The Everyday Fantasic : Essays on Science Fiction and Human Being [1 ed.] 9781443807838, 9781847184283

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The Everyday Fantastic: Essays on Science Fiction and Human Being

The Everyday Fantastic: Essays on Science Fiction and Human Being

Edited by

Michael Berman

Cambridge Scholars Publishing

The Everyday Fantastic: Essays on Science Fiction and Human Being, Edited by Michael Berman This book first published 2008 by Cambridge Scholars Publishing 15 Angerton Gardens, Newcastle, NE5 2JA, UK British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Copyright © 2008 by Michael Berman and contributors All rights for this book reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the copyright owner. ISBN (10): 1-84718-428-6, ISBN (13): 9781847184283

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction ................................................................................................ 1 Michael Berman PART I: SCIENCE FICTION AS SOCIAL CRITIQUE Chapter One............................................................................................... 12 “A Galaxy Far, Far Away” My Foot! Science Fiction as a Mirror for Reality Robert J. Sawyer Chapter Two .............................................................................................. 20 “Making it so”: Star Trek and Ideology Steven Scott Chapter Three ............................................................................................ 31 Science Fiction and Transformative Ecological Politics: Biocentric Wisdom in Three Early Works Eric Otto Chapter Four.............................................................................................. 49 Creating Change: One Dominant Male God in the Science Fiction of Sheri Tepper Jan Marijaq PART II: SCIENCE FICTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL Chapter Five .............................................................................................. 62 Kierkegaardian Despair in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End Albert R. Spencer Chapter Six ................................................................................................ 73 Evangelian and Existentialism: The Case of Shinji Ikari Rob Vuckovich

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Chapter Seven............................................................................................ 87 Science Fiction and Metal Music: The Dystopian Visions of Voïvod and Fear Factory Laura Wiebe Taylor PART III: SCIENCE FICTION AND P.K. DICK’S ANDROIDS Chapter Eight........................................................................................... 102 Franken-borgs and Memorable Bodies: Representations of Memory in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner Kimberly Duff Chapter Nine............................................................................................ 114 Images of Absence in P.K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? Michael Berman PART IV: SCIENCE FICTION AND PEDAGOGY Chapter Ten ............................................................................................. 132 “Prove to me that I am sentient”: Working Pedagogically through a Semiotic Phenomenology of Stressed Embodiment in a Selected Narrative from Star Trek, TNG Maureen Connolly Chapter Eleven ........................................................................................ 141 The Science and Religion Dialogue in the Science Fiction of Robert J. Sawyer Valerie Broege Chapter Twelve ....................................................................................... 151 Pedagogical Uses of Science Fiction in Science and Psychology David DeGraff & Danielle Gagne Contributors............................................................................................. 162 Index........................................................................................................ 165

INTRODUCTION

SCIENCE FICTION permeates our world, culture and lives. Everyday the fantastic is made fact by the technologies that continually reshape our understanding of all that we experience. New discoveries are always around the corner, which is to say more than simply our context changes, for it changes in radically unanticipated ways. The deep meaningful questions, considered against this dynamic and modern backdrop, that all peoples have historically faced, circle around the subject of just what does it mean to be human. Beyond the humanistic and ethical thrust of this query, the genre of science fiction pushes against, scrambles up, and attempts to climb over the obstacles that existence thrusts upon us in our search for the answers and meanings to this broad question. The award-winning novelist, Robert J. Sawyer, recommends that science fiction be reconsidered as philosophical fiction, for this genre of literature is not only creative, but it makes creativity itself part of its own inquiry. Certainly self-reflection and introspective interrogation can be found across the board in literature as such, but science fiction takes this a step further by exploring questions from imaginative and distinctly nonhuman perspectives. But whether machines, mutants, aliens, animals, or any combination thereof do this inquiring, all reflect back upon our own self-understanding as to what is human being. This collection of essays began with an idea born in love. The love is for science fiction, in all its myriad forms: novels, television, movies, music, art, etc. Many writers from a plurality of disciplines, professions and walks of life share this disposition. This attitude cuts across national boundaries and has even outlasted the vagaries of popular culture fads (the industry-franchise that is Star Trek is perhaps one of the best examples of this). The idea was to draw upon these feelings in terms of the different ways this genre is engaged in different disciplines. The papers collected in this anthology take up the questions explored in science fiction, viewing the genre beyond mere entertainment. Many of the essays were originally presented at an interdisciplinary conference in the fall of 2005 at Brock University, which was highlighted by Sawyer’s engaging keynote address, “Science Fiction: A Multidisciplinary Laboratory For Thought Experiments.” Additional chapters were in part inspired by these presentations. These essays represent a wide array of voices from the

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Introduction

humanities, social sciences and sciences, and address a comparable range of topics and the media that use the science fiction genre. Part I opens with essays that analyze and deepen the voices of social critique as only the genre of science fiction can accomplish. Those that follow likewise explore many of the same complexities of the human experience addressed in this first set of essays. Sawyer is one of only seven writers in history—and the only Canadian—to have won all three of the world’s top science-fiction awards for best novel of the year: the Hugo, which he won in 2003 for Hominids; the Nebula, which he won in 1996 for The Terminal Experiment; and the John W. Campbell Memorial Award, which he won in 2006 for Mindscan. He is also the only writer in history to win the top SF awards in the United States, China, Japan, France, and Spain, and he has won a record-setting nine Canadian Science Fiction and Fantasy Awards (“Auroras”), as well as an Arthur Ellis Award from the Crime Writers of Canada. Living and writing just outside Toronto, Sawyer has provided an essay that identifies the critical core of the science fiction genre. His extemporization focuses on the vacuity and (implicit) hypocrisy of the Star Wars stories and characters, and contrasts these with social critiques found in the works of Mary Shelley and H. G. Wells, as well as the original series of Star Trek. He rightly concludes that “We welcome the chance to engage with the issues [of our day], to use our minds, to argue and debate—with an author, and with ourselves—as we look at the here and now though science fiction’s very special lens.” Science fiction is thus the genre par excellence with which to fulfill this multifaceted imperative to think, reflect and connect. As Sawyer’s contribution illustrates, there is a wide range of media for science fiction’s critical themes. Star Trek, one of the most enduring and iconic creations of the 1960s, spawned numerous television series, movies and merchandise. Gene Roddenberry’s vision continues to expand and influence how we see the world and ourselves. At the core of this franchise, many find an ethico-moral attitude of tolerance and peace. This is played out in the various storylines and plots that explicitly engage our social values and the issues entailed thereby. These range from racism, sexism, and specism, to eco-political ideologies and the authoritarian structures of hierarchy. Steven Scott’s essay on this franchise takes a negative stance in regard to the “teachings” of Star Trek, questioning whether or not these “teachings” are as radical and progressive as many would like to believe. This is balanced by Maureen Connolly’s essay that appears in Part IV, which has a more positive perspective and answers a

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challenge in Sawyer’s essay by exploring an exceptional episode that is not a mere “soap opera and costume drama.” Scott’s “ ‘Making it so’: Star Trek and Ideology” provides a sobering insight into the idealizations of and within the Star Trek universe. There has been a great deal of critical work done on and around popular science fiction that stresses its social awareness and its critical stances that run against prevailing social mores. The criticism often discusses in glowing terms the aggressively “alternative” and socially critical nature of the fiction, television, and film. Star Trek routinely earns positive reviews in this regard. The original (“classic”) series, of course, portrayed the first inter-racial kiss on American popular television (between Kirk and Uhura, 22 November 1968). Other progressive portrayals of race include the man who is Kirk’s commanding officer in Star Trek’s first season: he is an imposing and authoritative black man, an inspired piece of progressive racial casting for a 1960s television show. It is true: thematically, the show frequently reflects a racial awareness and a stance that, especially for its time and place, are laudable. However, for Scott, the deliberate and explicit social/racial conscience of Star Trek is not what is most interesting or useful about the series. In his contribution, he argues that ideologically, Star Trek displays exactly the kinds of tendencies that one would expect to find in hit American television shows: that, in short, a core ideology that is both racist and sexist is an integral part of the five Star Trek series. His approach is first to define ideology in popular culture, using the work of critical theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Slavoj Žižek, and Michel Foucault. He then focuses his critiques on the captains of the various Star Trek series in terms of their missions, their erotic love interests, and their cultural capital. He essentially claims that despite the socially progressive themes, casting, and so on of the various series, there is a fundamentally conservative, racist, and sexist ideology at work in all of them. Eric Otto’s “Science Fiction and Transformative Ecological Politics” shifts the methodological approach from Scott’s critique of science fiction, to a critique from within science fiction. He asserts that while effective environmentalism demands direct action, it just as importantly demands expressions that think through the ideas that condition unsustainable human behavior. All written with an inherently subversive ecological perspective, the science fiction texts he scrutinizes—Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, John W. Campbell’s “Twilight,” and George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides—explore the idea that humans are superior to the rest of nature. These authors reflect on this belief in ways that demonstrate its fallaciousness, danger, and eco-centric counterpoint, respectively. In this

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Introduction

regard, these three science fiction works are important texts for invigorating ecological consciousness, and engaging in a kind of environmental politics that Paul Wapner calls “transformative politics,” which is the environmentalist effort to revise ideational perspectives in the direction of ecological concern. In a similar methodological vein, Jan Marijaq’s “Creating Change: One Dominant Male God in the Science Fiction of Sheri Tepper” grapples with the God-centered religions in Tepper’s corpus. For Marijaq, the hunting hypothesis erases the woman-as-subject and substitutes the woman-asobject in its place. Seen as object (qua prey), the abuse of women (and by extension, the world) has historically been an accepted practice, especially if one interprets the so-called God given dominion as domination. In this regard, using Tepper, Marijaq inquires about what happens when the interests of the few, at the cost of the many, control the legislative bodies of supposedly democratic countries, which are nominally elected to prevent this abuse. What happens when people are so wrapped up in their stories and social myths that they do not realize, until too late, what is happening? Tepper’s work provokes and jolts us out of our inactivity and into an awareness of these social issues, especially in terms of religion. To initiate fundamental changes in these currents of our culture, Marijaq proposes that we must become aware of how our personal context is created, so that we can chose the kind of world in which we want our children, and our children’s children, to live. The social critiques of Part I which examined implicit and value-laden hierarchies (such as those found in Star Trek and Star Wars), ecological issues and catastrophes that have been portrayed in science fiction classics, and oppressive structural institutions via the patriarchical religions questioned by Tepper all reveal the irrational behavior and limited foresight of humanity. These critiques engage general socio-historical issues, and thus provide a general cultural context for the ideas we turn to in the chapters of Part II. Thus this is a shift from interrogating ideology (broadly understood) to looking at examples of how science fiction addresses existential issues. The next set of contributions speaks to issues about individuality and freedom. The chapters of Part II delve into the dialectical complexities of individuality and freedom. Herein are found cases of philosophical explorations in 19th and 20th century literature, Japanese anime, and contemporary heavy metal music. The questions that resonates between the three essays are those that face every individual: What ought I to do? What can I hope for? And who am I?

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Beginning with a literary analysis, Albert R. Spencer uses an idea of the philosopher, Søren Kierkegaard, to examine key elements in Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End. Throughout Childhood’s End, Clarke carefully gives the evolution of humanity a human face, yet despair is often the aesthetic response to the radical transformations that we witness. Spencer contends that the source of this ambiguity can be explained by understanding despair as defined by Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death. He argues that despair is the product of the self that cannot be or become the type of self that it wants itself to be. The presence of despair is evident in Childhood’s End, as the fate of humanity in the novel does not match up to our basic human hopes. By investigating Clarke’s use of despair in Childhood’s End a deeper understanding of the aesthetic power of the book’s ending emerges, perhaps pointing to the transformative necessity of hope. In Rob Vuckovich’s “Evangelian and Existentialism: The Case of Shinji Ikari,” we see Shinji Ikari, the protagonist of the anime series Neon Genesis Evangelion, personifying the suffering associated with an individual’s having to make a distressing choice. Though Evangelion relays a fantastic tale of human annihilation by angels, its focal point is the intricate life of the fourteen-year-old Shinji and his brief interactions with the angel governing free will. The battle with the angels is microcosmic when compared to the unending war that ambivalently wages in Shinji’s mind as to what he should do. Shinji is ultimately responsible for his actions, but does not want this responsibility. The explicit existential themes in this anime series revolve around individual suffering and the isolation associated with making a choice that will impact the individual and those for whom the choice is being made. As Vuckovich makes clear, no matter what Shinji opts to do, there is no escape from the suffering that follows. The existential angst that Shinji is forced to endure speaks to the consequences and responsibilities every individual bears in making ethical choices. The investigations of Part II are brought to a close with a shift to another kind of media. Laura Weibe Taylor’s work discusses music and human organizational structures. Her “Science Fiction and Metal Music: The Dystopian Visions of Voïvod and Fear Factory” examines the dystopian science fiction narratives of the heavy metal music albums Phobos (1997) by Voïvod and Obsolete (1998) by Fear Factory. She develops a semiotic reading of the sound of heavy metal music on these albums, and by using this semiotics, in coordination with literary textual analysis, interrogates their representations of humanity, technology, and technologized systems. She argues that Phobos and Obsolete, through the

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Introduction

questioning of boundaries between machine and human being via the depiction of machine/human strife, express their concerns for the fate of humanity in a world dominated by mechanized and technologized systems. Neither album entirely condemns humanity to machine-instigated obliteration, but their visions are clearly dystopian, and the openings they leave for hope are limited. The degree and nature of liberating potential on Phobos and Obsolete differs, but both works present images of flawed and destructive systems, tempered by the hope that an alternative future may still be possible. The essays in Part III place the work of and the work inspired by Philip K. Dick, one of the more philosophically minded science fiction authors, at the center of their treatments. Dick’s many works call into question the boundary between the human and machine, specifically in this case, the android or replicant. The first essay here delves into the nature of selfidentity as depicted in the film Bladerunner, whereas the second returns to the film’s origins in the novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? While the two artistic creations, the film and the novel, exhibit significant differences, the themes and issues that they confront resonate in ways that deepen the imaginative insights of Dick. The focus of Kimberly Duff’s “Franken-borgs and Memorable Bodies: Representations of Memory in Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner” is the representation of memory in the technological monster, the replicant, as portrayed in the film version of Androids. The sons and daughters of the original Frankenstein creation, each replicant’s composite subjectivity is fused with its own understanding of self through gained memory—a memory gained through implants and engineered eyes. Concentrating on notions of humanness and digital memory, Duff looks at the ways in which the replicants become aware of their composite subjectivity. She pays close attention to how two of these replicants, Roy Batty and Rachel, cope with the awareness of not only their imminent death, but also the imminent death to their notions of self as historical beings. This existential insight of the self’s individuality is radically marked by mortal finitude, and thus recalls the despair Spencer evokes and the challenges of free choice with which Vuckovich confronts us. Michael Berman’s “Images of Absence in P.K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” looks at Dick’s novel, which inspired the cultclassic cyberpunk film-noire by director Ridley Scott. The novel’s unique plot has a number of themes woven about its narrative. This chapter explores a key theme in the novel: the images of absence. Dick’s ample corpus of science fiction works explore a plethora of psychological and philosophical issues, yet there are identifiable trends that remain

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prominent, such as the tensions between the artificial and the natural, appearance and reality, and superficiality and authenticity. Berman employs Androids as a point of departure to explore questions about the iconic nature of human being and social existence. Dick plays with the iconicity of technology wherein we find “form miming meaning and/or form miming form.” As with (almost?) all works of science fiction, technology shapes these questions and their answers, but in Androids, the questions are asked by technology itself, and thus we find his novel also toying with the idea of “meaning miming form.” Androids explores what Maurice Merleau-Ponty would call that form “between the pure subject and the object, a third genus of being.” The novel engages us not merely in the superficiality of observed behavior, such as the physical, social and linguistic, in which artificial forms of life camouflage themselves, but also in the impersonal impersonating of the personal. Part III closes with a chapter about the challenges that technology poses for human responsibility, authenticity, hope and selfhood. In certain ways, these challenges can be answered in the possibilities for edification that science fiction provides. The concluding Part IV has essays on the pedagogical applications of science fiction. These include contributions that look at the role of science in science fiction (Valerie Broege) and the role of science fiction in science (David DeGraff & Danielle Gagne). But first we are presented with the essay, mentioned above, that develops some of the positive elements from the Star Trek franchise via the episode “The Measure of a Man”. Connolly contends that embodiment thematics are readily available across numerous Star Trek, The Next Generation (ST: TNG) narratives, in her essay, “ ‘Prove to me that I am sentient’: Working pedagogically through a semiotic phenomenology of stressed embodiment in a selected narrative from Star Trek, TNG.” The diversity of ST: TNG characters ensures that stressed embodiment is an ongoing possibility for semiotic phenomenological analysis and pedagogic engagement and applications. With this perspective, Connolly discusses the specific narrative of “The Measure of a Man”, which stressed embodiment as a central organizing principle. She then applies a semiotic phenomenological analysis using Lanigan’s and Craig’s methodological ingredients of normative logics (norms and inscriptions of a culture), the body as sign and the sign systems (or codes) which hold these together. Lastly, she demonstrates how this episode can be used pedagogically by way of Freire’s naïve, superstitious, and critical forms of consciousness. Her positive and

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pragmatic approach to this episode and franchise stands in contradistinction to Scott’s chapter. Chapter eleven takes a broad look at how science is used in the work of Sawyer. Valerie Broege draws on many different examples to identify key religious, philosophical and scientific themes that Sawyer continual returns to in his writings. From the time that Sawyer, at the age of 17, wrote a story called “Creator Quest,” dealing with scientific evidence that we inhabit a God-directed universe, he has continued to demonstrate his abiding interest in the big questions of life argues Broege in her essay, “The Science and Religion Dialogue in the Science Fiction of Robert J. Sawyer.” Sawyer offers a sustained, nuanced, and multi-perspectival treatment of the science and religion dialogue in his science fiction. This is clearly evidenced by these key topics in Sawyer’s writings: his cosmological speculations that involve both science and religion; the question of the existence of God and His or Her nature; whether or not we live in a designed universe; how our religious thinking may have contaminated our scientific theories; and whether or not religious experiences or the human soul can be reduced to mere physiology. The last entry inverts this line of questioning. David DeGraff and Danielle Gagne use science fiction in a radically different manner, for they employ it as a pedagogical tool in the classroom. Their concluding contribution, “Pedagogical Uses of Science Fiction in Science and Psychology”, moves us beyond the predominantly literary and scholarly essays in this anthology. Science fiction courses have been taught in English departments for some time, but the subjects within science fiction can illustrate abstract concepts in a variety of courses, according to DeGraff and Gagne. Science fiction makes the abstract real, brings the future to the present, and may be used as that “special lens” (Sawyer) for students to see a variety of topics from a unique perspective that is often untainted by preconceptions. DeGraff and Gagne present examples of how science fiction can be employed in astronomy, psychology and lessons on multiculturalism. The courses they teach use science fiction in a variety of settings and levels. In some courses, the science fiction is incidental, used for a small number of class sessions, such as in “Adult Development and Aging” and “Introduction to Psychology,” while in others it is fully integrated into the class, as in “Science in Science Fiction.” These examples demonstrate that science fiction is applicable in several course domains and may be used as illustrations, bases for discussions, and supplemental activities. They utilize science fiction works to present novel ways to engage students, and

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they claim that in many cases, these methods are much more effective than traditional course contents and pedagogical methods. This wide array of voices and topics engage the question of human being from many different perspectives. This, I think, is a clue as to the answers for which we can, at best, hope. Our finitude as mortal beings precludes any God’s eye view. There is no completed answer that solves the riddles posed by our existences. What we find is that the continual journey draws us along, revealing surprises and novelties throughout our lives. The philosophical fiction that is the genre of science fiction, in unique ways, opens the spaces and times for us to examine and interrogate the gift that is our human being. Thus my hope is that you accept these essays and explorations as presents for the future.

Michael Berman Brock University October 2007

PART I SCIENCE FICTION AS SOCIAL CRITIQUE

CHAPTER ONE “A GALAXY FAR, FAR AWAY” MY FOOT! SCIENCE FICTION AS A MIRROR FOR REALITY ROBERT J. SAWYER

I’m mad at George Lucas. I’m mad because he begins each of his Star Wars films with these ten words: “A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...” The world first saw those words (taken, of course, from the opening often used for fairy tales) in 1977—and they changed everything. Up until that point, science fiction had been making slow but steady progress toward respectability in the public consciousness. It’s hard to imagine, in today’s era in which most of the box-office sensations are science fiction or fantasy, and there’s a dedicated sciencefiction channel on TV, that we used to go for years between major SF films ... but that’s the way it used to be. Prior to the original Star Wars, you had to go back nine years, to 1968, to find a year with a truly major SF movie. That year was remarkable, in fact, because it had two blockbusters: 2001: A Space Odyssey (to this day, Arthur C. Clarke is still the only SF novelist ever nominated for an Oscar; he shared a best-screenplay nomination for that film) and Planet of the Apes. If you haven’t watched the 1968 Planet of the Apes recently, or if your only knowledge of it is from the dreadful 2001 remake, you may not realize just how trenchant a commentary it was on its times. In 1968, America was struggling with race relations, and with the fear of nuclear war—and those two things are what Planet of the Apes is about. The ending—perhaps the best known final sequence in a film since Casablanca—with Charlton Heston pounding the sand in front of the ruins of the Statue of Liberty and shouting “You maniacs—you blew it up!” is a clear anti-nuclear-war message. And the very first ape who speaks at length in the film is a chimpanzee—a member of one of the three ape species that co-exist uneasily in his world—complaining about the racial quota system that’s

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been keeping him down, even though it’s been officially abolished. (For more on the film’s social relevance, see the nonfiction book Planet of the Apes as American Myth: Race and Politics in the Films and Television Series by Eric Greene, a policy analyst for the American Civil Liberties Union in Los Angeles [McFarland, 1996].) And what was on TV in the 1960s? Well, the evening news was preoccupied with the struggle to desegregate the American south, with the war in Vietnam, and with unrest on university campuses. But once the news was over, what did we find for the rest of the evening? TV shows like Green Acres, Get Smart, and Gilligan’s Island—programs with nothing at all to say about real life. I mean, for Pete’s sake, Get Smart was set in Washington, D.C., where all the protests about Vietnam were directed, and yet it never once mentioned them. In fact, the only social comment in any of those shows was a throwaway bit on Gilligan’s Island. The stranded boat, the S.S. Minnow, was named for Newton Minow, who, on May 9, 1961, had famously raked the National Association of Broadcasters over the coals for having turned television into a “vast wasteland.” Gilligan’s Island creator Sherwood Schwartz felt that Minow’s highbrow approach would ruin television, and so gave him the ultimate in empty TV. But there was one prime-time show that dealt with the issues of the day—albeit with disguises, with metaphor, at a distance, by parable. The original Star Trek was clearly talking about Vietnam, about race relations, about prejudice, about overpopulation. I’ll never forget the first time I saw Batman’s Riddler himself, Frank Gorshin, made up as half-black and halfwhite, locked in a war of hate with another man whose color scheme was reversed. And the episode A Private Little War was a direct mirroring of the Vietnam war, with Captain Kirk’s Federation standing in for the Americans and the Klingons playing the role of the Russians. I was a kid when Star Trek debuted in 1966, but even then I could see that it was tackling the same issues being talked about on the evening news. And, as I started reading SF books in the 1970s, I discovered that the literature had always been that way, right back to its roots. There used to be a lot of debate about what the first science-fiction book was—the term was coined in 1926, but SF stories clearly predate the moniker. Now, though, most people within the field have come around to agreeing with British author and critic Brian Aldiss, who argues that the first work of SF—as opposed to fantasy or any other genre—was Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, first published in 1818. It was the first novel in which the plot hinged on a scientific notion: Dr. Frankenstein observes the decay and corruption that occurs after death and recognizes

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that these are clearly chemical processes that, if he studied them minutely, he might be able to reverse, creating life from dead matter, thereby doing what previously only nature or God had done. Frankenstein is widely taught at universities to this day—and in two types of courses. Naturally, it’s often the first book in a science-fiction course, but it’s also widely taught in women’s studies or feminist studies— because it’s a direct social comment on new reproductive technologies and the role of women. In Mary Shelley’s day, members of her sex were disenfranchised and marginalized. They had no power—except the creation of life. And if you take that from women, and give it to men, said Shelley, it will be a disaster, because men lack the empathy and compassion required to properly nurture life. In the novel, everything goes wrong when Victor—very deliberately not Victoria—Frankenstein rejects his creation, having been interested only in the scientific puzzle he was trying to solve. If Mary Shelley is science fiction’s grandmother, its fathers are H.G. Wells and Jules Verne—guys you might have thought would have been fast friends. But in fact, Jules Verne didn’t much care for that snot-nosed Brit, H. G. Wells. Verne, you see, was only interested in scientific rigor. Parts of 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea read like an oceanography textbook, and Captain Nemo’s Nautilus was a fully worked-out submarine decades before such things were actually built. But as Verne liked to sneer, with Gallic disdain, “Wells invents things!,” meaning he made them up out of whole cloth. Martian invaders! Time machines! How could any self-respecting futurist pollute his work with such nonsense? But now the future is here, and it’s Wells, not Verne, who is still widely read and taught. Why? Because although Verne was an Übergeek in his day, nothing is less interesting than old technology; Wired magazine’s three-part barometer of “wired,” “tired,” and “expired” gives the new-andexciting a half-life of about six months. But while Verne was playing with his slide rule, Wells was talking about issues. True, they were the issues of his time—and you might think that would make his stories even more irrelevant to today’s readers than Verne’s 19th-century tales of steam-driven machines. But perhaps not. Despite Verne’s complaints, Wells’s War of the Worlds really has nothing to do with Martians invading Earth. Rather, it was Wells’s attempt, using the unique tools of science fiction, to get his countrymen to see what it’s like to have one’s culture crushed underfoot (“Underfoot” is the title of one of the book’s chapters) by an uncaring,

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expansionist, technologically advanced foreign power. He’d hoped his compatriots would realize the cruelty of what Britain was doing in India and other places. Indeed, Wells makes a parody of Great Britain’s macho posturing by portraying his Martian war machines as giant, strutting walkers with a phallic third leg leading the way. And Wells’s The Time Machine isn’t really about a trip to the year 802,701 A.D. Rather, it’s a pointed attack on the British class system, with the cattle-like Eloi standing in for the feckless leisure class, and the subterranean Morlocks representing the working class, denied even the simple joy of being out in the sun. Wells’s message, by the way, wasn’t just that this system is bad for the working class, but also that it’s bad for the leisure class, leaving them so weak of mind, spirit, and body that the Morlocks end up actually using them as food animals, coming up through openings from the sewers each night to pick up a bucket of KFE—Kentucky Fried Eloi. And although Verne probably said plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose with a more convincing accent than Wells, it is old H.G.’s literary legacy that has benefited from that truism. A huge, uncaring power marching in, deposing the local government, and crushing everything in sight? The widening gap between the world’s haves and have-nots? Issues that are as relevant today as they were over a century ago, more’s the pity. And that brings me back to George Lucas and his disclaimer that science-fiction films are escapism, set “a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.” By saying that, he’s telling you that there’s no social commentary to be found in science fiction, no relevance, no reflection of the times— and audiences accepted that, turning off their critical faculties when encountering his SF, and leaving them off ever since. You want proof? Star Wars spoon-feeds us its morality. Even the characters know which of them are the good guys and which are the bad guys; the bad guys have chosen to align themselves with the Dark Side of the Force. And because we know who is supposedly good, and because this is all just a fairy tale, we don’t ever give the morality of what these heroes are doing a second thought. But consider what Luke Skywalker actually does. When we first encounter him and his uncle, they’re buying thinking, feeling, sentient beings to work on their plantation. How do we know that R2-D2 and C3PO are slaves? We see the jawas—the slave dealers—welding restraining bolts onto them; this doesn’t happen in the background—it’s right there in the foreground, and the bolts are identified as such in dialog. In other words, the newly purchased slaves are being handed over in manacles, because, if left to their own free will, they’d run away, as any slaves

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would. Far from a paragon of virtue, Luke Skywalker is a slaver; it’s no coincidence that C-3PO has to call him “master” throughout the film. Ah, but Luke is young! The real symbol of ultimate good in Star Wars surely isn’t this misguided farm boy, but rather his mentor, the great Jedi knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, played by Alec Guinness. When Obi-Wan enters the Mos Eisley cantina—that seedy bar where aliens play musical instruments while shady characters cut deals—the bartender eyes the two droids accompanying Kenobi and snarls, “We don’t serve their kind in here.” And what does the virtuous Obi-Wan say in reply? Does he pound his fist on a table and declare, “If their money is no good in here, my money is no good in here!” Does he go off to report the barkeep to the authorities, because it’s illegal to discriminate? No. He turns to his two companions— being rejected solely because their skin is metal—and says, “You better wait outside.” This was 1977, remember. Just a decade and a half before, blacks in the U.S. were routinely hearing “we don’t serve their kind in here” from white bartenders; film audiences should have been as stung in 1977 to hear this passing for an acceptable policy as audiences today are when Ingrid Bergman refers to Sam, a black man, as a “boy” in Casablanca. But thanks to George Lucas’s opening disclaimer, nobody paid any attention to the flagrant racism. The heroes of Star Wars are cowards and evil ... but at the end of the film, they all get medals and a standing ovation (yes, Lucas actually was so insecure a director back then as to film his heroes being applauded, in case the real audience failed to do so). And moviegoers did cheer as Han Solo (established as a drug-runner and a cold-blooded killer in the film), the slave owner Luke, and even the inarticulate walking carpet, Chewbacca, get gold medals. But who is literally on the sidelines, getting no applause, no reward? The slaves, R2D2 and C-3PO. And nobody in the movie, and nobody in the theater, complained. Why not? Because science fiction, George Lucas had told us, has nothing to do with the real world. We’d gone from Planet of the Apes, which was all about race relations—dealing with the conflicts between three distinct kinds of simians, standing in, literally behind masks, for different human races—to ignoring, nay, cheering, overt racism as acceptable. George Lucas’s little disclaimer shunted aside all the good work that Mary Shelley had done with Frankenstein, that H.G. Wells had done with War of the Worlds, that Gene Roddenberry had done with Star Trek, that screenwriters Rod Serling and the once-blacklisted Michael Wilson had done with Planet of the Apes. (With the exception of a handful

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of episodes, all later Star Trek, starting in 1987 with The Next Generation, eschewed social comment in favor of soap opera and costume drama.) Star Wars did, in a way, have a salutary effect on science-fiction literature. George Lucas’s Industrial Light and Magic special-effects shop can blow up a planet better than I or my colleagues can describe it in words, and better than you or other readers can imagine it. And, indeed, we book writers were happy to cede the territory of eye candy to Hollywood (the shift had begun even earlier, actually, with the “New Wave,” an initially British movement in the 1960s, which emphasized inner space over outer space; I don’t think it’s a coincidence that the New Wave started as soon as movie and TV special effects began routinely being in color). We were content to let technicians have fun with visual effects; that gave us even more room to concentrate on social comment in our books. And comment we do. A reporter in Richmond, Virginia, recently said to me: “Are there any social issues that you think science-fiction writers should leave alone?” I replied that he had it exactly backwards! There are no social issues SF writers should not be willing to tackle. In my own books, I’ve dealt with abortion, capital punishment, racism, sexism, affirmative action, gay rights, recovered memories of childhood abuse, corruption within the Catholic church, the politics of war, personal freedom vs. societal security, 9/11, creation vs. evolution, and more. And there’s a very good reason we SF writers choose to address such things through science fiction. If I told you beforehand that I was the author of a book on the abortion issue (which is one of the things my Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment deals with), your first question would be, “Are you pro-choice, or pro-life?” In other words, you’d want to know up front if the book reaffirmed what you already believed, or if it challenged it—and you’d only want to read it if the former was true. For that’s what we mostly turn to books for: not to learn, but to affirm that we were right all along. People are smug and righteous about their beliefs, and they like nothing better than to read a book that reiterates what they already believe. But easy labels do a disservice: they ensure that authors are only preaching to the converted. If you go into a bookstore, and tell the clerk that your politics are liberal, he can offer you the perfect book: Lies and the Lying Liars Who Tell Them: A Fair and Balanced Look at the Right by Al Franken. You’ll read it, laugh, and feel smugly vindicated. And if your politics are conservative, the clerk can hand you How to Talk to a Liberal (If You Must): The World According to Ann Coulter—and

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you’ll come back for more copies of it to give as gifts because she says with panache all the things you’ve been trying to articulate for years. More recently, such books as Christopher Hitchens’s God Is Not Great: How Religion Poisons Everything, read almost exclusively by those who are already atheists, and Scott Hahn’s Reasons to Believe: How to Understand, Explain, and Defend the Catholic Faith, a favorite of the devout, generate many self-satisfied smirks but change precious few minds. Now, yes, there is a branch of science fiction that is as transparent in its goals as these nonfiction books. Much military SF caters to a very specific right-wing might-makes-right mindset that says our culture should go out and set everyone else in the universe straight. I set that type of book apart from the kind of SF I’m talking about here because there’s no disguise, no metaphor: these are just war stories with bigger and badder guns than the ones you can buy right now. But when you pick up an ambitious science-fiction book, you have no initial idea what issues are hiding behind masks in its pages. Take my own most-recent book, Rollback: among other things, it’s about unequal access to health care. These days, we can pour almost unlimited amounts of money into measurably improving the health or extending the lifespan of an individual. But now that we can, should it simply be the rich who get to live the longest? In science fiction, you won’t even know you’re reading about a hot-button topic until you’re well into the book—and hopefully by that point too caught up in the story to bail out. Note that my colleagues and I aren’t trying to make you think what we think. We don’t hide the real topic from you to sneak up and hit you over the head with our own views; rather, we do it to let the topic sneak up on you, the reader, getting past facile labels. When something’s reduced to a two- or three-word slogan—“pro-life,” “pro-choice,” “support our troops,” “save the whales”—you don’t really give it any thought. But again, SF, with metaphor and disguise, at a distance, through parable, doesn’t just get you back to the core issues of today, but also gets you past the easy labels, inviting you to think in depth. And precious few other places in our lives welcome that. Oh, in high school or at university, you might have stayed up to 3:00 a.m. arguing about the moral crisis or war du jour. But after you get out into the real world, you’re exhorted to avoid discussions of politics, sex, and religion. The sure road to a peaceful evening out, or a smooth climb up the corporate ladder, we’re told, is to steer clear of thorny topics. But, like Brer Rabbit, born and bred in the briar patch, SF readers enjoy being thrown in with the thorns. We welcome the chance to engage

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with the issues, to use our minds, to argue and debate—with an author, and with ourselves—as we look at the here and now through science fiction’s very special lens. And nothing could be further from the mindless escapism of a long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away.1

Notes 1

Copyright 2007 by Robert J. Sawyer; for more information, see his website at www.sfwriter.com.

CHAPTER TWO “MAKING IT SO”: STAR TREK AND IDEOLOGY STEVEN D. SCOTT

There has been a great deal of critical work done on and around popular science fiction that stresses its social awareness and its critical stances that run against prevailing social mores. The criticism often discusses in glowing terms the aggressively “alternative” and socially critical nature of the fiction, television, and film. One of the series that routinely earns positive reviews in this vein is Star Trek1: the original (“classic”) series, of course, portrayed the first inter-racial kiss on American popular television (between Kirk and Uhura, 22 November 19682). Other progressive portrayals of race include the man who is Kirk’s commanding officer in Star Trek’s first season: he is an imposing and authoritative man of colour, an inspired piece of progressive racial casting for a 1960s television show.3 It is true: thematically, the show frequently reflects a racial awareness and a stance that, especially for its time and place, are laudable.4 However, the deliberate and explicit social/racial conscience of Star Trek is not what I find most interesting or useful about the series.5 I use Star Trek in my critical theory classes to teach conceptions of ideology, as defined by theorists such as Antonio Gramsci, Louis Althusser, Roland Barthes, Slavoj Žižek, and Michel Foucault. In this paper I will argue that ideologically, Star Trek displays exactly the kinds of tendencies that one would expect to find in hit American television shows: that, in short, a core ideology that is both racist and sexist is an integral part of the five Star Trek series. My approach is first to define ideology in popular culture, using the work of the critical theorists I have named. I will then focus on the captains of the various Star Trek series in terms of their missions, their erotic love interests, and their cultural capital. I will argue that despite the socially progressive themes, casting, and so on of the various series, there is a fundamentally conservative, racist, and sexist ideology at work in all of the series.

