Whatcha Readin'?

 As noted on a previous blog, I just finished Someone You Can Build a Nest In by John Wiswell. I enjoyed it, despite occasionally feeling miles a head of the protagonist in terms of Clues to Pick Up On. However, I never know if that's actually a problem or just my well-honed writerly sense of foreshadowing and how it's used in narratives, due to spending much of my life workshopping professional-level writing in my two writers' groups. So, it's possible that it would not be an issue for most.

I have a number of things in my TBR pile, but probably I will be listening to Frankenstein next. Not only did Libby finally cough it up for me after being on hold forever, but we are doing a deep-dive into it for my cyberpunk podcast in time for Halloween, which is coming up fast. I think it will be fun to try to make the case that Frankenstein is cyberpunk--it certainly tackles a lot of the same themes as cyberpunk: what does it mean to be human? When is science TOO much science? And, there is no question in my mind that Frankenstein is the first science fiction novel. This will be, I think, my second reading. I'm pretty sure I had to read Frankenstein as part of my English major in college. Though I remember nothing of substance about it.

 As for manga and anime media, I seem to be falling into movies lately. On Crunchyroll, I watched Josee, the Tiger and the Fish.  I recommend it? It's a very sweet coming-of-age romance between two new adults, one of whom has been disabled (wheelchair bound) since birth. I found it really heartwarming. I tend to love me a good slice-of-life where a large percentage of it is just people discovering how cool it is to be alive in the world today.

 

The other one I watched yesterday might not be available anywhere you can get it because it comes via my membership in the Japanese Film Festival (JFF). You might be able to just sign up for it?  https://en.jff.jpf.go.jp/  It is, I believe, free.

 

Several years ago, I stumbled on to JFF because Facebook advertised to me that there was a Satoshi Kon film festival and I SLAMMED the sign me up button so hard that somehow I ended up with a Japan Foundation membership. At any rate, I get push notifications any time they're running another film festival. Thus, I spotted that the JFF was going to be debuting a live-action version of ReLife. Unfortunately, that isn't yet streaming in North America!  Bummer!

BUT, while I was there I found some things I could watch, including this great anime movie called Time of Eve, which is about robot love or rather more accurately the bonds between humans and machines. One of the things I adore about all the Japanese manga and anime I've consumed on the subject of artificial life so far is that the assumption never seems to be "Can machines generate real human emotions," but rather, "When the robots generate real human emotions, will we be emotionally mature enough to accept them as people?"   

Wikipedia tells me that there was an anime TV series of Time of Eve first, which doesn't surprise me.  You can kind of tell from the movie that they are condensing a lot. It was still a good movie.  Someone also did a manga after the fact, apparently, which I have open on another tab because I'd like to be able to review it for MangaKast (and I try to only review things that have corresponding manga--in part because everyone and their dog reviews anime TV and movies, and almost no one reviews solely manga.) 

I think that's most of what's been going into my brain lately. 

How about you? Whatcha reading?