The Fiction of Ideas - Week Ten

For this week, I read I Have No Mouth, And I Must Scream by Harland Ellison and it was a ride from start to finish.

The story takes place 109 years after the destruction of humanity at the "hands " of a self-aware supercomputer who refers to itself as AM (originally meaning Allied Mastercomputer, but eventually referring to its state of being by basing itself off of René Descartes philosophy, "I think there fore I AM").

AM's Talkfrield #1: "I THINK THEREFORE I AM"

AM takes full control of the third World War that has been raging and carries out mass genocide, save for four men and one woman. The narrator of the story, Ted, maintains that they have no reason why AM decided to keep the five of them alive, if only to torture them for the rest of time. That's exactly what AM has done. Each character has been either physically or mentally altered (AM's doing) and is tortured on a daily basis, sometimes not eating anything decent for months, often subjected to the elements (whatever elements AM can created in his vast, cavernous computer underground and each wishing that they were dead.

I think the world that Ellison has created is terrifying, and definitely a sy-fi future that I wouldn't ever wish to see. To think of the world run and destroyed by a computer that we created, completely taken over by this entity that is made up of binary code and some strange God Complex is something that I often think about, so to see it manifested in writing makes me even more curious.

There's a lot of media present where humans create artificial intelligence, whether in the form of humanoid androids or stationary computers, and they always turn on us in some way. Always. create them to make life easier for us, to give us less responsibility for our daily tasks (whether those tasks are keeping a house clean or running a government) and we always, always have to take full responsibility in the end, either by being punished and tortured for 109 years or watching everybody around us get eliminated and very few of us are left behind to pick up the pieces.

So I guess the real question is, do we actually think that this could happen if we were to create a super computer with hyper intelligence like AM, or Portal's GLaDOS, or even HAL 9000, would they turn on us like we think they would? Or are we just being paranoid? Should we even risk it?

The Space Opera - Week Nine

This week I read Murray Leinster's First Contact and was pleasantly surprised at how much information Leinster was able to fit in a short amount of time.

Tommy Dort is a photographer on the ship Llanvabon, set out to photograph the turn and evolution of the Crab Nebula (a feat that nobody on Earth would be able to see considering how long it takes light to reach our planet) and is present on board when the Llanvaon encounters another ship, hovering amongst the mist of the Nebula. The two ships sit quietly, neither wanting to turn tail to retreat for fear the other would blast them or stealthily follow them back to their home planet.

Eventually the crew establishes contact with the "aliens" on board the other ship, which is described as jet black and absorbs all light, and they figure out that the aliens don't have ears, and they don't speak from mouths. Instead, they send pulses from a part of their head and communicate in a way that we'd easily recognize as being telepathic.

While the skipper of the Llanvabon and the skipper of the alien ship barter and debate with each other on what the best protocol is, Tommy actually connects and establishes communication with what can only be described as his counterpart on the ship. They "talk" for about two hours and feel a sense of camaraderie while their skippers are conversating about whether or not to kill each other, and Tommy eventually states that the aliens have the "same psychology as we do".

I like that Murray Leinster brings in and explores the idea of duality in this story. There's is a theory that somewhere out there (mostly dealing with parallel universes) there is someone who is just like us, living out their lives as we are (though perhaps a bit differently, maybe they'd made different choices, turned left instead of right for example). The theory typically tends to mean that the other "us' is human as well, but I don't see why that can't apply to "aliens". We already know that there are people living on our won planet who tend to remind us of people we already know. Maybe there's someone you've seen on the street who looks like/talks like/laughs like an ex, your sibling, or a friend. I think this theory and idea could definitely apply to a foreign species, especially one that has the "same psychology as we do".

Mythic Fiction and Urban Fantasy - Week Eight

Myths have been around for ages, and by that, I mean, they've been passed down from generation to generation; from nearly ancient times up until our modern day. They've lived through word of mouth for the longest time, until humans innovatively decided to write everything down so we wouldn't lose important information, stories, etc through the unintentional game of telephone that is played when one person tries to relay a story to another. Details are bound to be lost or changed.

But that can also be a wonderful thing to happen.

The novel and movie for this week, Neil Gaiman's Anansi Boys and M. Night Shyamalan's Lady in the Water are all about reinventing the myth and, in my opinion, they do it beautifully.

I'll be honest and say that I've never really read a whole lot of Anansi stories but I did a bit of research after finishing Anansi Boys and was pleasantly surprised at how much Anansi was kept the same as well as how he was changed. Since he dies in the very first pages of the novel, we only get to really see who his character was through the eyes of his son, Charlie, and everybody else who'd ever known him (the old ladies, and the animal spirits in the other world). We know, through Charlie, that Anansi embarrasses him (like a total dad) and has a way of getting people to like him through almost doing no work at all.

