Through the power of relativity, a million-year picnic may pass in an hour.

Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Population Issues on the Moon

I made a pretty big claim in class today -- that a society consisting of 90% women would quickly reach the equilibrium point of approximately 50% males and 50% females. I was able to find some research backing that up in the work of the primary sex-ratio scholars Fisher, Bodmer and Edwards (who argue that species will always lean towards 1:1 ratios of males to females as it offers the highest return on their energy investment in terms of reproduction). Feel free to look up their work on JSTOR. In the meantime, I decided to use arithmetic to help explain my principles.

To do so, we will first demonstrate how Luna likely functions in terms of population growth and sex ratios. Let's start with some basics. We know that, at the time of the narrative, Luna (or at least Luna City) is 90% male. To simplify things, we'll use population figures of 10 men for every 1 women, with a starting population of 100 men and 10 women. We'll assume that in Loony society, each woman takes at least two husbands, and each woman has at least two children. We'll also assume a 1:1 ratio of male to female births, and we won't take into account old age (meaning a member of any generation can marry a member of any other generation), but we will allow marriages to only occur once. Finally, we'll add 10 men and one woman to each generation to simulate the introduction of new convicts into the environment. It won't seem like much after a few generations, but I think a 10% increase in population at first is reasonable, and there's no reason to think it will increase any more over time. This will, theoretically, give us quite a long time before the population is brought to 50/50 male/female. Let's calculate a few generations....

Generation 1
Available Men: 100
Available Women: 10

Unmarried Men: 80
Male children: 10
Female children: 10
Male convicts added: 10
Female convicts added: 1

Results:
Total Men: 120
Total Women: 21
Percentage Women: 15%

Generation 2
Available Men: 100
Available Women: 11

Unmarried Men: 78
Male children: 11
Female children: 11
Male convicts: 10
Female convicts: 1

Results:
Total Men: 141
Total Women: 33
Percentage Women: 19%

Generation 3
Available Men: 99
Available Women: 12

Unmarried Men: 75
Male children: 12
Female children: 12
Male convicts: 10
Female convicts: 1

Results:
Total Men: 163
Total Women: 46
Percentage Women: 22%

Generation 4
Available Men: 97
Available Women: 13

Unmarried Men: 71
Male children: 13
Female children: 13
Male convicts: 10
Female convicts: 1

Results:
Total Men: 186
Total Women: 60
Percentage Women: 24%

And so on. I'll save you the tedium of the rest of the operations, but suffice to say that it takes 25 generations before hitting 40% women, and a full 200 generations before hitting 48% (by which point our total population is around 56,000, and equilibrium has already been well enough achieved -- trust me). Clearly, Heinlein's depiction of Luna City has it bad, but not so bad as he makes it seem...using my model, they go from 10 to 1 all the way down to 4 to 1 in just a few generations, and that's using very conservative estimates. My model also didn't include any individual woman having more than two children (which made the count take longer) or any men or women dying of old age (which shouldn't have effected the statistics anyway, since there was always a surplus of men in the gene pool). In other words, in a society without these limitations (like Heinlein's), there would be a lot more children, and therefore things would get corrected much faster. So while 10 to 1 males to females is pretty bad, it self-corrects relatively quickly.

My argument, however, was that a society of 10 to 1 females to males would reproduce and self-correct so quickly as to hardly matter. So let's flip my system on its head; 100 women and only 10 men. Each man takes 2 wives, each woman has 2 children. Every generation we'll add an extra 10 females and 1 male. Let's see how this goes down.


