Reflection on Class Discussion and Ender's game

There was one line in Ender’s Game that I think should have been discussed in class and seems inconsistent with the novel. Before Ender engages in the final battle he asks Rackham if he could attack a planet with a MDD device. In response Rackham states that the Formics, or Buggers, never attacked a civilian population during either invasion. It does not seem to make sense that the humans would fear their own xenocide if the Formics only launched attacks against military targets. It is reasonable to have feared enslavement or submission, but total annihilation does not seem to be the logical conclusion based on the Formics’ actions. Could the humans not have used the MDD on the mass of thousands of MDD ships to hamstring the Formics rather than bring a sentient species to extinction? This one line seems very out of place in the novel as there is so much fear and paranoia about the Formics and discussion about the survival of the human species. In many ways I feel this reflects contemporary issues with terrorism where we have demonized terrorists to the point that negotiations with any extremists group is almost unthinkable. Whether or not discussion with these groups is a beneficial or moral course of action is another question, but the real issue is that by being close-minded the option of diplomacy is overshadowed by military action, leading to a cycle of violence. Perhaps the humans’ demonization of the Formics could be explained by the diversionary war theory, which is the concept of creating a conflict to push other issues out of the public limelight. By creating the Formics into monstrous antagonists, humanity was temporarily unified and there was relatively stability. It should be noted that just days after the Formics were destroyed this unity fell apart. Ideas like this can be seen in Schmitt’s’ Concept of the Political. This alliance based on fear directly contrasts with the Federation from Star Trek, which is interestingly enough more successful than any alliance mentioned in Ender’s Game. I personally believe that any unification based on the principals of cooperation and self improvement will outlast one based on domination and self preservation. Perhaps that is why organizations such as the European Union have had such great success whereas alliances such as the Non-Aggression Pact between the USSR have ended in ruin and destruction.

Reflection: Ender's Game

I admit, this entire post will be colored by the fact that I just finished Carl Schmitt's The Concept of the Political. After finishing Schmitt's work, I find it entirely impossible avoid applying its concepts directly to the human-Bugger conflict found in Ender's Game. Ah, where to begin...

I think one of the larger subjects not covered in class on Thursday was the political environment on Earth during Ender's time at the Battle School. Although the political maneuvering of Peter and Valentine as Locke and Demosthenes was no doubt a subplot to Orson Scott Card, the reactions on Earth to the Bugger wars are largely predictable by Schmitt's writings. Although Card presents a scenario which Schmitt largely believed was impossible, a force opposing all of humanity that is distinctly non-human, the logical extensions of arguments presenting in The Concept of the Political are present within Card's universe. Let's take a look at the political subplot, and compare it with the conclusions Schmitt makes when the political environment is defined by friend and enemy.

Card's descriptions of the Earth geographic and political environments are written with varying degrees of detail. From what we're told, the geopolitical environment post first invasion has resulted in the founding of the International Fleet, a worldwide space-operating military organization. From the descriptions Card gives, the organization draws its forces from a number of "super-states", essentially large territories that have resulted from the integration of states in regions of the world. These territories are united under the three leaders of "the League", the Hegemon, Strategos, and Polemarch (interestingly, George Schwab, translator, utilized the word polemic often within Schmitt's passages).

The Cold War influences on Card's political universe are pretty obvious (read more on Card and Cold War influences with Morgan's recent post). Of the states in the tenuous League, the "Second Warsaw Pact" are the most noticeably belligerent. Clearly by the time Ender's Game is taking place, the IF's warnings of an impending third Bugger invasion has taken a backseat to inter-league conflicts, specifically between the Second Warsaw Pact and the American territory. This, of course, plays at Schmitt's declaration that, "Humanity as such cannot wage war because it has no enemy, at least not on this planet. The concept of humanity excludes the concept of the enemy, because the enemy does not cease to be a human being..." The essence of Schmitt's critique lies in his hypothesis that it would take an extraterrestrial threat in order to unite humanity under the same banner. This has clearly occurred within the context of the League and the IF, but as the threat of the Buggers seems to pass, there is no longer an enemy in which humanity may unite against. Peter and Valentine Wiggin, posing as Locke and Demosthenes, utilize this tumultuous political landscape to begin their rise in Earth's political ring.

On one hand, Peter knew Russia and the Second Warsaw Pact were preparing for the post-Bugger war conditions: "Valentine, things are coming to a head. I've been tracking troop movements in Russia... In the last six months, they've stepped up, they're getting ready for war. Land war." And Peter definitely predicted the collapse of the League post Bugger wars: "When the Bugger wars are over, all that power will vanish, because it's all built on fear of the Buggers. And suddenly we'll look around and discover that all the old alliances are gone, dead and gone, except one, the Warsaw Pact." Peter's intentions were predicted from the first establishment of the two pseudonyms, and confirmed when Valentine revealed to Ender that Peter had utilized Demosthenes mob-appealing belligerence and Locke's "influence with the intelligentsia" to prevent the League War (which ensued after Ender's annihilation of the Buggers). In essence, Peter recognized the same political philosophy put forth by Schmitt and utilized it to his advantage. Knowing that a structure of government already existed that allowed for world hegemony allowed Peter to step in, but holding together Earth in the post-Bugger era required a deviation from Schmitt's political thinking. While Schmitt would predict that states would return upon the absence of a common enemy for humanity, Peter manages to keep the world united under a very different banner. Here, Peter defies the political philosophy of Schmitt - instead of uniting humanity under the threat of a common enemy, Peter manages to define his state not by external forces, but by an internal push towards the stars and colonization. And while Peter is implicitly implying that humanity needs to defend against any more external threats that could hurt it like the Buggers, there is no longer a single explicit enemy for humanity to unite against. Peter brought humanity past the political as defined by friend and enemy.

