Ｍｏｎｓｔｅｒｓ

　　　　　　Last week, we read a story in which zombies appears.  It was very interesting story, and I wanted to read whole story.  So, this time, I’m going to write about monsters.

              When I hear the word “monsters”, I firstly think of vampires. 

              The stories of vampire have been told for a very long time.  Vampires are thought to be ghosts of dead people, slip out graveyards, and suck people’s blood.  The victims also become vampires.  They hate cross and garlic, and change into dust when they get sunshine.

              I have some images about vampires.  They are handsome, gentleman and polite.  They are monsters, but are not negative images.

              The legends of vampire became famous when Bram Stoker, an Irish writer, published the novel, Dracula (1897).  Since then, a lot of vampire stories have been made into novels, animations, and movies.  As to recentness, a movie, Dark Shadow which director is Tim Burton and main actor is Johnny Depp is now showing.  I haven’t watched the movie yet, but I’m very interested in it.

Neal Stephenson

              The other day, we read Anathem written by Neal Stephenson.

              Neal Stephenson is an American SF writer.  He made his debut as a writer with The Big U in 1984.  Then he published some famous SF stories: Snow Crash (1992), The Diamond age (1995) and Cryptonomicon (1999).  Snow Crash is set in The American near feature.  The scene of The Diamond age is middle of the 21th century.  The Diamond age won Locus Award and Hugo Award.  Cryptonomicon won Locus Award, too.  Locus Award is SF story’s award in the English-speaking world and Hugo Award is SF story’s award in the U.S.  What I thought interesting that In The Diamond age, people are classified by the ways of thinking, and one of the main kinds is called “Nippon”.

              In Neal Stephenson’s works, there are a lot of metaphors and similes.  Similes are easy to understand for using “like” or “as”.  But metaphors are less understandable because the readers have to imagine the meaning.  In addition, his works are SF stories and far apart from the real world, which makes the readers more difficult to imagine the scene.  As to Anthem, it is necessary to know the religious background, so I could hardly understand the story only by myself.