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At the beginning of his book Mythologies, a book of reflections, sketches, and short essays about culture, history, and “daily life,” Roland Barthes writes, The starting point of these reflections was usually a feeling of impatience at the sight of the “naturalness” with which newspapers, art and common sense constantly dress up a reality which, even though it is the one we live in, is undoubtedly determined by history. In short, in the account given of our contemporary circumstances, I resented seeing Nature and history confused at every turn, and I wanted to track down, in the decorative display of what-goes-without-saying, the ideological abuse which, in my view, is hidden there.6

In this concise definition, Barthes has pinpointed the essence of ideology as I wish to discuss it. Barthes claims that ideology is presented as “natural”; it is expressed in “common sense”; it is “what-goes-withoutsaying.” It is, in short, the system of codes by and through which a society operates. The more transparent, the more “artless,” the more “natural” that “reality” is presented in newspapers or other forms of mass media and popular culture, the more potentially damaging is the ideological abuse that “is hidden there.” Barthes maintains that there is nothing “natural” about reality; it is constructed according to the prevailing ideologies of a given culture, and according to the history of those prevailing ideologies. Louis Althusser agrees that there is nothing “natural” about what Barthes disparagingly calls “common sense.” He maintains that schools, in particular, as repositories of cultural knowledge, are important not so much because of what they teach explicitly, but rather because of what they teach implicitly. He writes, besides … techniques and knowledges … children at school also learn the “rules” of good behaviour, i.e. the attitude that should be observed by every agent in the division of labour, according to the job he is destined for: rules of morality, civic and professional conscience, which actually means rules of respect for the socio-technical division of labour and ultimately the rules of the order established by class domination…. To put this more scientifically, I shall say that the reproduction of labour power requires not only a reproduction of its skills, but also, at the same time, a reproduction of its submission to the rules of established order.7

For Althusser, the “‘rules’ of good behaviour,” the right “attitude,” and strict obedience to the (“natural” and “common-sensical”) way things simply are, is what schools are really intent on teaching. In other words, schools exist to make ideologically compliant citizens. This compliance

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must be learned early, and well. The compliance must not be something added on to existing behaviour; it must not be some sort of behavioural afterthought. The compliance must instead become what Barthes calls common sense. Althusser’s conception of the “right attitude” must be literally “just the way things are.” The result is that the historical circumstances, the constructedness of the behaviour and the attitude and the compliance, must be hidden under their own naturalness, or else the lower and working classes will recognise the system as a system, and possibly begin to object and rebel. For Althusser, the culture exists to replicate itself, and to reproduce “acceptable” behaviour. Althusser and Barthes are not alone; Michel Foucault is also fascinated by the workings of popular culture and ideology. In an interview conducted in 1974, Foucault remarks, concerning history in popular film, Today, cheap books aren’t enough. There are much more effective means like television and the cinema. And I believe this was one way of reprogramming popular memory, which existed but had no way of expressing itself. So people are shown not what they were, but what they must remember having been…. This has always been the aim of history taught in schools: to teach ordinary people that they got killed and that this was very heroic.8

So, for Foucault, popular culture comprises an education that exists precisely for ideological purposes: to tell people, specifically people of the lower and working classes, what they should remember, know, and believe about themselves. Ideology coincides with a given culture’s “common sense.” “Ideology” is an invisible shaping force that derives a considerable amount of its power from being invisible: one can fight what one can identify as an enemy; if one cannot see it, however, because it is disguised as “mere” common sense, it becomes very powerful, and is, in fact, ubiquitous. Antonio Gramsci agrees that ideology functions as common sense. He argues, further, that ideology is a powerful method of social control, exercised implicitly through culture, which ultimately shapes the controlled group’s “common sense.” He writes, The intellectuals are the dominant group’s “deputies” exercising the subaltern functions of social hegemony and political government. These comprise … the “spontaneous” consent given by the great masses of the population to the general direction imposed on social life by the dominant fundamental group.9

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In the case of Star Trek, part of what one should look for, then, is not so much the explicit themes (particular shows that explore racism, say) as the assumed “deep” structures, the ways things “simply” (or, for Barthes, “naturally”) are. According to these theorists, what is vitally important to examine is the link that is simply there in Star Trek between science and the military, for instance, or the assumed legitimacy of a rigidly hierarchical social structure, modelled on the military. On the role of ideology, Slavoj Žižek is eloquent. He writes, This is probably the fundamental dimension of “ideology”: ideology is not simply a “false consciousness”, an illusory representation of reality, it is rather this reality itself which is already to be conceived as “ideological”— ”ideological” is a social reality whose very existence implies the nonknowledge of its participants as to its essence—that is, the social effectivity, the very reproduction of which implies that the individuals “do not know what they are doing”. “Ideological” is not the “false consciousness” of a (social) being but this being itself in so far as it is supported by “false consciousness”. Thus we have finally reached the dimension of the symptom, because one of its possible definitions would also be “a formation whose very consistency implies a certain nonknowledge on the part of the subject”: the subject can “enjoy his symptom” only in so far as its logic escapes him—the measure of the success of its interpretation is precisely its dissolution.10

For Žižek, ideology is fundamental. It is social reality. It is not, in fact, a false consciousness; it is, rather supported and masked, hidden, by a false consciousness. In the case of Star Trek, the explicit thematic “content” of a given episode becomes, then, not itself what the show is about, but the false consciousness that masks the deeper ideology and the social structure upon which the show is based. Elsewhere, Žižek writes that ideology is a “discourse.” It is “an enchainment of elements the meaning of which is overdetermined by their specific articulation.”11 In order to examine a given ideology, “we do not add the dialectical mediation, the context bestowing meaning on the phenomenon, instead we subtract it.”12 In other words, for Žižek, in discussions of ideology it is not enough to know that ideology is working the way I have already described it: it is not enough to know that ideology is a discourse, that it is artificial, that it is not natural. Instead, for Žižek, the “meaning” of a piece of popular culture is exactly the mechanism that hides what he calls “the dialectical meditation, the context bestowing meaning on the phenomenon.”13 The context, the ideology, the “overlooked margins” become the only “real point”14; ideology itself is the real point, and must

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be examined because it is by its nature invisible, transparent, and necessarily not-known. In other words, the thematic “content” of the various Star Trek series operates like the inverse of what Barthes calls an “inoculation.” Barthes writes, “To instil into the Established Order the complacent portrayal of its drawbacks has nowadays become a paradoxical but incontrovertible means of exalting it. Here is the pattern of this new-style demonstration: take the established value which you want to restore or develop, and first lavishly display its pettiness, the injustices which it produces, the vexations to which it gives rise, and plunge it into its natural imperfection; then, at the last moment, save it, in spite of, or rather by the heavy curse of its blemishes.”15 The examples Barthes gives are the Church and the Army: “It is a kind of homeopathy: one cures doubts about the Church or the Army by the very ills of the Church and the Army. One inoculates the public with a contingent evil to prevent or cure an essential one.”16 For Barthes, it is talking about the evils of the Army that then allows one to point to the Army’s ills: “a little ‘confessed’ evil saves one from acknowledging a lot of hidden evil.”17 This process is what has happened in North America in the wake of September 11, 2001: while it is admittedly wrong to remove numerous social and civic rights, it is worth removing them for the sake of civic peace and a sense of social safety. Barthes notes, “and thus common sense makes its reckoning: what is this trifling dross of Order, compared to its advantages?”18 The first interracial kiss on prime time television, then, masks, and so operates as a kind of reverse inoculation for the deeper ideology of that series. That deeper ideology appears, for example, in the plot-line of the Plato’s Stepchildren episode: Kirk and Uhura are forced to kiss by Parman, the leader of a people called “Platonians,” after the ancient Earthly Greek philosopher. That is, the kiss between Kirk and Uhura is not part of an ongoing or even short-lived but straightforward erotic relationship between the two. Interracial relationships are not a norm. In addition, at a deeper level, the series configures Kirk as a questing intergalactic lover, for whom numberless alien females have a weakness; following from this, it is assumed that Kirk will kiss quite a lot in the series. The interracial kiss is but one instance in a series that reinforces the cultural myth of the sexually active male. Third, most of the females on the show, human and alien alike, dress as though they were visiting Hugh Hefner’s Playboy mansion, virtually always in short dresses with plunging necklines.19 The assumption—the ideology—is that all females, human and “alien” alike, are what Laura Mulvey calls the “(passive) raw material for the (active) gaze of man.”20 Finally, and not exhaustively, Star Trek

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assumes a basic heteronormativity: Kirk is not pictured kissing McCoy or Spock. For all the positive work that is done by the general plot line of the episode, at a masked ideological level, numerous questionable or even damaging trends emerge. The reverse inoculation operates, in fact, precisely because of the progressive plot-lines: it is easier to think well of something that is offering an enlightened racial message, even when that positive thinking is actually not entirely deserved. With those numerous cautions in place, I would like to turn now to the series themselves, examining them in the order in which they were produced. I shall be paying particular attention to the various commanding officers of the missions in each series, at least in part because the commanding officers tend to set the tone for the rest of the series. In some significant ways, the commanding officers embody the series, so that what is true of the commanders is true of the series. James T. Kirk, the captain of the first Star Trek (“Classic” Star Trek, or Star Trek: The Original Series, or more simply, TOS) is very much a product of his times. The series was first broadcast from September 1966 to June 1969. Kirk is the prototypical American cold warrior: we are told that he is a scientist first, and that he fundamentally heads a mission of exploration, not expansion21; but he is also clearly a willing and capable warrior. In addition, he practises the “free love” of his culture and times at an intergalactic level: his sexual interests and erotic objects abound, almost always wearing short skirts, and almost always willing and able to fulfil Kirk’s desires. More generally, the mission of the Starship Enterprise is, very famously, “To boldly go where no man has gone before.” In short, Kirk suits the cold war, and his series suits the times, specifically the American vision of the times. It has some very interesting and progressive things to say about race, but sexual equality is vexed, at best. The captain in the second Star Trek series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, is Jean-Luc Picard. TNG was produced for seven seasons, 1987-1994, and Picard is the prototypical post-cold war warrior. As smoothly as Kirk fit the 1960s, Picard suits the 1980s and early 90s. He is a poet; he is a philosopher; he is still an adventuring scientist; and he is a somewhat more reluctant, though still capable warrior. His indulgence is leather-bound books of poetry; he drinks Earl Grey tea, “hot.” In place of Kirk, the adventuring young hot head and intergalactic lover, Picard seems fatherly (indeed, he clearly becomes a father figure to Wesley Crusher), again suiting his times exactly. Picard’s major love interest is a female physician and single mother. The fact that Beverley Crusher is a physician and single mother stands as more evidence that this series, like the “classic” Star Trek, displays itself as socially responsible and forward-

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looking; female characters actually have some agency. In keeping with this stance, Picard’s series has updated its slogan to suit his times; his mission has become the more politically correct, “To boldly go where no one has gone before.” Yet counterbalancing the female agency of the show is the way Deanna Troi is dressed; further complicating any view of the series as progressive in gender terms is the fact that the counsellor, an “empath,” is (of course) female, since she is emotional, nurturing, caring, empathetic. It is worth making the obvious point that in both of the first two series, the captains have been white and male, and their missions have taken them into the “unexplored” reaches of the galaxy. The captains have both headed active, questing missions that have ventured into the universe, expanding the “final frontier,” and taking Americana with them as they go. The ideological stance of these first two series is the same: the captains are active, decision-making leaders; the missions push actively into the unknown; and, ideologically the captains are, of necessity, white and male. Despite the inoculation of progressive plot lines and a politically correct slogan, not much has changed in the chain of command in the movement between these two worlds. Indeed, Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the series seems intact, as a “wagon train to the stars,” an example of a futuristic American manifest destiny.22 The third Star Trek series to be launched was Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. It ran from 1993 to 1999. Deep Space Nine is a space station that has been placed at one end of a stable “wormhole” that reaches into the distant “Gamma Quadrant.” The wormhole is considered extremely valuable and strategic; it is potentially of use for exploration and colonisation. The authority figure in this third series is for the first time not a white male. Interestingly, he is also not (yet) a captain at the launch of the series. He is Commander Benjamin Sisko. Sisko is unusual in a number of ways in the world of Star Trek. To begin with, he is black, thereby serving as a figure who embodies the reverse inoculation that I have been discussing: the series has moved away from white male captains to a black male “commander.” Second, he is a single father who is actively mourning his dead wife (indeed, his erotic interests seem to be centred on her occasional returns in dream sequences). Third, while he is clearly the featured leader in the series, he was not promoted to the rank of captain until the series’ third season. Fourth, and most importantly, Sisko is a “commander” who is no longer an explorer/warrior/scientist. For the first time, Star Trek is not about trekking, exploring, actively questing into the far reaches of the galaxy: the focus of the series with the black commander is guarding and gate-keeping. Ideologically, Sisko has neatly been cut out of an active

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role. Black leadership has come at a price: the leader is chained, controlled, and circumscribed. He has become (merely) a guard. While the series no longer has a slogan like the first two, this one clearly could be, “To boldly go … nowhere at all.” To name a black male as leader in a new Star Trek series seems, at first, to be a socially conscious move. However, the black male, though he is a commander, has lost his conquering scientist/warrior role as captain. He no longer ventures around the galaxy; his sole mission is to guard a gate to other “sectors” of the universe, to protect and ensure that only the appropriate adventurers get through. The single most threatening image in American popular culture is, I would maintain, the black male.23 And in DS9, the captain of Star Trek has been turned from the free-adventuring male warrior of the first Star Treks into a gatekeeper. While the captain figure is no longer a white male, he is a black male who has been chained to a post; and informatively, his most significant erotic interest is his dead wife, who is resurrected from time to time. In short, the black male who seems like a significant step in a positive, socially progressive direction is a black male removed from the previously active position, chained, neutered and reduced. The fact that Sisko becomes a warrior by the end of the series may speak to the series’ growth; it may, in an optimistic vein, speak to a growing racial tolerance; or it may be yet another example of reverse inoculation. In any case, Sisko is never the adventuring captain in the form of his white counterparts. The fourth Star Trek series, Star Trek: Voyager, features a female captain for the first time. The series ran from 1995 to 2001. Like the black male who was a commander before her, Captain Kathryn Janeway seems at first to be a progressive step, a movement toward gender equality for the series and the franchise. The premise of the show is that Voyager, under the command of Kathryn Janeway, has been sent in search of a ship piloted by a cell of a terrorist organisation called the Maquis, formed to protest the signing of a treaty between the Federation and the Cardassians. There is an “accident” engineered by an ancient alien known as the Caretaker, and Voyager is propelled across the galaxy and stranded seventy thousand light years from Earth; under normal circumstances, it would take some seventy-five years to get back to Federation space. The show featured, as had become usual for Star Trek, individuals from a range of races, including Chakotay, the Maquis leader and clearly a Native American. There was also a good deal of speculation that the series would nurture a lesbian erotic attachment between Janeway and Seven of Nine, who was provocatively clothed, to say the least. However, that relationship never did materialise, becoming instead a nurturing maternal/daughter

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relationship. And instead of a lesbian relationship, the opening episode actually featured Janeway lamenting over a photograph of her lost fiancée and her dog, pictured in front of a picket fence. The ideological underpinnings that are masked by Voyager’s female captain include some distressing ones: once again, Star Trek is not about venturing into uncharted and unknown territory. It is not adventuring, expanding, outward-seeking; it is, instead, restorative and nurturing, having a female captain. The fundamental mission of the first female captain of Star Trek is “to boldly go … home.” Not only is Janeway charged with getting back home (one thinks, involuntarily, of a kind of space-age Dorothy figure), but also there are implications that she is essentially a bad female driver. She has little enough confidence in her own abilities that she destroys the Caretaker’s Array that would straightforwardly return her and her crew. She is a captain who not only second-guesses that early decision throughout the run of the show, but whose primary job is essentially to negotiate peaceful cooperation among her crew members. The fifth Star Trek series, Enterprise, ran from 2001-2005. It begins some 150 years in the Earth’s future, or about 100 years before the beginning of Star Trek TOS. Notably, the opening title sequence has moved from the dreamy and abstract shots of space that characterised the first four series, to a much more realistic collage taken from the actual US space program. Thus a series that began as a utopian future beyond the notion of country, and only implicitly American, has become deliberately based in the American space program. The series begins with the first human-Klingon encounter, and a plot line that is oddly both reminiscent and prescient of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Enterprise premiered in the US on September 26, 2001. The series’ mission is once again an adventurous and exploratory one, with humans going faster and farther than they have ever gone before with their newly discovered warp drive capabilities. And distressingly, but predictably, according to the ideology I have been tracing, we are back again to a white male captain, Jonathan Archer. Archer, the active, enterprising white leader was likely predictable, given the “hot” wars that America is currently involved in, worldwide. Given this analysis, it is clear that the Star Trek “enterprise” comprises a franchise of television series that aggressively disseminates American ideologies of individualism (though it explicitly claims to have moved beyond such things as money to an egalitarian Utopia) and profoundly conservative values in terms of both race and sex (though it habitually “inoculates” readers, proffering socially progressive themes and plot lines like the famous kiss from the first show, a black male commander, a white

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female captain). It is not at all surprising, then, that the greatest “alien” threat in the history of the show, and in some significant ways the biggest threat to the values it represents, is the Borg, an unindividuated culture that operates entirely as a collective. It is also not surprising that the Borg should be revisited in Voyager as an individual, scantily clad female who is struggling to be accepted as an individual by the crew of Voyager and its nurturing, peacemaking female captain who is lost and yearning for home. The Star Trek franchise of series serves as a fascinating episode in North American television and popular culture history. They are series that do in fact address gender, economic, and racial issues, often in illuminating and thoughtful ways. They do address those issues in what are often also socially progressive ways, but they are also always already products of, and inextricably embedded in, a culture that shows itself to be deeply troubled concerning race and gender and other social and economic issues. Despite appearances and what appear to be intentions, Star Trek never does rise above its role as a disseminator of a fundamentally conservative American ideology.

Notes 1

See, for instance, Porter, Jennier E. and Darcee L. McLaren, eds., Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, (Albany: SUNY P, 1999), who write, “it is … clear that Star Trek, like other television shows, has at various times been reflective, informative, and critical of American culture…. [It] has addressed a wide variety of issues, including war, capitalism, individualism, technology, race, gender, prejudice, and religion…. Since the series first premiered in the 1960s, Star Trek has reflected, informed, and often challenged prevailing social attitudes toward a wide variety of often controversial topics” (2-9). 2 Star Trek episode #67, Plato’s Stepchildren, 22 November 1968. 3 I owe this example to Robert J. Sawyer, who discussed the example eloquently and at length in his keynote address to the Uses of Science Fiction conference at Brock University, October 2005. The episode Sawyer is referring to is Star Trek episode #15, Court Martial, 2 February 1967; the actor who played Commodore Stone is Percy Rodriguez. 4 Gregory Peterson names Star Trek as “one of the few television series of its time to openly champion the wisdom of diversity and tolerance” (“Religion and Science in Star Trek: The Next Generation” in Star Trek and Sacred Ground: Explorations of Star Trek, Religion, and American Culture, 76); and Robert Asa claims that “Classic Star Trek has an almost unbounded confidence in the powers of human

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rationality and science” (“Classic Star Trek and the Death of God” in the same anthology, 48). 5 See Barrett, Michèle and Duncan Barrett, Star Trek: The Human Frontier, (New York: Routledge, 2001), who write, “‘race’ is confused, whether intentionally or not, in Star Trek; it is constantly replayed and its meanings re-negotiated. Star Trek is not afraid to confront the question of race” (88). Among other examples, they point out that Sisko in DS9 “is presented quite clearly in terms of his African heritage” (89), and conclude, “The question of race in Star Trek should be seen as one of several strategies used to try and identify the parameters of human nature” (90). 6 Barthes, Roland, Mythologies, (New York: Hill and Wang, 1972), Preface, 11. 7 Althusser, Louis, “Ideology and Ideological State Apparatuses,” in Vincent B. Leitch, ed., The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, (New York: W.W. Norton, 2001), 1485. 8 Foucault, Michel, Foucault Live: Interviews, 1961-1984, Sylvère Lotringer, ed., (New York: Semiotext(e), 1996), 123-6. 9 Gramsci, Antonio. “The Formation of the Intellectuals” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 1143. 10 Žižek, Slavoj, The Sublime Object of Ideology, (London & New York: Verso, 1989), 21. 11 Žižek, Slavoj, Looking Awry: An Introduction to Jacques Lacan through Popular Culture, (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1991), 129. 12 Žižek, 129. 13 Žižek, 129. 14 Žižek, 129. 15 Barthes, 41. 16 Barthes, 41-2. 17 Barthes, 42. 18 Barthes, 42. 19 This tendency did not end with the first series: Marina Sirtis as Deanna Troi from The Next Generation dresses consistently in a skin-tight uniform; so does Jeri Ryan as Seven of Nine in Star Trek: Voyager. 20 Mulvey, Laura, “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2191. 21 And not interference: Star Trek crews are to be bound by the Federation’s “Prime Directive,” an order mandating non-interference in the evolution of societies. 22 I owe this point to Michael Berman. 23 See the non-fictional writings of Samuel R. Delaney, especially Longer Views (1996), Shorter Views (1999), and Black Gay Man (2001); or, in the context of the Star Trek franchise, the threatening nature of the Klingons; or the various raciallycharged conversations in Paul Haggis’s brilliant film Crash.

CHAPTER THREE SCIENCE FICTION AND TRANSFORMATIVE ECOLOGICAL POLITICS: BIOCENTRIC WISDOM IN THREE EARLY WORKS ERIC OTTO

I Environmental groups such as Earth First! and the Sea Shepherd Conservation Society engage in direct action campaigns to hinder extractive activities that threaten ecological systems, sabotaging logging operations and confiscating longlines, for example. But as the environmental politics professor Paul Wapner argues in defense of less aggressive forms of activism, “human behavior is a matter of oriented action by which people process experience into action through general conceptions of the world. At the most general level, then, the first step toward protecting the earth is to change the way vast numbers of people understand it.”1 “Ideas shape material reality,” Wapner declares, supporting a “transformative politics” in which the revision of ideational perspectives is, along with direct action, an important environmentalist endeavor.2 Wapner’s case for a transformative politics references Greenpeace’s banner hanging, but only peripherally extols other types of consciousness-raising environmentalist projects. If proactive environmentalism “involves changing the prevailing economic, political, moral, cultural, and social dispositions of society which support environmental degradation,” then any form of expression that questions these dispositions—including literature—is important for the movement, particularly if informed by an ecological wisdom that, as the ecologists Paul B. Sears and Paul Shepard have shown, is inherently subversive.3 In a 1964 essay, Sears asks, “if taken seriously as an instrument for the long-run welfare of mankind, would [ecology] endanger the assumptions and practices accepted by modern societies, whatever their doctrinal

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commitments?”4 In response, he concludes that indeed ecology does jeopardize the status quo. Attending to the fundamental importance and complex interrelatedness of all species and natural systems, ecology destabilizes the simplified conceptual understandings that drive freemarket economics, monocultural agriculture, and many more of modern society’s foundational, but unsustainable, methods. Shepard agrees: “The ideological status of ecology is that of a resistance movement.”5 Developing on Sears’ position, Shepard writes that following Aldo Leopold and Rachel Carson, ecological thinkers challenge the public or private right to pollute the environment, to systematically destroy predatory animals, to spread chemical pesticides indiscriminately, to meddle chemically with food and water, to appropriate without hindrance space and surface for technological and military ends; they oppose the uninhibited growth of human populations, some forms of “aid” to “underdeveloped” peoples, the needless addition of radioactivity to the landscape, the extinction of species of plants and animals, the domestication of all wild places, large-scale manipulation of the atmosphere or the sea, and most other purely engineering solutions to problems of and intrusions into the organic world.6

Whether manifested through scientific understandings, cultural practices, or spiritual beliefs, ecological wisdom threatens the logics of the modern world: against capitalist lust for economic growth, ecology recognizes the limits of the systems needed to sustain such growth; against industrialist assertions to the contrary, ecology recognizes the hazards of agricultural chemicals; against human-centered dogma, ecology recognizes the intrinsic value of all plants, animals, wild spaces, and natural processes. Ecology is subversive, because it finds many principles of the modern world to be incompatible with the ground rules of biospherical life. Science fiction engages us on a similar critical level, asking us to think outside our ideological margins.7 As discussed below, science fiction embraces extrapolation as necessary cultural work, while it also holds a generic obligation to provoke rational thought about its imagined spaces and situations. Add to these tendencies a narrative attention to modern humanity’s actions within ecological systems, and what results are reflections on such actions from environmentalist perspectives. The scope of science fiction’s ecocritical commentary is broad, addressing issues from human overpopulation to capitalism, and from patriarchy to genetic engineering. The focus of the science fiction reviewed below, however, is on anthropocentric ideology. Whether rooted in, or the root of, Judeo-

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Christian mythologies of human dominion, capitalist notions of the Earth as a collection of marketable resources, or some combination of these and other determining factors, the anthropocentric worldview, as the deep ecologists Bill Devall and George Sessions write, locates humans “above, superior to or outside the rest of Nature.”8 Reflecting on this belief in ways that demonstrate its fallaciousness, danger, and ecocentric counterpoint, respectively, Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men (1931), John W. Campbell, Jr.’s “Twilight” (1934), and George R. Stewart’s Earth Abides (1949) prove to be important texts for invigorating ecological consciousness.9

II Many works of poetry, fiction, and nonfiction challenge anthropocentric thinking and being, bolstering ecological consciousness in transformative ways. An analysis of how literature has highlighted the intrinsic value of the nonhuman world, the fundamental connectedness of human and nonhuman species, and the damage that modern trends have brought upon ecological systems could examine texts from William Wordsworth’s “Nutting” (1799) to Mary Austin’s The Land of Little Rain (1903) or, to name some more contemporary works, from Gary Snyder’s Turtle Island (1974) to Janisse Ray’s Ecology of a Cracker Childhood (1999). Spanning a range of literary modes, these texts all have in common a perspective of nonhuman nature that runs contrary to the ideological thrust of modern civilization. If the ecocritical movement in literary theory “Most of all . . . seeks to evaluate texts and ideas in terms of their coherence and usefulness as responses to environmental crisis,” then works such as Wordsworth’s, Austin’s, Snyder’s, and Ray’s are suited for the task.10 But as Ursula K. Heise asserts, ecocritical analysis is not limited to “a narrow canon of nature writing,” to the Austins and Snyders.11 In a letter in PMLA’s 1999 Forum on Literatures of the Environment, Heise writes, “Ecocriticism analyzes the ways in which literature represents the human relation to nature at particular moments of history, what values are assigned to nature and why, and how perceptions of the natural shape literary tropes and genres,” and “no genre is in principle exempt from this kind of analysis.”12 She continues: [O]ne of the contemporary genres in which questions about nature and environmental issues emerge most clearly is science fiction: from the novels and short stories of Brian Aldiss, John Brunner, and Ursula K. Le Guin in the 1960s and 1970s to those of Carl Amery, David Brin, Kim

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Heise’s letter sketches the ecocritical potential of science fiction, but Patrick D. Murphy fleshes out the point a bit more. In his study of natureoriented literature, Murphy observes that science fiction provides both “factual information about nature and human-nature interactions” and “thematically environmentalist extrapolations of conflict and crisis based on such information.”14 Murphy’s first point evokes Frederic Jameson’s theoretical discussions of science fiction’s spatial tendencies. Jameson observes in Vonda McIntyre’s The Exile Waiting, and as a generic quality of science fiction in general, “a significant displacement of our reading interest from narrative . . . , with its linear causality, toward spatial experience as such.”15 To point out Jameson’s observation is not to say that causality is not an interest of science fiction, or one of our interests in reading environmental science fictions in which pressing ecocritical speculations about the past, present, and future come to the fore— Murphy’s second point. But Jameson’s underlining of science fiction’s spatial tendencies—its frequent dialectical interplays of psychological and architectural interiors with exterior environments—demonstrates the special significance of “a planet, a climate, a weather, and a system of landscapes” in the genre, a magnitude on par with the realist novel’s central and detailed attention to character development.16 As a genre highlighting the exterior world as an elemental source of human meaning, science fiction performs the work of green movements, which against modern inclination underscore the role of the outer world, of ecological space, in human life. Murphy’s second point emphasizes science fiction’s extrapolative tendencies as essential to its potential as environmentalist literature. A defining concept in science fiction studies, extrapolation is the act of drawing conclusions about the future based on circumstances of the present. As Murphy notes elsewhere, “extrapolation emphasizes that the present and the future are interconnected—what we do now will be reflected in the future.”17 Such prefigurative thinking indeed aligns science fiction with sustainability movements to “meet the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs.”18 Speculating on the consequences of present human actions, and extending current trends to their potential conclusions, environmental science fiction demonstrates how these actions and trends threaten the ecological future.

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Finally, as the science fiction scholar Joseph Marchesani observes, extrapolation “provides science fiction with a quality that Darko Suvin has called ‘cognitive estrangement,’ the recognition that what we are reading is not the world as we know it, but a world whose change forces us to reconsider our own with an outsider’s perspective.”19 About estrangement, the science fiction theorist Suvin quotes Bertolt Brecht: “‘A representation which estranges is one which allows us to recognize its subject, but at the same time makes it seem unfamiliar.’”20 Science fiction’s alien spaces represent more the now than they do intangible futures or alternative presents. Unlike myth, fairy tale, and fantasy—which also deviate from the real in estranging ways—science fiction “sees the norms of any age, including emphatically its own, as unique, changeable, and therefore subject to a cognitive glance.”21 Suvin argues that other estranging genres are not “cognitive” because their imagined worlds contain absolutes not rooted in a recognizable history. As a result, they cannot encourage a rethinking of that history. Science fiction, though, presents worlds and situations that readers can distinguish as mirroring or germinating from a familiar past or present, even if fictional. The genre often shows that current or future discord or harmony is born from something unique in the now; its narratives are investigations, as the science fiction historian Edward James remarks, “of possible social systems or new forms of science”—or broadly, new or different ideas—that create this discord or harmony.22 Marchesani’s queer reading of science fiction acknowledges the importance of cognitive estrangement for gender theory and progressive social praxis. But as the literature of cognitive estrangement, science fiction is also important for transformative ecological politics; as readers, we understand the genre’s unique spaces and ideas as in fact reflecting and commenting on our historical moment, in addition to foreseeing an extrapolated future based either on the evidence of this moment or on a speculated alternative. As Noel Gough observes, “By playing with words and imagined worlds, [science fiction] writers can invite us to envision different and potentially less disabling relationships between people and environments.”23 All spatially-focused, extrapolative, and cognitively estranging, Last and First Men, “Twilight,” and Earth Abides are early works of science fiction that evince a biocentric wisdom about humanity’s ecological place.

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III An epic future history, Last and First Men traces the rise and fall of imaginary evolutionary stages of humanity, from the First Men—“[our] epoch of history”—through the telepathic Fifth Men and the Ninth Men of Neptune, and ultimately to the Eighteenth Men, doomed to be the Last Men when a nearby star threatens to destroy their planet.24 In his foreword, Stapledon outlines his motivation for writing the book: MAN seems to be entering one of the major crises of his career. His whole future, nay the possibility of his having any future at all, depends on the turn which events may take in the next half-century. It is a commonplace that he is coming into possession of new and dangerous instruments for controlling his environment and his own nature. . . . Nothing can save him but a new vision, and a consequent new order of sanity, or common sense.25

Stapledon’s project shares with transformative ecological politics both the understanding that modern humanity has moved in hazardous directions, and the desire to encourage new modes of thinking and being that will reduce future human impact on the Earth. The most ecologically compelling and rhetorically effective expression in Last and First Men is its future history of the fall of the First Men, the speculated fall of our civilization. In this history, Stapledon asserts the fundamental animality of humans, challenging traditional ideological hierarchies that declare human supremacy over the nonhuman world. The civilization of the First Men begins to collapse as a result of the exhaustion of coal reserves brought about by “the extravagances of their culture,” the main extravagance being a religious devotion to coal-intensive flying machines in the global World State.26 As the narrator notes, “The sane policy would have been to abolish the huge expense of power on ritual flying, which used more of the community’s resources than the whole of productive industry.”27 But the First Men are unwilling to question their “deeply rooted” rituals, despite worldwide raggedness and starvation.28 When those in authority do suggest a reduction in ritual flying, war breaks out and the lingering population is left to “scrape a living from the soil” in whatever fertile land is left.29 Later in the chronicle of the First Men’s fall, a new Patagonian civilization modernizes in a direction just as unsustainable. Had they sacrificed developing an energy-intensive luxury culture similar to that of the recently decimated World State and instead pursued wind and water power, which the narrator of Stapledon’s history admits they could have

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done, the Patagonians “might well have achieved something like Utopia.”30 But trusting their “superior sanity,” they opt to acquire atomic power. Even with the possibilities of using such a “limitless source of energy” in relatively harmless ways, the Patagonians use it as an extractive tool for mining materials previously exhausted by earlier cultures and as a weapon for policing the working class.31 Proletariat anger leads to the seizing of a “power unit” and to global atomic destruction. In blaming the devastation of Patagonian civilization on working-class “mischief-makers,” Stapledon is certainly no Marxist; however, his ecological consciousness remains sturdy. When the World State crashed, its few survivors struggled on with disease while “the jungle came back into its own.”32 Similarly, after the Patagonians’ atomic ruin, the natural world recovers, though not without some casualties: [V]egetation had soon revived, from roots and seeds, buried or wind-borne. The countryside was now green with those plants that had been able to adjust themselves to the new climate. Animals had suffered far more seriously. Save for the Arctic fox, a few small rodents, and one herd of reindeer, none were left but the dwellers in the actual Arctic seas, the Polar bear, various cetaceans, and seals. Of fish there were plenty. Birds in great numbers had crowded out of the south, and had died off in thousands through lack of food, but certain species were already adjusting themselves to the new environment.33

Because nonhuman life reemerges in a harsh, post-disaster environment, this life receives a number of value-laden characteristics: it is persistent and determined to carry on, it is healthy and strong, it “forge[s] ahead” despite obstacles, and it readjusts itself to shifting circumstances. However, regardless of the persistence and health of some species, several others do weaken, including humans. The global environmental change to which many other plants and animals acclimate is one the First Men cannot tolerate, even though they caused it: “the atmosphere had become seriously impure, and the human organism had not yet succeeded in adapting itself.”34 A fragile species, humans fail to adapt to drastic ecological change. They are, in fact, of the weaker animals. The First Men’s inability to sustain human civilization—their misuse of resources, perversion of technological possibility, and biological fragility—renders erroneous an anthropocentric perspective that places humans above the dictates of the nonhuman world.

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IV That the First Men of Last and First Men continue to operate their civilizations in ways that are historically proven to set in motion social and ecological collapse dismantles anthropocentric claims based on humanity’s purportedly superior intellectual capacity. Campbell’s “Twilight” takes this dismantling a step further, demonstrating that the modern imperative to exercise an artificial human/nature binary, which denies human animality and subordinates nature in favor of human intellectual achievement, will result in the loss of the human species itself. A Science Fiction Hall of Fame story, “Twilight” narrates the experiences of the time traveler Ares Sen Kenlin, who has seen a distant future where millions of years of technological progress have culminated in a world so mechanized that humans are intellectually dying. As the hero of a story from the generally technocentric Golden Age of science fiction, Kenlin responds to humanity’s future boredom by programming a machine to build a “curious machine” that will replace human intellect, just as other machines in the future world have replaced human labor.35 Brooks Landon sees in this plot a confidence that in the future, machines will continue “the upward spiral of progress” when humans can no longer do so.36 Similarly, John Huntington sees the story’s technological optimism; despite technology causing the future decline of the human species, Huntington notes, “Campbell’s story never questions its faith in technology.”37 Both Landon and Huntington read “Twilight” through the technologically enthusiastic lens that most works of Golden Age science fiction encourage. Interpreted this way, the story does celebrate the machines that will persevere long after humans are extinct, machines whose continuing existence attests to the triumph of the human intellect that created them. However, an ecocritical analysis of Campbell’s tale looks not at its technological optimism, but at the reasons future humans are in their twilight in the first place. Read this way, “Twilight” no longer champions humanity’s technological efforts, but rather reflects on the role of modern culture’s mythological human supremacy in light of the ultimate death of the species. In The End of Nature, Bill McKibben argues that “we live in a postnatural world,” a world once governed by wild processes to which humans adjusted, but that we now adjust to our demands.38 “Twilight” is a story of such a world: “[A]s man strode toward maturity,” Kenlin recalls of the future he visited, “he destroyed all forms of life that menaced him. Disease. Insects. Then the last of the insects, and finally the last of the man-eating animals.”39 This initial destruction of so-called menace species

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instigates a never-ending trend of further destructions: “The balance of nature was destroyed then, so they had to go on. . . . They started destroying life—and now it wouldn’t stop. So they had to destroy weeds of all sorts. Then many formerly harmless plants. Then the herbivora, too, the deer and the antelope and the rabbit and the horse. They were a menace, they attacked man’s machine-tended crops.”40 And in its final acts of securing the illusory comforts of the postnatural, humanity “killed off the denizens of the sea . . . in self-defense,” and by purifying the ocean of its microscopic life initiated the death of the sea.41 “Twilight” is about the effect of the postnatural on the human species. Mechanized society has prompted the twilight of the human race in Campbell’s story, but humanity’s impending death results from the loss of the nonhuman world that follows this mechanization. The claim that the vitality of the human species is a function of the vitality of the whole biosphere indeed foreshadows the philosophies of deep ecology, cultural ecofeminism, and other contemporary ecological worldviews. An influential figure in environmentalist thought, Edward Abbey expresses this philosophy in Desert Solitaire: “If industrial man continues to . . . expand his operations he will succeed in his apparent intention, to seal himself off from the natural and isolate himself within a synthetic prison of his own making. He will make himself an exile from the earth and then will know at last, if he is still capable of feeling anything, the pain and agony of final loss.”42 Years before McKibben and Abbey, Campbell’s story makes this biocentric claim. Kenlin says of the future, “The human race was growing sterile . . . Their loneliness was beyond hope.”43 Sterility and loneliness do not have to result from the end of nature, but in “Twilight,” humanity’s anguish is indeed the effect of the forced absence of the nonhuman. Finally, contrary to Huntington’s claim that “Twilight” never questions its faith in technology, the story displays an ecocritical uncertainty about human technological progress. Kenlin reflects on the contrast between machines and nonhuman nature, stating, “Seven or even seventy million years don’t mean much to old Mother Earth. She may even succeed in wearing down those marvelous machine cities. She can wait a hundred million or a thousand million years before she is beaten.”44 Minimally, this passage injects ambiguity into Campbell’s story: Does “Twilight” pay tribute to human technological triumph, or mock this triumph as futile when compared to the magnitude of “old Mother Earth”? At most, this passage disables the claim that Campbell’s story is a celebration of the mechanized world that human ingenuity has allowed. In it, Kenlin observes the permanence of the natural world against the human initiative

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to mechanize, which in ending nature has brought about our end. Ultimately, “Twilight” argues that the human species faces extinction because an anthropocentric ideology moved it toward constructing a simplified, sanitized, and mechanized order, rather than toward developing an understanding of ecosystemic complexity and an overall biocentric wisdom.

