Science Fiction

2005-07-26T21:25:00.000-07:00

Star Wars as a Science Fiction adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
Both Star Wars and LOTR are epics about the battle between good and evil (with the subsequent victory of good). There are too many similarities in these two works to dismiss them as coincidences. Everyone would agree that The Lord of the Rings is very much so a fantastic fiction. Star Wars seems to be a new-wave science fiction epic. The technology is not the focus of the story but without it, here would be no Star Wars. The Lord of the Rings would not be fantasy without the magic. However, both of these epics are very similar in story line and content. The main character of Star Wars, Luke Skywalker, is a direct correlation with the protagonist of LOTR, Frodo Baggins. Both of these men (well they are not exactly men, they are more young men). Both live with their uncle because his parents are dead. LukeÂs mentor is Obi wan Kinobi; FrodoÂs mentor is Gandolf. These two mentors seem to have great powers and thus their pupils develop a great attachment to them.
Since there are too many similarities too list, I will continue my point of proving that Star Wars is in fact a work of science fiction. The best type of science fiction to put this work in is probably new-wave science fiction. New-wave science fiction puts more emphasis on the psychological implications of technology and life in the future rather than the male-dominated, technologically centered works of the hard- science fiction era. However, many technological elements are part of Star Wars that, if they were to be removed, would remove much of the story. The focus of Star Wars is the struggle of good versus evil. The Jedi represent good and the Empire represents evil. To give an example of the necessity of technology in Star Wars, the Jedi have weapons called Âlight sabers.Â While these are reminiscent of swords of olden times, the light saber is scientific invention that is a major part of the practices of the Jedi. The JediÂs light saber is an elegant tool, which if used correctly can be a very powerful weapon. Take way the JediÂs light saber and all he could do would be able to do is ÂthinkÂ someone to death. Land transportation does not utilize wheels; everything floats. Characters like C-3PO and R2-D2 are robots. C-3PO is actually a very sophisticated robot that knows Âetiquette and protocolÂ to quote C- 3PO himself. R2-D2 is a robot (with an attitude I might add) that is capable of programming and controlling an aircraft. Nevertheless, he cannot actually fly an aircraft. A human mind is still required to do something like fly. In Francis J. MolsonÂs commentary on HawthorneÂs ÂThe Birthmark,Â Molson states that science fiction is Âthe lofty ambition of the scientist, the proper and improper use of scientific knowledge, the capacity of science to solve virtually and problem.Â (Warrick, et al. 12). This definition for science fiction applies to Star Wars in looking at the Emperor as the Âscientist.Â The Emperor has lofty ambitions in that he wants to rule the entire galaxy (so , half jokingly I say: how could that in itself not be science fiction?). The (im)proper use of science is the creation of the ÂDeath Star.Â The Death Star is a giant space station that was invented with the capabilities to destroy an entire planet. The Rebellion uses science and logistics to finally defeat the Empire and (as it should be) good triumphs over evil. Just because the science and technology is not the central element of Star Wars, the fact that the technology is an necessary thread in the pattern of the story makes Star Wars an epic science fiction work. Certainly Star Wars help to broaden the science fiction audience. The robots in Star Wars have a human element. They are not scary, seemly lifeless hunks of metal and wires. The many human aspects of Star Wars do not alienate (pardon the pun) the audience; they were not afraid of the sciedidn't Many kids that didnÂt know much about science fiction came out of Star Wars with a new idea oliket life could be llike out in the stars. While some hard-core science fiction experts may deem Star Wars a fantasy work, I see it as a work of fantastical science fiction.

Warrick,Patricia, et al. Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Longman: New York, 1988.

