We'd Like to Enter an Affirmative Defense

Our class Tuesday bounced back and forth between culpability and rationalizing, but instead of comparing one instance of each to its counterpart, I though that we skipped from one side to another without marrying the two. Here's what I mean, because I'm not sure that made any sense.

We had two examples from the book of who could be guilty, but didn't have proper knowledge: the buggers for the first invasion and Ender. Though we briefly touched on this similarity, I thought that the issue had some legal depth. The way I see it, if the buggers were guilty, Ender was guilty. This certainly has the effect of tying their fates together for all time, which makes the whole cocoon thing work even better as the mysterious prologue-y ending. If we're going to use our own legal tradition, we would have to conclude that no, neither the buggers nor Ender are guilty because they did not have intent to commit a crime. The buggers simply didn't know that they were destroying sentient life and Ender thought he was playing a war simulation. No intent, no crime. However much we'd like retribution for our dead, punishing the buggers is like punishing an innocent man. No intent.

On the communication issue, it seems very deliberate that the "other" is in bug form. Can our bugs on earth show us some kind of intelligence? They create massive, intricate anthills and ordered honeycombs. But we don't think of those as grand works of architecture, even though they could be the Eiffel Tower of anthills, or maybe the I.M. Pei Honeycomb. In much the same way, our buildings could seem so different to an outside race that they just seem like anthills - the sign of life, but not necessarily intelligent life. So, you start clearing out and what's that? Oh, crap, they're fighting back. Well, bees fight back when you hit their honeycomb. Oh, crap, they've got some pretty sophisticated stuff. Maybe this wasn't a good idea. Maybe we should try talking to them.

So let's try! Meanwhile, from Earth's perspective, this entire thing has been an unprovoked attack. An attack, not an accident, not a misunderstanding. So you prepare to wipe the sons of bitches off the face of the... plane of the universe with all necessary speed. In that sense, as a race, humans had every right to send their fighters off into space via that other neat affirmative defense, self-defense. Your entire history with these things is that they come and attack you. Even though your best option is to collude, to put this into the classic Prisoner's Dilemma, you have no reason to believe that your enemy will collude, so you minimize your losses and wipe your enemy right out of existence. So in that sense, they're justified.

But then there's the problem of communication. Should they have tried communicating, both ways? Absolutely, but it's more complicated than just sending a Red Telephone over with a note that says "Call me!" Maybe they could have started by rattling off a bunch of prime numbers - that's generally a good sign of intelligence. Maybe rip the plaque and the record off of Voyager 1 and give that a shot. You could even send them a turntable to play it on. So yes, there were probably better ways of trying to communicate that the I.F. didn't try. Oops! You just killed off a whole race! Thanks for playing, try again.

And finally, a few words on Aliens. It's a good movie to watch, especially with a proper sound system (though until the model classroom gets a center channel, I'm not comfortable with calling it a proper system). You get all these fun little glimpses into the Company from Paul Reiser's character and you wonder how the hell government exactly works in the future. And it's a shitload better of a movie than Alien^3 or Resurrection.

But cinematically, it doesn't hold a candle to Alien. As Prof. PTJ mentioned, Alien is much more of a horror movie than Aliens, which leaves Aliens something like "Space action." Aliens is filled with the horrible dialogue between the Marines and the annoying kid with the worst scream this side of Six String Samurai. What this film loses that Alien had was a true fear of the Alien. There was only one. And he was a lurking badass that no one knew how to kill. But you can shoot the thing? And it just dies? That's it? What a ripoff. Unfortunately, few people know how to keep an infinite badass alien villian going.

Enter the Borg. They were the infinite evil badass - it was simply impossible to communicate with them. Impossible to reason with them. "Your biological and technological distinctiveness will be added to our own." That's it. That's Borg communication. You get assimilated. That's it. But then, instead of keeping them as infinite cosmic badasses, they get a queen. So it turns out, all of the drones do play second fiddle, instead of all sharing first fiddle. And I don't buy the "I, Borg" thing that individuality ended up in the collective bullshit because Picard says that the Queen was there on the cube that was sent to Earth. And also, Voyager doesn't count. There, I said it.

So back to my point. Alien had the infinite badass and Aliens removed the "infinite." Which doesn't make it a horrible movie, though the Marine dialogue brings it close. It just makes it a considerable letdown from the original. Seriously, the first time I watched it, when the Marines are about to shoot one, I thought to myself, "Oh, shit - you've got another thing coming if you think you can shoot these things." And then they did. Lame.

But again, it's not a bad movie. Alien^3 was a bad movie. Resurrection was godawful. It's just the 2010 to Kubrick's 2001. It kills the mystery, though it leaves something generally satisfying in its place. But it kills the infinite badass.

Now, I'm just imagining what would happen if James Cameron and Michael Bay worked on the same movie. Three hours of gratuitous explosions? I'd watch that.

Genetic Instinct

Please note that this post has been updated; the third paragraph is new.

The moral component of our discussion in class was founded on intelligence. Specifically, the military intelligence to know whether the buggers had truly realized their mistake and would never attack us again, to know whether the I.F. had made any further attempts to contact the buggers once the ansible was developed (more on this later!), and whether Ender still would have been able to defeat the buggers had he known what he was doing.

Those less squeamish of us, who were willing to act in spite of our acknowledged lack of necessary facts, were not willing to take a risk where the continued existence of humanity was concerned. Although many people disagreed with this position, I don't remember hearing a cohesive argument to the contrary; instead, many people argued that more intelligence was needed, that they wouldn't be able to make a decision given only the information the I.F. claims to have had, or that wiping out another species entirely is just wrong.

Many of you argued that it would be important to know that an attempt at contact had been made; however, if you check out the Ansible entry in the Wikipedia page Concepts in the Ender's Game Series, you'll see that Card's ansible is explicitly designed like a set of two walkie talkies that are attuned to each other; the design prohibits two ansibles that are not constructed at the same time from communicating. Therefore, communication with the buggers through the ansible, based on Card's internally consistent technology, is impossible, and the I.F. would have known this, and decided accordingly.

It seemed obvious to me that, given the intelligence available, a war of extinction would be the only viable choice. That's why I was so very fascinated by all of your contrary views on the subject. We discussed it in class, but Graff's quotation deserves to be repeated:

"Ender, believe me, there's a century of discussion on this very subject. Nobody knows the answer. When it comes down to it, though, the real decision is inevitable: If one of us has to be destroyed, let's make damn sure we're the ones alive at the end. Our genes won't let us decide any other way. Nature can't evolve a species that hasn't a will to survive. Individuals might be bred to sacrifice themselves, but the race as a whole can never decide to cease to exist. So if we can we'll kill every last one of the buggers, and if they can they'll kill every last one of us."

According to Graff, individuals can sacrifice themselves, yes, but species cannot decide to stop existing, or as a group agree on a course of action that they know will lead to that outcome. Can an individual, however, decide for the rest of its species whether they can continue existing? Modern technology tells us the answer is yes -- it is (very, very remotely) possible for one person to obtain enough nuclear weaponry to eradicate humanity, if not all at once then at least by thoroughly irradiating the earth and rendering it uninhabitable. That one person can, theoretically, press a button and end our species. But we're discussing making a command decision that bears a risk of the annihilation of the species, rather than a lone madman. So here is the question that ought to be posed to those of you who could not decide to annihilate the buggers:

Do you accept responsibility for the possible death of your entire species?

