The Filipino Group discussion

Hello there!

For this month's F2F discussion, we will be trying something a little different. Instead of reading a specific novel, we will be reading a series of speculative fiction short stories. This format was patterned after the anthology tv series The Twilight Zone hence the title of this thread.

For every Monday for the month of July, a moderator will take over this thread and announce their selected short story that will be read by everyone who wishes to participate. The moderators are as follows:

Week 1 (June 27) : Aaron Vincent
Week 2 (July 04) : Angus
Week 3 (July 11) : Monique
Week 4 (July 18) : Bennard

(Click on the names to see their short story selection announcement post.)

Being the moderator of the first week, I am pleased to announce that the story that we will be reading is:

Robert Heinlein's All You Zombies

Clicking on the linky will take you to a pdf copy of the short story.

I won't provide any synopsis of the story. Usually with these kind of stories it is best to know nothing when you start to read it so it would be more fun discovering yourself what it is about. Agree?

Have fun!

Why don't we start this discussion by exploring the speculative fictiuon category?

Name 5 common things/themes/plotline you see in a speculative fiction story. You may also provide an example for each item. You can mention anything from books to movies to tv shows to comics.

Please don't repeat something someone already mentioned. Violators will be ejected from an airlock. JK. :D

1. Artificial Intelligence / Robots (Ex Machina)
2. The Chosen One (Harry Potter)
3. Vampires (Let The Right One In)
4. Cyberspace (The Matrix)
5. Intergalactic Space Travels (Battlestar Galactica)

5 common things/themes/plotline you see in a speculative fiction story:(view spoiler)[

1. Magic (Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell ) <--changed my example because apparently we can't repeat these ones, as well. Can I leave the airlock now? :P
2. Alternate history (Inglorious Basterds)
3. Zombie apocalypse (The Walking Dead)
4. Mythical creatures (as in dragons; as in Game of Thrones! Homaygoodness, that last episode!!! XD)
5. Time travel (X-Men: Days of Future Past)
(hide spoiler)]

Mawi: (view spoiler)[ Click here (hide spoiler)]

5 common things/themes/plotline you see in a speculative fiction story

1. Dwarves (The Lord of the Rings)
2. Faster-Than-Light Travel (The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy)
3. Immortality (In Time)
4. Teleportation (The Prestige)
5. Dualism (Star Wars)

5 common things/themes/plotline you see in a speculative fiction story:

1. It takes place in the contemporary world but adds fantastic or speculative elements (11-22-63)
2. It explores future technology or alternate technology (Ubik)
3. It takes place in the future (The Sparrow)
4. It takes place in a past that is different from what is generally accepted (The Mists of Avalon)
5. It takes an existing scientific fact and extrapolates it beyond what is known
(2001: A Space Odyssey)

Source: http://www.sherrydramsey.com/?page_id...

5 common themes you see in a speculative fiction story:

Alien zoo - Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
Living planets - The Left Hand of Darkness by Ursula K. Le Guin
Genetic engineering - Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
The nature of reality - The Man in the High Castle by Philip K. Dick
Artificial world - Inverted World by Christopher Priest

Shout out to Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind!

Can I just say that I love love love this 4-in-1 idea of yours? Kudos! :-D

5 common things/themes/plotline you see in a speculative fiction story
(view spoiler)[
1) Superheroes (Watchmen)
2) Dinosaurs (The Lost World)
3) Savages and Barbarians (Conan the Barbarian)
4) Steampunk (Leviathan)
5) Multi-dimensions / Multi-verse (Flatland)
(hide spoiler)]

5 common themes you see in a speculative fiction story:

psychic phenomena - Season of the Witch by Natasha Mostert
LGBTQ - The Mortal Instruments by Cassandra Clare
memory - Before I Go to Sleep by SJ Watson
isolation and alienation - The City & the City by China Miéville
cyberwarfare - Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex by Junichi Fujisaku, Kazuto Nakazawa

Uhhh, Hi?