We find out through Mrs. Higgler, that Charlie's dad is actually a god and that Charlie has a brother who inherited all of Anansi's tricksiness. Though this is completely new information to him, Charlie accepts it pretty quickly and is suddenly rocked out of his mundane, everyday life into the world of the gods when his brother, Spider, shows up and messes up his life (though not in a cruel-hearted way).

Lady in the Water completely creates an entirely new legend (at least I haven't heard anything about it, nor can I find much about the Narf legend online) and ties it in with man. In ancient times, we lived in harmony with sea nymphs and coexisted with the magic that was in the world, but eventually (like man must do in all creation myths) we turned away from the old ones to form a new path and we've ended up forgetting the old ways. The "old gods", as it were, do their best to turn us back to the light but we refuse to see and refuse to believe.

Cleveland Heep is a maintenance man for a building complex who has a pretty intense stutter and whose family were murdered. He knows he must keep on keeping on, but he doesn't feel like there's much to it day in and day out. That is, until he meets Story a Narf (water nymph like character) who's very presence eliminates his stutter and awakes a strange sense of hope within him, and he finds that he is able to bring people together and inspire others to do good. Cleveland Heep is your ordinary person who has something out of the ordinary happen to him, and he takes to it bravely and sees his promise to help Story get home all the way to the end.

The retelling and reinvention of a myth is a great thing. In both of these stories, the new twist on the "old" myth allows ordinary people (or in Fat Charlie's case, people who think they're ordinary) have a pretty grand adventure to find out who they are. Today, we are all about finding out who we are and feeling like we need to go through long trips (eg: backpacking through Europe) in order to discover what makes us tick, and these stories reflect that I think. It's a nice thought that ordinary people can do extraordinary things and still be able to help people in great need when they may feel they've nothing left to live for (lookin' at your Mr. Heep) and I think that's why updating and placing old myths into contemporary culture is important. Even though there may be magic involved, the lessons are still the same; individuals can do great and amazing things.

"You're no help," he told the lime. This was unfair. It was only a lime; there was nothing special about it all all. It was doing the best it could.

"...There are myth-places. They exist, each in their own way... They are inhabited still..." - Anansi Boys

The Novel of Spiritual Education - Week Seven

It's always interesting when authors use magic as a form of navigation through our complex youth in young adult novels. For the most part, magic is there to be an interesting component of every day life, a way to make little tasks easier (depending on what book you're reading or what movie you're watching). What these books tell us, though, is that magic, like anything and everything we encounter in our lives, takes work, hard work, and a sense of deep understanding of ourselves at our very core.

I could talk about Harry Potter all day long, and how it takes years and years for even the most talented witches and wizards to master all manner of spells and potions. The Night Circus  is no different. Celia and Marco are two... Magicians, I suppose it would be better to call them that, who train and are trained their entire life in two very different forms of magic for a competition that neither of them signed up for, yet one of them has to win. Without fully realizing why or what they're training for, they dive blindly into their studies in order to master their magic and in order to emerge from the competition as the victor.

Like most teenagers (though I think Marco and Celia are adults) the two characters are forced into "extracurricular activities" in addition to their daily life of growing into fully realized adults. Even though their extracurricular activities and the activities of normal every day teenagers are vastly different, the feelings are similar. During those years, especially if you've been doing those lessons for a long time, it can feel like it takes a lot of courage to go against your parents and back out. I think that's something that readers of the book can relate to. When Celia and Marco decide they don't want to participate in the competition, things get dangerous and they end up paying the ultimate price. Sure, we won't actually die if we decide to end our cello lessons or quit soccer practice, but it can sure feel that way.

Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits has interesting spiritual undertones. Although, I suppose they can just be tones, as the head honcho of the Time Bandit world is literally called the Supreme Being. He is God, or a god at least in that realm, and is complete control of Creation. The dwarves who Kevin accompanies on their adventures through time are his helpers.

The entire movie is spent wandering time and evading Evil (who I guess can be compared to the Devil) and trying to keep the Supreme Being from finding out they have the map, which, as it turns out, is completely moot. The Supreme Being already knew that the dwarves had the map, he, in fact, let them take it, like some handicap in a game they were all playing. He knew everything was going to happen and let it happen so he could test out his Creations, much like a god (I'm just going to accept the fact that SB is God and he's bored and toying with Kevin's little life for his own amusement).


                                                                    The map of all that was and will be

Time Bandits tells us that we can have awesome adventures and choose our own paths but ultimately the Grand Creator (or Supreme Being) is the one in control and that was His plan all along. We are nothing but pawns for Him to test and play with. He knows how everything is going to play out and we are doomed to believe that we have free will and choice. We are even shown that He will punish us if we don't do as we're told (in this case, Kevin and the Dwarves forgot to pick up a piece of Evil once he was defeated and the Dwarves get a 16% pay cut, jobs they don't want and Kevin's parents exploded, rendering him an orphan).