Generation 1
Available Men: 10
Available Women: 100

Unmarried Women: 80
Male children: 20
Female children: 20
Male convicts: 1
Female convicts: 10

Results:
Total Men: 31
Total Women: 130
Percentage Men: 19%

Generation 2
Available Men: 21
Available Women: 110

Unmarried Women: 68
Male children: 42
Female children: 42
Male convicts: 1
Female convicts: 10

Results:
Total Men: 74
Total Women: 182
Percentage Men: 28%

Unbelievable! I'll spare you the calculation...suffice to say that this model reaches equilibrium in just 7 generations, interestingly with a total population of about 7,000. In fact, this model reaches perfect equilibrium (exactly 50/50) in only 10 generations...which would have taken the first model over 50,000, more than all of human history has taken already! And that's assuming that each man takes no more than two wives, and each woman has no more than two children. If men take as many as 4 wives, you can reach equilibrium in 3 generations, or even 40% in only 2. And you'll STILL have a huge surplus of women. I think it's safe to say that equilibrium comes plenty fast in a society like that; men wouldn't be treasured articles of value for very long.

* These operations were performed using a program I wrote in QBASIC. If you'd like to see the code, please let me know and I could post it here. It's a very short program.

Journey to the Center of the Moon

The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is the second Heinlein book I've read, after Starship Troopers. I now realize that I can't decide whether Heinlein is a great sci-fi writer and a poor sociopoliticist or vice-versa. He introduces amazing sci-fi concepts which cut to the heart of the things we listed in class as being definitive of sci-fi, but then he dispenses with those elements as soon as they have served his narrative purpose. He then takes glorious stands on the side of libertarianism, offering a eudaimonic picture of what a free society should be. However, he is also very guilty of attacking conflicting political philosophies through straw man arguments, and (somewhat more importantly) how much of a utopia is a place that is essentially ruled through mob violence?!

The best way to express my frustration with Heinlein is by comparing him with Charles Dickens (bear with me). Dickens was a great writer; his words provided a gateway into the terrible conditions faced by the poor of his time, and a greater feeling of London in general. However, his chief failing is widely considered to be his dependence on coincidence in his stories; in a city of millions, you can always count on proximity to be proportional to dramatic effect in his placement of characters throughout the city. Similarly, Heinlein's story relies on a set of very specific circumstances that his narrative style encourages us to believe arrive through good luck. To paraphrase my comment on this blog's last post:
Need a supercomputer that's alive and your best friend? Check. Need an intellectual with expert knowledge of the world's political history, as well as psychology? Check. Need a woman for...well, don't get me started on Heinlein's treatment of women. Need a contact on Earth? Check. Pieces don't fall into place as much as they are forced there by Heinlein's need to create the perfect revolution.
So after demonstrating that a libertarian revolution on the Moon is is perfectly possible (provided, of course, that it is a libertarian revolution on the Moon directed by Heinlein), what's left for the book? I'm not very impressed by Heinlein's depiction of the political situation after the revolution, either. I get the sense that he knows two basic things about politics: he likes rational anarchy, and most people don't. Because of this, once it comes time to actually discuss the new political order, Heinlein (and, by extension, his narrator) completely loses interest. Heck, even his most interesting sci-fi element, Mike, is merely a tool to further the political goal of REVOLUTION! I was most interested in reading about Mike's growth as a person; I wanted to see the poetry he'd been writing, and test his ability to think and feel. If I had been Manny, I would have locked myself in a room with Mike and not come out. Heinlein being Manny, however, he merely brushes off Mike's attempts to further his own sensitivity. After Mike shuts down, Manny misses his friend, but it never occurs to him that humanity has lost an amazing opportunity to explore the field of creating new life, new forms of consciousness.

And now it's time to talk about Heinlein's view of women. I should have been ready for this from Starship Troopers, where he literally discusses women as though they are a completely different species. As far as I can tell, Heinlein just doesn't know how to write women, which is why the only ones he gives a real personality to here are an old woman and Wyoh, who he explicitly states is more like a man in many ways. If you thought Wells' Time Traveler was a sexual predator of sorts, then you should be prepared to recognize that Heinlein's writing basically molests women as a gender. In Heinlein, no mention of a woman is complete without discussion of her sexuality; his descriptions of pubescent girls are enough to make
Nabokov blush, and even poor Ludmilla is described as being killed by an exploding bullet impacting between her breasts. Wyoh is presented as devastatingly beautiful for no other reason, it seems, than to provide Heinlein with the vicarious sexual thrill of 'bundling' with her through Manny.