2005-07-26T18:32:00.000-07:00

What is “Real”?
The concept of reality has always been a major topic of science fiction writing. Campbell addresses the issue in the story “Who Goes There?”; Stanislaw Lem deals with what is real and not in his novel Solaris; and Phillip K. Dick examines the conflict between what is a ’real human’ and a ’fake human’ in his novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? But these are only a few of the science fiction works that analyze the idea of the real versus the virtual.
In Campbell’s “Who Goes There?” Some American scientists in Antarctica discover an alien creature frozen in the ice. Unbeknownst to the scientists, this creature can assimilate into any other creature that it wants, including humans. Once the creature has completely assimilated into a human body, no one can tell the difference. But the scientists discover that the blood of the assimilated creature/human is not the same has pure human blood. And a creature would not kill one of its own kind. Well, as one would guess, the scientists did blood samples of each other and discovered who was not human. And then that individual was killed. With all of this information, it seems as though being human is strictly biological. Thus to be a human one must have all the components of human biology. But even this theory fall through when challenged with cases that deal with mental and physical retardation. These individuals do not have all of the same biological traits that ‘normal’ humans possess but no one would say that a child with Down’s Syndrome is inhuman. So, a biological definition is not adequate for defining a human.
Stanislaw Lem takes a more psychological view of what is real and what is not. The ocean planet of Solaris creates people from the memories of the scientists that are studying the planet. Theses manifestations seem to be real in every aspect of a human, but they have no memories of their own. The manifestations are not completely true to their original forms. They exist only as the scientist remembers. But some things are different in the manifestations that are not like humans. They can regenerate, certainly a very inhuman characteristic. Emotions, which are human, are evident in the fake people.These people love there 'masters' and feel great distress when they are not together. This is often the case in some married couples that cannot stand to be parted. So, we can rule out emotion as being the defining trait of a human.
So on to Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? The premise of this novel is that rouge androids (that look and act exactly like humans) have killed some humans on Mars and are now living on Earth in disguise. Deckard is a bounty hunter who’s job it is to find and “retire” (kill) the androids. An empathy test has been created to discern the androids form the humans. The androids do not have the same empathy reflexes as do humans. This test is the only way one could tell is a human is really an android, for the androids look like humans thru and thru, even down to the blood of the android. The only definitive test is a bone marrow test that is the final ( and best) test of being an android. Well, now we must rule out the psychological and biological elements again.
In conclusion, there is no one definite list of traits that one can use to determine if someone/thing is human. Apparently, a combination of these characteristics ,along with some more that we don’t understand yet, must be used. But is it not weird that humans are trying to make guidelines for being human. There is no way that only one list can be used to determine a true human. No two humans are alike anyways so there is no way to define a human without having exceptions. To solve this problem. I suggest that humans get over their egotistical selves and look at something’s heart and mind to determine human likeness. I know it sounds sappy and idealistic, but why does everything need to be a human for us to accept it?

Dick, Phillip K. Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? New York: Ballantine Books, 1968.

Lem, Stanislaw. Solaris. New York: Walker, 1970.

Warrick, Patricia S., et al. Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. New York: Addison Wesley Longman, Inc., 1988.

2005-07-24T18:59:00.000-07:00

“There Will Come Soft Rains” by Ray Bradbury
Bradbury wrote “There Will Come Soft Rains” in 1950. This is right after the conclusion of World War II. At this point in time, the United States is on a high from its victory in the war. But there was still a fear of nuclear war. After all, the US did win the war by dropping two really big bombs. Not only are American’s in a high from the war, our technology is advancing. War is a great way to push scientists to create new technology and to improve the old. In “There Will Come Soft Rains” Bradbury examines what would happen if technology out lived man in the case of a nuclear fall-out. In Science Fiction A to Z nuclear war is defined as “ war fought with nuclear (“atomic”) and/or thermonuclear (“hydrogen”) weapons. May experts do not believe that such a war will have a “winner,” only losers. It is quite possible that the image of nuclear war, envisioned by policymakers in the United States and the Soviet Union, derives form science fiction. In this sense, science fiction has contributed to the balance of terror in the world.” While I tend to disagree with the second to last sentence, I do believe the last statement. While not all science fiction is negative and dark, all of it does lead the reader to have an apprehension of what the future holds for the world.
This short story follows a the final day of the ‘life’ of a house that has no family. The family has been destroyed by a nuclear blast. The house still continues on with it’s routine as if the family was still living in it. The house finally burns down, but from somewhere in the ashes, the house again states the date. Time goes on with or without man. What would happen to technology if mankind was wiped out? It would serve no purpose but continue anyway. The reader begins to sympathy for the house through the story. After all the house lost its reason for existence-- a family. But the house doesn’t know that no one likes it, does it? If the house doesn’t know that no one is in it then why do we feel sympathy for it? Perhaps humans feel that sometime needs family to be happy. Culture has programmed people to want to have companionship. We are pressured to have relationships, get married, have children (and be active in their lives) and to grow old with your large family. A old single woman is considered a spinster. So if we follow that view point, our sympathy is not pure but conditioned. But if we don’t sympathize with the house, we would be thought cold-hearted. So is it better to follow the societal norm or your “pure” emotions? The poem that the house computer (“There Will Come Soft Rains”) is an interesting poem about how nature will go on without man and man will not be missed. It seems that technology will continue as well.
Asimov, Isaac, et al. Science Fiction A to Z. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1982.

