Writing on science fiction, futurism, new media, and technoculture.

Lem's Solaris: A Critique of Human Progress

According to Muntius, Solaristics is the space era’s equivalent of religion: faith disguised as science… . Solaristics is a revival of long-vanished myths, the expression of mythical nostalgias which men are unwilling to confess openly. The cornerstone is deeply entrenched in the foundations of the edifice: it is the hope of Redemption. (Lem Solaris 173).

Unlike either Tarkovsky’s or Soderbergh’s film versions, both of whom seem to have taken Muntius’ interpretation of Solaris to heart, Lem’s 1961 novel suggests that Solaris remains alien, something that humanity’s cataloging and ordering cannot explain. The great ocean, despite humanity’s greatest minds, remains essentially mute and inexplicable, unable to be coded by scientific reason, explained through empiricism, or contacted through poetry. Lem seems to suggest, in the aftermath of science fiction’s Golden Age, that science is not the panacea or pinnacle of evolution and striving: it, like religion, is a faith-based language unique to the creatures that invented it. Lem’s vision seems introspective — it turns a mirror on a species that used science to create the possibility of annihilation by splitting the atom and mocks our pretenses to transcend our own human follies. While contact with the other may not be possible in Lem’s vision, perhaps the universe does contain wonders if we can just see past our own desires.

Bester's "Fondly Fahrenheit"

Man, I’m beautifully hot.

I can’t think of a more appropriate story to read on a scorching summer day than Alfred Bester’s “Fondly Fahrenheit.” This science fiction narrative uses the heat almost as if it’s a character with its own volition. If not a character, it’s definitely a force of nature that seems to act on the protagonist in deliciously violent ways, like the Dog Days when Sirius’ influence would incite disease, discomfort, and insanity. Heat is the major influence in this story, bringing about violence and disorder in James Vandaleur. It seems that the world is not immune to heat’s influence, and Bester’s protagonist(s) embody nature overthrowing and subduing human reason.

Nobody's Hero: They Should Have Sent a Poet

They Should Have Sent a PoetTo begin this summer’s section of World Literature I, the class and I brainstormed about just what we mean when we call someone a “hero.” As they suggested ideas, I wrote them on the board, and the whole class discussed each trait. We agreed that the idea of a hero changes with the needs of a culture and his/her literary representation — that while there might be universal characteristics of a hero, each particular, historical culture has its own ideas of what a hero should be. This is called the heroic ideal. For example, the epic hero will not be the same as the tragic hero, but they will, perhaps, share similar characteristics that might seem universal. After of brief discussion, we watched Robert Zemeckis’ 1997 film Contact, a film I’ve discussed in relation to the epic before. I then asked the students to write their first blog entries on Ellie Arroway as a hero. What follows are a few notes from the class as well as my own brief commentary of how Contact’s protagonist meets each. The class’ characteristics of hero are bolded.

Configuration v. Interpretation

The section of First Person on ludology suggests that video games should be studied differently than one would study a narrative; i.e., they are not (just) stories, so the considerations of play must be considered foremost. The most useful discussion in this section centers around configuration.

Eskelinen, the most outspoken and intractable of the group, suggests that most “dominant user function” in video games is not interpretative, but configurative. He begins to explain: “in art we might have to configure in order to interpret, whereas in games, we have to interpret to be able to configure, [ … ] consequently, gaming is seen here as a configurative practice, and the gaming situation as a combination of ends, means, rules, equipment, and manipulative action” (38). Moulthrop nuances this idea a bit more by explaining that configuration allows a user to influence a virtual environment in such a way as to change it in potentially significant ways (60). His definition suggests that the more user understand the game system, the more she is able to manipulate the world in ways she desires. Moulthrop pushes this configurative practice further by suggesting that this type of play does not only help within the gaming environment, but could have implications on the “conditions of other rule-systems such as work and citizenship” which may impact a player’s ability to “resist immersion” (66).

Sf Over?

An interesting thread on Slashdot addresses a Globe and Mail article that speculates that sf might be coming to an unceremonious end like other historically situated literary genres. I would agree that golden age sf is perhaps on the decline, slowly being replaced by the likes of fantasy disguised as sf (Star Trek, Star Wars, etc.), but it seems to me that good sf addresses humanity’s relationship with its technology and how the two have been merging, and will continue to merge at an increasing rate.

In an essay titled “Which Way to Inner Space?” J. G. Ballard opines that “only science fiction is fully equipped to become the literature of tomorrow, and that it is the only medium with an adequate vocabulary of ideas and situations” (Guide 198). He expands the role of sf and its writer in his introduction to the French version of Crash: sf should “document the uneasy pleasures of living” within a culture spawned by the “marriage of reason and nightmare” that’s preoccupied with “sex and paranoia” (“Words” 46, 45).

Media and the Material

Recent reading has made me think more about the seriation between the medium and the message — i.e., the cybernetic matrix of ideas about the physical and metaphysical that merge and precipitate new and unexpected ideas. In fact, these two notions — the medium and the message — upon further consideration, don’t seem separate ideas at all, but inextricably linked in extensions of ourselves, or what McLuhan calls “technology.”

Changing Media: Where We Live

In his 1997 study of computers and composition Nostalgic Angels, Johndan Johnson-Eilola writes:

We are like angels without maps, suddenly gifted with wings discovering not only that we cannot find heaven, but also that walking made us less dizzy, that our new wings snag telephone wires and catch in door frames. We recognize the apparently radical enactment of non-linearity inherent in the node-link structure of all hypertext; we proclaim in various ways that revolutionary potential; and then we immediately rearticulate those potentials in terms of our conventional, normal practices.

Like Johnson-Eilola, both Lunenfeld and Manovich seem to place us currently within a media flux, in theory and in practice. We can only know the present through our media forestructure — i.e., though sometimes intimate knowledge of our media past and present. Our current media technologies (will) invariably influence the development of new media and how we contemplate and use this media. Indeed, as Manovich speculates, the computer as “meta-medium” may contain the potential to transcend our imaginations and conceptions as we encode various analog forms into digital representations. We are currently caught in this nexus between a nostalgia for the past and a giddiness for the future.

Carl Sagan's Vision: Toward a Science Fiction Epic

“The first thing you picked up from us was that Hitler broadcast. Why did you make contact?”
     “The picture, of course, was alarming. We could tell you were in deep trouble. But the music told us something else. The Beethoven told us there was hope.” (Contact 359)

Carl SaganThroughout his life, the great Renaissance artist and scientist Leonardo da Vinci kept notebooks of his scientific observations and inventions, reflections on life, and his artistic studies. Leonardo connects his views on, what he called, “true science” — which he bases on experience of the world, reason and contemplation, logic and mathematics, and experimentation — with a knowledge of classical aesthetic tradition which Renaissance artists, like Petrarch and Boccaccio, rediscovered and renewed from Greece and Rome. Leonardo believes that through an understanding of “true science,” the artist might obtain power through observable truth and create new and beautiful works for the benefit of the community. Leonardo’s blending of his modern scientific method with the artistic tradition of the ancients epitomized the Renaissance project: a rebirth of the human spirit.