Sci-Fi Sick Day

I've been sick for a couple of days now. I can never figure out if it is better to just get sick, get over, and acquire a new immunity or to become a germaphobe, keeping a steady stream of purell and deplete my immune system. Anyhow, since I am sick, I let myself be lazy today, with intermittent fever.

Before my nap, I read a few chapters of Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? I watched the 1984 Dune movie. I was impressed but I want to digest it before I write about it. Following that was 1.5 episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Dr. Who, Top Gear and wrapped up the night with Alex telling me about the advances in science in the recent issue of the Economist. Altogether a good day for science and science fiction.

The full Star Trek episode was Conundrum. All members of the Enterprise have their memories wiped clean and become pure subconscious. I was extremely alarmed by the supposed first office MacDuff, who I could not remember for the life of me. He was an alien who had infiltrated the starship to win a personal war - what a relief! I found it pleasing to watch Lt. Commander Worf being captain and later watching Piccard's ethics overcome his fear.

Dr. Who remains a mystery for me. It just does not grip me. There is all this magic, these messes that are never cleaned up. It is a lot like Quantum Leap (or I suppose it is really the other way around) but it is less tidy and full of things that could not happen. To be specific, I watched the episode with the intelligent, mobile plastic. I assume it was the start of a series since the doctor picked up a new chic to play with, unless he does this every episode. If I were to classify Dr. Who within a sub-genre, I would stick it in limp sci-fi. It is sci-fi the way an illusionist is a magician. What we call magicians now a day is actually an illusionist, someone who pretends to be a magician. You can only call him a magician if you really think he pulls a rabbit out of thin air. Hint: he doesn't. And the chemical structure of plastics can neither think nor bend through volition. Can I have just a tiny bit of believability? I'll grant the altruistic alien super hero with a special phone box, but an intelligent plastic? Come on.

Geez, I just found out you can actually buy little action figures from just about any episode. So you can buy these clever little plastic figures and play out your own bizarre bad-science stories where everyone in the universe has north English accents? Or did I misunderstand and these are collectors items? Which is worse?

Star Trek (2009 Film)

I have heard from plenty of people that they love this movie and that it is the best Star Trek film. I just cannot agree. I thought it was terrible.

I know this is a little uber-geek but I was put off immediately when I realized that James Kirk was not being born in Iowa and that his father died. I have accepted the parallel universe plot device but who is Jim Kirk without being in is father's shadow? If there was any chance that I would like the movie, it was blown to pieces when young Kirk steals a classic car, answers his Nokia phone, blasts the Beastie Boys, is defiant and rude to his guardian, and then throws the car over a cliff. What? So Kirk is a punk, there is still petrol and in 2233 we are still listening to the Beastie Boys?

A lot of people also said that they loved the new Kirk. The thing is that I love Shatner. I loved him as captain Kirk when I was little, still do, and I love the person he is now. I know that Kirk has a reputation for being a lady's man but he consistantly refused romantic entanglements because he put the needs of his crew before his own needs and desires. There was always a tragic element with him, a heroic loneliness. He was also a wise and intelligent man. His refusals to obey Starfleet rules were always in the best interest of those at risk, not just his own petulant flaunting of his ego.

I also liked the emotional depth and ethical dilemma that were mainstays of the show. This movie offered no challenge to modern society. The original frequently battled sexism, racism, class hierarchies, politics, economics, warfare, torture, etc. There were just cheap ploys of baddies and goodies, no attempt to fix destruction of the Romulan homeland, and explosions. The new movie was just a bunch of smart-ass brats instead of mature, responsible and compromised adults.

I didn't buy Spock's classic struggle of Vulcan vs human. I felt like McCoy was absurdly stereotyped. And well, I just plane hate Scotty. Harold is just no match for Tekai as Sulu.

For a trekkie, it was funny that Kirk didn't know Uhura's name (she didn't have a first name in the original series). I enjoyed the inclusion of Capt. Pike. I found the women's uniforms tragically outdated and insulting. Why didn't the Romulans look like Romulans anyway?

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Did Roberto Orci and Alex Kurtzman ever watch the show? Any of them? I guess I really shouldn't expect much from the people who wrote the Transformers movie. I beg you "writers", please stop destroying my childhood.

For those of you who like the original series, the original Captain Kirk, or just love the Shatner, here is some gratuitous classic Kirk.

A Word About Genre: Mundane Sci-Fi

What a wonderful aberration of science fiction that I have just discovered! It is sci-fi based on this planet with only the technology we have, without the fantasy of speed-of-light travel or parallel universes. I find it strange how excited I am by Sci-Fi that completely lacks fantasy, but I am. If you wanted to map this on the hard/soft sci-fi continuum, it would be all the way over to the hard side with accurate science, although that does not preclude the possibility of soft science themes.

