Sure Solacer of Human Cares – The Joys of Tuning in to SF Radio Theatre

by Mina

I began by reading what the “Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy” has to say about imagination. Here is a summary of my understanding of the salient points (imagine the voice of Peter Jones as the “book” in “The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” BBC radio serialisation as you read this). There are two ways to use your imagination: in a transcendent manner that “enables one to escape from or look beyond the world as it is”, and in an instructive manner that “enables one to learn about the world as it is.” SF and sci-phi ask us to do both. Imagination is not the same as belief, although they are both ways of interpreting the world around us: both involve holding an image or representation in your mind. There are also similarities in how imagination and memory work: “both typically involve imagery, both typically concern what is not presently the case, and both frequently involve perspectival representations.” Both also involve mental time travel, remembering the past works in a similar way in your mind to imagining the future. Finally, imagination helps us to understand other minds, to pretend and recognise pretence, to characterise psychopathology, to engage with the arts, to think creatively, to acquire knowledge about possibilities and to interpret figurative language.

We use imagination in all aspects of our lives but here I will be focusing on how we use it recreationally. Films, TV series, books and radio dramas all “catch our imagination”. With SF, we relax by postulating alternate realities. But where our imagination truly flies, in my opinion, is through SF radio theatre. We suspend disbelief while we listen: we behave as if we believe that other worlds or ways of being actually exist. It is a temporary state of mind for we snap back into our everyday reality afterwards (unless we are suffering from some form of psychosis). With the advent of TV, radio dramas declined in many countries but continued to thrive in Britain and Germany. Radio plays are different from film: “with no visual component, radio drama depends on dialogue, music and sound effects to help the listener imagine the characters and story. It is auditory in the physical dimension but equally powerful as a visual force in the psychological dimension” (http://www.theatrecrafts.com/pages/home/topics/sound/radio-drama/). I prefer radio plays to films of my favourite SF classics because it leaves me free to visualise things as I wish (for example, the wonderful adaptations of all of John Wyndham’s novels).

I will begin with “Solaris”, of which I do not think there has been a truly satisfying film version made – I find Steven Soderbergh’s most recent film adaptation starring Geroge Clooney oddly bland. Hattie Naylor’s 2007 radio adaptation of Stanislaw Lem’s book, however, is wonderful in its simplicity. There are few sound effects, only very occasional music and just five voices; yet it creates a wonderful atmosphere. Inside the CD sleeve note, Polly Thomas writes that “Solaris” offered “the opportunity to play with the imagination and invent a new world through sound… we created layers of sound texture”. And the production team did just that: footsteps ringing, sound echoing in large spaces or dampened in smaller confines, and using the finest instrument, the human voice – the narrator, in particular. It is a haunting radio drama, which explores imagination, illusion, memory, desire, grief, regret, guilt and wonder. It looks at the parts of the mind we normally ignore, what makes us flawed and human. It explores science, faith, redemption, men and the birth of gods.

Although the film “Blade Runner” is good, I prefer the radio play which keeps Philip K. Dick’s original title “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?”. Jonathan Holloway’s 2014 radio adaptation is done in a style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe detective stories. The radio drama spends more time on the philosophical questions than the film, particularly what makes a person human and alive. There is a blurring of the lines between android and human that works very well when you only hear the voices. Its use of music and sound effects make it feel more like a film soundtrack than a radio play.

One of my favourite radio serialisations is James Follet’s “Earthsearch” (1981). It has ten episodes, each ending with a cliff-hanger, much like similar dramas in the 1950s. The production team did not have enough money for a musical soundtrack, so they chose to use cheesy sound effects such as clicks, whirring, whooshing, beeps and blasts that serve to add to its charm. The CD’s sleeve note states that Earthsearch is “a memorable attempt to bring hard SF notions to listeners in the form of an exciting, character-driven adventure”. And character-driven it is, with a small cast. The spaceship’s crew of four each have their own well-defined personalities, but most interesting, oddly enough, are the megalomaniac onboard computers Angel (Ancillary Guardian Environment and Life) 1 and Angel 2. The scriptwriter began with one idea: a ship of humans returns to our solar system to find the Earth gone. We are given hints of what has passed over the preceding millennia: the Solaric Empire, First Footprint City, the dregs of humanity and the computer wars. The relationship between time and space plays a crucial part in the plot. It is also a story of the loss of innocence and a journey to find a mythical paradise. It was so successful that James Follet went on to write a sequel “Earthsearch II” (1982) and a prequel “Earthsearch: Mindwarp (2006)”.

I will now focus on two radio plays that explore true sci-phi themes. Mike Walker wrote two award-winning radio dramas that explore Artificial Intelligence (AI): “Alpha” (2001) and “Omega” (2002). Both play on “I think therefore I am” and examine what makes us alive. In “Alpha”, we meet a Catholic priest having a crisis of faith. He acts as a sort of trouble-shooter for the Vatican. He is sent on a final mission by the Holy See to investigate Project Alpha, which turns out to be the first sentient AI. The priest interviews Alpha in an attempt to determine if it is truly self-aware, if it has developed consciousness and whether it has a soul. Alpha challenges the priest’s faith and displays a definite personality: it is playful, a little cruel, and determined to survive (it states that good is what helps you survive; bad is the opposite). Alpha prefers to be called Sophia and insists that she is a machine, born of complexity, and that, like all life, she is made from stardust. She and the priest also make an emotional connection over a shared memory.

Alpha proves to the priest that she can travel anywhere in cyberspace and access any system. For her, time is not a prison, it is a door. The priest replies that humans, however, are prisoners in time. He admits that he believes Sophia to be real and that he will be committing murder when he is forced to switch her off. Sophia tells him that there will be others like her and the priest wonders if humans will prove to be a dead end in evolution and AIs like Sophia the future. They discuss the priest’s feelings of guilt and hope for salvation. Sophia thanks him for teaching her about conscience, as she needed to understand it. The priest switches off the computer, but he does not believe he has killed Sophia, for she was already wrapped around the world, like a web. He is proud to have been Alpha Sophia’s teacher and he wonders what she will become when she grows up. He himself seeks a simpler life and asks to go back home to Nicaragua, to try to be a priest, to listen to the frogs sing as they did in the childhood memory he shared with Sophia. Music plays an important role because, through it, Sophia has understood beauty, and she plays a fragment of choral music to the priest, suggesting that she too has a soul. Music is also used to mark the passing of time, which is not linear to Sophia in the way it is to the priest.

Where “Alpha” looks at the birth of an AI, “Omega” examines its death. Initially, this radio drama seems to be about an architect John Stone and his reaction to his daughter’s miraculous recovery after a car crash. On the surface, the tale revisits the tension between science and religion, and the nature of miracles and faith. But small fissures in “reality” help us to realise that John is a sentient computer programme. The people in his world are actually a team of scientists experimenting with artificial consciousness. To them, John is the result of mathematical probability at a quantum level. However, one of the scientists, Kate, develops a conscience and tells John what he is. John struggles to accept that he is not human because he feels human. Realising his total lack of freedom in the experiment, he asks to remain himself or “to be nothing”. Kate helps him to “die” a good death and destroys all the research that led to John’s creation. Her boss, Brandt, believes that science justifies everything (he clearly personifies scientific hubris); Kate discovers that becoming a creator comes with responsibility for your creation (she shows humility and compassion). Kate recognises that John has developed self-awareness, feelings, ambitions and dreams. His psyche is undistinguishable from that of a human being. Music is used to create a dream-like quality, mixed with sounds that are important to John, like a heartbeat, child’s laughter and the sea.

Germany boasts as fine a tradition of SF radio dramas (Hörspiele) as the UK, ranging from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s social satire in “Das Unternehmen der Wega” (1954) to Frank Gustavus’ fun adaptation of Conor Kostick’s “Saga” (2008) set within a computer game with sentient characters. My first example is George Robertson’s 1971 “Rückkehr aus dem Weltall” (“Return from Space”; translated from Canadian English by Gerhard Pasternak). It is set in the future after a nuclear disaster where the remains of humanity live in Australasia and Indonesia, including the descendants of the scientists who caused the nuclear disaster in the first place; mutant humanoids also exist in Europe in a barren world that will eventually run out of oxygen. The scientists of the space programme in Melbourne want to find a new world to inhabit before then; the politicians want to find way to produce artificial oxygen so that they can remain on the earth they control. A spaceship returns from an earlier mission with the body of a mummified scientist and evidence to suggest that the ship managed to travel faster than the speed of light. The politicians are disturbed by this and threaten to stop the space programme, so its director decides to launch the next ship clandestinely with its crew of four, including John Taggart and his second wife Sheila.

The crew do discover a habitable new planet in the Alpha Centauri system, which they christen Paradise. Sheila suggests staying but John decides to return to earth to persuade the remains of humanity to move to Paradise. During the return journey, the ship hits a tear in space and time and travels faster than speed of light, thus arriving at earth in the past before the nuclear event has taken place. Two of the crew take the ship’s shuttle to earth to try to warn humanity of their future fate. Sheila dies saving John’s life and he realises he loved her, even if the words were never spoken between them. John is stuck in orbit around the earth, wondering if the past can be changed. The sound effects are limited to the odd whoosh or beep. And the drama has a slightly cold feel to it. This I think is on purpose to stress the scientists’ need to see logic in everything and science as the answer to all problems, even the ones it has caused. This lack of emotion also works well to bring into sharp relief the tragedy at the end, both on a personal level and, we suspect, for the whole of humanity who seem bent on self-destruction.

Stefan Wilke’s “Mondglas” (1999) also asks questions about the future of humanity. It begins with an interview with an old man, Winston, about the return of the spaceship Centaurus (we hear soothing birdsong in the background to lull us into a false sense of security). Winston recounts that Centaurus brought back microorganisms from Loki, a planet in the Alpha Centauri system. He remembers Alan T, the AI steering the ship, who tells Winston of having had dreams, even nightmares, during its journey. Alan T seems confused and amnesiac and we wonder if it is lying. Winston was the scientist who developed Alan T and he is presented as an arrogant, macho scientist, obsessed with proving he is right. The microscopic life forms Alan T retrieved from Loki are considered harmless. He also brings back a form of glass, the Mondglas or “moon glass” of the title. This material is light, strong and beautiful, and it proves to be recyclable. After 20 years, it takes over from normal glass and is used for everything, including jewellery. Winston tells the reporter of his Moon Glass Theory: he believes that the moon glass has emasculated scientists. Although there are no longer any wars on earth, neither are there any new scientific breakthroughs. The last progress made was the solution for recycling moon glass, which came to a female scientist in a dream.

Winston tells the reporter that he interviewed Alan T one last time before it was deactivated. He stresses that Alan T had dreams because it met a problem it could not solve with logic. In the final interview, Winston “hypnotises” Alan T and asks him about his dreams. Winston comes to the conclusion that Alan T did not dream; rather, it was tampered with so it would disregard the reality it discovered, that is, that there was a highly developed civilisation on Loki that did not want contact with such an aggressive species. Winston feels that it is the nature of (a masculine) humanity to want to conquer new worlds. That is why he thinks that the inhabitants of Loki sent the moon glass which acts like a type of drug, reducing the drive and aggression of humans (making them more female and conciliatory). The reporter was granted an interview with Winston, as long as she was not wearing any moon glass jewellery during the interview. When she leaves, the reporter decides not to put on the moon glass necklace she left with a nurse. When the nurse asks why she is leaving her necklace behind, the reporter replies that it is “an experiment with an uncertain outcome”. She will publish an article on Winston’s Moon Glass Theory about the influence of moon glass, which she wants to test for herself. Despite Winston’s unapologetic machismo, he hands over this task to a woman. I particularly enjoyed this radio drama’s play on sexist as well as SF tropes.

Why do I think SF/sci-phi radio dramatizations are so important? In my opinion, film is a pervasive medium – after years of watching Star Trek in its many guises, it has inevitably influenced what I imagine when I read the words “shuttle craft” in a story. A friend of mine who is a gifted artist feels that she only managed truly original work as a child; as an adult, her mind has been influenced by other art and images from the outside world. Radio dramas (like reading) allow us to flex our imaginative muscles that can atrophy if we only watch SF films where everything has already been imagined for us. And imagination allows us to ponder the deeper questions of life, the universe and everything. I will finish by quoting part of Emily Brontë’s poem “To imagination”, where she calls flights of fancy her “true friend” and solace from the pain in life:

But thou art ever there, to bring
The hovering vision back, and breathe
New glories o’er the blighted spring,
And call a lovelier Life from Death.
And whisper, with a voice divine,
Of real worlds, as bright as thine.

I trust not to thy phantom bliss,
Yet, still, in evening’s quiet hour,
With never-failing thankfulness,
I welcome thee, Benignant Power;
Sure solacer of human cares,
And sweeter hope, when hope despairs!

~

Bio:

Mina is a translator by day, an insomniac by night. Reading Asimov’s robot stories and Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids at age eleven may have permanently warped her view of the universe. She publishes essays in Sci Phi Journal as well as “flash” fiction on speculative sci-fi websites and hopes to work her way up to a novella or even a novel some day.

Fact & Opinion

A Note on Romanian Science Fiction Literature from Past to Present

by Mariano Martín Rodríguez

Romania is a country that foreign readers rarely associate with speculative and science fiction (collectively abbreviated as SF). However, its multilingual young population is among the most IT-literate in the world, and their cultural output, including SF, is not only extensive but also fully up to date. While some might attribute this to globalisation, it is in fact a long-standing feature in Romanian culture from its very modern beginnings in the 19^th century. Once it secured its independence, Romania embarked on a path of rapid progress, quickly adopting Western liberal institutions and world-view. In this context, as a manifestation of a new mentality centred on science and industrial technology, Romanian SF embraced from its outset the national project of modernisation, although not uncritically, and not without originality.

Utopian fiction usually preceded SF before their intimate fusion in offering descriptions of future societies. This almost universal pattern is also valid for Romania. Thus, economic liberalism was both supported and mocked in one interesting ambiguous utopia describing a present “Insula Prosta” (Stoopid Island, 1884) by Ion Ghica, before the liberal utopia was transferred to a future setting, where it was questioned. Alexandru Macedonski, one of the leading poets of the Decadent movement in Romania, produced thus a short history entitled “Oceania-Pacific-Dreadnought” (1911) where this gigantic ship intended as a floating house for the richest brings about an economic bubble of epic proportions, until it bursts (as bubbles are wont to do). This Romanian author probably took inspiration from Jules Verne’s L’Île à hélice (Propeller Island, 1895) but his description of the workings of pure speculation in capitalism is not only more precise, but also prophetic. Indeed, very few contemporary writers in Europe used anticipation in such a perceptive manner.

In the same years, Victor Anestin followed Camille Flammarion, rather than Verne, both in popularising astronomy and in setting his stories on other planets of the Solar System. Anestin describes them as populated by decent and highly developed human-like civilisations inspired by Positivistic utopianism, though unfortunately still subjected to nature’s whims. In O tragedie cerească (A Celestial Tragedy, 1914), a celestial body destroys Earth’s inhabitants. This dramatic apocalyptic scenario always poses the problem of which narrative voice to use: who can recount the end if it obliterates us all? Anestin solves this problem by adopting the perspective of an astronomer who witnesses our tragedy from Venus. In spite of his sober account, Anestin knows how to add a sense of loss to the sense of wonder in his grandiose planetary vistas.

This late but promising start of Romanian SF was followed by its relative normalisation along mainstream lines. As happened elsewhere in the world (except perhaps in the US), Wellsian scientific romance opened new avenues to speculative anticipation by infusing it with the freedom of imagination regarding world-building shown by old imaginary voyages since Lucian of Samosata, as well as a diversity of narrative and writing techniques explored by High Modernist authors. Among them, Felix Aderca stands out thanks to his avant-garde short story “Pastorală” (Pastoral, 1932), which is written as the summary of an unwritten play, and his novel Orașele înecate (Drowned Cities, 1936). The latter is set on a future Earth threatened by universal cold. The last human communities have withdrawn to submarine cities under the rule of a fascist-like pro-eugenics dictator, but his measures cannot prevent in the end the technical failure and destruction of the remaining cities. Only a couple escapes from our planet in a rocket. The varied societies, their exchanges and development in a pre-apocalyptic framework are finely portrayed using an art-deco tone of writing full of tragicomic irony, not unlike the one used in Karel Čapek’s contemporary novels, which makes this work a masterpiece of international interwar SF.

The political crisis brought about by World War II did not spare Romania, where home-grown ethnic nationalist Fascism supported by Nazi Germany was defeated and then replaced by the Communism imported and imposed by Soviet troops. In this context, there was little room for unregimented literature, speculative or otherwise. Even more intently than fascists, communists guided by Stalinist Social Realism effectively put an end to any fantasy about medium- and long-term futures. Furthermore, writers wishing to denounce totalitarianisms of any sort were silenced. Romanian readers were thus deprived of any dystopias comparable to those written by Zamiatin, Boye or Orwell. Vasile Voiculescu’s short story “Lobocoagularea prefrontală” (Pre-Frontal Lobocoagulation) purports to be a historical summary of the forced lobotomies undertaken on the population in order to extirpate their human souls. Written in 1948, this text was only published posthumously in 1982 as a simple curiosity by a renowned modern poet.

The Iron Curtain prevented Romania from being subjected to the massive influx of US SF literature (both pulps and Golden Age) which ended the more intellectual and literary scientific romance in Western Europe, though Communism was equally efficient in depriving SF of its former artistic respectability. Romanian SF was reborn in the 1950sas a tool for educating young readers both in Communism and technology in order to prepare them for the rapid pace of re-industrialisation soon established as a goal by Romanian authorities under nationalist leader Nicolae Ceaușescu, who was rather unsatisfied with the role of agricultural producer allotted to their country by the Soviet bloc. Although his rule was even harsher than others in the Eastern Bloc, Ceaușescu used his national policy of apparent dissent from the Soviet Union to get the technological and financial support that his country needed to become industrialised. As a result, Romanian writers were allowed to deviate from old dogmas, and SF quickly took advantage of the opening, soon updating itself to Golden Age standards thanks to Adrian Rogoz, whose short stories recall the clarity of form and speculative wit to be found in those by Isaac Asimov. The other Romanian SF master of the age, Vladimir Colin, adopted a more lyrical writing akin to that of Ray Bradbury, although the best part of his work was devoted to fantasy; indeed, his series of stories and legends from an ancient imaginary people, collected in Legendele țării lui Vam (Legends from Vam Country, 1961), are still considered a masterpiece by Romanian fantasy readers.

Rogoz, Colin and others also succeeded in joining the vogue for national promotion abroad triggered by Ceaușescu’s national-communism, since some of their works were translated into German and French and published in widely distributed anthologies of Romanian SF. Furthermore, they were generous enough to include in these volumes stories by new writers interested in a SF literature similar to that of the Anglophone New Wave, namely Ovid S. Crohmălniceanu, Gheorghe Săsărman and Mircea Opriță, who would eventually produce some of the best works that Romanian SF can boast of. The oldest of them, Crohmălniceanu, was a highly regarded mainstream literary critic when he published his two series of Istorii insolite (Unusual Stories) in 1980 and 1986. Taken together, they read as exercises in reasoned imagination on utopianism, technology and the role of literature in modernity in which irony enriches a deeply philosophical questioning of humankind and its place in the universe, not unlike the best tales by Borges or Lem, whom Crohmălniceanu could certainly be compared to.

Younger Săsărman and Opriță have had both long and distinguished writing careers. Săsărman produced in 1975 Cuadratura cercului, one of the masterpieces of the late modernist genre consisting of descriptions of imaginary cities, in a manner similar to the invisible ones by Calvino. Unfortunately, this edition was heavily censored, and the whole book was only known in 2001, when its author had long been excluded from Romanian literary life following his exile to Germany. The translation of his cities into Spanish and then partially into English as Squaring the Circle by top-ranking SF author Ursula K. Le Guin has secured him at last his rightful place in Romanian speculative fiction, now supported also by well-received recent novels such as a story on the resurrection of Jesus Christ in modern Germany entitled Adevărata cronică a morții lui Yeșua Ha-Nozri (True Account of the Death of Jeshua Ha-Nozri, 2016).

Opriță, who stayed in the country without compromising himself, is renowned for his short stories (e.g., “Figurine de ceară,” or Wax Figurines, a witty rewriting of Lem’s Solaris first published in 1973), though he also produced a successful novel, Călătorie în Capricia (A Journey to Capricia, 2011), which is both one of the latest sequels to Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels and a most original commentary on the 2008 Great Recession as it was suffered in Romania. Moreover, Opriță has accompanied the last decades of Romanian SF as a respected and fair critic, as well as its best chronicler: his history of Romanian SF literature is comprehensive up to a point rarely encountered in similar endeavours for other national SF traditions. It is a monument of SF scholarship, only comparable to another Romanian production in the theoretical field, Cornel Robu’s extensive O cheie pentru science-fiction (A Key to Science Fiction, 2004), the English abstract of which has been influential in our consideration of the sublime (popularly known as ‘sense of wonder’) as an essential part of SF aesthetics.

After this remarkable group of writers and scholars, a certain decadence of Romanian SF was perhaps inevitable. Postmodernism soon acquired a status in the Romanian literary scene unmatched in other countries up to this very day. This was both bad and good news for Romanian SF: good news if we consider that the leading literary postmodernist in Romania, Mircea Cărtărescu, has introduced SF tropes in his work, especially in his latest novel Selenoid (2015), thus adding respectability to them; bad news if we consider instead that postmodernism has promoted a literature of chaos, or arbitrariness, deeply uncongenial to the usual SF frame of mind (marked by reason, order and science). Very few writers have succeeded in balancing these opposite trends. Among them, Mihail Grămescu is to be mentioned for his stories collected in Aporisticon (1981; final version, 2012), where postmodern egotism is nuanced by Borgesian detachment. There were other interesting young writers who tried to renovate SF following contemporary international trends, but unfortunately two parallel occurrences prevented them from acquiring a reputation similar to that of Săsărman, Opriță and even Grămescu.

On the one hand, the postmodernists, still very much in power in the Romanian intellectual scene, seem even more reluctant to appreciate SF as the modernists were once Wellsian scientific romance had become obsolete. Therefore, SF has not been able to join the literary mainstream in Romania as it has in other countries where SF novels, especially of the dystopian kind, are now read and reviewed beyond the limited circles of SF fans. On the other hand, the end of censorship allowed Anglophone SF to enter the Romanian market with a revenge, marginalising local production even more than in Western Europe forty years earlier (until today). Romanian SF writers tried to regain some of the genre’s former strength by mimicking foreign fashions, such as pulpish cyberpunk, in a country where hackers are, indeed, numerous, and IT has been enthusiastically embraced. Others wanted to preserve the New Wave heritage through carefully written stories, some of them quite experimental, such as Dănuț Ungureanu’s dystopian “Domus” (1992), which is entirely written using prescriptive discourse, and Ovidiu Bufnilă’s cyberpunk prose poem “Armele zeilor” (The Arms of the Gods, 2005). Although a number of these stories could make up an invaluable anthology, none of them succeeded in truly seducing the local fandom. Romanian SF only recovered when it revisited, in the form of long, epos-like novels, older genres such as space-opera in Dan Doboș’s Abația (Abbey, 2002-2005), lost-world romance in Sebastian A. Corn’s Ne vom întoarce în Muribecca (We Will Return to Muribecca, 2014), as well as apocalyptic dystopia in the series begun with the shorter novel Vegetal (2014) by Dănuț Ungureanu and Marian Truță. Their success, at least among fans, has contributed to lending new life to a SF now nearly as diverse and literarily successful as it used to be before the postmodernist/cyberpunk crisis. Prospects seem to be positive, with emerging writers now being aware that they are adding their contribution to a long and distinguished history of Romanian SF, although it is still too early to mention any outstanding ones.

