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Category Archives: Fiction
[Bonus] Rappaccinis Daughter: a poisonous mystery
Rappaccini’s Daughter, a short story by Nathaniel Hawthorne first published in 1844, follows a young man named Giovanni Guasconti as he falls in love with Beatrice Rappaccini and becomes enraptured in her poisonous world created by her father, Dr. Giacomo Rappaccini. A mystery unfolds in the story as Giovanni learns about Dr Rappaccini’s infamous scientific […] Continue reading
Posted in disney, Fiction, Garden, Haggard, Poison, Rapunzel, Scientists, SF, She, short story
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Was there a real life Dracula?
The past few blogs posted have been about Dracula and Vampires and in this blog I am continuing the subject matter, but I want to bring attention to the history of Dracula. My first encounter with Vampires was with the infamous Twilight Saga, but my first encounter with an adaptation of the character Dracula, that […] Continue reading
Posted in Authors, bram stoker, disney, dracula, Fiction, Films, history, Hotel transylvania, SF, Shakespeare, Stoker, twilight, Vlad the impaler
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Monsters to Sex Symbols: the Evolution of Vampires in Fiction
Asia’s blog posted last week entitled “What’s So Human About Monsters?” discusses why we fear vampires, and how their near humanness reveals an ugliness that is already present in humanity. In this post, I want to examine the opposite spectrum: what is so alluring about vampires, and why are we so obsessed with them? And […] Continue reading
Winner Wednesday: “The Watermelon Seed”
The Watermelon Seed, written and illustrated by Greg Pizzoli, is the 2014 Theodor Seuss Geisel Award Winner, and it is no wonder why. The fun and colorful cover immediately drew me in, and the cover under the jacket did not disappoint either. Upon opening the book, it is as if the reader is actually going inside of […] Continue reading
Posted in Fiction, food, Funny, Pre-K, Winning Titles
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Black Mirror: 200 Years of Sci-Fi Influence
SPOILER WARNING FOR BLACK MIRROR SEASONS 3 AND 4 Over the past decade, anthology series have seen a significant rise in popularity, particularly in the horror and science fiction genres. From “American Horror Story” to the revival of the classic series “The Twilight Zone”, anthologies are in high demand both on streaming services and on […] Continue reading
Posted in Authors, Black Mirror, Black Museum, Crocodile, Edgar Allan Poe, Fiction, Frankenstein, future tech, H. Rider Haggard, Haggard, Mary Shelley, Netflix, Playtest, Sci-Fi, science, Science Fiction, SF, SF love, She, Shelley, Spoiler Alert, technological advancements, technology, Televsion, The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym, tv
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Confessions of a Librarian’s Daughter
I can’t stand when people watch a movie before they read the book. There. I said it. Even back in fourth grade when a film adaptation of Jeff Kinney’s renowned Diary of a Wimpy Kid hit theaters, I was appalled by my young cohort watching in awe from front row seats, so mindless of the […] Continue reading
Posted in art, Atwood, dystopia, Fiction, Films, hulu, Margaret Atwood, Science Fiction, SF, sf movies, The Handmaid's Tale
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Clockwork Humanity
Music has a certain peculiar, universal appeal which sets it apart from other forms of media. Most of us consume things like TV, video or movies on a daily basis. Hopefully most of us read a book for fun now and again – but we all have that one friend who hasn’t voluntarily picked up […] Continue reading
Science Fiction Themes Through the Decades
Taking this course was my very first introduction to science fiction. If I had to name one takeaway from what I’ve learned, it’s that science fiction is not about humans, but rather human nature. It’s about what issues us humans are facing in our current moment, and how those issues can be exploited through developments […] Continue reading
Posted in Aliens, Anderson, Artificial Intelligence, Asimov, Authors, books, civilization, ethics, evolution, Ex Machina, Fiction, gender, Heinlein, humanities, robots, Science Fiction, SF, society, technology, Van Vogt
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Ted Chiang AI Talk Highlights: Singularity?
In his talk last Monday here at Vanderbilt, Ted Chiang joined a panel to talk about the future of Artificial Intelligence. He spoke about what A.I. means for humanity, and contested the possibility of the singularity (a.k.a. the technology explosion that occurs when computers begin programming smarter computers, with those smarter computers programming even smarter […] Continue reading
Posted in AI, Chiang, Fiction, humanities, Procreation, robots, SF, Singularity, Turing Test
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The Fiction of Jurassic Park’s “Science”
Extracting DNA from amber-preserved mosquitos- mosquitos from before “the meteor” 66 million years ago- and filling in the missing parts with frog DNA is the premise of Jurassic Park’s successful dinosaur resurrection. So… can we do this and bring Busch Gardens to another level? Sorry, but no. Not really. And this is why: So, although […] Continue reading
Posted in Biology, clones, Dinosaurs, Fiction, genomes, Jurassic World, Science Fiction, SF
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