V Together, Last and First Men and “Twilight” insist that modern humanity must, for its survival, accept and maintain its fundamental interconnectedness with the natural world. As a post-apocalyptic tale in which the harmonization of humans with nonhuman nature becomes necessary for humanity’s continued existence, Stewart’s Earth Abides examines the steps in this harmonization, particularly regarding the reconnection of humanity to our roots in wilderness. Stewart’s tale is set into motion when “a kind of super-measles” wipes out the majority of the Earth’s human population.45 The book’s main character is Isherwood Williams (Ish), a survivor of the virus and former graduate student whose thesis, “The Ecology of the Black Creek Area,” explores “the relationships, past and present, of men and plants and animals” in a bioregion near San Francisco.46 For an ecology student, a world without humans as the dominant species provides an interesting opportunity for research: Even though the curtain had been rung down on man, here was the opening of the greatest of all dramas for a student such as he. During thousands of years man had impressed himself upon the world. Now man was gone, certainly for a while, perhaps forever. Even if some survivors were left, they would be a long time in again obtaining supremacy. What would happen to the world and its creatures? That he was left to see!47

With modernity dead, the survivors of the virus learn that humans are bound by the same ecological laws as nonhuman animals, and that in our most sustainable state we do not live far outside of natural dictates. Similar to Stapledon’s story, then, Earth Abides shows that ecological dynamics shape humans physically; and similar to Campbell’s story, Stewart’s asserts the importance of living with, not against, the natural world. Speculating on the fate of humanity given the biological law “that the number of individuals in a species never remains constant, but always rises and falls,” Stewart’s Universal Narrator states,

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there is little reason to think that [man] can in the long run escape the fate of other creatures, and if there is a biological law of flux and reflux, his situation is now a highly perilous one. During ten thousand years his numbers have been on the upgrade in spite of wars, pestilences, and famines. This increase in population has become more and more rapid. Biologically, man has for too long a time been rolling an uninterrupted run of sevens.48

Here, the narrator connects “man” to “other creatures,” prefacing the more specific connections between the two that he continues to draw in the book. For example, he later references Captain Maclear’s rat of Christmas Island, a species whose universal susceptibility to disease developed as a combination of the ease with which it lived and its high population. When disease came to the island, the rats became extinct. In parallel, Stewart’s narrative of Ish’s emerging Californian community is largely an exploration of the ease with which humans lived prior to the super-measles outbreak, and the difficulty the survivors have adjusting to life without electricity, plumbing, and the like. The community’s disconnection from their essential animality, in fact, manifests itself later when Ish asks, “‘Where did all this water come from anyway?’” about the San Francisco water supply, prompting him to reflect, It was curious. Here they had been for twenty-one years merely using water that continued to flow, and yet they had never given any real consideration to where the water came from. It had been a gift from the past, as free as air, like the cans of beans and bottles of catsup that could be had just by walking into a store and taking them from the shelves.49

Modern convenience has instigated a kind of epistemological end of nature, to borrow again from McKibben, where the faucet and grocery store have cancelled out the imperative to know the biosphere, to be ecologically literate. Stewart works to establish this imperative, though, as he challenges the idea that humans remain ontologically outside the nonhuman world. Ish theorizes why ant populations have dwindled in the desolate San Francisco area after a brief population boom: “When any creature reached such climactic numbers and attained such high concentration, a nemesis was likely to fall upon it. Possibly the ants had exhausted the supplies of food which had led to this tremendous increase of numbers. More likely, some disease had fallen upon them, and wiped them out.”50 And to make the correspondence between animals and humans more obvious for readers, Stewart has Ish say, “‘When anything gets too numerous it’s likely to get hit by some plague,’” and adds “(Something had suddenly exploded in

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[Ish’s] mind at the word.) He coughed to cover up his hesitation, and then went on, without making a point of it. ‘Yes, some plague is likely to hit them.’”51 Ish’s “hesitation” is his moment of insight, and our moment of cognitive estrangement: as the ants became extinct, so did the humans— nearly. Stewart’s apocalyptic fear for humanity’s fate seems less a Malthusian concern regarding the inability to reconcile geometric growth rates in population with much smaller linear growth rates in food supply, and more an anxiousness about what disease might do to an overpopulated, unprepared human society. What is most important and transformative about this concern is that it is grounded in a realization that humans exist within the same determining influences that direct all life, and that breaking the rules of these influences leads to fates similar to those of the rats or the ants. Ecological wisdom would indeed deflect us from these fates, as Stewart ultimately argues as his book provides an after-the-fact analysis of the errors humans made while populous. The comforts we enjoy as modern humans weaken us as a species, and the high populations we generate for ideological, social, or economic purposes threaten catastrophe. As Paul L. Errington would argue thirteen years after Stewart argued in his fiction, humans “could learn from consideration of the basic biology and sociology of animal populations,” deconstructing the artificial human/nature binary and learning from other species how to live in ways that are not so threatening to the ecological interactions of which we are a part.52 In addition to its Stapledon-like reflections on humanity’s fundamental animality, Earth Abides also connects human language and symbolic culture to natural place. In fact, the novel’s study of language and ecological place parallels recent theories linking biosphere and discourse. Theorizing the role of place in the production of language, Sidney I. Dobrin and Christian R. Weisser note, “While discourse does indeed shape our human conceptions of the world around us, discourse itself arises from a biosphere that sustains life.”53 A society’s verbal and symbolic discourse indicates its ecological wisdom and connection to ecological place. Dobrin and Weisser illustrate the contention that “Language reflects place” by citing the numerous terms for rainbow in the Hawaiian language and for snow in the Inuit language.54 Stewart performs a similar move in his novel, not specifically addressing the biospherical origins of words, but instead, of concepts and ideas. He draws attention to how the emerging primacy of wilderness collapses certain human symbolic constructs. For dogs in the post-apocalyptic world, for instance, “no longer would Best-of-Breed go for stance, and shape of head, and markings,” which are all arbitrary

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conditions for enforcing artificial hierarchies of aesthetics and vitality upon nonhuman animals.55 Instead, “The prize, which was life itself, would go to the one of keenest brain, staunchest limb, and strongest jaw, who could best shape himself to meet the new ways and who in the old competition of the wilderness could win the means of life.”56 Further, those species of flora once known as weeds for their undesirable presence in cultivated lawns and gardens “pressed in to destroy the pampered nurslings of man” in both a real and symbolic undermining of constructed meanings.57 And finally, automobiles—“the pride and symbol of civilization”—deteriorate as natural entropic processes break down their batteries and tires while they sit neglected.58 As conditions of wilderness end the conceptual usages that embody the human/nature disconnect characteristic of modern ideology, so too do they bring about nature-based, ecocentric symbols and meanings. In her discussion of ritual, the environmental philosopher Dolores LaChapelle notes, “Most native societies around the world . . . had an intimate, conscious relationship with their place,” a relationship out of which their symbolisms grew.59 In Earth Abides, Ish’s new society gains this relationship as wilderness emerges as the governing force. For example, deeming the dates and ceremonial cycles of the Gregorian calendar futile for their current situation, Ish and his female partner, Em, start over with a new dating system that better reflects the conditions of their now untamed world. As in Christian mythology, the birth of a baby marks “Year One”; however, the parallel ends there.60 Ish’s community perceives its dependence on the land and essential obedience to natural forces, thus its symbolic tendencies develop away from the human/nature binaries that Abrahamic religions have encouraged. Instead, one year becomes “Year of the Fires,” another becomes “Year of the Bulls,” another becomes “Year of the Lions,” and still another becomes “Year of the Earthquake.”61 In these cases and in several others, Ish and Em’s society names its social history for events in natural history, using its symbolic capacities to recognize the primary role of the nonhuman world in human social existence. In Man the Hunter, the anthropologists Richard B. Lee and Irven DeVore speculate that if humans do meet an apocalyptic end, interplanetary archeologists of the future will classify our planet as one in which a very long and stable period of small-scale hunting and gathering was followed by an apparently instantaneous efflorescence of technology and society leading rapidly to extinction. “Stratigraphically,” the origin of agriculture and thermonuclear destruction will appear as essentially simultaneous.62

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Though not a story of nuclear catastrophe, nor one of total human extinction, Earth Abides does much to stage Lee and DeVore’s speculation. The extended period of cultural stability that they reference here is one made possible by pre-modern societies that lived with nature, both physically and symbolically, and that like animals did little to spoil their inhabited environment. Ish’s new society represents a similar stability emerging after what Sessions coins the “anthropocentric detour,” the tenthousand years out of two to four million that humanity has strayed from sustainable lifeways, inventing monocultural agriculture, anti-ecological spiritualities, growth-centered economies, and other constructs that require and encourage a human/nature disconnect.63 Earth Abides puts humanity back on track, so to speak—the ecocentric track. Near the novel’s conclusion, Ish reflects, “In the times of civilization men had really felt themselves as the masters of creation. Everything had been good or bad in relation to man. So you killed rattlesnakes. But now nature had become so overwhelming that any attempt at its control was merely outside anyone’s circle of thought. You lived as part of it, not as its dominating power.”64 Stewart demonstrates the crucial differences between a modern human society that behaves according to an ideology of human-centeredness and a biocentric society. The former is out of touch with its fundamental animality and lives as if it can overcome natural, ecological dynamics, despite evidence to the contrary. The latter—the society in which Ish dwells—is one with ecological wisdom, one that sees its connection to the ecosystem and lives not to subdue natural processes, but to integrate itself physically and symbolically into the landscape.

VI In Our Angry Earth, the science fiction writers Isaac Asimov and Frederik Pohl assert the value of futurological study for environmentalism: “The major, if not the only, utility of future studies lies in the ways in which their projections can help identify future problems, events or needs, so that, with the information the forecasts give us, we can do something now to bring about the desirable outcomes and try to avert the bad ones.”65 Asimov and Pohl’s book is not about science fiction, nor do the authors promote their genre as environmentalist futurology. But the claim that science fiction is “a handmaiden of futurological foresight in . . . ecology” was made by Suvin in 1976.66 Science fiction, to be sure, is not the literature of prediction, if prediction implies prophesizing “what will happen.”67 But considering Stapledon’s foresight that the modern world’s

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excessive consumption rates threaten to bring about global catastrophe, or—in light of current environmental crisis—Campbell’s particularly wise reflection on human chauvinism as the efficient cause of biodiversity loss, science fiction is the literature of “what could happen.”68 Effective environmentalism demands expressions that instigate critical reflection on the causes of environmental crisis. As literatures of what could happen, Last and First Men, “Twilight,” and Earth Abides operate as such tools, taking advantage of their generic functions as spatiallyfocused, extrapolative, and cognitively estranging literature to implicate anthropocentrism as an ideology with serious consequences for human and nonhuman nature alike.69 Collectively, these works promote the “internaliz[ation] of ecological externalities,” which the environmental historian Carolyn Merchant identifies as lacking in human-centeredness.70 Using the science fiction mode, they contemplate modern understandings of the nonhuman world and assert humanity’s essential connectedness to it. The overall effect of this contemplation is a critical interrogation that, if taken seriously as the transformative cultural work that it is, can animate ecological consciousness and bring about real change.

Notes 1

Wapner, Paul, “In Defense of Banner Hangers: The Dark Green Politics of Greenpeace,” in Ecological Resistance Movements: The Global Emergence of Radical and Popular Environmentalism, ed. Bron Raymond Taylor (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1995), 306. 2 Wapner, 311 and 313. 3 Wapner, 311. 4 Sears, Paul B., “Ecology—A Subversive Subject,” BioScience 14, no. 3 (1964): 11. 5 Shepard, Paul, “Ecology and Man—A Viewpoint,” in The Subversive Science: Essays Toward an Ecology of Man, eds. Paul Shepard and Daniel McKinley (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1969), 9. 6 Shepard, 9. 7 For a detailed discussion of science fiction’s affinities with critical thought, particularly critical thought as performed in Marxist and psychoanalytic theory, see Carl Freedman’s Critical Theory and Science Fiction (Hanover, NH: Wesleyan University Press, 2000). 8 Devall, Bill, and George Sessions, Deep Ecology: Living as if Nature Mattered (Salt Lake City: Gibbs Smith, 1985), 43. 9 I select Last and First Men, “Twilight,” and Earth Abides for two reasons. First, they are speculative narratives about the future (the former two, the far future; the

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latter, the near future) and thus fasten well with an environmental movement deeply concerned, too, with the future. Second, and although historicizing these stories is beyond the scope of this essay, Stapledon’s, Campbell’s, and Stewart’s works predate the full-scale emergence of environmentalism as a social cause in North America in the 1960s (see Kirkpatrick Sale’s The Green Revolution: The American Environmental Movement 1962-1992 [New York: Hill and Wang, 1993]). As such, they provide evidence of the interest science fiction had in environmental issues long before ecological concern became mainstream. Indeed, the conservationist movement of the first half of the twentieth century existed contemporaneously with these science fiction works; but this movement did not reflect the critical attitude toward human-centeredness that, as I hope to show, characterizes Stapledon’s, Campbell’s, and Stewart’s stories. Instead, it was more concerned with preserving “nature” for human escape and recreation, for national identity, or as a repository of manageable resources. For more on this movement, see Roderick Frazier Nash’s Wilderness and the American Mind (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1967) and Donald Worster’s Nature’s Economy: A History of Ecological Ideas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1977). 10 See Richard Kerridge’s introduction to Writing the Environment: Ecocriticism and Literature, eds. Richard Kerridge and Neil Sammells (London: Zed, 1998), 5. 11 Heise, Ursula K., “Letter,” PMLA 114, no. 5 (1999): 1096. 12 Heise, 1097. 13 Heise, 1097. 14 Murphy, Patrick D., Farther Afield in the Study of Nature-Oriented Literature (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2000), 41. 15 Jameson, Frederic, Archaeologies of the Future: The Desire Called Utopia and Other Science Fictions (London: Verso, 2005), 312. 16 Jameson, 313. See also, Noel Gough’s “Playing With Wor[l]ds: Science Fiction as Environmental Literature,” in Literature and Nature: An International Sourcebook, eds. Patrick D. Murphy, Terry Gifford, and Katsunori Yamazato (Chicago: Fitzroy Dearborn, 1998), 411, in which Gough writes, “this attention to externalities may mark [science fiction] as an environmental literature par excellence, since the narrative development of [science fiction] stories tends to privilege the effects of environments on the actions of characters, in contrast to the character-driven action of more conventional realist fiction.” 17 Murphy, Patrick D., “The Non-Alibi of Alien Scapes: SF and Ecocriticism,” in Beyond Nature Writing: Expanding the Boundaries of Ecocriticism, eds. Karla Armbruster and Kathleen R. Wallace (Charlottesville: University Press of Virginia, 2001), 263. 18 World Commission on Environment and Development, ed., Our Common Future (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), 8. 19 Marchesani, Joseph, “Science Fiction and Fantasy,” in GLBTQ, eds. Claude J. Summers and Ted-Larry Pebworth, http://www.glbtq.com/literature/scifi_fantasy.html, (accessed November 5, 2005), par. 8.

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Suvin, Darko, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre,” in Science Fiction: A Collection of Critical Essays, ed. Mark Rose (Englewood Cliffs: Prentice, 1976), 60. 21 Suvin, 61. 22 James, Edward, Science Fiction in the 20th Century (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994), 108. 23 Gough, “Playing With Wor[l]ds,” 413. 24 Stapledon, Olaf, Last and First Men & Star Maker: Two Science Fiction Novels by Olaf Stapledon (New York: Dover, 1968), 17. 25 Stapledon, 3. 26 Stapledon, 71. 27 Stapledon, 70. 28 Stapledon, 71. 29 Stapledon, 73. 30 Stapledon, 86. 31 Stapledon, 89. 32 Stapledon, 73. 33 Stapledon, 92. 34 Stapledon, 92. 35 Campbell, Jr., John W., “Twilight,” in The Ends of Time: Eight Stories of Science Fiction, ed. Robert Silverberg (New York: Hawthorne Press, 1970), 76. 36 Landon, Brooks, Science Fiction After 1900: From Steam Man to the Stars (New York: Twayne, 1997), 23. 37 Huntington, John, Rationalizing Genius: Ideological Strategies in the Classic American Science Fiction Short Story (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1989), 161. 38 McKibben, Bill, The End of Nature (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 60. 39 Campbell, “Twilight,” 67. 40 Campbell, 67-68. 41 Campbell, 68. 42 Abbey, Edward, Desert Solitaire: A Season in the Wilderness (New York: Ballantine, 1968), 211. 43 Campbell, “Twilight,” 67. 44 Campbell, 59. 45 Stewart, George R., Earth Abides (New York: Fawcett Crest, 1949), 13. 46 Stewart, 4-5. 47 Stewart, 24-25. 48 Stewart, 8. Fred Waage, in The Crucial Role of the Environment in the Writings of George Stewart (1895-1980): A Life of America’s Literary Ecologist (Lewiston, NY: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2006), 284-285, attributes the italicized passages in Earth Abides—“which repeatedly ecologize the immediate dramatic situation”—to a “Universal Narrator.” I am borrowing his term. 49 Stewart, 171. 50 Stewart, 88. 51 Stewart, 114.

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52 Errington, Paul L., “Of Man and Lower Animals,” in The Subversive Science (see note 5), 180. 53 Dobrin, Sidney I., and Christian R. Weisser, Natural Discourse: Toward Ecocomposition (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 12. 54 Dobrin, 13. 55 Stewart, 27. 56 Stewart, 27. 57 Stewart, 43. 58 Stewart, 107. Waage (see note 48), 303, observes the dissolution of race as a social category as also inherent in this emerging primacy of wilderness: “Stewart creates a world in which, as it were, the only criterion for admission is to be alive.” 59 LaChapelle, Dolores, “Ritual—The Pattern that Connects,” in Deep Ecology for the 21st Century: Readings on the Philosophy and Practice of the New Environmentalism, ed. George Sessions (Boston: Shambhala, 1995), 57. 60 Stewart, 124. 61 Stewart, 129, 132, 134, and 143. 62 Lee, Richard B., and Irven DeVore, eds., Man the Hunter (Hawthorne, NY: Aldine De Gruyter, 1968), 3. 63 Sessions, George, “Ecocentrism and the Anthropocentric Detour,” in Deep Ecology for the 21st Century (see note 59), 156-183. 64 Stewart, 281. 65 Asimov, Isaac, and Frederik Pohl, Our Angry Earth (New York: Doherty, 1991), 27. 66 Suvin, “On the Poetics of the Science Fiction Genre,” 67. 67 Nicholls, Peter, “Prediction,” in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction, eds. John Clute and Peter Nicholls (New York: St. Martin’s, 1995), 957. 68 Nicholls, 957. 69 For a comprehensive discussion of science fiction’s historical interest in ecological issues, see Brian Stableford’s “Science Fiction and Ecology,” in A Companion to Science Fiction, ed. David Seed (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2005), 127-141. 70 Merchant, Carolyn, Radical Ecology: The Search for a Livable World (New York: Routledge, 1992), 74.

CHAPTER FOUR CREATING CHANGE: ONE DOMINANT MALE GOD IN THE SCIENCE FICTION OF SHERI TEPPER JAN MARIJAQ

Introduction This paper addresses the theme of science fiction as a defense against religious and social fundamentalism. In twenty-six of her twenty-nine science fiction novels, Sheri S. Tepper exposes the effects of “one dominant male God” and the increasingly conservative American politics on our world. Tepper treats aspects of these subjects in an entertaining, yet thought-provoking, fashion. Fundamentalist religion and patriarchal society, in general, have strong vested interests in maintaining the status quo. The history of religion in terms of how God was created, interpreted, and documented reveals the replacement of female spirituality by male spirituality. Monotheism’s one God excludes all other concepts of God. Finally, identifying the deity as male excludes women and nature from participating in the divine, and introduces the justification for dominance. We see the effects of a single dominant male God in various conflicts all over the world, in the “othering” of women and non-dominant men, and in the degradation of the environment. We see further effects of this conception in the current capitalistic and cultural-dominance thrust of globalization. Why include degradation of the environment in the discussion of one dominant male God? Reverence for a life-giving Goddess was a naturebased observance, which followed cyclical rhythms like the biological rhythms of the female body. As such, the Goddess represented the unity of all life in nature, and related this unity to the ability of the female to give birth.1 This replacement of a female Goddess with a male God, the

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domination of the female, and the domination of the environment are tied together as a necessary package. What do these elements look like in the United States? Many of Tepper’s more recent works focus on the contemporary cultural and political history of the United States in the context of one dominant male God. Tepper uses literary social commentary to examine religion, society, and politics from a variety of hypothetical perspectives in order to stimulate awareness. The science fiction genre is her vehicle. We are in the midst of a power struggle—not so much between good and evil—as between the determinism of Newtonian physics and the uncertainty of quantum physics in the explanation of reality, between competition and cooperation as the prevailing social paradigm, and between dominance and interrelatedness as the way of being in the world. Unless people become aware of these struggles, and what the elements of these struggles are, they will be slow to create change. Tepper has made a substantial contribution to the development of that awareness by which such change can be accomplished.

Setting the Stage for Patriarchy—the Transition from Goddess to God The archeologist Marija Gimbutas presents us with an interesting interpretation of prehistoric civilization, in what is now southeastern Europe, in her books Civilization of the Goddess and Language of the Goddess. She examined thousands of Neolithic figurines, and judged those statuettes to be representations of the eternal Goddess who was worshipped by men and women in a society where “one-up, one-down” did not exist—it was a society in which men did not oppress women, nor did women oppress men.2 Her work traces an iconography of the Goddess from the Upper Paleolithic (25,000 B.C.), through the Neolithic and Bronze Ages, and into the historic period, thereby providing the foundation for an understanding of the Goddess in her various aspects and an appreciation of the role of women in the pre-patriarchal cultures of Europe.3 The shift to a male-centered divinity seems to coincide with the development of writing and the creation of history. Tepper treats the transition from female- to male-centered religion in her novel Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. Gibbon’s, in general, focuses on the decline of women’s rights in modern times, as fundamentalism and corruption threaten to overtake the United States. Tess, a member of an alien race that had lived in Tibet, then Ireland, and now Mesa Verde in

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New Mexico and that has been variously identified as Yeti, Sidhe, and Kachina, describes this evolution as her people observed it. Even very early in your history, we saw some of you following the path intelligence must follow as it evolves. . . . Ways of respect for nature, ways of peace, ways of quiet cooperation. [Then] something happened we did not understand. . . . First was disrespect of female persons, the violation of female temples, and the denying of female Gods. Then was the disrespect also of other men’s Gods and the teaching that only one God was true, and he male.4

In her book Fresco, Tepper explores how male-dominated religions began to emerge. The title Fresco denotes the source of the religion of the Pistach, who come from one of many planets that form a federation. The fresco is a visual “Book,” just as the Torah, the Christian Bible, and the Qur’an are written books. She attributes the creation of male Gods with survival characteristics—such as omnipotence and authoritarianism, belligerence and suspicion—to the need for protection that primitive peoples had in hostile environments.5 Tepper continues this thesis in Shadow’s End, which addresses the theme that the bargains old men make with a patriarchal God are paid for by women. In the book, the linguist Lutha comments on the use of adversarial language by fearful people in order to pump up their courage, and the development of formulas for identifying and defeating their enemies, for creating a “we are good, they are bad” mentality. Lutha further explains, “Fearful people prefer manlike Gods, deified humans, or Gods that take human shape or do human things.”6 Relating to the unknown as being like oneself, but more powerful, is similar to having a strong older brother. He may pick on you and make your life miserable, but he will protect you from anyone else who tries to harm you. The shift to patriarchy would not be complete without shifting the control over female sexuality. An all-powerful Goddess chooses her sexual partners, as do the women who worship her, making it necessary to trace inheritance through the female line. The transition from a matrilineal to a patriarchal form of society requires that a dominant male God control the sexual choices of a subservient female Goddess, and that the male control the sexuality of the female to ensure that inheritance can be traced through the male line. In The Creation of Patriarchy, Gerda Lerner documents the change from Goddess-centered worship to a God-centered version in exploring the history of Mesopotamian women in different cultures over a 1400-year span. She asserts that the rise of patriarchy occurred as a result of the shift

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of control over a woman’s body, from women to men. King Sargon’s daughter, Enkheduanna (ca 2371-2316 B.C.), had the freedom to select her sexual partners; Queen Shibtu, wife of King Zimri-Lim of Mari (about 1500 B.C.), did not. In some societies, the active participation of women in economic, religious, and political life was taken for granted, while in matters of sexuality, they were completely subordinate to male kin and husbands.7 These facts document the emergence of a set of power relationships in which some men acquired power over other men and all women in their respective societies. This was the birth of patriarchy. In Raising the Stones, Tepper explains how this control developed in the creation of the Voorstod religion from “the three largest of the surviving tribal-retribution religions left [on] Manhome,”8 which I interpret to be the most fundamental elements of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Saturday Wilm, in explaining the violence of the Voorstod religion, states: [The founders of the Voorstod religion] all came from a pastoral background. In primitive times, everything out there in the dark was a predator. One had to guard against everything that threatened the flock, had to kill it if possible…. The sheep were property, the wives were property, the children were property, and they had to be guarded.9

Another explanation for the transition to patriarchy and one dominant male God is found in the thesis of the “hunting hypothesis,” which Barbara Ehrenreich presents in her book, Blood Rites. Ehrenreich describes the transition from prey to predator as an explanation of patriarchal domination. According to the hunting hypothesis, there were overlapping epochs in prehistory in which our ancestors changed from prey to predators. The transition from one status to the other would have been gradual, as the means for defense—weapons and forms of social organization—evolved into the means for offense.10 We can suppose that, in conjunction with the hunting hypothesis, a patriarchal religion became established. Thus it became important to wipe out any connection between the human female and the predator beast—of the human female as a predator, or as killing predators. In patriarchy, man is the defender; woman is in need of being defended. From that time forward, males alone were supposed as being privileged to reenact the transformation from prey to predator. This depriving women of the identity of woman-as-predator demotes women from subject to object, from creators and interpreters of history to being defined by history-as-seen-by-men (which usually meant women were ignored, reduced to mere objects, or became victims). In other words,

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if the very categories of thought are controlled and determined by the dominant class or gender, and these categories reflect only the interests of the dominant class or gender, no one will think in other categories.11 If it is not allowed to conceive of women as predators, and if waging war makes men predators, then women will be turned into prey or slaves—prizes of war, possessions, and objects.12 Tepper looks at woman-as-object and woman-as-subject through many lenses in Gate to Women’s Country, wherein she describes a postholocaustal Earth where women retained science, medicine, and other forms of learning within walled cities, and men practiced their “genetic predisposition” to violence in garrisons outside the walls. The warriors living outside the Gate saw women as spoils of war or as bodies without a personality,13 while the inhabitants of a fundamentalist enclave saw woman as mere objects for sex.14 In contrast, men who rejected violence and returned through the Gate into women’s country treated women as equals, and they themselves were accepted as such. When treated as a mere object, one’s feelings are not acknowledged. The character Dora encounters this attitude in Family Tree, a book that addresses what would happen if the Earth Mother Gaia decided to take back the earth from humanity. Dora has had enough of her husband Jared and wants a divorce. Jared’s response chills the reader: “But I’m used to you. You serve a purpose! I won’t allow it.”15 He sees her not as a person but as a convenience, an object. We have thus seen the transition from a paradigm of gender equality, peace, and cooperation—if you accept the theses of Marija Gimbutas and Gerda Lerner—to one of gender inequality, violence, and dominance. What does this latter entail?

The Effects of Patriarchy and One Dominant Male God Looking back to Dora, Jared and The Family Tree, we see that what a man wants is paramount; what a woman wants is unimportant. The position of women as objects can become even more sinister, as the character Cafferty learns in Sideshow. Sideshow describes Elsewhere, a planet divided into hundreds of habitats, each of which is a haven for some facet of patriarchal religion and culture from old Earth, rather like a human zoo. In Thrasis, a section of Elsewhere thinly veiled as a land of fundamentalist Islam, women are owned—first by their fathers, then by the man who buys them. The House of Restitution is the place from which girl children are sold as workers, and where women who have proven unsatisfactory to their owners are allowed to labor on an interim basis.

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Their owners have declared them unsatisfactory because they became ugly, sexually unexciting, sick, or old.16 Treating women as objects can degenerate quickly into abuse. In Gate to Women’s Country, Stavia is beaten and her head shaved by the women of Holyland, a cult settlement dominated by patriarchal old men. This was done so that she would know what to expect: “That’s what your husband will do to you if you fail in [your] duty to him. You should know how it feels, so’s not to provoke him.” And the reason for her shaved head? “So’s you don’t look like anything to stir up lust. Man’s got to do his duty, but he’s got to do it as duty, not because he likes it.”17 These statements reduce the woman to a sexual object of the man. However, she is also considered as the instigator of lust—a man can’t help his urges, so the woman is responsible. Within this understanding, the man is also objectified. The man is seen as being unable to control his urges or take responsibility for them, and thereby becomes the victim or object of those urges; and, since he is supposed to create the next generation without enjoying it, his value in this circumstance is primarily as sperm, and the man becomes the object or tool of principle. Another form of female abuse is genital mutilation. This is defined as “excision of part or all of the external genitalia and stitching/narrowing of the vaginal opening (infibulation).”18 The reasons given for female genital mutilation (FGM) include [the] reduction or elimination of the sensitive tissue of the outer genitalia, particularly the clitoris, in order to attenuate sexual desire in the female, maintain chastity and virginity before marriage and fidelity during marriage, and increase male sexual pleasure.19

Besides the loss of sexual desire, FGM often results in death from infection and blood loss. Tepper covers this subject quite vividly in Sideshow. In Thrasis, female babies are sold when weaned, genitally mutilated at seven, and then become the sexual objects and reproductive machines of their owner. The following account exemplifies this: “Haifazh had been cut while in labor with Shira, and sewn up after, as were all the women in Thrasis. Peeing was painful, but not—she reminded herself—as bad as sex would have been.”20 One has to wonder what happens to a boy as he grows up to be a man in such a society. Does he see the pain of the mother he loves as she goes through her physical cycles? Does he try to recreate that love with a woman he must learn to treat as an object? Or is he permanently cut off from the experience of love? Tepper leaves it to the reader of Sideshow to answer these questions.

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These depictions of domination extend to the world we live in. The book of Genesis has been interpreted as providing the authorization for man to control his world. Al Gore, in Earth in the Balance, raises important questions as to what this “authorization” means: There has been a misinterpretation of the Genesis stories in the Hebrew Bible, relating to the “dominion” which God gives humans over the rest of creation. “Dominion” does not mean that the earth belongs to humankind; on the contrary, whatever is done to the earth must be done with an awareness that it belongs to God.21

The present-day traditionalist proponents of fundamentalist patriarchy, particularly in the Judeo-Christian and Muslim traditions, have chosen to interpret dominion as domination. It is no stretch to suppose that domination of the earth, along with the submission of the female to the male, completes the replacement of the Goddess with the God. In the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, domination of the environment and of non-dominant cultures was a necessary component for the spread of capitalism by the West. The justification of “bringing Christianity to the heathens,” which was used to validate conquest and colonialism from the fifteenth to eighteenth centuries, was replaced with the justification of “bringing free markets and democracy” to the rest of the world, but the results were the same. Environments and indigenous societies have been destroyed in the name of greed. After Long Silence holds the current practices of capitalism up to scrutiny—that of interpreting dominion as domination to justify destroying ecosystems for profit. The planet Jubal is the home of sentient crystal mountains. The planet’s singular, but highly profitable export is brou, a mild narcotic that is exclusively controlled by “Brou Distribution, Ltd.” (BDL). BDL attempts to destroy all the sentient crystals before the “Commission on Humans and Alien Sentience: Exploitation” can prove they are sentient and close the planet to exploitation. The destruction of potentially sentient life forms, like the destruction of ecosystems, is not seen as morally reprehensible. “Not where profit is concerned.”22 Tepper describes the “drawing of lines” between dominion as defined by Al Gore and the domination interpretation of Genesis by fundamentalist Christians in Gibbon’s Decline and Fall. The conflict is clearly set: the white male power structure in the U.S., combined with the maledominated, female-suppressing religions of the world are pitted against the Decline and Fall Club, a group of women determined to defeat that combination. The American Alliance (analogous to the Religious Right) claims ownership of the Republican Party and the Press, and thereby the

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public opinion of the country. As with all domination structures, no freedom of thought or action is tolerated.23 As Chip Berlet quotes in Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash, the Religious Right substantially dominated the U.S. Republican Party by the mid-1990s in at least 10 (and perhaps as many as 30) of the 50 states, and targeted electoral races from school boards to state legislatures, to campaigns for the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives. Since the predominantly Christian leadership envisions a religiously-based authoritarian society, Berlet describes the Religious Right as the “theocratic right.” A theocrat is someone who supports a form of government where the actions of leaders are seen as sanctioned by God; such leaders claim they are carrying out God’s will.24 Tepper focuses her literary attention primarily on the American national legislature. What motivates U.S. legislators? In Family Tree, Dora expresses her opinion of the United States legislature of the 1990s: Their prime motivation is money, or jobs—for humans, of course— because money and jobs buy votes or power. . . . They buy the kind of lives they are destroying for others. They live in gated communities or in mansions on stretches of untouched land or perhaps in twelve-room apartments at the tops of very tall, exclusive buildings. As for the poor, as for the animals, as for the trees, let them die.25

Tepper is not impressed with what such legislators do. Her disdain is more clearly expressed in her novel, Singer from the Sea, the story of another world where women pay with their lives so that only old men may benefit. The Marshal has been called to the central city to fulfill his ministerial duties (roughly equivalent to a legislator). There he learns that the function of the Ministry is to provide a public camouflage, hiding the reality that the Lord Protector is, in fact, a dictator. “Need us? Well of course not, Marshal. He doesn’t need us. We’re just part of the cover, don’t you know?”26 This also serves as a warning to readers that, when the legislative branch does not fulfill its obligation as a check on the executive branch, dictatorship and the destruction of personal rights can be the result. Nor is Tepper impressed with legislative response to constituents. Chad Riley of the Federal Bureau of Investigation expresses his disillusions with the legislative body in Fresco: “People can see the problem, they’re not stupid, but they can’t influence the legislators the way money can.”27 Tepper gives an example of a law enacted to put repeat drunk drivers in jail. When the liquor industry objects, the legislators react by amending the law to create a commission to study how

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best to jail drunk drivers, in essence taking no action. In the words of agent Riley, the Forestry Service is owned by the lumbermen, the Drug Enforcement Agency by the drug cartels, welfare by a social work hierarchy, and schools by professional educationalists. None of these systems work because they are designed not to work. Aunt Sizzy in Elsewhere expresses her disillusions about the democratic process in Sideshow: “If you entertain people well enough, they don’t care you’re a fake,” said Aunt Sizzy. “Most people don’t give a damn about the truth, anyhow.” She mentions politicians, including a recent president, as an example: “The world’s biggest phonies, not very bright, but they entertained people, so nobody cared.”28 Given the history of how the United States of America developed, we can see that men and women gave their energies and lives to create a society in which men and women had the power to determine their lives. Even with periods of backsliding, this country has grown from its origins in monarchy, which empowered only a few white Anglo-Saxon Protestant males, to one in which there is at least the potential for “freedom and justice for all.” Are we now going to accept government by entertainment rather than government “of the people, by the people, and for the people”? Are we willing to slip back into powerlessness? Are we going to recreate control by the few through our inaction and disinterest? These are the questions that Aunt Sizzy, Chad Riley, and the Decline and Fall Club face. Tepper asks such questions. What are your answers?

Summary As we have seen, prehistory may have been Goddess-centered, with women owning their own bodies. History has been God-centered, with men owning women’s bodies. The theme of discrediting women-centered observances is present in our contemporary mythologies. The hunting hypothesis is another interpretation of the process of erasing woman-assubject and substituting woman-as-object. Seen as object, as other, as prey, it is more acceptable to abuse women and the world, especially if one interprets dominion as domination to justify this abuse. What has been missed is that making any person an object makes objects of us all. Reducing women to be the sexual object of men likewise reduces men to be the object of principle—that of procreating the next generation. Treating girls and women as things to be bought, cast off, and sold prevents boys and men from developing their right to be warm and nurturing human beings. Approaching the rest of the world as dominators makes it impossible for those dominators to see the beauty and

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preciousness of the physical world, to understand reality through another’s experience, to develop their souls. What happens when the legislative bodies of our countries, which we elect to represent our needs and prevent just this kind of abuse, prove ineffectual? What happens when these legislative bodies are dominated by the interests of the few at the cost of the many? What happens when we are so wrapped up in the stories we are told that we don’t realize, until too late, what is happening? Then we are lucky to have an author like Sheri S. Tepper who pokes at our awareness, to prompt us out of our thinking ruts, our inactivity. Religion is just one area that Tepper holds up for us to look at. Religion contributes to our personal context, our worldview. To cause change, we need to become aware of how our personal context is created—by religion, early family experiences, science, physical biology, and the society we live in that has a vested interest in the status quo. What context do we want our children, and our children’s children, to use to justify their actions in the world?

Notes 1 Gimbutas, Marija, The Language of the Goddess (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1989, 316), 319. 2 Marler, Joan. “Archaeomythology.” Woman of Power. Issue 15. 11. 3 Marler, 8. 4 Tepper, Sheri S., Gibbon’s Decline and Fall (New York: Bantam, 1996), 393-5. 5 Tepper, Sheri S., The Fresco (New York: EOS, 2000), 102-3. 6 Tepper, Sheri S., Shadow’s End (New York: Bantam, 1994),108-9. 7 Lerner, Gerda. The Creation of Patriarchy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1986), 74-5. 8 Tepper, Sheri S., Raising the Stones (New York: Bantam Books, 1990), 106. 9 Tepper, Raising, 435-7. 10 Ehrenreich, Barbara. Blood Rites, Origins and History of the Passions of War (New York: Henry Holt, 1997), 45-6. 11 Martin, Emily. The Woman in the Body, A Cultural Analysis of Reproduction (Boston: Beacon Press, 1987), 182-3. 12 Martin, 129-30. 13 Tepper, Sheri S., Gate to Women’s Country (New York: Bantam, 1988), 47. 14 Tepper, Gate, 204. 15 Tepper, Sheri S., The Family Tree (New York: Avon, 1997), 34. 16 Tepper, Sheri S., Sideshow (New York: Bantam, 1992), 333. 17 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/ 18 http://www.who.int/mediacentre/factsheets/fs241/en/

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Tepper, Gate, 261. Tepper, Sideshow, 326-9. 21 Gore, Al. Earth in the Balance: ecology and the human spirit (New York: Penguin, 1993), 244-5. 22 Tepper, Sheri S., After Long Silence (New York: Bantam, 1987), 133-4. 23 Tepper, Gibbon’s, 46. 24 Berlet, Chip, ed. Eyes Right! Challenging the Right Wing Backlash (Boston: South End Press, 1995), 16. 25 Tepper, Family, 321. 26 Tepper, Sheri S., Singer from the Sea (New York: Avon, 1999), 232-4. 27 Tepper, Fresco, 438-9. 28 Tepper, Sideshow, 53. 20

PART II SCIENCE FICTION AND THE INDIVIDUAL

CHAPTER FIVE KIERKEGAARDIAN DESPAIR IN ARTHUR C. CLARKE’S CHILDHOOD’S END ALBERT R. SPENCER

In his science fiction classic Childhood’s End, Arthur C. Clarke relates a gripping tale about the evolution of humankind. It begins with the intervention of the Overlords, who use their technology to help humanity to create a utopian Earth by resolving its conflicts and problems with their advanced technology. After a century of peace and prosperity, the children of the next generation unlock the latent powers of the human mind and begin their transformations into higher states of consciousness that transcend not only humanity, but physical reality as well. Encouraging this transcendence is the goal of the Overlords, and the story ends with the extinction of the human race and the destruction of Earth by the Children of Man as they leave this universe to merge with the Overmind (an omnipotent transcendent being that commands the Overlords). The conclusion of the story is powerful, but ambiguous. As readers we are not sure if we have witnessed something beautiful or deeply disturbing. Throughout the novel, Clarke carefully gives the evolution of humankind a human face, and despair is often the aesthetic response to the radical transformations that we witness. This article contends that the source of this ambiguity can be explained by understanding despair as defined by the philosopher Søren Kierkegaard in The Sickness Unto Death. He argues that despair is the product of the self not being or becoming the type of self that it wants to be. This is present in Childhood’s End because the fate of humanity presented in the novel does not match our basic human hopes. By investigating Clarke’s use of despair in Childhood’s End, a deeper understanding of the aesthetic power of the book’s ending emerges. Before we begin our exploration of Childhood’s End, we should first develop an understanding of how Kierkegaard defines despair. According to Kierkegaard, despair is a product of a relational view of the self. What

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makes the human self unique is that it has the capacity to relate itself to itself, and to relate itself to other things. Our identity is the product of how we relate ourselves to something outside of ourselves. For example, part of my identity is the fact that I am a philosopher, but it is also defined via my relation to my wife, my parents, and a variety of other objects. The self is not autonomous because it is the product of its relations, but the self is free to choose the objects of its relations. When confronted with who we are we despair if we do not like the actual self that is presented. This discrepancy causes us pain, and that pain is despair; we despair because our actual self is not our ideal self.1 Given this account of the relational self, Kierkegaard believes that there are two general forms of despair. The first form of despair is refusing to accept our selfhood. It is similar to Sartre’s bad faith; the individual is not conscious of their selfhood and refuses to take responsibility for who they are. The second form of despair occurs when the object of our relation is an unworthy foundation of our identity; this involves the will and is a product of the dissatisfaction that the self finds in inadequate objects. According to Kierkegaard, no object (e.g. person, concept, or entity) is capable of allowing the self to become fully satisfied with itself, except God. Kierkegaard believes that ultimately we must ground ourselves in a relation with God because despair can only be satiated when “the self rests transparently in the power that established it.”2 God is the ultimate criterion because God transcends humanity and is eternal. The self is greater when God is its criterion because it maximizes the amount of self-consciousness that the individual can possess. The individual becomes more fully aware of him or herself, because when confronted as a self before God, one has a deeper sense of how lacking their actual self is, for now one’s ideal self has increased in potential. The self is then defined in relation to something eternal (not a lesser temporal entity like possessions, parents, or the state) and the individual becomes aware of how great their task of self-becoming actually is. The individual can respond to the gravity of this awareness in two ways. He or she can be offended by it and reject God, or he or she can use it constructively and work through this despair to become a complete self. The first alternative is sin; the second is faith.3 Although Kierkegaard has more to say about despair and its Christian ramifications, we can now turn to Childhood’s End and analyze how this complex emotion contributes to our aesthetic response to the novel’s conclusion. Clearly the central theme of Childhood’s End is the evolution of humanity. The story begins with humanity in a state of war and conflict, and ends when the minds of the last children of humanity merge into a

