Week 15: Future Tense

FUTURE TENSE

Honestly, i’m both hopeful and worried about the future. Technologically, i’m sure we’ll reach new hights. By the time that would be my 80’s, my field of illustration will look pretty different. Work will be completely traditional, mostly because of technological advances but also because of soaring paper prices due to deforestation. Worldwide climate issues will spark movements to save the world’s environment, and we will just barely do so, but the earth will still feel the strain. Back to art though, creativity and artistic ability will still be one of the few things that can’t be automated, making designers as important as engineers in a highly commercial society. VR is the standard art form, but it will be VR unlike anything we have today. Augmented reality is standard in everyday life, which will replace smartphones.

Though I doubt i’ll make it that long, by the time i’m 70 my job will be probably taken over by a much younger and much more qualified designer. As an illustrator who focuses on advertisement and editorial work, my work will eventually become formulaic to young companies and possibly individualistic artistic touches from art will become more crucial to a population raised in plastic box’s who want to feel special. Those jobs will focus on the highest consumers, the younger 20-30 year olds, and all those jobs will be held be them. My advice to my younger self as a 70 year old, again if I make it that far, will be to focus on enjoying the work I do and be proud of it. To stay true and stay on popular trends, while making them my own and better than they were before.

Week 14 Reading and Movies: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, I Think We're All Bozo's on This Bus, Idiocracy

SATIRE AND SCI-FI

If the sci-fi genre was a newspaper, we've finally hit the comic strips.
First off: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio show and the I Think We're All Bozo's on This Bus radio special.
Hitchhiker's was incredibly good and I very much so enjoyed it. It was well acted and faithful to the tonal humor of the novel. Hitchhiker's is one of my favorite stories, ever since I saw the movie as a child. Now I am an adult who's read the book and enjoys the both of them, though the book is better. In the radio show, the use of voice modulators and the over the top way of thinking and speaking keep you entertained, thinking, and laughing the whole way through. Now, as for I Think We're All Bozo's on This Bus, I think it was incredibly clever, satyrical, and does so well to make a point of the blatant issues of the future of humanity, then for the punchline, accepting it as normal. It's all to make the point that no matter how different you are, no matter how analytical you are of the issues humanity and society has, if you're not asking the right questions and not taking action against the thing that's actually wrong, YOU'RE NOTHING BUT ANOTHER BOZO, JUST LIKE THE POPULATION YOU FEEL YOU ARE SO DIFFERENT FROM. All that aside, I was very confused at the beginning but I was soon able to make sense of it and enjoy the incredible acting and voice-work of the special. It was amazing how they did Dr. Memory's voice. 10/10 would recommend.
Also, we're living in an Idiocracy in this day and age. Half of the nation, bias/uninformed/bigoted/uneducated, voted for a man who would run the country amok, and a large part of the nation decided it was better to cast away their vote because they didn't want to vote for the person opposing the man threatening nuclear war against countries he didn't even know if we were at odds with. It's bonkers. Oh god, I wanna check out of this planet like the dolphins in the beginning of the Hitchhiker's movie. So long and thanks for nothing, republicans.

Week 13 Reading and Movies: Existenz, A Clockwork Orange, All At One Point, The Aquatic Uncle

LITERARY SPECULATION

FISH UNCLE STEALS YO GIRL. Literary speculation's actually pretty bizarre in a sense to me. You take a literature story, add a vale of another genre, then suddenly the set-up makes the story figurative, like a metaphor to further convey the underlying lesson/story.

Week 12 Reading and Movies: Boodchild, Monsters, I Live With You

DIVERSE POSITION SCIENCE FICTION

Beautiful and uniquely expressed by those of majoritarian culture, this week was a look into Diverse Position Science Fiction. Obviously from my lack of knowledge, I wasn't ever exposed to this particular variety of novel and writing, but it was very nice being able to read it for the first time in this class.

Week 11 Reading and Movies: Ghost in the Shell I&II, Paprika, Iron Sky, Blade Runner, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

CYBERPUNK AND STEAMPUNK

This week is so cool. Dystopian worlds and cyborg filled dark techno-futures; cyberpunk is the essence that brings worlds like Ghost in the Shell and Blade Runner to life. On the same spectrum, Iron Sky, Bioshock, and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen are set in the coal-powered future fantasy world of steampunk.

Week 10 Reading and Movies: The Left Hand of Darkness, Fahrenheit 451, Dark City, Man in the High Castle, Dune

THE FICTION OF IDEALS

This is it. I've found it. I can't believe there's such a perfectly well-defined sub-genre that perfectly enraptures my taste in novels. I'm a big-ideal sci-fi kinda guy all the way. In the Left Hand of Darkness the ideals of gender and their role in society, love and survival are explored in a harsh and honest way. The constructs of gender are all around us. In a way, it’s what everything is built around in our world. In this book, on a winter world with beings that have no gender, the main character (a male human) must let go of his toxic masculinity in order to survive. It’s an incredible story, and the transformation the main character undergoes is so subtle that by the end of the story and he’s with humans again in all of their gendered glory, he’s uncomfortable around them and finally notices all the ways gender takes form. 10/10 I love that book so much.

Week 9 Reading and Movies: The Martian, Star Trek, Forbidden Planet, Foundation

SPACE OPERA

SPACE: THE FINAL FRONTER. Ah yes, finally. Now we're getting into the stuff that's my literal life-blood. The markers of 19th century popular fiction are, to name a few, the damsel in distress or the "future woman", the macho man who understands/respects others for the most part (if it's a woman, then he's probably being a bit sexist even though he's "trying"), the alien/robot/monster creature that has no conscious or humanity, and the scientist that takes things too far in the name of "science".