2005-07-10T16:58:00.000-07:00

The Machine Stops by E.M. Forster
As humans, we strive to be individuals. We want to stand out from the crowd; we want to be noticed. People will go out of their way to be unique. Children are taught from day one that everyone is ‘unique and special in his or her own special way.’ Therefore, it is no surprise that people do crazy things like pierce their lips and get large tattoos to draw attentions to them and to make a statement. However, humans also have a nagging need to feel accepted and fit-in to a specific group. The battle between individualism and group acceptance is confronted in the short story The Machine Stops. Vashti was a woman that lived in the machine and never had any problems with it. Her faith in the machine becomes an almost idol worship. Eventually, when the machine would start malfunctioning, she and most of the other people would just know that everything would be fixed and go back to normal. Vashti’s son, Kuno, did not have the faith in the machine as his mother did. Kuno knew that the machine would eventually stop and he needed to see the outside world. Going against regulations, Kuno goes outside of the machine; and is caught. Knowing that the machine will soon stop Kuno contacts his mother and warns her. Vashti will not believe her son. Soon after the machine does stop and Vashti and all of the other citizens go outside their solitary rooms, everyone dies. Isolation is the practice in this society. The concept of this is interesting because humans are very social creatures. People that live in the machine live in solidarity without any physical human contact. The only contact is through videos of other people. For intellectual stimulation, everyone attends ‘lectures,’ but there are no new lectures and no new ideas. This story exemplifies the struggle between being an individual and being accepted in the group. Often times people will follow the crowd as to not draw attention to him or herself. That is what Vashti did. All she knew was her solitary room and her ‘friends’ and lectures that convey ‘ideas.’ Doing what everyone else did was, well, what everyone did. Kuno went against the norm. He knew that something wasn’t right with the machine and he wanted to find the answer. He lacked (or rather over came) the blind faith in the machine. The desire to know how something works often takes hold of the human mind, but the fear of not understanding also scares people. This desire along with the need/fear of fitting into the norm is what fueled both Vashti and Kuno in the story.

2005-07-10T15:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know how to seperate this from the rest of the blog entries so I will just include this list now. These are my works cited for the research I am doing for this blog. As I do more research I will continue to add works.

Lem, Stanislaw. Solaris. New York: Walker. 1970.

Science Fiction: The Science Fiction Research Association Anthology. Ed. Patricia S. Warrick, Charles G. Waugh, and Martin H. Greensberg. New York: Longman, 1988.

Definitions of Science Fiction. http://www.panix.com/~gokce/sf_defn.html

2005-07-08T23:30:00.000-07:00

The Stepford Wives is a Science Fiction Film.
I have seen the film The Stepford Wives many times, but only recently, the fact dawned on me that this is a science fiction film. I presume the main give away is the fact that all the women that live in Stepford are computerized. The film begins with a woman, Joann who is one of the head-honchos of a major television company being fired from her job. After having a nervous breakdown she, her husband, and two children decide to leave New York City and move to Stepford, Connecticut. While trying to start a new life Joann begins to notice that all the women of Stepford are very different from what she believes women should be like. These women are perfect. They always have a clean home, dinner on the table, and always ready for sex (which is always satisfying to both husband and wife). The women have their own book clubs and such; the men have the gentleman's club where they can be men and are away from the wives. Joann begins to notice strange happenings when on of the women goes crazy at a picnic. Joann keeps saying that an ambulance should be called but the head husband, Mike, says that everything is fine. At the book reading, the women review a decorating book, something that a worldly woman would not think of doing. Joann finally realizes that something is really wrong when her good friend Barbara is changed into one of the perfect blonde wives. After this happens, Joann decides to find out who the Stepford wives really are. She discovers that before the wives came to Stepford, they were CEOs, presidents and executives of huge companies. Once Joann learns of this she demands that she, her husband and children leave Stepford. Joann's husband decides that he is sick of Joann being the boss of the relationship so he tells Mike that he wants to make Joann into a perfect Stepford wife. Joann then looks and acts just like the rest of the wives. At a grand ball, Joann's husband destroys the computer that operates the computer chips inside the women. The women do not die but became what they were before the 'operation'. However, there is a twist in the end. The audience assumes that Mike is creator of the computerized wives. He did not though. It was his wife, a neurosurgeon. She was the one decided putting microchips into women’s’ brains to make them ‘perfect. She longed for the days when women were housewives and took care of her family, the days before women were as power-hunger as men, over-worked and over-stressed. She also knew that no one would listen to a woman who wanted to put computer chips into other women, but they would listen to a man. For all that women have become intelligent and powerful she knew men would only listen to and follow a fellow man. There are so many science fiction and pop culture themes in this film, themes like humans with microchip brains, male dominance, and females overcoming the male dominance, a superficially perfect community and even some suspense. The microchips implanted in the women’s brains have elements of classical science fiction. This is an example of the older types of science fiction known as hard science fiction. Male dominance and believable science are themes in hard science fiction. Microchips are scientifically proven to work and have a valid scientific use. The elements of the soft science fiction include the hero being a woman, a female being the scientific inventor, and the use of psychology. Theodore Sturgeon has a great quote of what science fiction is: “A science fiction story is a story built around human beings, with a human problem and a human solution, which would not have happened at all without its scientific content.” I think that this really applies to the film because there is always a human controlling the computers, each other and eventually destroying the computer chips. Another theme in this film that correlates with the science fiction genre is the conflict of a utopia/distopia. The utopia of what Mike’s wife wanted is the distopia that Joann most feared. Joann wants a world where women and men are equal (and women sometimes being better than their male counterparts are). The psychology of this film does a great job in asking the audience to question what he thinks of the role of women in society. Should women be the subservient housewives of the ’50s or the super-women that run Fortune 500 companies of today? A Golden Age science fiction answer would be: let the woman stay at home and let the man handle the world. In contrast, a New Wave science fiction answer would want the woman to go out into the world and be heard. Another question posed is what is the line between human and robot. The Webster definition of robot is “ a machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a human being; also a similar but fictional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized or an efficient insensitive person who functions automatically.” The women of Stepford still look like women but they could be control by a remote. Dose the fact that they have microchips in their brains make them inhuman? They still look like women, talk like women, and can still have sex, but there is a micro chip…