I can't accept that risk, so I argued that the I.F. made the right decision. How would you argue otherwise?

Ender's Game Reflection

I agree with Tim that forcing people to address the IF’s choices regarding how to deal with the buggers as though we were the people responsible for the decision and the consequences eliminated the middle ground, but it did so because making the decision personal prevents us from being able to take the easy way out by justifying both positions. I don’t think that this exercise was a bad idea, and I don’t think that people became so entrenched that they could not see the other side. I think that we seemed to be strictly standing for our positions because we were not allowed to have a middle ground. Making the decision a more personal question caused us to have to make firm justifications for whichever side we chose instead of just sitting on the fence.

Though I disagree with much of what was said during class, I enjoyed the discussion because the different opinions were so far opposed that it allowed us to look at the same evidence and see it in completely different ways.

I still think that because of the nature of human thought and drives, when working with the available information, I would make the same decision as IF, as long as attempts at communication continued to fail. I do believe, however, that some form of communication could have been reached if we had sent a small party of people to their world when we arrived, if only to ascertain whether their attitudes still remained hostile. Granted, if they were still hostile, it would be a suicide mission, but it would have at least been a final attempt at getting through to them without having to sacrifice our own people to destroy them.

Arthur C. Clarke

Arthur C. Clarke, author and visionary, is dead at the age of 90. As a class full of science fiction geeks, I think we all owe him a great debt of gratitude.

CNN article
Another

This is the End

Well, it's about time. My uncle gave me Ender's Game and a couple of other Orson Scott Card books for Christmas (you mean the atheist celebrates Christmas?) at least seven years ago and I never got around to reading it. At the time, and actually until sometime in late 2006, I had never heard a thing about the book except my uncle's recommendation. I guess I should call him up and thank him again for the gift. It was a pretty good book.

Unfortunately for my appraisal of the book, I also just finished reading Contact. Also a book about contact with alien life and how humanity reacts. Vastly different circumstances, though. The full disclosure on this one is that Carl Sagan is one of my idols. I lament that science and rational skepticism have not had such an eloquent and visible champion since his death. He might be my guy - you know the one I'm talking about. "If you could have a conversation with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?" Perhaps one of two people Issac Asimov ever claimed was smarter than he himself (I think the other was a mathematician).

I had to have been 9 when I saw the movie version of Contact. This was before I knew a thing about Sagan or Arthur C. Clarke or just about anybody but Stephen Hawking and Gene Roddenberry. I sort of want to go back there and have a conversation with myself about the movie because though I remember it vividly, I can't imagine the ways in which I enjoyed it when I was 9. It's probably one of the events that defined my atheism. I've meant to read the book since before I even got Ender's Game at some Christmas. And the book's spectacular.


Next rant is that the novel is better than the movie, but that doesn't take away from the movie. The film necessarily removed certain plot elements, especially the Cold War element, because of changed times. There's a lot less to the movie. But it's an excellent movie nevertheless. That's partially because you just can't put all the crap from a book into a movie; they're different media. Even if you did, it wouldn't make a good movie. Douglas Adams was a master of this. He knew what would work on a radio show that he called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Then, he knew what would work in a book called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Finally, he knew what would work in a BBC TV miniseries called The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy. Though all three forms of my favorite "increasingly inaccurately named trilogy" are very much alike, they are also radically different. Visual humor is not audio humor is not written humor. Visual drama is not audio drama is not written drama. What works onscreen is not what works on radio is not what works on the written page. Why the rant? Of course, because V for Vendetta is a good movie. I'm not giving up on this one.


Maybe I should talk about the thing we're actually reading for this week. The point of that long digression was twofold: one, to explain my blasé attitude toward Ender's Game. I'll expand upon that. The second was just to go on a further rant about movies based on novels (I saw an excellent one over break, by the way - No Country for Old Men. I can't believe I didn't catch it in theatres, but oh well.). I was thinking of this over break. The conventional wisdom is, read the book, then see the movie. As with so much of conventional wisdom (or all of it, as John Kenneth Galbraith, the term's inventor, might suggest), I think this needs to be challenged. Relatively, no one who reads the book first is happy with the movie and the book. But see the movie first, and you've got a fighting chance. I realized while reading Contact that I probably wouldn't like the movie as much if I saw it now for the first time, but when I saw the movie first, it became one of my all-time favorites. It still is because I have this personal connection to it. And of course, I understand that a lot of you in this class saw V for Vendetta as a movie before a graphic novel, just as I did, and I know most of you decried the movie. But I think it's also because that's an incredibly fashionable thing to do, especially among geeks. If it's not "The book's better," it's "The English translation sucks. You should learn Farci to read it properly." Perhaps it will soon end up as part of Stuff White People Like, the funniest thing to hit the Internet since Ted Stevens' series of tubes. (Among the Stuff White People Like that we've discussed: Hating Corporations, Barack Obama, Gifted Children (I imagine this'll come up tomorrow), Apple Products, Irony, Knowing What's Best for Poor People, Recycling) Anyway, to me, it's running Microsoft Word and having someone tell you that you haven't really experienced Word until you've read millions of lines of zeroes and ones. I'm sure there's a beautiful elegance in the zeroes and ones, but for the moment, I'm typing a blog entry. What is immediately useful to me is that it is a word processor.


Rant over. I promise. Maybe. No, probably not. But for now.


So back to the first part of my initial rant and my first reason for mentioning Contact. I liked Ender's Game, but I loved Contact. Everything about Ender's Game, despite it being a completely different book and a completely different brand of sci-fi, just didn't match up. It's a cool book and a cool idea - perhaps Futurama was directly referencing the concept in Bender's Big Score, where the nudist aliens are essentially playing the battle for Earth as a video game.


But if I'm going to throw this really far off-track, I can throw this somewhere it shouldn't be. It's along the lines of "What if we lived in the Matrix?" - the answer doesn't matter as long as the Matrix follows its own rules 100% of the time. That would be our observable universe. Damn. Ranting agian. What if every video game we play is actually a real battle going on somewhere? What if video games are actually our interface into another universe? Wouldn't that really suck for the people of that other universe? Imagine that your entire world is comprised of Blade Runner-style backdrops or World War II and the only rule of the universe is to pwn n00bs. So the next time you pick up your Atari to play Pac-Man, remember only this:

And yes, Threadless is mentioned on Stuff White People Like.

EDIT: It just occurred to me as I was leaving a jet lag-induced sleep that I missed a prime Star Trek reference for this post. "A Taste of Armageddon," of course. It's the reverse of Ender's Game in that instead of a game representing real violence, the game is designed to prevent violence. These two warring planets, instead of solving their problems, decide to go into a stalemate where a supercomputer decides the outcome of hypothetical battles. When someone is declared dead, he goes to an execution room and is executed painlessly. They've taken the war out of war. And that's when the computer records the Enterprise as dead. When the crew inexplicably refuse to die, it throws the entire war into a state of disarray. Kirk destroys the supercomputer and the planet's leaders fear that the real war will resume. Finally, the two sides agree to mediation to actually end their war.