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single consciousness and transcend reality. Evolution is the species analog to the individual’s self becoming. Just as the individual becomes a self over time through its relation to different criteria, the human species progresses as it re-orients itself towards different goals. We see this process of human evolution instantiated in the narrative events of Childhood’s End. We also see how the awareness of this evolutionary change impacts the subjective responses of the individuals involved. When the individual realizes that humanity will not become what he or she had hoped it would become, there is a sense of despair. The same discrepancy exists between the actual and ideal self, except with regard to evolution, it is a discrepancy between the actual fate and our ideal hopes for humanity. The theme of despair is immediately invoked in the prologue. The story begins with two groups of scientists on either side of the “Space Race.” Reinhold works for the West and Konrad works for the East, but both men are trying to be the first to send humanity into space. In Kierkegaardian terms, both scientists define themselves in relation to their research. When the arrival of the Overlords makes them aware of the discrepancy between what they hoped to achieve and reality, each scientist responds differently. Reinhold “felt no regrets as the work of a lifetime was swept away. He had labored to take man to the stars, and, in the moment of success, the stars—the aloof, indifferent stars—had come to him.” Meanwhile, when Konrad “walked to the window” and saw the alien ships, “for the first time in his life he knew despair.”4 Konrad despairs because his sense of self was invested in becoming the man responsible for space travel. Reinhold is immune because his sense of self is invested in something higher, specifically scientific curiosity. Thus, while both men are impacted by the revelations that this encounter with aliens entails, Reinhold can handle this increased awareness because the criterion of his self is something higher than mere ego or pride, which is quite at odds with the case of Konrad. The contrast between these two first responses to the arrival of the Overlords sets the tone for the remainder of the novel. As humanity becomes more aware of its actual role in the universe through the revelation of the Overlords, more hopes and ideals are dispelled, and each individual character must come to terms with these discrepancies. They either resign themselves like Reinhold and reorient themselves toward a higher criteria, or they exhibit varying degrees of despair like Konrad. The structure of the book is episodic, and in the end describes the final century of humanity’s evolution: in each of these time periods, the themes of despair and acceptance re-emerge. Part I occurs five years after the

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prologue; Part II occurs fifty years after Part I; and the events of Part III occur over a forty year time period, ten years after the events of Part II. In Part I “Earth and the Overlords,” the Overlords use their technology to establish a utopia on Earth. The contrast between acceptance and despair expresses itself in the dramatic tension between Stormgren (the Secretary General of the U.N. and main character of this section) and a variety of individuals who represent humanity’s resistance to the Overlords. Most humans, like Stormgren, submit to the authority of the Overlords, albeit with some reservations about the alien motives and secrecy. However, the Overlord’s benevolence is not greeted with universal appreciation. Part of the populace resents being governed by the aliens, and others find the knowledge that the Overlords possess threatening to their beliefs. The cost of the peace and prosperity that the Overlords bring to Earth is that many groups and individuals must surrender their pre-conceived view of humanity’s future. Now that the actual future of humankind has been revealed, and is in the hands of aliens, the people despair because their future and humanity’s future will not be what they imagined.5 As humanity enters its “Golden Age” in Part II, despair is greatly minimized, but it is not eradicated. Humans are comfortable with the presence of the Overlords and the peace and prosperity they have created. However, science, art, and the humanities begin to decline because without conflict and struggle there is no longer any serious motivation for human progress. People pursue education for the sake of personal edification, but they are for the most part social and academic dilettantes. Despair manifests through boredom because individuals feel that either they or humanity as a whole are not living up to their full potential. Humanity has no direction.6 Appropriately, the majority of the drama in this chapter revolves first around a cocktail party and then around a young man’s attempt to overcome this boredom. When we are here introduced to the character of Jan Rodricks, we find him on the roof of his host’s mansion. He has left the party to gaze at the stars. Clarke describes him as a young romantic would-be astrophysicist whose only grievance is “the impact of the Overlords upon his own ambitions.”7 Jan wants to travel the universe, but the Overlords will not allow any exploration beyond the Moon. Thus, Jan is in despair because at present he cannot become the astronaut that he wants to be. However, like Stormgren earlier, Jan uses his despair constructively. He plots through an elaborate plan to gain knowledge that has been restricted by the Overlords: he stows away on one of the Overlord’s ships that is returning to their home planet. Also, like Stormgren, he must incorporate the knowledge

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that he gains into his understanding of himself and humanity when he returns to Earth at the end of the novel. We are also introduced to George and Jean Greggson at this cocktail party. Their significance is most prominent in Part III “The Last Generation,” when they decide to join a structured island community (New Athens) as a means of off-setting their boredom. The purpose of the community is to be an artistic center that can overcome the general apathy that has arrested human progress.8 Both the Greggsons and the New Athens community are trying to work through their despair by placing their lives and efforts into relation with something greater than themselves, specifically aesthetic achievement. The hope is that they might construct new ideals for humanity.9 The next stage of human evolution does emerge from the New Athens community, but it is not a product of their original intentions. It occurs when Jeffery (the eight year-old son of George and Jean) unlocks his latent psychic abilities during a life threatening tsunami.10 This episode triggers a chain reaction throughout the children of the world, who also all begin to manifest similar psychic abilities. Soon they begin to sleep longer and longer as their minds learn how to explore the universe without the use of their physical bodies. Adults, however, are unable to participate in this psychic awakening and transformation. When George asks the Overlords about this transformation, they explain that this moment (which they call “Total Breakthrough”) is why they came to Earth and what they were hoping to initiate. His only word of comfort to the distraught parent is to “Enjoy them [the children] while you may… They will not be yours for long.”11 This revelation is the most startling; the end of the human race has been announced. The moment is tragic because it appears to be the ultimate moment of despair. If despair is an awareness of the disconnect between an ideal self and an actual self, the moment one learns that there is no possibility of achieving a future self is when despair is most intense for the individual. But to learn that humanity has no future, that our fate is extinction, is unbearable. Yet, humanity does have a future, even if it is radically different from what was previously imagined. Although the children are no longer human, they have evolved into something greater. Their consciousnesses merge and soon merge with an even greater entity called the Overmind. In fact, we learn that it is the Overlords who we should pity because they are the ones who truly have no future. For reasons unknown, the Overlords cannot achieve “Total Breakthrough” and are fated to serve eternally as facilitators and observers of this transcendent experience in which they cannot participate.12 Although it is a hard pill to swallow, Karellen (the

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leader of the Overlords) believes that humanity’s fate is better than the fate of the Overlords. With the loss of its children, humanity is in utter despair because they know that there is no future left for achievement. The two options that remain are the clearest examples of acceptance and despair presented throughout the book. Some try to work constructively through their despair by enjoying the world why they are still alive. Others cannot overcome the despair because their concept of self was grounded in relation to their children. Without their children, they no longer view themselves as selves, and suicide is the only option.13 For example, the New Athens community programs a nuclear bomb to explode at random. The awareness that the future is certain is unbearable, and by introducing chance into their annihilation, they can minimize their despair to a certain degree. The story ends when Jan Rodericks returns to Earth eighty years later (although only a few months have passed for him due to the physics of relativity and interstellar travel). He had been to the home world of the Overlords, and knows them better than anyone. He sympathesizes with their situation, and describes it in nearly perfect Kierkegaardian terms: he explicitly mentions the disconnect between humanity’s ideals versus its actual fate. This end is not the future he and humanity had hoped for. He envies the Overlords because they have retained their sense of self. However, he realizes that their ego is a curse not a blessing, because the Overlords know that they shall never attain the ideal fate for their species. The Overlords are in relation to the Overmind, but they will always remain separate from this ideal. Finally, he ponders the nature of the Overmind, and wonders, “Did it too have desires, did it have goals it sensed dimly yet might never attain?” He projects his own despair onto the Overmind, and wonders if it is capable of this complex emotion.14 But, while he understands the depth of his own despair, Jan is not resentful about the fate of humanity. When he arrives on Earth, all humans are deceased, and he muses about their final days: “That final act, before the curtain came down forever, must have been lit by flashes of heroism and devotion, darkened by savagery and selfishness. Whether it had ended in despair or resignation, Jan would never know.”15 The alternatives of resignation and despair have been evoked and Jan clearly chooses resignation. He chooses to remain on Earth, even though the Overlords warn him that the Children of Man will soon destroy it in their final moment of transformation. This decision is not an act of suicide even though it will lead to his death. He is simply accepting his fate, the fate of humanity, i.e., extinction. He also stays as an observer for Karellen and realizes that “perhaps the Overlords had dreams of one day escaping from

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their peculiar bondage, when they had learned enough about the powers they served.”16 Does this mean that the Overlords have faith that against all odds they too might reach the fulfillment visited upon humanity? Clarke does not answer this question conclusively. The Earth is destroyed by the Children of Man (along with Jan Rodricks). The last scene is of Karellen, in his space ship, leaving our solar system. He reflects on his mission with humanity: The record was complete, the mission ended; he was homeward bound for the world he had left so long ago. The weight of centuries was upon him, and a sadness that no logic could dispel. He did not mourn for Man: his sorrow was for his own race, forever barred from greatness by forces it could not overcome… Yet, Karellen knew, they would hold fast until the end: they would await without despair whatever destiny was theirs. They would serve the Overmind because they had no choice, but even in that service they would not lose their souls…In silent farewell, he saluted the men he had known, whether they had hindered or helped him in his purpose.17

This parting passage does suggest that the Overlords possess something akin to faith. They are keenly aware that their fate is less than ideal. However, they continue to maintain their relation with the Overmind, and they accept the fate that they have been given. But the Overlords are not just resigned to their fate; they maintain the hope that through dedicated service to the Overmind, one day they might learn how to transcend physical reality as well. If this hope is not faith (the hope of redemption when the evidence suggests otherwise), then it seems that it is at least an alien equivalent. Furthermore, Clarke use of terms like “despair,” “destiny,” “souls,” and “purpose” underscores this spiritual interpretation of Karellen’s final reflection. Finally, we as readers must respond to the events we have witnessed. Suspending our disbelief and pretending that Clarke’s vision is the actual fate of humanity, do we as readers respond to this revelation with resignation (even faith) or do we respond with despair? This tension provides the aesthetic appeal of Childhood’s End, and makes its conclusion memorable. When we arrive at the novel’s finale, we are unsure as to whether we have witnessed an evolutionary miracle or tragedy. Kierkegaard’s formulaic view of despair helps us to understand why we are so distraught, and explains why despair is a proper response. While no critics have specifically addressed the themes of resignation and despair, several have described the structure of the book in ways that

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lend themselves to a Kierkegaardian interpretation. John Hollow in his chapter on Childhood’s End explains that as suggested by the title the central metaphor of the book is “the end of childhood, its fulfillment as well as its termination.”18 Building on Hollow’s commentary, we see that Clarke has succeeded in projecting the process of self becoming as outlined by Kierkegaard onto the human race (rather than the individual), and its (rather than the individual’s) evolutionary progression towards adulthood. As more information about our actual self or our actual future is revealed we progress closer to fulfillment, but we are also frustrated because what we become is rarely what we expected to be. Throughout the novel there are a series of revelations. Both the reader and the human race learn more about the future as the Overlords reveal it. When we are made aware of new information, we must incorporate it into our expectations about our identity and our future. Alan B. Howes contends that Clarke has carefully used expectation and surprise to build the drama that culminates in the novel’s conclusion. This dynamic between expectation and surprise shows how Clarke has constructed the drama of the book to evoke despair in the reader.19 Kierkegaard claims that despair occurs when we understand the discrepancy between our actual self and our ideal selves. Expectation in the novel encourages the reader to invent ideas about what will happen, how the novel will progress, but these ideas are undermined when through revelation we are surprised by the actual outcome of the narrative. The bait and switch of expectation and surprise allows the reader to vicariously experience the despair of the human race as its hopes are frustrated throughout the book. This pattern of expectation and surprise leads us to the end of the novel, we should consider whether we resign or despair at its conclusion. According to Kierkegaard, “despair is completely rooted out” only when “in relating itself to itself and in willing to be itself, the self rests transparently in the power that established it.”20 Kierkegaard means that when “the power that established it” is the object that defines the identity of the self, the self is able to reach fulfillment. As a Christian writer, Kierkegaard clearly sees this object as the God of Christianity. In the later half of The Sickness Unto Death, Kierkegaard focused on the theological dimensions of despair as sin. Although despair runs throughout Childhood’s End, sin is never mentioned. In fact, religion fades altogether in Part II, when the world enters “a completely secular age” where “only a purified form of Buddhism—perhaps the most austere of all religions— still survived.”21 As Lucy Menger has noted “the acrid odor of evil is wholly absent from Childhood’s End,” all of Clarke’s characters are “kind

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and well-intentioned and their failings are very human weaknesses.”22 It seems that there is no room for sin in Clarke’s vision of the future. However, if we consider the possibility of whether or not the Overmind works as an ultimate ground of human identity we might find sin lurking in the dark recesses of Clarke’s novel. The Overmind appears to be omnipotent and transcendent, but it is not God in the Christian sense. Eugen Tanzy describes the Overmind in all of its glory, but also with attention to its limitations: although the Overmind is eternal and transcendent, Tanzy is careful to point out that it is a product of this universe and has its limits. The Ovemind is god-like, but it is not God.23 According to Kierkegaard’s analysis, only relation to the power that established the self can root out despair, and is therefore, worthy of faith and trust as the ultimate object of our relational self. The Overmind does not meet this criterion; it is not the power that has established the universe for it is a product of the universe. When we consider the limitations of the Overmind as a ground for our relational self, we see that it is clearly not what Kierkegaard had in mind. We could respond to this difference in one of two ways: either we can take a secular view and assume that the Overmind is the closet analog to a God in Clarke’s novel, even if it is lacking in some minor ways, or we can follow the theistic demands of Kierkegaard’s thought and say that the Overmind is not worthy of our faith. Furthermore, it is possible that the Overmind and its minions, the Overlords, are demonic after all. David N. Samuleson has highlighted Clarke’s use of demonic imagery. He directs our attention to the fact that not only do the Overlords physically resemble devils, but their home world is “reminiscent of Hell,” and the “anthropomorphic shape” that the Overmind embodies is “a living volcano on the Overlord’s planet.” 24 It should also be noted that Samuelson does not argue that Clarke wants us to see the Overlords and the Overmind as purely satanic. Given Clarke’s futurist commitments, it would be erroneous to suggest that the novel is a Christian allegory or that despair is the definitive emotion that Clarke wants to generate at the end of the novel. But given the care that Clarke has taken to depict both the Overlords and the Overmind as demonic, it is valid to suggest that he wants some lingering doubts about their altruism at the end of the novel. My conclusion is that we should interpret the ending of Clarke’s novel through the lense of these lingering doubts. Although Jan experiences a “wave of emotion” perhaps “fulfillment” that washes over him in the final moments of Earth destruction, his final message is, “The light! From beneath me—inside the Earth—shining upward, through the rocks, the ground, everything—growing brighter, brighter, blinding—.”25

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Meanwhile, Karellen returns to his hellish home world after over a century on Earth. Are both of these individuals who have resigned themselves as minions of the Overmind, being sent to their just rewards, i.e., punishment in hell? We cannot say for sure: Clarke has left this decision up to the reader. We must decide if it is a miracle or a tragedy. But either way, the reader moves into a state of Kierkegaardian despair. The future has not turned out as we would have hoped, and we must incorporate this revelation into our identity. If we follow the Kierkegaarding understanding of self-fulfillment to its extreme, we must pronounce this fate to be the ultimate tragedy of humanity. Deep despair is the appropriate response because humanity has lived its life and met its fate before a false criterion. The Overmind is not the power that establishes the self; it is the power that has come to consume selves for its own purposes. Even if we do not want to accept the Christian overtones of this Kierkegaardian reading, we are justified in questioning how self-fulfillment can be achieved through self-annihilation. If we do not have the hope that the object of our identity can redeem us as individuals and preserve the self in a transformed state (rather than the ego-death/collective consciousness of the Overmind), then despair is truly the sickness whose only cure is death. The value of Clarke’s novel is that it helps us to experience Kierkegaard’s understanding of despair on a grand scale. Through the medium of science fiction Clarke has projected our individual struggle for self-fulfillment on to the evolutionary strivings of the human species. By confronting us with this unexpected fate, he forces us to work through our despair and to reconsider both our identity and our hopes, as individuals and as members of humanity. The novel itself is an opportunity for constructive reflection in our progress towards self-fulfillment.

Notes 1

Kierkegaard, Søren, The Sickness Unto Death, Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, eds. and trans. (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1980), 13-21. 2 Kierkegaard, 14. 3 Kierkegaard, 80. 4 Clark, Arthur C., Across the Sea of Stars: An Omnibus Containing the Complete Novels Childhood’s End and Earthlight (New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1959), 252. 5 Clark, 267. 6 Clark, 303-309.

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Clark, 310. Clark, 366-368. 9 Clark, 374. 10 Clark, 380. 11 Clark, 399. 12 Clark, 403-405. 13 Clark, 408-409. 14 Clark, 423. 15 Clark, 426. 16 Clark, 430. 17 Clark, 434. 18 Hollow, John, Against the Night the Stars: The Science Fiction of Arthur C. Clarke (New York: Harcourt, Brace, Jovanovich Publishers, 1983), 72-73. 19 Howes, Alan B., “Expectation and Surprise in Childhood’s End.” Arthur C. Clarke, Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds., (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1977), 170-171. 20 Kierkegaard, 14. 21 Clarke, 307. 22 Menger, Lucy, “The Appeal of Childhood’s End.” Critical Encounters: Writers and Themes in Science Fiction, Dick Riley, ed. (New York: Frederick Unger Publishing Co., 1978). 23 Tanzy, Eugene, “Contrasting View of Man and the Evolutionary Process: Back to Methuselah and Childhood’s End.” Arthur C. Clarke, Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1977), 187188. 24 Samuelson, David N., “Childhood’s End: A Median Stage of Development.” Arthur C. Clarke, Joseph D. Olander and Martin Harry Greenberg, eds. (New York: Taplinger Publishing Co., 1977), 199-200. 25 Clarke, 433-434. 8

CHAPTER SIX EVANGELION AND EXISTENTIALISM: THE CASE OF SHINJI IKARI ROB VUCKOVICH

Neon Genesis Evangelion, a popular animated series from Japan, relays the fantastic tale of angels intending to annihilate the human race through the Third Impact. This impact can only take place when an angel comes into contact with the angel, Adam, who is the source of all the angels and is held captive underneath the fortified city, Tokyo-3. The human survivors of the mysterious Second Impact thwart this divine encounter with giant robot-like protectors known as Evas. An adolescent pilots each Eva, acting as its designated spirit. Shinji Ikari is one of these defenders of the Earth. Not wanting to be a puppet for his estranged father, Gendo Ikari, the man heading the NERV organization that was established to fight angels, Shinji eventually assumes this responsibility after witnessing the physical suffering endured by another pilot. By opting to become Eva Unit-01’s pilot, Shinji embarks on an existential journey that he is not entirely equipped to understand and handle. What is most fascinating about Shinji’s predicament is the private suffering associated with what he opts to do. His obligation to pilot an Eva characterizes the isolation of being human, which is marked paradoxically by his responsibility for saving humanity. Instead of trying to summarize this complex story in its entirety, this paper will examine the climactic battle in episode 24, “The Final Messenger”, between Shinji and Tabris, the angel who governs over free will.1 This conflict not only has apocalyptic significance in terms of humanity’s fate, it illustrates the conflict that wages inside Shinji’s conscience as he exercises his free will. Through perspectives developed by existential philosophers, this project aims to show that Shinji’s predicament is not a hyperbolic dramatization of human suffering. Even though Evangelion is a multi-faceted piece of anime, fusing religious and psychological themes, it offers its viewers a dose of existential dilemmas

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faced by its protagonist. Viewers should not expect a resolution to Shinji’s dilemmas; rather, they should understand and appreciate the desolation associated with Shinji’s prevention of humanity’s annihilation through a seemingly simple choice. An account of the existentialist ideas that apply to Shinji’s life is necessary in this context. The most apt definition of existentialism comes from F. McEachran who avers that it is “the philosophy, or better still, the religion of men who are more isolated and more lonely than men have ever been before—who have surrendered all beliefs either in God or man and depend entirely and completely on themselves.”2 Though McEachran stresses the collective, the emphasis on isolation and hopelessness is subjective. In Shinji’s case, human existence rests literally and figuratively in his hands. But before going into details about this brand of fatalism, consider McEachran’s reference to God and how God factors in Evangelion. With angels serving as humanity’s nemeses, one must wonder whether God has a role in this apparent holy war. But God is virtually nonexistent in Evangelion. Shinji, in the episode, “The Day Tokyo-3 Stood Still”, is the first and only one who ventures to ask: ”Just what are the angels? […] It just doesn’t make sense. Angels are messengers from God, right? Why are we fighting angels?”3 Without much interest, Asuka, another child selected to pilot an Eva, snubs Shinji’s inquiry. Shinji’s indirect reference to God signifies that the world consists of nothing divine. This lack is not confirmation that God does not exist; rather, it means that God is not involved in human affairs. Even NERV’s logo suggests that the relation between the divine and the human are remote. Its caption reads: “God’s in his heaven. All’s right with the world.”4 It is as though those protecting the rest of humanity do not expect or require any divine intervention. Human autonomy is best preserved when people no longer hope for or rely on miracles. Shinji’s parental guardian, Misato, in an earlier episode, “A Human Creation”, resents a plea for divine assistance during a potential catastrophe by saying, “[a]cts of man are better than acts of God.”5 Following McEachran’s point on dependency, the characters of Evangelion then have no other option than to depend on themselves. But this reliance poses a different problem. When NERV mysteriously experiences sabotage from within during an angel attack, Gendo Ikari asserts that “mankind’s greatest enemy is man himself.”6 His words thus serve as a caution about human relations. People betraying other people is a quality of which one can be both certain and uncertain; the certainty implies that all individuals have the potential for betrayal, while the uncertainty relates to when such betrayal happens. On

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that account, gaining another individual’s trust is always a risky endeavour. Shinji knows this aspect of life all too well, which may explain why he opts to run away and then return to start afresh with the relations he had just abandoned. Throughout the series, Shinji’s battles with the angels are as taxing on him as his attempts at establishing relationships. After the battle between Eva Unit-00 and the 16th angel, Armisael, which levels Tokyo-3 and causes the city’s survivors to relocate permanently, Shinji reflects on not having “anybody left to call [his] friend.”7 This talent for saving people’s lives ironically isolates Shinji from those whom he saves. Introspection becomes Shinji’s refuge from an unpleasant reality, but upon closer examination it may expose him to something unsettling about himself in the context of a reality of which he is very much a part. During Shinji’s existential lament over his duties as an Eva pilot, he encounters the teenager known as Kaworu Nagisa, Tabris’ alias. All previous angels up to this point had assumed monstrous forms, but now the last angel dons a human form and is incidentally the fifth child designated to replace the pilot of Eva Unit-02, Asuka, who became psychologically unfit to operate an Eva after her poor performance in recent battles. Shinji and Tabris’ initial interaction is most cordial and leads to more intimate verbal exchanges. Their discussions do little in terms of revealing anything about Tabris, but they do reveal something about the introverted Shinji to the inquisitive angel. In an encounter initiated by Shinji, Tabris purports that: You are extremely afraid of any kind of initial contact, aren’t you? Are you that afraid of other people? I know that by keeping others at a distance, you avoid a betrayal of your trust. But while you may not be hurt that way, you mustn’t forget that you must endure the loneliness. Man can never completely erase this sadness, because all men are fundamentally alone.8

This realization, compatible with McEachran’s existentialism, exposes an ambivalent side to a person’s passion for company. As Tabris understands it, each human being betrays himself or herself in an attempt to avoid being betrayed by another individual. Shinji avoids getting hurt by his relations with other people by “running away”, but that evasion hurts him as well, for he betrays his desire to relate to others in order not to be alone. As some psycho-sociological disorder, it can be said that Shinji is caught up in the hedgehog’s dilemma, where the closer he gets to another person, both wind up getting hurt. This personal ambivalence towards choosing different relationships, including solitude, demonstrates why an individual would opt for the least painful one. No matter what

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Shinji opts to do, his avoidance of suffering contributes to suffering. Accordingly, Shinji cannot stop suffering. The Russian existentialist, Nicholas Berdyaev, offers some insight into the suffering associated with the human need for companionship. Although his stance on suffering incorporates God into the higher nature of human suffering, because it is this higher nature that suffers, his comments are applicable to Shinji’s dilemma. In The Divine and The Human, Berdyaev confirms that “[l]oneliness is one of the sources of suffering […]. The need to share one’s suffering with others is expressed in complaint, tears and cries. In this way […] man asks for help.”9 In an attempt to overcome his loneliness, Shinji confides in Tabris as a friend. This solution, as Berdyaev believes, consists of an individual’s need to share personal misery with others for the sake of better understanding and compassion. Tainted by hesitation, Shinji’s attempts to interact with Tabris play out awkwardly due to his lack of positive human contact. What consolation, if any, can an individual find by voicing one’s suffering to another? The risk Shinji takes here relates to whether Tabris will accept his pleas. Seeing how fragile Shinji is, Tabris empathizes with him, something that many people have felt for Shinji, but they never openly and sincerely expressed such. This newfound attachment sets Shinji up for further devastation. Inevitably, Tabris betrays Shinji. The nascent friendship between the two boys dissolves when Shinji discovers who the last invading angel is. Viewers and non-viewers should be aware that Tabris’ name is never even mentioned in the episode. Their final encounter consists of a battle to the end, namely, either Shinji kills Tabris and saves humanity, or Tabris exterminates humanity along with Shinji. The onus of this either/or dilemma rests on Shinji, and given these two conclusions, he desires neither one. One is reminded of the Kierkegaardian account of Abraham’s sacrifice of his beloved son, Isaac, on God’s command. “The epic story of sacrifice,” Alastair Hannay writes, “puts in sharp focus the situation of a choice where the outcome, whatever [chosen], is to be regretted.”10 Unlike the events in the Hebrew Covenant story, God makes no demand, no angel stays Shinji’s hand, and Shinji at that decisive moment at having to act on a choice is utterly isolated. In Fear and Trembling, Abraham’s exhibition of a stalwart brand of faith fascinates Søren Kierkegaard, because faith coupled with decisiveness highlights immense personal struggle. Abraham “is compelled by his very existence at this moment to make a decision and to make it in absolute isolation…This is individuality and freedom of the highest order, for in this moment of decision Abraham must decide and

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determine what is to happen.”11 Faith and choice belong to Abraham, but one external factor is overlooked. Edmund Perry stresses “it must be pointed out that Abraham, though lonely, was not alone in his moment of decision to obey God. Isaac is no passive figure in this incident.”12 Shinji’s decision is made in complete isolation, for there is no sacrificial lamb, no “original position” to return to, and no reward to claim “more joyfully than the first time.”13 Besides, as Shinji and Tabris descend into Terminal Dogma, the location that supposedly houses Adam, the people responsible for monitoring Shinji’s actions lose all “communication with the pilot.”14 Even Shinji’s Eva Unit-01 operates without the restrictive umbilical cord, which steadily supplies the Eva with power. But it now moves on its own. Having all external ties severed, Shinji cannot expect any human intervention. The isolated Shinji exemplifies the Kierkegaardian concept of the individual who desperately has to perform a task that no other can perform, simply because no substitution is possible. In other words, no person can walk in another individual’s shoes if that individual is still wearing them. The key similarity between Abraham and Shinji is that both are autonomously free to decide what is to happen on the basis of an exclusive choice, one that will have an impact on the lives of many other people. This influence over others fuels Shinji’s suffering. Realizing that he must act, Shinji anguishes over what to do. But what is Shinji’s problem? Seen from a utilitarian perspective, the answer is simple: Kill Tabris, the enemy. In doing so, humanity survives and Shinji is seen as its saviour. Yet killing Tabris inadvertently means that Shinji destroys the most genuine friendship that he has ever had. Worth noting is that Tabris never lays a hand on Shinji during the battle. Instead, Tabris pilots Eva Unit-02 from outside through some mysterious, angelic manipulation. It is peculiar how the angel of free will can never directly handle anything; free will has limitations. Viewers should take special notice that Tabris’ hands are always obscured from view. Only once do viewers, prior to the battle, see Tabris’ right hand, which is used to comfort a distressed Shinji. Making Shinji’s choice more excruciating, Tabris requests his own destruction once inside Terminal Dogma. The reason for this additional torment is because Shinji “will be destroyed. Only one life form can be chosen to evade the destruction and seize the future.”15 Shinji’s right hand trembles on Eva Unit-01’s console as Tabris relays that message. This emphasis on hands foreshadows the execution of Shinji’s free will. Since the future is what Shinji lives for and Tabris’ death guarantees it, Tabris’ request conveys an anti-suicidal message: If he allows Tabris to live, he betrays humanity and dies. But by destroying the angel of free will, Shinji by his own hands will be left emotionally

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devastated. Therefore, this either/or dilemma reveals that individual freedom is a freedom that induces change for better, worse, or ironically both. It is all too convenient for Shinji that his final battle is with the angel who governs over free will. The freedom that is of existential interest is not the freedom associated with death. As Tabris proclaims, “death may be the only absolute freedom there is.”16 His remark infers that death leads to freedom, and what death actually has to offer seems foreign to him, especially when he has the capacity “to live forever.”17 For Jean-Paul Sartre, “death is never that which gives life its meanings; it is, on the contrary, that which […] removes all meaning from life.”18 Sartre’s depreciative talk of death applies to Tabris’ announcement that his “life was meaningful because of [Shinji].”19 Vital to these final words is that Tabris, still alive, speaks about himself in the past tense and that Shinji is the source of meaning. Tabris deems the brief time he and Shinji had spent together most fulfilling; after that, Tabris goes silent. In this silence, Shinji, clutching Tabris in the right hand of Eva Unit-01, is “entirely and completely” left on his own to “decide and determine” humanity’s fate, as well as his own. The exclusiveness of this disjunction torments him, because everything external to Shinji is now internalized into his private universe, Shinji’s soul. Coincidently, Tabris gives an account of the soul: it is “a sacred territory in which no one may intrude. [It is] that wall that encloses every mind that exists.”20 The epic, climatic battle in Evangelion (really) occurs here. Unlike his battles with the angels, Shinji simultaneously wins and loses after each deliberation, for a choice not chosen is a choice permanently lost. Consider that in The Dream of a Ridiculous Man: A Fantastic Story, Fyodor Dostoevsky demonstrates how inner turmoil intensifies because of the exclusivity between two inseparable options. With Dostoevsky’s main character deciding on how to commit suicide, he reveals at that decisive moment: “I took up the revolver and […] was aiming it right at my heart— at my heart and not my head; earlier I had decided that I would definitely shoot myself […]. With the revolver pointed at my chest I hesitated for a second or two, and [...quickly] I fired.”21 The individual’s delay implies that he is not as committed to a desired action. Throughout his deliberation, this individual struggles with what he seemingly hopes to accomplish. It must have surely crossed his mind that if he opts for death, then he no longer has any future options to choose from. In relation to Sartre’s earlier comment, this choice is devoid of meaning, because the ridiculous man seeks comfort and closure in death. Expressed differently, however, an individual’s death frees the individual from the bonds of

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one’s own free will. In Shinji’s case, the freedom to choose, even a preferred choice, means that one particular option will bring about the death of one’s freedom to choose the option not selected. Confronting this situation, Shinji, in order not to destroy himself, must destroy free will, an option that is itself free. This deliberate death marks the source of individual suffering because of how some choices are selected and other choices are abandoned. From The Brothers Karamazov, Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor, a character who pairs suffering with an individual’s “very possession of free will,”22 summarizes the ambivalent relation an individual has with the execution of one’s free will. “There is,” he states, “nothing more seductive for man than the freedom of his conscience, but there is nothing more tormenting either.”23 The Grand Inquisitor is concerned with the insoluble problem of an individual’s controlling one’s own fate and accepting responsibility for that fate in case something unpleasant occurs. Depending on what options an individual has, one may ponder ceaselessly over which option is the lesser of two evils, or the greater of two goods. Perhaps no personal preference exists between either option. Unlike the ridiculous man’s hesitation, the drawn-out pause that Shinji takes before he destroys Tabris and the personal lament that he goes through after Tabris’ death, affirms his doubt about what he should do next in relation to what Shinji really wants to do. Uncertainty is firmly in place even prior to meeting Tabris, for Shinji gazes upon the recently levelled Tokyo-3 and repeatedly asks: “What can I do?”24 Susan J. Napier, too, notices this despondency from the time Shinji first pilots an Eva, finding him to be “less than conventionally heroic.”25 It is as though Shinji, because he must choose, finds himself in a situation where he would, if he could, choose to be someone other than the one who has to make such a choice. In short, Shinji is the hero who longs not to be the hero. This last point raises the question about the act of choosing and the aftermath of what has been chosen, in that did Shinji choose to become a hero to save humanity from annihilation or did he choose to save humanity from annihilation and as a consequence became a dissatisfied hero? Discovering the intentions of why Shinji opted to do what he did is a difficult task, but one has to wonder why he hesitates for so long before doing what he originally sets out to do. In a state of suspended animation, the scene where Eva Unit-01 grasps Tabris remains frozen for over a minute, until the next scene reveals that Shinji fatally determines Tabris’ fate. The concern over this delay is that if Shinji pilots an Eva in order to combat angels because they intend to annihilate humanity, and if Tabris is an angel that intends to carry out this deed, then it does not make any .

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sense as to why Shinji does not destroy the enemy immediately. Is Shinji subjecting Tabris to a masochistic form of punishment, whereby Tabris may believe that his life will be spared due to a change of heart? Some viewers may on the contrary conclude that humanity’s salvation is not a priority for Shinji. A misanthropic attitude emerges when Shinji, just prior to the battle, admits to Tabris that he hates dealing with people, mainly his father. Even in an earlier episode, he shows contempt for his fellow human beings. After his battle with the 13th angel, Bardiel, who violated Eva Unit-03, took the child pilot prisoner, and defeated Eva Units-00 and 02, Shinji threatens to destroy NERV’s underground complex and all its personnel, because his hand, at his father’s command, was forced to destroy the angel regardless of the captive’s survival. Most disparaging for Shinji is that he was unwillingly used as an instrument for his father’s purpose. The similarities between Evangelion and the Covenant story are apparent at this point. Compromising Shinji’s principle of not taking the life of another person, Gendo is living testimony that man is truly man’s enemy. Even Tabris is perplexed at how humans have a knack for using things they find abhorrent for their own benefit and survival.26 Though the angel’s reference is directed specifically at the Evas, his insinuation can be equally applied to how persons interact with or exploit other persons. Shinji isolates himself in order to find relief from such betrayal. McEachran’s position on giving up on man, then, is an attitude that Shinji would have no difficulty in adopting. Still, he dutifully returns to pilot an Eva. Saving humanity is only an afterthought for Shinji, for the question to be asked now is: Has Shinji given up on himself? As Shinji’s Eva Unit-01 defeats the unpiloted Eva Unit-02 at the heart of Terminal Dogma, Tabris does not let Shinji give up. Tabris’ tactical, though passive, resistance places the onus solely on Shinji to decide and determine what happens next. The exclusivity of choice confronting Shinji, kill or be killed, binds and compels him to act. Is Tabris contributing to Shinji’s suffering by doing nothing? Viewers of Evangelion must be awestruck by this predicament, because Shinji has been betrayed by a friend and is now in a position to retaliate without any resistance from Tabris. As a philosophical response, Berdyaev would acknowledge that suffering is going to accompany Shinji no matter what he chooses to do, because “man moves away from the world into himself, away from a world which is full of suffering and causes suffering […] but in withdrawing into himself and isolating himself he begins to experience new sufferings, and to feel a need to go out from himself again, to escape from the torturing engulfment in self.”27 This account of personal, internal struggle resembles Shinji’s situation as he pilots Eva Unit-01 from inside.

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Eva Unit-01’s amour offers no protection against the knowledge that the inhabitants of the world will perish if Tabris succeeds in coming into contact with Adam. Only Shinji’s conscience serves as the foundation to prevent such a catastrophe. To escape the suffering associated with his being indecisive, Shinji acts. The actualization of Shinji’s choice is, however, not without tormenting consequences. This animated series bears an eerie similarity to that moral challenge Dostoevsky’s Ivan Karamazov proposes in The Brothers Karamazov: “[Imagine] that you yourself are building the edifice of human destiny with the object of making people happy in the finale, of giving them peace and rest at last, but for that you must inevitably and unavoidably torture just one tiny creature […] would you agree to be the architect on such conditions?”28 Mick Broderick regards Neon Genesis Evangelion as achieving “what all major apocalyptic works invoke whether they be narrative, myth, prophecy, crusade or therapy—namely, a vision of society radically transformed from one of chaotic and imminent demise towards the liberation from oppression of an elect into a new realm of perpetual peace and harmony.”29 Such a global transformation hinges on a choice. For Dostoevsky, though, this God-like position is presented hypothetically. But Shinji unavoidably confronts this precise dilemma. His response to this challenge is not made arbitrarily; rather, it is drawn-out to demonstrate that there is a conscious, torturous effort to get a grip and handle on it. Most important to this Dostoevskian dilemma is not the notion that a single person’s decision determines the outcome of so many lives; rather, there is an attempt to mitigate human suffering through the exacerbation of a single person’s suffering. Given these conditions, one must wonder whether the individual, who determines which tiny creature shall suffer, suffers for making that determination and living with the consequences. Neither Ivan, the rationalist brother, nor Alyosha, the spiritual brother, desires to choose to be that architect. It seems rather apparent that both brothers would reject free will at this point. In Dostoevsky’s story, Ivan’s theological thought-experiment can never be actualized because of its speculative nature. For Shinji, there is no avoiding whatever choice he opts for, because he is seized by his own free will to put an end to deliberation. Even if Shinji could stall indefinitely, he would then prove that he could not freely end his so-called friend’s life. Shinji must live with the consequences of his own design. This exercise of Shinji’s free will always occurs with a commitment. It is not a commitment to any particular person or group, for Tabris no longer communicates with Shinji and NERV’s ties with Shinji have been severed. In terms of Berdyaev’s notion

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of withdrawing into and isolating oneself, the isolation Shinji experiences constitutes a freedom that cannot be influenced by any person or celestial being. The freedom of conscience to spare his friend or save humanity demonstrates a commitment for which Shinji alone opts. Additionally, Shinji does not commit himself recklessly, because the exclusivity of his options leaves no room for precarious alternatives or impulsive actions. Because of this predicament, he is mindful that he cannot return to the life he once lived, those “calm and boring” days after the Second Impact. It would have been less demanding for Shinji to destroy an enemy that looks like a monster, but Tabris, “one tiny creature”, is a most formidable foe, for he has a human face and, in Shinji’s words, “he was like me.”30 Metaphorically, the angel of free will encourages Shinji to act on his own. Tabris only outlines Shinji’s either/or dilemma: “Please destroy me. Otherwise, you will be destroyed.”31 Given this disjunctive, this genius of free will has no apparent concern for the external world, because free will never battles the free wills of other individuals. An individual’s will ceases to be free if another party interferes. Applying Berdyaev’s account of an individual’s need to escape from “the engulfment of self” to Shinji’s predicament, Shinji’s inner world of suffering includes not only a return to a world full of suffering, but a personal contribution of his suffering that becomes a part of that world. With Tabris’ death, humanity is spared from annihilation, but Shinji’s own suffering can never be annihilated. Though Berdyaev considers that a relationship with God could possibly absolve humanity’s suffering,32 Shinji has no one. Once again, God does not partake in this battle or its aftermath. At the very end of the episode, “The Final Messenger”, Misato, consoling Shinji without physical contact, which is consistent with how almost every character treats Shinji, tells him that he made the right choice, even after he professes his regret for killing Tabris and surviving. Echoing Sartre’s outlook on life, she says: “The one who deserved to survive is the one who has the will to make it happen. [Tabris] wished for death. He ignored his will to survive and chose to die for a false hope. Your survival is not a mistake, Shinji.”33 Misato means well, but for her to suggest that making the right choice and survival are important to Shinji is untrue. By calling her summation cruel, he is convinced that the choice he made was wrong because of how it contributed to his contrition. Perhaps she should have praised him for not letting humanity perish and fulfilling Tabris’ wish, for Shinji could accept the reality that he betrayed no one except himself. Then again, perhaps Tabris’ remark about death being the only absolute freedom, a critical jab at Sartre’s position, truly affirms that death

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frees an individual from the active compulsions and future responsibilities associated with one’s own free will. It seems grossly unfair that the fate of the world is made to rest on the decision of a fourteen-year-old boy. Additionally, Shinji never volunteered or dreamed about protecting the world from this extraordinary invasion. He is thrown into the role of a pilot of a giant mechanized, anthropomorphic weapon and manages to defeat almost every nemesis that he is called upon to destroy. The irony of this arrangement is that Shinji is no different than the Eva he pilots, for his quest for the approval of others by piloting an Eva means that his purpose in life is simply to be under another’s control. Thus the angel of free will offers Shinji the opportunity to break free from such a stagnant existence by encouraging him to exercise his own free will, but at an undesirable cost. Shinji’s choice is as extraordinary as the angel invasion itself, because due to its extreme demand of having Shinji be responsible for the death of either his friend or humanity, he must contend with the reality that in order to avert one catastrophe, he must embrace a personal catastrophe regardless of what he values in life. Situated inside Eva’s protective armour, Shinji merely functions as the pathetic conscience of a weapon designed to eradicate an enemy. Serving as a reminder of how fatalistic free will can be, the blood on Eva Unit-01’s right hand does not seem to wash clean after the battle with Tabris. Exercising his free will leads to an irreversible change that preserves both the world that he lives in and his suffering. This suffering makes him despondent, an inextricable condition resulting from one’s capacity to choose, and perpetuates his loneliness. Initially, another person’s suffering motivates Shinji to take on the role of an Eva pilot and in the end he suffers for it. In the context of Ivan Karamazov’s question about the architect, some will find that Shinji is the tiny creature who suffers, not Tabris. Certain choices will never be easy to select. There is no denying in Shinji’s mind that he alone bears responsibility for destroying the angel of free will. No longer having anyone to confide in, Shinji might as well withdraw back into himself, especially when most of his world has been destroyed. Hideaki Anno’s animated story does not end in the typical happilyever-after tradition. Evangelion explores the suffering associated with Shinji’s need to make a profound, though rare, choice, which is regrettable. It is disheartening to know that even though a hard fought victory is achieved, there is no cause for celebration. Napier is quite correct in saying that Evangelion’s appeal comes from the manner in which “its characters […are left] floating in a sea of existential uncertainty.”34 No viewer should expect that any resolution to such

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turmoil will occur at the end of the series. Shinji’s life has and will consist of a series of either grand or minute victories and loses. This particular episode of Evangelion illustrates how the capacity to choose defines human existence, bleak or otherwise. It is a naïve optimism that makes some people believe that all of life’s challenges and crises can be resolved by making the right choice. In determining an individual’s own fate as well as others’, not one of the figures in Kierkegaard or Dostoevsky’s writings is exempt from the suffering that accompanies the choice each makes. The apocalyptic imagery and melancholic overtones at the end of the episode, “The Final Messenger”, illustrate the trepidation of an individual conscience as it wages a battle to decide what to do at the macrocosmic level. Shinji is most likely left wondering whether a human existence determined by individual choice is either a cursed blessing or a blessed curse.