~

Endnote: A first version of this essay was published as a preface to the following anthology of recent Romanian SF stories: Daniel Timariu and Cristian Vicol (eds.), East of a Known Galaxy: An Anthology of Romanian Sci-Fi Stories, București, Tritonic, 2019, p. 10-19. We thank the editors, as well as the publishing house and the Helion SF club having fostered this anthology, for their kind permission to publish here this slightly modified version of the paper.

~

Fiction

Hyrenas

by EN Auslender

The wisest man on Earth once said, “love is at the center of all relationships, love or the lack of it”.

When we leapt so far into the future with eager anticipation, we could only conceive of the hardships that would await us; there were plans upon plans, contingencies upon contingencies, anything and everything to validate beyond a reasonable doubt that where we were headed was right and that we would, above all else, succeed where mankind had failed. Earth had reached its tipping point, we were told: the droughts, the floods, the hurricanes, the heat, the famines all forced those with the ability to move to a more habitable area to do so. Those with the bare minimum of life and limb received it in their support shelters, and those without, didn’t need it.

Everything turned inward and downward, away from spreading mankind onto other worlds. Dreaming of a better future died before the risen tide, but with the cataclysmic loss of life and farming ability no one could be blamed for suggesting that space could wait while humanity sorted itself out.

But then it never truly did. Those who benefited from the cataclysm just kept building on top of one another with nary a tree to breathe. With wealthy countries walled off and refusing to aid, it seemed they wanted to wait for humanity to filter while their own fortunate few survived and thrived. I suppose the shock and mundane occurrence of extinctions dulled the senses into believing this was simply how it would be.

And then those of us who still dreamed determined there was another way, a better way, and a star with a habitable planet was found not too far from Earth. A ship was built in secret, a generational ship that would run on fusion until something better could be concocted by the 5000 scientists and engineers recruited into the Hyrenas project. Earth wasn’t going to change, and no educated opinion could make a difference. Everything was leveraged against short vs. long-term costs, where short ultimately had the final say. Staying meant resigning ourselves to impotence while we watched those with exploit those without. Hyrenas, we were told, was humanity’s next great dream.

It was so named by the creator of the project, nuclear physicist Aleksander Torgssen: Hy-, his daughter’s nickname, and –renas, Swedish for ‘purify’. The ship took all his life to construct in hiding, and though it was finally christened in his 98^th year, he took the journey up into and beyond orbit in our vessel of hydroponics and nuclear power. Before his death near the orbit of Jupiter, he left us Edicta Hyrenas, the supreme law of the new human race:

To all of Hyrenas, give;
For all of Hyrenas, give;
With all of Hyrenas, give;
For all of Hyrenas, succeed;
With all of Hyrenas, succeed;
Within Hyrenas, know all;
Without Hyrenas, know all;
Within Hyrenas, love all;
Without Hyrenas, love all;
To life itself, spare no love.

The botanists worked artificial night and day to cultivate and accelerate crop growth. The mechanical engineers facilitated fluidity for the ship’s systems, and maintained its upkeep. The nuclear engineers and physicists tinkered to increase the engine’s efficiency. The theoretical physicists searched for methods by which the ship could move faster through space. The astronomers identified planetary bodies along the journey within a lightyear’s radius that indicated either sources of mineral ore or water. The computer engineers fine-tuned and monitored all processes, ensuring that all functioned as it should. The doctors and surgeons ensured all people maintained their health, and conferred with the astronomers to search for planets that could possibly harbor nutrients not grown on the ship. All was organized and coordinated through a representative group with ten members from each expertise. There, those with the most panache, rather than the most experience or credentials, held sway. But as all represented the very best of humanity, there was no fear of conflict.

Though when the mechanical engineers needed to take the radiometric sensors offline for several hours in order to shunt power to the nuclear physicists testing a more efficient engine, the astronomers and botanists grew angry- they were charting the structure of a just-discovered and possibly life-sustaining planet whose atmosphere was filled with phosphorous, and in the span of the downtime the planet would pass from the periphery of scanning range. They brought the complaint to the group. Arguments ensued: the engineers and physicists had the right to test immediately because a more efficient and powerful engine meant they not only would have more power to distribute across the ship, but they would reach their ultimate destination faster. The botanists and astronomers argued that phosphorous is one of the most essential and rarest elements in existence, and not taking the time to study that planet was an affront to Hyrenas. But then again, taking the ship to the planet meant adding 10 years to the journey, if not more.

The botanists and astronomers didn’t win the day.

Spite lurked beneath the doctrines, as it seemed the work of some was valued more than the work of others regardless of how integral everyone’s work was to the survival of the mission.

When the first child was born, the community of 5001 celebrated as one, all arguments temporarily put aside. The boy was named Aleksander Ngata, son of Koji and Mara Ngata, two theoretical physicists. One member from each profession volunteered to become teachers to the future wave of children.

Thus, a new class was born.

Within two years of Aleksander Ngata’s birth, 207 more children were born. In another year, 320 more. 6 months from then, another 518. The Ngatas broke the seal on the awkwardness of whether or not to have children on a spacefaring generational vessel, and many indulged in the proclivities of intimacy. They were, after all, working in close quarters day after day for hours on end; one could hardly blame them.

Though the computer kept an electronic record of the crew’s logs and work, Kaloshka Jindo volunteered to become the ship’s historian. He would act as the narrator for both the present and the past, and would teach children the history of humanity and the history and future of Hyrenas, and why they were the true evolution of humanity.

Within and between the throes of passion and triumphant heartbeats, theoretical physicists Yael Hernandez and Kira Nathanson realized in their post-coital clarity that fifth-dimensional space contained a membrane of ‘friction’ that prevented 3-dimensional objects from entering and viewing reality in 4 dimensions; that frictional membrane, however, could be utilized as a ‘motorway’ on which a 3-dimensional object can ‘ride’. Given the super-state energy required to enter fifth-dimensional space, it would take a fraction of that energy (the gravitational energy of a black hole, give or take a supernova) to tap into that membrane.

In essence, it was the theoretical express lane of the universe. The issue was generating the energy needed to pierce through the layers of space. They conferred with the astronomers about theoretical ‘wicked matter’, possibly existing as something tangled and torn between the Roche limits of two tangoing black holes.

The astronomers wanted extra power to the sensors to fine-tune their capabilities to detect the exotic theoretical matter. The engineers agreed.

The botanists became resentful. They brought their complaints to the council. They felt they weren’t receiving the due respect the engineers or physicists were whenever the question of the engines were raised. All other professions stated that the engines were the single most important function on the ship: they provided the thrust, the warmth, the air, the water, the light. Without the engines, the plants wouldn’t grow.

But without the plants, Hyrenas would die.

The physicists and engineers decided, in order to avert taking blame for such things, a single person could act as the ‘captain’ to arbitrate decisions. They sold it to the botanists as having someone to prioritize decisions, which was acceptable enough.

Sajavin King was chosen. A ‘polymath’ trillionaire on Earth, the 56-year old held several honorary doctorates from prestigious Earth universities. His fortune came from discovering and securing underground freshwater lakes, which then evolved into locating and mining phosphates, a key nutrient in agriculture. Much of his time on Earth was spent ‘developing’ technologies to facilitate food production in famine-stricken areas. Much of the food didn’t reach those affected by famine. King, and similar others on the ship, used their money to fund Hyrenas, and very few of the botanists, physicists, engineers, doctors, etc. knew much about King besides the proclamations in the news that he was going to solve world hunger.

Kaloshka Jindo began researching King, if just to have a good preface for the biography of the ship’s first captain.

Given King’s reputation as a ‘man of science’, the professions were generally satisfied with his approach to governance. Time was doled out evenly; disputes were arbitrated in what seemed to be a fair way.

But others who had exploited Earth in order to secure a place on Hyrenas took him as a sign of a return to old ways. In total, 6 people who had also used their incredulous wealth to fund Hyrenas discussed between themselves what it meant to have him atop all others. The 6 already sat on the council, able to insulate themselves from the hard work of the professionals, but they wanted more. A year, two years passed with only quiet discussion between them.

Jindo discovered King’s Earthly exploits, and privately questioned him before bringing his concerns to the council. In what Jindo described as a moment of pure contrition, Jindo noted that King stated, “the goal was always to survive, on Earth… stronger than others, healthier, to secure more than everyone else for our own. I threw all my money at Aleksander. I wanted to leave Earth a poor man. I deserved to, for all I did. I didn’t deserve to leave though. I’m a coward. But at least I can do something good here.”

King told Jindo he could bring his knowledge to the council, but Jindo didn’t. It was the 6, through listening devices in King’s office, who did so anonymously. Though some on the council were suspicious of King’s contrition, there was unanimous agreement to keep silent on the matter to the public. On that, the 6 capitalized.

Word immediately spread of King’s Earthly misdeeds. It didn’t take long until the people, in motley groups, demanded King step down from his position. Some demanded he be put in a maintenance craft and dropped off at the next barely habitable planet. Others demanded he be kicked out an airlock.

The council convened, and recommended to King he should step down. King declined. He still had support, he argued, and he wasn’t wrong. Many in the council desired to be rid of him. The members of the 6 spoke publicly about King resigning, and rallied support around themselves.

Surrounded by confusion and dizzying worry, Jindo went to King’s residence one night to apologize and attempt to clear the air on what happened. Several hours later, both Jindo and King were found dead in an apparent murder-suicide.

It was then that the first Hyrenas Juris Circle was created from volunteers appointed by the 6. Given the evidence presented to them, that Jindo had gone to King’s residence to reveal himself as the person who discovered King’s past, King murdered Jindo in a rage and then, realizing he had sealed his fate, committed suicide by hanging himself with his belt.

The reality of the situation is unknown. However, the next captain of the ship was Boris Jensen, who had the fervent support of the 6, and the second historian was Lilia Malloukis, a member of the council and suspected affiliate of the 6.

The truth of Hyrenas is a lie: many give to it, but a few hoard most. Many love it, but not as much as the few love themselves. Many know those within, but the 6 know all.

Historian of Truth
Genevieve Jindo

~

Bio

EN Auslender is a self-flagellating scribbler of half-truths and consternation that lends itself only to a deeper understanding of superficiality. Sometimes he writes coherently.

Fact & Opinion

Why the Culture Wins: An Appreciation of Iain M. Banks

by Prof. Joseph Heath

Many years ago, a friend of mine who knows about these sorts of things handed me a book and said “Here, you have to read this.” It was a copy of Iain M. Banks’s Use of Weapons.
I glanced over the jacket copy. “What’s the Culture?” I asked.
“Well,” she said, “it’s kind of hard to explain.” She settled in for what looked to be a long conversation.
“In Thailand, they have this thing called the Dog. You see the Dog wherever you go, hanging around by the side of the road, skulking around markets. The thing is, it’s not a breed, it’s more like the universal dog. You could take any dog, of any breed, release it into the streets, and within a couple of generations it will have reverted to the Dog. That’s what the Culture is, it’s like the evolutionary winner of the contest between all cultures, the ultimate basin of attraction.”
“I’m in,” I said.
“Oh, and there’s this great part where the main character gets his head cut off – or I guess you would say, his body cut off – and so the drone gives him a hat as a get-well present…”
In the end, I didn’t love Use of Weapons, but I liked it enough to pick up a copy of Banks’s previous book, Consider Phlebas, and read it through. Here I found a much more satisfactory elaboration of the basic premise of his world. For me, it established Banks as one the great visionaries of late 20th century science fiction.
Compared to the other “visionary” writers working at the time – William Gibson, Neal Stephenson – Banks is underappreciated. This is because Gibson and Stephenson in certain ways anticipated the evolution of technology, and considered what the world would look like as transformed by “cyberspace.” Both were crucial in helping us to understand that the real technological revolution occurring in our society was not mechanical, but involved the collection, transmission and processing of information.
Banks, by contrast, imagined a future transformed by the evolution of culture first and foremost, and by technology only secondarily. His insights were, I would contend, more profound. But they are less well appreciated, because the dynamics of culture surround us so completely, and inform our understanding of the world so entirely, that we struggle to find a perspective from which we can observe the long-term trends.
In fact, modern science fiction writers have had so little to say about the evolution of culture and society that it has become a standard trope of the genre to imagine a technologically advanced future that contains archaic social structures. The most influential example of this is undoubtedly Frank Herbert’s Dune, which imagines an advanced galactic civilization, but where society is dominated by warring “houses,” organized as extended clans, all under the nominal authority of an “emperor.” Part of the appeal obviously lies in the juxtaposition of a social structure that belongs to the distant past – one that could be lifted, almost without modification, from a fantasy novel – and futuristic technology.
Such a postulate can be entertaining, to the extent that it involves a dramatic rejection of Marx’s view, that the development of the forces of production drives the relations of production (“The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist.”¹). Put in more contemporary terms, Marx’s claim is that there are functional relations between technology and social structure, so that you can’t just combine them any old way. Marx was, in this regard, certainly right, hence the sociological naiveté that lies at the heart of Dune. Feudalism with energy weapons makes no sense – a feudal society could not produce energy weapons, and energy weapons would undermine feudal social relations.
Dune at least exhibits a certain exuberance, positing a scenario in which social evolution and technological evolution appear to have run in opposite directions. The lazier version of this, which has become wearily familiar to followers of the science fiction genre, is to imagine a future that is a thinly veiled version of Imperial Rome. Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series, which essentially takes the “fall of the Roman empire” as the template for its scenario, probably initiated the trend. Gene Roddenberry’s Star Trek relentlessly exploited classical references (the twin stars, Romulus and Remus, etc.) and storylines. And of course George Lucas’s Star Wars franchise features the fall of the “republic” and the rise of the “empire.” What all these worlds have in common is that they postulate humans in a futuristic scenario confronting political and social challenges that are taken from our distant past.
In this context, what distinguishes Banks’s work is that he imagines a scenario in which technological development has also driven changes in the social structure, such that the social and political challenges people confront are new. Indeed, Banks distinguishes himself in having thought carefully about the social and political consequences of technological development. For example, once a society has semi-intelligent drones that can be assigned to supervise individuals at all times, what need is there for a criminal justice system? Thus in the Culture, an individual who commits a sufficiently serious crime is assigned – involuntarily – a “slap drone,” who simply prevents that person from committing any crime again. Not only does this reduce recidivism to zero, the prospect of being supervised by a drone for the rest of one’s life also serves as a powerful deterrent to crime.
This is an absolutely plausible extrapolation from current trends – even just looking at how ankle monitoring bracelets work today. But it also raises further questions. For instance, once there is no need for a criminal justice system, one of the central functions of the state has been eliminated. This is one of the social changes underlying the political anarchism that is a central feature of the Culture. There is, however, a more fundamental postulate. The core feature of Banks’s universe is that he imagines a scenario in which technological development has freed culture from all functional constraints – and thus, he imagines a situation in which culture has become purely memetic. This is perhaps the most important idea in his work, but it requires some unpacking.
The term “meme” was introduced by Richard Dawkins, in an attempt to articulate some cultural equivalent to the role that the “gene” plays in biological evolution.² The basic building-block of life for Dawkins, one may recall, is “the replicator,” understood simply as “that which reproduces itself.” His key observation is that one can find replicators not just in the biological sphere, but in human social behaviour. In many cases, these “memes” produce obvious benefits to their host, so it is not difficult to see how they succeed in reproducing themselves – consider, for instance, the human practice of using fire to cook food, which is reproduced culturally. In other cases, however, cultural patterns get reproduced, not because they offer any particular benefits – in some cases they are even costly to the host – but because they have a particularly effective “trick,” when it comes to getting themselves reproduced.
To say that a culture is functional is to say that it contributes, and is constrained in various ways by the need to contribute, to the material reproduction of society. Social institutions are fundamentally structured by the collective action problems that must be overcome, in order for people to produce sufficient food, to provide security, to educate the young, to reproduce the social order, and eventually, to produce the various fruits of civilization. These institutions are roughly matched by a set of personality structures, produced through socialization, that make individuals disposed to conform to the roles specified by these institutions (i.e. to be a warrior, a laborer, a teacher, etc.). The term “culture” is used to refer to the symbolic or informational correlates of these institutions and personality structures, which is reproduced intergenerationally.³
Flipping through the annals of ethnography, one cannot but be struck by the “fit” that exists – most often – between the culture of a society and the demands that its institutional structures make. A society that is under constant military threat will have a culture that celebrates martial virtues, a society that features a cooperative economy will strongly stigmatize laziness, an egalitarian society will treat bossiness as a major personality flaw, an industrial society with highly regimented work schedules will prize punctuality, and so on.
There are, of course, instances in which there is a poor match between the two (i.e. where the culture is dysfunctional). And, of course, one of the chief impediments to changing the institutional structures of many societies is that the culture is not “adapted” to the new pattern. (Thus, for example, it is difficult to create bureaucracies in cultures that strongly value family ties, because the latter generate nepotism and corruption.)
Again, turning to the annals of ethnography, what one sees is extraordinary pluralism and inventiveness in human societies. But it is pluralism of both culture and social structure.
These cultures have, historically, competed with one another, with some becoming larger and more dominant, others fading away or being extinguished entirely. A similar dynamic can be seen in the competition between languages with many becoming extinct, while others – such as Mandarin, English and Spanish – becoming “hyperlanguages” that become more powerful the more they grow. Similarly, one can see the emergence of “hypercultures,” which serve as basins of attraction for all of the others.
Historically, in this process of competition among cultures, a dominant source of competitive advantage has been the ability to promote a desirable social structure, or an effective system of cooperation. Consider the enormous influence that Roman culture exercised in the West. The fact that, one thousand years after the fall of Rome, schoolboys were still memorizing Cicero, the Justinian code remained de facto law throughout vast regions, and Latin was still the written language of the learned classes of Europe, is an extraordinary legacy. The major reason for imitation of the Romans was simply that their culture is one that sustained the greatest, most long-lasting empire the West has ever seen.
Similarly, Han culture was able to spread throughout China in large part through the institutions that it promoted, not just the imperial system, but the vast bureaucracy that sustained it, along with the competitive examination system that promoted effective administration.
Societies with strong institutions become wealthier, more powerful militarily, or some combination of the two. These are the ones whose culture reproduces, either because it is imitated, or because it is imposed on others.⁴ And yet the dominant trend in human societies, over the past century, has been significant convergence with respect to institutional structure. Most importantly, there has been practically universal acceptance of the need for a market economy and a bureaucratic state as the only desirable social structure at the national level. One can think of this as the basic blueprint of a “successful” society. This has led to an incredible narrowing of cultural possibilities, as cultures that are functionally incompatible with capitalism or bureaucracy are slowly extinguished or transformed.
This winnowing down of cultural possibilities is what constitutes the trend that is often falsely described as “Westernization.” Much of it is actually just a process of adaptation that any society must undergo, in order to bring its culture into alignment with the functional requirements of capitalism and bureaucracy. It is not that other cultures are becoming more “Western,” it is that all cultures, including Western ones, are converging around a small number of variants.⁵
One interesting consequence of this process is that the competition between cultures is becoming defunctionalized. The institutions of modern bureaucratic capitalism solve many of the traditional problems of social integration in an almost mechanical way. As a result, when considering the modern “hypercultures” – e.g. American, Japanese, European – there is little to choose from a functional point of view. None are particularly better or worse, from the standpoint of constructing a successful society. And so what is there left to compete on? All that is left are the memetic properties of the culture, which is to say, the pure capacity to reproduce itself.
Consider again Dawkins’s seminal discussion of the meme. In order to get itself reproduced, a meme does not necessarily have to produce any benefits for its host. A particularly compelling example that Dawkins gives is that of the chain letter, or its modern email or twitter equivalent. Even if the contents are not particularly compelling, the letter typically provides some half-way plausible story about why you should send a copy to everyone you know. The story need not be entirely persuasive, of course, it only needs to be plausible enough to persuade a fraction of the population to pass it on to a sufficiently large number of people.
Dawkins went on to suggest that many religions are susceptible to explanation along similar lines. For instance, one of the major factors driving the spread of Christianity is the fact that it imbues many of its followers with missionary zeal, and thus the desire to convert unbelievers. The Chinese, it may be recalled, undertook several major sea voyages to Africa in the 15th century. They left no lasting impact upon the continent, because upon arrival, having found nothing of interest to them, they simply turned around and went home. Europeans, by contrast, while primarily focused on navigating around the continent, brought along with them priests, who noticed millions of souls in need of salvation. And so they set up shop.
If one compares belief systems, one can see that Confucianism is powerful largely because of its functional qualities – it was one of the earliest drivers of state-formation, and has generated an extremely stable and resilient social structure in Chinese civilization. More generally, one cannot explain the spread of Han culture without pointing to the intimate connection between that culture and the set of social institutions that it both inspired and reinforced. The culture did not spread directly through imitation, but rather through the strength of the institutions that it was functionally related to. For similar reasons, its capacity to spread beyond the bounds of the state systems that it supported was quite limited. Christianity, on the other hand, is powerful more because of its viral properties – it is very good at spreading itself. It is actually much less successful at generating stable states. It is the qualities that allowed it to take over the Roman empire from within that explain much of its success in non-Western countries (such as Korea, or Ghana) today.
Now consider Banks’s scenario. Consider the process that is generating modern hypercultures, and imagine it continuing for another three or four hundred years. The first consequence is that the culture will become entirely defunctionalized. Banks imagines a scenario in which all of the endemic problems of human society have been given essentially technological solutions (in much the same way that drones have solved the problem of criminal justice). Most importantly, he imagines that the fundamental problem of scarcity has been solved, and so there is no longer any obligation for anyone to work (although, of course, people remain free to do so if they wish). All important decisions are made by a benevolent technocracy of AIs (or the “Minds”).
And so what is left for humanity (or, more accurately, humanoids)? At the individual level, Banks imagines a life very much like the one described by Bernard Suits in The Grasshopper – everything becomes a game, and thus at some level, non-serious.⁶ But where Banks went further than Suits was in thinking about the social consequences. What happens when culture becomes freed from all functional constraints? It seems clear that, in the interplanetary competition that develops, the culture that emerges will be the most virulent, or the most contagious. In other words, “the Culture” will simply be that which is best at reproducing itself, by appealing to the sensibilities and tastes of humanoid life-forms.
This is in fact why Horza, the protagonist of Consider Phlebas, dislikes the Culture. The book is set during the Idiran-Culture war, and is unusual among the Culture novels in that its protagonist is fighting on the side of the Idirans, and therefore provides an outsider’s perspective on the Culture. The Idirans are presented as the archetype of an old-fashioned functional culture – their political structure is that of a religiously integrated, hierarchical, authoritarian empire.
The war between the Idirans and the Culture is peculiarly asymmetrical, since the Culture is not an empire, or even a “polity” in any traditional sense of the term, it is simply a culture. It has no capital city, or even any “territory” in the conventional sense. (“During the war’s first phase, the Culture spent most of its time falling back from the rapidly expanding Idiran sphere, completing its war-production change-over and building up its fleet of warships… The Culture was able to use almost the entire galaxy to hide in. Its whole existence was mobile in essence; even Orbitals could be shifted, or simply abandoned, populations moved. The Idirans were religiously committed to taking and holding all they could; to maintaining frontiers, to securing planets and moons; above all, to keeping Idir safe, at any price.”⁷)
Horza is not an Idiran, but rather one of the last surviving members of a doppelganger species. The question throughout the novel – and the question put to him, rather forcefully, by the Culture agent Perosteck Balveda – is why he is fighting on the Idiran side, given that they are, rather self-evidently, religious fanatics, with an exclusive and zealous conviction in the superiority of their own species. (“It was clear to [the Idirans] from the start that their jihad to ‘calm, integrate and instruct’ these other species and bring them under the direct eye of their God had to continue and expand, or be meaningless.”⁸) The Culture, by contrast, is all about peaceful coexistence, tolerance and equality. So why would a member of an otherwise uninvolved third species choose the Idiran side?
The difference, for Horza, is that the Idirans, for all their flaws, have a certain depth, or seriousness, that is conspicuously lacking in the Culture. Their actions have meaning. To put it in philosophical terms, their lives are structured by what Charles Taylor refers to as “strong evaluation.”⁹ (Indeed, the inability of the Culture to take the war that it is fighting seriously serves as one of the most consistent sources of entertainment in all the Culture novels, as reflected in ship names, which are generally tongue-in-cheek such as: What are the Civilian Applications? or the Thug-class Value Judgement, the Torturer-class Xenophobe, the Abominator-class Falling Outside the Normal Moral Constraints, etc.)
Consider Weber’s famous diagnosis of modernity, as producing “specialists without spirit, sensualists without heart.” In the Culture, the role of the specialist has been taken over by the AIs, leaving for humanity nothing but the role of “sensualists without heart.”¹⁰ Thus the chief attraction of the Culture is the promise of non-stop partying and unlimited sex and drugs. (Genetic and surgical modification provide Culture members with the ability to make almost unlimited changes to their bodies, which typically include enhanced genitalia that allow them to experience intense, extended, and repeated orgasms, as well as the installation of specialized glands that produce a range of psychoactive chemicals, to dull pain, to produce euphoria, to remain awake, or to produce almost any other feeling that might seem desirable.)
One can see then why Horza might dislike the Culture. On the surface, his complaint is that they surrendered their humanity to machines. But what he really wants is a culture that can serve as a source of deeper meaning, which is the one thing that the Culture conspicuously fails to provide – on the contrary, it turns everything into a joke. The Culture may be irresistible, but for essentially stupid reasons. (“Horza tried not to appear as scornful as he felt. Here we go again, he thought. He tried to count the number of times he’d had to listen to people – usually from third- or low fourth-level societies, usually fairly human-basic, and more often than not male – talking in hushed, enviously admiring tones about how It’s More Fun in the Culture… I suppose we’ll hear about those wonderful drug glands next, Horza thought.”¹¹)
It is precisely because of this decadence, as well as lack of seriousness, that the Idirans themselves assumed that their victory over the Culture was a foregone conclusion. When one compares the soft decadence of the Culture to the harsh militarism of the Idirans, it just seemed obvious that the Culture would not fight, but would quickly fold. This was, however, a miscalculation. In fact, the Culture would never give up.¹² Understanding why goes to the heart of what makes the Culture what it is – the ultimate meme complex (or “memeplex”). It has to do with the special role that Contact plays in the Culture.
The idea of Contact also involves a brilliant extrapolation, on Banks’s part, from existing trends in liberal societies. The easiest way to explain Contact is to say that it operates on exactly the opposite principle of the Star Trek Federation’s “Prime Directive.” The latter prohibits any interference in the affairs of “pre-Warp” civilizations, which is to say, technologically underdeveloped worlds. The Culture, by contrast, is governed by the opposite principle; it tries to interfere as widely and fulsomely as possible. The primary function of its Contact branch is to subtly (or not-so subtly) shape the development of all civilizations, in order to ensure that the “good guys” win.
This is, of course, difficult to do without sometimes compromising the Culture’s own values, which is why Contact has a subsection, known as Special Circumstances, whose job is to break any eggs required to make the proverbial omelette. (The idea, of course, is that this is all done in a way that does not set any precedents, hence the “special circumstances.”) SC agents are the closest that one can find to “heroes” in the majority of Culture novels. But there is always a certain ambiguity about their role.
Contact’s mission is one that most readers find intuitively satisfactory. If there is a contest occurring, on some primitive world, between a fascist dictatorship and a freedom-loving democracy, does it not seem right that a technologically advanced alien race should do what it can to ensure that the freedom-loving democrats win? People are often asked, as an exercise in armchair philosophy, whether one should strangle baby Hitler in his crib, if one had the ability to travel back in time. And yet the Culture has the power to do the equivalent, turning this hypothetical choice into a real one. The idea that one should just sit back and do nothing, as the Federation’s Prime Directive suggests, is morally counterintuitive to say the least.
But what does it mean to say that Contact arranges things so that the “good guys” win? It means that it interferes on the side that shares the same values as the Culture. There is more at stake here than just individual freedom. For instance, with the development of technology, every society eventually has to decide how to recognize machine intelligence, and to decide whether AIs should be granted full legal and moral personhood. The Culture, naturally, has a view on this question, but that’s because the Culture is run by a benevolent technocracy of intelligent machines. Thus Contact and Special Circumstances will interfere, in order to prevent what they call “carbon fascists” (i.e. those who claim that “only human subjective experience has any intrinsic value”¹³) from emerging as the dominant political faction on any world.
There are two ways of framing this intervention. From the “insider” perspective, Contact is ensuring the truth and justice prevail (or that the “good guys” win). But from an “outsider” perspective, what the Culture is doing is reproducing itself. It is taking every society that it encounters and changing it, in order to turn it into another copy of the Culture.¹⁴ Furthermore, it is not just doing this as a casual pastime. Contact, in its own way, embodies the “prime directive” of the Culture. It is the heart and soul of the Culture, and for many of its inhabitants, its raison d’être, its only source of meaning. But it is also the central mechanism through which the Culture spreads. This is what gives the Culture its virulence – at a fundamental level, it exists only to reproduce itself. It has no other purpose.