So there you have it. The extent of sci-fi in Heinlein is merely a prop to provide an excuse for him to foment revolution where it would otherwise be impossible. His political arguments are unfair, giving only lip service to the idea of open discussion (except for the "Randists," who, he apparently believes, have some good ideas!). His views on women are neanderthal at best; what good is sexual liberation if it causes them to become nothing more than sex objects? He is an entertaining and engaging writer, true, but where many people see a visionary of the future, I see a political hack pushing his agenda with tools that give him the best excuse for it.

The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress

Halfway through the first paragraph of The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, I knew it was going to be fun to read. It was the line about Dr. Watson writing about Mycroft Holmes before he founded IBM - it's a great sort of a one-off one-liner affair of which I found the book to be full. In contrast to the fantastic, no-nonsense style of The Time Machine, Heinlein fills his work with the humor of the mundane, quotidian life of a smart Loonie. His writing style saves pages without losing any substance - I appreciated the marvel of the human brain to insert words where they make sense.

Of course, the course description insists that I delve deeper into the work than its fun literary aspects, and Heinlein gives ample material for analysis. Prof certainly has the mind for a revolution; its gestation period is written to perfection. The most ingenious part of Heinlein's revolution is obviously Mike. Things become a lot easier when you have an essentially omnipotent, omnipresent computer tied into every system of your entire world that happens to have taken a liking to you. The next time I plan a revolution, I have got to pick one of those up.


Heinlein certainly had a sense of how to manipulate the masses. Mike's manipulation of the communications infrastructure, right down to his poetic alter egos, is spot-on. The communication between the four key conspirators gives us all a perfect Machiavellian way to run a revolution. Provided, again, that you have one of those superconfusers sitting around somewhere.

Ultimately, I don't have too many problem's with Prof's methods. The Declaration of Independence bit especially stunk of genius. Ah, it's hardly democratic, but it gets the job done. It is an interesting point, though, that Prof seems to go against his own "rational anarchist" principles to achieve his goals. His ultimate failure to reshape society is perhaps a reflection of his top-down style. As Andrew and Mr. Townshend point out, there's nothing in the street looks any different to me (damn you, Andrew, for beating me to a good Who reference). In Pete's old age, though, I fear he ends up closer to the Professor's practice than his theories.

Posting this rather late, I have the advantage of reading other blogs and touching on a common thread I've seen. In my continued defense of The Time Machine, I remind everyone that this book was published in 1966, a year that should be close to any sci-fi fan's heart. By that time, Heinlein had some giants on whose shoulders he could stand. The back cover of ...Harsh Mistress fawns over Heinlein, claiming such an immense influence on later sci-fi writers. Apart from the most libertarian of authors, I see people standing on the shoulders of the likes of Asimov rather than Heinlein. Essentially, my defense of Wells boils down to context, as I wrote before. Wells wrote an excellent story in his idiom; Heinlein did the same in his. Though it's absolutely acceptable to choose favorites, I hope at least that we can give both authors credit where credit is due.

I wonder what Mike thought of The Time Machine.