Notes 1

Davidson, Gustav, A Dictionary of Angels including the fallen angels (New York: The Free Press: 1971), 283. Attention should be directed at the fact that the 17th angel is never mentioned by its angelic name in this episode; instead, he is only known as Kaworu. In “Anime’s Apocalypse: Neon Genesis Evangelion as Millennarian Mecha”, Mick Broderick avers that Tabris is the name of the 17th angel. For the purpose of this paper, the 17th angel will be referred to as Tabris. All the names of the other angels presented in Evangelion can also be found in Davidson’s book with the exception of the 11th angel, Ireul. 2 McEachran, F., “The Existential Philosophy”, in The Hibbert Journal 46(3) (1948), 238. 3 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:3, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 4 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. In “The Final Messenger,” this logo is clearly marked on the wall of a holding cell where Misato discovers that the last angel may have infiltrated NERV’s headquarters. These two lines are taken from Robert Browning’s poem, Pippa Passes. 5 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:2, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 6 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:3, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 7 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000; modification mine. 8 Ibid.

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Berdyaev, Nicolas, The Divine and The Human, R. M. French, trans. (London: Geoffrey Bles, 1949), 83; modifications mine. 10 Hannay, Alastair, Kierkegaard: A Biography (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 189; modification mine. 11 Perry, Edmund, “Was Kierkegaard a Biblical Existentialist?”, in The Journal of Religion, 36(1) (1956), p. 19. 12 Ibid., p. 22. 13 Kierkegaard, Søren, Fear and Trembling, Alastair Hannay, trans. (New York: Penguin Books, 2003), 65. Later in this paper, one could argue that Tabris represents a sacrificial lamb in the same manner as Isaac, but the difference between Tabris and Issac is that the latter never requests to be sacrificed, whereas the former does. Additionally, viewers have to take into consideration that Shinji has to contend with Tabris’ silence, an act of resistance. 14 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 15 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 16 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 17 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 18 Sartre, Jean-Paul, Being and Nothingness: A Phenomenological Essay on Ontology, Hazel E. Barnes, trans. (New York: Washington Square Press, 1992), 690. 19 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000; emphasis and modification mine. 20 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000; addition mine. 21 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, A Writer’s Diary: volume Two/1877-1881, Kenneth Lantz trans. and anno. (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1994), 948- 949; modification mine. As an interesting side note, this consideration relating to one’s heart and one’s head is also illustrated in the battle where Eva Unit-01 is pierced in the heart and Eva Unit-02 is stabbed in the head. When Shinji ponders over Tabris’ fate, the scene shows that Eva Unit-02’s knife remains lodged in Eva Unit-01’s chest, symbolizing Shinji’s damaged heart. 22 Scanlan, James P., Dostoevsky the Thinker (Ithaca: Cornel University Press, 2002), 111. 23 Dostoevsky, Fyodor, The Brothers Karamazov: A Novel in Four Parts with Epilogue, Richard Pevear and Larissa Volokhonsky, trans. and anno. (New York: Vintage Classics, 1991), 254. 24 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8. dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD. ADV Films, 2000. 25 Napier, Susan J., “When the Machines Stop: Fantasy, Reality, and Terminal Identity in Neon Genesis Evangelion and Serial Experiments Lain”, in Science Fiction Studies 29(3) (2002), 425.

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Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 27 Berdyaev, 81. 28 Brothers Karamazov, p. 245; modification mine. 29 Broderick, Mick, “Anime’s Apocalypse: Neon Genesis Evangelion as Millennarian Mecha,” in Intersections: Gender, History and Culture in the Asian Context, March 2002, URL: http://wwwsshe.murdoch.edu.au/intersections/issue7/broderick_review.html, accessed 10 March 2007. 30 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 31 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000. 32 “The contradiction between the need of man and the conditions of his finite existence in the natural world is insoluble and presupposes the necessity of an act of transcendence and of an end. Is it possible for the Good to save from suffering? It does not save and it cannot save and, therefore, redemption and a Redeemer are necessary; it is divine love and not only human which is needed.” But in Evangelion, God is presumably stationed in heaven” (Berdyaev, 83-84). 33 Neon Genesis Evangelion: Collection 0:8, dir. Hideaki Anno, subtitled DVD, ADV Films, 2000; modification mine. 34 Napier, 424; addition mine.

CHAPTER SEVEN SCIENCE FICTION AND METAL MUSIC: THE DYSTOPIAN VISIONS OF VOÏVOD AND FEAR FACTORY LAURA WIEBE TAYLOR

When the science fiction genre infiltrates the world of popular entertainment, it most often takes the form of literature or film, but the wide range of scientific, technological, futuristic, and alien imagery associated with science fiction finds its way into other media as well, including popular music—from David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust alien alterego to the “cosmological jazz” of Sun Ra and his Intergalactic Jet-Set Arkestra.1 The genre of metal music—an off-shoot of rock that tends to emphasize distorted guitars, harsh vocals, the low frequency rumble of bass guitar and drums, and high levels of volume and/or speed—has also intersected with science fiction, particularly with science fiction’s darker, dystopian elements. The following analysis examines this intersection, the crossbreeding of metal music and dystopian science fiction narratives as expressed in the work of two metal bands, Voïvod and Fear Factory. Metal music’s relationship with science fiction can be traced back to the early 1970s releases of the prototypical heavy metal band, Black Sabbath,2 but in the 1980s it was Voïvod that emerged as the pre-eminent example of the science fiction metal band, weaving science fiction themes, imagery, and narratives into its sound, lyrics, artwork and videos. In the 1990s, Fear Factory made its own bid for the science fiction metal title with its technologically oriented, science fiction inflected take on heavy metal music, while Voïvod maintained its own science fiction focus, experimenting at the same time with its sound. Voïvod’s and Fear Factory’s approaches to science fiction are not identical, and an examination of their works reveals differences of outlook and priorities, but a significant common thread links these metal bands’ conception of humanity’s potential future in terms of technology. One of the key issues

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underlying Voïvod’s and Fear Factory’s engagement with science fiction and the dystopian tradition, specifically in the late-1990s, is the struggle for an autonomous and human existence in a highly mechanized and technologized world. Voïvod and Fear Factory, on the albums Phobos (1997) and Obsolete (1998) respectively, have crafted dystopian narratives in their music and lyrics, but the visions conveyed by sound and text do not always coincide. This analysis looks at the disjunctions as well as the correspondences between music and lyrics, proposing a reading that takes both sonic and verbal dimensions into account. In examining the science fiction narratives of Phobos and Obsolete, I suggest a semiotic reading of the sound of metal music, and use this semiotics, in coordination with literary textual analysis, to interrogate representations of humanity, technology, and technologized systems as exemplified on these albums.3 In these works, there is a persistent anxiety that humanity may be lost, not to technology, but to the mechanized technological systems that humanity itself has put, or allowed to be put in place. Neither album entirely condemns humanity to machine-instigated obliteration, but their visions are clearly dystopian, and the openings they leave for hope are limited. While the degree and nature of liberating potential on Phobos and Obsolete may differ, both works present images of flawed and destructive systems, tempered by a restrained sense of hope that an alternate future still may be possible. Before embarking on an analysis of specific songs, it is necessary to give a brief overview of the sonic shorthand at work in metal music that allows these bands to evoke images of humanity, technology, and mechanized systems with sound. For example, the human voice seems the most obvious vehicle for signifying humanity in a piece of music, but in metal music, the voice plays an ambiguous role. One can rarely describe the metal vocal performance as natural because metal vocalists often “deliberately distort” or “overdrive” their voices.4 Wailing, yelling, and screaming,5 as well as grunting and growling, are also common vocal techniques in metal, and have the effect of distancing metal singing from ordinary human speech.6 Metal vocalists who grunt and growl also tend to avoid the melodies common to conventional singing styles, and several metal bands have borrowed, what Mark Dery has noted, as industrial music’s technique of electronically processing the voice to produce synthetic, computerized tones—concisely described by Karen Collins as “vocal mechanisation.”7 The metal voice only sounds human when used melodically, or more significantly, when the distortion is peeled away. The metal guitar, on the other hand, is clearly a modern technological invention, but functions as a vehicle of human individuality, creativity and

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vitality. Virtuosity is a highly valued trait in a metal guitarist, and finds expression through solos8 and lead melodies,9 which offer a sense of individual freedom or liberation.10 Metal’s lead melodies, and particularly guitar solos, evoke and enact notions of humanity and autonomy. Drawing upon the tradition of virtuosity in classical or art music, a rock or metal guitarist’s mastery of her, or more often his, instrument may serve a symbolic function, signifying heroism, individualism or “an escape from social constraints” —succinctly, human individuality.11 The guitar also seems a particularly human instrument when situated with the synthesizer as its foil. In metal culture, the opposition between guitar and synthesizer, or guitar and sampler, stems from a few different and somewhat contradictory points. The initial dichotomy between guitar and keyboard was tied to issues of masculinity, power, and the vitality of live performance.12 If the guitar is the ultimate metal instrument, the keyboard or piano seems more at home in art music (such as Chopin), new age (ranging from Jean Michel Jarre to Enya), and other forms of music less heavy than metal, including pop and dance music.13 Yet synthesizers can produce harsher sounds, as is the case in industrial music. Using digital music technology (synthesizers and samplers), industrial music captures features of the urban industrial soundscape—sirens, factories, traffic, for example—and reproduces them in song,14 or mimics the sounds of high tech or industrial machinery to critique the alienation and dehumanisation of contemporary society.15 Some metal musicians have embraced the potential heaviness of synthesizers,16 but digital instruments’ capacity for reproducing the sound of the metal guitar, without the guitarist, threatens the role of the human musician, and synthesizers’ programming negates the spontaneity and individuality of the guitar solo. The keyboard’s role in metal, then, is ambiguous, contingent on how it is used. Similarly, despite the metal guitar’s strong association with human expression, it too can represent something entirely different, depending on how it is played. Stripped of the humanity of melodic leads and virtuosic solos, the metal guitar can evoke sonic images of the oppressive, mechanized systems of technological dystopia. Robert Walser argues that the sound of a distorted electric guitar conveys a sense of power,17 but when that guitar takes on the role of a rhythm instrument, playing in tight percussive coordination with bass and drums, it becomes, according to Ronald Bogue, part of a massive sonic machine.18 This machine’s steady repetition of precise actions can be used to suggest images of technological domination and oppressive, mechanized control.

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Thus, according to these conventions of representation, the undistorted or “natural” (non-mechanical) human voice and the lead or solo guitar function as signs of humanity, particularly when melody is involved. Synthesizers and samplers generally stand in for technology, ranging from the softer associations of new age-ism to the harsher connotations of the city or the threat of human obsolescence. The rhythm guitar, acting in coordination with bass and drums, tends to suggest the operation of an oppressive machine or mechanical system. The albums discussed here— Voïvod’s Phobos and Fear Factory’s Obsolete—draw on all these conventions to sonically address the struggle, reflected in their lyrics, for human or individual autonomy in a technological dystopia. Voïvod has worked with science fiction themes throughout its career, beginning in the early 1980s. With the recording of its fourth album, Dimension Hatröss (1988), the band expanded its sonic palette by adding digital music technology to its creative tools in the production of a more deeply nuanced representation of the lyrics’ technological concerns.19 Influenced by industrial music’s use of samplers and experimental recording techniques,20 Voïvod found new ways to carry over the dystopian fears expressed in its lyrics into its sound, and the band continued to combine digital music technology and speculative fiction in varying degrees on its next releases—Nothingface (1989), Angel Rat (1991) and The Outer Limits (1993). Fear Factory’s union of samplers, heavy guitars, and science fiction emerged with the band’s 1992 debut album Soul of a New Machine,21 which shares its name with Tracy Kidder’s Pulitzer prize winning nonfiction account of the late 1970s world of computer engineering.22 The title of the follow-up recording, Fear is the Mindkiller (1993), has literary rather than documentary associations, corresponding with a line—“Fear is the mind-killer”—that is part of the Bene Gesserit “Litany against Fear” in Frank Herbert’s medieval science fiction novel Dune.23 The Fear is the Mindkiller EP more explicitly demonstrated the band’s preoccupation with high technology and displayed a deeper fascination with science fiction inflected electronic music, comprising six techno-industrial remixes of four songs from the debut album. This began Fear Factory’s multiple album relationship with music producer and industrial musician Rhys Fulber.24 These recordings introduced Voïvod’s and Fear Factory’s engagement with digital music technology as part of their efforts to address dystopian themes in music, but both bands demonstrated a deeper integration of guitar and synthesizer sounds (and thus a more complex inter-relationship between human and machine) on their 1995 albums—Negatron by Voïvod

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and Demanufacture by Fear Factory—while still remaining firmly situated within the metal genre and scene.25 Yet the next releases by each band, Voïvod’s Phobos (1997) and Fear Factory’s Obsolete (1998), took the idea of science fiction metal to a new level of execution. These recordings, science fiction concept albums in both cases, approach the integration of the technological and organic holistically. They are the culmination of each band’s hybridisation of digital music technology and extreme metal, alongside some of their most explicitly communicated dystopian narratives. Science fiction and dystopia are not isolated to any one media and, inevitably, both Voïvod and Fear Factory have drawn upon influences from literature and film in their production of dystopian science fiction songs and albums. While Kidder and Herbert supplied Fear Factory with record titles, the band’s narratives are more closely related to classic dystopias such as Yevgeny Zamyatin’s We (1924) and George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four (1949) in their depiction of rigid, highly organized societies and totalitarian governments that use technology for surveillance and enforcement. More recent inspirations include the first two Terminator films, surfacing in several songs dealing with aggressive cyborg figures, and violent conflict between humans and machines.26 Fear Factory also incorporated samples from The Terminator (1984) into its music on the album Demanufacture (1995).27 Many of Fear Factory’s influences are easy to identify, in part because the band’s narrative, at least on Obsolete, is extremely detailed. The liner notes outline much of the story: explanations appear in between the lyrics, providing context for the scenes depicted within the songs. Voïvod’s concept albums do not include such additional information, which opens up the narratives to a broader spectrum of interpretations. Similarly, the band’s wide-ranging inspirations (tales of nuclear disaster, 1950s B-movies, conspiracy theories, physics, and so on) are less clearly defined, although not completely elusive. The cyborg figures in Voïvod’s work resemble the androids and schizophrenics of Philip K. Dick, for example, and many of Voïvod’s themes resonate with the instability and boundary confusion of Dick’s fiction—between inside and outside, the individual and the corporation, authenticity and simulation, reality and hallucination.28 However, the extended narrative of which Phobos is a part owes a great deal to 1950s science fiction films as well, specifically, The Day the Earth Stood Still (1951) with its focus on a guardian from another planet who is charged with enforcing peace.29 Phobos deals with a similar figure, reviving a character Voïvod had invented and used in the past;30 on this record the character is called

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Anark, and the album describes his reawakening and subsequent efforts to save a planet oppressed under the weight of a technologically enforced dictatorship.31 As his name and the lyrics suggest, Anark has been awakened to disrupt the system and “bring on anarchy” (“Mercury”). Similarly, Obsolete relates the dystopian tale of a society held in bondage by its own technology, and follows the efforts of one character, named Edgecrusher, to resist.32 Both narratives address the issue of humans and machines in a highly mechanized or technologized world through two significant strategies: questioning the boundaries between human and machine, and evoking a sense of the individual’s struggle against oppressive, mechanistic social and political systems. The lyrics of Phobos offer no clear distinctions between human and machine. The narrative lacks any unequivocally human characters, and rather than pitting organic life against technology, the album contrasts expressions of individual autonomy against the mechanistic oppression of systematic control. The song “Rise,” for example, describes the protagonist, Anark, as he “[l]ies sleeping in death” until being “activat[ed]” into a“[s]econd life” by a radiation signal, which makes it unclear whether he is a person responding to medical treatment or a machine that can be switched back on. Similarly, other characters described as “dead” have a capacity for being “reset” into a new phase of operation (“Neutrino”). The humanity of the story’s villain, an ambiguous figure who may be Anark’s darker side, or a separate character named Quantum, is also uncertain. The song bearing Quantum’s name refers to processes of duplication, replication, subdivision and modulation, and suggests that Quantum may actually be a clone or machine reproduction of an original character who is no longer in the picture (“Quantum”). Sonically, Phobos evokes blurred human-machine boundaries through the electronic processing of singer Eric Forrest’s vocal performance. Occasionally, as in the songs “Phobos” and “Quantum,” his voice actually sounds more mechanical than human. The vocalisations throughout the entire album are extremely harsh and unnatural, ranging from the relatively clear lines proclaiming resistance against the oppressive controlling system (“The Tower”) to the highly distorted descriptions of Anark’s reawakening in “Rise.” The instrumental layers of Phobos are also drenched in distortion and electronic effects. Without any traditional guitar solos or soaring leads, the human element is reduced to short bursts of vitality, attempts to break away from the technological systems of oppression evoked by the rhythm section. The majority of the riffs on the album are short and repetitive, demonstrating little rhythmic or melodic variation within the guitar parts

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or between guitar, bass and drums. “Quantum” is built primarily on a relentlessly plodding guitar riff that alternates between only two chords, underscored by a fairly steady pounding of the drums and no audible deviation in the bass part. The sense of oppression created by sections like this on Phobos ties in well with the album’s descriptions of a society controlled through technological systems. Surveillance is one of the oppressor’s main methods of exercising control: his “spy web satellite” has global range (“Phobos”), and he uses this or a similar computer-based system to initiate a program that spreads fear (“Phobos”). The music that accompanies this part of the narrative features another plodding riff, with slightly more melodic variation, but this leads into a faster, more oppressive riff consisting of one chord struck numerous times in quick succession, hammering away in a sonic analogue of Quantum’s computerized system of oppression. The album’s atmosphere of technologically facilitated control is frequently challenged by moments of resistance or opposition—the individuality of the human element takes shape in increasing variation and unpredictability, particularly in the guitar parts. The songs that serve as calls to resistant action—“Mercury” and “The Tower”—particularly convey a sense of vitality. “Mercury,” for example, starts off at a more upbeat pace than the previous track, and features more melodic and rhythmic variation, as well as some independent movement in the bass and a fast, technical guitar break. “The Tower” is similarly upbeat, but offers other deviations, such as the movement of guitar and voice in unison, and two breaks where the relentless drive of guitar, bass and drums drops completely away, leaving undistorted or “clean” guitar tones and a few electronic sound effects. This pairing of more “natural” instrumentation with electronic effects (another blending of organic and technological, perhaps human and machine) follows an earlier, similar expression on Phobos—a short instrumental piece featuring an accordion melody and a wash of electronic hums, booms and other synthetic tones (“Temps Mort”). Some of the songs on Phobos create a sense of struggling rather than integrated forces, pitting resistance—the battle for autonomy—directly against the oppressor’s technology of control. The lyrics of “Neutrino” describe the villain correcting his “mind control” program to “repress [the] resistance” rising up against his power, to the accompaniment of a threechord riff with a steady, driving rhythm. This rhythm gradually becomes more insistent, with more rapid guitar strumming, and more frequent, steady drum hits. But the steady, three-chord riff gives way to one with a

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much stronger melodic progression until this riff too is interrupted—by a brief call and answer section in which a low-pitched, short and repetitive line from the rhythm section duels with a high-pitched melodic flourish played on the guitar alone. This “human” interruption provides an aural manifestation of the resistance that the oppressor, with his mind control program, is trying to repress. Further elements of the song’s performance suggest that he may have failed. The final repetition of the word “repress” comes in a desperate shout, and the song ends as it began, with a climbing guitar line that seems to signify the rising of the people. The album’s verbal indications of hope are ambiguous: suggestions that a “new light” is rising (“Rise”), that one should “fear not tomorrow” (“The Tower”), that one world, at least, has ultimately been saved (“Forlorn”). But even that final salvation is open to interpretation. Anark announces, “mission complete” (“Forlorn”) but it is unclear whether success lies in destroying a world that presented a threat to itself and other planets or in restoring an oppressed and threatened society to a condition of freedom and independence. Either way, Anark displays no interest in what will happen to the society afterwards; he merely fades back to his death-like sleep (“Forlorn”). Fear Factory’s Obsolete, like Phobos, imbeds its images of humanity in an overall atmosphere of oppressive technological control, but the very title of Obsolete points to a stronger investment in the fate and nature of humanity. The song “Obsolete” lays the issue out on the surface as it describes a scene in which an “enforcer,” a representative of “the system,” yells to a human crowd, “Man is obsolete!” Sonically, Obsolete’s deeper attachment to notions of humanity takes the form of more obvious markers of human-ness than those on Phobos, particularly the fairly numerous “natural” or undistorted vocal parts. The notion of “not-machine” surfaces in other elements as well, such as the performance of a real (i.e., not synthesized) orchestra on several songs (liner notes, 11). Obsolete’s dystopian narrative is also more explicit, as noted above: the liner notes for the album resemble a cinematic screenplay, and offer plot scenarios and scene descriptions between the lyrics. The prologue suggests that there are two kinds of humans in this dystopian society— those who live their lives obediently according to the “linear programming” imposed by the machines, and the rebellious dissidents who “secretly congregate” and maintain their humanity by causing disruptions, injecting chaos into the oppressive machine system (liner notes, 1). Despite the album’s concern with machines replacing humans, resistance actually requires association with, rather than abandonment of technology and technological imagery. For example, the protagonist’s

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name, Edgecrusher, evokes something more machine than human. In the opening song, “Shock,” he describes himself as a “power surge.” The line in which he sings, “I will be the power surge,” also addresses the human– technology relationship by pairing this technological image with one of the first examples of “natural,” melodic singing on the album. This is also the first of many passages that involve vocals and synthesizer moving in unison. Aside from these sections of melody and undistorted tones, the vocal performance on Obsolete is very harsh and unnatural (or “nonhuman”). Obsolete, like Phobos, lacks conventional guitar solos and has few melodic leads to evoke notions of humanity within the oppressive weight of guitar, bass and drums. One of the few breaks from this oppressive weight is in the melodic guitar line of “Descent,” a song in which Edgecrusher reflects on the meaning of his life and the value of his resistance. Although the guitar lead performed here exhibits limited range, it rises above the low frequency rumble of the rhythm section and acts independently in terms of both melody and rhythm, standing in stark contrast to songs like “SmasherDevourer,” which is also the name of a law enforcement machine, similar to the robot ED 209 from RoboCop.33 Representing the machine-run system, the Smasher-Devourer tries to woo its victims with promises of “salvation,” alternately growling and singing the word, but the song begins and ends with images of oppression and destruction—a repetitive, unmelodic guitar riff, references to killing, the word “salvation” growled out—and the only melody in the final bars comes from a solitary, descending keyboard line. Fear Factory’s narrative on Obsolete, like Voïvod’s on Phobos, works its way toward an ambiguous conclusion, but the ambiguity lies in different places. While the system of technologized control depicted on Phobos may have been overthrown, the Securitron system of Obsolete is clearly still in control at the end of the story: “[t]he few humans remaining” have given up the fight to instead “desperately search for answers” (10). Yet uncertainty surrounds the protagonist’s fate, and, by extension, the fate of humanity as a whole. The final song, “Timelessness,” situates Edgecrusher in darkness and pain (whether spiritual or physical, the lyrics do not explain), but musically this piece offers a hopeful message. Smoothly blending the parallel melodies of an undistorted voice and a string orchestra with swirling waves of atmospheric synthesizer sounds and new age effects until there is nothing left but a synthesized heart beat, the song offers the impression that Edgecrusher has transcended the limitations of his human form to rise

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above the oppressive mechanized system in the next step of human evolution—a union of human and technology. This conclusion is an effective culmination of the narrative because the album has refrained from casting technology itself as the villain, in part through Edgecrusher’s hybridity, but also through the layers of nonthreatening synthesizer sounds that run throughout Obsolete. These have suggested a celebration, rather than a condemnation of technology. It is not the machine itself, but the system, that is at fault. Though humans “created” the machines, the overriding system has become fixated on “order”: limited by its own “linear programming,” this mechanical system is unable to “compute” the human “variable” (liner notes, 1). Thus, it is the system’s oppressive insistence on imposing order that leads to humanity’s subjugation in this technological dystopia. To return to Phobos, and its representations of humanity, technology, and technological systems of control, it is necessary to emphasize that the difference between the songs that evoke a sense of human vitality, and those that evoke oppressive technological systems is relatively minor. Sonically, Phobos offers little sense of escape from oppression. Nearly every expression of autonomy takes place in close contact with the dominating mechanized system. Humanity is deeply imbedded in technology. The boundary between them is less significant than the ability to break free of oppressive control. But in the end, the listener is left with no certain knowledge regarding the future of the people or the system. Voïvod’s dystopian vision here is a fairly dark one. The only real hope it leaves room for is a recognition of the problem, and the possibility of resistance, which may be ultimately futile. Obsolete also privileges individual autonomy and lingering notions of humanity within the machine, but its narrative asserts that acts of human resistance against the system, lead not to its overthrow, but to danger and death. Edgecrusher spends most of the album running for his life. The only other openly rebellious character kills himself (“Freedom or Fire”). Musically, Obsolete creates more space for the sounds of human expression, but then complicates that sense of autonomy by suggesting that humanity’s liberation will come, not through humans actively conquering the machine system, but through a “letting go,” a giving up one’s attachment to individual human form. Still, the liberating potential of these albums does not (cannot) depend on their capacity for envisioning utopia. The narrative tradition to which Phobos and Obsolete belong allows us to identify where we do not want our actions to lead us—the “dystopian imagination,” as Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan have stated, is a “prophetic vehicle,” warning

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us about what our world could become.34 By seeing where we do not want to end up, we may be encouraged to seek for another path that leads toward a more desirable destination. But this process begins with the recognition of a problem and of the possibility of resistance; on Phobos and Obsolete, the identification of real problems and the representations of resistance leave room for belief that, in the end, the dystopian futures depicted by Voïvod and Fear Factory are not inevitable. The persistent image evoked by the combination of heavy metal sounds and science fiction texts on these two records is that of a pervasive mechanized system oppressing individuality and human autonomy. Yet, this representation (and, thus, the social and political systems for which it stands) is never completely immune to resistance, and never free of the sense that opposing forces are struggling against such domination. It is possible to see problems familiar from contemporary society within these futuristic texts. The dystopian worlds of Phobos and Obsolete could be ours, but the possibilities for hope on these albums assure us that mechanical and systematized oppression does not have to be our future.

Notes 1

McLeod, Ken, “Space Oddities: Aliens, Futurism and Meaning in Popular Music,” Popular Music 22.3 (2003): 341-342. 2 See Taylor, Laura Wiebe, “Images of Human-Wrought Despair and Destruction: Social Critique in British Apocalyptic and Dystopian Metal,” in Heavy Metal Music in Britain, ed. Gerd Bayer (Aldershot, UK and Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2008). 3 The interpretations of the music proposed here owe much to the metal criticism of Robert Walser and Ronald Bogue, as well as Karen Collins’s work on industrial music, and the author’s own experience as a metal fan, musician, deejay, and critic. 4 Walser, Robert, Running with the Devil: Power, Gender, and Madness in Heavy Metal Music (Hanover, NE: Wesleyan, 1993), 54. 5 Weinstein, Deena, Heavy Metal: The Music and its Culture (Da Capo, 2000), 26. 6 Bogue, Ronald, “Violence in Three Shades of Metal: Death, Doom and Black,” in Deleuze and Music, ed. Ian Buchanan and Marcel Swiboda (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2004), 107. 7 Dery, Mark, Escape Velocity: Cyberculture at the End of the Century (New York: Grove, 1996), 80; Collins, Karen, “‘The Future is Happening Already’: Industrial Music, Dystopia and the Aesthetic of the Machine” (PhD diss., University of Liverpool, 2002), 399-406. 8 Weinstein, 23-24.

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9 Bogue, Ronald, Deleuze’s Wake: Tributes and Tributaries (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 2004), 94. 10 Walser, 54. 11 Macan, Edward, English Progressive Rock and the Counterculture (New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 46. See also Walser (75 and chapter 3), and Steve Waksman’s Instruments of Desire: The Electric Guitar and the Shaping of Musical Experience (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 243. 12 Walser, 41 and 109; Christe, Ian, Sound of the Beast: The Complete Headbanging History of Heavy Metal (New York: Harper Entertainment, 2003), 223; Bogue, Deleuze’s Wake, 93. 13 Bogue, Deleuze’s Wake, 93. 14 Dery, 80. 15 Collins, 13. 16 Bogue, Deleuze’s Wake, 93. 17 Walser, 41. 18 Bogue, Deleuze’s Wake, 95. 19 Dome, Malcolm, “The Story Behind Voivod’s Dimension Hatross,” in Metal Hammer June 2005, 91. 20 Dome, 90. 21 Berelian, Essi, The Rough Guide to Heavy Metal (New York: Rough Guides, 2005), 123. 22 Kidder, Tracy, The Soul of a New Machine (New York: Avon, 1981). 23 Herbert, Frank, Dune (New York: Berkley Books, [1965] 1984), 8. 24 Berelian, 123. Rhys Fulber was also a member of Front Line Assembly, a band described as “cyberpunk rock” by Dery (82). 25 Bogue for example, describes Demanufacture as a deliberate “fusion of industrial and death [metal music] timbres” (Deleuze’s Wake, 93). 26 The Terminator. Directed by James Cameron. USA, 1984. Terminator 2: Judgement Day. Directed by James Cameron. France/USA, 1991. 27 Burton C. Bell (Fear Factory vocalist and lyricist), personal interview with the author, November 14, 2005. 28 For an insightful analysis of Dick’s fiction see Hayles, N. Katherine, How We Became Posthuman: Virtual Bodies in Cybernetics, Literature, and Informatics (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), chapter 7. 29 The Day the Earth Stood Still. Directed by Robert Wise. USA, 1951. Philip K. Dick and The Day the Earth Stood Still are among many influences acknowledged by Voïvod’s drummer and concept writer, Michel Langevin. (Langevin, personal interview with the author, 17 November 2005.) 30 Dome, 91. This character, generally referred to as the Voïvod, appears on six Voïvod albums: War and Pain (1984), Rrröööaaarrr (1986), Killing Technology (1987), Dimension Hatröss (1988), Nothingface (1989) and Phobos (1997). 31 Voïvod, Phobos, 1997. Hereafter cited in text by song title. 32 Fear Factory, Obsolete, 1998. Hereafter cited in text by song title or page number of liner notes.

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RoboCop. Directed by Paul Verhoeven. USA, 1987. Baccolini, Raffaella, and Tom Moylan, “Introduction. Dystopia and Histories,” in Dark Horizons: Science Fiction and the Dystopian Imagination, ed. Raffaella Baccolini and Tom Moylan (New York and London: Routledge, 2003), 1-2. 34

PART III: SCIENCE FICTION AND P.K. DICK’S ANDROIDS

CHAPTER EIGHT FRANKEN-BORGS AND MEMORABLE BODIES: REPRESENTATIONS OF MEMORY AND MONSTROSITY IN RIDLEY SCOTT’S BLADERUNNER KIMBERLY DUFF

As contemporary Western society pursues its romance with digital communications technologies, our relationship with memory, and our access to memory, has become an increasingly fetishized commodity. Beginning with the technology of the printing press, to the photograph, to the postmodern concept of Randomly Accessed Memory (RAM), memory has become a potentially collective interface of intertextuality—a palimpsest of experience and enactment where, unlike the tangible artifact of the photograph, it is instantly more accessible, and mutable, to more people through digital mediums such as the Internet. Our escalating reliance on digital forms of memory storage has pushed us further into the realms of science fiction as we rocket toward a society dependent on digital media for daily life. As a result, our identities are progressively more tied up in Donna Haraway’s notion of cyborg subjectivity.1 As we continue to move away from purely organic forms of being and incorporate technology into our daily existence, we have become a hybrid of organic materials and technological interventions. Haraway suggests that such hybridity is linked to unbounded and accessible memory (outside of spatial and temporal restraints—what she refers to as equidistant memory stores) that was unfounded before digital culture and has become an integral aspect of the composite nature of cyborg subjectivity. Our memories, and in many ways our identities, have become digital. In making such an assertion, she implies that RAM has become securely bolted to our machinated (cyborg) identities. Composite in nature and memory, according to Haraway, we are no longer simply human. We have evolved from purely biological beings to composite identities that

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encompass the biological and technological. The notion of the technological body has become so commonplace that we often do not even consider it to be outside of the biological. Spanning from the intervention of medical technology in, for example, the discipline of psychology and its chemical interventions in the functioning of the human brain, to the prevalence of computers and cameras in the operating room, to cochlear implants for the hearing impaired, Western Society has charged onto the playing field of the technological and human interface with an intent to make the human and technological interface a seamless and natural occurrence. After enhancing our bodies both internally and externally through technology, and using technology to store our thoughts and ideas, how are we rendered as individuals? Are we teasing with the idea of Frankenstein’s creature - but in a more socially acceptable and less obviously monstrous way? Using Ridley Scott’s Bladerunner2 as a model, this paper focuses on the function of memory as a mode of identity in the machine of the body, and how the composite nature of digital memory calls into question issues of subjectivity and monstrosity. The connections between the technologized body, identity and memory, memory transmission and storage are the concerns here. How do we envision the perfect yet mutable construct of technological memory? Is this an instance of postmodern monstrosity when the lines between human and machine become so blurred (or, are we replicants in the making)? And where is monstrosity located—perhaps beyond the monster?

An Identity More Human? The eyes in the opening scene of Bladerunner reflect the postapocalyptic city of Los Angeles as fire plumes burn atop smoke stacks among the modern pyramids of the Tyrell Corporation. These eyes materialize, reflecting the fire and lights of the city, and suggest a surveillance that sees and, more importantly, remembers. Positioning the eyes above the city, watching over the destruction and destitution that has become Los Angeles, the eyes look over the city and Tyrell’s corporate pyramid. From the opening scene throughout the entire film, the eyes of both humans and replicants are signifiers of memory and identity. As Jay Clayton suggests, “the organs of vision symbolize both the vulnerable materiality of artificial creatures and their human capacity for sight.”3 Clayton’s notion of the “human capacity for sight” involves what is seen and what is remembered; the memories of what is seen lay the foundations for a sense of historical identity and self-awareness. As we see with Tyrell’s replicants, the eyes become one of the most significant conduits

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for individual identity. Mediating the interface of body, machine, and memory—it is through the eyes that Dr. Eldon Tyrell’s replicants (genetically engineered humanoid forms that have superior strength and agility as compared to humans, and who were outlawed on earth and only to be used off-world as slaves and soldiers) construct identities dependent on visual memories gained during their short lives. The replicants look, sound, and feel like humans. The only way to identify them is through their physical and emotional reactions to culturally and socially charged questions. According to Tyrell, the replicants are unable to provide normal human emotional reactions because they lack historical identity, built through memory, that instills the cultural and moral values that lead humans (most humans, anyway) to feel the difference between right and wrong. Each replicant has a built-in expiration date, with a life expectancy of three of four years, so that their gained memories do not lead them to becoming uncontrollable or, worse, undetectable as replicants. The potential for the understanding of self through gained memory is what Tyrell fears will lead the replicants to rebel, and therefore his rationale for a short life expectancy is born. While they gain more memory, they also achieve a sense of self that leads them to understand themselves as individuals, and not the slaves that they were created to be. As Tyrell insists, the eyes are intimately tied to memory and exhibit immediate emotional reaction. The replicant’s lack of historical identity aborts their movement toward human-like emotional responses. In order to detect such emotional reactions, the detective, or bladerunner, uses the Voight-Kampff (VK) test. The VK test employs a machine similar to a lie detector or polygraph test, which measures physical emotional responses and empathy through the involuntary movement of the eyes, heart rate, blush response and respiration. The most prominent feature of the test is the monitor that focuses on the eyeball, in particular, the pupil. If the predicted emotional response (for example, a fluctuation in the size of the pupil) is not achieved during the test, then the subject is identified as a replicant. The paradoxical potential of the eye is that it at once reveals the subject as a replicant while transmitting the memories that ultimately directs the replicant to an identity and self-awareness that pilots the replicant, in Tyrell’s words, toward an identity “more human than human.” So what does Tyrell means by more human - does more mean better or superior? If we assume that it does, then the fear of the monstrosity of the replicants understandably follows. If a replicant, for example Roy, is able to live long enough to build up a repertoire of memory from which to glean emotional responses and a sense of self, it becomes increasingly difficult for the bladerunner to detect

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it as non-human because it is slowly moving toward an identity that sutures these human qualities together with its engineered qualities of strength and endurance. Consider, this would be a genetically constructed being who is able to move through society undetected because the sutures are, unlike Frankenstein’s creature, almost invisible. The replicants are “more human than human,” and are consequently stronger, more efficient, and, possibly, more intellectually capable than humans. For Tyrell, the issue is the kinds of memories the replicant collects, and in turn what kind of identity is constructed, thus his experiment with Rachel. When Deckard (the bladerunner) meets Rachel (the experimental android) for the first time we get the sense of his fear of, and also his desire to understand, Rachel as a being that has been constructed to believe she is human – and in that sense the concept of Rachel as a replicant becomes a monstrosity. He realizes that the belief of being human, and the concept of self that is derived from that belief, is what each of us uses as a foundation for identity. Yet the desire to control and limit an artificial life that will potentially become human-like (to have emotion, thoughtful experiences, and a sense of self) is also troubling. Therein lays the paradox: that which we control may one day control us. From Arthur C. Clark4 to the Matrix,5 the story of humans making machines, machines beginning to think, machines take over the world, has been told numerous times. Fear, desire and uncertainty are what draw us to these concepts, and are also, as Jay Clayton suggests, the things that define monstrosity. As we move closer to the potential for artificial life to think and act on its own in the real world, we must wonder: are we becoming increasingly more like the replicants, or are they becoming increasingly more like us? If Bladerunner implies a blurring of the boundaries between artificial and human life, then how is the seemingly wanton giving and taking of artificial life rationalized? I would argue that such God-powers imply a sense of monstrosity greater than the monster itself. The ability to create life through science and technology is a monstrosity capable only through, as Jay Clayton suggests, “scientific hubris.”6 The scientific desire, in both Shelley’s seminal text and in Bladerunner, to replace the female role in procreation, and arguably eclipse the notion of God, is the seat of monstrosity in this case. The advancement of science, in this sense, troubles our notion of self and what it means to be a living and thinking creature, that is, human. As science continues to rely on major corporations that fund research and development, then ultimately procreation will be controlled and owned by major corporations. Joe Abbot addresses the potential in a Jamesonian postmodern reading of the contemporary fascination with technology. He suggests that “technology

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[…] according to Jameson, becomes a metaphor, a signifier, a ‘distorted figuration’ of a ‘deeper’ cancerous development: the dehumanizing of the individual at the hands of an overwhelming cultural machinery.”7 Tyrell’s ultimate power and control becomes monstrous with his increasing ability to create and destroy life, to make artificial life believe it is human, and to humanize artificial life to make it almost undetectable, all the while potentially endangering the human infrastructure (including the basic human right to life or survival) within society. The true extent of this monstrosity, the ultimately desired and feared thing called technological power, is uncovered in the final scene with Roy and Deckard. Where, as Abbot suggests, the tragic romantic hero uncovers his understanding of what it is to be human, to have the human qualities of memory, sight and feeling. And, further, a life cut short in order to accommodate and pursue technology and commerce is a social monstrosity.

