Category: SF

Reading The Host in Context, Part 2: How I Read The Host

gordsellar24 Comments
This entry is part 11 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

NOTE: The following is a continuation of my earlier post on Reading The Host in context. You should probably start at part 1  first, and proceed here afterward. Though I have trawled through the books I’ve recently read for over a half an hour now, I cannot now find the passage that sticks out in my mind where an SF critic points out that American readings of Gojira, while they tend to correctly grasp the political subtext of the film — anxieties about nuclear weaponry, loss of colonial territory after the war, the threat of American power — miss out …

Continue Reading

My Thoughts on SF in Korea (How and Why They’ve Changed)

gordsellar7 Comments
This entry is part 1 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Anyone who’s reading this series from the beginning will note that this post was written much later than the second post in the series. My thoughts on SF in Korea have changed somewhat, and I think it’s important to frame that. A few months ago, when I began looking into SF here, all I really had access to was a couple of websites, and the shelves of every bookstore I walked past. You see, everytime I saw a bookstore, I would hurry into it and look around for the SF section. Not the SF section in English, but the Korean …

Continue Reading

Home With Split Head, But Good…

gordsellar0 Comments

I’m just posting this to say I went to the festival both yesterday and today, met some interesting people, had fun, took a lot of pictures, and will be reporting back soon. (And looking into what I need to do to submit a notice to Locus about it, or whether that’s even possible…) But also to say that I was thinking back on my earlier posts on the SF in South Korea series, and will need to add a preamble to it, explaining how my impressions and opinions have changed since I started looking into this topic. Both those posts, …

Continue Reading

Ian McHugh: Ass Kicking Writer

gordsellar0 Comments

Kudos time! Australian writer Ian McHugh, the friend I visited in Canberra last year (photos here), not only won 1st Prize for the third quarter of 2008 in the WOTF (Writers of the Future) Contest, and word has it he also won the Gold Prize last night, thereby making, as Wikipedia notes, more money for his short story than most writers make for a first novel sale. Congratulations, Ian! That’s some powerful ass-kicking. Competitor (and fellow Clarion Westie — I would probably have met her if I’d been at WorldCon, as many Westies were about the place) Erin Cashier graciously …

Continue Reading

Reading The Host in Context, Part 1

gordsellar2 Comments
This entry is part 10 of 72 in the series SF in South Korea

Well, here I go. This is my attempt to provide a reading of the 2006 blockbuster Korean film The Host in context — that is , not only a Korean cultural and historical context, but also in the context of Korean Gwoesu (“Giant Monster”)  movies, and those films which influenced the development of the genre in South Korea. Disclaimer — all images not cited to an photographer at copyright their respective owners. They are used in this post for educational/critical purposes, and thus their use falls under fair use. Thank goodness, because this essay would be hard to read without …

Continue Reading