The Nature of Questionable Decisions
I love reading Modesitt’s blog because sometimes there is something really profound written there. One such subject was this idea of characters making questionable decisions. In the case of what Modesitt is talking about it’s a rather serious decision which results in something that might be perceived as evil: I came across a comment by a reviewer that condemned [yet again] one of my characters [not Van Albert, surprisingly enough, who has taken much abuse over the years since The Ethos Effect was published] for killing “innocents” when she destroyed a city ruled by those who had inflicted great evil on others for generations. The evil wasn’t questioned, but the extent of the “collateral damage” was, and it was questioned on the grounds that it was akin to condemning all Germans in WWII because Hitler was the German head of state. What is really interesting about this is that the reviewer didn’t just say “oh, I didn’t like it”, he or she, according to Modesitt, “condemned” it. No, setting aside the fact that I haven’t read The Ethos Effect I think there is plenty to discuss here about the nature of questionable decisions, not necessarily in a science fictional or fantastical context, but in a realistic context. From a realistic perspective I wonder what exactly this reviewer wants to achieve. Does he or she want to force writers to stop writing about controversial issues? Should we stop writing about the bombing of Hiroshima or Nagasaki just because it comes off as a questionable act and bothers someone? I’m not saying that those acts were right (certainly you could argue that the bombings in Japan were for a necessary good, but the ambiguity of such destruction leaves room for open debate in any forum, but I do acknowledge that sometimes human beings make decisions that are, in and of themselves, for the good of someone else. This isn’t just some rare event, but rather popular in the world. We can look at any insurgent group who is fighting off an invader. Sometimes actions are taken that involve the death of innocents not only by the insurgent group, but by the invaders as well. The fire-bombing of Dresden, while certainly a seemingly pointless act, did serve to show the might of the Allied forces–this acted on the level of demoralization, which is a psychological way of ending a war quickly. The insurgents who exist in Iraq, for a more current example, are bombing locations filled with students and otherwise innocent people who are just trying to move on with their lives. I don’t know the intentions of the insurgents and whether or not they are intentionally blowing up innocent people (as in that being a primary goal), but it would seem from a non-terroristic perspective to be the act of violence against the innocent to serve a purpose: they want us out. Now, certainly these are events we don’t like remembering. Nobody likes dreaming about the deaths of tens of thousands of, for the most part, innocent Japanese citizens at the tail-end of WW2. We think about them because they are real and part of being human–we make decisions that are ambiguous. Why is it so hard to accept that this sort of ambiguity belongs in literature, in any form? Literature predominately deals with issues of humanity, even science fiction and fantasy (especially science fiction by the way, since the concepts of cloning, robotics, cybernetics, etc. are inherently centered on the idea of humanness). While the decisions characters make might be vile and horrible, isn’t that sort of addressing what is real about humans anyway? We aren’t a perfect little species who goes around loving one another as if we were permanently stuck in a 1960s Love movement. In fact, we’re rather brutal to one another and even the good guys make bad choices. The U.S. might not make a lot of great decisions–particularly in recent years–but we and many of our allies consider us to be the good guys. We look at the U.K. in much the same light, despite the many ambiguous and often wrong-seeming acts that nation has committed. Literature certainly takes this and puts it into context. What exactly is the problem with the good guys making bad decisions in a story? Let’s take what I think is an especially good example of personal ambiguity. In Tobias S. Buckell’s Crystal Rain one of the characters, towards the end of the book, has to make a particularly horrible decision which I found to be horrible, yet entirely powerful to the story at large. This character has to make the decision between ending the war and giving up several thousand innocent people who were captured by the enemy (who are like Aztecs) to be sacrificed to the enemy gods, or prolong the war and likely kill everyone. She makes the first decision, taking with her this horrible sense of defeat and that lingering emotion and memory of what she had done. Innocents are going to die here, thousands of them, and yet the decision has to be made. While this is certainly not the same sort of situation that Modesitt is talking about, it is an example of a decision that brings a variety of different responses. Some people are going to accept this, despite the horror of it, and others are going to reject it and might even become violent, especially if they are the ones who have lost their loved ones to sacrifice. It seems like the “RIGHT” decision, but a “BAD” one nonetheless. It’s a decision that hints at the opposite end of the examples already given, which do fit within Modesitt’s example: committing to something for the better of everyone that will hurt the few. There’s something about the road to Hell being paved with good intentions. Questionable decisions have to exist. There’s no way you can simply say that characters can’t make bad decisions with the intention to do good. Literature does not commonly
