In a Nutshell

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Current Forum:  Bonus Assignment Forum

Date:  Thu May 30 2002 11:33 am

Author:  Bill

Subject:  Counting Electric Sheep

 

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P.K. Dick wrote this thing back in 1968. The world was a different place back then, with a different political and social climate. The cold war was at its height. The genre of science fiction was still trying to find its way. Many of today’s sci-fi fantasy authors write merely to entertain and for escapism, but back in the ’60’s, many Sci-Fi authors felt they had to convey some sort of social message in their works. The times, they were a changing, and all that.

 

By now, we’re pretty well familiar with some of the major issues that Dick was portraying in his novel. He wrote of the subjugation of an entire race of people. It was taken for granted back in Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness that the Europeans were just inherently superior to the natives of Africa. That did not need to be explained. Likewise, in Dick’s novel, it is assumed that of course androids aren’t real people. But he still toyed with the idea that ok, they aren’t people like us, but they still go through the motions. I’m not sure that the message that Dick was trying to convey was that the androids were equal to humans, but more as a metaphor of attitudes that people have regarding their own humanity.

 

Today, people are more willing to see and accept a fuzzy area between intelligence in any form. We are having theoretic discussions about artificial intelligence, and if that constitutes a valid life form once it evolves to the point of self-awareness. The human race’s consciousness as a whole has progressed beyond what it was back in 1968, and is more able to accept certain ideas and concepts.

 

The evolution of ideas is what will define us as humans in the future, more so than the evolution of biology.

 

I leave you with perhaps the most memorable quote from the movie Blade Runner: “more than anything, shows that androids have Soul”.

 

I’ve seen things you people wouldn’t believe. Attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion. I watched C-beams glitter in the dark near the Tannhauser gate. All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain. Time to die.

-Roy Baty

 

 

 

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Current Forum: Bonus Assignment Forum

Date:  Thu May 30 2002 6:48 pm

Author:  SVETLANA

Subject: Re: Counting Electric Sheep

 

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As for the equality between androids and humans, I thought they might be unequal in life, but they are certainly equal in death. Fear of death is their strongest emotion.

 

About science fiction (I am pretty positive that everyone will disagree), but I happen to like and agree with this excerpt:

 

“Rudi is so fascinated by all this technology that I don’t think he reads anything but technical journals and science fiction. He hasn’t even read my books, although he does display them prominently and always brags to his horse-world friends about having an unusual friend, a Russian writer.

 

He tells me (even without having read me) that I write too realistically, realism being the thing of the past. To be honest, such ridiculous opinions infuriate me, and I am always telling Rudi that his horses are also a thing of the past. But if some people still have need of horses, there still must be some use for a literature that depicts life as people really live it. People are much more interested in reading about themselves than about robots and Martians.

 

I had just said this to him in the beer garden where we were sitting. With a condescending grin, Rudi replied that we should compare the sales of my books with that of the average science-fiction writer. “Science fiction,” he said self-confidently, “is the literature of the future”.

 

That statement exasperated me. I ordered another mass and said that science fiction, like detective stories, is not literature but tomfoolery like the electronic games that induce mass idiocy.” (Voinovich, “Moscow 2042″)

 

 

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Current Forum: Bonus Assignment Forum

Date:  Thu May 30 2002 10:49 pm

Author:  Bill

Subject Re: Counting Electric Sheep

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Thanks for your response, Svetlana.

 

Now… Where to begin… First, I agree with your first statement about humans and androids being equal in death. And they do have a strong survival instinct. I’d say you’re right on the mark, there.

 

Regarding your next statement and quote concerning the uselessness of science fiction, I would have to strongly and completely disagree with that viewpoint. And no, it’s not just a knee-jerk response. I happen to believe that if you thought about it the right way, you too would come to see the value that fiction has in our society.

 

First, the person whom you are quoting… I don’t get the impression that he has read much of the science fiction that he chooses to so readily relegate to the Trash Heap of Useless Things.

 

Let me say a few things about fiction. Not just science fiction, but all fiction. Virtually all the great works of history and society are… you guessed it… fiction. If fiction was so useless, why has only it endured through the centuries when more “useful” things have not? Perhaps, then, it might not be that useless? Rarely can we have a conversation without some reference to literature of some sort. The English language is rife with phrases lifted directly from Shakespeare that even today are still in common use. Phrases like “something is rotten in the state of Denmark”, “pure as the driven snow”, “at one fell swoop”, “in the twinkling of an eye”, and the list goes on and on. How plain and poor would our language be today without the contributions of people like William Shakespeare?

 

Fiction has enabled our culture and many other cultures to attain a depth and richness that often is the only thing from that time period which endures. In ancient Greece, the Parthenon and other structures are in ruin. Yet, the ancient Greek tragedies are still performed for audiences all over the world. Homer’s The Odyssey and the Iliad are a part of every well-rounded library. In pre-Roman England, very little is known about the people that lived there or their culture. Yet from that time period, the epic ballad of Beowulf has endured.

 

Edgar Rice Burroughs, creator of such works as Tarzan and John Carter of Mars, has this to say about fiction, “highly imaginative fiction, such as I write, demands the retention of a youthful and elastic mind, to achieve which one of my principal aims in life is to keep my body physically fit and my mind responsive to a diversity of simple stimuli.”

 

Or, to quote someone a little more modern, according to renowned physicist Stephen Hawking, “science fiction is useful both for stimulating the imagination and for diffusing fear of the future.” Interest in science fiction may affect the way people think about or relate to science.

 

Fiction, and by extension science fiction, is not useless. There is value to be had. I enjoy the journey my mind takes to far off worlds and universes that I could not have begun to imagine on my own… To feel my mind stretching as it wrapped itself around a concept that had never before occurred to me. As existing social issues were displayed to me in a new light, and my understanding of them deepened as a result. As I became less aloof from the humanity about me and came to understand and even love the diversity the people I interact with each day.

 

I would never say that “mere fiction” is useless. It has real value, and ultimately, as history has proven time and time again… Perhaps the only enduring value.

 

You can’t discover new oceans until you are willing to lose sight of the shore…

 

All the best!

Bill

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Posted on July 25th, 2009 under Conversations, DeVry, Films, Literature • Tags: androids, DeVry, Films, Literature, Philip K. Dick, reviews, sci-fi. • • RSS 2.0 feed • Leave a response, or trackback