My brain hurts with these spec fic... anyways
(view spoiler)[
5 things/themes/plotlines you see in a speculative fiction

Magical realism - Kite of Stars (Dean Alfar)
Alternative History - Serox (David Hontiveros)
Phones / mobile technology(?) - Charged (Seige Malvar)
Virtual world - Ready Player One (Ernest Cline)
Time-travel - The Time Machine (HG Wells) (hide spoiler)]

5 Common Themes

Alternative myth/retellings - American Gods
Tesseracts - A Wrinkle In Time
Super-duper genius kids - Ender's Game
Experiments - Flowers for Algernon
Cloning - Never Let Me Go

(view spoiler)[Not sure if I mentioned anything that has already been given, eh. (hide spoiler)]

Five Common Themes:

1. The False Promise of a Utopia (The Book of Strange New Things)
2. Persecution of Minorities (The Handmaid's Tale)
3. Crises of Identity (The Metamorphosis)
4. Unchecked Consumerism (In Persuasion Nation)
5. The Connection Between Reality and Fantasy (One Hundred Years of Solitude)

5 Common Themes:

1. Demons - Case 39
2. Single Gender Worlds - The Female Man
3. Terraforming - The Mars Trilogy
4. Mind Control Parasite - Upstream Color
5. Metaverse - Snow Crash

I guess by now you all have read the absurdness of our selection this week. I have been a fan of time-travel stories for a long time now and that is the reason why I selected this short story. Often the case and especially in this story, it highlights the question of free will vs fate. So I our discussion will revolve around those argument.

1. Do you think the character in the story has any say at all on his/her life when her existence is what is at stake in it?

2. How much free will do we really have when the past which we cannot change determines the future? If yourself right now is the product of the choices you've made in the past, then it follows that the next choice you will make is the product of those choices. Does this mean that free will is just a mere illusion? I guess what I really want you to do is defend your free will against the idea of causality, determinism or teleology. :)

(troll comment for notif purposes)

Grabe naman, hong hirap ng tanong :D

(view spoiler)[
1. I think he has. From what I understand from the story, time-traveling for him requires a machine, as opposed to an involuntary time travel (if you've read or seen The Time Traveler's Wife, parang ganon) where the guy just pops in and out of time zones, without any say in the matter. In "All You Zombies," the character has always had the choice to go into the machine or not in order to travel through time. (Of course, his job requires him to, which is a different matter.)

2. Free will is not an illusion, I think it relates more to moral freedom, to do what one thinks is right. It relates to one's sense of right and wrong, to one's freedom to create a future for himself within the parameters of his control. What I mean is, free will allows one to dictate or shape his future but only as far as he is able to, because there are many things that are simply beyond one's control. Even if one keeps doing the right things, exercising his free will by choosing to do what he thinks are morally right, there are some things that could have an effect on his choices and those are things that are beyond his free will, beyond his control. So I think that free will is given to man because he has the capacity to think, weigh, and decide what is good for him. It's not just an illusion. (hide spoiler)]

Maria wrote: "(troll comment for notif purposes)

Grabe naman, hong hirap ng tanong :D"

Pahirap yan kasi WTF yung story hahaha. :P

^ difficult question to a rather short WTF story. haha

Hi Aaron, trolling pa din hihihi (don't mind me)

Ay ang pa-deep naman ng tanong. Hehehe.

(view spoiler)[
1. To be honest, I got a bit confused with the story. Hahaha. If I understand it correctly, they are all one person?! I think he has a say in his life. It's a bit fucked up but it's like he created everything for himself. He was jumping timelines trying to give himself what he wanted during a particular time in his life. He's living in a loop trying to find pieces of himself when all along, he was just looking for himself lang. Gulo. Haha

2. I agree with Monique that freewill is not an illusion. Humans are intellectual beings and have the capacity to decide what they want out of life but there will always be a cause-and-effect from decisions made which may greatly affect the future. I don't think it changes how much freewill a person has although it influences future choices and makes him wary of pending effects his decisions may bring based on past experiences. In short, we are free to do what we want pero paranoid lang tayo kasi ayaw natin magkamali kaya we tend to box ourselves in thus making freewill look like an illusion. :P
(hide spoiler)]

Fuck this story talaga. My head reeled when I watched Predestination almost two years ago, and reading it changed nothing.