Brings up the same question raised at the end of the book. What's up with a war that you only play on computers? I won't go on, mostly because I want to see what happens in class.

Crossing Values

Pg. 269:

“And when she died, the others all died.”

“No, they just went stupid. The first ships we boarded, the buggers were still alive. Organically. But they didn’t move, didn’t respond to anything, even when our scientists vivisected some of them to see if we could learn a few more things about buggers. After a while they all died. No will. There’s nothing in those little bodies when the queen is gone.”

Pg. 270:

“Why did they kill the crew?”

“Why not? To them, losing a few crew members would be like clipping your nails. Nothing to get upset about. They probably thought they were routinely shutting down our communications by turning off the workers running the tug. Not murdering living, sentient beings with an independent genetic future. Murder’s no big deal to them. Only queen-killing, really, is murder, because only queen-killing closes off a genetic path.”

“…Think of it this way. In all the bugger wars so far, they’ve killed thousands and thousands of living, thinking beings. And in all those wars, we’ve killed only one.”

These quotes describe one of the ideas that I found most intriguing this time through Ender’s Game. Mazer justifies their actions in the war by discounting the lives of all of the buggers except for the queen because she is the only bugger who thinks. At the same time, he offers a justification for the actions of the buggers, that they did not understand that all humans are capable of independent thought. The buggers did not understand the value that humans place on each individual life, and by killing the crew of the tug, they were merely following their own standard procedures.

What I find interesting about this is that as each culture came to understand the other, it adopted the other’s values. Since the buggers actions revealed to humans that they did not value individual lives, humans began to disregard the lives of individual buggers. The third quote from above by Mazer Rackham illustrates of just how little concern the lives of the dependent buggers have become to humans. At this point Mazer only counts the single queen that died as a casualty, none of the other buggers matter at all. Buggers, on the other hand, came to respect the individual life more as they realized that each human is an independent person. As the pupa queen let Ender know, “We did not mean to murder, and when we understood, we never came again. We thought we were the only thinking beings in the universe, until we met you, but never did we dream that thought could arise from the lonely animals who cannot dream each other’s dreams.” Once they understood that each human was a thinking being, they gained a more human respect for individual life. It’s interesting that despite the interaction between the two groups having been a war, it allowed them to further understand each other, which caused each group to take on certain values of the other regarding individuality. They already placed the same value on independent thought, as each group considers murder only to have occurred when the subject is a thinking being.

A closing thought: He isn't named Ender just because it's a derivative of Andres. Card named him for what he does. He ends things. He ends the war; he ends the buggers, and I'm sure you all can come up with other things he ends. Ender is an ender.

The psychology of games

Ender's Game. On the surface, it appears to refer to the simulator "game" Ender plays towards the end of the book, in which he unknowingly defeats the Buggers. However, there is also the Battle Room, a grand game that nearly every character in the book plays. And then there's the fantasy game, the pure reflection of Ender's psyche that is the entryway for the Buggers into his mind. Other characters play their games, as well -- Graff's game is the subtle manipulation of Ender into a perfect commander, Peter and Valentine play a game of control over the world.

But the important one is Ender's Game. And which one is it? I think it's primarily meant to be the fantasy game. The fantasy is a sci-fi author's safety valve, where anything is possible without needing to be explained, internal consistency is meaningless, and symbolism is available at whim. This exploration into the inner workings of Ender's mind shows us what he is thinking far better than his internal narration; even when Ender doesn't know why he feels the way he does, we can draw clues from his fantasy world. Every great challenge in Ender's life, each significant turning point is accompanied by progress in this game. By the time he has beaten it, he himself has come to depend on the game to represent and facilitate his emotional development; even his crucial meeting with his sister only provides him with the appropriate weapon to overcome the psychological challenge that awaits him in the mirror.

"But wait," one might ask, "this isn't so cut-and-dried, is it? After all, it's specifically stated that all who enter the game face the same basic tasks; although the game is able to insert personally tailored features, the challenges are always the same. How can every child share the same basic psychological challenges?" Well! You raise an excellent point. But remember: the I.F. knew exactly what kind of child it was looking for. The game wasn't custom-tailored for Ender, but it was custom-tailored so that the child able to beat it would be the one meant to be the commander of the I.F. forces. The reason that every other child at Battle School fails the game is because he or she does not fit the same psychological profile as Ender, which is required before one can win.

The game does not reflect Ender's personality; it reflects the personality of the child who can defeat the Buggers, and that happens to be Ender.

The relative simplicity and heartfelt qualities of Card's writing make it easy to find parallels in other sci-fi works (or maybe elections). To me, the fantasy game begs the following question: do we carve our own paths in life? Or, like Ender, are we simply filling in us-sized holes?

I guess what I'm asking is, "could anyone else have written this blog post?" Could someone who grew up in similar circumstances, with a similar background and repertoire, with similarly minded friends and a similar psychological profile have come up with what I have? Since Professor Jackson can only hope that his students come up with such obviously brilliant points as mine, I'm comforted by the fact that my genius is unexpected. But Ender is explicitly filling a niche, growing into a mold because he is offered no other way to grow. I'd run away, too.

Oh, bugger...

Ender's Game has always been one of my favourite books, though I've come away from it with different ideas each time I've read it. The main thought it generally, "Well, it can only be a surprise once." I shall just share some other points that have stood out to me:
Though a collective intelligence, the Buggers demonstrate much more intelligence than their human counterparts upon meeting another race in the universe. Where the Buggers learn from their first mistaken conceptions, the humans react only with blunt fear (which reminds me of the human reaction to a snake in the grass- rather than discovering if the snake is a poisonous or harmful variety, the fearful human just proceeds to smash it out of existence). Where the Buggers use the humans' own technology to find a human ally to help preserve their race, the humans' only survival mechanism is to breed the ultimate fighting machine and hope with crossed fingers that their produced boy can beat ridiculous odds against an enemy that hasn't shown any signs of aggression. It is the Buggers who initiate contact with a human and try to understand.
After so many speculative years about, "If we make contact with aliens..." you would assume humans would be a bit more receptive, or at least foreseen some difficulties in communication with a completely alien species and not reacted with such hostility. Even after the First Invasion, shouldn't some attempt at communication have been tried before plotting to destroy the Buggers' home world? However, I think Card has an interesting point in how the humans do react to aliens, initially and the second time around. The people in charge aren't necessarily interested in the exploration of alien cultures, so much as power-driven and fearful of this unknown they're faced with.
Adult behavior overall is appalling. The children are exploited. Pitted against one another. Planned. Sculpted into nothing more than tools without any chance of having a childhood. Yet the adults are willing to place the fate of humanity into their hands. And it works. It always amazes me that people are so willing to manipulate one another, though this is just personal opinion and Card's portrayals are generally realistic in politics and war.
Through all of this is poor little brilliant Ender. His charactre causes some protective instinct because he is always so small and picked on and he seems to genuinely feel for others and just need a friend. At the same time, he's fearsome. He is capable of killing before I could drive (and I live in a rural state where you get your license when 15). Ender is complex, but still a charactre that can be related to because despite his violent tactical side, he remains compassionate and is always searching for his true friends.
As for the games throughout the book, they all serve the same purpose. The Fantasy game, the battle room, and the computer games towards the end are all merely tools to manipulate the ultimate weapon- Ender. How such a brilliant boy didn't figure any of that out is beyond me, though I didn't catch on during my first read, but wasn't he supposed to be the hope for the entire human race? Anyhow, Card's use of the games shows Ender's growth and thoughts, as well as his development of military tactics, without making this just a boring battle against aliens. It's the battle of a lonely little boy who doesn't want to cause any harm and is tricked into causing the most harm any human has done. The cruel irony.
But the humans lived. As they would have anyhow.