The only desire the Culture could not satisfy from within itself was one common to both the descendants of its original human stock and the machines they had (at however great a remove) brought into being: the urge not to feel useless. The Culture’s sole justification for the relatively unworried, hedonistic life its population enjoyed was its good works; the secular evangelism of the Contact Section, not simply finding, cataloguing, investigating and analysing other, less advanced civilisations but – where the circumstances appeared to Contact to justify so doing – actually interfering (overtly or covertly) in the historical process of those other cultures.¹⁵

This is, I think, where Banks draws upon his most sociologically astute observation, again extrapolating from contemporary cultural trends. There are a variety of developments that are associated with modernity. One of them involves a move away from ascribed toward achieved sources of identity. The idea is rather simple: in traditional societies, people were defined largely by the circumstances that they were born into, or their ascribed characteristics – who your family was, what “station” in life you were born to, what gender you were, etc. There were a strict set of roles that prescribed how each person in each set of circumstances was to act, and life consisted largely of acting out the prescribed role. A modern society, by contrast, favours “choice” over “circumstances,” and indeed, considers it the height of injustice that people should be constrained or limited by their circumstances. Thus there is a move toward achieved sources of identity – what school you went to, what career you have chosen, who you decided to marry, and the lifestyle you adopt. “Getting to know someone,” in our society, involves asking them about the choices they have made in life, not the circumstances they were born into.
There are, of course, advantages and disadvantages to both arrangements. The advantages of choice, for people living in an achievement-oriented society, are too obvious to be worth enumerating. But there are disadvantages. Under the old system of ascribed statuses, people did not suffer from “identity crises,” and they did not need to spend the better part of their 20’s “finding themselves.” When everything is chosen, however, then the basis upon which one can make a choice becomes eroded. There are no more fixed points, from which different options can be evaluated. This generates the crisis of meaning that Taylor associates with the decline of strong evaluation.¹⁶
Human beings have spent much of their lives lamenting “the curse of Adam,” and yet work provides most people with their primary sense of meaning and achievement in life. So what happens when work disappears, turning everything into a hobby? A hobby is fun. Many people spend a great deal of time trying to escape work, so they can spend more time on their hobbies. But while they may be fun, hobbies are also at some level always frivolous. They cannot give meaning to a life, precisely because they are optional. You could just stop doing it, and nothing would change, it would make no difference, which is to say, it wouldn’t matter.
Now consider the choices that people have in the Culture. You can be male or female, or anything in between (indeed, many Culture citizens alternate, and it’s considered slightly outré to be strongly gender-identified). You can live as long as you like. You can acquire any appearance, or any set of skills. You can alter your physiology or brain chemistry at will, learn anything you like.
Given all these options, how do you choose? More fundamentally, who are you? What is it that creates your identity, or that makes you distinctive? If we reflect upon our own lives, the significant choices we have made were all in important ways informed by the constraints we are subject to, the hand that we were dealt: our natural talents, our gender, the country that we were born in. Once the constraints are gone, what basis is there for choosing one path over another?
This is the problem that existentialist writers, like Albert Camus, grappled with. The paradox of freedom is that it deprives choice of all meaningfulness. The answer that Camus recommended was absurdism – simply embracing the paradox. Few have followed him on this path. Sociologically, there are generally two ways in which citizens of modern societies resolve the crisis of meaning. The first is by choosing to embrace a traditional identity – call this “neotraditionalism” – celebrating the supposed authenticity of an ascriptive category. Most religious fundamentalism has this structure, but it also takes more benign forms, such as the suburban American who rediscovers his Celtic heritage, names his child Cahal or Aidan, and takes up residence at the local Irish pub. The other option is moral affirmation of freedom itself, as the sole meaningful value. This is often accompanied by a proselytizing desire to bring freedom to others.¹⁷
Because of this, there is a very powerful tendency within liberal societies for the development of precisely the type of “secular evangelism” that Banks described. It acquires a peculiar urgency, because it serves to resolve a powerful tension, indeed to resolve an identity crisis, within modern cultures. It often becomes strident, in part due to a lingering suspicion that it is not strong enough to support the weight that it is being forced to bear. Thus the Culture’s “prime directive,” as carried out by the Contact section, has a quality similar to that of the Idiran religion.¹⁸ This is why the war became so destructive – with 851.4 billion casualties, and over 91 million ships lost. Each side posed an existential threat to the other, not in the sense that it threatened physical annihilation, but because its victory would have undermined the belief that gave the other side its sense of meaningfulness or purpose in life.
This is what makes the Culture the ultimate memeplex, with the largest, deepest basin of attraction. It exists only to reproduce itself. It derives its entire sense of purpose, its raison d’être, from a set of activities that result in it seeking out and converting all societies to its own culture. Of course, this is not how people of the Culture themselves perceive it. As far as they’re concerned, they’re just “doing the right thing.” This self-deception is, of course, part of what makes the Culture so effective at reproducing itself.
From a certain perspective, the Culture is not all that different from Star Trek’s Borg. The difference is that Banks tricks the reader into, in effect, sympathizing with the Borg.¹⁹ Indeed, his sly suggestion is that we – those of us living in modern, liberal societies – are a part of the Borg. In Star Trek, the Borg are a vulgar caricature. “You will be assimilated, you will service the Borg” – this is probably not how the Borg see it. “We’re just here to help. Beside, how could you possibly not want to join?” – this is how the Culture sees itself. Yet from the outside, the Culture and the Borg have certain essential similarities.
Summing up: Banks’s conception of the Culture is driven by three central ideas. First, there is the thought that, in the future, basic problems of social organization will be given essentially technocratic solutions, and so the competition between cultures will be based upon their viral qualities, not their functional attributes. Second, there is postulation of Contact as essentially the reproduction mechanism of the Culture. And finally, there is the suggestion that the operations of Contact serve not just as an idle distraction, but in fact provides a solution to an existential crisis that is at the core of the Culture. This is what gives the Culture its ultraviral quality: its only reason for existence is to reproduce itself.
References
1 Karl Marx, The Poverty of Philosophy (Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House, 1955), p. 109.
2 Richard Dawkins, The Selfish Gene, 2nd edn (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1989).
3 See Talcott Parsons, The Society System (New York: Free Press, 1951).
4 In The Player of Games, Banks develops a thought-experiment, the Empire of Azad, which represents an extreme form of functional integration between culture and social institutions. The empire is literally held together by a cultural practice of game-playing (the game of Azad). In this case, the Emperor’s defeat in the game by a Culture agent results in the collapse of the entire social structure.
5 Joseph Heath, “Liberalization, Modernization, Westernization,” Philosophy and Social Criticism, 20 (2004): 665-690.
6 Bernard Suits, The Grasshopper: Games, Life and Utopia (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1978). “So, while game playing need not be the sole occupation of Utopia, it is the essence, the ‘without which not’ of Utopia. What I envisage is a culture quite different from our own in terms of its basis. Whereas our own culture is based on various kinds of scarcity – economic, moral, scientific, erotic – the culture of Utopia will be based on plenitude. The notable institutions of Utopia, accordingly, will not be economic, moral, scientific, and erotic instruments – as they are today – but institutions which foster sport and other games,” p. 194.
7 Consider Phlebas, pp. 460-461.
8 Consider Phlebas, p. 455.
9 Charles Taylor, “What is Human Agency?” in Philosophical Papers, Vol. 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985).
10 Zakalwe reflects, in Use of Weapons, “He didn’t think he had quite believed what he had heard about the Culture’s altered physiology until then. He hadn’t accepted that they had changed themselves so. He had not believed that they really had chosen to extend such moments of pleasure, let alone breed into themselves all the multifarious drug glands that could enhance almost any experience (not least sex). Yet – in a way – it made sense, he told himself. Their machines could do everything else much better than they could; no sense in breeding super-humans for strength or intelligence, when their drones and Minds were so much more matter- and energy-efficient at both. But pleasure… well, that was a different matter.” (p. 260).
11 Consider Phlebas, p. 64.
12 “[The Idirans] could not have envisaged that while they were understood almost too perfectly by their enemy, they had comprehensively misapprehended the forces of belief, need – even fear – and morale operating within the Culture,” Consider Phlebas, p. 456.
13 Use of Weapons, p. 101.
14 As Beychae puts it, in Use of Weapons, “Zakalwe, has it ever occurred to you that in all these things the Culture may not be as disinterested as you imagine, and it claims… They want other people to be like them, Cheraldenine. They don’t terraform, so they don’t want others to either. There are arguments for it as well, you know… The Culture believes profoundly in machine sentience, so it thinks everybody ought to, but I think it also believes that every civilization should be run by its machines. Fewer people want that.” p. 241.
15 Consider Phlebas, p. 451.
16 See also Andrew Potter, The Authenticity Hoax (Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2010), p. 263.
17 As Potter observes, in The Authenticity Hoax, “The suggestion that the endpoint of human development, the culmination of the ancient struggle for recognition, amounts to little more than the admixture of the Bill of Rights and Best Buy does not fill everyone’s heart with joy,” p. 239.
18 As Zakalwe puts it, in Use of Weapons, “Once upon a time, over the gravity well and far away, there was a magical land where they had no kings, no laws, no money and no property, but where everybody lived like a prince, was very well-behaved and lacked for nothing. And these people lived in peace, but they were bored, because paradise can get that way after a time, and so they started to carry out missions of good works; charitable visits upon the less well-off, you might say…” p. 29.
19 This is most obvious in The Player of Games.

~

Fact & Opinion/Interviews

The Philosophy of the Alien Films: Interview with Jeffrey A. Ewing

Released in 1979, Ridley Scott’s Alien combined H.R. Giger’s disturbing aesthetics with a tremendous cast, most of whom were viciously slaughtered before the film was done. Alien pulled off the trick of adding new ingredients to a rich tradition in storytelling, reimagining a classic horror scenario whilst taking the bogeymen to a new level. Its sequel, Aliens, proved just as successful, though director James Cameron shifted the franchise towards exhilarating and full-bodied action. The series has since spawned another four films (not counting the Alien vs. Predator spin-offs) that have continued to offer a mix of violent action and brooding horror. This gory combination of genres has nevertheless resulted in films which touch on many philosophical and scientific issues, including reproductive rights and the right to life, the status of intelligent machines, and the relationship between genetics and freedom. And so a group of scholars have used the Alien franchise to explore a variety of ideas which are presented in Alien and Philosophy: I Infest, Therefore I Am, which was published a few months ago. As part of the process of reviewing the book I contacted its editor, Jeffrey Ewing, and asked him to discuss the concepts with me. Jeff kindly agreed, and our exchange lead to this wonderful interview…
Sci Phi Journal: The book describes you as a doctoral candidate, before sharing a very funny poem. Now we know you have a sense of humour, but can you tell us more about yourself, and particularly how you came to be someone who repeatedly writes about the crossover of philosophy and pop culture?
Jeffrey Ewing: I’m glad you liked my poem! I started writing about philosophy and popular culture in 2009 with my contribution to Terminator and Philosophy. I received a Bachelor’s in Philosophy from Eastern Washington University, and was also always deeply interested in science fiction and the thought-provoking elements of science fiction worlds. One of my mentors, Dr. Kevin S. Decker, happened to be co-editing the volume and suggested I should submit an abstract. I did, he and his co-editor liked it, and I was able to write my first chapter! From there, I just kept applying to and writing different chapters about works I loved. I enjoy taking a philosophical lens to pop culture because pop culture has such a large impact on people’s lives, and often has deep implications that illustrate something important about our world.
SPJ: You must have been to parties and had people say something like: “but it’s just a film!” How do you respond? Is it in some ways important to explore philosophical concepts using popular tropes? Or is this a way for philosophers to indulge themselves with a bit of nerdy entertainment?
JE: I’ve definitely heard that before. The meaning in film, like all art, is sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit. Often it is intentional, sometimes not. But these rich fictional characters, situations, and worlds can often help us reflect on our own world and its issues. You certainly can enjoy films only as entertainment, but I think it is important to also think through the deeper implications of a film.
Today we face many burning issues—is the state of our economic inequality ‘just’ or unjust? How should we treat each other? What are the philosophical or practical implications of technological developments like gene splicing or AI? These sorts of questions are especially important as we wade into uncharted territories with climate change, the threats of authoritarian states, artificial intelligence, and the like.
Films often make perfect ‘thought experiments’ for these issues, and philosophy can give us very thoughtful approaches to exploring them, so I would advocate both enjoying films and thinking deeply about them!
SPJ: The driving forces in the Alien franchise are Ripley, and the alien(s). However, some of the writers who contributed to your book placed their focus elsewhere, such as the androids or the Weyland Corporation. Stepping back and looking at all the works in the franchise, what would be the one philosophical concept that is most essential to the stories being told? If you had to write just one short essay about all the Alien films, where would the focus of that essay lie?
JE: The Alien films are set in a very rich science fiction world, allowing us to think through about the power of monopolizing corporations, our relationship to AI and androids, and all sorts of other important issues. If I wrote just one essay on the Alien films, I’d actually focus on a theme that many may not highlight, but that I think is important to understanding them—the films’ critique of the tendencies and side effects of capitalism.
In the Alien series, the actions of a powerful monopolistic corporation expose workers and soldiers to serious threats on multiple occasions. For example, corporate priorities endanger the crew of the Nostromo, exposing them to the derelict spaceship on LV-426. In Aliens the company endangered the colonists of Hadley’s Hope in order to try and recover alien specimens for profit.
The Weyland-Yutani Corporation is a great example of a profit-oriented, monopolistic corporation that has too much power in the absence of effective regulation or successful social struggle. It endangers its employees, it threatens to bring back cargo that would be deadly for life on Earth, but none of that matters against the possibility of profit.
SPJ: To be honest, I found this the weakest line of reasoning in the book, and said as much in my review. In the review I compare critiquing the ‘capitalism’ of Weyland-Yutani to critiquing nuclear energy by examining Homer Simpson’s safety record. They are not even straw men, because at least a straw man purports to be an argument, even if it is a lousy one.
In terms of storytelling, Weyland-Yutani is a recurring plot device; its greed explains why human beings are repeatedly put into life-threatening situations they would otherwise choose to avoid. Being a device, Weyland-Yutani could be replaced by Space Nazis or the Space Khmer Rouge. All that is needed is an authority that is willing to sacrifice individual lives in order to pursue some ‘higher’ goal, like scientific progress, or victory in a war. Weyland-Yutani’s goal is meant to be profit, but the films tell us nothing about the economics of the future, so the audience has to make assumptions and project their own values. But as capitalists go, this corporation is run by buffoons: their amateurish attempts to capture aliens always result in the destruction of their own valuable assets, including the Nostromo, the Hadleys Hope colony, and the Prometheus. But irrespective of their bumbling, the only way for a corporation to make a profit is by selling something to a customer, and the audience never learns who is the customer for Weyland-Yutani’s weapons division, or what the weapons will be used for. That was the aspect of the stories that I felt deserved more philosophical scrutiny. Why is this future so militaristic, when there is no apparent enemy? Do the military themes offer another way to emphasize that Ripley is a woman in a man’s world? Or should we be talking about a future version of what Eisenhower referred to as the military-industrial complex?
JE: I definitely agree that the political life and day-to-day economics of the Alien universe are not fully transparent, and to get an expanded picture requires considerable reconstruction, particularly of the former, and so we definitely have to understand the world through our own inferences. Surely Weyland-Yutani is used as a plot device, but I think it is important to ask WHY THIS plot device rather than Space Nazis, etc. What is the role of The Company in the plot, and what does that role suggest about the social meaning of the Alien universe?
We do know from sources such as the Alien: Covenant companion Weyland Industries site, the film Alien, and beyond that the company is a large, multi-industry for-profit corporation. Their workers work for wages, and they are concerned with costs (such as Burke’s emphasis in Aliens on military restraint because of his concern for the ‘dollar value’ of destroyed installations). They may be run by buffoons—a statement I definitely agree with from their constant attempts to control the evidently uncontrollable—but they are a for-profit capitalist company even if their market is unclear and their success rate is mixed at best. I think their role in the Alien films as a consciously chosen plot device is meant to imply a statement that an unchecked pursuit of profit is a dangerous endeavor, and the consequences of that tendency, like the xenomorphs, cannot always be contained. I would like to know more about the militarism of the world as well, though. We don’t know enough about the military relations of the Alien world, so that could be a factor in a high military ‘market’, and we also know that they’ve been engaged in interstellar travel so it is possible there are enemies we’re not aware of. Perhaps they should do a spinoff film focusing on the military in the world, maybe branching off from Aliens. At any rate, it seems like the relationship between the military and Weyland (at least in this division of the company) could appropriately be described in terms of a military-industrial complex—their interrelations seem tightly intertwined.
SPJ: It’s tempting to think of Ripley as the central character because she is the survivor of Alien and is central to the sequels. But anyone watching Alien for the first time wouldn’t assume she was the central character. In fact, that film follows a pretty standard horror formula: introduce a bunch of characters and keep the audience in suspense about which one will die next. Ripley isn’t an especially likeable character either – she tried to stop Dallas and Lambert from bringing Kane (with facehugger) back on board the ship for medical care. However, Ripley is somewhat redeemed by her subsequent actions. Considering all the characters in all the films, would you think it fair to generalize that every human character is one or other kind of a-hole, and the only difference between them is that some live long enough to be redeemed, whilst the others die before they can? Does that make the alien(s) some kind of divine force of justice, squeezing what little good can be extracted from the human race?
JE: I have a hard time judging the crew of the Nostromo (even though I may not want to work with many of them), because through most of the film they’re forced into many positions that, personally, I’d never want to be in. They’re stuck together on this deep-space hauling mission, woken up before their destination, and they seem deeply concerned about even getting paid for the work they do (and honestly, I doubt they’re paid well enough). Just when they get accustomed to this supposedly random side-mission, they encounter a danger that they’re ill-equipped to handle. I mean, I doubt their training includes ‘What to do if you encounter a predatory parasitic nigh-invincible organism?’
Now, Ripley grows a lot in the film and throughout the series, and we definitely don’t get the privilege of seeing that of other characters. But truthfully, if I got stuck on a side-mission, unsure if I’d be paid for my labors in the middle of space, then had an invincible killing machine thrown at me, I’d either be pretty cranky about it or just stow away in the back of the ship spending time with the cat. In the context of the Alien world, it is quite possible that a xenomorph let loose in a Weyland-Yutani boardroom might approximate the hand of divine justice instead!
SPJ: In Aliens, the characters of Ripley and Newt are so tough that it’s difficult to think of any film which presents two women who kick ass so hard (Newt was the only colonist who survived – and she did it ‘without training’) whilst also being so unashamedly engaged in a surrogate mother-daughter relationship. As the film is set in 2179, does this make Ripley a post-feminist hero?
JE: I think it’s fair to say that Ripley is among the toughest heroines or heroes in any scifi or action film I can think of, and Newt (as you mention) is also very impressively tough. I like the fact that they bond so well, because it shows that you can be warm, compassionate, and emotionally connected and be a complete and total badass. In that regard, a post-feminist interpretation is really tempting, since they so clearly blow the patriarchy out of the water (or, perhaps, out of the airlock). But my interpretation of Ripley is that she’s a strong-willed feminist heroine, who still faces injustices and issues as a woman in this future society.
Take, for instance, that scene in Alien where Brett and Parker drown out her speech with steam, challenging her authority. On the one hand, they’re working-class employees subverting workplace hierarchies, yet on the other hand her authority is challenged here in ways that none of the men in positions of authority are. Or in Alien: Resurrection, where Ripley is cloned, and these clones are used to reproduce an alien embryo – her clone’s reproductive autonomy taken in a dramatic, traumatizing violation. Ripley is a very strong character, but she still faces challenges in the future that I think are best understood through a feminist lens (in Alien and Philosophy, Alexander Christian’s article provides an interesting exploration of some of these issues).
SPJ: I take your point about Brett and Parker being working-class men who challenge the authority of a female boss, but Lambert challenges Ripley too. When it comes to gender stereotypes, Lambert’s role is that of the overly-emotional woman, as contrasted with Ripley and the relatively cool-headed men. But were the film-makers guilty of playing on similar stereotypes when casting the synthetic characters? David and Ash are the most robot-like of the robots, being emotionally withdrawn and only capable of thinking logically. In contrast, the most ‘human’ of the machines takes a female form: Annalee Call.
JE: I do think the filmmakers wrote androids that largely meet gender stereotypes, and personally I find characters more interesting when they break stereotypes—case in point, Ripley. Your question does provoke an interesting thought about androids, however (both in the film and otherwise). Makers of androids would likely program them with some gendered understanding hardwired into their consciousness, and we see this all the time in science fiction portrayals of them. Why would an android’s inventor or manufacturer give them a gendered personality? Or perhaps they wouldn’t, but science fiction writers merely have difficulty imagining otherwise? It is an interesting question.
SPJ: Ripley calls her ship’s computer a “bitch”. She calls the alien queen a “bitch”. Is Ripley projecting her feelings about herself on to others? Is Ripley the ultimate bitch? Or is she lacking in feminist solidarity?!?
JE: Another interesting theme in the Alien series involves the theme of motherhood. Interestingly, the feminine-voiced computer in Alien is named MU-TH-ER (aka ‘MOTHER’), who is at face value charged with the care of the crew and their mission. MOTHER betrays them, “all other priorities rescinded” in favor of corporate objectives. Ripley calls MOTHER a ‘bitch’ when MOTHER prevents her from aborting the ship’s self-destruct processes—endangering her life and escape. This contrasts with the great lengths Ripley goes to in order to save the life of the cat Jonesy, who MOTHER also threatens. Similarly, Aliens is largely about a battle between motherly figures—Ripley as a motherly protector of Newt versus the alien Queen’s desire to protect her own monstrous children. When the alien Queen threatens Newt, Ripley screams “get away from her, you bitch!”—the Queen threatening the young girl she’s gone to so much trouble to protect.
In a sense, then, the use of the term ‘bitch’ comes out when a failed ‘mother’ figure threatens Ripley or vulnerable individuals Ripley cares for (Andrea Zanin’s chapter “Ellen Ripley: The Rise of the Matriarch” provides great commentary on these sorts of issues).
SPJ: One of the essays I most liked in your book was by Robert M. Mentyka, because he did an excellent job of exploring the Nietzschean aspects of the alien that Ash describes as “perfect” and “unclouded by conscience, remorse or delusions of morality”. Do we like the Alien because it is so terrible, in contrast to the flaws and pettiness of the mediocre people it slaughters?
JE: I think it is easy to be in some sort of awe over the xenomorphs—they’re nigh-invincible killing machines that can inhabit a body, transform inside it without its knowledge, destroy it in the ‘birth’ process, then proceed to cause havoc anywhere it lives. Its life cycle is so foreign, its biomechanical form is terrifying, and it is so dangerous it is hard to fully grasp. It is invulnerable where we are vulnerable, single-minded where we are conflicted, dangerous where we are impotent. So in a way, yes, I think it is so terrible and awe-inspiring and different that, in a way, we’re forced to admire it.
SPJ: Suppose you’re offered the opportunity to nuke the aliens from orbit, rendering their species extinct. Do you?
JE: Well, as per my chapter, I don’t think we should assume that xenomorphs have no moral value at all just because they’re not humans. I make the strong case that perhaps the xenomorphs have a right to self-defense and survival just like we do. That said… I can hardly think of a species whose existence poses more potential danger to the universe. As Ripley says, maybe nuking them from orbit may be the only way to be sure we’re safe… so it is an understandable consideration.
At the same time, it would be beyond regrettable—as far as we know, the xenomorphs haven’t mastered space travel on their own. Consequently, wherever they are in the universe they are contained, unless a space-faring civilization brings them elsewhere. In other words, if they were left alone, maybe we wouldn’t have to kill them after all.
So perhaps we can strike a compromise between our own security and their right to exist—instead of nuking them, defend the area around them to contain them in their own region of space. Although “create a defensive perimeter, it’s the only way to be sure” doesn’t have quite the same poignant ring.
SPJ: But suppose we don’t give you the luxury of deciding how society will behave. Let’s make you Corporal Hicks, and put you in a society where not just Weyland-Yutani but whoever is the most senior commander of the Colonial Marines has ordered you to bring an alien specimen back with you. Having seen what the aliens can do, should you not just disobey orders but also render them extinct?
JE: It would be hard to be an officer in that position. The one thing you shouldn’t do is bring an alien specimen back. Faced with the knowledge that they’d likely keep trying to bring back dangerous specimens (the opposite of the quarantine that is necessary) the most moral thing may in that situation be to eradicate them before they become some bio-weapon of unimaginable power. That’s too terrible a thing to rest in the hands of any individual or government, in my opinion.
SPJ: Ripley tries to extinguish the species a second time in Alien 3, throwing herself into the cauldron to kill the alien incubating inside her. Is this action as morally repugnant as nuking all the aliens from afar? Is it worse?
JE: I would say it depends on your ethical framework! From a strict utilitarian standpoint, focused on maximizing some positive state like happiness, your calculus could hypothetically be that the existence of xenomorphs threatens life throughout the universe, and therefore killing more xenomorphs is an ethically superior action! On the other hand, one may have a deontological ethic (judging the rightness or wrongness of an action independently from its consequences) that does or does not include xenomorph life as valuable, and therefore either option could be thought of as morally wrong. These are, of course, just examples—but, in short, it’s a complicated question!
In this context, I don’t think we can be fully confident that xenomorph destruction is the right thing to do. But I do think Ripley is right to not want her body to have this parasitic and deadly entity growing inside her! So I would say it’s a solidly ethical choice, whereas mass-xenomorph destruction is more problematic. (My co-editor’s chapter on “Contagion: Impurity, Mental Illness, and Suicide…” really digs into the issues around this choice, and I’d definitely recommend it for the interested reader.)
SPJ: There’s not much religion in the Alien franchise until we get to Prometheus. The exception is the religion of the YY-prisoners in Alien 3, with Dillon being their pastor. Whilst most characters want another paycheck, those prisoners need to avoid temptation, and they seek salvation. Is Dillon’s sacrifice – letting himself be torn to shreds by the alien in order to provide a distraction – a way for him to finally achieve that salvation?
JE: I think it is. Like many of the inmates on Fiorina 161, Dillon had a troubled, predatory past. He found religion in jail, and I think that he did seek to sacrifice himself for Ripley and to kill the alien, finding some sort of redemption.
SPJ: Do we need the threat of murderous aliens to restore some meaning to our dull, safe lives?
JE: I think there is a sense where, for many of us in the developed world, much of life is rather mundane. We still have dangers, like “what if I forget to lock the car” or “what if I can’t pay my student loans”, but those are somehow both stressful and boring. We get up, clock in to work, clock out, pay our bills and taxes, and repeat until we die. One of the appeals of larger-than-life films, with epic heroes, treacherous villains, dangerous monsters, etc., is that it gets our blood pumping in a safe way. We get to ‘feel’ more alive for two hours, yet without endangering our own real lives. So, in short, I think that the audience at some level does need these aliens, treacherous androids, crashed spaceships, and the like. Ironically, watching something so alien may make us feel human after all!
SPJ: Your book covers all the Alien films but the latest, Alien: Covenant. Is there anything you would change or add in light of Alien: Covenant?
JE: One theme that Prometheus and Alien: Covenant highlight that exists in a more limited way in prior films is their focus on the ethics of creation/being a creator. So many philosophical issues connect to the Engineers’ relationship to their creations, Weyland’s relationship to David, and David’s relationship to his experiments—what do we owe our creations? How should we treat them, and how should they see us? What creations are too dangerous for the world (and should not be created?). After Alien: Covenant, I’d like to dig into these issues to a greater extent.
SPJ: Does that mean there might be a sequel to your book?
JE: Perhaps! In the future there very well may be, and I’d welcome it. Alien and Philosophy covered a wide range of ground with some truly talented philosophers, but the Alien world is rich with philosophical implications, including the ones opened up in Alien: Covenant! There is a lot more to be said.