1. Yes, I do believe she/he can. She/He has the choice to stop the cycle by leading a different life. But what to make of her/his life after that choice would be totally unpredictable to everyone, including to those who chose to put her/him into the cycle. If elimination is part of the choice from those people, then that ultimately stops the cycle. Either way, the cycle is gone. So, it's not a question of existence after all.

2. Determinism vs. free will. Aren't we accountable for every choice we make? Eradicating accountability means we have no effect whatsoever in the world, may it be good or bad. Our free will may be limited on certain occasions, or limited on how much we want to affect, but it is certainly real.

Teleology vs. free will. Everyone has a purpose. At least, on the Christian context, that is. But it is still our choice if we wish to apply our self to that purpose or not; or how much of our self do we wish to apply.

1. He can choose to end his existence if he's so tired of living in a loop.

2. I think free will is about the now and not about the past so the first question sounds jarring to me. Even if the now becomes the past, it's still your free will that dictated it.

Regarding free will per se, I think there is no absolute free will. I think our moral upbringing and ethical standards constrict it, which I see as a good thing.

Hi! For this week, we'll be reading Ken Liu's The Paper Menagerie.

What is it about? Like Aaron, I won't provide a synopsis, but maybe you'll figure it out with the questions below. Before clicking the linky, take a breather from our hectic lives and find a spot where you can transport yourself to that world filled with fanstastic imagination and nostalgia--our childhood. Isn't speculative fiction about our boundless capacity for imagination?

Some Questions:

1. What is your favorite animal and why? (Optional: What's your Patronus?)
2. Describe your mother in three words (no repeating of answers).

(view spoiler)[
1. My favorite animal is the owl. Because owls look smart - aren't they actually smart? And they look cute! But my Patronus is an otter. (Weird haha.)

2. Strict, patient, kind-hearted. (hide spoiler)]

1. The wolf. Wolves can live alone or in a pack. They also look so majestic yet scary. My patronus is the hare. Predator - prey. Lol

2. Woman I Love

(view spoiler)[
1. I believe that he/she has. The unmarried mother could've chosen not to take on the bartender's offer for revenge. The stranger could've chosen not to seduce the unmarried mother. The bartender could've chosen not to recruit the stranger. The issue is that these people knew each other so very very well that the probability of them picking the other options are quite slim.

2. I think free will is real. Free will is an innate characteristic of our humanity and what makes us human beings unpredictable. Unlike Monique though, I don't think it necessarily ties in to morality (i.e. choosing between 'right' and 'wrong'), because morality is imho dependent on culture. A lot of times the consensus would say that the 'right' choice is the 'destined' choice, but there had also been a lot of times the consensus were proven wrong. Sometimes, our destiny is right in front of us, but we still take the unknown path, regardless if it's the 'right' or 'wrong' path. Why? Because we chose it.
(hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[
1. Favorite animal will always be a dog, because they are simply LOVE. My Patronus is an otter, because, yes, I'll do anything for the people I love.

2. My best mentor.

(hide spoiler)]

All You Zombies Questions:(view spoiler)[
1. Yep. The unmarried mother could chose to stop all the time traveling. I mean, there would be consequences if he does so, I guess. But still he is free to chose such an action because he/she ahs free will.

2. I guess we have what we call limited free will? There have been studies about the possibility of scientists predicting your next decision, based on your genetics and experiences and personality traits and brain waves and stuff. So yeah, we have free will but it is somewhat determined by all those stuff I said (genetic component, traits blah blah). Still a person can chose an option that can be considered as entirely out of character. In short, I don't think free will is an illusion. It's for reals yo. (hide spoiler)]

Oh my gulay, ang ganda ng story, Angus!