V for Justification...wait...

I think it’s time to question another of our underlying assumptions, yay! So, in class we spent quite some time talking about whether certain of V’s actions were justifiable, for example, killing the priest who had merely been present at Larkhill, but who probably hadn’t contributed to any of the killing or experimentation (though who knows what he did to little girls there), or V’s abduction, imprisonment and torture of Evey. My question is, why should we be concerned as to whether these are justifiable actions or not? V does not feel that he has to justify his actions to anyone, merely take responsibility for them. V is also working to create anarchy, the land of do-as-you-please, not the land of do-as-you-please-then-tell-us-why-it’s-okay. If he is just doing as he pleases, even if he has a reason for doing what he does, do we need to try to justify it if V himself does not think a justification is necessary?

Responsibility, Fate and Anarchy

So, this novel was pretty freaking awesome, just putting that out there. Also, please try to avoid too many movie spoilers. I don’t know about anyone else, but I haven’t seen the film version yet, and since it apparently doesn’t follow the book, please don’t ruin it. Thanks.

Anyway, I went into this book not really knowing what the story was about. It wasn’t my first graphic novel, so I wasn’t in that boat with some of you, but all I knew was that someone was on a vendetta (got that from the title, don’tcha know). Needless to say, I wasn’t really expecting it to be quite that much of a political piece. Still, I really liked it. The mystery, psychology and political commentary were well paced and spaced, and I quite enjoyed the way that characters didn’t just disappear, but we continued to follow up on them throughout the entire novel. For example, I was a little confused as to why we kept following the plight of Rosemary until we discover that she is the one who is going to kill the leader, but at the same time, even when I didn’t know where her story was going, it was interesting to see the long term consequences of her husband’s treatment of her, V’s actions, and her own choices that ultimately led her to stand next to that car with a gun.

V talks about wanting everyone to take responsibility for their actions, and that is a major part of what this book is about. He forces that responsibility on the people who ran Larkhill by killing them or driving them insane (why is Prothero the only person from Larkhill he didn’t kill, by the way?). He never shirks his own responsibility for the things he does. Even when we don’t see characters taking responsibility for their actions, we see the results of those actions, and we know who is to blame for them.

One thing I wish we’d seen more of was Fate. While the whole Susan/Fate relationship was interesting to observe, I wondered what exactly Fate did. They talked about “consulting Fate,” but from what I read, I never really quite grasped what it is that fate does for them, aside from calculating the exact minute when the rain will start. Anyone have a more clear idea than it just being a supercomputer and supercomputing for the government?

One of the most interesting things to me in the novel was V’s distinction between Anarchy and Chaos when Eve asks him, “All this riot and uproar, V…is this anarchy? Is this the land of do-as-you-please?” He replies, “No. This is only the land of take-what-you-want. Anarchy means “without leaders” not “without order.” With anarchy comes an age of ordnung, of true order, which is to say voluntary order. This age of ordung [sic] will begin when the mad and incoherent cycle of verwirrung that these bulletins reveal has run its course. This is not Anarchy, Eve. This is Chaos.” I think it’s quite a fine distinction, and is well explained, but most of all, it’s something I had not thought about before, so I found the concept intriguing.

Cyberpunk and Jewish Folklore

Maybe I’m a minority here, but I think cyberpunk is one of the most fun sub-genres of science fiction because it blurs the lines of what is human and what humans are capable of doing. When an AI becomes so advanced that the difference between it and humans is nigh indistinguishable, who is to say that it isn’t human, especially in societies where body modification has gone to such extremes that the humans are half machine already. I guess what I’m saying is, in a society where machines become more and more human and humans become more and more mechanized, where do you draw the line between them and us? Anyhow, that was my little cyberpunk rant, just ‘cuz I like it.

In He, She and It, however, the lines are not quite that blurred yet. Cyborgs are not commonplace enough that the line between us and them can begin to fade. No, at this point a very concrete line exists, you were manufactured, we were born. Whatever happened later, if you became more human, if I modified myself, our origins continue to define what we are. In this way, I can understand why Yod didn’t want any more cyborgs to be built: he could see that the time for acceptance for artificial people was still a long way off. The parallel story of Joseph tells us that much. His story took place almost 460 years prior to Yod’s, and yet their stories end in nearly the same way, their creator telling them that they have served their purpose, and reclaiming the life from them.

So, I also looked up golems, not having ever studied any Jewish folklore, and Joseph’s story is based on an actual Jewish folktale, and looking at Piercy’s biography on her website, I’m not all that surprised. Considering her grandmother brought her up Jewish and told her stories, she’s probably known that folktale throughout most of her life. That, I think, supports my idea that she did not include the older tale to parallel her own story, but that the folktale was probably an inspiration for Yod’s part in this story, though from what I’ve read, Piercy probably added in Joseph’s love interest, because I’m not seeing her in any of the variations of the story I’m looking at. Anyway, I might have to read some more about Jewish folklore; it seems pretty interesting.

Belief

Since the nominal topic of our discussion was whether Paul was a messiah or not, I think I’ll question our basic assumption. Does it matter whether we define Paul as a messiah? If the people who followed him believed him to be a messiah should that not be enough? The fremen believed that he was their savior, so to them he was their savior, whether he truly had come as a fulfillment to prophecies or whether he merely took advantage of the prophecies. And even if he did simply take advantage of prophecies that had been planted there, he still led the people to their freedom. Does it even matter if the prophecies were real or planted by the Bene Gesserit? If the fremen believed in the prophecies, Paul came and fulfilled the prophecies, and the fremen believed that Paul was their savior, then he was a savior to them. In this situation, I believe that the fremen’s faith in Paul proves he is their messiah. By no means would you ever get a freman to believe that Paul wasn’t a messiah.

I suppose the position I’ve outlined above leads back to the question of a messiah versus the messiah. This question, however, presupposes that in the world Herbert created, a single messiah is possible. My question would then be how would you identify a single messiah as the messiah? That again depends on how Herbert’s world works. Would The Messiah have to fulfill the prophecies of all religions, or do religions exist that claim to expect the one true Messiah? In the first case, would Paul work as The Messiah? He fulfilled prophecies from several different religions, but did he cover all of them? What about the second case? How do you know which religion to trust when they say that their Messiah is the one true savior? I ask these questions strictly from an outsider perspective like us reading Herbert’s novel, not to get into a religious debate about the competing religions we live with, but without getting into a debate, we can think about these questions abstractly in regard to today’s religions. I’ll let you others do that, however. I’m not about to start pulling out the worms now that I’ve opened that particular can.