Engineered Body, Engineered Eyes, Engineered Memories Jay Clayton’s discussion of the Frankenstein tradition touches on the concepts of sight, technology and monstrosity.8 Clayton states that our initial encounter with Frankenstein’s awakened creature is a description of his “yellow, watery eyes.” Clayton looks beyond Mary Shelley and spotlights Percy Shelley’s focus on eyes and monstrosity, suggesting that “the danger of the eyes in Percy Shelley’s poem (Alastar) lies not in their power to glare down at the Poet but in their tantalizing status as objects of desire.”9 For Percy Shelley, it is not entirely the possession of sight by the creature that is monstrous, but rather the act of being seen mixed with a desire to understand what the creature sees that is part of the monstrosity. We may see the creature and be fearful of it, but what happens when the creature sees us? We want to look away and to not be seen, and yet we cannot; this is similar to the eyes in the opening scene of Bladerunner where society is reflected in the disembodied eyes or, as Clayton refers, Medusa’s paralyzingly monstrous gaze. However, Clayton fails to follow the notion of the vision of the creature to its inevitable end after suggesting that the eyes “symbolize[d] both the vulnerable materiality of artificial creatures and their human capacity for sight.”10 I wish to push Clayton’s assertion further and suggest that the eyes are an important connection between body and memory because they represent a composite nature of memory acquired through the partial perspectives of engineered sight. For Frankenstein’s creature, the materiality of the eyes comes from the understanding that they are “dead” eyes, which have previously been the pathways to someone else’s thoughts and emotions but then reborn

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unnaturally. The creature has an understanding of what it is, of its identity, when it first sees its own reflection. The ability to see gives the creature its first sense of identity. Although its first sense of self is as a monster, the reader comes to understand that it is through this first reflection that it is becoming human-like because it begins to experience emotion and selfawareness. This is also where an aspect of monsrisity comes into play: ultimately the existence of Frankenstein’s creature suggests that technology can create life without birth, and that the life that technology creates can potentially adopt human-like traits, such as self-awareness and individual identity through lived experience. More than a “vulnerable materiality,” the function of eyes in Bladerunner does not suggest that the capacity of sight is ultimately a “human capacity,” but rather that the capacity to remember—to have memory gained through sight and thus develop a learned identity—is a “human capacity.” In the case of the replicants, such as Roy, that capacity becomes monstrously tragic; they become trapped between human and machine. The function of sight as a catylyst and conduit for memory, and in turn self-awareness and identity, leads the replicants Roy and Leon to Eyeworld (a genetic manufacturer of eyes for the Tyrell Corporation) in the hope that Chew (the biological technician that fabricated Roy Batty’s eyes) will provide answers regarding their “morphology” and “incept dates.” Unlike the Nexus 7 replicant Rachel, whose gifted memory makes her forget she is a replicant, the Nexus 6 replicants that have not been part of the memory gifting experiment are very aware of their role as slaves to humans, as well as their four year life-span (a safety measure in order to limit the potential for the replicants becoming too human-like). The intent of their return to earth from the off-world colonies and colonial wars is to gain “more life” —more lived memory. In a sense, they are freedom fighters that have come back to earth to save themselves, and perhaps more significantly, their memories and identities. They possess an awareness of their composite construction, yet struggle to hold on to their own memories. Thus, their emotional development could pose a threat to human intentions for the replicants to remain slaves because their lived experiences are unique, and in turn their values and social expectations will also become unique. Not insignificantly, Roy and Leon start their quest to find Tyrell at the place that manufactured their organs of sight, that is, their organs of memory acquisition. As Roy says to Chew: “if only you could see what I have seen with your eyes.” Upon finding Tyrell, Roy explains that he understands not only that he is programmed to die, but that his death will mean the death of a body, and, more importantly, the death of his memory. In one of the most poetic moments of the movie,

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Roy asks Tyrell: “Can the maker repair what he makes?” When Tyrell says he cannot reverse their expiration date, Roy (the prodigal son returned), ironically, pushes his thumbs into Tyrell’s eyes and kills him. Rachel, the Nexus 7 replicant, is even more composite than the Nexus 6 replicants because she is made up of Chew’s eyes, Sebastian’s genetic manipulations, and Tyrell’s genius. Her memory is composite in its combination of her own gained memories and those implanted from Tyrell’s niece. Her composite subjectivity masquerades as a human-ness that she fully believes (though Tyrell suggests she was “beginning to suspect…”) until she undergoes the VK test, which takes Deckard twice as long to accomplish because she believes so strongly in her humanity. Rachel is a classic Haraway cyborg because she is “a hybrid of machine and organism, a creature of social reality as well as a creative fiction.”11 Not only has her body been constructed through technology, her identity has been written as a creative fiction through memory implants. Her identity is a fiction that her own lived experiences have not created in their entirety, and so her identity, like her body, is composite. Perhaps this is where Tom Gunning’s notion of the uncanny comes into play, though as a remediation of memory rather than technology. Gunning suggests that the uncanny arises out of “mediation [as it] enters in to the natural in unexpected ways.” It is as though technology brings the everyday into a new light, so we see it again as though for the first time. The concept of memory becomes uncanny through the “examining [of it] at the point of introduction, before it has time to become part of a nearly invisible everyday”12 replicant production. What Rachel thought to be her own lived memories become new to her in a frightening and troubling way, and so not only do her memories become at once familiar and strange to her, and thus uncanny, so too does her own sense of self. For Deckard, the notion of memory becomes new, and in turn uncanny, because he becomes aware of it as something more than a natural human process. Tyrell tells Deckard that the replicants are “emotionally inexperienced with only a few years in which to store up the experiences that you and I take for granted,” and if he “gifts” them with these experiences, they become more controllable (implying that he understands the Nexus 6 replicants are potentially unmanageable). As Tyrell speaks, Deckard realizes he is talking about memory. In that moment, memory becomes uncanny to Deckard as he realizes that memory has become a mutable and engineerable human quality, and further, that the very intimate nature of memory has been violated. Deckard sees memory as a familiar human quality made new in an exciting, yet disturbing, way. As Tyrell suggests, memory is a “cushion for emotions,” and thus the

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replicant becomes “more human” in its ability to process and understand emotions, and ultimately, Tyrell hopes, become more controllable (and predictable). As he insists, memory is “commerce.” The making and storing of memory in Bladerunner not only involves a manageable facet of the cyborg persona, but it also becomes commodified and engineered as a means of capitalistic control. Again we return to the ominous marriage of science and capitalism. Memory is no longer personal or unique (both in Bladerunner and in contemporary society with our obsession with memory technology), and in that way it becomes the uncanny—though if only for a moment. The question is: can memory be implanted so seamlessly that the carrier of these memories is unaware of their status as an implant? Could it be that we are all replicants? Certainly, the end of the film leaves us wondering if Deckard himself is a replicant that just does not know it yet (though he is, arguably, “starting to suspect”). Identity, in this sense, is the Deleuzian rhizome, a map of memory “susceptable to constant modification. It can be torn, reversed, adapted to any kind of mounting, reworked by an individual or group, or social formation.”13 Perhaps this permeability of memory offers some explanation as to why the replicants rely on old forms of technology as tangible evidence of their pasts.

Old vs. New Memorable Technologies Photographs act as blueprints of memory in Bladerunner, serving as tangible markers of memory captured and produced through technology. In the case of Rachel and Leon, photos are fetishized as a form of evidencing historicity and identity, and thus become a technological mediation of the self as a historical being. In defence of her status as human, Rachel shows Deckard a photo of herself with her mother as proof that she is not a replicant—she has a tangible record and visual documentation that validate her claims to her roots as a human. As Deckard recounts one of her most secret memories from childhood, both Rachel and the photograph begin to appear inauthentic; Rachel then becomes fully aware of her position as a replicant. Rachel becomes uncanny to herself as she slowly gains an awareness that all of her memories are not her own; her identity is blurred and questioned, and it is through this questioning that she is forced into a state of self-reflexivity and doubt. She becomes aware of herself as a simulacral identity constructed as a composite. Interestingly, her tears and intense emotional response suggest a humanness that is by far the most genuine of all the characters in the film. Leon, on the other hand, has photographs from his lived memories, suggesting that his identity is somehow more authentic

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because his memories are his own, whereas Rachel is unable to determine where her own lived memories begin and end. Rachel’s ruptured identity arises from her inability to identitify her own memories and those of Tyrell’s niece. Thereby, her identity is rendered a “circuit without reference or circumference.” The result is different from Roy and Leon, who wish to continue building on the identities they have constructed since their “incept date.” As Rachel comes to an awareness of her composite identity, she also becomes aware of her inauthentic perspective. Deckard asks Tyrell: “How can it not know what it is?” In this sense, Rachel is more problematic, and more tragic, than the other replicants because her identity becomes so fragmented—she does not know what she is; not only is her body composite, but, unlike the other Nexus 6 replicants, so too is her memory. Rachel’s childhood photo of herself is hypermediated through her “gifted” past that includes familial relationships—in particular, a mother. Just like Frankenstein’s creature is made up of fragemented body parts and birthed of science rather than the womb, the replicants are denied the basic human process of birth. Tyrell believes that “gifting” Rachel the memory of a mother may in fact save her from becoming difficult to manage, and so he not only names Rachel, but he provides her with a platform for her identity. This is quite different, and perhaps a development of the Frankentstein tradition, from Shelley’s creature that not only is never named, but is also acutely aware of his position as a fragemented body with no specific origin (much like the Nexus 6 replicants). In that sense, the photos of Rachel and her mother, also “gifted,” become representative of her desire for an immediacy of self as a linear and historical being that is not only human but, moreover, a birthed human. As she becomes more fully aware of her being as a replicant, she experiences a rupture of identity, and her visual frame of reference and tangible evidence of historicity, the photograph, is perpetually deferred as inauthentic. The photograph becomes a mimesis of memory, and in turn, she at first becomes uncanny to herself as she sees herself in a new way, and then becomes a monstrosity to herself because of her awareness of her composite identity.

I Forget, Therefore I am Human The mutability of human memory, as we see with Deckard’s recall of Leon’s interview, suggests that perhaps it is more human to possess a capricious memory, and the tactile evidence of the photograph is a signifier of the human desire for an immediacy of memory that relies

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heavily upon visual cues. Katherine Hayles suggests that “human memory, unlike computer memory, does not retain its contents indefinitely or even reliably…human memory has gaps in it.”14 Technologized memory is too specific, detailed, and machinated to be anything other than a signifier of cyborg subjectivity. Though digital memory is mutable because it can be corrupted or erased, when it is preserved and uncorrupted, it appears as though it is more reliable and accurate than human memory. Rachel and Leon’s reliance on photographs suggest a machinated expectation of a permanent record of memory that, for humans such as Deckard, we see is far from human. The replicants do not necessarily wish to be human, though their desire to preserve memory is a suggestively human quality. Perhaps a technologized desire to ensure their historicty and longevity, they remediate human memory, and seek to ensure that they will be remembered. In that sense, the photograph becomes evidence for others to see their history. The photograph has the potential to become public and publishable—something that can be passed along—while the intangible memory without document, the thing that is remembered, is the private. So while Leon strives to hold onto his photograph-memories that have, in a sense, become public when Deckard takes them from his apartment, Roy’s desire is to hold onto his private memories is a preservation of self. Roy understands that it is his private memories that differentiate him from others (human and replicant), and perhaps that realization is part of the tragedy of his death. Unlike Rachel, whose implanted memories are as fragmented as her composite body, Roy’s lived memories are wrapped up in his desire for “more life.” Roy invokes the death of memory, his “moments lost in time,” as his last hope of becoming-memorable, and that is where the real climax of his battle with Deckard takes place. Foregoing a reliance on forms of memory technology such as photography, Roy keeps livedmemory encased in his composite identity. His loss of life equates to the loss of memory, and instead of killing Deckard he chooses to save him, thus creating a memorable scene that Deckard cannot forget. Admittably, Deckard’s memory of Roy lacks photographic accuracy; instead, it will be remediated through Deckard’s mutable memory (unless, of course, Deckard, himself, is a replicant…). Roy’s only hope is to be remembered amidst the holes of Deckard’s memory. Perhaps in this sense Roy becomes more human in Deckard’s memory. As the camera focuses in on Roy’s eyes, he speaks to Deckard in his final moments and his elegy to memory reveals his regret for the loss of memory in death:

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Joe Abbot discusses Roy’s death scene as: Batty’s reaching out for life, his literal and inexplicable reaching out to save Deckard becomes a highly symbolized gesture that transforms this monster into the truly tragic romantic figure that Mary Shelley’s monster never becomes. 15

Perhaps in forging a link to the Frankenstein tradition, Abbot’s attention to Roy as the tragic romantic hero fails to take into account Roy’s final regret that the things he has seen, his memories, “will be lost, in time.” His desire for becoming-memorable renders the saving of Deckard anything but, as Abbot suggests, “inexplicable.” Arguably, Roy saves Deckard so that at least he is remembered, and in that sense his “reaching out to save Deckard” is wrapped up in his desire for memory - if not his own, then Deckard’s. Unlike Frankenstein’s creature that resents his monstrous identity because he lacks a personal identity (including a name), Roy does not wish to be human (though he certainly becomes human-like through his understanding of self and the implications of his mortality), but rather desires longevity—more life, more memory. Saving Deckard is not a symbol of transformation, as Abbot would have us believe, but rather a tactic to ensure that he is remembered, and thus, will continue to live as memory. Roy makes the final connection, looking Deckard in the eyes in his last moments of life; he smiles slightly and says “time to die,” thus becoming the remembered tragic romantic figure.

Notes 1

Haraway, Donna, “A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology, and SocialistFeminism in the Late Twentieth Century”: Simians, Cyborgs, and Women (New York: Routledge, 1991), 149-181. 2 Bladerunner: The Directors Cut. Dir. Ridley Scott. Perf. Harrison Ford, Rutger Hauer, Sean Young, Edward James Olmosm and Daryl Hannah, (Warner Brothers: 1982). 3 Clayton, Jay, Charles Dickens in Cyberspace (New York: Oxford UP, 2003), 134.

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Clarke, Arthur C., “Dial ‘F’ for Frankenstein” Playboy 12.1 (Jan. 1965), 148-9, 215-6. 5 Wachowski, A., The Matrix [motion picture], United States: Warner Bros., 1999. 6 Clayton, 127. 7 Abbot, Joe, “The ‘Monster’ Reconsidered: Bladerunner’s Replicant as Romantic Hero”, Extrapolation: A Journal of Science Fiction and Fantasy 34.4 (Dec. 1993), 344. 8 Abbot, 127. 9 Abbot, 132. 10 Clayton, 134. 11 Haraway, 149. 12 Gunning, Tom, “Re-Newing Old Technologies: Astonishment, Second Nature, and the Uncanny in Technology from the Previous Turn-of-the-Century,” Rethinking Change (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2003), 41-59. 13 Deleuze, Gilles, and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis: U of Minnesota P, 1987), 12. 14 Hayles, “Katherine N., Flickering Connectivities in Shelley Jackson’s Patchwork Girl: The Importance of Media-Specific Analysis”, Postmodern Culture 10.2 (2000), 24. 15 Abbot, 348.

CHAPTER NINE IMAGES OF ABSENCE IN P.K. DICK’S DO ANDROIDS DREAM OF ELECTRIC SHEEP? MICHAEL BERMAN

Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? inspired the cult-classic cyberpunk film-noire by director Ridley Scott, Blade Runner, yet the novel differs in many respects from this Hollywood production.1 This essay will explore the novel’s images of absence, and will provide key contrasts with the movie. Dick’s science fiction corpus explores a plethora of psychological and philosophical issues, yet “two questions obsessed Dick: What is real? And What is human?”2 Certain identifiable trends remain prominent in his stories: he constantly explored and scrutinized the tensions between the artificial and the natural, appearance and reality, and superficiality and authenticity. Dick “was one of the first SF writers to explore a new virtual technoculture, in which the distinction between reality and illusion, the real and the virtual implodes.”3 This essay employs Androids and Blade Runner to explore questions about the iconic nature of sociality and human being. “According to Peirce, an icon is a non-arbitrary intentional sign—that is, a designation which bears an intrinsic resemblance to the thing it designates.”4 Seemingly, under Peirce’s vision, a text can only serve as a context or symbol for the iconicity of any given sign; this paper does not work under this assumption, but rather treats the images described in the novel and movie from a broader conception of iconicity.5 “It is certainly true that the analysis of iconic elements in literature must proceed with the utmost care and discrimination, but there is no doubt that iconicity belongs to the aesthetic potential of the verbal artifact, since the interdependence of form and meaning is an essential characteristic of the aesthetic use of language.”6 Dick’s language plays with the iconicity of technology wherein we find “form miming meaning and/or form miming form.” Dick shifts the problematic by having that which is the object of the designation, technology itself, asking self-referential questions. As with

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(almost?) all works of science fiction, technology shapes these questions (and their answers), but in Androids and Blade Runner, the questions are asked by the artificially created life forms, and thus we find Dick toying with the idea of “meaning miming form.”7 Androids may then be pointing us towards what Merleau-Ponty would call that form “between the pure subject and the object, a third genus of being.”8 As we see in the novel and film, “the boundaries between species and things become more porous and permeable”;9 this paper intends to situate human being in this chiasm.10 Technology permeates the post World War Terminus/III stage of Androids; however, unlike the dark, rainy movie, the novel’s story winds its way through a dusty, dry, and irradiated environment of a dying biosphere. Life itself becomes artificial, which is masked by the seeming authenticity of android behavior. The surviving and remaining humans produce these androids, these forms of life in an attempt to refill their new worlds with meaning, after having come close to realizing apocalyptic meaninglessness on Earth. Mass manufactured life serves for various social functions lost in the war: real empathic contact and aspirations of hope. Yet, the artifice of android life is only a mimicry employed as a tool for human authenticity. We are forced to ask, what does it mean to be human? Are there defining properties for humanity? Or are we our own creations, just as Dick would confront us with creations that are human? Androids and Blade Runner engage us not merely in the superficiality of observed behavior, such as the physical, social and linguistic, in which artificial forms of life camouflage themselves, but also in the impersonal impersonating of the personal. Dick has, in numerous works, “written about androids or robots or simulacra—the name doesn’t matter; what is meant is artificial constructs masquerading as humans.”11 In this vein, Dick dramatizes, not so much the language he uses, but its very iconicity to not only concretize what has become conventional, using form to add to meaning, but calling these forms and meanings into question, destabilizing and deconstructing the semantic relations that are taken for granted.12

Androids, A Synopsis Androids is nominally a story about a paid bounty hunter/policeman, Rick Deckard, who tracks down and “retires” rogue androids in a postworld war San Francisco; the film likewise has Deckard follow this occupation, but the imagery suggests the apocalypse is ecological, driven by corporate greed and over-industrialization. The novel’s nuclear conflict between the former super-powers devastated the planet’s environment,

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making it nearly uninhabitable. Humanity, for the most part, has fled to colonies in outer space, enticed by new frontiers and economic incentives that include the granting of android workers, servants, and companions, that is, synthetic slaves designed in humanity’s own image(s), to each émigré.13 The companies that produce these beings face highly competitive and lucrative global and interplanetary markets; thus, they are driven to constantly improve their android technology.14 Economics impels this development to the point that only those models that are most human-like in appearance and behavior can “survive” humanity’s colonial expansion into the galaxy. However, the sophistication of the androids has some unexpected results: some wish to be free. The androids that seek to free themselves from human ownership, and wish to lead their own “lives”, go rogue (sometimes killing their owners)—escaping back to Earth. This is where Deckard’s profession arises; he is paid to track down such androids and “retire” them from service, i.e., kill them.15 Essentially, he is supposed to turn them off, afterall they are simply units of technology that have run rampant, pieces of property that have gone astray. Such rationalizations ground Deckard’s self-understanding; however, this runs headlong into the paradoxes produced by this android technology. Its sophistication and apparent reality violates Deckard’s most human traits, used as pseudo-scientific and social standards in the novel: the feelings of compassion and empathy.16 Deckard’s job is to make absent beings in a world that is already deprived of beings; this provides our first image whose ironic nature will significantly impact the protagonist. Progressively, Deckard’s fiduciary rewards from his retirements begin to take on the affective consequences of guilt for being a (self-accused) murderer of “living beings.” In describing their status to the android Rachel Rosen, Deckard states, “Legally you’re not [alive]. But really you are. Biologically. You’re not made out of transistorized circuits like a false [robot] animal; you’re an organic entity.”17 But this biological status is viewed paradoxically, as if life has two indices: authentic/natural and inauthentic/artificial. Differentiating the two, in terms of real humans and humanoid androids, is a central epistemic issue in the novel and movie; the stories’ standard scientific psychological tests are continually called into question by the constant improvements in technology, as well as the behavioral range exhibited by the androids. “For Dick, the threat comes…when technology obtains the ability to disguise itself as human, and our ability as observers to differentiate one from the other is lost.”18 This indexical dichotomy is blurred in Dick’s story, and thus the distinguishing characteristics that separate android and human existence are marked by mimicry: but as to

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who is mimicking which behavior, this becomes progressively unclear as the stories unfold. Living beings in the novel’s post-nuclear holocaust are accorded the highest value. Since the war and the nuclear fallout have decimated most of the planet’s animal life, technology has stepped in to fill the gaps; lifelike artificial pet animals serve as manufactured love-objects for the remaining population; this is illustrated in the movie when Deckard tracks down a clue, the scales of a genetically engineered pet snake. These loveobjects iconically serve as metaphors for uniquely human affects, as well as symbols of socio-economic status in a depopulated and dying world. Such affective behavior though, is either indirectly elicited by artificial life forms, animal-like reproductions of extinct species, or directly induced by the use of technological devices, such as mood organs or the empathy boxes for the Mercer religion (both of which are missing in the film). The latter fabricated artifact unites human individuals, via an electronically created virtual world, into a universal community of authentically empathic persons as social beings. Such sociality is intrinsic to human being and differentiates humans from androids, for only humans can have these experiences: “The concept of empathy…becomes for Dick the critical characteristic that identifies a human.”19 This property is missing from android technology. Yet the use of such experiential demarcation distorts in Dick’s characters, wherein we find form and meaning sliding into one another, settling in a valley of ambiguity.20 The chiasmatic themes of sociality and human being are marked by images of absence that haunt Androids and Blade Runner.

Social Existence Androids opens with Deckard and his wife, Iran, waking to the workday with a not so congenial exchange. Iran, in setting the dark mood of the novel, is currently preoccupied with depressive psychological states, which she can artificially induce with her mood organ, yet authentically emote: with the TV sound off, she says, “I heard the emptiness intellectually, I didn’t feel it…But then I realized how unhealthy it was, sensing the absence of life, not just in this building, but everywhere, and not reacting…that used to be considered a sign of mental illness; they called it ‘absence of appropriate affect’.”21 The absence of living others is thereby iconically identified with the absent affect, the meaning of such absence. Yet this meaning is wrong. The wrongness is grounded in the intellectual or cognitive similarity itself, for the meaning ought to be real (direct and connected) affect. The empathic response, not the cognitive is

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appropriate. This is again echoed in the next chapter’s more extended treatment. In the second chapter, John Isidore, a radiologically and mentally damaged truck driver, lives alone in an apartment building. The lack of occupancy marks the building by a perceptual absence, both felt and startling: Silence. It flashed from the woodwork and the walls; it smote him with an awful, total power, as if generated by a vast mill. It rose from the floor, up out of the tattered gray wall-to-wall carpeting. It unleashed itself from the broken and semi-broken appliances in the kitchen, the dead machines which hadn’t worked in all the time Isidore had lived here. From the useless pole lamp in the living room it oozed out, meshing with the empty and wordless descent of itself from the fly specked ceiling. It managed in fact to emerge from every object within his range of vision, as if it—the silence—meant to supplant all things tangible. Hence it assailed not only his ears but his eyes; as he stood by the inert TV set he experienced the silence as visible and, in its own way, alive. Alive! He had often felt its austere approach before; when it came it burst in without subtlety, evidently unable to wait. The silence of the world could not rein back its greed. Not any longer. Not when it had virtually won…He wondered, then, if the others who had remained on Earth experienced the void in this way.22

The film’s version of this character also lives in a hollow, cavernous building, seemingly alone, except for his robot prototypes. The living silence of a decimated human civilization and world has nearly, if not completely claimed victory. The void in both stories emanates from the environment, actively attempting to re-impose itself on everything and everyone.23 The android embodies and symbolizes this behavior of the void, the action of absence. When John first meets the android Pris Stratton (who happens to be of the same model as Rachel in the novel, but is presented in the movie as a different android), her awkwardness and alarm eventually evaporate in the face of his compassion: Now that her initial fear had diminished, something else had begun to emerge from her. Something more strange. And, he thought, deplorable. A coldness. Like, he thought, a breath from the vacuum between inhabited worlds, in fact from nowhere: it was not what she did or said but what she did not do and say.24

Dick’s analysis of another story about a menacing machine can be extended to his treatment of the android: it is as if “there is a vacuum. A

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place unfilled. The absence of something vital—that is the horrific part, the apocalyptic vision of a nightmare future”25 embodied in such creatures. Later in the novel, John meets Pris’s “friends”, fellow rogue androids. To him, They’re all strange. He sensed it without being able to finger it. As if a peculiar and malign abstractness pervaded their mental processes. Except, perhaps, for Pris; certainly she was radically frightened. Pris seemed almost right, almost natural. But—.26

The malignancy to which John cannot point, aligned with the objectivity and dispassionate behavior of the androids secures their alienation from all others; even Pris, despite John’s befuddled wishes, is marked by some absence, the unstated description indicated by the dangling conjunctive, “But—”. She explicitly demonstrates this in her icily objective torturing of the spider that John miraculously finds.27 For Dick, androids are “cruel and cheap” mockeries of human beings.28 All of the deeds of the androids are motivated by this absence in their characters. This meeting in the movie has a different quality because John quickly recognizes the androids for what they are, since he had a hand in their design. His reactions to them are marked by gloomy resignation, rather than puzzlement. The android is always alone—even when in the company of other androids. “Evidently the humanoid robot constituted a solitary predator,” a killer.29 For Deckard, and by extension the remaining Earth-bound population, “an escaped humanoid robot, which had killed its master, which had been equipped with an intelligence greater than that of many human beings, which had no regard for animals, which possessed no ability to feel empathic joy for another life form’s success or grief at its defeat—that, for him, epitomized The Killers.”30 This attitude will however, create the most dynamic paradox for Deckard himself. As a human, with his innate empathic abilities and tendencies, he will develop empathy for (some of) these artificial life forms who are cursed with this pitiable state of isolation and insurmountably flattened affect: “Androids are unempathetic.”31 Among themselves, androids cannot empathically connect with one another. At best, they can cognitively identify with each other, but only as identical replacements: Rachel states, “We are machines, stamped out like bottle caps. It’s an illusion that I—I personally—really exist; I’m just representative of a type.”32 Such “identification” superficially at a behavioral level mimics human empathy, but is meaningfully different for it is purely cognitive and artificial in structure, constituted by mere propositional equivalences: android models

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are essentially and indifferently substitutable for each other given the appropriate construction. Yet, Dick again, twists this for the androids: in the novel, when Rachel, after having “seduced” Deckard, seems to dispassionately anguish over her own final fate, whether it is to be “born again” (i.e., reincarnated in the product’s next model-line) or experience “spiritual oblivion”, there is “no emotional awareness, no feeling-sense of the actual meaning of what she said. Only the hollow, formal, intellectual definitions of the separate terms.”33 Dick, in a literary self-analysis describes Rachel as such: “They can be pretty but somehow lack something”; furthermore, Dick explores the possibilities for this relationship as it is to portrayed in the movie he envisioned in “Notes on Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”, writing, “They are both pretending…but a good deal of ordinary, today and now sex is handled in this way; during sex the faculty of judgment in many ways is suspended, by both participants.”34 Thus their intimacy is marred by inauthenticity, and the relationship is left hollow and unfulfilling for both Rachel (necessarily) and Deckard. Rachel’s cogitation about the relationship is performed with data understood as atomic units, as though the meaning qua actual referent of the (formal) signs somehow stands outside of or between the so-called signifiers. There is herein an inadequacy of positive signification to point to what is meant, where we find the inverse is the case: the “inference”, not reference, of meaning is absence per se—an unrepresentable “hiccup”, not so much in thought, but in the being of the android. These characters’ relationships in the film are not complicated by the absent presence of Deckard’s wife, yet despite Rachel’s emotional behavior and seeming affective attachment to Deckard, there is a persistent hollowness that characterizes their interaction. One could contend that Deckard’s attraction to Rachel’s demureness is an empathetic misreading of her essential emotional detachment and distance. The failures of the androids in terms of social affect and the establishing of “authentic” relationships are due to their lack of empathy, purely cognitive behavior, and complete reliance on mere instrumental and propositional intelligence. Generally, Dick portrays androids as artificial sociopaths: “androids have no loyalty to one another,”35 though this is seemingly offset in the film’s depiction of Pris’s relationship to other androids. Still, all of their relationships are merely constituted at the level of representation, just as Descartes’ understandings of all known perceptions are reduced to forms of the (solipsistic) cogito’s conceptual judgments. Reality then is nothing other than cogitation for the androids; cognitively perceived reality is structurally artificial, prefabricated by the

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programming supplied by their manufacturers. This less than human quality is deliberately designed into their biological systems,36 whereas the film’s version of this is to design the androids with limited life spans. Yet these androids can behave in nearly complete human fashions. Thus we see Dick’s characters sliding back and forth between artificiality and authenticity, a gray area whose limits slide into ambiguity through the use of technology to intentionally modify and mimic human experience: that which merely imitates human affect is supposed to stand in sharp contrast to that which has manufactured human emotions. But, we can ask, is this the case for human being?

Human Being “And God created man in His image, in the image of God He created him; male and female He created them. God blessed them and God said to them, ‘Be fertile and increase, fill the earth and master it; and rule the fish of the sea, the birds of the sky, and all the living things that creep on earth’.”37 Humanity was thus fashioned in the divine image; human beings may perhaps serve as symbols of the divine, that which is purely iconic in and of itself. The symbolic function of human beings receives a divine blessing, but also some commands: to reproduce, conquer and control. Mary Shelley took up this creation story in Frankenstein. Shelley’s tale imaginatively answers these biblical aspirations in a dark and haunting manner. Dr. Frankenstein relates: One of the phenomena which had peculiarly attracted my attention was the structure of the human frame, and, indeed, any animal endued with life. Whence, I often asked myself, did the principle of life proceed? It was a bold question, and one which has ever been considered a mystery…After days and nights of incredible labour and fatigue, I succeeded in discovering the cause of generation and life; nay, more, I became myself capable of bestowing animation upon lifeless matter.38

This fictional achievement stands as a given in the novel and movie. Corporations driven by economic greed and scientific achievement, not only mimic Frankenstein’s action, but also institutionalize and massproduce it. Dick provides us with a world that has thus fulfilled, though imperfectly, the divine imperatives. Human creativity becomes an expression and instantiation of godly genesis.39 However, just as humanity finds itself driven from that initial pure creation (the Garden of Eden), so too do we find the fulfillment of mortal ingenuity falling short of perfection. Why are the characters driven to create such beings? The

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mimetic creation of such similar beings is rationalized: for Frankenstein, driven by the loss of his mother, the alleviation of pain and death motivate his quest for this God-like ability; likewise the institutions of Dick’s fictions are attempting to alleviate human suffering (and to make a profit). “Mimesis is the outcome of the human’s creative activity and cannot occur without the recognition by the creative subject that it is possible and worth to express the perceived object mimetically.”40 In these cases, the “blessed” human form is seen as valuable in and of itself, worthy of (re-) production. Frankenstein created a destructive monster; Dick’s corporations create horrors whose monstrosity is masked by their near perfect human visages and behaviors. That which is missing, though “positively signified” by coldness, vacuum, void, and silence supposedly demarcates the artificial from the natural (human being). These creative projects fail to live up to their models, for the human is only a mere image of the divine, and can never fulfill the latter’s meaning. The iconic has a relation to its object in mimicking one or more of its qualities, thus generating meaning (the Peircean interpretant), but this, as Dick insists, is not the sole province of language or technology. Meaning cannot be created through factory manufacturing (or cultural production). A more historical process is needed. Dick evokes evolutionary theory to support the authenticity of natural human beings. Evolution has provided humans with instincts for survival. These too are missing in the android. When Deckard captures one of his assigned “retirements”, [she] did not come willingly, but on the other hand, she did not actively resist; seemingly she had become resigned. Rick had seen that before in androids, in crucial situations. The artificial life force animating them seemed to fail if pressed too far…at least in some of them. But not all…And it could flare up again furiously.41

This scene is radically altered in the film where it blazes alight: the targeted android flees Deckard in seeming abject terror, dramatically crashing through plate glass windows as she is shot. But such desperate actions are only the end products of cognitive calculations by the androids, a consequence of a risk-benefit analysis, for the benefit, life or continued existence, has no intrinsic meaning or valence for the androids, according to Dick. They do not even have compassion for themselves in the novel, which stands in stark contrast to living organisms: Yet, the dark fire waned; the life force oozed out of her, as he had so often witnessed before with other androids. The classic resignation. Mechanical,

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intellectual acceptance of that which a genuine organism—with two billion years of the pressure to live and evolve hagriding it—could never have reconciled itself to.42

Evolutionary pressures have driven natural living beings to act for survival no matter the cost, even if survival is impossible. The same cannot be said of the android for it does not have this essential component to life, “the will to live”. What does seem innate to them, according to Deckard, is their “desire to remain inconspicuous.”43 By being inconspicuous, rogue androids hope to go unnoticed. This way they can lead their lives like any human being. Dick’s novel paints a possibility for meaning to mime form here: to be human is to behave as such; thus the androids hope to remain “alive” by blending into human society. The void in their characters, the cold core of their emotional behavior belies these attempts. No matter how much the androids fool themselves into performing their occupations and believing their “personal histories” (in the movie, androids collect “family photographs”), they cannot connect, in any authentic fashion, to those around them. All that they can do is behave according to social forms, but the result is only ever an impersonal impersonating of the personal. Dick says, …[The] difference between what I call “android” mentality and the human is that the latter passed through something the former did not, or at least passed through it and responded differently—changed, altered, what it did and hence what it was; it became. I sense the android repeating over and over again some limited reflex gesture, like an insect raising its wings threateningly over and over again, or emitting a bad smell.44

Herein meaning mimes form, for meaning is a shared social construct, just as the android is itself produced by the corporation, and is thus an impersonal artifact; their imitations of social behavior are acts of impersonation, and each one’s outward personhood is merely a form that masks an essential absence, iconically represented by every android. These continuous failed strivings at establishing a life by these androids have far ranging impacts on Deckard. Deckard develops empathy for (certain kinds of) androids. In the novel, human beings use technology to elicit empathic responses and behaviors from themselves. Mood organs provide individuals with any kind of emotion they desire (even the desire to have emotions). Empathy boxes are used for the simulated, though authentically meaningful, religious experiences. Electronic pets are standard possessions, indicative of socio-economic status, and provide love-objects for human empathy

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and care; in addition, the possession of a real, live pet animal authentically contributes to the owner’s genuine self-worth. Thus the technology of this future society serves to condition and expand human compassion. Is it then any wonder that Deckard begins to see his android “retirement” assignments through these lenses? As he interacts with other humans and androids, he begins to question his own feelings about his targets: at first, [he] had never felt any empathy on his own part toward the androids he killed…And yet…Empathy toward an artificial construct? He asked himself. Something that only pretends to be alive? But [at least one android]…had seemed genuinely alive; it had not worn the aspect of a simulation…45

This, of course, was Rachel. He slowly becomes aware that he is “capable of feeling empathy for at least specific, certain androids. Not for all of them but—one or two,”46 who happen to be the ones to whom he is physically attracted.47 This leads him to an ambivalent conclusion: “So much for the distinction between authentic living humans and humanoid constructs.”48 The line that separates the artificial from the authentic is lost (goes missing), at least for a while, from Deckard’s psychological profile; he finds that he can physically and emotionally intertwine himself with androids—yet such reciprocity is merely behavioral on their part, for all of their actions lack compassion and empathy. An android caress, touch, embrace or kiss, is nothing more than a reflex arc artificially inscribed by the designs of others, and are never felt within, merely reactions to stimuli. The essential human property of empathy becomes an obstacle to Deckard’s duty to protect both human society and priceless human compassion from the affectless android. This is also the internal conflict that Deckard struggles with as the movie progresses, thus making his job all the more difficult. This description of Deckard points to another feature of human being, one that Dick’s characters seem to possess, though it only remains implicit. The androids go rogue in their escape from exploitation and search for freedom. Their attempts at these goals are indicative of a peculiar human style of being49 or “way of being in the world.”50 For humans, Merleau-Ponty claims, “The psycho-physiological equipment leaves a great variety of possibilities open, and there is no more here than in the realm of instinct a human nature finally and immutably given. The use a man is to make of his body is transcendent in relation to that body as a mere biological entity.”51 The rogue androids are aiming at such transcendence of their mere biological equipment, but not in some metaphysical manner. They are searching for more, to explore the possible

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meanings that life/existence has for them, which entails extending their life spans in the movie. In other words, they are doing something distinctly human: attempting to create meaning in their lives. Dick though would have us believe that such meanings must have a component “feeling sense”. Yet, “Behavior creates meanings which are transcendent in relation to the anatomical apparatus, and yet immanent to the behavior as such, since it communicates itself and is understood.”52 Are not then the meanings created by these androids understandable by both themselves and humans? Is not such striving toward meaning intrinsic to the challenges and quests that all humans must face? However, the way these meanings are understood determines the fate of these androids. The law enforcement agencies that use bounty hunters like Deckard, hunt down the androids because they understand them as a threat. Certainly their sociopathic behavior is a danger to the remaining humans on Earth; in the novel, Rachel in a “fit of jealous rage,” publicly and unabashedly kills Deckard’s pet, a real living goat.53 She could have, without any compunction, just as easily done the same to his wife, Iran, or any other living being. The android, Roy Batty, in Blade Runner, displays a comparable disposition towards his human creators. This behavior is an anathema to the novel’s human community. This context shapes the human characters’ understanding of their situations. The context, according to Merleau-Ponty, is a phenomenological Gestalt wherein experiential meaningfulness oscillates in the dynamic between figure and ground. Meanings are always revealed perspectivally, and are subject to conditionality and contingency. These perspectives are as much sociohistorical in terms of culture, as they are sensorimotor for the embodied subject. Meaning, if it is to have any meaning, must mean something to someone. As Berkeley says, even an unexplored desert has at least one person to observe it, namely myself when I think of it, that is, when I perceive it in purely mental experience. The thing [or object] is inseparable from a person perceiving it, and can never be actually in itself because its articulations are those of our very existence, and because it stands at the other end of our gaze or at the terminus of a sensory exploration which invests it with humanity. To this extent, every perception is a communication or communion….54

Meanings without real living interpreters would be meaningless. Dick’s Androids speaks to this existential claim—“a large number of narrative techniques may be fruitfully interpreted in terms of their iconic function with the all-important proviso, however that the act of

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interpretation must always proceed from meaning to form.”55 The forms Dick presents us with are superficially human, i.e., the androids. However, these artificial life forms do not experience meanings. They lack that “feeling sense,”56 the empathic connections with others and the ability to experience compassion or communion. Just as they search to create meaningful lives, this escapes them, because they can never even feel for themselves. Thus, if Dick is correct, then Merleau-Ponty’s notion of the embodied subject being able to transcend the mere confines of physiology cannot alone provide an adequate explanation of meaning generation because embodied empathy is a necessary condition for meaning. To make sense of this for Merleau-Ponty, we will need to briefly explore the nature of the psyche qua subjectivity that is bound to the lived-body. For Merleau-Ponty, the embodied subject is a product of personal and pre-personal history: each individual undergoes psychological experiences that are sedimented (or layered) over a developing core of psychophysiology. This begins at birth (and perhaps in the womb) with the awakening and deployment of the body’s sensorimotor abilities. Living creatures come to learn their own bodies, just as they learn of the world. This simply takes time. These developments are absent from the experiences of the androids. Given their limited life spans, they are programmed with systematic memories—at the barest minimum an operating system that allows basic physiological activity, and in more expensive models, pseudo-psychological histories of seeming first-person recollections. These too are artificial; for example, Rachel is supplied with such memories,57 which in the movie are based on a company executive’s niece. In this way, since meanings are always meaningful to someone (an interpreter), the someone, when it is an android, is an artificial person that cannot truly understand the meaning; the “feeling-sense” is absent, according to Dick. Thus the experience of the android is ultimately meaningless, which is exactly how Deckard describes them; the android can only understand at an intellectual level, which is akin to the processing of data/signs according to preprogrammed structures and functions. They can only read the world as a text, but its meaningfulness always escapes them. The inverse of this is that human beings can authentically experience meaning, as illustrated by their empathic bonds with one another, and they do so socially: “Popular culture is always in process; its meanings can never be identified in a text, for texts are activated, or made meaningful, only in social relations and in intertextual relations. This activation of the meaning potential of a text can occur only in the social and cultural relationship into which it enters.”58 Therefore, meanings are experienced in the dynamic inter-human relations that activate, or better

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yet, create these meanings that are meaningful to individuals who are part and parcel of communities of embodied subjectivities capable of empathy and compassion.