Is this even sci-fi? I am not sure. Fantasy seems to be such an intrinsic part of the genre. But if this is fiction about or heavily influenced by science or fiction about where current technology can take us, then it must be sci-fi, right? The Cold War inspired numerous sci-fi stories of possible impending doom as nations play a deadly game of one-ups with weapons. Those were certainly science-fiction.

I suppose The Twilight Zone has a few examples. There was an episode called 'Where Is Everybody?' in which a man finds himself in an uninhabited town except there is lingering evidence of someone having just been present (i.e. a lit cigarette in an ashtray). It turns out that this is a dream or hallucination caused by prolonged sensory deprivation. A little wiki-sluething has revealed that this was the first episode of the series! Facts are fun.

This seems to have riled up quite a large section of the sci-fi world but I am intrigued by the possibilities it offers in literature.

Since I have not read any mundane sci-fi, at least not knowingly, I cannot offer my own opinions, analysis or even a reading list. Instead I offer you a link to this blog about Mundane Sci-Fi.

The Dispossed: An Ambiguous Utopia

I am going to try this again. I want to talk about revolution. The word itself hints at the problems of a revolution. To revolve is to turn and return. The idea of return plays an important role in Shevek's life and his theories of physics.

My family is from Cuba. My mother was born just days after Castro came down from the hills and declared victory. It was what my grandmother prayed for and she reminds me from time to time to be careful what we pray for because we just might get it. A couple of years later, my grandmother move to Florida with my mother while my grandfather was in jail. If you knew my grandparents, you would be struck by the absurdity. Like me, my grandmother stubbornly says what she thinks out loud, dangerous in any dictatorship. My grandfather is the opposite, he makes do and tries to see the best. Revolution is a dirty word and many of my cousins, I am quite certain, did not vote for Obama because his promises sounded disturbingly familiar. My grandmother also likes to say, "If you aren't a communist when you are 20 then you have no heart; if you are still a communist at 50 then you have no brain."

We look at Cuba with fear and hope, with impotent anxiety, with thin-wearing patience. I have only known Havana's streets in photographs, black and white and yellowing with age but it is the place where my grandparents and older cousins came into the world, were they grew up, were they became. There is a lingering but strong homesickness, an undeniable bond, and a painful recognition of the familiar. So I keep looking at pictures, cooking Cuban food, and, lately, I have been reading a blog by a woman, Yoani Sánchez, trapped on that island.

She has recently written a post about the maintenance of the revolution. To be 'revolutionary' "it is enough to exhibit more conformity than criticism, to choose obedience over rebellion, to support the old before the new." This is the harsh reality Shevek finds on his home planet.

He lives roughly 200 years after the Odonian revolution in a communist paradise. I find my heart sympathetic and smitten with the communal and free spirit of his world, not to mention the equality of sexes and the utter frankness of bodily functions. It offers a type of freedom I will never know and could not survive: freedom from possession. And, while I envy the health care systems of other western, first world countries, I have no intention of going whole hog - not because I am disgusted by the ideal of communism but because I am terrified of the realities.

Shevek discovers that in his academic field, there is corruption where there should be none, barriers against the novel, and that the ideals upon which his society is based can be manipulated into the power structure they oppose. One of his friends is punished by continual assignment to physical labor until he breaks down, forced into an assylum. Shevek's work is stymied by his supposed mentor who denies publication of his work unless credit is shared and blocks Shevek's entry into teaching.

I know that corruption is not a new theme in the utopian genre of science-fiction. What surprised me was the description of how stability can promote corruption, how status quo can purchase power. There are many kinds of freedom: freedom to live, freedom to work, freedom from physical harm, freedom of thought, freedom of mind, freedom to speak and freedom to be heard. Shevek has a very tangible sense of the freedom he desires and is denied. It is freedom to be heard that he seeks, risking all other freedoms for the ability to communicate.

At the risk of sounding prosaic, I offer these quotes, frequently misattributed to Thomas Jefferson:
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance.
Those who would give up essential liberty to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety. (This is Benjamin Franklin, by the way. You've probably heard a popular paraphrase)

The Dispossed: An Ambiguous Utopia

I have not yet finished this book but it is living up what I have come to expect from Le Guin-a complete world governed by different social structures, deep characters, and the painful feeling that I am missing out on something whenever I am forced to put the book down.