Some Questions:

1. What is your favorite animal and why? (Optional: What's your Patronus?)
2. Describe your mother in three words (no repeating of answers).

(view spoiler)[
1. Cats are my favorite animals. I like them because they are the ultimate predators. My Petronus, according to the link, is a hare.

2. Tough, intelligent, survivor.
(hide spoiler)]

Paper Menagerie Questions(view spoiler)[
1. Dragons! Can I say dragons? (GoT hangover!) Accordging to Buzzfeed, my patronus is a horse!

2. Selfless. Funny. Disorganized. (hide spoiler)]

Paper Menagerie Questions

(view spoiler)[
1. Since dogs have been mentioned, my next favorite animal are seagulls. On land, they look so awkward but when they fly, they look so graceful and free. My Patronus is a horse (puede na, haha)

2. Quiet, wise and brave.
(hide spoiler)]

Paper Menagerie
(view spoiler)[
1. Favorite animal would have to be pandas since I have watched a lot of videos of them chilling and fooling around and I find them cute and amusing
Hahaha
Patronus - otter :)

2. Crazy. Fierce. Independent.

(hide spoiler)]

Lol at fooling around! :D

Aaron Vincent wrote: "Lol at fooling around! :D"

For lack of better term. Hahaha.

Paper Menagerie
(view spoiler)[
1. Bears. Polar, grizzly, kahit ano pa yan; they're formidable yet fluffeeeh as hell!
Patronus - horse
2. Formidable yet fluffy. (Parang bear lang. :D) (hide spoiler)]

Aaron: Ibang fooling around yata ang nasa isip mo. :P

Paper Menagerie Qs:
(view spoiler)[

1. Dog is my favorite. Whenever I remember Basha, I still cry. :( Patronus: ano ung kay Remus Lupin, wolf ba? Yun na lang din haha

2. Stronger than Me.
(hide spoiler)]

I suppose some of us have finished reading this week's short story. Here's a question for y'all (not Aaron level):

In an interview, Ken Liu said, "[...] I care very little about genre labels, but I do like to write stories that literalize metaphors, an approach that works better in some stories than in others."

What do you think are the literal metaphors in the story? Did these metaphors work for you?

What do you think are the literal metaphors in the story? Did these metaphors work for you?

(view spoiler)[
Well, Jack's mom literally did breathe life into her art. Which are so life-like that they literally move.

And yes, they absolutely worked for me. I totally love the story!
(hide spoiler)]

Hi! New here. Read the first story after watching the movie so it didn't have the same impact anymore. buy il oved it just the same. Very interesting premise.

Aaron's story is new to me. At first I thought the character was talking in metaphors about the animals, then realized it was all real. I wonder if the son and the mom were lose, would the son be able to do the same thing to paper?

What do you think are the literal metaphors in the story? Did these metaphors work for you?

(view spoiler)[
I thought the paper tiger was very literal. It was a term used during Mao Tse Tung's time to describe American imperialism. It means something that looks formidable but is, in reality, ineffective. Pretty much how the mom saw her life.

It was the first thing I thought of when I read the story.
(hide spoiler)]

Hello, hello! :) This week, I picked Daniel Keyes' Flowers for Algernon for our reading.

Just two things for this week:

(1) Pick one favorite line from the story and tell me why you picked it.

(2) Let's have fun! What's your IQ? :)

P.S. If you've read the novel, you can choose not to read the short story. The novel is an extended version of the short story. :)

Paper Menagerie:

(view spoiler)[
This is going to be a long shot, but I find this significant (for me, at least)...

Those shoe boxing of the paper animals is similar as to how we box away certain parts of our lives, and because they were endowed with life, however long it has been, they will have a way of sneaking out and surprising us when we least expect it.

So, I guess, yes, it worked for me. :)

(hide spoiler)]

Paper Menagerie:
(view spoiler)[1. I think Ken Liu uses the metaphor of the mom being the paper tiger (lao hu) to demonstrate the former's love and devotion to her son. And when the mom died, the origami tiger stopped moving as well.

