Hyperion and Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom
If you are reading Hyperion, post your comments below. Remember to post a comment after you read each third of your book. Each comment should include the book's title, the portion of the book you read, and at least 10 response sentences. (Take a look at the list of Response Starters on this blog.) Your responses should show that you are reading and thinking about your book. When you finish the book, do a Final response. (Refer to your handout or the copy posted on the class web page.)
posted by T Sale at
2:12 PM
5 Comments:
Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom is alright so far. The concepts of this book, and how humans can “dead head” is interesting because it allows people to live in whatever era in the future they want. Kind of like a bear in hibernation, except it gets to choose when it wakes up according to what’s going on in the outside world. Julius, the main character gets murdered about 40 pages into the book. I was a little confused at that part because Julius was telling the story, after he got a new body, another idea I found interesting. There is a woman named Debra who is trying to change the Magic Kingdom, and take out the rides, and make it all a virtual experience. Julius is not to happy about that. I predict that Julius will be getting into trouble with Debra and her crew, because I think he is gonna try to ruin their plans.
By
kenna_d, at Tue Dec 19, 02:06:00 PM 2006
I was introduced to this new idea of a HUD, which is this thing that measures personality, and keeps a person “online”, people look at each others HUD so that they can get a feel for how the person is, the more HUD the better. Julius ends up offline, and is totally out of the loop, which is really hard on him. Debra and her crew just debuted there new “ride” in the Hall of Presidents. Julius comes to realize how much better they are than he is and it scares him into wanting to keep the Haunted Mansion human run and operated on. He doesn’t want Debra to take control of that too. This was a turning point because it sparked his need to beat Debra, and keep the Haunted Mansion. While Julius is offline, his girlfriend has an affair with his best friend because she is so sick of how horrible he’s acting because of his obsession over beating Debra. He leaves her house, and him and his best friend Dan have a long talk about everything, and how Dan thinks that he is just going to die instead of deadheading. Julius also finds out that after going to the doctors that his brain is messed up, and because he hasn’t rebooted, he won’t be able to remember the last year of Dan’s life. I found this really interesting because it shows just how much Julius cares about his friend even after what he did to him. He is also very stubborn, and I predict that this will end up really hurting him in the end.
By
kenna_d, at Tue Dec 19, 02:19:00 PM 2006
They are continuing to work hard on the Mansion, and are making it better than ever. If I could, I would ask the author why he chose the Mansion to be the center piece of his story. Anyways, things start going really down hill for Julius, as he realizes his mistake of not rebooting, and it causes him to have little episodes. By the end of the book, Julius destroys the Hall of Presidents exhibit that Debra made, and also finds out that she was the one who killed him off. He can’t take it anymore, and tries to drown himself, but before he dies, Dan saves him. Dan decided to deadhead with Julius for a while until they found a better time to live. And that is the end of the book. I thought that it was interesting that the author had Dan live, since half of Julius’s problem was not wanting to forget Dan. I was right about his obsession hurting him in the end.
By
kenna_d, at Tue Dec 19, 02:25:00 PM 2006
I am not really sure whether or not I liked this book. I thought that some of the concepts, like deadheading, and HUD, were actually kind of cool. But I also felt that they were just more ways for people to run away when they didn’t like things. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to my friends now, but maybe if I was older, I would have understood it better, and I might then. I think that a reader who likes ideas about how the future is going to be would really like this book. I think that paradox was the most common thing in this book, because the author makes you think that they will save the Magic Kingdom from being completely modernized, but in reality, the opposite is left by the main characters to happen. The book was all right, definitely not my favorite out of books that I have read, but it was very interesting at parts.
By
kenna_d, at Tue Dec 19, 02:33:00 PM 2006
Kenna --
Your three in-progress comments were a little heavy on plot summary and could have used more of your reactions, though you did make some of your opinions clear. Your final comment was helpful because it mentioned some specifrics.
By
T Sale, at Wed Dec 20, 04:16:00 PM 2006
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