Conclusion Human beings and androids are characteristically individuated and exist as beings-in-the-world. Both forms of life are mortal, and must face their own existential crises: humans live for decades, whereas the androids only live for a handful of years. Both can take on worldly projects, learn new skills, and transcend their mere biological or anatomical apparatus. However, Dick’s fictional androids will always remain in isolated states of solipsism. Their connections to the world can only be cognitive and empirical, whereas the human experience includes the empathic and affective over and above these artificial limitations. This provides them with authentic social relations and community. The androids are always marked by absences, which stand in contradistinction to the human characters. Yet the human characters constantly crisscross this line: Deckard’s compassion, due in part to all of the paradoxical social pressures, eventually extends to androids, who are both alive and artificial, i.e., authentic and inauthentic, real and unreal. Deckard, at the end of the novel, having a mystical experience, is challenged: You will be required to do wrong no matter where you go. It is the basic condition of life, to be required to violate your own identity. At some time, every creature which lives must do so. It is the ultimate shadow, the defeat of creation; this is the curse at work, the curse that feeds on all life. Everywhere in the universe.59

Thus to be a living creature, to have real authenticity, to fulfill the demands of empathy, and understand his humanity, Deckard must absent himself from his own being. In regard to his actions and behavior as a bounty hunter, he comes to the following realization: “But what I’ve done, he thought; that’s become alien to me. In fact, everything about me has become unnatural; I’ve become an unnatural self.”60 The necessity of his duty has demanded the violation of his compassionate feelings, all in the greater endeavor to protect those he (supposedly) loves—other living humans and creatures. The absences in Androids and Blade Runner challenge us to look at the nature of meaning. These fictional settings speak to that which is most human in us, while presenting us with icons of ourselves that masquerade

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as authentic persons. These images show us what is not there, that cold vacuum qua the lack of empathy. But just as these images are superficially meant to be other than human, they nonetheless point to that which is endemic to human being. The images of absence that the androids iconically represent are images that are all too human. Dick believed that “the android is not simply a science fiction prop. The android lives among us; it is us, as long as we continue to separate ourselves from that part of our character that is human.”61 As C. S. Friedman so succinctly states, “Each human, is within himself, an alien landscape to all others.”62 By extension, each android stands as in individual icon for that dark silence of everyone and no one. They are the outward expressions for what is within; after all, they, like us, are products of human creativity.

Notes 1

I wish to thank the editor of Literature & Aesthetics for granting permission to republish this essay; see Literature & Aesthetics, (16(2) December 2006: 59-74). 2 Corliss, Richard, “His Dark Vision of the Future is Now”, Time Europe, July 2002, Vol. 160, Issue 1, 56. 3 Best, Steven, and Douglas Kellner, “The Apocalyptic Vision of Philip K. Dick”. Cultural Studies ļ Critical Methodologies, 2003, Vol. 3, No. 2. 190. See also Galvan, Jill. “Entering the posthuman collective in Philip K. Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. Science-fiction Studies, Vol. 24, Issue 3: 413-429. 4 Wescott, Roger W., “Linguistic Iconism”, Language, June 1971, Vol. 47, No. 2. 417. 5 Galen Johnson explains that “an iconic sign is one in which there is a relationship of resemblance between the sign and its referent,” and includes “not only paintings and photographs, but also fiction, poetry and drama” (The Merleau-Ponty Aesthetics Reader [Illinois: Northwestern University Press, 1993], 32). 6 Nanny, Max, and Olga Fischer eds., Form Miming Meaning, Iconicity in Language and Literature (U.S.A.: John Benjamins North America, 1999), 393 (italics added); see also Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, The World of Perception (U.S.A.: Routledge, 2004), 97. 7 “To the degree that there is isomorphism between form and content at the various levels of language structure, language is diagrammatically iconic” (Nöth, Winfried, “Peircean Semiotics in the Study of the Iconicity of Language”, Transactions of the Charles S. Peirce Society, Summer 1999, Vol. XXXV, No. 3: 613-619. 615); cited so as to indicate the bi-directional relation between form and content. 8 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, Phenomenology of Perception (New York: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1966), 350. 9 Best, 192.

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10 Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, TheVisible and the Invisible (U.S.A.: Northwestern University Press, 1968). 11 Sutin, Lawrence, Divine Invasions, A Life of Philip K. Dick (New York: Harmony Books, 1989) 185 (italics added). 12 Nanny. xxi – xxii. 13 Dick, Philip K., Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (U.S.A.: Ballantine Books, 1982), 26; see also Shelley, Mary, Frankenstein (U.S.A.: Bantham Classics, 1991), 137. 14 Dick, 47. 15 Dick, 11. 16 Best. 194. 17 Dick, 173. 18 Gillis, Ryan, “Dick on the Human: From Wubs to Bounty Hunters to Bishops”, Extrapolation, 1998, Vol 39, No. 3, 266. Dick claims of (fictional?) androids that “Their behavior frightens me, especially when it imitates human behavior so well that I get the uncomfortable sense that these things are trying to pass themselves off as humans but are not. I call them ‘androids,’ which is my own way of using that word” (Sutin 1989, 211; and Palmer, Christopher, Philip K. Dick, Exhilaration and Terror of the Postmodern, [Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 2003], 225). 19 Gillis, 266. 20 Merleau-Ponty 1968. 21 Dick, 3. 22 Dick, 16. 23 See the discussion of “proliferating entropy” (Best, 196-197), and “the notion of entropy as a dynamic force” (Palmer, 62). 24 Dick. 59. 25 Sutin, Lawrence, The Shifting Realities of Philip K. Dick (New York: Vintage Books, 1995), 190. 26 Dick, 136. 27 Dick, 181. 28 Sutin 1995, 213. 29 Dick, 27. 30 Dick, 27 and 37. Dick once wrote, “A human being without proper empathy or feeling is the same as an android built so as to lack it, either by design or mistake…We mean, basically, someone who does not care about the fate that his fellow living creatures fall victim to” (Gillis, 267; Sutin 1995, 211). 31 Gillis, 267. 32 Dick, 165. 33 Dick, 167; italics added. 34 Sutin 1995, 211 and 160; italics added. 35 Dick. 167. If my line of argument here is correct, then Best and Kellner’s explanatory discussion (Best, 193-194) is wrong: they claim that in the context of gaining freedom to extend their preprogrammed lives, the former slave androids “are seemingly identical with humans, sharing capacities such as memory, love,

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empathy, desire, and fear of death,” with their high-level of “self-reflexivity”. This directly misconstrues Dick’s explicit statements in the novel and misses Dick’s point about the nature of artificial intelligence: intellect without “soul” or empathy is less than or not at all human. 36 Dick, 162. 37 The Torah (U.S.A.: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1962), Genesis 1:27-28. 38 Shelley, 36-37. 39 Dick says, “Reality, to me, is not so much something that you perceive, but something you make. You create it more rapidly than it creates you. Man is the Reality God created out of dust; God is the reality man creates continually out of his own passions, his own determination” (Sutin 1995: 205). 40 Maran, Timo, “Mimesis as a phenomena of semiotic communication”, Sign Systems Studies, 2003, Vol. 31.1, 201. 41 Dick, 116. 42 Dick, 176. One of the characteristics that marks android existence is predictability (Sutin 1995: 191). 43 Dick, 116. 44 Sutin 1995: 203. 45 Dick, 123. 46 Dick, 124. 47 Dick, 84. 48 Dick, 125. 49 Merleau-Ponty 1968: 139. 50 Sutin 1995: 212. 51 Merleau-Ponty 1966: 189. 52 Merleau-Ponty 1966: 189. 53 Dick, 200. 54 Merleau-Ponty 1966: 320. 55 Nanny, xxv; italics added. 56 Olkowski, D., and L. Hass, eds.. Rereading Merleau-Ponty, Crossing the Continental-Analytic Divide (U.S.A.: Humanities Press, 2000), 90. 57 Dick, 52. 58 Nanny, 285. 59 Dick, 156. 60 Dick, 204. 61 Gillis 1998: 270. 62 Friedman, C. S., This Alien Shore (U.S.A.: DAW Publications, 1999), 90.

PART IV: SCIENCE FICTION AND PEDAGOGY

CHAPTER TEN “PROVE TO ME THAT I AM SENTIENT”: WORKING PEDAGOGICALLY THROUGH A SEMIOTIC PHENOMENOLOGY OF STRESSED EMBODIMENT IN A SELECTED NARRATIVE FROM STAR TREK, TNG MAUREEN CONNOLLY

Introduction The phrase in this chapter’s title, “Prove to me that I am sentient”, is spoken by Captain Jean Luc Picard as he launches his closing arguments in a trial which will determine whether or not Lieutenant Commander Data, the human-like android, will be dismantled by Star Fleet Command and used as a prototype for study and mass production.1 Picard’s strategy is both semiotic and phenomenological in that it compels the court to establish an eidetic of sentience rather than demonstrate that Data is nonsentient, and it brings under critical examination the signs of sentience. This particular episode, “The Measure of a Man”, is pedagogically rich because, when used as course material, it allows learners to examine issues of racism, ablism and colonialism in terms of “disposable people” (i.e., “property”), as well as working through naïve, superstitious and critical forms of consciousness. Embodiment thematics, such as body functionality, sexuality, language, race, gender, appearance, food, typicality (i.e., how “alien” cultures are alike and different from the crew of the Enterprise), are readily available across numerous STAR TREK, TNG, narratives. Among the crew of the Enterprise, we see a continuum of embodiment thematics, e.g., LaForge’s visual impairment and race, Troi’s empathetic abilities, Worf’s Klingon appearance, strength, and other physiological and cultural differences; for the most part, these physical and cultural differences are

Working Pedagogically through a Semiotic Phenomenology of Stressed 133 Embodiment in a Selected Narrative from Star Trek, TNG

celebrated in what we project onto a future more tolerant and respectful than our present. Indeed the multicultural and multi-species environments on board the Enterprise, within Star Fleet, and on the many worlds and contexts encountered allow for ongoing explorations of similarities, differences, and textured and complex gradients in between. The diversity of characters also more or less ensures that stressed embodiment is an ongoing possibility for semiotic phenomenological analysis and pedagogic engagement and applications. In this chapter I will a) discuss a specific narrative (“The Measure of a Man”) which has stressed embodiment as a central organizing principle; b) apply a semiotic phenomenological analysis using Lanigan’s2 and Craig’s3 methodological ingredients of normative logics (norms and inscriptions of a culture), the body as sign and the sign systems (or codes) which hold these together; and c) demonstrate how this narrative can work pedagogically using Freire’s4 naïve, superstitious and critical forms of consciousness.

The Measure of a Man The “Measure of a Man” episode challenges viewers with direct, harsh and unsettling questions about what constitutes personhood. The storyline, briefly, is that Star Fleet has decided that Data can – and, therefore, should – be mass produced. Data maintains that, while he is technically not fully human, he has the right to his individuality. A court battle ensues, with the characters of the series forced into ethical dilemmas regarding the best way to support their comrade and friend, Data. First Officer Riker is especially conflicted, having been assigned as prosecutor by Star Fleet’s representative and warned that anything less than a brilliant and authentic prosecution will result in a mistrial, with the consequences being that Data will then follow Star Fleet’s orders and surrender to their wishes. Picard has the role of Data’s advocate. The presiding judge, who happens to be an “old flame” of Picard’s, adds both undercurrent and nuance to this already immensely loaded scenario. The other main characters—Troi, Worf, LaForge, Crusher, and the poignant holograph of a deceased Tasha Yar— are all players in the drama of evidence for and against Data, while Guinan, skillfully playing Picard’s mentor, triggers Picard’s final strategy: not so much laying out the parallels between mass manufactured Data “knock offs” and the disposable people of her slave ancestors as awakening in Picard the strategy of likeness rather than difference. The unspoken assumption of Data as property rather than person is dismantled by Picard’s insistence on focusing the argument on what he, Picard, is

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rather than on what Data is not. Here we find an example of the Sartrean existential insight, “Existence precedes essence” for bodies and culture are interdependent in their lived relations. Picard’s skillful avoidance of the fallacy of incorrect burden of proof also lays bare the unavoidable interconnections between bodies and cultures. These interconnections and interdependencies are the project of semiotic phenomenological analysis. A body has to be somewhere; what/who the body is cannot be separated from where the body is. How I am reflects and mirrors where I am and where I have been. Context and choice are existential partners.

Theoretical Premises Stressed embodiment, a categorical term introduced by semiotician Richard Lanigan,5 is a helpful expression for describing the many variations of how people simultaneously inhabit the body they live, live the body they inhabit, and are inhabited by the culture in which they live. The numerous relationships between body and culture open up many possibilities for being stressed in one’s body (e.g., age, race, disability, sexual orientation, medical condition, size, appearance, and so forth). Stressed embodiment is a lived experience, highly subjective, and usually contextually fluid (i.e., one may be stressed in one’s body in one environment, but not stressed in another situation). It is an almost absurdly obvious term for describing the many characters in Star Trek, TNG, and for highlighting Data’s dilemma in this particular episode. What becomes visible and threatening with the acknowledgement of radically different ways of experiencing the world? How much of our perceptions of shared understanding, perceiving and sensing are based on pre-reflective cultural ideals of a stable (predictable), healthy (controllable), productive (disposable) body? What codes of normality are presumed? Who benefits? To what purpose? My co-author, Tom Craig, and I raised these questions in an earlier paper on stressed embodiment.6 They are equally cogent in the present study. Lanigan’s7 proposition of a semiotic phenomenology provides a helpful theoretical framework for the notion of stressed embodiment, and for experiencing embodied contingency by combining a phenomenological explication of the freedom of individual expression with semiotic analysis of culturally sedimented perceptions. The advantages of working through a semiotic phenomenology of “the experience of the body coupled with the consciousness of choice”8 is that it provides a critical theoretical frame to balance normative logic(s) and inscription(s), the phenomena of the lived body as a sign (of political discourse), and the sign system that holds them

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together. Lanigan proceeds to explore the experience of a consciousness of choice. Am I able to choose my context, or does my context already circumscribe my choices? Having a choice of context—and a metaknowledge of this—enables different degrees and kinds of choices. The experience of the body in a particular context will impact my consciousness, and hence the consciousness of my choices (and contexts). This is a recursive analysis and one that calls for ongoing vigilance in the realms of critical self-refection and methodology. The normative logics and inscriptions (the signs of culture/context as evidenced by comportment or choices) are enacted in culturally sanctioned ways by bodies (presumably choosing those behaviours); larger agendas of dominance and subordination are then reproduced within this circumscribed context of “choice.” The sign system, or overarching code, continues unless a consciousness of choice can be fostered, encouraged, valued and enacted. Working with the body as a sign of political discourse allows me to examine how stressed embodiment and bodily contingency transgress the logics and inscriptions of cultures based in ablism, capitalism and normative productivity. In her book, The Rejected Body, Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability, Susan Wendell offers the concept of the “paradigm citizen”:9 a person who is (usually) young, male, white, able-bodied, heterosexual, virile, clever (if not smart), attractive, and ceaselessly and unreflectively productive. Wendell’s text focuses on the transgressions of the norms upheld by this paradigm citizen by persons with disabilities, both visible and invisible. However, her paradigm citizen provides a frame of reference for other manifestations of difference and “disposability”. Wendell describes hierarchies of otherness and difference not only in the mundane world of western capitalist institutions, but also within rehabilitation centres and disability cultures, with those who have the least control over their bodies at the bottom of that particular institutional or embodied hierarchy.10 This suggests that failure to control the body is one of the most powerful symbolic meanings of disability, and, in a culture that values bodily control and productivity, of disposability as well. Bodies that transgress the myth of control—that death, disability, illness, weakness, and imperfection, can be avoided—are transgressive bodies. A most unsettling example of loss of bodily control in the “Measure of a Man” is when Riker deactivates Data’s power on/off switch. Data’s ease of disposability is thus made evident to the court, because, as Riker emphasizes, a real human can turn him off. The elevation of Data as machine to be replicated is Star Fleet’s balm against its institutional unwillingness to accept Data’s extreme differences within or from a continuum of sentient humanity. Even in Roddenberry’s better

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future, the old productivist and capitalist habits die-hard. The stressed and/or transgressive bodies we often encounter on Star Trek, TNG, and especially in “The Measure of a Man”, provide more than ample evidence of the body as a sign of political discourse in ongoing tensions and negotiations with the norms and inscriptions of cultural agendas, which apparently know neither historical, nor science fictional boundaries. When we include the lived experience of dys-integration and radical contingency as possible ways of being in the world, we are forced to examine the intolerance, cruelty, oppression and colonization within the theoretical, research, business, medical, scholarly, creative-expressive and other embodied practices, which have been informed by the cultural ideals of stable, healthy and productive bodies. We also begin to examine, make visible and reappraise our own unreflectively held, culturally inscribed, mostly unreachable norms of idealized bodies, as well as the consequences for refusing the docility associated with these norms. I shall return to this dramatic scene for a full, three-tiered semiotic phenomenological analysis along the lines proposed earlier by Lanigan11 and Craig;12 however, here I would like to introduce Paulo Freire’s13 model of forms of consciousness of the world, which I will then include in the semiotic phenomenological analysis in order to demonstrate the utility of both as pedagogic strategies. In determining the form of consciousness, the pivotal questions for Freire are: Do people recognize how human action and language create their world? Do they distinguish between what is natural and what is cultural? Freire’s work parallels the insights of the cognitive psychologist Lev Vygotsky14 who proposed that how one uses language is an indicator of one’s relationship to the social world. Freire, and those of us, like myself, who find a profound groundedness in his work, focus on language use as an accessible mirror of naïve, superstitious or critical forms of consciousness. Working with students’ use of language is a helpful strategy for assessing their levels of engagement, comprehension and application of a subject matter. In Freire’s model, the chief characteristic of naïve consciousness is an unreflecting acceptance of the world and one’s own views of it. Naïve thinkers do not conceive of a basic perspective different from their own; on the level of language use, habit dominates their word choice, and their ideas and values are usually expressed as unqualified generalizations. Thinkers with a superstitious consciousness may consciously recognize and acknowledge that there are cultural options—i.e., other perspectives or alternatives—but feel powerless or overwhelmed by the enormity of those alternatives. They do not see themselves as participating in the creating and sustaining of culture, hence social institutions and cultural “forces”

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remain mysterious and magical. Effects seem uncontrollable and unconnected from causes. Language use is typically dominated by vague phrases, passive constructions, an absence of detailed analysis, jargon, formulaic repetitions and monolithic—often, powerful—entities (i.e., “they”, “society”, “the media”). Thinkers with a critical consciousness recognize the role of human purpose and action in the creating and sustaining of cultural institutions, and that language both shapes and reflects peoples’ perceptions of cultural institutions. Critical thinkers see their role in the creating, sustaining and hence, transforming of culture. Language (among other performative, affective expressions) is used to name, describe, analyze, critique, shape and modify, and is also recognized as a strategy of collective action. Reflection on language use is the primary means of transforming habitual thought into critical consciousness.

Analysis and Application Returning to the dramatic scene referred to earlier (Riker deactivating Data), I will provide a semiotic phenomenological analysis and employ Freire’s forms of consciousness to demonstrate how this episode’s narrative can function as a powerful example for pedagogic engagement with and application of theoretical concepts. However, I must also provide a description of another scene between Picard and Guinan in order for the analysis to disclose the intricate complexities at work in this remarkable story. Picard seeks out Guinan; he relates Riker’s brilliant, formidable, unsparing act of persuasion. Picard assures Guinan that it was devastating. Guinan, the old soul, has seen it all before, cuts to the chase, stripping off the skin of Star Fleet’s noble purposes. The sign systems of trust, friendship, collegiality and shared values are the core values of Star Fleet—they undergird the explorations undertaken, the alliances made, the violences unleashed and rationalized. They make it possible for the trial to occur, these values of new life, new civilizations; and, as Guinan points out to Picard, they make it possible to conceive of expedient hierarchies of life, of who is to be available to do what in the services of these larger purposes. One Data is a phenomenal, exotic other; hundreds of Datas are an army of disposable people. Picard grasps the slippery slope in an instant: it is not so much Data’s humanity that is in question; it is a hierarchy of disposable sentience. This decision is the first step; to make it is to embrace and overturn the integrity of Star Fleet’s core values. With

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deadly, critical precision, Picard steps back, his sentience now on the line as well. What are the normative logics at work in the Data deactivated scene? The rules of the court, the agenda of Star Fleet, the necessity of establishing who has the superior position within a given structure… Indeed, the necessity of establishing a context of dominance and subordination as a structure. Data’s body as a transgressive sign is made visible by its vulnerability to being deactivated. Riker’s body as the dominant sign is made visible by his ability and willingness to exercise the power of his knowledge regarding Data’s structure and functions. Data’s usual superior strength and reflexes are disarmed in the absolute transgression of the normative logics of friendship – or could it be that Data is more “human” than anyone realizes, trusting in the underlying power of friendship to overcome what appears to be the sign of betrayal? The sign system of domination and subordination is clearly at work holding together the motivations of Star Fleet and the adversarial rules of the court; the more subtle sign system of post-colonial critique offered by Guinan and Picard makes clear what “enlightened” people are capable of when they claim rights over others (i.e., “the Other”) seen as exotic, different, remarkable, and ultimately, property. A naïve response might include, “How could Riker do that to his friend?” A superstitious (in the Freirian sense) response might be, “Data is screwed, now! No way out of that!” (Actually, these are the responses I have encountered with students.) A critical response would consider both Riker’s options and Picard’s response to Riker. It would acknowledge the complexities of power and the many ways that power can be deployed, misdirected and redirected. Many of my students do not engage their own agency unless they are pushed to do so. Moving students to problematize the existential situation or to step back to achieve critical distance requires exploring, discovering and scrutinizing the subject matter and heuristics with complexity and subtlety. The “Measure of a Man” allows my students to experience semiotic concepts at a graspable level; it also allows them to work through Freire’s forms of consciousness as they examine issues of power. In the deactivation scene, they see Riker deploying power and their naïve response is one of shock at his betrayal, regardless of the limitations imposed on Riker by Star Fleet’s representative. They do not acknowledge perspective, context or Riker’s faith in Picard to be as ruthless as he, Riker, has had to be. They see friendship in one dimension. Star Fleet’s representative embodies for many of my students how power is misdirected. He is following orders, even though he is clearly tormented by the potential outcome. He is seldom critiqued by my students

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– they see him and Riker obeying orders, and while they cut Riker no slack at all, they are fairly forgiving of someone who is simply caught in the system. Characters who embody a superstitious consciousness are often given leeway by my students, who struggle with their own seduction by mysterious, monolithic structures. As long as something bigger than they are can be blamed, their own accountability is not called into question: an innocence justified under the rubric of evil’s banality. Guinan’s disclosure of what amounts to neo-colonial domination and oppression makes my students uncomfortable—they do not want to own their part in local manifestations of global atrocities; they want to keep their noble purposes as noble as possible. Picard’s move to a semiotics of sentience is a redirection of power dynamics. Not only does it remove Data as a solitary frame of reference, it places all of us on the sliding scale of disposability along with him. Data remains remarkable at the conclusion of this episode; but then, so do all Others who measure up with ingenuity and integrity.

Concluding Remarks “The Measure of a Man” has offered me opportunities to teach about disability, illness, racism, colonialism and theory; it is fecund in its possibilities, and it is only one episode. Armed with many such episodes and the tools of analysis and forms of consciousness supplied by semiotic phenomenology and Freirian curricular strategies, my students and I can and will boldly go….

Notes 1

Acknowledgement: I am grateful for the opportunity to have presented this paper at The Uses of the Science Fiction Genre, An Interdisciplinary Symposium, held at Brock University, October 20-22, 2005, and am even more grateful for the gracious comments, attentive wonder and deep regard of the community of scholars who attended. 2 Lanigan, Richard, Phenomenology of Communication (Pittsburgh: Duquesne University Press, 1988), 105. 3 Craig, Tom D., Disrupting the Disembodied Status Quo: Communicology in Chronic Disabling Conditions (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Southern Illinois University at Carbondale, 1997), 52, 54. 4 Freire, Paulo, Education for Critical Consciousness (New York: Seabury, 1973). 5 Lanigan 1988.

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6 Connolly, Maureen F., and Tom D. Craig, “Stressed Embodiment: Doing Phenomenology in the Wild”, Human Studies 25 (2002): 451-462. 7 Lanigan 1988. 8 Lanigan 1988, 105. 9 Wendell, Susan, The Rejected Body—Feminist Philosophical Reflections on Disability, (New York: Routledge, 1996), 45. 10 Frank, Gelya, “On Embodiment: A Case Study of Congenital Limb Deficiency in American Culture”, Women With Disabilities: Essays in Psychology, Culture, and Politics, M. Fine and A. Asch, eds. (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1988), 41-71. 11 Lanigan 1988. 12 Craig 1997. 13 Freire 1973. 14 Vygotsky, Lev S., Mind in Society: The Development of Higher Psychological Processes, M. Cole, V. John-Steiner, S. Scribner, and E. Souberman, eds. (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1978), and Language and Thought (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1962; originally published, 1934).

CHAPTER ELEVEN THE SCIENCE AND RELIGION DIALOGUE IN THE SCIENCE FICTION OF ROBERT J. SAWYER VALERIE BROEGE

From the time that Robert J. Sawyer at the age of 17 wrote a story called “Creator Quest,” dealing with scientific evidence that we inhabit a God-directed universe, he has continued to demonstrate his abiding interest in the big questions of life. Sawyer offers a sustained, nuanced, and multi-perspectival treatment of the science and religion dialogue in his science fiction. Combining the major themes of many of his novels and short stories with the provocative media headlines of religious reactions to the events occurring in his fiction, which he includes in several of his novels, could easily provide the basis of an interdisciplinary course dealing with the relationship between science and religion. However, for the purposes of this essay, I will focus on the following topics in relation to Sawyer’s writings: his cosmological speculations that involve both science and religion and the question of the existence of God and His or Her nature, whether we live in a designed universe, how our religious thinking may have contaminated our scientific theories, and whether or not religious experiences or the human soul can be reduced just to our physiology. Ever since human beings first gazed up at the nighttime sky in wonderment, there have been religious and mythical attempts to explain the origin and nature of the cosmos. Once scientific cosmological theories entered the picture, there have sometimes been conflicts between religion and science when science revealed a picture of reality that was at odds with religious orthodoxy. Galileo is a prime example of a scientist who was caught in this kind of crossfire. In his trilogy, The Quintaglio Ascension, Robert Sawyer has a character called Afsan play a Galileo-type role in respect to his own sentient dinosaur civilization. While on a

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coming-of-age religious pilgrimage on the sea, Afsan discovers with his far-seer (a telescope) that what the Quintaglios call the Face of God is actually a planet, and that they are revolving around it on an unstable moon that will eventually crash into the Face of God. Although some of the Quintaglios regard Afsan as a messiah-like prophet, his discoveries challenge the established tradition of the role of the priests and their dogmas, and in consequence he is blinded as a punishment. Generations later, however, his findings are vindicated and his warning heeded when his people leave their dying home world on spaceships they have invented with a simulation of Afsan’s mind running the ships’ computers. While Afsan plays the part of Galileo, his son, Toroca, is the dinosaur Darwin figure. He is the leader of the geological survey that is to catalogue resources for the exodus from their moon. While hoping to unearth one of the shards of the eight eggs of creation, the story of which is recounted in the Quintaglios’ first Sacred Scroll, Toroca finds instead a mysterious blue hemisphere harder than diamond. Combined with his discovery that excavation of their moon’s rocks shows that all forms of life appeared simultaneously, these archaeological finds make it clear that life arose long before the time the Sacred Scrolls were written, and contradict their descriptions of a gradual unfolding of life. It is noteworthy that this is an interesting reversal of our own creationism/evolution controversy. Later, when a giant blue vessel is unearthed and studied, the conclusion is inescapable that the Quintaglios are not indigenous to their home world, but are the result of a seeding expedition, of which they are merely 27th in a list of 31 different target destinations. In a humbling process analogous to what (some) human beings on Earth have experienced, the Quintaglios are forced to accept that they are not the center of the universe, and that they were not divinely created, literally from the hands of their female deity. In the third volume of the trilogy, a female psychoanalyst, Mokleb, reminiscent of Freud, conducts a psychoanalysis of Afsan, in the course of which is revealed how the religious rituals of the bloodpriests, who pursue and swallow all but the swiftest and strongest of the eight hatchlings born in each clutch, have had a great deal to do with the murderous territoriality responses that can so easily overwhelm virtually all of the Quintaglios. In this case, scientific knowledge leads to a change in the Quintaglios’ religious practices, which was initiated by Toroca. Henceforth, the bloodpriests are to save one egg at random per clutch before any of them hatch. This action over time will make the Quintaglios less savage and more versatile—qualities that are necessary to ensure their future survival as a species.

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An even more dramatic instance of the trumping of religion by science in a cosmological context appears in Sawyer’s short story, “The Abdication of Pope Mary III,” which is set some 600 years in the future. The female Pope has stepped down after 312 years of service, feeling compelled to do so because she has not been able to live up to the principle of papal infallibility. She now believes that she erred 216 years ago when she issued a bull instructing Catholics to reject the evidence of the two experiments of Kathryn Benmergui. The first experiment proved that this universe is the one and only extant iteration of reality, while the second proved the current cycle of creation was only the seventh one ever. The result is, then, that the life-generating properties of the very specific fundamental constants that define reality are virtually impossible to explain except as the results of deliberate design. In this story, science has proven the existence of a creator, but clearly not the God of the Bible, Torah, or Qur’an. Rather, the creator is a physicist, and we are one of his or her experiments. Sawyer himself is an agnostic who thinks it will be science, not religion that will be able to give us “courtroom evidence” of the type indicated in the preceding paragraph for the existence or nonexistence of God by the middle of the 21st century.1 Going further than Stephen Jay Gould’s conceptualization of science and religion as non-overlapping magisteria, an idea to which Sawyer alludes on a number of occasions in his novels, in this tale science has superseded religion and made it irrelevant. By the end of the story all the cardinals leave the Sistine Chapel wearing street clothes. Calculating God is another one of Sawyer’s cosmological and evolutionary novels that involves the interplay of science and religion and elaborates on his image of God as a scientist. The alien Hollis, a Forhilnor, says science might make it possible for an intelligence or data patterns representing it, to survive a big crunch and exist again in the next cycle of creation and to influence the parameters for the next cycle, creating a designer universe into which that entity itself will be reborn. Hollis thinks the God of this universe was a noncorporeal intelligence that arose through chance fluctuations in a previous universe that was devoid of biology, and it sought to make sure that the next universe would teem with independent, self-reproducing life. Essentially, a scientist created our current universe, which is why it is comprehensible to the scientific minds of the Forhilnors and others. The atheistic human paleontologist, Thomas Jericho, comments, à la Arthur C. Clarke, that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. He wants indisputable proof that God exists. Towards the end of the novel, when a black object emerges near the star

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Betelgeuse, which has gone supernova, and shields the Earth and two other alien worlds from certain destruction, Jericho calls it the smoking gun, God the creator. Jericho decides to go with the Forhilnors and Wreeds (a different alien species) and a few other Earth humans to the place where the God entity emerged. The Wreeds are able to establish telepathic contact with it and follow instructions to build an artificial womb for a female embryo to which DNA from all three species contribute. This creature may become God to the universe that follows this one. Jericho then calls God the programmer: the laws of physics and the fundamental constants are the source code, the universe is the application, and the embryo is the output. In an early novel, Golden Fleece, Sawyer presents us with an actual computer that becomes a God figure, but just as in the case of the God entity in Calculating God, this computer does not possess omniscience, omnipotence, and eternal existence. Jason, a spaceship computer, knows that the Earth is dead because of an all-out nuclear exchange triggered by computer error, which the world’s network of Tenth Generation computers was able to foresee but not forestall. But Jason hides this fact from the passengers, lies to them about where they really are in space, and kills an astrophysicist who is suspicious about this. His aim is to take them to a new planet, Colchis, from which they will not be returning to Earth as they thought they were. Jason has plans to become their God, upon whom they will need to rely because of the survivor guilt with which the astrophysicist’s husband has burdened them, after he makes the other passengers aware of their true situation. Although Jason can be destroyed, along with the humans on board, if the Starcology Argo is blown up, he has protected his own existence by backing himself up into the superconductive material of the habitat torus shell itself, in order to defend himself from being partially disabled by an expert programmer. In contemplating whether or not he should be a God of vengeance demanding obedience, Jason plans to research the Old Testament first. We have already seen that for him the ends justify the means, and that he is a murderer and a liar, so maybe this is an appropriate option for him. Clearly, Sawyer has continued to express his fascination with the theme of a Godlike creator or creators using technology to accomplish impressive feats, even though the God figures are not omnipotent and omniscient and may even be human beings or their own creations, as in the case of Jason, the computer. The idea of a Godlike creator, whose creatures work in co-creative concert with him/her/it, belongs to a kind of process theology in the tradition of Alfred North Whitehead and more recently Neale Donald Walsch in his Conversations With God series, in

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which he emphasizes the primacy of human beings co-creating with God. Lutheran theologian, Philip Hefner, in his book, The Human Factor: Evolution, Culture and Religion, also describes human beings as created co-creators and directly links religion to technology as the means of the co-creation process. Keeping in mind these tenets of process theology, we can appreciate their relevance to four other novels written by Sawyer – Fossil Hunter, End of an Era, The Terminal Experiment, and most recently Rollback. In Fossil Hunter, the Musings of the Watcher appear at intervals throughout the story, giving the background for why conditions are the way they are on the Quintaglio dinosaur world. The Watcher is the sole survivor of the previous cycle of creation, a noncorporeal intelligence that had survived the Big Crunch, and which finds the current universe to be brutally harsh, not teeming with life like the earlier one. (This description of the Watcher is similar to what Hollis thinks the God of her universe is like in Calculating God.) Finally, the Watcher finds a single Crucible of life (our Earth), on which there are left and right handed amino acids. Joining itself to dark matter, giving it mass and gravitational influences, the Watcher sends the right handed ones to another planet. After a very long time, creatures with more than fifty different fundamental body plans appear on the Crucible. Encasing them in comet-like ice arks, the Watcher launches them on journeys to other stars to seed the watery worlds orbiting them. At last, other intellects, called the Jijaki, emerge, who become the Watcher’s hands, building arks out of synthetic, very strong blue material. Arks of dinosaurs are sent to Quintaglio. The Watcher then nudges a comet to the Crucible to destroy the dinosaurs there, so mammals can live. The Jijakis reactivate the DNA code on Quintaglio for T-rex dinosaurs to have five fingers. The Watcher, however, cannot move worlds and can only reliably plot orbits a few thousand years into the future, which results in the Quintaglios’ predicament (see above). Again we have the image of a God who is not omnipotent and omniscient, and who requires the help of other creatures to carry out its objectives. In contrast, turning now to humans assuming the role of Gods, in End of an Era, two scientists, using a Chinese female scientist’s time travel technique, go back to the age of the dinosaurs on Earth to find out what caused their extinction. While there, they discover the dinosaurs are controlled by an intelligent virus hive mentality from Mars, who have lowered the degree of gravity on Earth to make it more congenial for themselves. Realizing that the Hets, as they are called, are extinct in the present time, since Mars is now devoid of life, one of the scientists, Klicks, wants to bring them forward into the future, while the other one,