Sunday, January 27, 2008

Space for Jailbirds

Personally, I loved The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, despite the predictable ending. Robert Heinlein managed something I believe few authors can achieve effectively in not only creating a seamless new world with its own language and customs, but also creating charactres with depth and personality within it. What is at first an awkward sentence structure with strange slang terms slowly becomes familiar. Alongside the reader adjusting to Loonie culture, the charactres grow and change in terms with their volatile situation. The most fascinating of these is the metamorphosis of "Mike" from simply being a highly operational computer to a sentient being and finally to what could nearly be classified as a genuinely feeling human being who also happens to have a few other amazing capabilities. This change is witnessed primarily through demonstrations of how Mike changes his functions and through his conversations with his first and oldest friend, Mannie. This evolution of sentience was the most intriguing element to me, though of course the tale of revolution holds multiple political messages as well.
Being the human side of the plotting of their revolution, Professor de la Paz created the only truly unbelievable element for me. His understanding of human nature and how to manipulate political pressures was too perfect, though it was appropriate that his idea of not having much of a government on Luna fell to pieces following his death. I understand that Mike was supposedly behind all of this, with his analyses of every foreseeable outcome of everything, but somehow the Prof seemed to be at least ninety percent sure of himself throughout every decision involving human nature and revolution. Not only that, but he was always right. I would at least like to think that human behaviors are not so predictable, but that may just be idealistic.
After I finished reading
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, I thought back to our theme for this week -Space as the Final Frontier- and the implications that in this novel the only thing that pushed humans to venture into space was the growing need of somewhere to dump their unwanted, their overcrowded...their jailbirds. Amidst the uplifting themes of freedom and revolution there was a constant undercurrent of rejection from Terra society. As shown through the numerous references to historical events concerning colonies and liberation -such as the "coincidental" declaration of Luna being released on July 4th- man didn't forge ahead to new horizons, he merely repeated history, yet again. Loonies were not adventurous space settlers, they were the citizens that Terra didn't want and could thus exploit.

Heinlein effectively builds empathy for social outcasts such as those in his fictional penal colony on Earth's moon, and consequently his political ideas. It was in this book that the term “rational anarchist” was first used, enforcing the point that Heinlein's political ideology is entrenched in The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. However, multiple political viewpoints are represented and Heinlein gives fair play to all of those that assist his cause. The Prof and Mannie's visit to Terra points out the flaws of the standard bureaucracy, while the Prof's ad hoc congress fails to achieve any progress of merit. The rational anarchist himself, the Prof, fails to sway anyone to his particular opinions, but this in itself proves his ideology.

There are of course nearly innumerable examples and ideologies to be found, but throughout The Moon is a Harsh Mistress shines Heinlein's libertarian ideals and passion for good betting odds.

Friday, January 25, 2008

Context

As a class, I think we had some issues getting into the context of H.G. Wells' world. Professor Jackson's point about European attitudes pre-WWI explained much of our disbelief about perfecting our sciences. It's certainly true that Americans especially tend to forget about the devastating aftereffects of World War I because of our WWII-centric Greatest Generation culture. We weren't really in WWI for that long, so we don't think of it as an important, America Saves the World (tm) moment. Our hero/savior complex tends to get in the way of proper history.

What I find in some other blog posts, though, is a willing (though probably self-aware) blindness to the context of women's and class issues that Wells was trying to present. From a literary standpoint, we need to trust the narrative voice of the book. For the sake of reading Wells in proper context, we need to believe Wells' version of the future. We need to believe what he does about biology. We need to believe that the Eloi were so stupid as to be thought of as mere pets, not as people. Though it's true that people go to extremes to protect their dogs, risking almost certain death to go back for Weena would be absurd. This is less a Victorian opinion about women than a rational opinion about pets. I'm going to get letters from PETA for this one.

So yes, we can point out Wells' now-absurd opinions on many things, but this should not detract from our appreciation of the book. When reading something like this, we must live in the past and the present, appreciating the book in historical context while accepting its considerable flaws as time artifacts. Don't be postmodern; respect the artist.

Thursday, January 24, 2008

The Purpose of The Time Machine

Other than the obvious purpose of the time machine -to travel in time- we looked at several different possible purposes of The Time Machine in class. Possibilities such as it being a warning against abandoning the grindstone of progress struck me as being the most probable motivation for Wells, given the historical context it was written during. This line of thought, that people actually thought everything of importance had been discovered and there wasn't really anywhere else to discover led me to wonder if this had a link we missed in Wells' writing. Space travel had been brought up, such as in Jules Vernes works, but in 19th Century London, space wasn't considered. Everything major had been accomplished, right? Just as we remarked that in The Time Machine the Time Traveler didn't find that people had traveled into space or any progress in an outward direction, they had remained at home just like the good old British of Wells' time were expecting to. I think it only stands to reason that the Time Traveler never found evidence of space travel or progress, because that was part of the point Wells' may have been making about people already being on a path to atrophy unless they continued with discovery and exploration.
However, I think Wells was given far too little credit as an author. Granted, this doesn't make for the best novel, but I tend to look more at the literary aspect of things, and as we mentioned, Wells didn't intend this to be a novel. Perhaps we viewed it as lacking literary drama because we didn't view it in an episodic manner, but a span. Even as a novel though, the premise it presents has still drawn a reading audience for decades, whatever else its shortcomings. I also appreciated how insignificant characters such as the Editor -he edits- didn't merit names the reader wouldn't have recalled anyhow. If Wells' had done this without distinction, we would have known the Morlocks merely as "ground dwellers" and the Eloi as "the dancing flower people" or something of the sort. The fact that Wells' gives them creative titles leads me to believe we missed something significant here. Then again, I could just be creating what I want to be there from what an author added on a whim.

Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Themes of Defiance

There are some who may argue that "defiance" is such a universal theme as to make it pointless to analyze it in any serious literary context. However, I believe that analyzing how individuals manifest defiance in their actions tells something important about their societies or cultures (or, in the case of fiction, about the society or culture of the author). So then, where do we find instances of defiance in Metropolis and The Time Machine?

Examples in the former are pretty obvious -- pretty much everybody defies the ruler of the city, Joh Fredersen. Workers defy their boss and place in society, a son defies his father, and a mad scientist defies fate and death. In building a New Tower of Babel, the boss himself defies God and Judeo-Christian religious tradition. In Metropolis, defiance is not met with immediate punishment, but rather with indirect, passive-aggressive retaliation. Fredersen's discovery of duplicity in his workers and son does not spark the immediate crackdown one would expect from a virtual dictator. Instead, he sends an agent to encourage dissent among the workers (that he may punish them for more open defiance), and he merely places a tail on his son. Freder himself is almost killed by his sympathy for the workers. Rotwang the scientist's disloyalty is punished not by the higher powers he disregards, but he is forced to lose his love to the machinations of Fredersen once again. And despite his attempts to build a tower tall enough to allow him to spit in God's face, Fredersen must face the terrible truth that his arrogance could cost him the life of his son, which crushes the delicate machismo he had so carefully cultivated in his stewardship of the city. In other words, in Metropolis, people may defy, but they sure don't get away with it.

Well, what about The Time Machine? Not much room in that one for defiance, I agree. Aside from the Time Traveler's willingness to defy his colleagues' quaint ideas of the laws of physics and time, that's about it. But then again...that's just it. The Time Traveler breaks the very laws that govern our existence. Joh Fredersen maintains the conceit that he has bested God, but it's actually very easy to defy God. People do it all the time, all over the place, and God doesn't lift a (metaphysical) finger to stop them. But time is the great equalizer...we're all subject to it, and we all eventually fall victim to it. The Time Traveler defies the greatest absolute we know, and gets away with it (until something mysterious happens and he never comes back, but we aren't explicitly sure that he's encountered something bad).

Unfortunately, there is a major contradiction between the two worlds that makes it extremely difficult to compare them. While Metropolis exists in its own contained universe, The Time Machine is an instance of one society's representative commenting on another society. It's easy to talk about systems of defiance in punishment in the Metropolis fiction, but it's never clear whether the Time Traveler is being punished or not. Certainly he risks punishment in his own time (in the form of lost status) if he fails to demonstrate a working time machine. And while his trip to the future is hardly kind to him, he learns much about what we might become and takes away the satisfaction of successfully traveling through time. Although he gets a little disheveled, he returns to England essentially unscathed. Even his vision of the future is pointedly lacking in forms of punishment; everything has become meaningless, and whether one lives or dies is a function of luck more than anything else. However, Wells goes out of his way to mention that a lack of defiance is the main cause of the blasé attitude of the Eloi. His intrepid hero, therefore, is representative of the greatest defiance (and therefore, strength) a human can muster. His disappearance is all the more tragic, and could conceivably be the turning point at which humanity began to lose the fight against entropy.