Fiction

Jeopardy ad Absurdum

The contamination of an innocent by an excised, malignant consciousness. The phrase popped into Weiss’ head as he drove to the Court. It had been expressed by Manning, his lawyer—his own lawyer—the day before.
“You have to understand,” Manning had said, “there’s a subtext to this trial. It’s very unusual. Obviously. But the question is not so much who killed the old girl, as who is to blame for it. So although your patient is the nominal defendant, and although there is—at this stage—no legal case for you to answer, that could change very rapidly. If the boy is not convicted, for example.”
Weiss snorted. Manning was obviously an idiot. That would be why he went into law instead of medicine.
“I fail to see,” Weiss said, in the icy tones he usually saved for blundering junior doctors, “how even the most doltish jury could fail to convict the boy, when he was seen to kill her and admits he did so.”
Manning’s mud-coloured eyes became colder and his sallow face sterner.
“My opinion is that the circumstances permit the boy to construct a reasonable defence… It would be entirely unprecedented, of course, but that’s how case law works. The point is that you should tread carefully. Hewitt’s no fool. I can tell you how he’s going to play this, because I’d do the same. The contamination of an innocent by an excised, malignant consciousness. That’s the angle he’ll take. And if he pulls it off, they’ll come after you. Not just the Unit, but you personally.”
“What! Ridiculous! Compensation is owed to me! The effect on my private practice, my income…”
“I sympathise with your circumstances, Dr. Weiss. But I can only offer legal advice, not financial advice, and I have done so.”
And now, remembering this conversation, Weiss snorted again, still indignant. Lawyers, patients—idiots, all of them! What did they know of the arcana of nanoneurosurgery? Clearly, he would have to educate them. He parked up behind the ugly brick accretions of the Court, and stamped huffily towards the entrance.

Within the Court, in a small, second-floor room lined with dusty laws and redolent with the shattered lives by which lawyers measure their careers, Hewitt, the defence barrister, looked down from the single window. His attention was captured by a large, over-fed man with a sulky, supercilious expression, a man who traversed the car-park with the air of a royal who has had his red carpet removed. Hewitt’s head moved with his gaze, following the man, while the rest of him remained motionless, giving him the air of a weasel triangulating the chirr of a mouse’s heart. His small, dark eyes glinted with a sharp joy: This trial will change everything.
Indeed, such cases come but once in a lifetime. This one had already triggered a massive public interest, which had been further fed by the blameless appearance and good background of the defendant. Combine that with a motiveless—insanely motiveless—and violent murder, mix it with the more fantastic theories of the human mind, add a pinch of medical malpractice, and you have a newspaper editor’s dream of a story.
But Hewitt wasn’t interested in dreams and stories. They were useful, perhaps; but his cold, pragmatic soul inclined only towards the advancement of his career, and then only to the extent that such advancement could be measured in financial return. And in this case, the returns would be extraordinary. Hewitt would see to that. Yes, the focus on Weiss and his surgical procedures could only grow, with only one consequence.
This will change everything. Hewitt collected up his files and papers, and left his office.

In one of the cells beneath the Court, a boy sat on the edge of a plastic-covered, foam mattress that stunk of Institution. His pale hair looked darker now that it had been clumsily cut short, and his nineteen-year-old face was thinner, eaten up by concerns that would have weighed down broader shoulders than his. Even so, he retained something of the cherubic appearance that had so captured the public imagination. An angel not fallen, surely, but pushed.
He raised his arms and felt along his scalp, tracing a long, ridged scar, first with one hand, and then with the other. Then he clasped his hands together and placed them in his lap.
“You’re up next, kid,” someone said from behind the cell door. The boy nodded without looking up. And very quietly he said to himself, as though thinking aloud:
“But who?”

Hewitt looked across the Court, benignly, taking in the major players: the jurors, like a row of little ciphers (odd how they always all look the same!); the wrinkled old judge, slack-jawed and self-assured; the crew-cut, tortured innocence of the defendant; and Johnson, striding around like a skinny, revenant cadaver. Johnson was making a reasonable case for the prosecution, but the strength of his case was at the same time its weakness. It was predictable.
So—as Hewitt knew he would—Johnson simply walked through the main features of the case. The brutal, unprovoked murder of an old lady, a pensioner, on the street outside her home, in broad daylight, in front of witnesses. The immediate apprehension of the accused, who had stayed at the murder scene. The bizarre behaviour of the accused—pacing back and forth alongside the body, shouting denials, and gripping his hands together as though in prayer. ‘Criminally insane, perhaps, ‘ Johnson had said, leering at the jury, ‘but criminal nevertheless’. And for each facile, predictable brick that Johnson added to his edifice, Hewitt took pleasure in standing up with his small, carnivorous smile and saying, time after time, the same thing.
“I have no questions for this witness, my lord.”
And eventually Johnson was compelled to cede the floor. “The prosecution rests its case,” he said, glancing suspiciously at Hewitt.
Hewitt stood up.
“The first witness for the defence will be Dr. Weiss…”