Putting aside messiahs for a moment, I’d like to talk about Paul as a political instead of a religious leader. In “Politics as a Vocation,” Weber talks about hereditary, charismatic, and legal justifications for leadership. While Paul admittedly has some roles he occupies through charismatic justification, he also has a ninety-generation pedigree set up by the Bene Gesserit. Despite this hereditary justification already being in place, does he actually gain the positions of leadership that should be his through his family ties by his charismatic leadership, or does his justification in those roles rely mainly on his hereditary right to rule? Which justification takes precedence in Paul’s situation if both justifications are present? Wow, a lot of questions in that post, but I’m still more interested in hearing what other people have to say on the political front than trying to come up with my own answers since I’m sure you all know much more about politics than I do (you all don’t actively avoid politics).

Charisma and Corruption

I have to start off by saying that “Politics as a Vocation” has been the most difficult text yet for me to get through. I am not at all interested in politics, and so the little details that Weber continually brought up about the slight differences between this role in this country and that role in that country just drove me up the wall. Despite that, I did find interesting the idea of “the authority of the extraordinary, personal gift of grace of charisma, that is, the wholly personal devotion to, and a personal trust in, the revelations, heroism, or other leadership qualities of an individual.” I had not thought about our political system as being one that functions on trust in the leadership of a charismatic individual, in those exact terms, but it definitely makes sense the way Weber lays it out, especially when you consider how much the personal appearance of candidates matters to the public these days. Back when Weber gave this lecture, we didn’t have televised debates yet, but as soon as candidates began appearing on our screens, appearance began to play a significant role in the public’s confidence in a candidate. Though Weber does not specifically mention appearance as being a part of the charismatic justification for rule, I believe that he might have included this in his list if he was aware of just how image conscious society would become. In that regard, charisma was an apt word choice. According to WordWeb, a dictionary/thesaurus program I’ve installed on my computer, “charisma” is “a personal attractiveness or interestingness that enables you to influence others.” This definition certainly encompasses the qualities Weber laid forth of revelations, heroism and leadership qualities, but it also leaves room for appearance and rhetoric, which are such large parts of how we now tend to think of charisma.

The other thing I found interesting in Weber’s justifications for rule is that he does not attempt to address good and bad rulers. Many rulers who fit into one of the three categories of justification have turned out to be poor leaders. Hereditary rule simply cannot produce a good ruler every time. Examples of this can be found in every royal and/or imperial family throughout history. Charismatic rule is just as fallible. To go for the extreme example, Hitler was an extremely charismatic ruler who inspired “the wholly personal devotion” and “personal trust” in his followers that Weber outlines in his description of the justification for charismatic rule. His third category of a legal justification for “servants of the state” is just as prone to corruption. A person in one of these roles may follow orders and carry out their duties, but the motivation behind such service is always open to question. I realize that the point of Weber’s lecture was not necessarily to discuss what made a good politician and how to avoid corruption, but that he was trying to show the seriousness and importance of making the decision to make a career of politics, however, I just found it interesting that a justification for rule does not necessarily mean a good ruler.

Expressing Multiple Roles

When we discussed Dune in class, we spent much of the time talking about which of Paul’s titles best represents who he is, or if he is all of them, and what happens when his different roles come into conflict with each other. I think that the most likely answer is that he takes on each role as the situation demands it. If we all look at our daily lives, this is how we act in different situations. Since I know my life better than any of yours, I’ll use myself as an example. I have many different roles in my life, as I’m sure you all do. I am a Desk Receptionist at Hughes, a Writing Consultant and the Writing Center, the lighting technician for the Gathering service, a junior in college, and many other things depending on the situation. Depending on which role I am playing at the moment, I have to respond differently to different situations. For example, when I am studying in my room, being a student takes precedence, but when I am studying at the front desk in Hughes, checking someone’s spare key out to them becomes more important than reading an article on blackboard or whatever I am doing because I have other responsibilities that are more important. When I am working as a writing consultant, I work one on one with a student to help them improve their writing skills, but when I am setting up lighting for the Gathering, I work on an much more impersonal level with other people, telling them where to run wiring and such. In a way, Paul’s multiple roles are not any different from the multiple roles that we all have to play every day. Paul’s roles just have more impressive titles, and come with more impressive skills. So anyhow, I believe that Paul can be all of his titles at once, but that different situations bring different roles and skills to the forefront, just like different situations in our day-to-day lives call for responses from our own different roles and skill sets.

Dune the Epic Fantasy?

Since this book reminded me more of epic fantasy than of what I expect when I think of science fiction, I thought it would be interesting to take a look at genre and where Dune fits in. I’m not out to make anyone mad or start a whole genre debate, but I think it would be interesting, especially in light of the conversation we had on the first day of class regarding genre, to bring it up again. I’m going to be relying quite a bit on Wikipedia sources here, so please don’t bite my head off about that either, because I’m aware that they can be wrong and that they are not exhaustive. This is more of an exercise in thinking about genre than an argument that Dune has to fit into a specific genre. Now that I’ve written enough of a preface to hopefully avoid any nasty comments, I’ll jump in.

According to the Wikipedia page for Dune, it “is popularly considered one of the greatest science fiction novels of all time, is frequently cited as the best-selling science fiction novel in history, and was the first bestselling hardcover science fiction novel ever.” I dispute none of this and I don’t believe that Dune has a problem fitting into most people’s definitions of science fiction; after all, it is set in a more technologically advanced future that has taken us to new worlds. When I took a closer look at Wikipedia’s (admittedly incomplete) listing of science fiction sub-genres, however, I couldn’t really find one that I felt Dune fit in with well. Hard SF, according to Wikipedia, “is characterized by rigorous attention to detail in quantitative sciences, especially physics, astrophysics, and chemistry.” Dune is not about detailed scientific explanations of future technology, so I discount this sub-genre. Next is Soft SF, which consists of “works based on social sciences such as psychology, economics, political science, sociology and anthropology.” This seems to fit much better with Dune, and yet I would argue that the scope of the book is so much larger than a study of any or all of these topics that this sub-genre cannot contain it. What I mean is that Dune covers all of these areas, but it goes far beyond them because of the huge scope of its story. The next sub-genre down the list is Cyberpunk, which definitely does not fit Dune. Cyberpunk usually takes place in a post-humanist dystopian future where body modification, implants, and full-sensory internet are the norm. Time Travel, the next sub-genre, also does not fit. This is followed by Alternate History, which is also not Dune, and Military SF, which also does not quite fit. Paul may be a good fighter and lead a jihad, but the focus of the book is not “conflict between national, interplanetary, or interstellar armed forces.” The list goes on to include New Wave, Apocalyptic and Post-apocalyptic fiction, Christian science fiction, space opera, and science fiction western, none of which really fit Dune either. I’m sure there are more sub-genres of science fiction out there and that Dune at least partially fits into some of them, but for now, I’m going to move on to the second part of this post, Dune and epic fantasy.