Now we know that a lack of defiance leads to a breakdown of society, and hidden defiance (or defiance against abstract concepts) leads to psychological or slow-burning retaliation. Unfortunately, these aren't really mutually interactive principles. The world of The Time Machine has no room for subterfuge, so the ideas of Metropolis can't apply there. Similarly, industry is dead by the year 800,000 and some; a distant time where nothing is left has no relation to the fast-paced near future offered by Lang. The important similarities are the class divisions and the theme of the "human creative impulse" (a term I feel free to use interchangeably with "defiance"). The "human creative impulse" is, in my opinion, the urge of every individual to be in control of his or her own future. It is perhaps best demonstrated in that the Eloi lack it entirely, while the events in Metropolis are caused by one man's struggle to quash the HCI of everyone else in the world.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I have one more point of defiance to offer, although it's going to be quite weak. As a very strong Star Wars fan, I was extremely dismayed to learn that it wouldn't be an object of our study. Please do not confuse me with a fan seeking to expand our working definition to include Star Wars; I appreciate Professor Jackson's definition of science fiction as a perfectly sensible one (and ultimately necessary for a meaningful study of social science and science fiction). To be fair, I largely ignore the movies when I make the argument that Star Wars, at least in parts, deserves to be considered science fiction. Star Wars films, especially with the release of the prequel trilogy, stray very far from any form of systematic social conjecture. They are naked settings for fantastic adventures of swords and princesses, swashbuckling tales that are betrayed immediately by their inspirations as absent of any deep consideration of politics, technology, or the ramifications of alien contact.

Yet there is no doubt that the Star Wars universe is a compelling one, if for no other reason than its sheer scope. In a galaxy that is at least as large as our own, containing millions of inhabitable worlds (not necessarily only for humans), there exists an expanded universe, originally created as mere backstory, that has gone beyond its humble origins to create a living, breathing universe with detailed systems of politics, economics, religion, ethics, conflict and above all a true sense of history. If "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," then
who is to say that, in the far past of Star Wars, some brilliant scientist created a retrovirus that infected all living beings with an ability to harness the power of the brains over nature through what became known as the Force? It's true that the aliens of Star Wars (with many notable exceptions!) are by and large humans in funny-shaped bodies; however, I find this to be perfectly reasonable in a universe where interplanetary travel has been the norm for longer than anyone can remember. To use an example from our world, advances in transportation technology are fast eroding the differences between people all over the earth; English has become a sort of global language, and there are many symbols and cultural elements that are present in every culture around the world. All of this has occurred over a period of less than a century; is it really fair to declare that no sufficiently advanced galactic society can be considered representative of science fiction? Certainly, it is a different genre of science fiction than The Time Machine or Metropolis. But is it fair to cut it out entirely? Is there really no value in positing a universe where the major initial problems of interacting with alien species are a thing of the past? I argue that Star Wars presents a world of galactic politics and trade that is important for us to consider, as it at least represents a place in history that many people dream of humanity reaching.

Societal Evolution in The Time Machine

H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine seems to fall more into the category of a study in social science than in science fiction, the more I think about the book. Instead of examining the effects of a new technology or alien lifeforms on humanity, Wells examines the eventual evolution of societies taken to the extreme. As Chris pointed out, the Time Traveller presents two opposing theories as to how humankind managed to evolve into the creatures he observes in the future, one a communist view that the loss of conflict and violence allowed people to become harmonious, weak and simple-minded, and the other a capitalist view that the separation between the privileged class and the working class had become so great as to split species, turning one set of people into the feeble-minded Eloi who play all day, and the other set into the Morlocks, who provide for the Eloi out of a single-minded need to protect their food source.

What I found most interesting about these theories is the change in the power dynamics in the second theory. Both the Eloi and Morlocks have become simple creatures that live only to serve their own needs and desires, but they have evolved to do so in different ways. The Eloi’s needs are provided for by the Morlocks, and thus they are free all day to weave flower garlands and try to swim. The Morlocks seem to have an ingrained need to provide for the needs of the Eloi, but this need is no longer the working-class job it evolved from. Instead it is the protection of a food source. Instead of growing and caring for crops, the Morlocks are breeding Eloi. Thus with the degradation of the human mind in both forms of being, the Morlocks, who still know enough, or at least have an ingrained behavior pattern, to be able to care for the Eloi, have an edge over the Eloi, who have no need for knowledge about anything. The Morlocks have overcome the Eloi through evolution instead of revolution.

