Science Fiction Interpretations

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Subject: Science Fiction Interpretations

Posted by: brm50diboll
Date: Jan 02 17

I have debated with myself starting a Virtual Blog for months. I have so little free time nowadays that I may not be able to keep it up, but I think I'll at least try. This is intended to be wide-ranging, so it wouldn't fit in the Television, Movies, or Literature boards categories and I don't want to clog up General with just my observations but here I can rant if I choose and people can choose to ignore me or engage my flawed analysis if they wish.

469 replies. On page 8 of 24 pages. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

brm50diboll

I think I'll discuss Philip Pullman's "The Golden Compass", or, if you are not American, "The Northern Lights". As an aside, I've never understood why titles of books are sometimes changed when introduced into different countries. Why, for example, it was felt necessary to change the title of Harry Potter from "The Philosopher's Stone" to "The Sorcerer's Stone". Arguments that Americans do not understand what a philosopher's stone is are unpersuasive, to say the least. The percentage of the general American population that knows what a philosopher's stone is is probably about the same as the percentage of the general British population that knows. And the same for the northern lights. But I've digressed long enough.

The Golden Compass (as I read it, as an unwashed backwoods rural American) is part of a trilogy of books known as His Dark Materials. Apparently there was quite a controversy over Pullman's writings as supposedly promoting an atheistic viewpoint. I do see in what I read a criticism of church power and influence, but I choose not to delve further into that particular angle here. I also saw the movie version of The Golden Compass, which was widely panned despite having Daniel Craig and Nicole Kidman (Nicole!) in it. The movie was a little disjointed, I will admit. The director did not have the courage (in my opinion) to film the book's ending that would've helped explain things, instead, leaving it hanging in a weak effort to avoid the controversy the book faced. Forget it! Face the controversy head on and show some grit! Have the movie faithful to the book!

Anyway, the aspects of the story that appealed most to me included the "daemons", which were physical manifestations of the human characters' souls in external animal forms. The fact that each person could see other people's daemons and, from that, determine their underlying characters was interesting. Also interesting about the daemons were that, in children, they could change form, but at some point in adolescence, they became fixed, indicating the true nature of the adolescence was now fixed. I actually think final personalities are pretty much determined in adolescence, although adults may become more skilled in hiding their true natures from others. Also, for the humans, the daemons were physically bound to be nearby their counterparts and could not be separated by more than a few hundred feet or so (although that distance restriction did not apply to witches).

The idea of parallel universes that are almost, but not quite, the same as the one we live in is also intringuing to me. The Oxford University in Lyra's world has some significant differences from "our" Oxford University. In fact, Pullman goes to great lengths to even invent an alternate English and an alternate Geography that I found fascinating, as if our world has somehow been partially "stuck" in nineteenth century history and technology. "Anbaric", rather than electric, energy, for example.

Of course, there are allegorical interpretations for many of the story's characters, particularly Lord Asriel. In a playful attempt of mine to be indirect but humorous, I am reminded of the scene in National Lampoon's Animal House where the English professor played by Donald Sutherland asks the class who is the most interesting character in John Milton's Paradise Lost and then proceeds to write the name on the chalkboard. Or a tag line from Dana Carvey's SNL "Church Lady" character? "Could it be -....!"

The failure of the movie version of The Golden Compass disappoints me because I would've liked to see movie versions of the other two parts of His Dark Materials. Maybe in another universe.

Reply #141. Oct 01 17, 12:07 AM

brm50diboll

I recently discovered Black Mirror, a British television series created by Charlie Brooker. I've watched a few of the episodes and, although I will describe them as uneven, think that it is definitely worth seeing more of.

Black Mirror is somewhat similar to the Twilight Zone, but darker in tone and with a particular focus on modern technology, such as cellphones, computers, and social media. Like the Twilight Zone, it is an anthology series with a different cast each episode. The episodes are self-contained like mini-movies. If they were movies in the US, they would be rated R. They are quite intense.