The book is structured both sequentially and simultanouesly according to concepts in phsyics explored by Shevek, the protagonist. This concept is not so difficult to me because it is at the heart of the Jewish calendar, or more correctly the heart of the conflict between the Jewish and the secular calendars. On the face of things, the calendars are only different in that the former is a lunar calendar while the latter is a solar calendar. The both have seven day week cycles, they are marked by (semi)lunar events called months, each annual orbit of the sun begins a new calendar year, and the months are sprinkled with secular and/or religious holidays. However, if you live with both, they begin to take on different meanings. The Jewish calendar becomes one of tradition, of repeating cycles. The Sabbath grounds the week and returns one constantly to peace, to the celebration of life, and to God. The secular calendar marks the forward movement of time through life, the daily grind. The cycle and the progression are part of each other.

Oh travel through the heavens! This is not what I meant to write about but I have wandered into time and physics. I will give it a go.

Shevek tries to explain time like a book. Everything is in the book already but we must move through it from one end to the other. We are only readers of a small portion and we are only able to understand our portion if we move from beinning to end. If you have read Slaughterhouse Five, you will be familiar with this understanding of time as this is how Tralfalmadorians view time, except that they can see the end as easily as the beginning and move fluidly through it. This naturally becomes determinist, lackign free will. Shevek tries (maybe he eventually succeeds) in reconciling his theories of physics and time with free will. I would struggle to put the two together, too, but I am not worried about free will. It doesn't seem worth worrying about since, unless you are Kilgore Trout, you don't get to change whatever the status quo is.

The two worlds, Anarres and Urras, revolve around each other, referring to one another as moons of their earth/world. So, too, do their civilizations and governments pull and repel each other while travelling through their orbits. I haven't developed this thought enough to comment on its relationship to the theories of physics and time that are central to the novel.

Inception

I am finding it difficult to write anything without erasing it. This is a great movie, a smart movie, a beautiful movie.

My dreams are intense, detailed, full of sensation. Often, I struggle to recall if some event, some conversation is in fact real or something I merely dreamt. I dream in color, I dream with temperature, I dream with taste and smell and touch. The place between dreaming and waking is unnerving for me. I feel as if I am moving between two realities. Which ever one I am in feels like the real one but I find it unappealing to shut myself off from my dream worlds.

I used to imagine that when we dream in this world, we wake up in another world, one of many worlds in which we live. We lead full lives in these other worlds but when we wake to each new world, the others fall away and we can grasp at only snatches of the others. Please, don't question my sanity. I understand REM sleep. I don't believe these things, I just like to imagine.

If any of this sounds like you, go see Inception. It exists in a world where these boundaries are very much blurred, where one can enter into shared dreams, where the projections of people in our dreams carry on even when they are not on stage. And isn't it fun to wonder if we are not just some one's projection, unaware that our entire lives take place inside one person's sleep, moving around and fulfilling ourselves just in case a brown haired, brown eyed woman of 25 is needed to ride a bus a few seats away from the dreamer. It is terrifying, too, because nothing is truly stable in a dream. At any moment the sun could cease to be.

In Inception, other people are allowed to enter a person's dream and manipulate their subconscious. For some, this is a flight of fancy, escapism. Some use it for purposes of theft of information. The difficulty in this movie is the implanting of an idea. One person is a dreamer but for everyone else the dream is "lucid", they are aware that they are in a dream world. In fact, they create the world for the dreamer.

Isn't that alone a beautiful impossibility. The plot obviously leaps to the cynical possibilities but can you imagine designing the world for a loved one to dream in. A world without nightmares. But then again, that is a world with a caged subconscious, which is more terrifying than someone fishing around my suppressed thoughts just to find out what my bank pin is.

Christopher Nolan, who not only directed but wrote the movie as well, is gifted with a frequency of lucid dreaming that I lack. Since he has experience in the manipulation of his own dreams, he took this idea even further than I had hoped. There is an amazing fight scene which takes place in both suspended and shifting gravity. There is also a scene in which an architect folds and manipulates the world physically.

If you want a movie you've never seen, a story you haven't already heard, I cannot recommend Inception enough.

Rendezvous with Rama

Against expectations, the aliens do not appear. Rather, Rama is a passing world, briefly coming to life in a shocking display of evolution and animation only to recycle itself as it sling-shots around the sun in disregard for the animal life it has confounded in its brief journey through the solar system. Any and all things understood about Rama must come from human reason and imagination. There is no host population to translate and explain.