Science Fiction

The definition of “science fiction” has been the subject of much of the scholarship about science fiction, as I discovered two years ago in Cox’s speculative fiction section of the Honors English seminar. At the beginning of the course, Professor Cox told us that throughout the semester, the texts we would read, both fictional and academic, would not make that definition any easier to understand, but would instead continually complicate our definition of science fiction. In our Social/Science/Fiction class, we have started out with definitions already complex, based not necessarily in content and context, but in what science fiction does and how it makes us think. From my perspective, this type of definition is a good way to start the class. Even if we don’t have any sort of firm boundaries as to what science fiction is and is not (pretty much impossible anyway), our discussion allows us to understand what we mean, at least in class, when we discuss science fiction.

For myself, much of what we discussed are not things I generally think about when reading or viewing a work of science fiction, but that does not mean that they are not working below the surface. I don’t read books and watch movies to come to a greater understanding of society’s problems or to glean warnings about the future-should-we-continue-on-our-current-path. I read and watch because I enjoy stories that take me out of the world I know, which is why I also enjoy fantasy. However, despite me not looking specifically to find the applications to today’s societies, they cannot fail to enter my consciousness. One thing I do read for is to examine relationships, which we discussed as being a part of science fiction. I think one thing I particularly enjoy in SFF is seeing which types of relationships remain the same from our society to the fictional society, how authors chose to change or leave unchanging concepts like friendship, love and the motives that guide people’s actions toward each other. In this, I think our class will not disappoint. In looking at the crossovers between social science and science fiction, we will certainly examine the specific interactions between characters and what they mean in order to better understand what different works have to say about society.

Defining Science Fiction

Try as we might, we can never come up with a comprehensive definition of science fiction. But we should always try.

Part of the allure of science fiction is its glorious indefinibility. There are exception to nearly every rule that we can create for a comprehensive definition of sci-fi. I am inclined to be very inclusive when I define sci-fi, including so-called "border" works like The Prisoner and much of The Avengers, just to pick a couple of groundbreaking British shows.

I do believe that sci-fi is mostly about surrogating contemporary problems and fears to elucidate them. This is precisely why I consider The Prisoner a seminal work of TV sci-fi. Patrick McGoohan was very explicit about his fears concerning all technology, including, but certainly not limited to the atom bomb. He believed that society had built billions of "Villages" that we all inhabited. They are invisible to us, and like The Village of the show, we can never be sure who are the wardens and who are the inmates. Never is this clearer [SPOILER ALERT] than in the final episode, where Number 6 rips off Number 1's mask to find that Number 1 is simply him - "Who is Number 1?" "You are... Number 6." In the end, Number 6 escapes The Village, but the final shot of the show is the same as the first - he is still in The Village; he can just no longer see the walls of his prison. In this self-indulgent, mostly allegorical, and all trippy way, McGoohan illustrates his omnipresent fear of contemporary society to us. He forces us to ask ourselves if we are all trapped in The Village. [/SPOILER ALERT]

Another goal of science fiction can be to show us the great potential of man. This was Gene Roddenberry's image of the future. His exuberance and grand hope for humanity came through in every episode of the series he worked on. Though TOS confronted contemporary human problems, they were surrogated onto other species. The show certainly had allegorical themes (Klingons=USSR, Romulans=China, etc.), but through it all, the Federation embodied Roddenberry's positive image of the future. By the time of TNG, humanity was nearly perfected. Starfleet was only barely militarized and the Enterprise-D acted as a great peaceful city in space. Conflicts were few and far between and secondary to the stories of the crew exploring themselves in peace. Q's attitude toward Picard and the crew was especially indicative of Roddenberry's hopes. Q admitted that humanity had the potential to become virtually omnipotent. Most "foreheads of the week" could be reasoned with, with the notable exception of the Borg, who are a wholly innovative concept in the Star Trek Universe. Of course, after Roddenberry's death, the series lost much of its message of hope. I simply cannot imagine that the Dominion War would have been written had Roddenberry still been alive. For him, humanity did not go to war anymore. The abomination that made up most of the writing on "Enterprise" would never have gone through. The image of humanity that "Enterprise" presented was absolutely antithetical to Roddenberry's vision, and this change alienated many longtime fans, including myself. But I digress.