The Heroic Journey Through Week Six

At first I wasn't sure what to write about for this week in terms of the heroic journey in regards to The Hobbit but after Monday's class I think I'd like to talk about the heroic journey in general and women in fiction (specifically women in Tolkein's universe).

It was a topic that had to come up during discussion because how could you talk about The Hobbit without talking about the movie and how could you talk about the movie without talking about Tauriel? It was a topic that I almost wish we had taken more time to discuss rather than let it sputter out and die in silence, but I was "too tired" when I really shouldn't have been because this is important to me.

Tauriel, in the second movie The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, is a brand new character that Tolkein's universe had never seen before. She's the Captain of the Elven Guard underneath Thranduil's rule and realm and she's absolutely different from the other female elves that we'd seen before (in reference to the Lord of the Rings movies). I can't talk about Tauriel without comparing her to Arwen and Galadriel, yet she deserves to stand on her own. Galadriel and Arwen are both elves of different areas of the world, hold different titles and, of course have their own (pretty small in my opinion) part to play through the Fellowship's journey.

Both Arwen and Galadriel are etherial, otherworldly and seem, at times, quite aloof, though we know that they hold nothing but information for Frodo and his friends. They are written (again, at least in the films) as information holders, and tend to not "do" very much. Arwen saves Frodo from the wound the Ring Wraiths inflict on him and bring him to her father's kingdom so he can heal, and then promptly spends the rest of the trilogy fighting over her personal decision to give up her immortality so she can be with Aragorn without the threat of outliving him.

Don't get me wrong, Arwen and Galadriel are wonderful, amazing characters, both of them adding to the mystery and complexity of Middle Earth but for me (and a lot of other people, I'm sure) Tauriel offered something a little more. She was created and implanted into The Hobbit as a way to break up the dominating male cast and, admittedly, to give women more of a reason to see the film. From the promotional posters and the trailers and such, Tauriel looked amazing. She was a kick ass, no nonsense character who, although Elves and Dwarves were supposed to loath each other, decided to help out a rag tag group of Dwarves and their Plus One Hobbit get out of Mirkwood so they can continue on her journey. I had hoped that she was going to tag along as extra security. I had hoped that she was going to stay as her own character and not be written as a potential love interest, but that's exactly what we got.

And people hate her.

This is what we're greeted with on her Wikia page. She's a character in the movie, she's cannon now! 

This isn't a fanfiction that someone wrote.

Tauriel's appearance in the film was a great step forward, her writing in the film forced her to stay where most women in film stay and that's not okay. The audience is immediately forced to watch a growing love triangle between her, Thranduil's son Legolas, and one of the youngest Dwarves, Kili. Now if you want two characters to fall in love, that's fine, great even! But to fall back on the crutch of the love triangle is weak, outdated, and annoying. I want her to be so much more. Yes, she's based heavily off of the "Strong Female Character" trope, which just hearing someone devalue a female character to that one single trope is annoying, but she's what we've got and we need her in the movie. So what if she's non-cannoncial? The entire Hobbit trilogy should be counted as non-cannonical because of the appearance of the White Orc (he wasn't in the books) or the Necromancer (who was just mentioned, briefly, in an offhand comment, way at the beginning).

I read an article a while ago that I think about sometimes, especially when I'm reading/watching anything that has only one or two female characters. It's about this father who read The Hobbit  to his daughter one night and was surprised when she told him that she thought of Bilbo as a woman. At first he wasn't very receptive to it, but once he began changing Bilbo's pronouns to she/her/hers, he found miraculously (sarcasm intended) that there was no change to the story. Lady Bilbo was just as strong, sarcastic, clever and brave as Male Bilbo and, guess what, THE STORY DIDNT CHANGE. Bilbo being a woman didn't ruin the story as some people might claim she would. She didn't grow whiny, or weak, or think any of her Dwarf companions were attractive; she continued on with her adventure, just as lost, just as heroic, and just as wonderfully cunning as the original Bilbo did.

Women don't ruin stories. Women don't have to be written as weak, something to be saved, as only information holders. They're awesome and great additions (especially in Tolkein's universe where there are thousands upon thousands of male characters with names! and only a handful of named women, and even a smaller few who aren't barmaids). This is important to me and it should be important to everybody.

"A hero ventures forth from the world of common day into a region of supernatural wonder: fabulous forces are there encountered and a decisive victory is won: the hero comes back from this mysterious adventure with the power to bestow bones on his fellow man" - Joseph Campbell "The Hero With A Thousand Faces"