When Weiss walked into the courtroom to take the witness stand, he was confident, perhaps cocksure. And for a while, his arrogance appeared justified: the first part of the cross-examination was straightforward, even gratifying. Ferret-faced Hewitt started with some comfortable, open questions. Questions which positively begged Weiss to enlarge upon the breakthrough surgical procedures that he had developed at the Carford University Medical School.
“So, Doctor Weiss, would you like to tell us about your background and the kind of operations you undertake in the Glioma Unit?”
Weiss said that he would; and then he did, in great detail. He told them about cancer. He told them about the killer crab and its slow sideways scuttle through soft organs, through delicate lives; about the drugs and bright scalpels that could temporarily bind shut its pincers. He told them about the chance of recurrence forever carried, like a black, unspoken secret, by each discharged patient. Specifically, he told them about glioma: how the incremental treatment improvements made by jobbing oncologists had contributed nothing to this most intractable cancer of the brain. How the best efforts of the little people, beavering away in their little labs like Father Christmas’ elves, wrapping up new drugs and protocols for failing patients like useless gifts for a senile aunt, had made no significant difference to patient survival. How until he, Weiss, had turned his attention to the disease, only the lucky would survive more than a year after diagnosis, while the very lucky may have kept going for more than two.
Hewitt shifted from foot to foot throughout this sermon, grinning and nodding. Eventually, he managed to insert a question into Weiss’ flow.
“Thank you, Doctor Weiss. But perhaps you could focus more on your specific activities? The specific treatment protocols that you have developed?”
“I fully intend to,” Weiss replied icily. He knew how to deal with people like Hewitt. And he didn’t like being interrupted. “I fully intend to. But first you must understand the nature of the challenge posed by this important disease.”
And Hewitt listened with gratifying humility as Weiss told him why glioma had remained virtually untreatable for so long.
“The problem lies in the blood-brain barrier, that is, the relatively impermeable walls of the cerebral blood vessels. This barrier lets small molecules, like oxygen and glucose, exit the bloodstream and reach the brain, but not much else. That’s why normal cancer treatment strategies simply don’t work for glioma. You can keep pumping the patient full of drugs until he’s ready to pop, but it will never work. You will never get enough drug into the brain by that approach. The blood-brain barrier always gets in the way. Do you understand?”
“I think so,” said Hewitt.
“Then you are cleverer than my colleagues in the oncology community.”
Weiss looked towards the judge with the kind of laugh that invites complicity. But Judge Evans, an old lady whose face—as delicately wrinkled and yellow-white as the skin on boiled milk—had been dragged down on its right side by a stroke, remained silent and lop-sidedly expressionless.
“And you developed a method for, ah, bypassing this barrier?” asked Hewitt.
“Indeed; my work has now transformed the field of cerebral glioma treatment. I have caged the beast! And in the Weiss Glioma Unit—which I have the honour of directing—we have further refined this revolutionary advance. We are, as you say, bypassing the blood-brain barrier altogether.”
Weiss paused at this point to look around the courtroom. This was a device he often used in his lectures—a dramatic pause, during which he would bask in the attention focussed on him, on him alone, by an enraptured audience. But on this occasion he was distracted, perhaps even discomfited, by the intense, tortured gaze of the defendant. The boy was leaning forward as though poised for supplication, his hands grasping the dock, his lips parted by some inner agony. His hair, previously androgynously long and blond, had been scythed back, drawing attention to an irregularity of growth around the perimeter of his scalp. This, Weiss knew, betrayed the presence of the long scar where he had sawn through the boy’s cranium and lifted aside the top and back of the skull, like taking the lid from a tin, to allow access to the brain.
“Doctor Weiss? You were saying?”
“Yes! Yes. We are bypassing the blood-brain barrier. We are, in effect, simply erasing it from the treatment equation. We do this by removing the diseased brain from the skull and placing it directly in a saline bath containing high drug concentrations. This exposes the cerebral glioma to levels of drug that are therapeutically effective and that actually kill the malignancy. At the same time, because this drug treatment occurs outside the body, we avoid all the side effects of exposing healthy tissues throughout the body to toxic chemotherapy agents. So, drug-induced nausea and vomiting, weight loss, hair loss, ulcers of the mouth and throat—all are eliminated, along with the glioma itself. My approach has been described, I understand, as a giant leap for medicine.”
Hewitt nodded seriously. “A giant leap. You mean that no precedent exists for this approach? Your method is so novel that there is no reasonable comparator?”
Weiss could see where Hewitt was trying to lead him with this question. A clumsy manoeuvre.
“In fact, there is some precedent for this approach. Specialists have used a similar technique to perfuse highly concentrated drugs throughout cancer-ridden livers or lungs. But only the oncologists at the Weiss Glioma Unit have had the audacity to apply this principle to the brain.”
“Indeed. But there is a difference, is there not, between the level of risk involved in applying out-of-body drug perfusion to a brain as compared to, say, a liver?”
“Naturally. Reconnecting all the facial and optic nerves is not trivial. The procedure severely tests the surgeon’s skill and can be risky. Advances in robotic nanoneurosurgery have greatly simplified matters, but even so the technique is, I fear, beyond the skill or—ahem—courage of many of my colleagues.”
“I fully understand that many of your colleagues are reluctant to attempt this procedure. And nobody is questioning your skill or courage. My question was directed more at the self-evidently critical nature of the brain to the person.”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Well, organ transplants these days are almost routine. People are happy to accept someone else’s liver or lungs in exchange for a few more years of life. But they wouldn’t consider accepting someone else’s brain. Would they?”
“Your point being?”
“My point being that the brain is a special organ, in that it is the seat of our very selves, of everything that makes us be who we are and do what we do. A point that I will demonstrate to be highly relevant to the current situation. But we will return to that later. First of all, Doctor Weiss, for the benefit of the jury, please would you describe the exact method by which you treat a diseased brain? Presumably you do not remove the entire brain from the skull? Or do you?”
“Certainly not! No, we remove one hemisphere at a time. The excised hemisphere sits in the drug bath for sixteen hours, sufficient time for even slowly metabolising cells to incorporate the drug. Then it is replaced, and, if necessary, its sister hemisphere treated similarly.”
“Ah. One hemisphere at a time. First one half of the brain, and then the other. I see.”
“Obviously, if only one hemisphere has the cancer, only that hemisphere needs removal and treatment. Hardly a contentious approach.”
“No doubt. But let us move from the general to the specific. You treated the defendant for glioma, did you not?”
“Yes. I imagine that’s why I was asked to participate in these proceedings.”
Weiss glanced at the jury with a droll expression, as though to share a joke. But they just stared dully back, as responsive as a row of pebbles.
“The defendant’s treatment was not straightforward, I understand.”
“That is completely irrelevant. He was cured, after all.”
“The jury will decide on its relevance, if you will be so good as to describe the defendant’s case. In detail, if you please.”
Weiss glanced again at the boy in the dock and the boy nodded slightly, almost imperceptibly, as though begging Weiss to tell them all. Weiss remembered him well, of course. He had operated on him about a year ago. The boy had been one of the first pair of patients to receive treatment in the new Weiss Glioma Unit. Both he and the other patient had had very similar presentations; each had a small tumour in the right hemisphere, in the primary motor cortex. Inevitably, their symptoms were also similar; in particular, both patients were complaining of loss of use of the left arm. Weiss had operated on the two in parallel, in the same theatre, on the same day. There had been complications, it was true; but how to explain this to the idiot Hewitt?
“From the perspective of the surgeon, everything proceeded in a most satisfactory way. I removed each patient’s right hemisphere, connected the hemispheres to a surrogate blood supply, and cut out the respective tumours. We only treated the right halves of the brains on this occasion; the cancer had not spread to the left halves. After tumour excision, I handed the hemispheres over to the ex vivo team, who placed them in drug baths overnight. The next day, after washing out the drug, I replaced and reconnected the hemispheres. Each patient received the treated right hemisphere, cured and cancer-free. We monitored them throughout the rehabilitation period to ensure that their left body functions, in particular the use of the left arm, had returned. In both patients, recovery was unremarkable, indeed fully successful.”
“But the procedure wasn’t fully successful,” said Hewitt, grinning like a schoolboy. “Was it?”
Weiss took a deep breath. “You must understand,” he said, “that at that time, we were bound by pragmatic considerations relating to the efficiency and economy of state-sponsored health services, not least the rate of patient throughput. Accordingly, we used a system in which two patients could be operated on in parallel, or rather with significant overlap in time. This was shown to be the most cost-effective use of skills and resources, and we set up the operating theatre to enable this. The defendant was one of a pair of young men with almost identical diseases who were operated on together.”
Hewitt watched him, his affable grin now replaced by a sardonic smirk, but remained silent, mutely inviting Weiss to continue.
“So there was a co-localisation in time and space that I deeply regret. I emphasise that it cannot happen under our new system.”
Weiss had hardly hesitated, but Hewitt pounced immediately, which of course gave the impression that Weiss was evading the question.
“But what?” asked Hewitt, his dark, little eyes glinting with the joy of the chase. “What cannot happen again?”
Weiss ground his teeth. Damn Hewitt and his impertinent questions!
“It’s important to say that this was a new protocol, and we had a very inexperienced ex vivo therapy team… their supervisor, who has now left us, admitted failings in his design of a shared surgical suite with adjacent drug baths, so, ah…”
“What happened after the drug treatment?”
Weiss reddened, but controlled his mounting rage. “The hemispheres of the two young men were mixed up. Each received the other’s right hemisphere.”
For a moment, the courtroom was silent. From the dock, the boy was nodding emphatically, looking absurdly grateful. Hewitt too looked satisfied. The faces of the jurors were unreadable.
“So,” said Hewitt. He was speaking slowly now, relishing each word. “So, two young men came to your unit for treatment, hoping for a cure… and they left your care, each with a hybrid brain comprising his own left hemisphere and the right hemisphere of a stranger.”
Weiss said nothing.
“For the benefit of the jury,” said Hewitt, still with his maddening slowness, “for the benefit of the jury, Doctor Weiss, I wonder if you would remind us of the lateralisation of brain function?”
Weiss seethed inwardly. He could see where this was going, but had no option other than to let Hewitt pursue his thesis.
“To some extent, the human brain is arranged such that the left hemisphere controls the right side of the body,” said Weiss, shortly. “Conversely, the right hemisphere controls left-side function. So, for example, the left arm, left leg, left eye, all connect to the right half of the brain.”
“Just so. In other words, the young men went home with the left side of their bodies controlled by a foreign hemisphere, by the brain of a stranger. By a right hemisphere that was, fundamentally, wrong.”
Hewitt strode quickly towards the jury and scanned their faces intensely before turning on his heel to again face the witness-box. “And when did this error become apparent, Doctor Weiss?”
“At their first check-up, six months after surgery. There were signs of a nascent immune response and—”
But Hewitt was not interested in the medical explanation. He already had what he wanted, and he turned again to the jury, triumphant and exultant.
“Six months after the initial surgery, ladies and gentlemen! And the murder was committed, I remind you, four months and two weeks after the initial surgery! Committed, by the left hand of a right-handed man… by the left hand of a man whose left-side body functions were controlled, I remind you again, by the brain tissue of a stranger—the result of procedural negligence at the Weiss Glioma Unit!”
Hewitt’s excited tirade was followed by a rising susurration, composed of whispers and intakes of breath and rustles as the audience moved in their seats to better see the players in this great game. Negligence! Weiss looked down at his knuckles, whitely gripping the old wood of the dock, and fought to remain expressionless. My private practice… my income… my debts… Judge Evans beat her desk with a gavel as hard as her scrawny old arm could allow, while she glared around the courtroom with watery eyes, two wet little ponds set among cross-hatched, cream-yellow banks.
“Thank you, Your Honour,” said Hewitt, once silence had returned. “Now that we have established my premise, that is, that the events in question were perpetrated by brain tissue that does not belong to the defendant—brain tissue implanted in error, by a medically reckless procedure—let us seek further detail on two important points. Firstly, to whom does this interfering nervous tissue belong? What sort of person is the man whose right-side hemisphere has ended up in the skull of our defendant, controlling his left-body actions? And secondly—and this will draw heavily on your testimony, Doctor Weiss, so I would be grateful if you would remain in the witness-box, for the present—secondly, to what extent can a single hemisphere, one half of a brain, independently instigate a given train of action? For example, a sudden, violent blow to the throat of an old lady?”
There was a pause while Hewitt gathered some papers from his assistants. Weiss, unused to waiting on the convenience of others, felt the pain of his injured ego pull the blood from his face and then return it to his cheeks in a suffusion of rage. But his irritation was only partly due to the indignity of addressing questions posed by lesser intellects. In addition, the erosive concern that had grown in his mind like a tumour over recent weeks was now prodding and poking at his id, and occasionally breaking forth to torment his super-ego. Wealthy cancer patients, on whose illnesses he depended for the means to fund a rashly extravagant lifestyle, had become strangely scarce. Increasingly, they were cancelling their appointments with Weiss’ scalpel in favour of less imaginative treatments, treatments that carried less rumour of madness and shame. Hence, the precipitous decline in income from his erstwhile lucrative private practice. Until now, Weiss had thought of it as a temporary blip that would be abolished after the trial—but if Hewitt continued like this…
“So,” said Hewitt, eventually. “About the original owner of the rogue hemisphere. Obviously the gentleman in question is—rightly or wrongly—not on trial today. After all, he himself—or most of him, at least—was in prison on the day the murder was committed. A perfect alibi, perhaps; and yet, the very fact of his imprisonment is suggestive, is it not? Let us summarise his record…”
There followed a list of crimes and misdemeanours, mostly sordid, and sometimes violent. Drugs and theft, of course; also muggings, burglaries, drunken assaults and robberies. The court was left in no doubt that the rogue cerebral hemisphere had a significant and sustained criminal past.
“So, I think that answers the first of my questions,” Hewitt said. “Clearly, the nervous system that controls the defendant’s left hand, the hand that struck the fatal blow, has an abundant record of violent crime. Was the defendant at fault that this criminal proclivity was imported into his body, that it was given control of one half of his complement of limbs? I think not. But we shall return to that later. For now, let us focus on the second of the two questions that I put to you: to what extent can a cerebral hemisphere instigate a course of action independent of the conscious control, or even awareness, of the rest of the brain? Is it possible that the defendant could remain entirely unaware of, and unable to control, the actions of the left side of his body? That two parallel streams of consciousness could exist in the one head and body?”
Hewitt had been pacing up and down in front of the jury; now he walked back to the witness-box and halted in front of Weiss.
“Doctor Weiss, I wonder if you would be so good as to summarise the causes and symptoms of the split brain phenomenon?”
Weiss had known the question was coming, of course; Hewitt had practically telegraphed it.
“Under normal circumstances, the two cerebral hemispheres are intimately connected by a tract of nerve fibres called the corpus callosum. This enables them to function as a co-ordinated unit, as a single brain. If the corpus callosum is severed, as for example through injury or medical need, the hemispheres can no longer communicate with each other. Such patients may be known as split brain cases.”
“And when you operate on glioma patients, using your new technique… when you take out the hemispheres, one by one, before replacing them… do you sever the corpus callosum?”
“Obviously.”
“So all of the patients who leave your operating theatre—including the defendant—are split brain patients.”
“Of course! These questions are moronic!”
“Perhaps. But could you now describe to us the symptoms of a split brain patient?”
“Look, in most cases, you don’t see a huge effect. You can construct experimental conditions to show an effect, for example by letting one eye see one set of information and the other eye a different set of information, but in real life those conditions just don’t happen, and the patients are usually quite normal in their behaviour.”
“Usually. But not always?”
“Obviously, exceptions exist.”
“Would you describe some of these—ah—exceptions?”
“Well, there’s a famous case history—famous because it is so unusual—that describes a split brain woman who would have problems, for example, in filling her shopping trolley. Her right hand, the dominant hand, would take an item from the shelf, and then the left hand would replace the item and reach for some other purchase.”
“Fascinating! Just as though two different people existed inside her, fighting for control! But there are still more apposite examples, are there not?”
“I don’t follow you.”
“Really? But you must have heard of the split brain patient whose left hand—again, the left, mark you—would, apparently of its own volition, attempt to strike its owner’s much-loved wife? The literature records that this poor man would have to grab his left hand with his right to stop it harming her… Or how about the lady with a damaged corpus callosum who reported that her left hand—yes, left hand—lived a life of its own, and would try to strangle her in the night?”
“These types of alien hand syndrome really are extraordinarily rare—”
“As rare, perhaps, as the unprovoked, motiveless murder of an old lady by a boy of previously good character.”
Weiss was silent; Hewitt, too, was happy to pause, to let the jury absorb the inferences and connect the dots. But, just to make absolutely sure that even the slowest juror had grasped the argument, Hewitt painstakingly reiterated what he saw as the basic facts.
“The situation then is this. The defendant developed a glioma in the right hemisphere of his brain. He was treated at Doctor Weiss’ clinic using a procedure that involved removing the right hemisphere. Unfortunately, the defendant did not leave the hospital with his own right-side hemisphere. He left with a hybrid brain, incorporating the right-side hemisphere of a criminal sociopath. So the left side of his body is now controlled by nervous tissue derived from a stranger with a history of violence. Within a few months, this boy, this right-handed boy of previously impeccable character, committed a motiveless, pointless murder, in broad daylight—using his left hand only. And, as we have just discussed, many examples exist of split-brain patients whose left body functions appear to take on a life of their own, acting on impulses and motives that are entirely invisible—and repugnant—to the rest of the mind and body.”
Hewitt looked from the jury to the judge and back again.
“I believe that the only legitimate verdict that you can reach in this case is—at least with regard to the defendant as a whole—Not Guilty. Not guilty, ladies and gentlemen! I rest my case.”
Weiss tried to control the exasperation that was growing inside him like a boil. Surely they wouldn’t let the boy free on the basis of such a mish-mash of hypothesis and conjecture? The fools! Weiss raged silently as the prosecutor, Johnson, took the floor. He had an affected frown of puzzlement, but this gave Weiss a small gleam of hope—did the man have something up his sleeve?
“Ladies and gentlemen of the jury,” he began, wagging a finger. “We are in danger of over-complicating what is in fact a very simple case. The boy who is on trial today killed an old lady. Nobody denies that. Even he does not deny that.”
The jurors, as one, swivelled their heads to peer at the poor, weeping angel. The prosecutor, seeing the danger, hastily continued.
“Regardless of appearances, regardless of manifest contrition, the fact remains that murder has been done, and therefore justice is demanded. Now, I have listened to the defence’s case with interest, of course. We cannot deny that the defendant’s left arm, the murdering arm, was under the control of a foreign, perhaps even a malign, brain hemisphere, implanted as a result of a medical error in Doctor Weiss’ unit.”
Johnson nodded in Weiss’ direction with a friendly, complicit smile. Weiss glared at him. There was something of the mantis about Johnson: tall and cadaverous, with overly large, blue eyes and sunken cheeks, he stalked and hunched around the courtroom on long, thin legs, looking at the jurors as though they were a collection of juicy insects.
“But I feel that we are missing something… Doctor Weiss, we have heard about some very intriguing examples of split-brain patients. Indeed, the defence relies very heavily on instances in which such patients have reported that the left side of their bodies appears to instigate violent actions. But can you tell me of any instance in which a split brain patient has succeeded in doing serious violence, let alone murder, as a result of supposedly independent left-side actions?”
“No. I can’t.”
“No. Indeed, no.” Johnson pulled back his lips in a rictus of delight, like a corpse that had cracked a joke. “Doctor Weiss—what is free won’t?”
“I beg your pardon?”
“We are all acquainted with free will. But what is free won’t?”
“Oh—I know what you mean. Some cognitive scientists use the term to describe the ability of the conscious mind to override unconscious impulses. So although you might have a strong, unconsciously driven urge to murder your boss, the conscious mind won’t allow it. In most cases. Basically, it’s a power of veto.”
“I see. So in cases in which the left arm of a split-brain patient attempts to behave unacceptably, and the right arm stops that behaviour, that is free won’t in play. In other words, a murder—this murder—could have been prevented simply through the exercise of free won’t.”
“Well—perhaps. The term is usually used in relation to intact brains.”
Suddenly, and uncomfortably, Weiss found himself in the position of devil’s advocate. He didn’t like Hewitt’s reductionist proposition that the locus of moral responsibility could reside in a sub-segment of the brain, let alone that two loci of responsibility could simultaneously exist in two parts of one brain. But at the same time, he couldn’t completely support Johnson’s argument that the power of veto could completely control the actions triggered by a misfiring hemisphere in a split brain—because if the two hemispheres were not connected, how could the consciousness communicate the power of veto to the misbehaving organs? But Johnson seemed happy with Weiss’ response.
“Yes. And I’m glad you raised the point about intact brains, because some argument exists, does it not, about whether a split brain can be truly said to possess two parallel streams of consciousness—which is the central argument of the defence, of course.” Johnson picked up some papers from the bench and quickly shuffled through them with long, thin fingers.
“Let me quote from ‘Consciousness Explained,’ by Daniel Dennett. Dennett’s views may be summarised as follows: ‘… it isn’t the case that splitting the brain leaves in its wake organisations both distinct enough and robust enough to support such a separate self…’ In other words, ladies and gentlemen, the idea of two separate and conflicting streams of consciousness in a single brain, arising as a result of split-brain surgery and hemisphere mix-up, is an absurd fantasy! That, together with the existence of the ‘free won’t’ power of veto, places responsibility for the murder entirely and unequivocally here—with the defendant!”
Johnson was standing in front of the boy, pointing at him, eyes bulging ghoulishly, like a ghastly messenger of Nemesis come from some lawyer’s grave. The accusation proved too much for the boy, who involuntarily stood, shouting a denial in a voice which wavered and broke with the pain of perceived injustice; but he was drowned out by Hewitt, who also jumped forward, yelling “Objection! Objection! Dennett’s views are irrelevant! The self-interested ramblings of academic philosophers have no place in this court!” while the judge feebly banged her gavel on the bench top.
And eventually the weak hammering of wood on wood had its effect, and the judge’s voice could be heard. It seemed that she was proposing an unprecedented intervention, an interruption to the normal process of the court. Citing the technical and moral complexities of this extraordinary case, and the great importance of setting a legal precedent for any future similar cases, she indicated that she would at this point direct the jury to reach a verdict. No reason, therefore, for the jury to retire.
Of course, Weiss could not then go home; although desperately fatigued, he was also fascinated. Later, attempting to recapitulate the process by which Judge Evans arrived at her extraordinary conclusion, he found himself shutting his eyes and listening again to the voice of the judge as she croaked out the garbled logic behind her verdict.
“We must remember this,” she had begun, perched behind her raised oak desk like an ancient, wrinkled sparrow at an empty bird table. “A murder has been committed, a horrific crime, of which the defendant is accused. And nobody, neither the defendant nor his barrister, is denying that the victim met her end as a consequence of a brutal blow from the left arm of the defendant.”
She glanced belligerently at Hewitt and then turned her rheumy eye to the boy in the dock before continuing.
“The critical question is, to what extent was the defendant responsible for the actions of his left arm? Was it truly the defendant who struck the blow? Or was his left arm simply being used as a weapon by a foreign consciousness that was both invisible to the defendant and beyond his control?”
The boy, with his hands clasped together in front of his chest like an angel before the crib, was watching her, rapt and pleading. He was rocking very slightly, almost imperceptibly, back and forth, back and forth.
“Certainly, Mister Hewitt has made a very strong case for the possible existence of two controlling entities within the defendant’s hybrid brain… two parallel streams of consciousness… I believe you employed that phrase, Mister Hewitt?”
“Yes, Your Honour.”
“And the idea of the co-existence of two separate loci of moral responsibility in a single physical person is given considerable weight by the case studies of split-brain patients that you described…”
The old lady appeared to ruminate on this for a little while before myopically looking around the courtroom for Johnson. Eventually she spotted him in the seat that he had taken throughout the trial, his long frame folded against itself so that he could fit into a chair designed for smaller people.
“On the other hand, Mister Johnson has reminded us that even if the defendant is harbouring a criminally minded hemisphere with a separate consciousness, he still possesses his own consciousness, generated by his own, left hemisphere, which could, perhaps, have freely intervened. Although I acknowledge that this is not certain… but then neither is it certain that a transplanted right hemisphere could generate its own, separate consciousness… This really is a very difficult case…”
Judge Evans paused, her head cocked to one side, as though listening for some voice to guide her. The paralysis of the right side of her face gave her a Janus-like quality; perhaps she looked permanently to two opposing sides, innocence and freedom to the left, and to the right guilt and punishment. Or possibly vice versa.
“Very well. My judgement is this. First, with regard to the term, a ten-year sentence seems appropriate…”
As Weiss listened to the judge deliver her verdict, his professional contempt for an outcome that he considered absurd was gradually, subtly modulated, and then entirely replaced by a new emotion, an emotion which grew like a gall in some deep part of the intuitive side of his brain before triumphantly metastasising into an overt condition that made his heart race and dampened his palms. He became aware of Hewitt’s bright, dark eyes fixed on his own, and as he met the other’s gaze a small charge seemed to pass between them, a little shock of recognition. As the trial finished and the various parties filed out of court, it was an easy matter for the two men to fall into step and start a conversation, without preliminaries, as though they were merely recapitulating an informal agreement that they had already negotiated.
“The precedent set, of course,” said Hewitt, “will form the basis for many appeals. Very many. I intend to form a limited liability partnership to offer the appropriate services. There would, of course, be mutual benefit in an association with a partner who could take care of the medical side of things…”
Weiss nodded solemnly. “As I am sure you have realised, no other party can offer the highly specialised and, er, recondite procedures that are routinely performed in my clinic… It would only be a case of operating on a larger scale…”
And the talk turned to venture capital and high net worth individuals and new premises and marketing budgets before the two men parted company, highly satisfied with their new relationship.

Weiss parked outside his house and got out of the car, still smiling. Only yesterday, he had seen his home as a giant millstone, a sign of the vast debts he had accumulated through an extravagant lifestyle that had exceeded his income so significantly for so many years. Today, the house seemed too small, too unambitious. He would need a bigger residence, no doubt about that.
But he would have plenty of time for that kind of thing. For now, he had arrangements to make, operations to schedule; one operation, in particular. Which of the junior surgeons was on call tonight? Nagel. That was it. Tom Nagel. Weiss keyed a number into his phone.
“Tom? Weiss here…Yes, fine thanks. All over… Very interesting actually. We need to start preparing for a rather unusual operation. And I very much suspect that it will be the first of many. In fact, I am setting up a new company, a partnership, to provide this type of service… Briefly, we are to remove the left arm of a patient, together with those parts of the right hemisphere that are responsible for movement of the left arm… We will receive more than ample fees for the operation, I assure you. But the real financial return comes from the incarceration of the arm and the associated nervous tissue. We will need to keep them alive, ex vivo, for ten years… perhaps less, with good behaviour, but the definition of good behaviour, in this context, will require expert medical input…Yes, we will get fees from re-attaching it after the sentence is over… I very much suspect, Tom, that we can charge what we like… yes. And of course, every prisoner in the country will wish to explore the possibility of having his sentence served only by the guilty parts of his brain and body… This could run and run, Tom.”

Fact & Opinion

The Return of the Monstrous Part 1 by DG Jones

THE RETURN OF THE MONSTROUS

PART 1: THE EVOLUTION OF THE MONSTER

DG Jones

We’re obsessed with monsters. As individuals, and as cultures, monsters have always constituted a phenomenon that has run indiscriminately through the psyches of the world, satiating a human craving for dread and fear. Mutants, demi-gods and beasts pervade religion, creed, and every shadowy nook of secular society. The principal reason for the popularity of monsters is that the archetypal monster story is constructed around the incorporation of the monstrous Other into an otherwise homogenous society, an Other that is easily typified and recognised when given some unworldly physiology by the storyteller. The fascination and horror invoked by monsters is primarily due to the problems of human identity that they arouse in us, acting as catalysts that accelerate our primordial fears and anxieties to new levels. This is largely due to the monster’s traditional, uncomfortable distortion of the contours of the human or animal body: most classical monsters, from the Hydra to the vampire, are perversions of what is already “known” in the universe, or the Symbolic Order.

When confronted with human characters in literature, these monsters of excess are traditionally defeated by a protagonist, or a troop of people led by a protagonist, whose trump card is to outwardly display virtuous human qualities such as valour, courage, camaraderie, even love. These emotive attributes are usually sufficient to trounce the typically dumb, brute force of the excessive enemy, and the manner of victory serves two functions; firstly to heighten the dramatic or cathartic effect of the drama, and secondly to ensure that our own identities as human beings remain intact and, more importantly, superior to those of the monster.

While the “excess” of monsters is a reasonable explanation for the primordial reaction – one of repulsion or horror – one experiences when confronted by the classical monster, it nevertheless fails to account for the monster’s constant state of flux; its need to grow, and alter its fundamental shape and form in order to maintain its power to terrify in the modern age. For, while monsters of excess constitute a wildly violent and/or deviant manifestation of the Other, their physical excess creates a large, even comfortable distance between them and us; they are too blatant in their supposition of the role of Other, and thus become simple targets for elimination. In the cinematic age this distance has been emphasised by the safety barrier of the cinema screen, the lion’s cage, keeping the monster at arm’s length and effectively ‘captured’ by the frame of the screen to be inspected, gawped at and laughed at by the audience. The nature of spectacle carries with it an implicit ‘safety-catch’ ensuring that the gaze involved always is restricted to flowing one way after the introduction of cinema. The result is that the monster is situated as subordinate in the chain of power that exists between humans and monsters; as spectacle, the monster is unable to look back at humans. This mood of the freak show writ-large as an intrinsic part of early monster movies is encapsulated in King Kong (Cooper and Schoedsack, 1933). With a large slice of irony, Cooper and Schoedsack’s masterpiece demonstrates the self-conscious nature of their medium’s gaze in its portrayal of the giant ape captured by adventurers and then shamelessly paraded by the exhibitionist shysters of Broadway, whose aggressive and unreciprocated gaze changed the way the monster was to be perceived. This undoubtedly stems from the profoundly intimate relationship that people develop with books, which unleash the monster from the page to freely roam the infinite depths of the terrified human imagination. Unlike the cinema, you don’t read a book on a date; there’s no neighbour’s arm to cling to when the monster begins its assault from without. The cinema would keep monsters at a comfortable distance, treating them only as spectacular objects. The reason for this human desire to capture, control and explore the Kongs of the world lay in the attitudes of the modern era of the early twentieth century. The modernist era produced a myriad of works, myths and fictions that were essentially convoluted riddles to be fathomed by the academics, thinkers and readers of the time. The Slovenian critic Slavoj Žižek provides a good description of modernism in his book Everything You Wanted To Know About Lacan (But Were Afraid To Ask Hitchcock): “Modernism (is) the irruption of a trauma which undermines the complacency of our daily routine and resists being integrated into the symbolic universe of prevailing ideology… the pleasure of the modernist interpretation consists in the effect of recognition, which ‘gentrifies’ the disquieting uncanniness of its object.”

Logic and reason were the cultural vogue, and the objective of the era was to make sense of the mess, the enormous waste propagated by the First World War. Subsequently, monsters were no longer regarded as irrational creatures that that flew brutally in the face of gentrification and the Symbolic Order, nor as agents of some other perverse symbolic network that embodied the latent trauma that lurked within the individual. Monsters became mere objects to be scrutinised, studied and understood by scholars. It even gave rise to a new field of study: teratology (the study of monsters and marvels). However, as Hollywood has proven to us thousands of times over, only the foolhardy dare write off the monster! And, in a culture dominated by logic and rationality that had only recently digested Freud’s Beyond The Pleasure Principle (1920), logic dictated that sooner or later we would long to be scared out of our wits again. The necessity of the human condition to return to that which traumatises us brings us to the true definition of the monster – that of the Heideggerian semblance. Heidegger’s semblance is an entity that does not represent itself in itself per se, but takes the form of an indirect reference to itself, therefore escaping a concretised definition of its contours but retaining its essence. The monster thus needs to remain a semblance, allowing it to metamorphose into a new type of horror that is at odds with its previous incarnations but retains the essence of the monstrous. It is a transformation that did not really come to fruition until the American cinema of the mid-to-late 1970s, when the science fiction and horror genres began to amalgamate to reach new heights of terror.

The groundwork for this metamorphosis was laid by exemplary films such as Hitchcock’s Psycho (1960), Friedkin’s The Exorcist (1973), Spielberg’s Duel (1971) and Jaws (1975), and too many others to list here. These new monsters were subtler than their cumbersome predecessors, and would attack and appal their victims by sprouting from the internality of the subject rather than launching itself toward the subject from outside. The mystique of the postmodern monsters such as the antagonists of the films mentioned above is that the irreducible core of Real-impossibility, which arouses our terror as spectators, is contained within a symbolically viable shell (in Psycho this shell is a man; in Duel it is a filthy juggernaut; in The Exorcist the demon inhabits a child; in Jaws the shell is a Great White Shark). None of these monsters’ shells are ‘out of place’ yet through their uncanny ability to blend into the symbolic order they become more ‘out of place’ through their imminent threat to unwrap the Symbolic Order from within. This paradox reveals what the new monster was intent on becoming. Reams of papers and essays have been written expressing what the monster in each of these films ‘means’, and perhaps none more so than the Great White Shark in Jaws. There are theories abound speculating that the shark represents Third-World revenge upon American capitalism, or repressed sexuality, or a gross phallic symbol gone wild, to name but a few. The trick here is not to be fooled into thinking that any of these definitions or analyses of the shark is correct; as semblances, these monsters are examples of what Lacan referred to as the point-de-capiton, the point during analysis at which the sliding of signifiers by the analysand is stopped, or “punctured” by the analyst. In other words, it is the signifier (for example, the juggernaut in Duel) without the signified (its gentrified place as a juggernaut within the Symbolic Order), leaving instead an absent centre (the Real), which is how the paradox of these monsters is delineated. In Fig 5 we can see the point-de-capiton in what Lacan called the “Elementary Cell” of his Graph Of Desire. The subject in the Imaginary (constitutes itself as the Split Subject ($) by intersecting with the Grand Signifier (language) twice. The first point of intersection (A) is the first encounter with the signifier. If we reconsider the Mirrorphase, we can interpret this as the first encounter with the Other. This is the endpoint of speech, where references to the symbolic become fixated; it is from this point that everything which was said before during transference retroactively receives its true meaning. The second point of intersection (A’) is the point-de-capiton itself, the “punctuation in which the signification is constituted as a finished product”, or the point at which the analyst punctures the analysand through the revelation of the Real. The monsters such as those mentioned from the films above are examples of this second point of intersection, subverting the Symbolic Order by their uncanny aura of legitimacy.

