Has anyone read Clans of the Alphane Moon?

For regular readers of the blog: Has anyone read Phillip K. Dick's Clans of the Alphane Moon? I'm thinking of using it for a literature and mental illness course, but I'm wondering if there's enough to talk about in the novel. Knowing Phillip K. Dick, I suspect that there is, but I wanted your take on it. Let me know.

Donnie Darko and Mental Illness

I think Donnie Darko is a rare sci-fi\horror film in that it does not trivialize mental illness or the suffering mentally ill people go through, but tries to understand what the experience of mental illness might be like for those suffering from it. It is never quite clear whether Donnie is himself mentally ill or the saviour figure he perceives himself to be. What is clear from the film is that the societal standards governing mental illness in the eighties (the time period in which the movie is set) are designed to create a joyocentric, self-absorbed society that does not truly care about how the mentally ill perceive things. Donnie Darko, as a film, contrasts the possibly schizophrenic Donnie, with his razor sharp analysis of hypocrisy, with the shallow eighties motivational speakers that dominate his school. In doing so, Donnie Darko remains the definitive cinematic statement against the Norman Vincent Peale school of "Positive Thinking", which currently dominates cognitive behavioral psychology. For that the producers of Donnie Darko have my gratitude.

Commercialism ruins sci-fi

In a spirit not in tune with the season, I want to say how much I detest the commercialization of sci-fi that occurs during the holidays. Transformer toys, Star Wars toys, mass productions of second rate science fiction novels, the obligatory big budget, not big idea sci-fi Christmas epic. It's enough to make one sick. What about the old days, when everyone was justly cynical about the spirit of the season, and we had our own genre "Imagines," rather than Mercy Me Christian Christmas songs. I want Tim Minchin kick ass anti-Christmas lyrics in my sci-fi, not a return to the early sixties, in which science fiction still did an occasional Christmas episode. It's enough that we commercialize the other 364 days of the year . . . do we really have to make Christmas day yet another effort in capitalist consumerism? Rant over.

Why is BSG's 3rd season so bad?

I've been watching the 3rd season of the new BSG in bits and pieces, and I have to say, it sucks. I've heard that the writers were forced by SCI-FI to write the series episodically in season 3, instead of with a story arc. I don't know if that's true (I suspect it is), but I know that the series loses a lot of its power after the first four or five episodes of season 3. There's still potential there, but I wonder if I'll be disappointed by season 4 (no spoilers, please!). I think season 3 of BSG is to season 5 of Babylon 5 what bad cheese is to bad yogurt (o.k., sucky analogy). And I can't keep track of all the people hopping in the sack with one another in season 3. It's a little offputting. I don't care about the sex, but even most highschoolers don't go through partners that quickly!

Disney and Sci-Fi\Fantasy

To me, Disney has a rather checkered record with science fiction and fantasy. C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien hated Disney animation so much that they tried to forbid their books being adapted by these companies (Lewis failed posthumously, but Tolkien succeeded [also posthumously] through getting Ralph Bakashi to adapt the films). The Black Hole, Disney's main sci-fi film, had some great special effects, but it was a cheerless affair (one I am currently watching now). Sleeping Beauty had some great animation, but also contributed to gendered stereotypes of women. Aladdin and Beauty and the Beast were good in and of themselves, but not true fantasy or sci-fi as we understand it today. Perhaps my biggest problem with Disney adaptations, however, comes from Disney's atrocious handling of The Black Cauldron. The company butchered Lloyd Alexander's masterpiece, turning what should have been a sure-fire hit into a failure, one predicated on a combination of two books into one over-loaded plot. I fear that ultimately Tolkien and Lewis were right. No matter how well intentioned, Disney's additions to science fiction and fantasy have ultimately dumbed down the field.

New Sci Fi Novel: Francis Schaeffer, Galactic Warlord

Hey guys, just wanted you to know that when I was in the hospital I started plotting out a new novel featuring Francis Schaeffer as a sci-fi character. The novel's kind of a thought experiment, to see if I can write a convincingly interesting sci-fi novel that does not explicitly endorse my own pro-evolutionary views. Yes, I know, very hard, but worth a try anyway. I'll give you more details if the project makes it beyond the extensive planning I've already done for it.

