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I don’t know how people blog on a regular daily basis (well, actually I do, maybe that’s why I don’t read many blogs). I only have to do this once a week, and this week I really can’t think of anything to say that might be of interest to anyone, let alone me. So, here’s a link to someone who actually has something of interest to say about the concept of “The Other.”
Speaking of encountering the other in literal terms, as some efforts of NASA purport to do by sending Elvis Presley recordings out into the cosmos, I highly recommend Stanislaw Lem’s Fiasco, which satirizes the whole notion of alien contact as encountering people from other star systems who are more or less just like us, but maybe with pointy ears.
Perhaps you can help with the conundrum of how monsters in fiction are being humanized to the degree that they’re no longer monsters.
James kind of touched on that with the mylittleponied unicorns, but I think it’s happening elsewhere to and we need to put a stop to the twighlighting of vampires and such.
I think the point of most horror is that the “monsters are us.” I haven’t read the Twilight series, though my daughter, not surprisingly, loved it. I have not objection to the idea, but I agree the “vampire as good guy at heart” is overdone. Which is why I don’t read much of it.
But, obviously, I’m in a minority, because it does seem to sell. Maybe there’s a book in which a world of civilized vampires is beset by evil humans with their garlic and crosses, or has that been done already?
So a space opera vampire hunt?
How about bloodthirsty vamps hunt down the whipped MTV vampire pansies?