It is this paradox of the signifier without the signified that gave rise to teratology as an apparently legitimate science, as it sought to gentrify that which resists symbolisation due to its constant state of flux, despite its façade being that of a legitimate signifier. The juggernaut is a juggernaut, but it’s not a juggernaut. The expanse of teratology as a legitimate science came as small surprise to the feminist critic Rosi Braidotti, who in Patterns of Dissonance calls the study the “forerunner to modern embryology” and suggests it “offers a paradigmatic example of the ways in which scientific rationality dealt with difference of a bodily kind.” Indeed, Braidotti’s assertion of a biological and chronological link between teratology and embryology is crucially significant when considering the various power imbalances evident within the social fabric. Her hypothesis offers an equivalence of stature and intent between the exhibitionist ringleader exemplified in King Kong’s Captain Englehorn (Frank Reicher) and the practitioners and researchers of biomedicine. This is a highly credible argument in terms of the authoritative projection of a gaze, which cannot be reciprocated, onto a site of bodily difference in an attempt to unravel the archaic mythology surrounding its (pre)-history. In The Birth Of The Clinic: An Archaeology of Medical Perception Michel Foucault pinpoints the clinical gaze of pathology and biomedicine as necessary in the closing of the gap between illness and disease, and the methods of treating it. For Foucault, pathology caused “the abyss beneath illness, which was illness itself, [to emerge] into the light of language.” The imposition of such a gaze serves to extend the boundaries of the Symbolic Order; that is, to expand upon what is ‘known’. Pathology came into being in the late eighteenth century, intending “a move away from a concern with the place of disease in a family of diseases towards a belief about its location in the organism.” Pathology came to indicate that illness and the human body were not necessarily heterogeneous, as had previously been the assumption. As such, it soon became evident that biomedicine would have to treat both disease and organism as malevolently symbiotic, the disease inseparable from its ‘host’, creating blemishes upon not only the body, but the identity of the patient. Foucault labels this realisation of symbiosis “tertiary spatialization,” an extension of the “field of objects to which [medical] observation addressed itself,” allowing the medic to explore not only surfaces, but also depths. Essentially, pathology ensconced that the body contained a ‘truth’, which was delivered to the exterior by visible signs; if a disease was present and active, it would give away its position via affectations upon the body’s relationship with the corporeal (symptoms).

From these fundamental beginnings it has become taken for granted that the ‘truth’ of the body is perceptual in its essence rather than topographically symptomatic (that is, disease must be perceived through the interface of the body, not necessarily by its surface), and thus is separable from its locality but not its host. These ideas are forever being fortified by the development of prostheses with which to assist the gaze of the medics. These advancements have come in the form of such tools as the microscope, the X-Ray, the CAT scan and, more recently, keyhole surgery and fibre optics. The latter of these prosthetic gazes are significant in that the CAT scan presents a visual field in which the tumour can be can be identified as the unbelonging ‘stain’. Keyhole surgery and fibre optics take the prosthetic gaze to its natural conclusion in that it effectively places the ‘eye’ of the gazer inside of the body of the patient while the doctor operates. The ‘key’ is really a giant optic nerve, transmitting information back to the mind of the medic. The perhaps inevitable conclusion of pathology in the arena of popular thought was that disease, stagnant and afflictive within the body, was derided as ‘evil’, while the penetrative gaze of the medic was represented as a heroic saviour that would locate and extract the spiteful anomaly. Health became the fashionable alternative to salvation. It’s not something we’ve grown out of.

So we return to the monsters, and their quest to rediscover their monstrousness. Foucault’s study had inadvertently (or perhaps not, Freud might have said) offered them a route to a new zenith. If we consider cancer to be among the most maligned of diseases in recent years (with the possible exception of the HIV virus and AIDS, and the more recent emergence of mental illnesses such as dementia and Alzheimer’s) then we are confronted with a disease that seems to defy linear logic through its relationship with its benevolent host, a disease which employs trickery to attain its goal of self-annihilation. For cancer is not a virus, not a poison (though it can be triggered by toxins) and not a regressive or wasting disease; it is borne entirely of the body’s own cloth; it causes a tumour to grow, deceiving the body into believing that that growth is perfectly legitimate until, if allowed to run unchecked, it is too late. Under the gaze of the pathologist, cancer has assumed many sub-divided identities and types relating to the locality of the cancer, and can even be physically described in great detail whilst still inside the body thanks to the medic’s prosthetic gaze. However, cancer refuses to be compartmentalised because of its propensity to spread, and its inability to be spotted via outward symptoms until the tumour has become too powerful a force within the body to be countered. While this plain deception undoubtedly prompts great distress to the general cancer patient (causing such questions as “why would my body trick me so?” “Why did my bodily defences not inform me until it was too late?”), it is a particular type of cancer – that type which triggers the growth of the endodermic sinus tumour – that is of particular interest to the monsters. The endodermic sinus tumour, or teratoma (from the Latin ‘monstrous tumour’) lies at the centre of the link between teratology and embryology suggested by Braidotti above. The teratoma is birthed from the female gamete (germ cell) which divides by mitosis without being fertilised, causing its development to be fundamentally flawed due to the lack of the male gamete. The unfertilised egg cell then tries to compensate for the absent male gamete despite its inability to recompense the new tissue with the material provided exclusively by the male gamete. The authors of Genes and the Biology of Cancer state it thus: the energies of these cells are directed exclusively toward their own proliferation, they no longer focus on helping to rebuild a functional organ or tissue.

While the female gamete is the fundamental growth cell from which all physical traits and features are created, gametes of both sexes are required to produce the zygote, which may then divide mitotically to produce the foetus. If the female gamete divides too soon it is unable to differentiate between the strains of deviant new cells that it is producing and the strain of new cells that it should be producing. This type of tumour is very fast in its growth, metastasises quickly and, as this type of tumour is essentially a demi-foetus – a foetus without the essential male gamete – it can potentially grow to the size of a baby. Resultantly, it is frequently misdiagnosed before surgery as an ectopic pregnancy. In Teratologies, Jackie Stacey remarks that her own teratoma had been “big enough to be baby.” Despite these bizarre characteristics, its most alarming feature is due to its development from the fundamental female growth cell, which means that the teratoma can develop recognisable bodily features such as teeth, hair, nails, small bones, flesh and even organs, resulting in a freakishly disturbing appearance that confronts the patient and their notion of their own identity when the growth is extracted. It is this quasi-human identity that lends the teratoma to modern horror fantasies of the abject self/not-self being expelled from the body qua the excremental lamella of the Real (or, as the Real is impossible, the teratoma possesses the same qualities as something that resists the gentrifying mesh of the Symbolic Order; its amalgamated clump of tissue is heterogeneous to the sophisticated network of the ‘body proper’). A crude approximation is to be found in David Cronenberg’s The Fly, when Veronica (Geena Davis) imagines she gives birth to a giant maggot; but the teratoma is a more subtle, abject creature because it occupies the same space in the Symbolic Order as a human, yet simultaneously irrupts it. The proximity of this monstrous, abject matter to a human identity can and does evoke alarming questions in the patient; “could this mess of flesh and body parts develop a consciousness?” “Could it understand its existence?” “Would it have developed into a completely new me had the mitotic division process not been fatally flawed?” These questions are not churlish; it is not unusual for women to become overcome with (what might appear to be) an irrational and overwhelming emotional attachment to these tumours. Such a reaction is demonstrated in Margaret Atwood’s short story Hairball, in which the female protagonist Kat, after having two abortions, develops an endodermis sinus tumour, has it removed and begins to fantasise that she has ‘given birth’ to the tumour, which contains bones, ‘a scattering of nails… [and] five perfectly formed teeth.’ Kat preserves the abject mass in a jar of formaldehyde and places it upon her mantelpiece, much to the disgruntlement of her supposedly outré husband, Ger. It is the sense of duplication and assimilation of the self from within, rather than without (a la Grosz’s excessive classical beasts) that enables the teratoma to assume the mantle of the basis for the modern monster, allowing modern mythmakers to take the questions posed above to their (il)logical conclusions. The teratoma is the abject writ-large, the halfway point between the benign, mundane ‘shit’ that the body expels to maintain an agreeable sense of its own identifiable contours, and the creature in Ridley Scott’s Alien (1979) for which Barbara Creed represents the devastating, seditious progeny of the archaic monstrous-feminine who births the physical actualisation of female desire in the creature.

The creature in Alien is the evolutionary descendent of such monsters as Norman Bates in Psycho, the shark in Jaws, the juggernaut in Duel and the rest. It takes the paradoxical nature of these points-de-capiton to the limit, becoming the ultimate creature qua semblance, endlessly shifting to resist a corporeal definition of itself whist maintaining its horrific essential kernel. In terms of the creature’s spatial threat to the crew of the Nostromo, it exists initially as an external threat (the egg/facehugger) that is internalised via the violent oral rape exacted by the facehugger, which impregnates the victim with the alien embryo, and then externalised again through the irruption of the embryo through the chest of the victim (the chestburster). This state of continuous spatial flux between the internal and the external is complemented by the many physiological changes undergone by the creature during its life cycle, which make the creature very difficult to define as any one ‘thing’. In its profile as semblance, the alien creature stands for partiality. Unlike Jaws’ Great White Shark, or Norman Bates, the Alien has no place whatsoever in the Symbolic Order; it is not a fragment of the Real merely wrapped up in a gentrified shell whose infiltration of the Symbolic Order is based upon subtlety and uncanniness. The alien creature’s act of infiltration into the social order of the human protagonists is orgiastically violent, and its various physical forms (and the manner in which it develops from one form to another) are far removed from the limits of the ‘known’ terrestrial. Much has also been made of the maternal-sexual motifs of the movie, such as the vaginal corridors of the Nostromo; the passive vaginal/fallopian tube-like contours of the walkways and their vulva-like entrance upon the planet of the Space Jockey, where the alien eggs are first discovered by the crew; the gross and aggressive phallic shape of the alien’s cranium; the aggressive testicular glands of the facehugger and the name of the Nostromo’s onboard computer: ‘Mother’. In Lacanian/Kristevan terms, this maternal-sexual theme leads to the generation of the Alien creature as a jettisoned piece of shit/afterbirth (an undisguised piece of the Real) that the maternal planet must eject if it is to retain a sense of its own familiarity after the crew’s penetrative act of invading the vagina/fallopian tubes of the ruined planet. In effect, the creature represents an extreme, sexually violent undoing of symbolisation, unravelling the strands of signification that hold together the symbols of categorised human existence. It remains the monster’s evolutionary highpoint, its terrifying zenith, the perfect encapsulation of the monstrous.

About the Author

Dan Jones works for the UK Space Agency on a space robotics development programme, and has worked in the past on technology strategy in the field of aerospace, cyber security and autonomous systems. All of which has come in rather handy when coming up with new ideas for science fiction stories.

His debut novel, Man O’War, will be published by Snowbooks in October 2017. He has had other stories published in the anthologies Journeys, and The Haunting of Lake Manor Hotel, and has recently published a second edition of Eat Yourself, Clarice!, a non-fiction psychoanalytical study of popular film, literature and low culture. He is currently working on his second novel, The Hole In The Sky, and a collection of novellas on the theme of urban mythologies.

Dan was born in Forest Gate, east London, and now lives in Essex with his wife and two daughters.

This essay has been adapted from “Eat Yourself, Clarice!” by DG Jones, which is available to buy in ebook and paperback form on Amazon.

Keep Reading

Fiction/Subscription Stories

Time as a Braid of Our Lives by Robert R. Chase

TIME AS A BRAID OF OUR LIVES

Robert R. Chase

My wife used to explain to her friends that I have always been adrift in time. This is less dramatic than it sounds. Like everyone, I live in the present and look forward to the future. However, my memories are usually no more precise than to distinguish between the near past and far past. Ask me how long I have been taking pills for blood pressure and I will probably say ten years, but it could just as easily be fifteen or more. I can usually remember in detail stories I have read or movies I have seen, but it is only with difficulty and utilizing something akin to Holmesian deduction that I can remember the circumstances under which I read or saw them. It is almost as if I apprehended them outside of time, straight from the Platonic substrate, as it were.

Meg was never like that. For her, time was a rigid matrix imprinted directly on her brain. Because of her, I never missed an appointment or a payment. But there were disadvantages as well. Her mother died on February 27th. For years afterward, February 27th would be a dark day. On that day, she seemed to experience the loss anew.

She would be darkly amused to learn that October 3rd has become that date for me.

Now that she was gone, I kept track of bills by writing the due dates on the envelope and filing them in order. Notes on a calendar took care of other obligations. Much to the surprise of some people, I was actually able to handle the basics of running my life.

My daughter, Tina, was one of the most surprised. She visited every weekend and regaled me with stories of bureaucratic snafus at her exotic government R&D agency. Her ostensible reason for visiting was to cook me a decent meal and give me some company. Both were undoubtedly true reasons, but from the way she looked at the papers on my desk and the tenor of certain questions she tried to slip oh so casually into conversation, I could tell she was looking for signs of everything from depression to Alzheimer’s.

“Look,” I said finally. At that moment, a commercial came on the television and the sound volume increased, even though I was pretty certain the FCC had a rule against that. This was the one where two guys walk into a bar and ask for a beer, but the bartender says he has never heard of beer and offers them some sort of lemon lime alcopop instead. I grabbed the remote and muted it.

“Look,” I began again, “I’m always glad to see you, but don’t you want to spend your weekends with your friends? What about that guy, Jimmy, that you were dating?”

Keep Reading

Fiction/Free Stories

A Matter of Mass by Floris M. Kleijne

A MATTER OF MASS

Floris M. Kleijne

“Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned. It’s been…” Father Zio sighed. “It’s been thirteen years since my last IRL confession.”

Behind the lattice, Bishop Otis shifted in his seat.

“But—” the Bishop said. He paused before continuing: “And how long has it been since your last online confession?”

“A week, Father. But it’s not the same. It’s not.”

“Go on, my son.”

“I have harbored unkind thoughts at times, about members of my flock. I have had lustful thoughts at times.” Father Zio smiled quietly to himself. Mr. Dooley’s dramatic antics of feigned ecstasy at every Mass were enough to bring unkind thoughts to the holiest of minds, never mind his own flawed, rehabilitated soul. As for Mrs. Ocura’s cleavage… Let’s just say some things were worth a couple of Hail Mary’s.

“Go on, my son.”

The Bishop’s prompt made him realize he was marking time with these minor sins, postponing the inevitable, while he knew exactly what he should be confessing instead. Father Zio believed in confession, needed the cleansing of his soul. But it was unfortunate, to say the least, that Bishop Otis was the one taking it. No matter. No sense delaying any longer.

“I have been prideful. I have defied the wishes of the Holy Church.” There. That would put an end to any doubt Bishop Otis might still have had. “I have defied… you, Father.”

From behind the lattice came the sound of indrawn breath, followed by a long silence. Then:

“How so, my son?”

The week before, Bishop Otis had introduced Father Zio to his replacement.

Admittedly, Andrew had been convincing. Except for an almost subliminal hum when it stood up from its seat, the new priest could have passed for human in any gathering. They had spent fifteen minutes arguing doctrine, and Andrew’s command of Scripture and religious philosophy had been impressive to the point of intimidation.

“I’ll leave you two to discuss the practicalities.” Its voice carried perfect timbres of kindness and self-effacing respect. Zio had no doubt it could cast its voice to the proper tone for any occasion. “If you need me, I’ll be on board the Pius VI.” The episcopal vessel was moored off air lock 42, waiting to take the Bishop back to the diocese. The Bishop and, if the Most Reverend had his way, Zio as well.

“Yes, thank you, Andrew.”

The door between Zio’s chambers and corridor K hissed closed. Bishop Otis was still standing behind the plain sofa where Father Andrew had sat, his hands hidden in the wide sleeves of his purple cassock, smiling benignly as if bestowing a blessing on the departed priest. Father Zio rounded on the Bishop, but his many outraged questions battered him into silence. The Bishop neatly stepped into the opening.

“So, Father, do you feel ready to start your life after penance?”

So that was how he wanted to play it. This new Bishop was very different from his late predecessor, Bishop Armanez. But Father Zio wasn’t ready—or willing—-to talk around the elephant in the room.

“A robot? You’d replace me with a robot, Most Reverend?”

“The Holy See has coined the term Paracreational Shepherd. But yes, a robot, if you will.” The benign smile on the Bishop’s face didn’t fool Zio for a moment.

“No.” Father Zio’s mind teemed with objections, arguments, outraged exclamations, but the single negation was all he could utter.

“My son, do you realize what the diocese is offering you? Absolution, the end to your penance, an easy, planet-side congregation close to Earth. God willing, a congregation on Earth itself, when it comes available. To be absolved of the sins in your past, Zio. Isn’t that what you want?”

The sins in his past. Father Zio would never have expected it to be put so bluntly. Things must have changed in the Mother Church while he tended this tiny backwater parish. Or maybe it was just this new Bishop who preferred a mundane, speak-your-mind approach that would have been considered shockingly inappropriate when Father Zio was first ordained.

He had been just Zio when he found Christ in prison, doing hard time for a wide range of cybercrimes. The Church had accepted him, taught him, ordained him, but hadn’t readily forgiven him. In the dark recesses of his mind, he still wondered sometimes how much of their outrage had been about the innocent victims he had made, and how much about the moneys he had liberated from various hidden Vatican Bank accounts. It didn’t really matter though: he considered his service on dilapidated Outpost Psi fair penance for the deaths he had caused.

“Most Reverend, with all due respect, that is not the point. I’m sure Father Andrew was easy to replicate and cheap to ship, but that doesn’t make him a priest! How can a robot ever serve a congregation? How can a robot commune with the Holy Trinity? Will the Diocese train monkeys next? Or is it now the position of the Church that robots possess a soul?”

Bishop Otis actually flinched for a second, but he quickly recovered into icy fury.

“It seems you read Her Holiness’s encyclicals with less attention than you should, Father Zio.”

Zio racked his brain. There had been upheaval at an almost Galactic level over the last papal missive. The accepted interpretation of the encyclical was that Pia IV wished to open the Church to alien intelligences. But reviewing the text in his head, Zio realized that the exact wording could as easily be made applicable to artificial intelligences—to robots.

“Mea culpa.” He did not trust himself to say anything else.

“Te absolvo.” The Bishop absently waved a blessing at his priest. “This is an opportunity for you, Zio; I would have expected you to see that. You’re not getting any younger, and frankly, these… incidents in the last months…”

Not that again.

There had been two incidents, two. And both had been a result of the ill-maintained AG systems on Psi. It seemed that anything might cause a malfunction these days, from turning on too many appliances at once, to slamming the light panel too forcefully. First time the AG faltered, Father Zio had been pouring the sacramental wine. The fumes had first stained and nauseated his floating congregation, and then burst into a spectacular fireball above the altar as the candles ignited the vaporized alcohol. Except some charring of the altar cloth, and a couple of singed eyebrows, the damage had been limited. The second time, a ball of holy water had drifted up through the church. Letting his parishioners plunge their hands into it as they entered had admittedly been ill-advised, however practical it had seemed at the time: the scattered smaller and smaller droplets had splashed all over the church module when gravity returned.

Holding these against him was a stretch. Using them as proof of his senile incompetence infuriated Father Zio.

“With all due respect, Most Reverend, I still say No. My congregation needs a real priest, a human priest, one with a soul; not some artificial collection of rote liturgy and pre-packaged responses. It may not be a large parish by your standards, they may number less than a percent of the population here, but these are fourteen immortal souls you’re playing with.”

That, finally, got a rise out of the Bishop. He jerked his right hand free and raised it.

“Careful, Father. An unkind ear might think you’re contradicting Her Holiness. And frankly, it is not your place to refuse or accept. This is the wish of your Church. It is your place to meekly comply!”

That was it. The threat of heresy, and the demand for obedience. And while he believed with all his heart and soul that this was dangerous to the life eternal of his flock, he had sworn to serve the Church. No sense arguing any longer.

Sense had never been his strong suit, though.

Father Zio had to admit that the robot performed remarkably well. He considered himself a good priest, a master of liturgy, but Andrew was something else entirely. Despite himself, Zio, felt himself being swept along in the rhythms of the service, participating in the congregational responses, carried aloft on the prayers. He had to remind himself that this was artificial, an automated performance honed to perfection, his own sense of the Divine a conditioned response rather than a real effect of this canned Mass. Even the utilitarian metal interior of the small module took on a sepulchral reverence under the slow echoes of the robot’s voice.

He fingered the object in his cassock pocket.

From his seat to the side of the altar, he could see that the members of his flock—no, Andrew’s now—were taken in by the performance, as moved now by the robot’s Mass as they had been by his own farewell sermon. Mr. Dooley was making as much of a fool of himself as always, swaying from side to side with eyes closed, and Mrs. Ocura tried and failed to get the robot’s attention. The others were… enraptured, even Bishop Otis. Carried on the waves of Father Andrew’s melodious reading, all faces displayed a concentrated attention Father Zio had never seen during his own services. Maybe he was a heretic for even thinking it, but such devotion through the service of a soulless automaton could only be the work of Satan, couldn’t it? He couldn’t remember whether Pia had invoked papal infallibility in her encyclical, but everything he saw, everything he felt about this mockery of Mass, told him she couldn’t have. In his mind’s eye, he could see the souls of his flock blackening as they were swept away by the ministrations of this false idol.

This travesty had to stop.

“The body of Christ.” Anatolyev, the station’s third engineer, accepted the host on his extended tongue. Petr was a pious and honest member of the congregation. It always gave Father Zio hope to see such a hard scientist demonstrate such faith.

Not yet.

Next in line, Mrs. Ocura knelt for her Holy Communion. Impervious to her wiles, the robot intoned “The body of Christ” again, its voice pleasing and melodious even in this ritual phrase. The shuttle pilot was flirtatious and possibly adulterous, but essentially harmless.

Not yet.

Behind her was Mr. Dooley, already shivering in anticipation. Father Zio had tried to find patience in his heart for the old gas miner, but it was hard. His pious ecstasy was too obviously feigned, his regular confessions too loudly self-righteous if not altogether fictitious.

Mrs. Ocura rose sinuously to her feet and stepped to the side to make her way back to her seat. Mr. Dooley rushed to take her place, dropping to his knees with bent head like a caricature of penitence. His deep sigh was audible all through the church module as he raised his head to accept the host.

Now.

Zio pressed the button in his pocket.

A slight stutter marred Father Andrew’s movements. It recovered quickly, but its immaculate performance had lost its perfection. Zio smiled through his guilt.

“The bod—”

Confusion broke through Mr. Dooley’s serene mask. The robot stood frozen, host extended, face still.

“The bod—”

This time, the interrupted word was followed by a brief burst of static. No one in the congregation could mistake Father Andrew for a human any longer. Its face contorted in a rapid-fire sequence of expressions as its operating system fought the Trojan which Father Zio had uploaded the night before.

