Week Eleven - Cyberpunk and Steampunk

I think steampunk is really interesting and attractive theme in books and movies. Actually I have watched Laputa, Castle in the Sky, which represents steampunk animation in Japan. This animation is based on the world when it was late of 19th century and industrial revolution was happened. Also, I have watched The Good, the Bad, The Weird which released in Korea and this movie is also based on steampunk. For this week, I read The Anubis Gates by Tim Powers. The story of The Anubis Gates is about time travel, magic, and romance. When I was little, my fantasy was all about time travel and that's why I was attracted by this book. Honestly it was hard to understand to me when I read this book at first because there are so many characters and the novel's setting jumps from place to place throughout the entire novel, as well as from time to time, and all description and expression are so detailed. But the more I read, the more interested I become. The main character, Brendan Doyle is a literary professor and he is hired by Cochran Darrow who is a rich and powerful man. He travels back in time but he is kidnapped, and left behind in 1810, where he is forced to beg for food and money. He has gone through all sort of hardships and finally he got freedom to live out his life as he chooses. So The Anubis Gates is a great book for people who have dreamed about time travel.

The Good, the Bad, the Weird

Laputa, Castle in the Sky

Week Nine - The Stars my Destination

Star Wars is a famous movie that made space scientific genre popular over the world. Actually I'm interested in natural universe but didn't really like space stuff, so I haven't watched Star Wars until this week. After I read The Stars my Destination and watched Star Wars, I realized that those kind of book and movie were awesome. I really was interested in how author thought about future in 1956. The author described main character Gulliver Foyle as "the oiler, wiper, bunkerman; too easy for trouble, too slow for fun, too empty for friendship, too lazy for love." I could feel how the author felt about people in 25th century. He has no skills, no merits, and is not educated. He is the last remaining survivor of the Nomad, a merchant spaceship attacked in the war. This spaceship was drifting in the universe.

Week Eight - Anansi Boys

The theme of this week was interesting to me because mythic fiction and contemporary urban fantasy is kind of new to me. Well sometimes I imagined that I live in a world where all the gods of mythology are real. Both Lady in the water and Anansi Boys are about "mythic fantasy." According to wikipedia, animism is the worldview that non-human entities possess a spiritual essence. In African and west Indian indigenous folklore, Anansi is the spider god who created the universe. This book is about Fat Charlie, whose father is Anansi realized that his father is died in Florida. Anyways the theme of this book is Animism, so there are some spirits like Tiger or Bird woman.
I thought it is a very visual story and I was not at all surprised to read that offers had been made to turn it into a movie. During I read this book I always imagined scenery of this story and I think it is really interesting book.

Week Seven - Night Circus and Harry Potter

I had kind of fun for this week because I really like books or movies of fantasy magical theme. That's why I have read all of Harry Potter, The Chronicles of Narnia, Howl's Moving Castle and etc. Those books are so interesting and I think it is because fantastic world in the books arouse people's curiosity. When I read The Night Circus first, I liked its introduction which said; The circus arrives without warning. No announcements precede it. It is simply there, when yesterday it was not." It already attracted me a lot. Basically The Night Circus is about two magicians from two (old and new) magical schools. Young illusionists fall in love during the course of the deadly game. This book is totally focused on "circus". I thought author's description about circus and expression of mood are quite interesting too because I could feel his effort for describing how this book flows. All the time when I was reading The Night Circus, I felt that I was dreaming like the name of circus "Cirque des Reves" which means the circus of night. Actually this book is not really meaningful, but it was good book for just having fun to read.