Again in Wikipedia, epic fantasy is “generally serious in tone and epic in scope, dealing with themes of grand struggle against supernatural, evil forces.” This may be a bit of a stretch, but I believe Dune is at least serious in tone and epic in scope, and while the “grand struggle” may not be against a supernatural, evil force, Paul does lead the fremen against their foe and defeat the corrupt emperor to take over. Where this comparison really takes off is in looking at the qualities of the hero in epic fantasy in comparison to Paul. According to Wikipedia, “Often, much of the plot revolves around his heritage or mysterious nature. In many novels the hero is an orphan or unusual sibling, often with some incredible ability or abilities and skills in a particular area (usually either magic or skill with a weapon). He begins the story young, if not an actual child.” The plot of Dune does revolve around Paul; he is not an orphan, but he does have quite an isolated upbringing, he has many incredible abilities, and he begins the story fairly young. The article goes on, “In the beginning of the storyline, the hero is threatened by the unknown force.” Despite Herbert’s audience knowing the plot against the Atreides family, and them knowing that their enemies have some sort of plot against them, the attack is enough of a surprise that it is a success, and Paul and his mother are forced to flee. Particularly relevant, “the hero slowly gains knowledge of his past through legend, prophecy, lost-and-found-again family members, or encounters with "mentor" characters who know more about him than he does.” Paul encounters all of these: he takes on the legendary figure of being the savior for the fremen, he fulfills the prophecy of being the Kwisatz Haderach, he discovers that he is related to the Harkonnens, and he has several mentor characters who help him in different ways both during the book and before the book began. This is getting ridiculously long, so I’ll cut myself off here, I just thought it was interesting how much better this book seemed to fit in with epic fantasy than with any standard sub-genre of science fiction. Thoughts?

Computers and Cartoons

Since everyone else has provided their thoughts on the computer experiment, I guess I’ll throw in my two cents as well. Like Kaitlin, I enjoy trying different things in class, and I thought this was an interesting program to try out. I found it interesting to see the different ways that our groups went about searching for sources to prove or disprove the validity of Stephanson’s argument, and I think that it is also important to take into consideration the validity of an argument when reading a text like Stephanson. Like most of the class, however, I don’t think that this program worked out very well. We spent a good portion of class time just looking up different things on the computers instead of being in discussion. Because we spent so much time on this question, both in research and in sharing our conclusions, we didn’t really get to spend much time in the text, which is too bad when you have a text this interesting. Also, the technical difficulties and the delay between the sending and receiving computers were distracting. Finally, I also hate Macs (never owned one, but had to suffer through them being the only computers my school district would use).

Despite all of this, I found the different approaches our groups took to the question to be interesting. It’s interesting to see just how little political correctness mattered in society back when those cartoons were produced, but at the same time, not all that surprising. Even cartoons I’ve seen from the early 1930s are sometimes blatantly racist, witness Plane Dumb, featuring Van Buren’s Tom and Jerry, which doesn’t have anything to do with propaganda. It’s just racist.

How Protestant Ideals Became American Nationalism

Stephanson’s Manifest Destiny is an interesting text because it not only looks at what happened in history, but it argues specific motivations behind the actions of the United States as a whole throughout its history. Stephanson is not trying to explain why specific people took specific actions that shaped the history of the United States, though he does a little of that, but he is presenting a theory on how the United States as a nation justified its actions to itself and to the world. What this text showed me were some of the ideals that went into American nationalism, how that nationalism was different from nationalism in other countries around the world and how the ideas that make up American nationalism have affected policies and decision making throughout the history of the United States.

People in the United States needed something under which to band together. Part of what makes up nationalism is what Benedict Anderson called “imagined communities.” This is when people are able to think of themselves as part of a community that is made up of more than just the people they know. American University, for example, is an imagined community because we all consider ourselves to be a part of the group of people that make up American University, but I’m fairly certain that none of us know every single other person who considers her/himself to be a part of American University as well. When the United States fought for independence from Britain, they were banding together under a common oppression by the British government, but they were also banding together under the common ideals of the protestant religions. Many of the colonials had left Europe to escape religious persecution, and despite the differences among the different branches of Protestantism, they did have several ideals in common. Freedom of religion means a society free from religious persecution, not a society free from religion, and many of the men who instigated the American Revolution and worked in the formation of the United States were Protestant. Once they had won the war, Protestant ideals became and even greater part of the commonalities among the people, and thus became the basis for American nationalism.

As the United States continued to develop, the religious ideals became more ingrained into American society, until the phrase "American" came to represent those religious ideals under a secular name. This is why the Biblical argument that came up time and again throughout Stephanson's book went largely unchallenged through American history, and why manifest destiny has constantly emerged in our nation's past.

Focus of Discussion - Wells versus Heinlein

I found it interesting how different our discussion on The Moon is a Harsh Mistress was from the discussion we previously had on The Time Machine. With Wells’s book, we spent much time discussing what we found implausible and poking fun at the way the Time Traveller handled his trip into the future, whereas most of our discussion of Heinlein’s book centered around questions of morality and ethics, which Chris outlined nicely in his “Morality vs. Ethics” post, and about the logistics of the Lunar society. Why the difference in discussion? I believe the difference came about partly because we better understand the context from which Heinlein is writing. Both the politics from the era Heinlein’s book was written and the understanding of science people had at that time are easier for us to relate to than those from Wells’s era. I also think that the difference in conversation had to do with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress being more what we now expect from a science fiction text. Though The Time Machine contained its titular device, the world the Time Traveller transported us to seemed less of a science fiction setting, and more of a canvas on which Wells could explore his political theories. I don’t mean to say that a setting cannot have both, because as we see in Heinlein’s book, it can, I just mean that Wells’s world contains little in the way of imagined technology outside of the time machine itself, but instead is practically wiped clean of technology and all we expect from science fiction texts now. Because it is so different, we had to spend time discussing how it worked at the time it was written and explaining to ourselves why the lack of advancement and other things in the book bothered us. With Heinlein, we don’t have this issue because his story is chock full of futuristic technology, and shows us a world we can more easily understand as being our future because we see the human instinct to strive for achievement and discovery played out.

American versus Lunar Revolution

One thing I found interesting about Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is that despite the many correlations between the prison colony on Luna and European colonies, particularly British colonies of the 17^th and 18^th Centuries, the choice he made to set his colony on the moon created differences that altered his society from developing the way that colonies developed on Earth. For example, the British colonies in America were exploited in a similar fashion to the way Terra exploits Luna. The British reaped materials from their colonies, which they transformed into finished goods and sold back at a much higher price. The colonies were not supposed to engage in trade with other countries, which was supposed to give Britain full advantage of both the materials and the colonists’ money. Because this system is set up between Britain and its colonies, the colonials had the outside recourse of smuggling with which to bring in needed supplies and cash flow so that they would not be bled dry. The situation on Luna in which the Loonies ship wheat back to Terra reminded me of that colonial system on Earth because Luna will exhaust its own food supply if it continues to make the required wheat shipments. The difference in this situation is that the Loonies do not have an outside source that they can use to relieve the stress on their food supply because no such source exists. This dilemma leads them to planning their revolution, which again is reminiscent of the American Revolution. One of the many causes leading up to the American Revolution was that the Britains, though they knew that smuggling provided continued income into their colonies for them to take away through their exploitative policies, cracked down on smuggling and tried to actually uphold the trading regulations they had set down.