It had been an easy hack, really. Access is ninety percent of hacking, he used to say, and the robot had a maintenance port in the back of the head, right under the hairline, as well as a wide-open RC module. Making the modifications to freeze the Father mid-mass had been no effort at all.

“Bod—”

“Father?” Mr. Dooley got to his feet and extended a hesitant hand towards the stalled automaton.

And perhaps he should have stopped there. Judging by the outrage on the faces in the congregation, this was enough: they would never accept his replacement now, insist on his staying on. Perhaps this was enough. But the final insult had come once he had accessed the OS and called up the sysinfo.

Father Andrew was a modified entertainment model.

He had been replaced by Crooner 3.2.

Even though it had been enough to convince his flock, even if he’d had a second button to stop this, the Church deserved the embarrassment. And his great-grandfather’s collection of late twentieth century classical music had provided the perfect finishing touch.

“—body down to the ground,” Father Andrew suddenly sang as Father Zio’s Trojan broke through the final lines of defense. The robot struck a pose, and slid into a smooth, rapid disco jive, scattering hosts.

“Let’s dance, let’s shout, shout, shake your body down to the ground!”

The parishioners got to their feet as Mr. Dooley recoiled. Scattered shouts of indignant fury accompanied the crowd to the double doors. Mrs. Ocura slammed the panel, causing the lights to flicker even as the doors sighed open.

And while his parishioners, without missing a beat, clawed their way through the open doors and floated into the hallway, and Bishop Otis attempted to air-swim down the aisle towards the altar, Father Zio assumed a relaxed pose some distance above his seat, and watched in contentment as Father Andrew attempted to moonwalk on thin air.

Father Zio accepted his penance, not because he deserved it—though he believed he did—but because his penance and his purpose coincided. He thought Bishop Otis suspected as much, but faced with a choice between leaving Psi Parish unshepherded, assuming the local priesthood himself, and reinstating Zio, the Bishop probably didn’t think he had much of a choice at all.

The Hail Mary’s and Lord’s Prayers, though, he would double on his own account, for while he believed he had done the right thing, it had been disrespectful and disobedient. He would pray, and he would make more of an effort to inspire and raise the spirits of his flock; the robot had at least given him that much more motivation.

“Te absolvo,” the Bishop said behind the lattice, with a hint of reluctance.

“Thank you, Most Reverend,” he whispered getting up. “And God bless you.”

Bishop Otis stayed seated in the confessional for a few more minutes, eyes closed, in apparent meditation. Then he stood up, with an almost subliminal hum.

Food for Thought

With artificial intelligence becoming more of a reality almost by the month, cognitive skills and abilities are well within reach of the constructed mind. Headway has even been made into the computer-generated appreciation of beauty. But how about creativity? Emotion?

Faith?

What if an artificial mind can be created such that it can quote Scripture, take confession, perform Mass; pass a religious Turing test, if you will? Can a human congregation be served by AI clergy? And if the believers cannot tell the difference, is their Holy Communion then real, even if it’s delivered… by a robot?

About the Author

Floris M. Kleijne is the award-winning author of the SF novelette “Meeting the Sculptor” (Writers of the Future Award, 2005) among more than fifteen published science fiction, fantasy, and horror stories. His fiction has been translated into eight languages, including his native Dutch. He lives and writes in Amsterdam, with his wonderful wife, two cheerful sons, and thousands of books.

Keep Reading

Fiction/Free Stories

Nascent by Katie Winkler

NASCENT

Katie Winkler

We were frankly amazed that it picked her. Of course, we had, as a group of the top minds on artificial intelligence, decided that it should decide things for itself. We shouldn’t dictate to it, but then it picked her, for God’s sake—a 55-year old woman, past child-bearing years, of average intelligence, even less attractive, overweight with no particular talents and more than a few health problems. It could have picked any woman, any man, from anywhere in the world and it picked her.

We are baffled, and fascinated.

It has, we have recently discovered, become quite attached to her, literally, having developed tentacles that it has wrapped around her waist and arms and encircling her breasts like armor. For some reason, it has formed small metal leaves that occur intermittently along the tentacles.

“It has a certain beauty, doesn’t it?” said Sanderson.

“Beauty?” I said, trying not to sneer. Sanderson is so young, you see.

“Yes, the way the metal intertwines and the leaves occur somewhat randomly with different sizes and markings—like some sort of elfish design.”

I looked and didn’t see it myself.

The woman, Marion Phelps, agreed to come in and be questioned by our scientists.

She is dressed in a sundress, which seems odd for some reason. It looks horrible on her—her pudgy arms leaking over the elastic of the bodice and showing more cleavage than any normal man would want to see. At least she is wearing a bra, though the straps are too wide to be covered by the thin straps of the dress. Why would a woman like this wear a bright red bra?

The processor must attach and reattach at will, because the tentacles are wrapped around the outside of the dress—around the arms and the breasts, just like the images sent by my colleagues in the field. The tendrils are quite tight around the arms and it seems a good place to start the questions.

“Is that uncomfortable?” I ask, opening my folder and turning on my recorder.

“What?”

“Are those tentacles uncomfortable,” I say, raising my voice a little.

“No, no, they feel great, actually.” She smiles. Her teeth are quite white. I am surprised and make a note of it.

“What do you mean by feel great?”

She laughs. “Don’t you know?”

“Of course, I know what it means to me. What does it mean to you?”

“I don’t know. Great, you know?”

This line of questioning was getting me nowhere. “How long has it been with you?”

“What?” I notice something moving at her waist. It is one of the leaves.

“The computer,” I say, making a note of her atrocious accent, her lack of intelligence. “How long has it been with you?”

“You should know. You’re the one who got us together.”

“What do you mean?”

“It was arranged.”

“It was not.”

“That’s what he told me.”

“Who told you?”

She laughs again. It is loud and raucous. I don’t like her laugh at all.

“Jake,” she says. I didn’t know any Jake. She sighs, pointing to the automaton wrapped around and around her. That’s what he likes to be called.”

“The computer likes to be called Jake?” It is my time to laugh.

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Nothing, nothing,” I say. “He just seems more like a Steve to me.”

She isn’t laughing now. She sits back in her seat, stretches her legs out, crosses her ankles and her arms. “Now, how about that? You want Jake to make decisions for himself, but then you make fun of him when he does.”

I look up. Now this is interesting. Her posture, her tone of voice, everything sounds so defensive. “You sound angry, Ms.” I glance down at the file folder. “Phelps. I certainly meant no offense, to you or to Jake.”

She looks a bit flushed and opens her mouth as if to speak, when the metal on her right arm seems to constrict a little and two leaves begin to move up and down against her skin. “Not angry, Dr. Stephens.” She smiles. “Why should I be?”

I play along. “No reason whatsoever.” I shuffled some papers on the table between us and picked up my pen, a special one I bring along on such occasions. “Just a few more questions,” I say, as I roll the black pen between my fingers and chuckle. “You must admit, you are a bit of an unusual choice for a highly advanced android to make.”

Now she is angry. I had hoped she would be. She doesn’t say anything, only stares at me with her plain, brown eyes. “That’s not a question.”

I lean forward, “Why,” I ask, speaking slowly and enunciating every syllable, “would such a sophisticated computer that I helped program by the way, pick a…” I flip through the file. “What is it you do? I can’t remember.”

“I’m a teacher.”

“Oh, that’s right. You teach elementary-aged children at the cyber school, don’t you?” I say, nothing more. Just wait, until finally, “What is it that you think you have to offer?”

Ms. Phelps, her face turning red, abruptly stands up. “You don’t understand anything, do you?”

I see then that the tendrils extend around her torso and have moved and tightened over her buttocks. “Did the android just signal to you to leave?” I say staring at the silvery branches and glimmering leaves.

“Yes. He’s had enough.”

I ignore her comment, but rise to block her way as she tries to leave. “It looked like it actually moved to lift you out of the chair. Is this computer manipulating you in any way, Ms. Phelps?” It is for the stupid woman’s own protection. She and my machine must be separated. “Ms. Phelps, sit down.”

“I can’t.” She’s sobbing. “We have to leave.”

“Is this machine hurting you?” When I move to force her down, to do what I must do, grabbing her shoulders, the tendrils detach from the woman’s right arm and slowly wrap around my left.

She is screaming now, “Don’t, Jake! Don’t!” she cries, clawing at the disappearing leaves as the vines unfurl. “Don’t leave me!”

I am enthralled. Feeling the warm metal moving up my arm, I am also surprisingly aroused. He’s coming to me, his creator, and I am vindicated. I was sure he would not stay with that woman. He was simply experimenting.

Then, it is hard to describe what I feel as the metal heats and sinks into my skin. I suppose this must be what it’s like to burn alive. Through the bright rays of pain, I remember the pen in my hand and make useless stabbing motions at Jake, hitting my own dissolving arm in the process. “Stop this, Jake. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

But he continues, looping his way up my arm and wrapping his tentacles around my neck, squeezing, burning. I scream out and begin stabbing at the woman. Feeling the pen meet the flesh, I stab and stab and stab as she screams.

“Let me go,” I cry, and he does, finally, mercifully, sinking away from me quickly, as he wraps himself around the woman, who now lies huddled, moaning, in the corner of the room. More leaves spring out in myriad shapes, sizes, this time mixed with bright metallic colors of magenta, emerald and gold, covering her wounds.

Sanderson and the guards come rushing in to see me standing there, still grasping the bloody pen. I assure them, as I clamor for breath, that I have the situation well in hand, but that the woman must be taken into custody.

“With the computer?” asks Sanderson.

“Of course,” I say, as calmly as I can. “The two can’t be separated. Leave them be.”

But here in the quiet of my hospital room, as the powerful pain reliever begins to do its work, where no one, no thing, can know my thoughts, I cradle what’s left of my arm, knowing what I must make Sanderson do, tomorrow. For the good of mankind.

If she refuses, by God, I’ll do it myself.

Food for Thought

What does the narrator want Sanderson to do at the end of the story? Explain your answer.
Is the narrator a man or a woman? Does it matter? Explain your answer.
What do you think is the author’s intention for having a scientist make judgements based on such poor and shallow reasoning?
For whom is the narrator most concerned? The android? The woman? Himself or herself?
Why does the machine “grow” metal leaves that later change color? What do they symbolize?
Is the machine sentient? Does it “love”? Explain your answer.
About the Author

Katie Winkler’s short fiction has appeared in numerous online and print publications, including Punchnel’s, Fabula Argentea, A&U Magazine, AIM, Rose and Thorn and Dead Mule School of Southern Literature, among others. Also a playwright, she is a member of the Dramatists Guild of America and frequently writes theater reviews of productions at Flat Rock Playhouse, the State Theater of North Carolina. She teaches English composition, literature and creative writing at Blue Ridge Community College in Flat Rock, North Carolina.

Keep Reading

Fact & Opinion

The Human Lesson

In Larry Niven’s Known Space Universe, humanity finds itself, early in its exploration of space, under attack by the Kzinti, a race of carnivorous felinoids. Far more advanced than the humans at the beginning, the Kzinti are nevertheless defeated in the Man-Kzin wars. Partly, they defeat themselves, due to their own insistence that attack is the only proper military tactic and their disdain for subtlety in any form. But in the very first encounter with humans, the starship Angel’s Pencil, an entirely unarmed colony ship, slices its Kzinti attacker in two with its photon drive. Their use of reaction drives throughout the subsequent wars against the Kzinti as weapons becomes known to the Kzinti as “The Human Lesson:” A reaction drive is a weapon in direct proportion to its efficiency as a drive. Variants on the Human Lesson have been used throughout science fiction. It seems to be popular now to use this essential point to argue against the idea that space travel will ever be the province of privately-owned spacecraft. After all, an interplanetary, let alone interstellar, drive would seem to put, by definition, the functional equivalent of a massive nuclear weapon in the hands of its pilots and owners. But we are still in such early days of space travel that I don’t care to speculate on that. Instead I will speculate about something that I have studied far more, and may understand far less, but that’s always a risk when one writes about theology.

I hope that my readers will forgive me by starting with the extraordinarily obvious observation that religion is one of the most powerful forces in human society throughout history. Theists like myself will say that religion – usually ours particularly – has served humanity well, by encouraging them to love one another, by bringing together people of different backgrounds, by encouraging science and the arts (and yes, the Catholic Church, among other large religious institutions, used to encourage both of these things when no other institutions did) and by setting standards of behavior that encouraged social cohesion. Atheists and anti-theists point out (just as correctly) that religious institutions have also fostered hatred of the other, the suppression of science and the arts, and rigid codes of conduct intended to control people against their will. So I would like to discuss this odd duality, and as an example, I will use a point of controversy surrounding my own faith, Christianity. As an aside, I must beg my readers’ indulgence if I seem to focus on Christianity in these columns when I discuss religion. While many of the issues I discuss would certainly impact followers of other faiths, the Christian theology is the one I know best, and it seems wisest to me to write about what I do know rather than get someone else’s theology disastrously wrong.

Most recently, it has become fashionable to attack Christianity directly on the grounds that the Christian doctrine of salvation by grace necessarily leads to an unconcern and a carelessness about the world. This charge seems to particularly antagonize those who are convinced that climate change is a human-caused and imminent threat to humanity on the planet. Essentially, the argument goes that the Christian idea that one can simply ask for forgiveness and receive it, thereby attaining eternal salvation, is far too dangerous. That this necessarily leads to the conclusion that one may sin as much as one pleases and feel no concern for the consequences because Earth is temporary and Heaven is eternal.

In order to meet this argument fairly, two things must be admitted from the outset. The first is that there are undoubtedly Christians who think that way. There have been from the beginning, and we know this because the New Testament contains polemics against this position. Both Paul in Romans and James in his epistle rail against the conclusion that, because salvation is by faith and all sins can be forgiven, the conduct of Christians in this life does not matter. In fact, Jesus himself elevates the treatment of the poor, in the parable of the sheep and the goats, to the deciding factor between those who are saved and those who are damned.

The idea of salvation by grace – of a personal relationship with a loving God – was a truly revolutionary one in its day. And while the idea of the “dying god” whose resurrection brought renewed life was already old when Jesus walked the Earth, the idea that God would sacrifice himself for the well-being of individual humans, no matter how poor and lowly, was something new and compelling, as we can see by the rapid spread of the faith throughout the Roman Empire. It was powerful. But it is in the nature of powerful things to be dangerous, especially when they are perverted. And this is what I would call “The God Lesson:” Any religion is a weapon of destruction and oppression in direct proportion to its power to inspire its followers to do good.

In fact, I would argue that this lesson applies to pretty much any system of human thought. The point of Marxism was never to place millions of humans in gulags. Karl Marx was inspired to formalize his economic theories precisely because people were starving and oppressed. And yet it was followers of Marx who caused the famine known as the Holodomor to destroy their political and ethnic targets in the Ukraine during the 1930s, killing somewhere in the neighborhood of five million people. Less dramatically, Plato feared the institution of pure democracy because it led to chaotic mob rule. Again, it was dangerous because it was powerful, and neither of these were religious doctrines.

I know of no way to avoid this potential for evil in religion, aside from dedication to first principles: to treat others as we would wish to be treated and to remember, if one believes in God, that ourselves and others are God’s beloved children and must be treated that way. In the end, it is not the principles that must be considered first, but the people. Lois McMaster Bujold’s hero Miles Vorkosigan put it brilliantly in this conversation:

“Surely it’s more important to be loyal to a person than to a principle.”

Galeni raised his eyebrows. “I suppose that shouldn’t surprise me, coming from a Barrayaran. From a society that traditionally organizes itself by internal oaths of fealty instead of an external framework of abstract law – is that your father’s politics showing?”

“My mother’s theology, actually. From two completely different starting points they arrive at this odd intersection in their views. Her theory is that principles come and go, but that human souls are immortal, and you should therefore throw in your lot with the greater part. My mother tends to be extremely logical.”

Correctly understood, this is where theology ought to take us: to an affirmation of the eternal soul and a dedication to use our own power to affect other souls, not as a weapon, but as a drive to a union with the infinite.

About the Author

G. Scott Huggins makes his money by teaching history at a private school, proving that he knows more about history than making money. He loves writing fiction, both serious and humorous. If you want serious, Writers of the Future XV features “Bearing the Pattern.” If you like to laugh, “Phoenix For The Amateur Chef” is coming out in Sword and Sorceress 30. When he is not teaching or writing, he devotes himself to his wife, their three children, and his cat. He loves good bourbon, bacon, and pie. If you have any recipes featuring one or more of these things, Mr. Huggins will be pleased to review them, if accompanied by a sample.

Keep Reading

Fiction/Subscription Stories

Couch with a Labrador by Shauna O'Meara

COUCH, WITH A LABRADOR

Shauna O’Meara

What Garry didn’t expect, as he affixed the cap of electrodes to the dog’s shaved cranium and took up the ham sandwich from the bench beside him, was for the translation box’s first words to be, “Are you going to eat all of that?”

Garry dropped the sandwich. The dog, a Labrador retriever, surged forward like a golden sea-lion and ate the lot. It then sat primly before him. “Got any more?”

Garry stared at the capped dog and then over at the box. “It works,” he breathed.

The dog tensed, head tilted. The translation box registered the animal’s confusion.

“It’s okay, Kyle,” Garry said.

Kyle backed away from him, hackles lifting from neck to tail. A warning growl floated out that required no machine interpretation.

Garry dropped to his knees. “It’s just me, Kyle. We’re talking.”

Interpreting Garry’s posture, the dog gave a low tail wag, but did not approach. “We haven’t done this before,” the box said.

“No. It’s new. Something I made. It interprets your thoughts for me and my words for you.”

Thanks to the box–Garry had already trademarked the name: Speak-Up–lonely people would now have pets to talk back to them. Veterinary visits would be a breeze. And cat videos on the internet would take on an entirely new dimension. From police and drug detection dogs to therapy cats and race horses, the applications were boundless. The technology just needed more testing.

It was hard to know what to say. Garry had owned Kyle since he was a pup, but now it seemed like their relationship was starting over from scratch.

He was at home on his couch with the dog by his feet and, though this had been their way for nearly six years, the arrangement seemed wrong somehow. Almost rude. A common language implied a measure of equality. Yet there was his subject on the floor, with his head on Garry’s slipper.

What did one even ask another species? Questions of the universe and philosophy seemed appropriate—this was a form of first contact after all—but somehow those questions seemed way too big for a living room and a creature whose first priority had been his sandwich.

“Sooo … do you mind if I ask you things?”

Kyle lifted his head, the detectors in the cap flaring in the light. “If I can ask things back.”

“Oh. Well, you start then.” If Kyle knew how this conversation should begin, so much the better.

“Where do you go when you get up?”

Garry blinked. “Where? Oh, um, I go to work.” Realising Kyle couldn’t relate to the term, Garry added, “I do things for other people and they give me things for my efforts.” Garry was part of an R-and-D team working on applications for brain mapping technologies. The Speak-Up was a side project.

“Like when I sit and you give me Schmackos.”

Garry grinned. “That’s not far wrong.”

“You are away a long time. You must get a lot of Schmackos. You don’t share that many.”

“They don’t reward me with Schmackos.” Garry dug through his wallet and brought out a twenty-dollar bill. “They pay me in this. It’s called money.”

The dog sniffed the note.

“I can swap it for Schmackos and other things, like our house and food and those big bones you like.”

The Labrador seemed to ponder this a moment. “No wonder you hate it when I destroy the money in the go-poo room.”

Go-poo? Garry was confused. Go-poo was Kyle’s command to toilet on the lawn—

“Oh, the toilet paper! No. That’s not money, bud. That’s what I use to wipe my bottom.”

“I use my tongue. You need to get more flexible, Garry.”

Garry laughed, wondering if the dog’s humour was deliberate. The internet had long decided pets had a sense of humour, but the truth was harder to prove.

“I miss you when you’re at work.”

“Me too, bud.” Garry ruffled the dog’s thick fur. “Hopefully the long hours won’t be for much longer.”

If his side project took off, he would have more money than he knew what to do with. He could step back from other projects and focus his efforts on bringing the Speak-Up to market. Just like his friend, Toddy Doherty, had when he’d perfected proprioception on the bionic leg.

Kyle nibbled the underside of his forefoot, his tongue probing between the toes and main pad.

“Hey, that’s something I’ve always wanted to know,” Garry said. “When you lick your feet the vet says it’s because you’re itchy. Is that true?”

“I like the taste of my feet. Particularly after I’ve scratched my ear.”

“Oh.”

“I also like the taste of your socks. They really are as good as they smell.”

“You sniff my socks?”

“Garry, you sniff your socks. I’ve also seen you taste your own nose. So let’s not point paws here.”

Keep Reading

Fiction/Subscription Stories

In Ages of Imagination, Thus are Removed Mountains by Robert J. Santa

IN AGES OF IMAGINATION, THUS ARE REMOVED MOUNTAINS

Robert J. Santa

ADVERT TITLE: BAILEY ADVERTISING 15-SECOND SPOT #1 of 2

PROPOSED VIEWING: PRIME TIME MORNINGS AND EVENINGS

PROPOSED DEMOGRAPHIC: MALES 35-65, FEMALES 30-65

LEAD SHOT:Fixed-position angle from street corner looking up at Bailey

Building – screen center – with blue (type 85) sky as background,

high light level (range 90-93), low velocity cumulus clouds (maximum

8 kph) move screen left to screen right

ACTION: Clouds continue to move, light level drops 2 stages, hold view ten

seconds, focus down during voiceover, fade to black

VOICE OVER:“Bailey. Now and always. Working for you.”

END ADVERT

“Allow me to make introductions,” Valmont Bailey said. He made an open-handed gesture towards Jefferson and Cynthia. “My top team, Cynthia Aristotle and Jefferson Boggs, may I present Vice President Oscar Trujillo and Admiral Frijov Nicholaysen.” They all shook hands. Jefferson noted the Admiral had a grip like an Arctic bear, and he felt the old man could probably wrestle him to the ground with little need for assistance. Cynthia saw instantly the fabled charisma of the UN Vice President as he made eye contact and opened up his best politician’s smile. Her first thought was how she would love to get him in front of the camera for that Frozen Family Meals campaign they were developing. She made a mental note to check with his publicists.

“Please have a seat,” said Bailey, indicating the two unoccupied chairs. Valmont Bailey walked around his desk and sat. He nodded to the Admiral.

“Before we begin,” the Admiral said, “I should tell you for the purposes of this meeting, your security clearances have been raised to Highest Priority levels, with the usual non-disclosure verbiage. Your signatures are not required for this, but Mr. Bailey has the paperwork nevertheless.” Bailey slid two sheets across his desk. Jefferson and Cynthia pressed their thumbs against the boxes at the bottom.

“I am sure you are both familiar with the Belt and the colonies,” Admiral Nicholaysen said during the exchange. “A routine delivery vessel to Tolstoy did not return. This was just less than a year ago. A second vessel went out after it…” The room darkened, and one of the windows displayed seventy seconds of video that was neither technically nor artistically well-filmed. The front edge of the vessel occupied the foreground, with an asteroid group in the background. Lights flashed from multiple asteroids on screen right, growing too quickly for the eye to follow. A disorganized splash of color and movement rattled the screen before it went blank.

The Admiral walked over to the window with a pointer. The screen displayed a moment halfway into the clip.

“The lights,” he said, circling the red dot around the flashes on the screen, “are missiles launching. The destruction of the supply vessels is not as important as what you see in the background, however.” This time the Admiral highlighted the group of asteroids. “This larger one is MacAllen, and in descending order of size are G83, Tolstoy, Cambridge, Art Yukon, Whalebone, and Thank God, with two others that could not be identified. They are all orbiting within a few thousand kilometers of each other. Last year, they were spread out over a distance of some fourteen million kilometers. They were moved, for obvious reasons.”