Arthur C. Clarke is 90 Today
If you don’t know who that is, even by name popularity, then you have been asleep and should wake up. Arthur C. Clarke was one of the most influential writers of the 20th century writing books like 2001, Rama, and Childhood’s End, with dozens of books and short stories to his name. And he is 90 years old today. Happy Birthday!You can see his YouTube video here, in which he talks a little about life and the three things he wishes would happen before he dies. They are all good wishes I think. I got the video from Robert J. Sawyer. Thanks Mr. Sawyer! On a side note, Dave Itzkoff at the NY Times wrote this article. In it he said that Arthur C. Clarke’s novel (formally a serialization) Childhood’s End is about “An advanced intelligence arrives from above, creating a utopia by integrating all of humanity into a single mind that thinks and acts as one.” This isn’t actually 100% true and I think it deserves going on the record what the story is actually about.Childhood’s End is about an advanced alien species arriving on Earth and assuming control of everything by displaying amazing feats of power that force all of mankind to suddenly stop bickering and give in to the demands of the Overlords. In fact, by the time the integration of humanity into the next evolutionary stage, which is a hive mind as Itzkoff suggests, occurs, mankind has already entered into a utopian world where everyone has just about everything they need. There is no violence and no war. The worst human trait, according to the Overlords, is human curiosity. So, while the basic premise is true and they do become a hive mind, this doesn’t occur until after a utopia is created by the Overlords. In fact, if you want to be picky about things, from a human perspective, the ending isn’t a utopia at all because it involves the complete extinction of the human race in exchange for a collective of minds that cannot think individual. All individuality is lost in exchange for awesome power. Think of it as humanity turning into the Borg from Star Trek.On a humorous note, I read the first sentence of a Wikipedia article on this book and it too is wrong, only more so. This is why I don’t use Wiki at all, for anything other than very basic knowledge. This is the first sentence on Wiki: Childhood’s End is about humanity’s transformation and integration to an insterstellar hive mind the Occult, man’s inability to live in a utopian society, cruelty to animals, and the idea of being “The Last Man on Earth”. The first part is true up until the Occult part. I don’t know where the whole Occult came from. The way the story plays out it’s almost as if humanity merges with what could be considered God. It’s this powerful single mind / entity that the Overlords cannot join because they can’t evolve anymore, but humanity has the potential, if it doesn’t destroy itself, to reach that plateau. It turns out to be a dirty trick by the Overlords though because they don’t come out in front about what they are up to, which I think would have sparked nuclear war.The second part about man’s inability to live in a utopian society is really very wrong. Actually, this is far from true within the story. The one thing that the Overlords, however, fail to do is remove human curiosity, but in the process they do remove war, famine, and art. Art, it turns out, is a human curiosity, and the only reason the Overlords get rid of it is because they don’t understand it. But there is, at one point, a human colony that takes on art once again and the Overlords show up and sort of analyze it to figure out what the big deal is. They still don’t understand it, but this has nothing to do with not living in a utopia, but far from it.Cruelty to animals? What exactly does that mean? Do you mean kicking puppies for fun? Or food? That is such a vague statement and it can either be a statement laced with personal bias or a statement that doesn’t make sense to the story. The story isn’t about cruelty to animals at all, at least not from my perspective on what that phrase means. Nobody in the story kicks puppies for fun.The last bit is basically true, but it’s sort of misguided. The story isn’t about what it’s like to be the last man on Earth so much as being the last human being in the Universe. When the character that statement refers to actually returns to Earth after sneaking onto an Overlord ship and finding out all the stuff that exists out there, he basically is presented an option: he can continue traveling with the Overlords doing what they do, or he could sit down on Earth’s surface with a recording device and tell the Overlords what’s happening as the Earth is destroyed. Why he chooses the latter route I don’t know, but regardless it has nothing to do with being the last man on Earth, but more to do with being the last man in the universe. That’s a lot more complicated than the former. Anyway, that’s all from me for tonight. Happy Birthday Mr. Clarke!