Another difference I found interesting between the colony on Luna and the British colonies is that British colonials were able to return to Britain. Living in the Americas would not have made them unable to survive in the English atmosphere, which made them more able to be vocal in Britain than the Loonies are on Terra. Since the Loonies have an extremely difficult time surviving for any extended period on Terra, they are even easier to exploit than the colonies in American were for Britain. Because they cannot fight back (I’m talking pre-revolution here) through official or political avenues, they are forced to a revolution more quickly. They have to fight physically, and on their own turf, because they cannot survive on Terra, and no one will listen to them until they take power and make their words be heard.

Questioning Our Assumptions in The Time Machine

We spent much of class discussing the problems we had with The Time Machine, most of which were issues with the scientific believability of the world as Wells described it. I believe that our discussion on those issues was useful because it let us discuss why the issues we had problems with made sense or were at least possible explanations in the time in which the book was written. This led to discussion of what the book said about society in relation to the context of the society at the time Wells wrote it, which allows us a deeper understanding of what he was trying to say about society and the pitfalls it needs to avoid.

On the other hand, the fact that we had to discuss the believability of the novel at all leads me to question how we were reading it. Though it was meant to take place in our world, the world of today is so different from both the world in which Wells lived and the one he created that we cannot judge the book based on criteria from today’s world. The book consistently follows it’s own logic, so we should not have to question the world it shows us. However, we do question that world, and not just because we are reading the book from a modern perspective. We also question that world because the Time Traveller himself questions that world. He doesn’t question it by pointing out what doesn’t make sense, but he questions it by creating hypotheses about it that are continually wrong. Because Wells forces us to see this new world through the Time Traveller’s eyes, his assumptions become our own, and as those assumptions are disproved, we begin to mistrust our own judgments of what is taking place in the future that Wells shows us.

Nightmares Come True

I'm so sorry.

Justifying V

I was disappointed that we never reached a conclusion on why Susan's logic for wielding absolute control being because it was necessary was different from V's logic for wielding absolute control being because it was necessary.
I acknowledge that it was noble of V to take more direct responsibility for his dirty work, but it was dirty work nonetheless. We skirted around the issue that perhaps the only important distinctions were the intentions of each character. Is killing justified if the killer has a greater good in mind? The same idea appears (like we discussed) with Mike from The Moon is a Harsh Mistress explaining his crashing of a ship because it seemed necessary for the cause, which is why I found it so odd that V never tries to explain or justify his actions to anyone. It makes V seem that much more inhuman, that a computer showed more typical human behavior than he did. V's character is all the more dangerous simply because he seeks no recourse or justification from anyone, even Evey who practically begs V to clue her in. If we justify V's actions as being better than Susan's because V has a more noble end in mind, aren't we justifying any individual taking our future into their hands simply because they think they know what's best for us? Or that they won't force anything upon us, just make it nearly impossible for us to choose any future but they one they approve of?
On some other points, I appreciated the historical comparisons that we discussed, particularly the similarity to the Nuremberg Trials. It harshly illuminated the scary fact that there really are people who pass judgment on who is guilty to what degree- and who should die. And apparently these characters don't just show up in graphic novels.
As for comparisons to the movie- of course I agree that they are ridiculously different, but that doesn't make me like the movie any less. It might just be that I enjoy the more romanticized version of a revolutionary in comparison to the cold anarchist V Alan Moore created. It might be that "strength through unity" seemed to provide a more practical founding statement for a lemming population than "strength through purity," though not as close to the fascist doctrine. Whatever the case, I enjoyed both on different planes but was glad we discussed the major disparities.

V for Verbose

Well, since I'm getting the hell out of Dodge tomorrow, I'd better put up a reflection on class now. What to say? We didn't really cover much in my opinion, always coming back to the question of how V gets the right to do what he does versus Susan and Norsefire. One thing is for sure: V is not of the body. Peace and tranquility is not with him. He does not know Landru.

Okay, actually, that's a start, actually. "Return of the Archons" - classic original series, just after the magic microphone that can detect heartbeats and right before Khan. The Body is this huge subconscious telepathy system that makes people seem absurdly calm save one hour a day, the Red Hour. Bottom line, the Body is actually controlled by Landru, a 6000 year old computer that was programmed to help the people of Beta III. Unfortunately, instead of doing this in some reasonable way, it decides that people having free will is too much of a risk to their own safety and takes it away. Kirk and Spock convince the computer that it has betrayed its own programming by doing this and it goes up in wonderful 1967 special effects "the computer's going up in smoke" smoke.

Or we go to the second season (Chekov shows up, so it's a good time) - "Patterns of Force." A Federation historian breaks the prime directive and interferes with a culture, organizing it in accordance with fascism, hoping to only duplicate its positive aspects. Long story short, the historian gets overpowered, a new guy takes charge, and then all the bad parts of fascism take over. Say, genocide of another planet. Once again, free will goes by the wayside as the new leader attempts to achieve racial purity. Spock mind-melds with the historian, who tells the planet that the Final Solution analogue isn't a great idea, then he gets shot, but it's all cool now.

All right, so we've got message one, that free will is the all-important marker of a society. Even if you can be guaranteed safety under Landru, you won't really be alive because you don't have freedom of choice. Let's go with the quest for free will to vindicate V's agenda over Norsefire's.

And then we've got the great little critique of fascism and human hubris. Sure, it can do some great things, but despotism's built into the system. As soon as Gill gets overthrown and the evil dude starts up, you've got bad fascism. Whoops. I guess the historian didn't really learn about history until he recreated it. And the Enterprise flies off to its next mission. Dum da da, da dum dum da da, DA!

Last, an additional word on the movie. I can see the graphic novel being turned almost verbatim into a great movie. Unfortunately, the only director I can see doing it, David Lean, died in 1991. Lean had this wonderful skill: being able to throw all sorts of wonderfully subversive politics into a damn entertaining movie. I just still don't see a way to properly capture the novel on film in 2005. In 1990, we're talking a different story. It could have been that crazy project that a director does before he dies (see Eyes Wide Shut for a prime example). Maybe the next David Lean (added bonus on his being British) can take V and treat it right. But in any case, the Wachowskis made a fun movie.

I, for one, take no joy in shooting fish in a barrel, which is pretty much what comparing a movie to its original book usually is. Sure, we have that award for Best Adapted Screenplay every year, but usually the movies that win take a so-so (or completely unknown or foreign) book and turn it into a good movie. Notable recent exception: LotR, where Peter Jackson took an excellent (though dry as all get out) novel and turned it into what many die-hard LotR fans call a so-so movie version (or a travesty, depending on how die-hard the fan). I, for one, hated reading the books but loved the movies because they didn't make fight scenes as interesting as a stackable combination washer/dryer with Energy Saver cool dry mode manual. But I digress. My point is, judge the film not on the graphic novel. That was Alan Moore's job, and we know his answer. Come down off your high horses, judge the film as a film, and tell me it's not enjoyable, being all "high and mighty" offended notwithstanding.