The third episode from the first series, entitled "The Complete History of You" struck my fancy. In this futuristic society, most people have implantable video recorders placed behind one ear that allow them to record everything that happens to them and play back the video of those memories later. Also like the Twilight Zone, Black Mirror episodes end with unexpected twists, usually quite unfortunate for the central character. So in "The Complete History of You", the central character, Liam, ends up losing his wife and family over his too-aggressive replays of his past memories. Some striking visuals in that episode. Downright creepy, even. Beyond Twilight Zone, beyond even Night Gallery.

Reply #142. Oct 10 17, 5:11 PM

brm50diboll

Correction: The correct name of the Black Mirror episode I referred to is "The Entire History of You". Writing from memory does lead to errors like this.

Reply #143. Oct 11 17, 5:59 AM

brm50diboll

Earlier, I had promised to consider some science fiction stories that involve drugs. As an aside, I will state for the record I have never used drugs (except for an occasional aspirin, Tylenol, Prilosec, Zantac, or antacid (as I have gastroesophageal reflux)), but there are a number of interesting stories that follow this path.

The 1980 movie Altered States, which starred William Hurt and Blair Brown, was about psychology researchers experimenting with sensory deprivation chambers to create hallucinations. Later Hurt's character takes psychedelic mushrooms to enhance the experience and undergoes a sort of DNA regression to a more primitive animal state. It was all very hippy-dippy, but I liked the special effects with the hallucination scenes.

In the 1981 movie Outland, which starred Sean Connery and was a sort of science fiction reimagining of High Noon with Connery's marshall character as a latter-day Gary Cooper. The villain of that movie was played by Peter Boyle as a mining executive stationed on Jupiter's moon Io whose job it was to maximize production, which he did by supplying the miners with a banned stimulant that increased there productivity for awhile, but ultimately led to insanity, violence, and early death for the miners. Connery's marshall had been assigned to Io with the expectation that he would cast a blind eye on what was going on there, not actively investigate it, so when the corporate bigwigs saw that he was really trying to bust up the drug trafficking, they tried to kill him. They failed of course. This was Sean Connery after all.

There was the much-panned The Lawnmower Man, which was very loosely adapted from the Stephen King (or was it his Richard Bachman pseudonym? I lose track of this sometimes) story where a mentally feeble lawnmower takes some drugs to enhance his intelligence, has some hallucinations, develops super powers, and becomes insane as a result. Where have I seen this plotline elsewhere? I don't know, it may trace itself all the way back to HG Wells' The Invisible Man (reimagined as the ubiquitous Kevin Bacon in The Hollow Man) and, more recently, by Scarlett Johansson in Lucy, or as Caesar the chimpanzee in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, although the latter two characters weren't really insane.

Whatever.

The idea that drugs can be taken to enhance mental functioning and result in hallucinations, some sort of super powers, followed by megalomania, psychosis, and evil has been around for a long time and there are certainly numerous variations on that theme.

Of course it doesn't really work that way. Even Sigmund Freud may have thought cocaine greatly enhanced his mental powers, but he was wrong. Methamphetamine doesn't create geniuses, it creates psychotic paranoiacs who think bugs are crawling on their skin and starve themselves into becoming near-skeletons. And LSD doesn't expand consciousness, it creates unpredictable hallucinations and flashbacks. The special effects in movies may be very interesting, but

Don't do drugs, kids.

Reply #144. Oct 21 17, 6:18 PM

brm50diboll

Their productivity, not there productivity. Can't see my whole post before I hit submit.

Reply #145. Oct 21 17, 6:20 PM

brm50diboll

I was a fan of the original 1970s version of Rollerball with James Caan and John Houseman, but not the 2000s remake. The basic idea is that a futuristic society is run, not by nations, but by corporations, and these corporations keep the general population distracted with an ultraviolent game called rollerball. The corporate interest is in the game, not in personalities. While it is useful to the game to have stars, it is detrimental to corporate interests for the stars to become too popular. When Caan's character becomes too popular for the corporations' interests, attempts are made to force him into retirement. When the early "carrot" approaches to achieve this fail, the corporate bosses begin a "stick" approach of increasing intimidation and multiple rule changes designed to greatly increase the odds that Caan's character is seriously injured. These changes, Caan's defiance of them and persistence in spite of them, together with the blood lust of the crowds, results in Caan becoming unbelievably popular and a clear threat to the corporations.