And yes the metaphor worked for me, not only because of the added whimsy, but also because it made me feel the mother's love much more deeply. (hide spoiler)]

Flowers for Algernon
(view spoiler)[
1. "Anyway I bet 1m the first dumb person in the world who ever found out somthing importent for sience. I remember I did somthing but I dont remember what. So I gess its like I did it for all the dumb pepullike me."

This was when Charlie started regressing into his old self. It was sad seeing him deteriorate just when he was starting to enjoy being a genius and help further studies for the same cause. But, even though his intellect dropped, it was good to know that his passion to help was still there. It was something that didn't go away. :)

2. 181

(hide spoiler)]

Flowers for Algernon
(view spoiler)[

1. I told her how can you tell storys about pepul you never met. I said why shud I make up lies. I never tell lies any more becaus I always get caut. She told me this test and the other one the raw-shok was for getting personalty. I laffed so hard. I said how can you get that thing from inkblots and fotos. She got sore and put her picturs away. I dont care. It was siIy. I gess I faled that test too.

This is the 1st quote among many, anyways.
His summation is on point. It's silly making up stories about other people, especially when you don't know them. It's morally wrong. :)

2. (hide spoiler)]

Flowers for Algernon:
(view spoiler)[
1. "Thank God for books and music and things I can think about."

I mean people are great, but books, msuic and things are better! I kid! :) Anyway, I love this quote because I always think about what it's like for people who say they don't read, or watch movies, or listen to music. I mean what do they do? And how to they make sense of stuff? So yeah, I too am always thankful for books, music and things because not only do they give me pleasure and happiness, but they also help me deal with life.

2. I got 181! Har! Dis for reals?!
(hide spoiler)]

Paper Menagerie

(view spoiler)[
" She breathed into them so that they shared her breath, and thus moved with her life. This was her magic."

The first animal his mother breathed life into is the Tiger. The son is born on the year of the Tiger. The son is one of her magic. Her son as much as the paper animals is her most cherished creation.

I could have done without the lengthy exposition letter at the end but I thought everything was done beautifully.
(hide spoiler)]

Flowers for Alrgernon

(view spoiler)[
"No one I've ever known is what he appears to be on the surface."

The sad thing about human existence is that there is no amount of genius can really help us fully understand or know who people really are.

2. I think the test is broken because I also got a 181! Did it again and consciously made mistakes and the result is still 181.

(hide spoiler)]

Aaron’s (difficult) questions:
1. Yes. He has a choice on what to do at the present.
2. I agree with Angus, it’s about the now. Maybe there is no absolute free will but you can still make your own choices and then face the consequences.

Angus’s questions:
1. I love cats that I even say hi to stray cats that I see on the streets. According to Buzzfeed, my Patronus is a Jack Russell Terrier, same as Ron.
2. brave, hardworking, generous

Will catch up with my reading, just finished the first story.

All You Zombies Questions -
(view spoiler)[1. I think he created his own paradox. This is so like Tsubasa Chronicles, where a clone was created for the original Syaoran, little did he know that the original is a son of the clone. So in essence, he has the say. He can simply end the cycle by not moving at all, via time travel, based on the short story.

2. Freewill versus determinism is a tough question. We all have our free will, and the choices from this determines our future fate. We should treasure free will as it is, and not be fatalistic about it. #YOLO hahahahah (hide spoiler)]

(view spoiler)[chase-reading the other short stories before I can answer~ (hide spoiler)]

Paper Menagerie Questions
(view spoiler)[
1. Favorite ko Dog - because it is loyal to you. And clingy. Just like Ella AHEHE

Patronus Charm says: I got Swan, which is weird(?) or so not me.

You’re quiet, but not anti-social. You’re always surrounded by a group of friends, and they act as a support system in times of emotional distress. Your Patronus takes the form of a swan, the same as Cho Chang. Keep enjoying the simple things in life and do your best to not dwell on the past; the future is bright.

2. Troll, Wisdom-filled, Blunt (hide spoiler)]