V for Victimhood

I envy all of you who may be reading this for the first time. Sad to say, it just isn't the same the second time around. Where a book like Dune only gains in the rereading, V for Vendetta relies too heavily on twists and sudden reveals, however dramatic they are, to be anywhere near as interesting after the first time. Nevertheless, I shall endeavor to enjoy it once again with you.

The character of V is an interesting one, and I'm not referring to the man who was injected with chemicals at a concentration camp. I'm talking about the identity assumed by that man, which he then passes on to Evey. V seeks to create the land of Do-As-You-Please, a place where freedom is the watchword. We can only assume, lacking evidence to the contrary, that this is very similar to Heinlein's "rational anarchy." V doesn't pretty its political ideology with the throwaway word "rational," but the precepts are pretty much the same: everyone can do what they want, and things will just work out for the best. V effectively achieves its goals by destroying whatever bloated authority exists in society and then educating the remainder.

Disregarding the question of whether enforced anarchy is merely tyranny of another stripe, V fulfills a role much like Mike: its immense knowledge and power makes the anarchic revolution possible, and then it runs the risk of exerting too much control and making the revolution moot. However, Mike's friends recognized the danger of allowing him to remain in power. V, on the other hand, is portrayed as the perfect hero of a new age. Each book takes the cheap cop-out of showing how its idyllic society actually forms, but V offers a much more sinister expectation. What happens to the most capable being in an anarchic society? Well, if individuals behave rationally and attempt to maximize their self-interest, then eventually the entire society coalesces around that most capable being. V's ability to initiate change, immense knowledge base and mythical status mean that it must exempt itself from the day-to-day occurrences of the world it hopes to create.

The Future

Like a god unto men, it walked
Smiting all those who displeased
And we, in turn, were smitten
By its grace and the way it talked

In our poor judgment we followed
The creature so perfect and free
That promised us nothing but treasure
Yet all of its words were so hollowed

Those great men who seek to lead
Weaker men heed their words
But the stranger, dismayed, will cut
And the strongest among us will bleed

We return once again to our caves
Watching crabs gather on shore
To remember the days of society
And one day forget kings and knaves

In Defense of the Wachowskis

Let me begin by saying that I really enjoyed V for Vendetta in its graphic novel glory. In addition to being fun to read, it serves as a fine warning against Thatcherism, fascism, and, to paraphrase Ferris Bueller, all the -isms. I enjoyed the characters, though not being used to the graphic novel format, I would occasionally have to look back to figure out who someone was. The multiple narrative strings are a great storytelling tool, one I enjoyed more here than in He, She and It. Let me also indicate that I'm not saying that the movie is better than the novel.

That being said, I still say that V for Vendetta is also a damn fine movie; it just happens to have very little to do with the novel. We've got the same protagonist, a dude in a Guy Fawkes mask who went insane during medical testing. We've got the same general idea of constant surveillance and 1984-ishness. The backstory of how we got to that point is pretty vague in both instances. And there's a girl. Other than that, we're pretty much blazing our own trail.

Saying this, I have the benefit of just having watched V for Vendetta as HBO has decided to play it constantly for a few weeks. Even if I caught a few minutes halfway through the movie, I enjoyed watching it. It's a cool movie. It certainly doesn't give the same message and the path it takes is substantially different from the novel. But this isn't to the detriment of the film. There was a lot to cover in the novel and a movie wasn't going to catch it all. Instead of really trying, the Wachowskis took the premise and messed with it, creating their own story while retaining some of the most badass lines of the original. Sorry, Alan, but them's the breaks.

This isn't to say that some graphic novels can't be turned directly into films. Sin City and 300 are both fine examples of carbon copies of their graphic novels and they're both excellent films. I just can't see an exact copy of V for Vendetta (maybe V for Verbatim?) working as well onscreen. I don't think the Wachowskis could, either, so they tried to write something that could at least live up to the namesake, and I think they succeeded.

Here's a trick to enjoy any movie with Hugo Weaving. In V for Vendetta, imagine V as Agent Smith. In The Matrix, think of Smith as Elrond. And in Lord of the Rings, of course, think of Elrond as Smith. Also in that one fight scene in LotR, think of Christopher Lee as Count Dooku and Ian McKellen as Magneto. Trust me. It all makes more sense that way.

We're Not Alone!

I don't know how many of you read Slashdot (I don't recommend it, actually - most of the posters seem to be insane at this point), but in any case, there was a post up there that I couldn't resist looking into: "The Law and Politics of Battlestar Galactica."

Fans of the show Battlestar Galactica might be interested in our interview with writers and producers Ron Moore and David Eick. Three law professors at the blog Concurring Opinions have an hour-long interview with Moore and Eick about the legal, political, moral, and economic issues raised by the show. The interview is available in audio files; alternatively, people can read a transcript of the interview (Part I) and (Parts II and III). Part I examines the lawyers and trials in the show, how torture is depicted, as well as how the humans must balance civil liberties and security. Part II examines politics and commerce. It explores how the cylon attack affected the humans' political system, and it examines how commerce works in the fleet. Part III examines issues related to cylons, such as the humans' treatment of cylons, how robots should be treated by the law, how the cylons govern themselves politically."

I guess we're not the only ones in academia looking into the "social science" end of sci-fi. The interview touches on a lot of what we've been grappling with, and it's perfect for our discussion of "Exceptional Circumstances," this week's theme. How about a robopocalypse (yeah, that's right, a robopocalypse) for exceptional?

Also, callback to last week: "Is there anything morally wrong about beating a machine?" - Ron Moore in Part I-B.

And back to last week's movie:

Moore (jokingly): First of all, what's Blade Runner? It figured into our discussions from Day 1. Very influential.
Eick: And yes, Deckard is a replicant, for the record.

V?

As this was my first foray into the previously unknown realm where the graphic novel dwells, I came out with some strong impressions. Laced with shadows. And lots of little straight lines to make those shadows. It wasn't my favourite format for enjoying a novel, but it was interesting. I would like to just mention that while I was trying to find it at Barnes and Noble in the Graphic Novel/Manga/Comic Book section, I received the most "interesting" stares. People's perceptions of graphic novels and those who read them are grossly exaggerated.
I do feel like I missed a lot in this first reading as I had a hard time following separate charactres and story lines, all the while trying to pick up on V's quoted speeches and graffiti in the background and other subtle little clues that may have helped my understanding had I picked up on more of them. I did love the visual creation of the "body" of the state alluded to by the titles of the different sections: The Eye, The Finger, and my favourite- The Nose. Who would want to smell British society?
Honestly though, I was left wondering if British society would be able to pull themselves together or not after V died, or successfully implement V's beloved theory of anarchy. As Finch points out, V should have been able to prevent Finch from shooting him, so why didn't he? Would it ever be possible to right the chaos that V jump-started? Why were so many upper-level party members involved in this human testing program anyway?
I need to read this again, but this time let myself be more distracted by the pictures. In the meantime, I hope things become more clear and that our discussion helps me see deeper than a basic run through of one man's goal for society.