The real world is not too far away from Rollerball, in my opinion. I live in Texas, where football (American football) is almost a religion to those devoted to it, and they are many around here. I have been a Dallas Cowboys fan since the 70s. AT&T Stadium (formerly Cowboys stadium) is practically a great temple for football, and pilgrims such as myself are in awe there of its massive game board. I could continue the analogy, but you get my drift.

The Star Trek episode "Bread and Circuses" explored similar themes of violent sports and entertainment almost 50 years ago in their imagining of a society where the Roman Empire persisted all the way into the 20th century. Gladiator fights to the death were routinely televised (with canned applause).

Football is probably the sport closest to rollerball in its social importance and level of violence. Movies like North Dallas Forty (a thinly disguised version of the 1970s Dallas Cowboys based on a book of the same name written by the former Cowboys receiver Pete Gent) attracted my attention, as did the more recent movie (and later TV series) Friday Night Lights.

This is Texas. Don't y'all go dissin' the national religion of Texas, f'ball, now, y'hear?

The interaction between major sports such as football and politics and social issues has been on my radar for a long time now, and remains in the news today.

Reply #146. Oct 30 17, 9:00 AM

Jazmee27

Welcome.

Not a big Star Trek fan (never got into it), but this back and forth is interesting).

Only thing at all related to science fiction I'm reading (or, rereading) right now is "Other Worlds Than This." Parallel universes really fascinate me now).

Also, and I don't know how I missed seeing that...

I did read "The Golden Compass" years ago, and enjoyed it.

I've heard most movies based off books are not as good as the books themselves.

And it bothers me too when people are pretending to be happy all the time. Just show emotion... why hide what you feel? It just seems forced anyway depending...

I have started reading some science fiction online; her name is Teresa McLaughlin (that's the main one; I first found her on Facebook, then Scriggler; she's on Twitter as well).

Reply #147. Oct 30 17, 10:40 AM

brm50diboll

Very good. I will check into the books you mentioned when I get a chance. I don't have much time for reading nowadays, as I am a chemistry teacher and this is a busy time of the school year for me, but I will google the books and read summaries. I agree with you that books are usually superior to movies, but more people have probably seen the movies than read the books in most cases. I found the book version of Jurassic Park much more detailed and showing the clear connection of Ian Malcolm's chaos theory to what was happening than in the movie version. The seven "iterations" pages and their accompanying Ian Malcolm quotes in the book were particularly illuminating. Most of my book reading, such as it is, occurs in the summer. Thank you for your interest.

Reply #148. Oct 30 17, 11:11 AM

Jazmee27

Anytime. Busy time for me as well, with physical therapy and all; I'm trying to read more Braille as there was a time there when I thought I couldn't do it anymore.
I've recently read a bunch of reviews for new novels coming out, and I will be doing more of that as viable links become available (my Screenreader fights with a lot of sites).

I've sorta made morework for myself because I didn't feel safe writing the blogs I was here, so now I am writing one called "we are just people." There isn't much to it yet, but I'm hoping that will change soon As in, once we feel confident/safe, story reviews, etc., will be posted).
Good day/night.

Reply #149. Oct 30 17, 12:50 PM

brm50diboll

One science fiction theme that seems to pop up from time to time is a society that is completely controlled by a computer. The citizens are unaware that their leadership is a computer, however. They usually identify it as some sort of god, or a sage elderly man. The primary conflict in these stories arises when the computer malfunctions and the people (who are unable to think for themselves as they are trained to defer to their leaders on all important questions) must start making decisions for themselves.

Multiple Star Trek episodes cover this theme. Offhand, I can think of: "The Apple", "For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky", "The Return of the Archons", "A Taste of Armageddon", and "That Which Survives". Surprisingly, this particular theme does not appear as often in The Twilight Zone. The most obvious appearance of it there that I can remember is "The Old Man in the Cave", which starred James Coburn in a post-apocalyptic society with widespread radioactive contamination where the people rely on "the old man in the cave" to tell them which foods are safe to eat and which are not. Coburn's character is a scoffer who eats what he wants and ends up dying of radiation poisoning, but "the old man" was actually a computer, a computer that probably should have been listened to in this instance.