Substantive: Concept of the Political

“The specific political distinction to which political actions and motives can be reduced is that between friend and enemy…The political enemy need not be morally evil or aesthetically ugly; he need not appear as an economic competitor, and it may even be advantageous to engage with him in business transactions. But he is, nevertheless, the other, the stranger; and it is sufficient for his nature that he is, in a specially intense way, existentially something different and alien, so that in the extreme case conflicts with him are possible.” (p. 26-27)

This quote, to me, summarizes everything we were discussing with Ender’s Game last week. Schmitt proposes that the justifications for war, and the existence of the enemy, come from this notion of otherness, that it is not high-minded values of good and evil that we suggest when we discuss enemies, but a kind of xenophobia, this sense of other. This, Schmitt says, is politics. The very distinction of enmity is what makes politics possible, because that is what political motives can be reduced to. It makes perfect sense, in a way, as to why bipartisan issues seldom get resolved—the whole point of a political system is “Well, my opponent wants this, but I want this.”

“The notions which postulate a just war usually serve a political purpose.” (p. 49)

If we look at the real world, what Schmitt is saying makes a large amount of sense, particularly in the terms of the last presidency, and the war in Iraq. While we can justify war on a level dominated by opposition and capital letters (i.e., Good vs. Evil, Freedom vs. Terrorism) it boils down to pragmatism, and the notion of a just war is just that: a notion. The justification for war as an instrument of “justice” is almost always a cover for something entirely without the bounds of these social mores.

“Never in the thousand-year struggle between Christians and Moslems did it occur to a Christian to surrender rather than defend Europe out of love toward the Saracens or Turks.” (p. 29)

I believe this also goes back to our discussion last week. We talked a great deal about Ender’s love of the buggers, that it is this which enables him to destroy them. And yet Schmitt makes an excellent point here, that this friend/enemy dichotomy creates a situation in which few other actions are possible. Even though Ender loves the buggers, he ultimately destroys them, and the people who are manipulating him choose to do so because they believe that no other choice is possible—because the buggers are other, and therefore enemy, and therefore must be destroyed. I am simplifying matters here, but only because I don’t want to get into the Hierarchy of Foreignness, which we will discuss next week. I understand that Earth attempted to communicate, but I also understand that the final invasion was Earth’s doing, and that lives were lost because humanity had no way of knowing that this other, this alien race, finally understood.

Reflection: Ender's Game

I wanted to take the time in my reflection to touch on a few things that we glossed over or didn't discuss in class. Not all of these have to do with alien-human interactions but, as I've begun rereading Xenocide (it's not really a sequel to Speaker for the Dead, it's just this kind of abysmal continuation of a few very bad ideas brought up in Speaker), it colors my whole thought process looking at Ender's Game. In Speaker Ender's in his thirties (I don't think that's a spoiler?) and it makes you so keenly aware of his childhood in Ender's Game that it makes everything else slightly superfluous. And yet, I came to the conclusion during our discussion that Ender has to be a child in this book, or he would not do the things he does. It's a very child-like action to do something outrageous in the hopes that unpleasant things will stop, and that's exactly what Ender does when he attacks the buggers' homeworld. Now, we know that the reason Ender is able to do this is because (in part through the Fantasy Game) he understands these creatures, he loves them, they get inside his head and his dreams. It makes his decision all the more radical because, even though he doesn't know it's real, even though he's being manipulated and deliberately pushed to the breaking point by his superiors, even if it's just a game, it's such a heinous act from his standpoint that he MUST be past his breaking point to do it. I myself can't even play Renegade on Mass Effect.

Ronald Reagan, in a speech to the United Nations General Assembly in 1987, said:

"In our obsession with antagonisms of the moment, we often forget how much unites all the members of humanity. Perhaps we need some outside, universal threat to make us recognize this common bond. I occasionally think how quickly our differences worldwide would vanish if we were facing an alien threat from outside this world. And yet, I ask you, is not an alien force already among us? What could be more alien to the universal aspirations of our peoples than war and the threat of war?"