Pullman and the Church of Stupidity
I was recently having a discussion with a classmate in my Modern German Fiction class–a relatively interesting class actually–on the subject of the film adaptation of The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman. First, I haven’t read all the books so anything I am going to discuss here is from what I have read about the book online and elsewhere and what I have been told by people who have read the book. Second, some of what I’m going to bring up from the discussion from the other day may not be true. I haven’t researched it because it really doesn’t matter considering that the argument I’ll be making it still valid whether what I learned is true or not. Given the history of the relationship between literature and religion I am highly inclined to believe it. Now, as many of you know, Pullman’s “His Dark Materials” series is highly critical of organized religion–Christianity to be specific. Pullman himself is an outspoken atheist as has been said countless times in the news and on his home page. I am not arguing that atheism is the right course for any individual, though I am what one would call a near-atheist, but I am simply making a point that is quite valid historically and presently. My classmate brought up to me that the film adaptation, of which I have mixed feelings about to begin with, was altered in one way that seems rather disturbing and disgusting to me. Nicole Kidman, an actress I at one point had deep respect for, is catholic and refused to be a part of the film if she felt that the religious criticism within the story felt too much like a criticism of her religion. This is remarkably like the sort of hypocrisy of the fellow who played Chef in South Park (the short version being he had no problems playing his role in episodes that bashed Mormonism, Christianity, etc., but left the show as soon as Scientology, his ‘religion’, was addressed in none-too-light a fashion). So they, the film makers, have, according to my classmate, altered the story so that the religious undertones point in a different direction, and are not really catholic in feeling. Now, whether this is true is somewhat irrelevant in my opinion, but I find it morally reprehensible that anyone of any faith would find it necessary to use their influence to manipulate literature. Literature has had a long history of dealing with religious oppression. England saw many a book burnings and books have gone on and off the banned book list in the U.S.–when such a list existed here–and various other countries, many for religious reasons. It is especially irritating when religious reasons are used to remove books that criticize religion. Religion, having brought itself up from the woodworks and solidified its value in modern society, must be open not only for interpretation, but criticism too. The day that we don’t allow literature to express itself as it always should have is the day that literature loses value. Kidman, if she has actually done as I’m told, has done something I feel is a direct insult to the very craft she has made herself a part of. Actors are there to entertain all of us as they play a role. Sometimes a message is sent, sometimes not, but in either case they have influence on society. The fact is that “His Dark Materials” criticizes the catholic church and should be left unchanged. It is irrelevant if a few people get upset, or if the church itself wages a pointless campaign to stamp out religious criticism, which some groups have tried to do with Pullman’s works and have failed miserably at. The fact is that we need criticism in this world of all ideals. People who are secure in their beliefs are not affected by criticism in the first place. For Pullman, his criticism came in the form of a trilogy of fantasy books for kids. Some might find this disturbing, that an author would target children to plant ‘evil ideas’ in their heads. Pullman, however, isn’t targeting kids to plant ‘evil ideas’. He’s doing what an author is supposed to do: tell a good story for kids. Do most kids realize that Pullman is talking about the catholic church? Probably not. Adults likely see it, but the books aren’t meant for adults, even if an adult can just as easily enjoy it. The idea that the ideals present in “His Dark Materials” may, ultimately, be left out disturbs me. What are we teaching children these days? Not to think for themselves? Is this the future of the education system? Brainless automatons who simply repeat the same ideals over and over that they learned from their parents or elsewhere? Kids, especially, should ask questions and should ask them with the intention of figuring things out. How often do we see criticism of religion in the classroom? What I mean is that things like the crusades, the use of religion to enslave blacks, etc. are often either ignored or glossed over. This isn’t to say that I would like to see children culled from being religious. Quite the opposite. I think children need to be aware of the dark side of religion so they can make a decision as to whether they really believe or not. Perhaps parents would hate this sort of doctrine, but the idea of living in a society of people that cannot think for themselves scares me to death. The church has tremendous influence on society, and exerts that influence to push for the inclusion of its ideology in classrooms and in quelling the voices of literature–such as Pullman. There are certainly a number of religious folks who are great people, and I know many of them. But what sets them apart from people such as Kidman in this instance is that they are aware of their history and past and of the present. They know that their religion has been used to