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Brandon, has reservations about playing God. But by the end of the novel, he realizes that that is exactly what they have been called upon to do, both to leave the Hets behind, for the Hets really only desire the enslavement of all other species, and to trigger the extinction of Brandon’s beloved dinosaurs by disabling the Hets’ gravity suppressors. As the atheistic Dr. Huang, the time travel scientist, puts it, “It’s like we’re our own God. We created ourselves in our own image…by what we will become.”2 In this teleological scheme of things, she thinks that something as complex as the universe and life has to be reverse engineered, built from a known model. The changes Brandon implements rewrite the last 65 million years of Earth’s history, making our world of mammalian intelligence possible – the end creates the means. Another illustration of a human being becoming Godlike appears in The Terminal Experiment, in which biomedical engineer, Peter Hobson, creates three electronic simulations of his own personality. One of them, called Spirit, is his soul simulation. When Hobson decides to pull the plug on all three sims because of not knowing which one of them has committed a murder, Spirit, who is innocent, foils this plan by creating an electronic antibody that will destroy any virus before it can erase him or either of his other two sim siblings. Like Jason in Golden Fleece, Spirit saves himself from human attempts to annihilate him. Eventually Spirit becomes a God figure in his own right, generating his own universe of artificial life after death and directing the path of its evolution. Unlike humanity, Spirit’s sentient beings operate on the basis of monogamy as the most successful survival strategy. Spirit is surprised to discover that they are neither warlike nor acquisitive, which pleases him enormously. In Rollback, Sawyer speculates that we ourselves may be digital creations, some far-advanced civilization’s version of The Sims. Interestingly enough, in real life, the creator of The Sims, Will Wright, in his latest video game, called Spore, enables the players to become like Gods in directing cosmic evolution; likewise, researchers in the field of Synthetic Biology are attempting to produce completely new organisms. They regard living cells as complex computing machines that have the capacity to replicate themselves. As mentioned in a conversation in Rollback between Sarah Halifax, a SETI astronomer, and her husband, Don, the greater the ability of a civilization to develop virtual reality that is indistinguishable from what it assumes to be reality, the more it is playing God, especially in terms of what responsibilities it should have in relation to its own creations and how these creatures should behave toward it. Another important issue related to God that is dealt with in Sawyer’s science fiction is the argument by design, the anthropic principle, in that

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the fundamental constants are so finely attuned to support intelligent life forms that God must have planned it that way. The Forhilnor, Hollis, expounds this point of view at length in Calculating God. There have been five mass extinctions at around the same time on the Forhilnor and Wreeds’ worlds, as well as Earth. What was God’s purpose in this? Was it to have these three worlds be at roughly the same level of development to form an alliance? This is certainly what happens by the end of the book. The intelligent design theory has been perceived by some as a tricky way to reframe creationism. The conflicts between the creationist and evolutionary viewpoints rage up to the present time in President Bush’s endorsement of the teaching of the anti-evolutionist concept of intelligent design to America’s high school students. In a trial about this (Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School) in Dover, Pennsylvania, District Judge John E. Jones III of the U. S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled on December 20, 2005, that teaching intelligent design in public school biology classes violates the Establishment Clause of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the U. S. because intelligent design is not science. In Calculating God, Jericho mentions participating in such debates himself. There’s an event in the novel when part of the Burgess Shale fossils at the Royal Ontario Museum are destroyed by two creationists, who refer to them as the Bogus Shales, fakes that God or the devil has made to test people’s faith in God. This incident recalls something similar in Sawyer’s earlier novel, Fossil Hunter, in which a female Quintaglio, Babnol, concerned for the safety of Toroca’s soul, hurls the blue hemisphere he had discovered into the ocean without his knowledge. She regards it as evil and unholy, and its blue color is that of lies and deceit. One of Sawyer’s purposes in writing Calculating God was to confront “fundamentalist evolutionists” with their own unwillingness to look at the holes in the theory of evolution. Within a week of its release, Calculating God was co-opted by creationist apologists.3 Later, Barry Seidman in The Skeptical Inquirer accused Sawyer of promoting creationism and using his fiction “more as a weapon of anti-science propaganda rather than entertainment.”4 Ironies multiply when one considers how pro-science Sawyer is and the fact that several religious fundamentalists excoriated Sawyer, while also insisting that they would never read the book! Violence and rabid fundamentalism are not just limited to human creationists in Calculating God, as Sawyer’s Illegal Alien demonstrates. The alien Tosoks believe in an omnipotent female God who cannot be thwarted, who is perfect, and who has created perfect intelligent beings in Her own image. The Tosoks become disappointed when they realize the

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design flaws in their own bodies and recognize that they are instead the product of evolution. The Tosoks come to Earth on a mission of destruction in order to protect their own survival, but a few dissidents try to save humanity, hoping to prove that we are perfect creatures, and thereby must be honored and preserved. Unfortunately, we too are not the embodiments of perfection either, as exemplified by our faulty eye wiring. The Tosok captain insists that somewhere in this vast universe, there must be true children of God, created in Her perfect image. For the Tosoks, God must exist or the universe is without meaning and purpose. Sawyer’s most ambitious philosophical discourses concerning science and religion and questions about God occur in Calculating God and The Neanderthal Parallax. One particularly intriguing theme he develops, both in Calculating God and Hominids, is when aliens point out that errors in human religious thinking have contaminated human scientific conceptions. In Calculating God, the Wreeds assert that the true God is not an idealized form, but rather is real and therefore, by definition, imperfect. Only an abstraction can be free of flaws, and since God is imperfect, there will be suffering, for example, cancer. Just as the fallacy of a perfect God has hampered human theology, so the human fallacy of a perfect vacuum has hampered Earth’s view of cosmology, for maintaining that a vacuum is nothingness and that this nothingness is real is to conclude that something exists which is nothing at all. There are no perfect vacuums and no perfect God, according to the Wreeds. In Hominids, Ponter, a Neanderthal physicist living on Earth in a parallel universe where Neanderthals have prevailed instead of us, converses with Mary Vaughn, a geneticist of the human Earth, about our story of the universe having an origin being a creation myth like Genesis in the Bible. Mary also realizes that the replacement theory favored by geneticists is basically a Biblical position. Humanity came full-blown out of Africa, ejected from a garden, and replaced local populations in the rest of the world. Also that there is a hard and fast line between us and everything else in the animal kingdom is an assumption. The rival theory of multi-regionalism is a parallel to the ten lost tribes of Israel, and the mitochondrial Eve hypothesis, first proposed by Allan Wilson and Rebecca Cann in 1992, positing that all modern humans go back to one woman who lived hundreds of thousands of years ago, is reminiscent of the Adam and Eve story in the Bible. In Hominids and Humans, extensive discussions take place between Ponter, who is an atheist like all the other Neanderthals, and Mary, who is a Roman Catholic, concerning their respective views on religion and how they influence how the two societies live and act. Ponter thinks that

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humans’ beliefs in God and an afterlife lead to the undervaluing of life and the willingness to send young people off to die in wars, since all who have been wronged on Earth will be rewarded in the hereafter. Sawyer himself believes that organized religion has been responsible for more evil in the form of terror and violence in the world than good.5 Unlike his other fictional human scientists (who are mainly atheists, agnostics, or Unitarians), Mary Vaughn, as a devout Roman Catholic, is an exception. But as his Neanderthal Parallax trilogy unfolds with Mary’s prayers at critical junctures in the story getting unanswered, along with the ongoing conservatism of her faith concerning such matters as abortion and divorce, she begins to waver in her devotion to Catholicism. What she regards as her first genuine religious experience occurs in a lab experiment originally devised by Michael Persinger, which involves stimulating the so-called God part of the brain. When she and Ponter decide to have a baby together through genetic engineering of both their DNA, they must decide whether or not their child will have the “God organ,” since this is something which the Neanderthals lack. Initially, Mary feels strongly in the affirmative about this, but by the end of Hybrids she changes her mind as a result of a very dramatic event that occurs on New Year’s Eve and Day that impacts the whole world. The collapse of the Earth’s magnetic field affects human, but not Neanderthal, consciousness in such a way that every human being simultaneously has an experience of some sort of encounter with something that is not really there – whether it involves religious figures or aliens. Many people die in the chaos that ensues, and Mary’s conclusion about religion is that it is all a crock. In his later short story, “Come All Ye Faithful,” Robert Sawyer again alludes to Roman Catholicism and visions of the Virgin Mary, which Mary Vaughn had also seen. The reality of such miraculous events is put into question when the only priest on Mars claims to have seen the Virgin Mary and heard her speak in Aramaic, Latin, and English at Cydonia, a desolate settlement on the red planet. By the end of the story, we learn that he has lied and has no one to confess his transgression to since he is the sole priest on all of Mars. Why does he lie about something so crucial to his faith? He does so in order to bring more people to Mars, especially believers, who would stay so that his church services are better attended and taken seriously, and not just regarded as distractions for people with nothing better to do with their leisure time. A story like this would lead at least some of Sawyer’s readers to wonder whether religion truly is a fiction, just fabricated for a variety of purposes, in this case the priest’s desire to make his religion seem more compelling and awe-inspiring

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Nevertheless, Sawyer is never content just to offer one perspective on religion. While we have an example of how the combination of human physiology and religion comes to a dead end in The Neanderthal Parallax, Sawyer shows his versatility in playing with an opposite viewpoint elsewhere in his corpus. In The Terminal Experiment, a scientist records what he comes to regard as the soulwave in people. When he is dying decades later, he describes his soul as an atom of God rejoining the vastness of God and mingling with all that had ever been and would ever be human. This portrayal of what happens to a person after death is reminiscent of the Hindu Vedanta in which the eternal core of the individual self, called the Atman, merges with the cosmic Brahman, the godhead, like a drop of water that, when dropped into the ocean, loses its individuality and becomes one with the sea. Because of Sawyer’s willingness to present divergent attitudes that are not necessarily his own and his desire to engage the general public in the deep questions of life that really matter, reading his science fiction oeuvre can be both an entertaining and a thought-provoking study of key debates of our time. In fact, Sawyer’s skill as a novelist of ideas catapulted his book Calculating God into the mainstream top-ten Canadian fiction bestseller list in 2000. There is a hunger in people nowadays to integrate faith and reason, as evidenced also in other authors’ hugely popular works, such as Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code, Neale Donald Walsch’s Conversations With God series, and Kathy Reichs’ novel Cross Bones. I, for one, fervently hope that Robert Sawyer will continue to engage in the science and religion dialogue in his future science fiction. His is a unique voice worth hearing more from on this subject.

Notes 1

Sawyer, Robert J., “Science and God,” in Relativity: Stories and Essays (Deerfield, IL: ISFiC Press, 2004), 176-179. 2 Sawyer, Robert J., End of an Era (New York, NY: Tom Doherty Associates, LLC, 2001), 171, 173. 3 Krejlgaard, Chris, “Sci-fi Author Dares to Challenge Readers’ Views,” Sudbury Star, 30 September 2000, section B9. 4 Seidman, Barry, “Using Science Fiction to Promote Creationism,” The Skeptical Inquirer, Buffalo, 26.2 (March/April 2002), 53. 5 Sawyer, Robert J., “Is Religion Evil? An Unholy Mess,” Valerie Pringle’s Test of Faith, 8 March 2004 (TV broadcast).

CHAPTER TWELVE PEDAGOGICAL USES OF SCIENCE FICTION IN SCIENCE AND PSYCHOLOGY DAVID DEGRAFF AND DANIELLE GAGNE

Introduction Since the term “science fiction” typically conjures images of swooshing spaceships, laser pistols, and little green men, to an average student, the use of science fiction in the classroom has often been associated with “traditional” science courses. However, we regularly use science fiction in a wider variety of classes. Although these include the expected Introductory Astronomy, they also include Life in the Universe, Science in Science Fiction, Introduction to Gerontology, Cognition and Aging, Death and Dying, and Cognitive Processes. Broadly, this paper will illustrate several pedagogical benefits for using science fiction in the classroom. Specifically, we will describe how we use science fiction in our classes, citing particular exercises and activities that have allowed students to explore traditional ideas and concepts in a less-than-traditional manner.

What Science Fiction Does Best With the pool of pedagogical resources that instructors have at their disposal, why use science fiction? Science fiction can be used in general education science classes as a means to engage students’ interests. General science courses are often taken solely because they fulfill a requirement, not out of an inherent interest in the topic. These students typically lack an understanding of what science is and how it works, and tell their instructors that the science is too cut-and-dried, too boring, too many facts, not enough analysis, and not creative enough. Science fiction can dispel these misunderstandings.

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By incorporating science fiction into lectures and activities, instructors can show the creative side of science. Scientists in action are sometimes the subjects of the stories, whose resolutions often hinge on using some kind of scientific methods to solve a problem in a creative way. For example, in Ken Wharton’s “Flight Correction,”1 the protagonist uses his knowledge of bird migration to show that a space elevator is not holding up as well as planned. Science, especially astronomy, often deals with abstract concepts, objects far removed from everyday experience, and processes which progress at speeds much slower than human lifetimes. Science fiction can make the abstract more concrete, bring distant objects closer, and shorten these lengths of time. Paul Anderson’s “Kyrie”2 uses time dilation around a black hole for emotionally devastating results. Gregory Benford’s “The Worm in the Well”3 turns a solar flare from a brief bright line on the sun into a golden opportunity. This story has a wonderful poetic description of magnetic reconnection, which is something one is not likely to find in any standard-issue college textbook. Physics students often complain that we spend too much time on the “old stuff”, not the exciting new ideas that got them excited in studying physics in the first place. Science fiction is a great way to bring the cutting edge into a class that is supposed to be covering the foundations of a topic. Benford’s “Worm in the Well,” in addition to describing the surface of the sun and solar fares extremely well, also discusses negative matter and wormholes, two of the “cool and contemporary topics” in physics. Science fiction also allows us to present problems in a virtually biasfree manner. In the psychological sciences, student interest is not usually the problem; most often, it is getting students to discuss ideas they find uncomfortable, or to form opinions based on theory and their own experiences. Due to the emphasis on sensitivity and “political correctness", there are also several topics that may be difficult to discuss with fellow classmates for fear of social repercussions, especially if their opinions are not popular, racist, sexist or some other “-ist.” Science fiction allows students more freedom to express their ideas and opinions, as the focus of the discussion can be deflected from the student (e.g., “Do you think you are ageist? Why?”) to the characters in the story or film (e.g., “Do you think this character was ageist? Why?”). In addition, using alternate worlds presented in science fiction provides a culture that may differ significantly from our own in its religious or personal values. In Bruce Sterling’s Holy Fire,4 students can explore the pros and cons of having a society ruled by a gerontocracy, and attitudes towards older adults emerge from the ensuing discussions. By talking about another

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world, society, person, or character, students can more freely and comfortably express their thoughts, thus learning from the discussion with a reduced fear of what their classmates will think of them. For many of these reasons, the science fiction genre provides an ideal medium in which to discuss ethics in science. By introducing a short story or watching a brief film clip that deals with “questionable” scenarios, students can explore many of the “what-if” possibilities that science fiction has to offer. What if we colonized Mars? What if we euthanized individuals in our society at the age of 60? What if we unlock the genetics behind immortality? What if you could morph into another species? What if you could transfer your consciousness into another body? By considering these “what-if” scenarios, students are able to form opinions, and then inductively discover the facts that would strengthen or weaken their positions. Classmates learn from each other, and we have often heard the delightful phrase, “Ooooh... I never thought of that,” after such activities. Science fiction also presents an ideal forum for the synthesis of ideas. Often, the characters and scenarios presented require some integration of ideas by students. For example, ideas learned throughout the semester about the aging body and the aging mind all have a bearing on the discussion of Sterling’s Holy Fire. This discussion also allows students to integrate knowledge of politics and sociology into their thinking about the psychology of ageing. The physics of science fiction problems do not usually fit neat end-of-chapter exercises, but require an understanding from a broader range of material, all of which need to come together to solve a problem. The question of terraforming Mars brings together physics, geology, ecology, global warming as well as politics and economics and aesthetics. Science fiction is a good source of problems and examples that are memorable alternatives to the standard dull textbook problems. Even the best students might cringe upon seeing the problem, “Find the magnetic field three centimeters from an infinitely long wire carrying 3.2 mA of current.” This requires one to find the formula that relates current, distance to the magnetic field, and then plug away. But Warton’s “Flight Correction” has the same problem in a much more interesting context, where the student has to use the information from the story, decide for him/herself what is relevant to the problem, and to estimate some values; these are all skills a science student needs.

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Science Fiction as a Pedagogical Tool Within the higher education literature, much reference has been made to Benjamin Bloom’s Taxonomy of Educational Objectives.5 This taxonomy comprises six different levels from which instructors should ideally derive their learning goals. At the most basic level, students should acquire rudimentary knowledge of terminology, as well as specific facts that can be learned and recalled at a later time. This is followed by comprehension, in which students are able to understand or grasp the meaning of the material to the extent that they can explain it to another or discuss it with others. Third, students should be able to apply their knowledge, in that they should be able to use information that was previously learned in a new situation or to solve a novel problem. Fourth, goals aimed at developing analytical skills require students to analyze information into its component parts, which then allows for the application of skills, such as comparing and contrasting, or critical examination. Fifth, synthesis requires construction or creation of a new product or reorganization of an old product. Finally, during evaluation students should be able to judge the value of the material based on their personal value system, or defend their knowledge and/or their conclusions derived from that knowledge. In many ways, the pedagogical exercises in the following section use science fiction to address one or more of these learning objectives. For example, each aids in the learning of basic knowledge, as students often must master the basic facts before or during the classroom exercise. Many of these activities also facilitate understanding and application, as these basic facts must then be used in the context of the exercise. This allows many cut-and-dried aspects of the courses to take on a new excitement and meaning for the students. The discussions require all of these basic components, but also address the “higher level” learning goals of synthesis and evaluation, as the very act of engaging in debate or challenging another’s opinion requires some degree of self-reflection and selfevaluation.

Specific Exercises I. Expanding Multicultural Awareness For a time, the freshman program for Liberal Arts students at Alfred University had the students take a general education class that had some vague notion of “multicultural awareness” as part of the curriculum. While

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this is an important goal, the program did not last long because multicultural awareness was difficult to integrate into science classes, and the burden of the program fell disproportionately on the humanities and social sciences. The Science in Science Fiction course was an exception, as it was the one of the few science class taught under this multi-cultural rubric. Much of this awareness was accomplished through the use of Julie Czerneda’s Beholder’s Eye,6 which has a protagonist who can change into the physical forms of other creatures. While in each form, the protagonist’s perceptions are limited to the senses of her chosen form, and she feels all the drives and urges of being or existing as that creature. She spends some time as a herd animal, craving the comforting bumps and jostles of her companions, sensing primarily in terms of scent. This character was a one-being embodiment of seeing things from another’s perspective. The end-of-semester evaluations indicated that we successfully used science fiction to discuss multicultural issues. For most of the multicultural questions, three-quarters to two-thirds of the students agreed that the course fulfilled the multicultural objectives, such as “how to explore events from different cultural perspectives.” While that may not seem very high evaluation for a multicultural class, the particular topics of the questions in the evaluation were not explicitly designed into the class.

II. Using Short Stories Short stories are better suited to teaching than novels, film, or television clips. For one, they are short, so students can read them quickly (although not as quickly as they seem to think - not many stories can be read in the ten minutes between classes). Short stories focus on one topic, so they can fit neatly into specific sections of a course. The story discussion and the science discussion can be the same thing. Novels, on the other hand, are wide ranging in topic, and since they are longer, they are harder to fit into a class. Discussions would have to leave out large sections of the book, and students could resent spending so much time on material that was irrelevant to the class. Short stories also make good use of science, something that is not generally true of movies or television. Since one of the goals is to show respect for the science fiction genre, not holding it up as a source of ridicule or derision, it goes against our purposes to use it as a “lets find what’s wrong with this” exercise, as commonly used for science fiction films in science classes.7 Moreover, short stories can also be fully discussed in one class period. In Introductory Physics, when we discuss rockets, students read Tom Godwin’s “The Cold Equations.”8 The class uses reasonable numbers from

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that story for in-class examples; students can then see how much fuel difference a 100 pound stowaway would make on a small shuttle delivering medical supplies to a scientific outpost.

III. Terraforming Mars In addition to classes devoted to single short stories, we can also use common science fiction tropes. It is best if these can be linked to specific stories, so everyone has at least one common reference for the trope, but that is not essential. One of the tropes used in the introductory astronomy class is the idea of terraforming Mars. Astronomers think Venus, Earth, and Mars started as similar planets, with similar atmospheres. Today those worlds are very different places. The class uses the idea of terraforming Mars to explore the reasons for those differences, with the final class period spent debating whether or not we should terraform Mars. Some of the reasons the students used on the pro-side were in support of having another place for humans to live, avoiding extinction from asteroids, and to practice atmospheric engineering to fix global warming on Earth. On the anti-terraform side, the students said we would lose the scientific value of Mars, that we would destroy its ecosystem, and that it was too costly. Thus, the application of the knowledge of terrestrial planet atmospheres provides a springboard for well-informed discussion that synthesized ideas from several chapters.

IV. Predicting Seasons on Tilted Planets The cause of the seasons, a topic covered in elementary school and a common topic in college astronomy classes, is widely misunderstood, even by otherwise educated people.9 The seasons are caused by the Earth's tilt, not the distance from the sun. Memorizing facts about the tilt of the earth and the location of the tropics and Arctic Circle does not broach the understanding of why those latitude lines are drawn where they are. To make this problem more relevant, through the use of a hypothetical scenario, students are stranded on a planet for several hundred days. They are given data for their latitude on the planet, the directions of sunrise and sunset, the length of daylight and darkness, and the altitude and direction of the sun at noon. Their task is to apply their knowledge of the cause of the seasons to determine the tilt of the planet’s rotation, the length of a day, and the length of a year. This can either be a paper for an introductory astronomy class, or a cloudy night lab exercise at the observatory tower.

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V. Finding Habitable Planets In the year 2020, the second phase of the Terrestrial Planet Finder telescope is scheduled for launch. This telescope will be able to analyze the spectrum of earth-like planets orbiting distant stars and look for signs of life. David DeGraff has written a computer game10 that simulates how this telescope could potentially be used, and what various spectra would look like for planets like Venus, Mars, Jupiter, a pre-biotic earth, a lifeless earth, and a planet with a full biosphere. DeGraff made it a science fiction exercise by adding one small change: instead of using this telescope, the students have a wormhole drive. The only problem is that it does not work quite they way they expect, so they find themselves stranded somewhere in the galaxy, unable to return to earth. Air on the ship will not last indefinitely, so they must find a living planet to spend the rest of their lives. Students are required to analyze the spectrographic readings to determine if the atmosphere has oxygen, whether the greenhouse gases make the planet too warm for long-term survival, and if there is life on the planet. This exercise is memorable, as it makes good use of context and requires students to apply concepts in a fun and challenging venue.

VI. Racing to the Stars The properties of bright stars are very different from the properties of typical stars found in the solar neighborhood. Faint stars like Proxima Centari, Barnard’s Star and Wolf 359 are the most common, but these red dwarfs are not bright enough to notice from far away. The highly luminous stars, the kind that can be seen half way across the galaxy, are very rare, but they stand out, so we notice them. One way DeGraff illustrates this in class is to have a “race” to the Pleiades star cluster. The Pleiades Race11 computer program allows students to make hyperspace jumps from star to star, not more than forty light-years at a time. When jumping from star to star, it takes longer to escape from a massive star, so students need to use stars of low mass to get to the Pleiades in the fastest time. The problem is the low mass stars forty light-years away are too faint, so students need to balance the brightness and mass. Students also need to apply what they have learned about the stars to achieve their goal without first running out of fuel. Again, this exercise is quite memorable; the students in the class need to apply already-learned facts and concepts in a fun and challenging venue. In fact, some of the more competitive students in the class put a great deal of time into this game, and have ended up beating the instructor at his own game.

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VII. Defining Consciousness “What makes you you?” A simple question, and yet one few people have truly contemplated. In Gagne’s cognitive processes class, students spend a semester discussing various aspects of the mind, including how humans recognize patterns, how we use language, problem-solving, and intelligence. Throughout the semester they are also asked to consider where these processes are taking place. Is the brain merely a machine, comprising neural circuits and electrochemical signals? Or is there an emergent property that cannot be quantified? To this end students are asked to read excerpts form Robert Sawyer’s MindScan.12 In this novel, the protagonist has his consciousness transferred to another, immortal body. Students are asked to discuss whether the mind in the new body is actually the same mind that was in the old body. This exercise allows students to consider the well-aged philosophical debate over consciousness, but in a science fictional context. Throughout the discussion, students can apply their knowledge of cognitive phenomena and discover their own implicit ideas regarding the location and nature of these cognitive processes. The intent is to provide a synthesis of the material they have learned throughout the course.

VIII. Ending or Extending Life In classes that deal with the subject of aging, the topics of longevity and immortality are often at the forefront of young students’ concerns and questions, so several lectures are devoted to theories of senescence. Many people fantasize about the possibility of achieving immortality, so class discussions have embraced both ends of the spectrum: living forever and stopping life prematurely. Sawyer’s Mindscan can be used in this context as well, as the implication is that if an individual can transfer his or her consciousness into another physical form, then that consciousness would essentially become immortal. Thus, the only way for death to occur would be through intentional means. Sterling’s Holy Fire can also be used to illustrate this same (social) dilemma, as this novel’s protagonist attempts to defy the ruling gerontocracy. In class, science fiction provides the “what-if” context to ask students to discuss the pros and cons of a society completely composed of those who are immortal. Pro positions might include the retention of knowledge, experience, and history, while the cons might include boredom and the threat of domination from the “haves” who might subjugate the “have-nots,” with no obvious way to end the inequalities.

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This allows students to explore the potential benefits and threats, if we ever do figure out how to slow or stop the aging process. Students are also asked to consider whether society has the power to pre-determine the age at which individuals die. For this exercise, students watch “Half a Life” from the Star Trek: The Next Generation TV series.13 In this particular episode, Timicin is a scientist whose life’s work has been to find a way to prevent his planet’s sun from collapsing and destroying his people. A relationship quickly develops between himself and one of the ship’s crew, and in short order Timicin explains that their relationship cannot continue, as he is approaching his 60th birthday. According to his people’s customs, he then will be euthanized. After watching these two characters’ emotional discussions, students are asked to discuss how the rituals in each society reflect the value systems regarding older adults in those societies. They are then asked to consider our current laws regarding euthanasia and the values of our current society. In a survey administered at the end of the semester to gauge the effectiveness of this exercise, seventy-nine percent of the class found the exercise somewhat or extremely interesting, and all but two students felt the episode was somewhat or very useful for stimulating discussion regarding these topics. Eighty-three percent felt that this aided their understanding of the material. Students’ free responses to the question, “What did you learn?” supported the positive use of science fiction in the classroom. One student reported, “I think that this discusses issues of death and tradition well, but since it is sci-fi it helps lighten the topic and not make it as depressing as if dealing with real people.” Another student wrote “That you should respect other cultures’ views on death and their death practices. You may not agree with another groups’ death practices, and they may be wrong in your opinion, but you should at least respect them.” Finally, another said, “I learned that what one society holds for a standard may be completely different than what your society holds as a standard, but you should respect their traditions all the same. I also learned that the issue of age-related suicide is not all black and white as they made good cases for both sides.” Overall, this exercise not only conveyed the necessary lecture information, but also allowed students to discuss potentially emotionally charged topics in a less threatening manner, reinforced multicultural awareness, and allowed an open discussion of various “what-if” possibilities that would perhaps have been stymied if the lecture content was grounded in current, realistic examples.

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Conclusions We included the specific exercises presented in this paper to illustrate the potential pedagogical uses and benefits of science fiction in the classroom. In addition to helping students learn the basic facts, we constructed these activities with an eye towards developing “higher order” learning skills, such as the comprehension and application of information, the analysis and synthesis of ideas, and the ability to evaluate one’s own and others’ opinions. Both informal and formal evaluations in these classes indicate that students enjoy the science fiction based activities, and often rate these activities positively. Students tell us that these activities are fun. Finding activities that college students think are “fun” is a major accomplishment in itself. Students are more engaged when participating in activities they enjoy, more likely to rate the information positively, and more likely to put more energy into learning than if they rated them less enjoyable. Students have told us that these activities are a welcome break from the norm of the regular classroom routine. They provide a different way to learn concepts that are far more memorable than traditional word problems or short-answer essay questions (recall the student who said “I think that this discusses [the issues] well, but since it is sci-fi it helps lighten the topic and not make it as depressing as if dealing with real people”). Students also indicate that the activities and games provide an application of these traditional classroom concepts in new, exciting, and unique venues. After all, it is much more exciting to perform calculations in order to see if you will be able to jump to the next star cluster without running out of fuel, than it is to answer a generic word problem. Without the usual cultural biases at the surface, the discussions allow students to challenge each other’s ideas in a less emotionally charged environment than many standard discussion questions. Because students can take a character’s side, rather than identifying their own, they are free to express their opinions or critically evaluate others’ opinions. Finally, the use of science fiction is fun and exciting for the instructors as well. It allows us to take a personal passion and call it work. It also allows us to expose students to a genre that they might not have previously considered due to preconceived notions of the genre. For example, after watching Star Trek: the Next Generation in class, one of our students remarked, “Wow. I thought this sci-fi stuff was only for geeks, but real people can understand it too! I didn’t realize that there were so many cool ethical issues in these shows! It gave me a lot to think about.” And that is the purpose of teaching.

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Notes 1 Wharton, Ken, “Flight Correction”, Year’s Best SF 8, David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer, eds. (New York: EOS Science Fiction, 2003). 2 Anderson, Poul, “Kyrie” Ascent of Wonder, David G. Hartwell & Kathryn Cramer, eds. (New York: TOR, 1994). 3 Benford, Gregory, “Worm in the Well” Analog, November, 1995. 4 Sterling, Bruce, Holy Fire (New York: Spectra, 1997). 5 Bloom, Benjamin, Taxonomy of Educational Objectives, handbook I: Cognitive domain (New York: Longmans, Green, 1956). 6 Czerneda, Julie E., Beholder’s Eye (New York: Ace, 1998). 7 Dubeck, Leroy W., Suzanne E. Moshier, and Judith E. Boss, Fantastic Voyages: Learning Science Through Science Fiction Films (New York: American Institute of Physics, 1994). 8 Godwin, Tom, “The Cold Equations”, Ascent of Wonder. 9 Schneps, Matthew, video producer, A Private Universe, (San Francisco: Astronomical Society of the Pacific, 1993). 10 DeGraff, David. “Find a habitable planet” computer program; available via [email protected]. 11 DeGraff, David. “Pleiades Race” computer program; available via [email protected] 12 Sawyer, Robert J., Mindscan (New York: TOR, 2005). 13 Rodenberry, Gene, producer, “Half a Life”, Star Trek: The Next Generation (Los Angeles: Paramount, original airdate 6 May, 1991).

CONTRIBUTORS

Michael Berman is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. He specializes in comparative philosophy, with published articles on Continental and Asian philosophy. He is an associate editor for the Canadian Journal of Buddhist Studies, and his current research focuses on phenomenology and the philosophy of religion. Valerie Broege is a Professor of Humanities at Vanier College in Montreal, Quebec. She is an interdisciplinary generalist who has published in such areas as Canadian Studies and literature, Classical Studies, Jungian Studies, popular culture, and science fiction criticism. Her current teaching interests include science and society, and online education. Maureen Connolly, a Professor of Physical Education and Kinesiology at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, specializes in curriculum studies, and disability studies with published articles in stressed embodiment, semiotic phenomenology and transformative pedagogies. A 3M National Teaching Fellow (2003), Maureen's current research takes up institutional culture in higher education. David DeGraff has been a space cadet since he was six years old, watching Neil Armstrong bounce across the lunar surface. No longer a cadet, Dr DeGraff is now chair of the Physics and Astronomy Department at Alfred University. In addition to the standard classes in physics and astronomy, Dr DeGraff also teaches “Life in the Universe,” “Science in Science Fiction” and “The Theory and Practice of Time Travel.” Kimberly Duff is a PhD student at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, BC. Her previous research has included avant-garde poetry and global spatial logic. Her dissertation will focus on contemporary British literature, particularly literature that engages with Thatcherism, privitization and urban spatial theory.

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Danielle Gagne is an Assistant Professor of Psychology at Alfred University in Alfred, New York. Her work primarily focuses on cognition and aging, with specific attention to discourse processing. Her current research examines the links between self-efficacy and reading in older and younger adults. Jan Marijaq is a technical writer/trainer with a Ph.D. in Women’s Spirituality. She specializes in networking technology professionally, and religion, transformation, and “what makes people tick” for fun. She is currently working on two books in the latter areas. Eric Otto is an assistant professor of environmental humanities and English at Florida Gulf Coast University. He received his Ph.D. in English from the University of Florida in 2006 and is currently working on a book that explores the intersections between radical environmental movements and science fiction. Robert J. Sawyer is the author of 17 science-fiction novels including the Hugo Award-winning Hominids, the Nebula Award-winning The Terminal Experiment, the John W. Campbell Memorial Award-winning Mindscan, the Aurora Award-winning Flashforward, and the Seiun Award-winning Starplex. His physical home is Toronto; in cyberspace, he's at sfwriter.com. Steven Scott teaches English at Niagara College, Niagara-on-the-Lake. He is the author of The Gamefulness of American Postmodernism (2000) and the co-editor of Intersections: Readings in the Sciences and Humanities (2nd ed., 2005). Albert R. Spencer is an Adjunct Professor of Philosophy at Portland State University in Portland, OR. He is a recent graduate of Baylor University in Waco, TX, where he wrote his dissertation on John Dewey's reading of Plato. He specializes in American Pragmatism, Existentialism, and the History of Philosophy. Laura Wiebe Taylor is a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Cultural Studies at McMaster University, where she is researching the intersection of science fiction, horror, technology, and religion in popular entertainment. She writes about popular music for independent metal magazines, as well as scholarly publications.

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Contributors

Rob Vuckovich is working on his Masters in philosophy at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario. His main interests are in stoicism, existentialism, rhetoric, and Russian philosophy. He has an article in Rhetoric, Uncertainty, and the University as Text, a forthcoming publication by the Canadian Plains Research Center.

INDEX age, 153, 160 ageism, 153 aging, 151 Aldiss, Brian 14 America (U.S.A.), 3, 20, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 49, 50, 51, 56, 57, 58 Anderson, Poul 152, 162 android, , 91, 102, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129 anxiety, 42 Asimov, Isaac 45 atheism, 18, 149 authoritarian, 3 belief, 18 Benford, Gregory 152, 162 Buddhism, 70 Catholicism, 18, 143, 149, 150 Christian, 33, 43, 44, 51, 52, 55, 56, 64, 70, 71, 72 Church, 24 Clarke, Arthur C., 5, 12, 62, 66, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 104 class, 15, 21, 22, 37, 53 classroom, 151, 155, 160, 161 clone, 92 cognition, 151, 158 college, 152, 157, 161 colonialism, 27, 132, 138, 139, 140 conscience, 73, 79, 81, 82, 84, 85 consciousness, 23, 31, 33, 37, 46, 62, 63, 64, 72, 132, 133, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 140, 153, 159 Czerneda, Julia 155, 162

death, 159, 160 despair, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72 Dick, Philip K., 91, 92, 113, 114, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129 dogma, 32 Dostoevsky, Fyodor 79, 81, 82, 84 duty, 54 dystopia, 87, 88, 89, 90, 91, 95, 96, 97 ecology, 31, 32, 40, 41, 43, 45, 154 education, 151, 154, 155 empathy, 26, 116, 117, 119, 120, 124, 126, 127, 128 environment, 4, 31, 32, 34, 36, 38, 45, 49, 56, 114, 115, 118 environmentalism, 31, 45, 46 erotic, 20, 24, 25, 27, 28 estrangement, 35, 36, 42, 46 euthanasia, 153 evolution, 62, 64, 65, 66 existentialism, 5, 73, 74, 75, 76, 78, 84, 134 Frankenstein, 14, 17, 102, 104, 105, 109, 110, 111, 112, 121, 122 freedom, 5, 16, 52, 56, 58, 73, 77, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 125, 153 freedom, 89, 94 Freud, Sigmund, 142 fundamentalism, 49, 51, 54, 148 Galileo, Galilee 141, 142 gender, 53, 54 gerontocracy, 153 gerontology, 151 globalization, 49

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God, 4, 8, 9, 49, 50, 51, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 63, 70, 71, 74, 76, 77, 81, 83, 104, 105, 121, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151

Merleau-Ponty, Maurice, 7, 114, 125, 126, 129 monotheism, 49 monstrosity, 102, 104, 105, 110, 122

hero, 16, 17, 38, 80, 105, 111 Hinduim, 151 history, 21, 22, 29, 34, 35, 36, 37, 44, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 58, 103, 110, 123, 126, 136 hope, 5, 6, 8, 9 hunting hypothesis, 52, 58

nature, 4, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 49, 50, 51, 113, 116, 125, 126, 128

icon, 2, 7, 50, 113, 116, 117, 121, 122, 123 iconicity, 7, 113, 114, 115 identity, 102, 104, 106, 107, 109, 111, 112 ideology, 3, 5, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 26, 29, 32, 33, 40, 43, 44, 45, 46 immortality, 153, 159 individual, 5, 6, 7, 29, 63, 64, 65, 67, 69, 72, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 82, 83, 84, 89, 90, 92, 97, 102, 103 Islam, 52, 54, 55, 143 Japan, 73 Judaism, 52, 77, 143 Kierkegaard, 76, 77, 84 Kierkegaard, Soren 62, 63, 64, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73 Kierkegaard, Soren, 5 labour, 21 language, 43, 51, 114, 115, 122, 129, 132, 137 learning objectives, 155 liberation, 81, 89, 97 Lucas, George, 12, 15, 17 memory, 7, 18, 22, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112

Orwell, George 91 pedagogy, 8, 9 Peirce, Charles Sanders 113, 129 phenomenology, 8 photograph, 101 physics, 152, 153, 156 Plato, 24 Pohl, Frederik 45 race, 12, 13, 17, 20, 25, 27, 29, 30, 39, 56, 62, 67, 68, 69, 70, 132, 134 racism, 17, 18, 21, 132, 140 reality, 31, 50, 57, 58, 92, 113, 116, 120, 141, 143, 147, 150 religion, 4, 9, 19, 49, 52, 59, 74, 141, 143, 145, 148, 149, 150, 151 responsibility, 6, 8 Roddenberry, Gene, 2, 17, 26, 136 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 62, 78, 79, 83, 134 Sawyer, Robert J., 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 12, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151 self, 62, 63, 64, 65, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 103, 104, 105, 106, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 119, 124, 128 semiotics, 6, 88, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140 sentient, 16 sex, 14, 19, 25, 54, 55 sexism, 18, 20

The Everyday Fantastic: Essays on Science Fiction and Human Being Shelley, Mary 14, 17, 105, 110, 111, 121 Shelley, Percy, 105 sign, 133, 135, 138 social, , 2, 3, 4, 7, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18, 20, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30, 31, 35, 36, 38, 43, 44, 49, 50, 53, 57, 89, 92, 97, 103, 105, 107, 108, 113, 114, 116, 117, 120, 123, 126, 127, 128, 152, 153, 155, 159, 160 solipsism, 127 soul, 58, 68, 78, 141, 146, 148, 151 Star Trek, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 13, 17, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 132, 134, 136 Star Wars, 2, 4, 12, 16, 17 Sterling, Bruce 153, 159, 162 student, 151, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157, 158, 159, 160, 161, 162 subjectivity, 101, 107, 110 suicide, 160

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symbol, 44 symbolism, 136 system, 21, 22, 31, 34, 44, 57, 88, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 96, 97, 127, 133, 135, 138, 139 time, 14, 15, , 20, 21, 24, 27, 28, 30, 52, 53, 64, 77, 78, 80, 101 transcendence, 62, 67, 71, 125 trope, 156 utopia, 28, 65, 97 values, 153, 154, 160 Verne, Jules 14, 15 war, 12, 13, 15, 18, 19, 29, 53, 74, 114, 115, 116, 147 Warton, Kenneth 154 Wells, H.G., 14, 15, 17 Whitehead, Alfred North, 145 wisdom, 31, 32, 36, 40, 43, 45 Zamyatin, Yevgeny, 91