Rama, a world in an enormous pill. It is a medicinal dose of discovery. Stories of conquistadors, missions, colonization, etc, that make us all slightly ill with guilt - or at least they make me feel that way. Why? Certainly not because I would conduct negotiations at the end of a gun. I have the privilege of living in 2010 in a fairly egalitarian society (at least politically on paper) and in the great wide world known as the internet*. The exotic has become psychologically domesticated and I have little fear of run ins with the unknown (and even less opportunity to have such run ins). Rendezvous with Rama offers a fairy-tale type of exploration. Hostility is denied, fears are faced, and extraordinary astronauts repress their biological reactions in the name of diplomacy. It is with great sadness and relief that these star sailors flee without having met one of the true Ramans. There is no culture clash, no war culture coming across a peace culture (you can decide for yourself which culture either of the teams would be on).

I did not draw a connection to the Age of Exploration on my own. The spaceship is named the Endeavor after one of Captain Cook's ships. The captain often ponders Cook and compares his successes and failure to Cook, not only as an explorer and captain but also as a human and a husband.

There are indeed some forms of life, the biots, biological robots. They are simple, utilitarian, undeniably organic but not alive as we understand the word. In high school, on the first day of biology, we were asked to define life. What an extraordinary complicated task. What lept to my mind was the inevitability of death, which is no more easy to explain in a satisfying way. I could say the inability to move, permanent lack of consciousness, etc. But these are merely negations of life. So what does alive mean? We agreed that reproduction, conversion of material into energy (metabolism), and growth were necessary. Sufficient? Not quite. A robot-building robot might fit that description. Self-sustaining seemed important, although like many other elements is suggests that certain humans in certain conditions are not truly alive. Cells! now there is an element I can get behind. Some organization of a cell or cells-microscopic bacterium, enormous ostrich egg, and the beautiful gestalt of multi-celled organisms. Dr. Kephart kindly added some of the remaining elements which had been either too uncertain or too unclear in my mind (and probably others'): evolution, the possibility to change from generation to generation; stimulus response, which can be part of growth but also exhibited in movement. So, there you have it, life itself. Solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short.

How do the biots rank? Reproduction-check. The biots had available blueprints for their makeup and were either spawned or built as Rama neared Sol. Metabolism- null. Biots lacked a means of ingesting food or a digestive system. I don't think the shifting of electrons through a power chord count as metabolism since the energy is already converted. Growth - null. Self-sufficient - null. Cells-check. Their skeletal system was built in a honeycomb pattern of cells, which reminded me a great deal of that awesome cat with the million-dollar-man style hind legs. But the biot's cells were organic. Evolution-difficult to tell but I would imagine null. Stimulus response, check. I found this an inconclusive and dissatisfying analysis. But at least these biots are only science fiction (at the moment) so the ethical ramifications of their possible life can be delayed, probably through my lifetime and yours.

These biots, while possessing mobility and some intelligence, ignore the astronauts. Since the Ramans fail to appear, the humans have only Rama itself and themselves to explore. While this may seem dull and uneventful, I can feel a lingering tidal tug that will cause me to return again and again to some detail from the story. Each character is well developed and believable. Those in charge have attributes we wish to ascribe to ourselves, even humility. And because I can relate, I find myself questioning what I would think, how I would act, what I would do. Rama is much like the early Myst series computer games. They provided a world to explore without the threat of inhabitants.

In case you are wondering, and like any good human you are always wondering, Rama is one of Vishnu's avatars. He is known as the Lord of Self Control and the Lord of Virtue. His life is a struggle to maintain perfect dharma, by doing what is appropriate and right even in difficult trials.

*Spellcheck insists that the internet must be capitalized but I disagree.

A. I. Artificial Intelligence

I have given much time and thought to this movie, probably more than it deserves. It is a blatant remake of the Pinocchio story. There is a conflict between humans and mechas, android humans capable of intelligent thought, emotions and physical sensation. David is the first child mecha, given to a family with an injured son who is kept in suspended animation. The child is cured, comes home, starts inevitable trouble, and David is released in the wild to fend for himself. A mecha prostitute, Gigolo Joe, helps David escape danger and find the blue fairy, which is just a statue. David meets his maker, is upset that he is not unique, and attempts to commit suicide. He spends hundreds of years trapped in a submersible craft until rescued by advanced mechas. Humans no longer exist. Mechas are incredibly advanced, communicate through touch, and look like anorexic aliens. They give David a day that he can spend with his recreated mother. At the end, he goes to sleep, or shuts himself down.