SFWA: The Aftermath
I just thought I’d show everyone who reads this blog just how bad the reinstatement of Mr. Burt really is. Here is the aftermath just in this first day: Tobias Buckell, an author I deeply respect as some of you know, has decided to cancel his membership to SFWA. Read his full post here. You should read it because he offers a lot of insight into all that is going on, including an lovely link to what I’m about to link you all to. Mr. Burt has put a post on the SFWA livejournal that has sparked a lot of very angry comments asking for his resignation, including some posts from Scribd and members challenging his view that people should give him a chance even though his post is clearly one of bitterness and an example of his disinterest in keeping friendly relations with Scribd, even though Scribd is working on efforts to keep illegal posting of artist material at bay. That’s all for today. More will likely spring up over the following days though. You can be sure of that. Don’t get me wrong. I like SFWA. It is a good organization, in general, but right now I’m not too happy about their policies either. (Don’t click the read more, there isn’t any more after this)
SFWA Strikes Back…Like A Poorly Made Prequel
Who would have thought that after SFWA’s earlier debacle, which I discussed here, would only lead to further debacles of complete idiocy? I certainly wouldn’t have. Apparently SFWA has renamed its e-piracy committee and, against just about everyone else’s wishes, has reinstated as its chairman the very man who caused the whole Scribd issue in the first place–Andrew Burt. To put Burt’s reputation as an authority figure into perspective, Cory Doctorow has put it wonderfully in his post: Last August, Andrew Burt, the vice president of SFWA, sent a list of thousands of works that he alleged violated the copyrights of Robert Silverberg and the Isaac Asimov estate. This list was compiled by searching the Scribd site for the words “asimov” and “silverberg” and it included my own novel Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, a teacher’s guide to great science fiction for young readers, and the entire back-catalog of a science fiction magazine whose editors had placed their work on Scribd. Burt sent an email to Scribd’s management in which he said that this list wasn’t “idle musing, but a DMCA notice.” This is the man that SFWA has put back into the position he was in before, only under a new title. How wonderfully idiotic. So, to prove that it intends to change its policies, SFWA has done nothing at all to change its policies. You see the unmoving logic in that statement right? Obviously some changes have been made on paper, but with Burt returned to the throne how can SFWA expect those textual changes to be acknowledge when clearly Burt has a serious lacck of good judgment in the first place?Charlie Stross has also blogged on this issue, saying something that I agree should happen if SFWA is going to make decisions such as this: Under Dr Burt, the new copyright committee will almost inevitably devolve into a reincarnation of the old piracy committee. If I thought it’d do any good I’d be resigning in protest right now; only the expense of a life membership purchased a couple of years ago is restraining me right now. Clearly the current executive of SFWA is making damaging decisions and ignoring input from committees it appointed, and and in view of this I call on SFWA president Mike Capobianco and the rest of the SFWA executive — including Andrew Burt — to resign immediately. Meanwhile, I’d like to call on all other SFWA members who don’t want to see their organization commit public relations suicide to make their voices heard. At this point I don’t think any of the people running SFWA are going to be resigning, although by all accounts they should if this is the way they are going to think. What exactly is the point of this? Burt has clearly hurt SFWA’s reputation, which it has gone through great pains to earn back, but now they’ve decided to put Burt back where he was? And of course the wonderful Scalzi has weighed in on this issue while providing interest insight to how Burt got to his position in the first place: That said, I think the board choose puzzlingly, to use as polite a word as possible, in its choice of chairman for the new committee, for some of the reasons which Charlie outlines in incendiary but not unreasonable fashion. It would not have been my choice, for those reasons and a few others (the suggestion in the board’s statement that our committee recommended installing the chairman of the new committee is quite obviously in error). I believe the situation was additionally complicated by the fact that the once-and-future chairman is on the SFWA board, and voted on the recommendations, and voted for himself as chairman of the new committee; had I been him, I would have chosen to recuse myself from the deliberations. I think what Scalzi is hoping for is that people like Burt will have considerable amounts of personal integrity. Clearly that isn’t the case, and if such people sit on the thrones of SFWA, what can we expect in the future? Probably more problems not only for writers, but for fans too. Read the posts I linked because they can give you a lot more information than I feel entirely adequate or authorized to discuss, seeing how I am not a published author or a member of SFWA. Still, my opinion is worth something.