What shouldn't sci-fi be? Questions like "What if we all actually live in a virtual reality generated by a gigantic computer?" are usually fruitless (sorry, "The Matrix." I still love you, though.) because we cannot examine that question any further. This form of intellectual masturbation too often plagues scientists and sci-fiers alike and is best suited for a long afternoon among friends and mind-altering substances, not good science fiction. Rather, science fiction explores what it means to be human and the nature of a single person. What if your thoughts could all be transferred into another body? Would you be the same person? Would you still be married to Worf? Is today a good day to die? These are the sort of questions that best suit sci-fi.

So what is sci-fi, then? I suppose that for me, it's a simultaneous glimpse into the past, present, and future.

The Time Machine

As far as geneses (genisisses? genesi?) of genres go, sci-fi probably couldn't have asked for a better one than The Time Machine. It introduces the reader to a fantastic, though well-explained and eminently plausible world and does so with not a small amount of literary talent.

The Time Traveller's initial explanation of 4-dimensional geometry is clear and, considering the understanding of the universe we now possess, very much ahead of its time. Even the idea that once the time machine was in motion, it would be invisible to people moving at a "normal" rate of time was impressively clear.

That being said, the passage of a little over 100 years of science and technology led to my amusement at certain little "facts" that the Time Traveller explains. I chuckled at his understanding of the death of the Sun (that the planets would fall back into it, fuelling it for a short time longer) and the fate of the millenia-old Earth.

These, of course, are just small details compared to the full scope of the book which, while excellent on the whole, was very frustrating at points. That the Time Traveller would have so little foresight as to what he should bring into the future is hard to believe. I suppose it fits his "nutty professor" M.O., but it still seemed unlikely. Further, that no great technological advances had been made past his time seems strange. Though the Time Traveller frequently states that it would have taken much time for humanity to perfect its worker exploitaiton system, he ignores that other developments would be made during that time.

The part of the book that I enjoyed the most was the Time Traveller's original and second impressions of mankind's evolution. In the first, he believes that technology along with communism caused a lack of struggle which eventually caused humans to become weak and stupid. In his second evaluation of human history, perfected worker exploitation in a capitalist framework led to the schism of the human race into the Eloi and the Morlocks. In both cases, the overspecialization of humanity removed its drive. Wells believes that conflict, though destructive, is essential to the progress of humanity. If it were removed, humanity would stagnate and decay into nothingness.

Wells' vision of human evolution, fitting into his era of biological common wisdom (Social Darwinism, etc.), is much more negative than the visions of humanity in many other sci-fi works. I think of it specifically as at odds with the show that first got me interested in sci-fi, "Star Trek." Gene Roddenberry's vision of humanity in the future was almost unilaterally positive. For him, humanity had a natural urge to explore and never to be satisfied with the status quo. Roddenberry's version of humanity would never allow for the stagnation of society that Wells indicates as inevitable. For Wells, humans are slaves of their biology - our own drives are just part of that biology.

Personally, as a member of the human race, I hope this is not the case. I prefer to believe that we will always boldly go where no one has gone before.

Tuesday, January 15, 2008

Welcome to the Foreseeable Future

Hello, friends. This will be our jump-off point for our mutual exploration of the sci-fi genre and what it really means. Expect great, great things. And maybe some not so great ones.

The title of this blog refers to our ever-present desire to keep a rocket in each of our backyards, that we may take weekend trips to Mars whenever we wish.