Blog back online

Hey guys, just wanted to let you know I didn't cancel this blog. I was in the hospital the last week suffering from sleep deprivation, plus a condition that causes sleep deprivation. Hope you are well, and I'll have more to post later this week.

John

28 Days Later: Brutally Uncompromising

I think that 28 Days Later will remain the definitive zombie movie (and yes, they are zombies!). Why do I think this? Because only 28 Days Later, alone among the zombie movies of the last 40 years, is brutally uncompromising in its depiction of human agression and lack of compassion. It offers no hope for the future, no promise of a better world, and the redemption at the end, such as it is, seems but a temporary respite. Moreover, Jim and Selena, the leads, are characters that one can identify with, much more complex than the castoffs of the various zombie retreads of the last 30 years. 28 Days Later, to me, is a film that says life is hopeless, life is meaningless, and then asks you whether Jim's compassion for others is something still worth preserving, or a trait that will get him killed. Like the best British films, it is cynical about the human race in all the right ways, while never losing sight of the fact that we all belong to that race, for better or worse.

Even zombies.

Gynoids and Student Apathy

Almost every semester, I talk to my class about the concept of gynoids and virtual sexuality. I have, of course, for a long time known of the stereotyped female androids of Star Trek, and the subversively submissive androids of The Stepford Wives (how anyone could see Levin's work as anti-feminist is beyond me). But in the early 2000's, after I accepted evolutionary theory and many of the concepts of the transhumanist movement, I gradually grew nervous with the idea of virtual sexuality. I predicted, it turned out correctly, that virtual, and particularly online avatars of women, would be used for sexual exploitation. Other people's concerns at the time, quite correctly, were for the women being harmed by cyberstalking, avatar bullying, etc. My concern was more fundamental: what would happen when those virtual images, or their solid robotic counterparts, started taking on human emotions. Early in 2004, I expressed this in a story about a pedophile who abuses sentient robotic children, that the state will not protect (perhaps not the most original idea). I am of course, concerned for any A.I. that might be harmed in such a process, but I am also concerned about how such a process might lead us to objectify other human beings as well, treating them like gynoids rather than flesh and blood people.

My concern is that my students don't seem to even care about this phenomenon. Even when I mention extreme examples of this kind of sexual disregard for women, such as Japanese hentai games (Rapelay, for instance), it merely infuriates my students, who want unrestricted gaming freedom. I understand their frustration to a certain extent, as censorship is usually a bad thing. But if our Wild West of internet subjectivity has led us to create rape simulators, isn't it about time we calmed things down a little bit?

Mother Night

Though not technically sci-fi, Mother Night was written by sci-fi pioneer Kurt Vonnegut, and is therefore more than worth a look. Vonnegut skillfully interrogates the difference between performing an action and being the role you play. Howard Campbell Jr., the protagonist of the book, is a man who wishes to live only in a "nation of two", but ends up serving as a propaganda tool for the Nazis, while simultaenously being a spy for the Allies. I really suggest you check it out. The movie version, at least is great, and I'm looking forward to reading the book.

Wicked

Wicked is a novel I've been re-reading lately. While not sci-fi, its revisionism makes it worth mentioning on this blog. Basically, Wicked is a retelling of the Wizard of Oz, from the Witch's point of view. Many of the racist subtexts that Baum put in to the original novel are brought out by Wicked's author, Gregory Maguire. Basically, the novel is a meditation (God I hate that word) on the nature of evil. Maguire's Elphaba struggles to recconcile herself to various views of what evil is, none suiting her. Maguire quite perceptively points out the Ben Kenobi truism that "Evil is evil from a certain point of view" I don't know that I entirely agree with that truism (or agree with it at all), but Maguire offers an excellent analysis of how an entirely good person can be labeled, literally, a Wicked Witch, by her society. Wicked is at times a heartbreaking read, simply because you feel so much sympathy for the characters, particularly Elphie, yet you know how the story is going to end. I wish U.S. copyright laws were looser, as I hear that the Russians have already written several excellent revisionist fantasy novels about the Lord of the Rings. Anyone else know of any good revisionist fantasy or sci-fi?

Note: By the way, revisionist fantasy has nothing to do with revisionist Holocaust denial, for those who might be inclined to make that mistake. Two entirely seperate genres, the latter being worthless except for historical analysis.