For this week's concept, we have to write about something I had never even heard of before we were assigned it. Something called the novum. After discussing it in class and reading over the prompt, I found the idea of the novum to be very interesting. Generally in science fiction stories, there is some sort of device or machine per say that classifies the story under the genre of science fiction. Examples include a computer, a robot, or any fictional element that is plausible but not necessarily existent within our present time. I will get to a literary example from class, but first I wanted to use an example to expand my point with one of my favorite films, 2001: A Space Odyssey. In the film, one of the main characters is HAL 9000. He is an intelligent computer that controls that space ship the remaining characters are on to Jupiter. This is an example of the novum in the sense of a character. I just personally found it interesting that it was a character in the story, but also a science fiction element that enhanced the story, but I digress. One of the stories we read recently, Dead Space for the Unexpected,  we meet several characters that work in some sort of marketing or advertising firm, it never really says but that's the impression I got for some reason. At this firm, it seems as if every aspect of their daily tasks are scrutinized and eventually scored. These scores, especially for our main character, are the only thing that matters. It's almost as if what their job services or provides does not even matter. I viewed the company as selling some useless product, like a plunger or a workout machine.Only the scores determined everything. It didn't matter that what you were selling was maybe not the most honorable practice, but the way you did it. This is all, by the way, my personal interpretation, essentially what I, "read between the lines." Without getting off topic too much, I wanted to bring all of these points back to the original concept. I viewed these scores as the novum of the story. There are many similar programs at various places of employment that we today, but in no way the manner seen in the story. Thats really what validated the science fiction element for me. These scores determine every aspect of the work day, and that just seems eerie. I got this weird vibe that they were being watched. I had this picture of a huge room with hundreds of screens analyzing every move the employees made. This in turn made up a large portion of the scoring. The concept of the novum is very clear in the stories we have read this semester, particularly in the story I have talked about today. A concept I was not initially familiar with, but now have a concrete understanding of  and will apply to future readings.