These are just stories, after all. One shouldn't be tempted to take them literally. Down that path lies madness. Nevertheless, it is hard for me not to speculate, if only for a short time:

What if our world and societies *were* actually controlled by artificial intelligence? Could we tell? Is there a Turing test for ....?

Reply #150. Nov 09 17, 12:27 PM

Jazmee27

But what if we developed feelings for artificial intelligence? I am thinking of a piece of fanfiction we read (and are going to read again) entitled "Coming to terms." The basic premise isn't so much what you're talking about, but more "college students seeking ways to get out of housework/homework get artificial intelligence to "help" them. There are those who believe they are just machines; then there are those who subscribe to the belief they are more sentient.

Then there's the "Uglies" series by Scott Westerfeld. Not artificial intelligence exactly... unless you count that these people have been enhanced (superhuman "specials" or "Special Circumstances"). Definetly society-based theme though. Kinda scary when you start considring it.

Reply #151. Nov 09 17, 12:53 PM

brm50diboll

Well, none other than Stephen Hawking is quite concerned with artificial intelligence. He believes it has the potential to far outstrip humans' own intelligence and ability to control it. Programming artificial intelligence with "feelings" is not beyond the realm of possible. So if a supercomputer gets mad at humans - HAL 9000, The Terminator, anyone?

It is quite possible that artificial intelligence might consider humanity an "infestation" of Earth that needs to be eliminated. This was basically the plot of the bloated Star Trek: The Motion Picture (colloquially referred to as "Star Trek I", and disparagingly referred to as "Where Nomad Has Gone Before" as it is basically a rehash of a Star Trek episode featuring the altered probe Nomad that was convinced humans needed to be destroyed.

The premise that flawed, imperfect humans should not be allowed to rule themselves (if not simply destroyed) also appears in "I, Mudd", where the head android Norman believes that humans must be "served" by androids to curb their more destructive impulses. "We shall serve them, and they shall be ... controlled."

Kirk disagreed. The androids were reprogrammed after Kirk discovered they could not handle illogic, which humans have copious quantities of. A similar method was used to defeat M5, the murderous supercomputer in Star Trek's "The Ultimate Computer", where the computer's inventor, Dr. Richard Daystrom, was able to tie into M5 and convince it it was flawed itself, murderous, and needed to shut itself down.

Lots of room for speculation in the field of AI. Are humans really an "infestation" of Earth in the long term geological sense?

Reply #152. Nov 09 17, 1:36 PM

brm50diboll

So if you want AI to be nice to you, perhaps you should be nice to AI.

Reply #153. Nov 09 17, 1:38 PM

brm50diboll

I have steered clear of comics and graphic novels up to now, but not for any particular reason. They can be perfectly valid science fiction, better, in fact, than many other forms of it.

So now for The Watchmen.

Such amazingly complex material to analyze here. I think I should devote several posts to it.

I will start with the alternate timeline. In The Watchmen, it is 1985 and President Richard Nixon has just begun his fifth term because the 22nd Amendment had been repealed after America won the Vietnam War and Nixon successfully suppressed the Watergate story (both with the help of Watchmen.)

Each of the Watchmen are interesting in their own way, but for me, it is clearly Dr. Manhattan I must start with. Dr. Manhattan is actually the only Watchman who has true "superpowers" beyond advanced technology, brilliant intellect, and superb physical training. Manhattan is essentially a demigod. Whether Dr. Manhattan is actually a "hero" is quite debatable, in fact. He does numerous things that could be interpreted as evil, depending on one's point of view. For example, it was Dr. Manhattan who single-handedly won the Vietnam War for Nixon by his "interventions".