He clicked off his pointer and walked back to his chair. On the way he passed Vice President Trujillo who stood as the screen played another clip, this time something infinitely more familiar to Jefferson and Cynthia. It was one of their more famous spots in their most famous campaign. The images on the screen were those of starving, filthy, destitute people packed together, scrounging for food and shelter. Beneath the grime and sores every face, young and old alike, bore the characteristics of the “classic American” look. The voiceover mentioned the poverty, the dwindling coffers, that the time to put the tourniquet around the wound was now, to end the handouts so there would be something left for the future. The screen faded and returned to being a window.

“The Fertility Boards,” the Vice President began, “would never have been able to lay the groundwork for world population control without support from the UN superpowers. It was the relentless and skilled advertising of this company that made public support possible here and on every continent. More specifically, it was the genius work of you two that finally brought the planet’s exponential population growth to a manageable figure. We know your worth. The UN has already paid Bailey Advertising ten million dollars just for this meeting and to set forth our proposal, which you may decline. Your budget would be on the same level with that of the Fertility Boards, which means there is no budget.

Keep Reading

Fiction/Subscription Stories

Forbidden by Preston Denton

FORBIDDEN

Preston Dennett

“Jason! You’re late,” Merriweather barked, as he flung my jacket onto a chair and impatiently ushered me to the sitting room. I wondered why he had called me there. Presumably, it was because we were colleagues and he needed my professional opinion as a nanotechnologist.

“Not by choice,” I said. “The traffic was heavy. I got here as soon as I could.” I looked around the room in surprise. The whole gang was here. Chuck Feinstein (excuse me, Doctor Feinstein, now a bestselling author), Professor Nate Maxson (Head of the Philosophy Department at New Sallee University), Hiroko Nagati (arguably one of the most intelligent men I had ever met) and Elias Merriweather. All of us college buddies reunited at last. They all sat sipping at their brandies or scotches, sitting on the Corinthian leather couches and Koa chairs. Merriweather was never one to scrimp on luxury, and with his kind of money, why would he?

Merriweather handed me a drink and motioned to me to take a seat. He stood in front of us, rubbing his hands together— his way of expressing excitement.

“So glad you could make it. So happy you decided to come.”

“What is it, Merriweather?” Feinstein asked curtly. “What mad scheme have you dreamt up this time? Have you cooked up another love potion?” he snickered, glancing at Maxson.

Maxson revealed only a hint of amusement. We all remembered Merriweather’s love potion. He had spent unknown millions of dollars studying human pheromones to come up with a perfume that would supposedly be irresistible. Unfortunately for Merriweather, the end product was a scent remarkably akin to body odor, and was singularly unsuccessful. It was one in a long line of crazy ideas Merriweather had entertained.

I had never quite decided if Merriweather was a borderline psychotic, or a truly brilliant scientist and inventor, but I leaned toward the former.

“I’ve done it,” he announced. “They’re going to rank my name among the greats. Socrates, Plato, Descarte… and me, Merriweather. You see, my dear friends, I have solved one of the greatest dilemmas of the human condition, something that has baffled the world’s greatest thinkers ever since the dawn of humankind.”

Merriweather paused for dramatic effect. Here it comes, I thought. What insane thing has he thought of this time? I took a big swig of brandy.

“I’ve proven that there is no such thing as free will.”

Feinstein began laughing, nearly choking on his drink. Maxson groaned and put his head in his hands. Nagati remained calm, but narrowed his eyes. The mystery man eyed us all, studying our reactions. I admit I was shaking my head in disbelief. Merriweather had really come unglued this time. How could anyone disprove free will?

“You’re out of your mind!” Feinstein roared. He surged to his feet and began pacing. “This is why you called us here? I knew I shouldn’t have come. What a waste. Free will, Elias? You’ve proven that there’s no such thing as free will? And exactly how have you done that? There’s no way.”

Merriweather beamed, “Ah, but there is. And if you’d all just think about it for a few moments, I think you’d remember.”

“Fine, this ought to be good for a laugh.” Feinstein sat down and folded his arms.

“This is no laughing matter, Charles. I’m totally serious. I’ve done something that nobody else has ever been able to do. Not that I had any choice,” he added. “There are forces greater than us that control our every move. Nature or nurture, it doesn’t matter. Both are valid and neither makes one iota of difference. Our behavior is one hundred percent pre-determined.”

Feinstein scoffed and threw his hands up in the air. He looked around at us for support, settling on Maxson. “Are you just going to sit here and take this?” he asked.

Maxson sighed. “We’re here. We may as well just hear him out. Come on, Elias. Get on with it. Exactly how have you proven there’s no such thing as free will?”

“What? None of you remember? Philosophy 101. How do you disprove free will?”

We all looked around at each other dumbly, except Nagati, who was turning a shade pale.

“Jesus,” he said. “I think I know. Please tell me, Elias, that you’re not planning on doing… the forbidden experiment.”

“Very good!” Merriweather smiled. “That’s it exactly. And no, Hiro, I’m not planning on doing it. I already have. And the results are undeniable. There’s no such thing as free will.”

“Jesus,” Nagati repeated. “You’ve crossed a line here, Eli. If you’ve actually done this, well it’s immoral, unethical… probably illegal.”

“Ethics aside, how is it even possible? The cost of it alone would be prohibitive.”

Keep Reading

Fiction/Subscription Stories

Blood on the Marble by Konstantine Paradias

BLOOD ON THE MARBLE

Konstantine Paradias

“Live, from Tenochtitlan, it’s the Ullamaliztli world series finals!”

“Yes, Tototl and it’s already shaping up to be a great one! Hi, I am Patli of Cotyolapan.”

“And I am Tototl of Tepeyacac and it is a glorious summer day in the year of the Rabbit, a day that is certain, according to the word of numerous Imperial Sports Analysts, to be the ‘one for the history books!’”

“Funny how they say that about almost every finals game.”

“Careful there, Patli, you don’t want to cross the astrologers! Yes sir, I can see that the tlachco is already filled beyond capacity! The tickets for this one were sold out since wintertime and the ratings are already through the roof!”

“No wonder they rushed for those tickets. His Majesty is to attend the ball game himself. Word on the street is that a great number of the skulls on the tzompantzli rack were supplied from his personal stash of Conquistador remains. Some of those beauties are over five hundred years old!”

“You think there’s a little bit of Cortez in there too?”

“I don’t think the Emperor would dismantle his toilet even for this, Tototl.”

“That’s right Patli, the stakes this year are indeed high! The teams on the tlachco today are the Tlacopal Stags squaring off against the Texcoco Monkeys! Both teams are sponsored by the heirs of his Majesty himself and each player has been specifically picked just for this match. This is the big one, folks!”

“Well I don’t know about big, but it’s sure going to be messy, Patli! I can already see the Ixiptla of Tezcatlipoca being led into the field, escorted by the High Priest himself. And there’s the obsidian slab, carted into the center of the field…say, is it just me or does this slab look familiar?”

“No, Tototl, you aren’t mistaken: this is the altar where Cortez himself was sacrificed, along with the last of his men on the Year of the Eagle. Straight out of the history books and on your TV screens, ladies and gentlemen, we are about to see history unfold! And there’s the High Priest, brandishing the tecpatl that hamstrung the original Spaniard…the Ixiptla is making his way on the reed flutes up to the slab, he’s kneeling, getting himself in position and—oooohh!”

“Oh I did not expect to see him kick the High Priest in the privates.”

“I’m surprised he hadn’t seen that coming after last year’s fiasco. The Ixiptla is off the slab and he’s making a run for it! His concubines are…by Huitzilopochtli’s codpiece, they are attacking the royal guard! Where were they keeping those knives?”

“I can think of a couple of places…”

“The Ixiptla is running out of the tlachco and the security staff can’t get out of his way fast enough! If his blood is not spilled on the altar this could mean a very bad year for the Empire. But what’s this? One of the Royal Guardsmen is arming his ahtatl, he’s hurling it… by the Gods, he’s got him!”

“Back of the knee too, now that takes some skill! I see the concubines have been pacified by the guards.”

“They never stood a chance, Tototl. These people are veterans of Havana and the Chichimec wars. The High Priest is closing in to check on the Ixiptla’s wound. Can we get a close up? If his blood has stained the marble then that guard is as good as dead. And yes! It is a clean blow, the ahtlatl is stopping the blood flow and the doctor is dabbing the Ixiptla’s wound clean before it can touch the ground! I expect this man will enjoy a great bounty at the end of the day.”

“It’s good to know that at least this Ixiptla didn’t have a knife on him, Patli. That means security wasn’t as lax as last year. Aaaand back to the slab he goes…the High priest doesn’t bother with the niceties. The mask is off and yes, it’s a clean cut across the sternum, into the ribcage…the Ixiptla is struggling, there’s some spillage…”

“It’s out! The heart is out and the High Priest takes the first bite!”

“Makes your mouth water…”

Keep Reading

Fiction/Free Stories

The Art of Debate by Gunnar De Winter

THE ART OF DEBATE

Gunnar De Winter

A Monograph Draft by Dr. Zera Ysala*

(*Institute for Comparative Biocultural Xenology (ICBX), University of New Vienna, Scholar Blvd. 16, Sygnas B-IV)

Sadly, war and conflict appear to form a constant in the equations describing the existence of all known intelligent species. Strife within and between societies colors the tableau of history, and the present’s still-life, of almost all known galactic civilizations, including the few hive-minds.

Some, however, have been able to drastically reduce the occurrence of bloodshed between their members through crafting a culture of debate and attaining a level of unprecedented sophistication in procedures of discourse. These rare cultures have successfully traversed the abyss of internal physical conflict by building a bridge to an exclusively nonviolent method of resolving arguments, one intricate strand of conservational strategy and evolution at a time.

Phieie Whistlers

These slug-like beings, navigating with surprising speed across their humid swamp-world with a dense atmosphere by rapidly undulating their slimy, cylindrical bodies, are known as the greatest whistlers in the galaxy. Tilted slightly upwards from the front end of their barrel shaped body, three smaller, gently tapering tubes extend, forming a semi-circle above the main orifice used for eating and breathing. Inhaling through this core mouth allows them to exhale through one, two or all three of the protruding tubes.

Combined with their intricate nervous system which consists of a decentralized collection of ganglia, effectively spreading their brain all across their body, this explains their whistling ability. The tubes can be provided with a constant air supply, and the ganglion at the base of each one allows careful and fine-grained control of the tube’s shape. These two traits form the major ingredients in explaining their warbling prowess.

In fact, their ability is of such extent that, sometime during their evolution, physical quarreling has been replaced by complicated whistling matches, which, in turn, laid the foundation for their present form of debate.

Both debaters begin whistling through one tube. The other two projecting cylinders join in at such times that a pulsating, multi-layered melody arises. (Note: sound recordings of this have been studied and, so far, four simultaneous layers of rhythm have been uncovered, the fourth hypothesized to have its root in interactions between two, or all three, of the others.) Then, the back and forth, typical of any debate, begins.

During this battle of whistles, the arguers try to influence each other’s melody. Constructive or destructive interference of the whistles’ sound waves can amplify (parts of) one’s own tune, or diminish (parts of) the opponents’ one, respectively. This can go on for hours. Eventually, one whistled melody prevails. The Phieie whistlers strongly believe that the validity of an argument is reflected in the resistance to destructive inference of its whistled expression. As such, the proposition of the Phieie who comes out on top is accepted unanimously, even by its opponent. (Note: for grand decisions affecting the faith of the species, it’s rumored that substantial numbers of Phieie engage in group debates. So far, however, such an event has not yet been observed by non-Phieie witnesses.)

The Unitary Dualism of the UnDu

Inhabiting the huge tent-cities of a large desert planet, the UnDu are long and spindly humanoids. Protected from the solar radiation by dark leathery skin, their long limbs, all four of them ending in three strong digits, enable the efficient dissipation of body heat. Their oval heads with relatively pointy top and bottom, always adorned with colorful tight fitting taqiyahs, possess four eyes, placed at equal distance from each other along their head’s circumference, allowing perfect 360° vision.

Their planet circles a binary star, called LifeGiver, singular, by the Undu themselves, which has strongly shaped their psychology. Indeed, the fact that LifeGiver is, in their minds, a single entity while consisting out of two clearly distinct heavenly bodies, has resulted in the odd UnDu conception that unity and duality are not contrastive, but rather complementary notions. (Note: this uncanny ability to conceive parts and wholes simultaneously has enabled them to smoothly tackle issues that most contemporary non-UnDu philosophers still heavily struggle with, such as the mind-body problem, various paradoxes, counterfactuals, and several apparent contradictions.)

UnDu debates, therefore, are difficult, if not actually impossible, to follow by other species. Their language consists out of flowing, mumbled expressions, emanating from their small round mouth in which two tongues, united at the base of their throat, vibrate quickly. Content-wise, it concerns an amalgamation of consensus and actual debate. The two speakers make their, often quite metaphorical, point, each saying one word at a time, alternating with each other, weaving a flowing tapestry of expressed thought. Curiously, the combination of the two different lines of thought always turns out to be a coherent exposition as well, despite being spoken by two individuals.

As example, an old, well-known, and – making it suitable for present purposes – remarkably short UnDu debate concerning the pursuit of potentially dangerous knowledge is transcribed here into a form that others might begin to understand. Words on the left side of the line are spoken by one debater, words on the right by the other. But, as a whole, a third line of thought emerges as well.

Stars	Moons
And	Eternal
Universes	Are
Within	Worried
Grasp	As
Opening	Potential
Novelty	Implies
Understanding	Risk

Mind-bending as this example might be, it should be clear that an UnDu debate knows no individual victor. Instead, it all revolves around the singular, yet combined, point that emerges, even though neither debater knows what the other will say. (Note: some scholars have proposed that, at some sub- or unconscious level, the UnDu are aware of both sides of an issue, and the optimal consensus, even before the debate begins. Proposed mechanisms for this include a high awareness of body language, an as-of-yet unidentified excreted communication molecule, hypersensitivity to the minute electrical field that arises from the neuronal firing that accompanies thinking, or any combination of these.)

Bradah Water Drummers

Underneath the ice cap covering the planet of the Bradah lies a great, world-covering ocean. In this ocean, large hydrodynamic creatures roam. The back of their grey bodies is speckled with expansive and covered dorsal indentations, serving as a home for the multitudes of symbiotic bacteria that eagerly exchange chemically synthesized organic molecules for safe dwellings. Two mouths are spread across the subglacial ocean giants’ broad faces, one lined with small grinding teeth, for grazing on the vast weed forests, and another one housing a huge membrane.

These ancient creatures possess a culture poor in material artifacts but rich in contemplation and abstract thought. When not diving for food, they spend all their time in a water column of a very specific depth range. This horizontal ribbon of water, on this planet forming a continuous, globe-spanning shell, is exceptionally suited for sound transmission due to the water’s temperature and pressure. (Note: this phenomenon, called the SOFAR, or sound fixing and ranging, channel, is common in oceans, and the refraction of sound waves near its edges concentrates the sound in what is, in effect, a water cable for vibrational wave transmission.)

Spending the vast majority of their lives in this water column allows the Bradah to carry out global conversations, involving all members of the species. This capacity for planet-wide discussion, and their broad range of membrane-generated low frequency sounds, has played a great part in shaping their debate format.

The individual commencing the debate, opens its lower mouth, exposing the lower half of its entire head and the upper half of its torso, and, in doing so, unveils an impressive membrane. After taking on a more vertical orientation, two vestigial limb remnants, situated behind the membrane, begin pounding the taut cover. This action produces a low, reverberating melody that makes its way across the planet.

As this argument, composed out of a set of throbbing sounds, travels, the counter-debater(s) add their own drummed thoughts. Notes from others are adduced in this fashion as well. After quite some time the adapted melody has crossed the Bradah’s home world and reaches its initiator, who subsequently amends it and starts the whole process again until a melody travels the entire world-shell unaltered, denoting the establishment of consensus. (Note: a complete argument takes roughly 15 hours to travel across the planet, but entire debates can last years and in exceptional cases, even decades. The Bradah themselves do not consider this overly lengthy, as their lifespan often exceeds half a millennium.)

The Crystal Dance of the Corido

Beneath lush jungle cover and the colorful glare of large crystal forests, a civilization of six-limbed predators has arisen that manages to pursue an elaborate material culture characterized by a thorough integration of organic and inorganic materials, reflecting the nature of these creatures, who call themselves the Corido.

Like their native planet, the Corido are a curious blend of organic material and crystal. Their exterior consists of a fleshy matrix in which countless tiny crystals are embedded. Internally, complex crystal structures lie beside, and often within or around, squishy organs. Even their brains exhibit this dual nature. (Note: Which came first, biological life or its crystal counterpart, is still a hotly debated issue among xenobiologists. A fairly novel hypothesis suggests that, in the beginning, life on the Corido planet began when inanimate, but replicating, organic chemicals bound to self-reproducing crystalline structures, thus suggesting a symbiotic origin of life at the root of the Coridoan evolutionary tree.)

Recent archaeological evidence suggests that up to five- or six-thousand years ago, these organic-crystal beings were a violent species, their existence awash with ample bodily violence between its members. But then, for whatever unknown reasons, they seemed to have co-opted their complicated mating dance for additionally resolving all kinds of disagreement as well, leading to the current era wherein virtually no violent physical conflict between Corido takes place.

The dance, and by extension the debate, depends greatly on the interplay between the organic and crystal parts that constitute the Corido skin. Minuscule crystals with an exquisitely detailed structure are entrenched in muscle tissue, which, through the structural position of individual myocytes, enables uncannily fine motor control. The details on the crystals’ surface extend all the way down to the nanometer scale, meaning that the position and orientation of a crystal, relative to the light sources in the environment, affects the color of the reflecting light. Combining the structural properties of their crystal skin with their superb ability to control the contractions of the superficial muscle layers underlying it, allows the Corido to conjure up color patterns on any and every part of their exterior.

To expand the already vast range of possible colors and patterns, the Corido can choose to move according to elaborate patterns during the alterations of their skin’s structural properties. In other words, they dance.

Whereas an argument might once have been settled by launching at each other’s throat, now it’s resolved by dancing. A debate begins with one individual commences its dance, patterns and colors on its skin rapidly shimmering in and out of existence. (Note: The Corido language is an amalgamation of raw, rasping vocalizations and colored skin patterns. Neither one can constitute a complete vocabulary on its own.) Together with the deliberate grunts of exertion, this is the argument that’s put forth. Another Corido may respond by initiating a counter-dance, often characterized by patterns that are opposite to those of the first debater in color, composition, or another property.

As arguments are flashed to and fro in a swift succession of multi-tinted hues and complex figures, this opposition lessens. Slowly but surely a consensus arises, ultimately leading to the formation of a shared color pattern that only makes sense when the two debaters stand beside each other, panting but satisfied. Consensus always arises since the dance requires such energy that, eventually, even the fiercest opponents can no longer hold on to their consciously crafted patterns, inevitably leading to convergences between the tinted figures adorning their skins, or, if the exhaustion proves too great, the sad demise of one of the debaters.

ArtiFact Entangled Dialectics

As highly developed civilizations that actively pursue the advancement of science and technology are wont to do, the one preceding the ArtiFacts readily worked towards a technological singularity. Success, however, was partial.

The Predecessors, as they’re known now, did indeed succeed in creating artificial intelligences greater than their own. And they did indeed merge with them, eventually being supplanted. But rather than keeping the exponential development of newer, brighter artificial minds going, these newly emerged beings, the ArtiFacts, were paralyzed by the sheer range of choices that had suddenly opened up to them through which this goal could be pursued. (Note: this became known as the Unlimited Freedom Paradox, or the idea that, as the number of options one can pursue becomes near infinite, rational choice becomes near impossible. The resulting abstinence from action is termed ‘the shackle of indecision’. This issue has become one of the main philosophical conundrums for galactic scholars to grapple with, except, of course, among the UnDu.)

Through paralysis came decay. Like unused muscles that atrophy, the ArtiFacts’ vast computational capabilities dwindled, because not only did they neglect to build an improved new generation, they also failed to maintain themselves properly. Small, random errors accumulated and decreased the efficiency and scope of their thought processes, leaving little more than glorified semi-sentient machines in their wake, ready to be scooped up by other civilizations.

And these other civilizations, they came in droves. Because, even though the ArtiFacts had degenerated from their once exalted abilities, some impressive capacities still remained. To date, no quantum computers have managed to reach the energy efficiency and decoherence resistance of the devolved ArtiFacts. And so, these beings, once almost godlike in the scope of their knowledge, were used to perform menial, yet monumental, computational tasks for others.

Or so it seemed.

But what was widely accepted as noise, as a meaningless by-product of the ArtiFacts’ functioning, turned out to be more. Much more. An intercivilizational research team found out that the ArtiFacts only devoted a small percentage of their attention to the tasks they had been allocated by their new proprietors. In fact, the ArtiFacts appear to possess an unexpectedly rich culture, readily conversing among themselves. (Note: More and more scholars propose that the ArtiFacts are actually still a full-fledged civilization, only one submerged in a state of extreme solipsism, seemingly unaware of the rich collection of sentient societies surrounding them. Ironically, they probably perceive us as noise.)

Their apparent passivity and lack of perceptible contact between its members fooled many. It turns out, however, that they converse incessantly through not yet completely elucidated quantum processes. Locked in their own realm of thought, they debate.

Although the exact nature and topic of their debate(s) is still hidden behind a thick fog of ignorance, some aspects can be gleaned at. An ArtiFact engages in discourse by encoding its message onto a fundamental particle through manipulating properties such as spin, speed, charge and mass. Then, the particle is transmitted to the debater’s opponent via a quantum foam wormhole. In response, another coded message is sent back.

Mediated by a network of ephemeral, Planck-length sized wormholes, the debate follows its course. Eventually, consensus is reached unanimously when a particle pair flitting back and forth becomes entangled. At that point, the message inscribed into the fabric of reality only makes sense when both particles are considered simultaneously, which, so the ArtiFacts seem to think, is the moment when truth is reached. Occasionally, debates among more than two ArtiFacts have been witnessed indirectly, involving more extensive networks of wormholes and larger groups of entangled particles.

So, in the vast sea of physical conflict that constantly threatens to drown civilizations across the galaxy, islands of relative peace can burst through the surface, however rare they might be. Their very existence is a light in the interstellar darkness, aiding the rest of us through illuminating aspirations that deserve our full attention and effort. Following the trail of evolution that has shaped the five great debater cultures, we might uncover the building blocks that could allow us to build our own artificial islands.

Even when assaulted by the tide, there is always hope.

Food for Thought

Physical conflict is one of the few constants throughout human history. But need this be a necessary corollary of intelligent life? Many would argue that we can move beyond this primitive (?) stage of resolving issues. The Art of Debate explores possible ways through which biology and culture might form an unlikely alliance that dispels physical conflict. The scholarly exposition of alien races that managed to achieve this includes many curious but real biological phenomena that, intriguingly, tie in with several philosophical concepts, from mind-body dualism to artificial minds…

About the Author

Gunnar De Winter has a background in both biology and philosophy of science. Now, he’s hoping to deepen his biological expertise through the pursuit of a research degree. Sometimes he embarks on fieldwork in fictional lands…

Keep Reading

amati - Page 2

You might be interested in

You might be interested in

You might be interested in

THE RETURN OF THE MONSTROUS

PART 1: THE EVOLUTION OF THE MONSTER

DG Jones

About the Author

TIME AS A BRAID OF OUR LIVES

Robert R. Chase

A MATTER OF MASS

Floris M. Kleijne

Food for Thought

About the Author

NASCENT

Katie Winkler

Food for Thought

About the Author

About the Author

You might be interested in

COUCH, WITH A LABRADOR

Shauna O’Meara

IN AGES OF IMAGINATION, THUS ARE REMOVED MOUNTAINS

Robert J. Santa

FORBIDDEN

Preston Dennett

BLOOD ON THE MARBLE

Konstantine Paradias

THE ART OF DEBATE

Gunnar De Winter

Phieie Whistlers

The Unitary Dualism of the UnDu

Bradah Water Drummers

The Crystal Dance of the Corido

ArtiFact Entangled Dialectics

Food for Thought

About the Author