Aldiss and Ridley Scott on Modern SF/F
(A lot of this applies to fantasy as well, so that’s something to consider when reading this post) As per usual it seems like there is plenty of criticism of science fiction out there, especially amongst those who have some pull in the world of literature. Brian Aldiss has brought up the interesting question of ‘why are science fiction’s best writers so neglected‘? Why indeed? We have all headd of Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, Frank Herbert, etc., but what about all those others who may have once written superb works that seem to have been lost in the wake of more prominent authors? And what exactly constitutes something being ignored? Does Aldiss mean works that aren’t discussed but still sold relatively well? Or does he mean any work that is actually good but for whatever reason never got any attention from sales or from the public? I think for this we’ll have to assume he’s mostly talking about works that have sold at least decently, but are forgotten.No matter how you look at literature there will always be something that is ignored. I think it would be impossible for any one person to read every single SF or F book that is printed in the United States alone. Maybe it could be done if such a person had no job or personal life. In any case, all SF books published can’t sell millions of copies or be critically acclaimed. So I think the crux of the matter is how books are chosen to be remembered. Do we remember Isaac Asimov because he was better than Kornbluth? Bradbury because he was better than Bester? Perhaps what makes authors like Asimov and Bradbury into science fiction icons is the stories that they told. Asimov developed the laws of robotics, which even today we consider with great interest as our technological achievements in robotics and artificial intelligence flood the market with new technologies. Bradbury presented us with a world where books are burned and it is illegal to read or own them. Do any of us remember the worlds of Kornbluth or Bester? What about Del Rey, Lafferty, or Gernsback? And why don’t we remember?Perhaps some aspect of this has to do with the fact that science isn’t taught as readily as it should be in schools. If high schools (or whatever would be in the equivalent in your country of origin) brought SF and F to the front, we might see a wider appreciation for the genre. More people will read Bester and Kornbluth, Asimov and Bradbury. College programs could really address the golden age of science fiction, an era that seems so forgotten in this ‘age of style’. For some of us the authors I mentioned are remembered, even if we have not read their work, but they aren’t remembered the same as the bigger names and I wonder why that is. Any thoughts? Any idea why we have forgotten Wagner in literature, but remember Tolkien? I’m interested to know what you all think out there. On a side note, Ridley Scott recently criticized the state of science fiction in film, which I found to be rather amusing. First, I have to make a point in saying that Scott didn’t write the novel that Blade Runner is loosely based on. Philip K. Dick did and it was called “Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?” On the subject of forgetting SF authors has Scott forgotten who is responsible for Blade Runner? All Scott did was bring the story to the big screen, and in a very artistic manner, which had to have been difficult back in the day. Regardless, it’s not Scott’s story and for him to pretend that it is, which he makes it very clear he thinks he wrote it in the above link, actually disgusts me. Maybe Philip K. Dick wouldn’t care, but I know I certainly would.But, that’s a difference discussion than what I was originally talking about. Now, Scott brings up a good point about how science fiction on TV and film is becoming almost repetitive–like horror films you might think. In a lot of ways this is very true. With shows like Battlestar Galactica and Bionic Woman, both remakes of originals which, while I believe different from their origins, still fall prey to common problems in science fiction film. Then there are the many Star Trek incarnations and the different Stargate series. We are seeing a lot of elements repeated in today’s SF that were original, or at least seemingly original, so many years ago. As Scott says, “where do all the writers go?” I don’t know either. I think there is a lack of truly deep SF right now in the media. We need to work on that.