2005-07-01T14:27:00.000-07:00

What is Science Fiction?
The Webster dictionary definition of science fiction is “fiction dealing principally with the impact of actual or imagined science on society or individuals or having a scientific factor as an essential orienting component.” From what I have read so far in Dr. Lucas’ Pop Culture class my ideas of what science fiction literature is has drastically changed. Before the class I believed that science fiction was for geeks that went to the Star Wars openings in full Darth Vader are Han Solo costume; that science fiction was just about aliens, abductions, hyper-drives, and laser guns. While these can be elements in a science fiction story there are so many more themes elements that are of great literary and psychological/emotional value. The first piece I read that attempts to explain what science fiction is was Introduction by Ursula K. Le Guin. She edited an anthology of science fiction works. In this introduction she identifies many different types of science fiction. Le Guin first uses describes two main types, ’hard science fiction’ and ’soft science fiction’. She describes hard science fiction as “a fiction using hi-tech iconology with strong scientific content, solidly thought out, well-researched, tough-minded.” Le Guin’s description of soft science fiction is “without gender bias, which does not posit violence either as an ethnical standard or a necessity of plot. Just by reading these different definitions it’s easy to speculate that hard science fiction is manlier and the soft science fiction would draw a more feminine audience. Le Guin also describes “three major types of science fiction stories: the extrapolative, the cautionary and the alternate-world.” These three types can happen in both hard and soft science fiction. The extrapolative type deals with things that might actually happen. Just because it hasn’t happened before doesn’t mean it couldn’t happen. The cautionary type deals with what is going to happen. The alternate-world “deals with what might have happened, but didn’t.” Science fiction isn’t just contemporary writing anymore it is slowly becoming an actual literary genre that is worthy of study and consideration. My personal opinion is that science fiction should contain more of the psychological elements of the new-wave, soft science fiction stories. The human mind is a very complex and interesting thing. The brain needs to have as much thought put to it as the technology that it creates.

2005-06-28T17:47:00.000-07:00

Isaac Asimov's short story Night Fall presents the idea that all that our reason and knowledge is inevitably false because we as humans do not know everything. In Night Fall the characters are preparing for what they presume as the end of their civilization. The end has been both scientifically proven as well as prophesied in one of the religious texts. The scientists calculated exactly when each of the six suns would set and when they would all be in complete darkness. Their planet, Trigon, had not been in darkness for more than two-thousand years. Anyone would be freaked out if he knew that in a few hours there would be no light in the sky, only darkness-- and stars. On Earth, there is no great fear of the night and stars. But in a world with six suns, darkness is a legend told around camp fires, a myth told as a bed time story. I love how Asimov refers to Plato's cave in Night Fall. It adds to the literary aspect of the story; the reader must use some thought in reading-- a sign of real literature. How can humans claim to be so intelligent when we are not sure of everything around us? Many of the things that we put faith in are simply theories, good theories, but theories none the less. Diciplines like mathematices and quantum physics are things that we can not touch and see in the pure form of it but we believe it and trust it. Using mathematics we create buildings and bridges that work. Having faith in things is something that humans have learned to do. I can not understand how the television works, but it does so I watch it. I can not see electricity but I can see the light from the light blub so I know it works. Maybe it is wrong for people to have such faith in things; but if one was to question everything it would seem like he was of everything being a conspriecy.Not knowing everything is something that humans can not handle. Humans feel as though they must have the answers to everything. I do not know how the television works but I can see the pictures so I watch it. I can not see electricity but I see the light from the light bulb so I know it works. But one can not rely on sight alone to know whether or not something works and is real. Humans must rely on all of our senses to know if something is real, but that sometimes doesn’t even work. That is the case in the novel Solaris. Humans have faith in theories that are mostly abstract, only because the theory hasn’t been proven wrong…yet.