The move was started by Kubrick and completed by Spielberg, an unexpected progeny if ever there was one. Spielberg has claimed that some of the darker elements are his and I rather believe that because they were not altogether horrifying and dark. Unregistered, damaged and obsolete mechas are collected for entertainment. Humans who resent the mechas eclipse of humanity create a circus in which mechas are tortured. The so called Flesh Fair looked very much like a monster truck rally. It had all the elements of the grotesque and gaudiness for which America is well known. Except, when you step back, it is hardly scary or disturbing. The machines are incapable of pleading for their lives and capable of shutting off their physical sensations.

The ending was trite and grating. James Berardinelli, a film critic, referred to it as "force-fed catharsis." I can think of not better description. The super-robots can clone a human for a single day. What? They can read minds, are obsessed with the extinct humans, too. It just doesn't work. Supposedly this was Kubrik's idea but I feel it is a cheap conclusion, unlike Kubrik's other dark films.

If I were to remake this movie, I would make Gigalo Joe the focus. He overcomes some of this programming, he sticks by David, helps him, risk himself all in the hope that David is capable of bridging the gap between robot to humanity.

I suppose my biggest problem was how annoying and pathetic David seemed to be. He is obsessed with his mother in a nearly Oedipal way. He is whiny, incapable of socializing with other kids, incapable of doing anything really. He is almost like an infant in an 11 year olds body. His creators toy with him, his mother abandons him. It just amounts to so much nonsense.

My Creation, Is It Real?

We can rebuild him! We have the technology. The Six Million Dollar Cat!

Oscar is the world's first bionic cat. After an accident that resulted in the severing of his two hind legs, Oscar's prospects were not good. Most quadripeds can get along with only 3 legs, but losing the support for the entire back half of his body is too much for a cat to live without. Veterinarian Noel Fitzpatrick created revolutionary implants featuring a honeycomb pattern with which Oscar's skin could bond. Oscar's new implants have a reduced risk of infection because that bond between flesh and metal is complete. He is still being monitored and getting used to his new legs but his recovery so far has been astounding.

Theme: Slavery

Slavery creeps in to science fiction in a few ways.

Humans Enslaved by Aliens
This is the simplest, most pedestrian form of slavery featured in science fiction. Humans are captured and forced to do manual labor, often to build weapons for space warfare.

Wage Slavery
Excuse me if that sounds a little like communist paranoia. By wage slavery I do not mean that humans are held captive by the need to work long hours to earn money to obtain material possession until they die. Instead, I am referring to enforced tributes to an alien species. It is possible for alien overlords (even human overlords) to enslave a population without forcing them into labor at the end of a whip. Instead, a species may simply show itself to be at a military advantage and demand wealth or resources. A different and weaker form of this would be demanding wealth and resources in an unfair exchange for technology, information or aid with the understanding of prolonged indebtedness.

Slavery of Mind
Dystopia novels like 1984 and Brave New World present societies in which thoughts are monitored, controlled, even programmed. In 1984, we are introduced to the idea of thoughtcrime or crimethink. This goes beyond freedom of speech, which we can control, to freedom of thought, which to a large part we cannot control. The mind is the refuge of the sufferer, where one can express what one cannot act. The Thought Police enforce ideology to its deepest roots. When we are not free to think, we are hardly alive at all.

Sleep Learning is the means of mind control in Brave New World. Thoughts, preferences, prejudices are implanted in infancy. But the process begins even in the embryonic stage. The fetuses of the lower castes are limited in brain function. Other elements are manipulated according to the future job of the fetus (for example, those who will work in space must be comfortable working upside down). Deltas, Gammas and Epsilons are bred en masse, identical to siblings of enormous groups. Each class is given a preference for their own class, their own fashion (castes are color coded), ambitions, etc. Each person feels that they have free will but nothing in their personality exists except for their programming - unless you are fortunate enough to be a savage.

Replacement
Common in science fiction is the replacement of one's mind or will with that of an alien species. Invasion of the Body Snatchers features aliens which assume the appearance of individual humans while behaving with a hive mentality. The Puppet Masters is the tale of slug-like aliens that can control animal bodies only while attached to them, often neglecting to maintain the health of the body and changing bodies whenever one dies. In these stories, humans become the unwitting vehicles of their own destruction. They suffer death without their body dieing with their mind. Instead, their bodies are exploited.

Non-Human Slavery
Many works toy with the idea of intelligent, huminoid robots. These robots are functional, created to serve humanity. Their purposes range from sex workers, soldiers, domestics, mechanics, surrogate parents, surrogate children, economic regulators, and advance scouts. The trouble rises when these robots are developed to (or beginning to develop on their own) emote, think independently and feel pain. There are no morals for a mechanical device, but ethics become complicated when robots begin to resemble humans. Something which thinks, feels, hurts, fears cannot be bought and sold, forced into danger, forced into labor without crossing ethical boundaries.