Week 8: American Gods (6)

 

In his novel, American Gods, Gaiman explores themes of belief and worship. There are a lot of interesting ideas brought up in American Gods, the idea that belief or worship is a quantifiable resource, and that there is only so much to go around. The idea that attention is a form of worship. The idea that multiple contradictory or even impossible things could be true at once. The idea that the invention and introduction of the new can lead to the the 

A staple of many religions is the creation myth, the idea that the gods, or some other forces greater than humanity, created the universe and the people in it. Gaiman presents an alternative view of the creation myth, suggesting that humanity creates gods, or perhaps that gods and humans created each other. The corollary of this view is that, in American Gods, human belief is incredibly impossible. 

I read American Gods, but I watched the video adaptation as well, and it was incredibly interesting to see how the adaptation changed what the story was about.

In the Starz series, the story is essentially about a group of relics on the way out clawing and clinging to life by any means necessary, whereas the book is more focused on Shadow’s story and his growth as a character, as well as his journey through this world of grief and gods. I also enjoyed how the adaptation expanded the world of American gods and talked more about Laura and Mad Sweeney.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Week 11: Johnny Mnemonic (3)

  My favorite thing about William Gibson’s Johnny Mnemonic is how it uses genre. It is, in essence, a noir detective story, with its quirky, campy names like Molly Millions, Ralfi Face, and of course the titular Johnny Mnemonic, it just also happens to contain the technological aspects that happen to be found in traditional cyberpunk stories. Johnny Mnemonic reminds me of my favorite cyberpunk noir detective story, the Penumbra Podcast's Juno Steele series. That is a sentence I thought I'd never write, because it seems like such a specific genre mix, it's bound to only happen once, and yet here we are. However, this mix might not be so unlikely. The thing about cyberpunk is that it has a distinctly different vibe to the clean, shiny, brand new chrominess of space operas. Cyberpunk seems to imply some element of being dirty or run-down, cyberpunk is what happens to space operas when you add a lot of colorful neon lights and then leave it to decay without cleaning it up for
Read more

Final Point Count: 85

  Week 1: 6 Frankenstein Week 2: 6 Interview With A Vampire Week 3: 6 A Wild Sheep Chase  Week 4: 6  Annihilation Week 5: 10 Aunt Maria Redlands 1-5 Week 6: 4 Equal Rites Week 7: 5  In Other Lands Week 8: 12 Anansi Boys American Gods  Week 9: 6 The Martian  Week 10: 6 The Female Man Week 11: 3 Johnny Mnemonic Week 12: 3 Bloodchild Week 13: 6  Oryx and Crake Week 14: 6 Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy
Read more

Week 9: The Martian (6)

  Andy Weir’s The Martian has been praised for its excellent humor, commitment to hard science, and general well-told story. I don’t read too many survival narratives, because I’m faint of heart and I can only handle so many suspenseful life or death situations. The Martian ’s humor and constant refusal to take itself too seriously helped to temper all of that suspense. However, as much as I enjoyed The Martian' s wit and entertainment value, there was one thing about it that bugged me beyond belief, and that is how this book treated women. The men in this book seem It’s no secret that there is a general lack of women in the STEM field, this is due to many things, but a big reason is the way that women in STEM get treated by their male coworkers. I can only assume that Weir was aiming for realism when he portrayed the men in this novel generally just treating and talking about the women around them in a way that's just generally pretty icky. An example of this is when Teddy and
Read more