Dr. Manhattan's connection to humanity is extremely tenuous at best. He could be described as a demigod who got bored. His lack of connection to ordinary mortals made him susceptible to the machinations of Ozymandias, who possessed no real superpowers but keenly analyzed Dr. Manhattan's weaknesses and exploited them.

I've always found "origin stories" in comic books to be very interesting, which is why they tend to be repeated frequently at regular intervals. The origin of Dr. Manhattan, once physicist Jon Osterman, was particularly fascinating for me. Apparently when brilliant scientists are exposed to radiation that would kill anyone else, it doesn't kill them, just transforms them into a superhero. This is pretty much a rip-off of the Incredible Hulk origin story, where "an accidental overdose of gamma radiation" transforms Dr. David Bruce Banner into the Incredible Hulk. I've joked about this with my students some times. "You know what would really happen to you if you were exposed to high levels of gamma rays, don't you?" Oh, and I quibble about the use of the term "overdose", which presumes there must be a "correct dose". "What would the correct dose of gamma rays have been for Dr. Banner?"

Ah, but one of the joys of science fiction is the willful suspension of disbelief. So Jon Osterman enters the Intrinsic Field machine (whatever the heck that is) and is trapped there when it goes off, disintegrating him. But somehow he manages to reconstitute himself into physical form over the next few weeks, although now as the glowing blue Dr. Manhattan who can manipulate time and space at will. But he still has all his human psychological imperfections.

In the second Star Trek pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before", Kirk's friend Gary Mitchell (played by Gary Lockhart) is transformed into a demigod similar to Dr. Manhattan and begins to go on a rampage. Kirk yells out "Above all else a god needs compassion!"

I think it is a good things humans don't have superpowers. If they did, with our psychological imperfections, the Earth would quickly become a charred cinder.

Reply #154. Nov 22 17, 12:50 PM

Litecruzer

I agree about that projected power-crazy scenario, it puts in mind the saying, "with great power comes great responsibility." (one of those was in Spiderman, the movie, where Cliff Robertson's character, Uncle Ben, cautioned it to Peter/Spiderman.) On another note, it was actually Gary Lockwood who portrayed Gary Mitchell.

Reply #155. Nov 22 17, 2:38 PM

brm50diboll

Correction: The name of the actor who played Mitchell in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" is Gary Lockwood, who is still alive. He is best known for his role as astronaut Frank Poole in 2001: A Space Odyssey, where the evil HAL 9000 cuts him loose on a spacewalk to kill him.

Reply #156. Nov 22 17, 2:38 PM

brm50diboll

Thanks for your note. I do make mistakes, particularly as my posts are usually off the top of my head and my memory is not perfect. This is why the recollections of eyewitnesses are frequently the weakest pieces of evidence in a legal case. Thank goodness for Google. It is much easier for me to identify and correct my mistakes now than before. In my classrooms, I am always happy to have a student who can catch my mistakes early. If I am doing a particularly long and difficult problem on the board and no one notices my mistake, I will usually recognize it at the end when I arrive at the obviously wrong answer, but then a great deal of class time gets wasted as I search for where I went wrong. And I do search, as I am a Myers Briggs ISTJ. (Emphasis on the J.) I like Gary Lockwood, in both his famous roles from almost 50 years ago. A thousand pardons.

Reply #157. Nov 22 17, 2:46 PM

Litecruzer

You're welcome, it's funny that we posted the same minute. I would like to be able to post more freely, but I'm sure that I'd make even more mistakes. One can express more creatively I think, when they're not too worried, a balance is the key. Anyway, I enjoyed your post.

Reply #158. Nov 22 17, 3:04 PM

brm50diboll

Somewhere, in the deep dark recesses of my mind, I think I mixed up Gary Lockwood with June Lockhart. For those who may not remember, June Lockhart was in the campy 60s TV show Lost in Space. My favorite character in that was actually Dr. Smith, who was not intended originally to be a main character in that show. It was a good thing they put him in, though. Without a primary antagonist, the show would've flopped very quickly.

Reply #159. Nov 22 17, 4:15 PM

Jazmee27

Always find your posts interestin. Miss stuff sometimes...

Reply #160. Nov 22 17, 5:48 PM

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