Abby's Blog for Literature of Horror, Fantasy, and Sci-Fi

The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy , a satirical Sci-Fi radio show written by Douglas Adams, is as entertaining as it is crazy. On the day of Earth’s demolition, Arthur’s alien friend Ford helps him escape into the galaxy, traversing the universe by the seat of their pants and using information from the famous novel The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy to get them out of dozens of hair-raising, life threatening situations . From the President of the Universe to a paranoid android, the dynamic duo meet a wild array of characters in space and have the adventure of a lifetime. This radio show took me by surprise. I expected to like the story (and, of course, I did), but the production value was amazing! The radio show was complete with multiple voice actors, autotune, and sound effects. It was fantastic! I was quickly brought in within the first five minutes, and it kept my attention throughout the 12-part series. The writing is absolutely hilarious, the humor clever and the cha...

Ever since the turn of the century, technological advancement has skyrocketed. Even in my own short 19 years of life, I have seen technology go from the simplest cellphone sans touchscreen and chunky computers to face recognition on Iphones and Virtual Reality as an available college major. If we continue at this pace, the next 50 years are sure to be full of giant technological leaps for mankind. I predict that by 2028, holographic imaging will have changed exponentially. Rather than using a touchscreen to communicate, holograms and VR-like screens will be used a la Tony Stark’s tech. We’re about to break the mold of the IPhone already. Google Glass will have been adapted into a more practical form, but no matter what I think it’ll become mainstream. Entertainment will be venturing deep into VR. By 2038, robots will have most likely taken over the workforce, causing a crisis for employment. This will effect the topics of films, books, and social media as people scramble to decide...

“The Fiction of Ideas” is an interesting topic; change one thing about the human race, and an entirely new world is created. Such a wide variety of stories can come from this subgenre, each taking wildly different paths. Two short stories I read that fall under this broad category are “The Drowned Giant” by J. G. Ballard and “Come To Venus Melancholy” by Thomas M. Disch (I read a third story, “And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill,” that falls under this genre which is discussed in the previous blog post). “The Drowned Giant” is quite short, but in its few pages it tells a unique story. In this tale, we see what happens when a group of miniature humans find a drowned man washed upon the shore. The townspeople proceed to not only examine the giant body but crawl over it, kids using the nose as a rock to climb and the arms as stairs. The casualness with which the people treat the body is almost disconcerting, as if it’s just a large collection of rocks. Then, the scientists ...

And I Awoke And Found Me Here On The Cold Hill is a short story about a reporter going to a service port full of spaceships to try and find someone to interview. He finds a drunken, bitter man in uniform and asks him about the aliens around the port. Rather than getting a simple answer, the reporter gets a life story and lesson from the man about the human race’s unhealthy infatuation with aliens, going beyond sexual to just pure obsession. This brought something to light that I had never considered: people’s obsession with aliens may not be reciprocated. Aliens may find humans boring, worthless, or dumb. If we were to discover an alien race, we’d be fascinated with the first lifeforms in space we find. The aliens, though, may’ve mastered space travel and humans may mean nothing to them. This imbalance could lead to a subservient position for the human race, desperate to do anything to not lose this new connection and opportunity. People have always been obsessed with the unk...

“Johnny Mnemonic,” by William Gibson, is a dystopian short story about a man named Johnny who acts as a living database, storing information for others. After a violent mix-up at a club, he and the girl who caused the death of his client run off and escape to Nighttown, where she and her partners take the information and end up battling in the ruinous town over the Floor. The storyline was a bit hard to follow, and I wasn’t always clear on what was happening or who the characters were. Parts of it felt random, and the chaotic vibe was difficult to unravel. Something that stuck with me, though, is that the scariest part of this short story wasn’t the blood or the augmented humans and dystopian ruins of society, but the empty shell that Johnny Mnemonic has made his mind. He collects information for others and spits it back out with no memory of what he said. Of course, at the end he decides to stop being a traveling flashdrive of a human being, but to live a life where your brain can...

When one thinks about a “New Frontier” in regards to Space Opera, it usually involves space travel as the Biggest Advancement So Far. The shock value lies with finding new planets and interacting with aliens. In Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination , space travel isn’t the kicker, but teleportation is- or “jaunting,” as the book calls it. The novel’s story revolves around this concept of jaunting, which is essentially the concentration-based act of teleporting, and it’s repercussions on the world. The story starts out simple as Gulliver Foyle, our supposedly under-average man abandoned on a wrecked starcraft in space, is denied help by a passing spaceship called the Vorga-Ta^g. Furious, Foyle starts on a rampage to find and destroy the Vorga for abandoning him among the stars. He steals a spaceship from a tribe among the asteroids, where his face is tattooed like a terrifying tiger, and he flies back to Earth to find and wreak havoc on the crew of the Vorga. We follow Goyle as...

The Ocean at the End of the Lane , by Neil Gaiman, is an urban fantasy about a man coming back to his childhood home and remembering a long forgotten otherworldly experience from his childhood. As a seven year old, his life changes for the weirder when an opal miner,  who had been renting out a room in the boy’s house, commits suicide in their family car. The death opens a door for a mischevious cloth-like spirit to start messing with the locals’ lives in twisted ways of giving them what they want. The boy meets the Hempstocks, an immortal family of three who live at the end of the lane, and accompanies the youngest, Lettie Hempstock, on a journey to bound the spirit. However, the spirit latches on to the boy and uses him as its gateway between worlds. Parading as a nanny named Ursula Monkton, the demon torments the boy through herself and his father. It’s up to the boy and the Hempstocks to send the demon away and restore reality. Gaiman’s imagination makes the book take fligh...

Over the past 20 or so years, Harry Potter has become a household name. Everybody knows the story of the Boy Who Lived and his enemy He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Named. You’d be hard-pressed to find someone unfamiliar with the famous franchise; even those who never read the books or seen the movies has at least heard the name. The global effect of author J.K. Rowling’s wizarding world is phenomenal, but what makes the story of the young wizard so enticing? Harry Potter took the world by storm not only because of its wonderful cast of characters and in-depth world building, but its opportunity for self-insertion really boosts its fame. People love labels. It’s a part of why astrology is so popular, why months have birthday gemstones, why MBTI personality types are emphasized. Being able to belong to a group while simultaneously feeling special is something many people strive to find, and finding labels helps people feel defined . If you think about popular YA series, many include groups ...