I did not think about this when reading Ender's Game, in part because I did not, until recently, know that this quote exists. And my immediate reaction to it is that, while it is a nice idea, it is pretty fundamentally that: an idea. The reason I chose this quote to reflect on is because, given the time that this was said, and the time during which Ender's Game was written, the influences of the Cold War are unmistakable. It is one of very few things about the novel that is particularly dated, because reading about Russian imperialism and the Warsaw pact is an immediate source of confusion for those of us born at the tail end of the Cold War. And yet what we have between the Buggers and the Humans is a kind of Cold War in itself, a state of destruction perpetrated by an inability to understand the other's ideology. I was trying to pinpoint, in my earlier post, the kind of patriotism I could see in the childhood games of Val, Peter, and Ender, and I at first likened it to World War II but I really think, in retrospect, that it's slightly later, and it's fascinating to think of Card (biographical fallacy, I know) growing up in this Cold War environment and letting it influence his work.

The last thing I wanted to mention is why Ender has to leave Earth behind. It's interesting but, reading the book, you don't get much of a sense of his attachment to Earth, despite the fact that he is essentially being trained to defend it. Before he goes off to Command School, he learns to develop a connection with the physical world, but there's still no sense of its people. And yet, after he's made a hero, he goes off to settle colony worlds. Why? The answer is simple, according to Val. Because he would be far too much of a tool for Peter, and that in itself is disturbing to me. There's this comment in one of the later books that talks about how Val and Ender simply handle people. Far be it from me to speculate what would have happened had Ender stayed on Earth, but I feel as though, for him, it would have been utterly pointless, because the only person he deeply cared about went with him when he left. As for Peter turning him into a puppet, I'm not sure how well that would have worked. The Buggers tried to get at him, and they, who could literally reach into his mind, found him too strong a persona to use. And while Peter was a figure of terror in Ender's childhood, Ender was later manipulated by other people in some significantly more distressing ways. Ender was selected by Battle School over Peter because he is not merely ruthless, but compassionate, and lacks the element of ambition that made Peter dangerous. In that case, I suspect he would have been more of a threat to Peter than anything else.

Substantive: Ender's Game

Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game is one of the few science fiction works which seems to have universally been accepted as a teenage right of passage. The book itself has all the makings of a story which strikes at the heart of young people: crazed familial relationships, a lonely protagonist, and memorable characters. I have to admit, I'm probably one of the most biased fans of the book, considering that for years my online handle was Ender. It was easy for me to relate, consider that Ender and I share the same name, same position in the family (thirds are clearly the best), same siblings (unfortunately for me though, my eldest brother isn't out to conquer the world), and the same sense of intelligence. I only wish I could invoke the same feelings I had when I first read the book! But this, being my third time reading through Ender's journey, was different. It was different because the book is clearly more than a tragic tale of a young boy who is swept up in a world of controlling adults. This time, it was a tragedy for the human race.

Ender's True Game - The Prisoner's Dilemma

But wait, Ender's "game" (without giving away too many spoilers) is just literally that, right? The book throws us through countless games that Ender plays, like Buggers and astronauts, to the more advanced battle room, and finally to the simulator in command school. But, when we say that these were Ender's games, we wrap a bubble of understanding around them. Of course it's okay for Peter to bully Ender, it's just a game. Of course it's okay to shoot your fellow students, it's just a game. Of course it's okay to blow up simulated starships, it's just a game.But if we take the side of Ender, and question the adults in the book for their true intentions, perhaps we can also question what Orson Scott Card means when he says Ender is playing games.

The prisoner's dilemma is one of the most widely applied "games" from a field of mathematics called game theory. The game has been applied to countless fields, from economics, to international relations, and even to evolutionary biology (with the two later subjects implicitly important when considering Ender's Game). In the thought experiment, it involves two potential prisoners. They're being interrogated by the police for a crime they're suspected of committing together (in the game, it doesn't really matter if they've actually committed the crime). If both prisoners deny that they committed the crime, both walk out scot-free. If one denies that they've committed the crime, and the other implicates the first suspect, than the first suspect goes to jail, and the turn-coat gets a reward for putting a criminal behind bars. The same is true if the first suspect is the turn-coat, and the second suspect denies involvement. The final option, of course, results in both suspects implicating each other, resulting in long prison sentences for the both of them. The most important aspect of this game is the prisoner's inability to speak to one another. Here, there isn't any collusion between the two; there can't be any deal making to ensure that both deny the charges and get off. Of course there are theoretical iterations of the game that allow for that collusion to take place, but it's this lack of communication built into the original prisoner's dilemma that makes it such a fascinating case into behavioral logic. It's also the lack communication that's built into the heart of Ender's universe.

Just how much do we know about the Buggers from a reader's perspective? Really, we know about as much about this threat to humanity as Ender does. There have been two attacks against humanity - the first and second invasions. Later in the book we find out that the first invasion was more of a bugger scouting mission, and not really a full out invasion per say. The second invasion, on the other hand, WAS a true invasion, and as we learn, included a queen Bugger. Let's try and put this into our prisoner's dilemma framework. Since we don't know many details about the first invasion, it might be similar to our last option, where both suspects implicate one another. In this case, each species attacking each other leads to a bloody war. The second invasion is probably more indicative of our middle cases of the prisoner's dilemma, where one suspect implicates the other while the other denies it. Here, the Buggers attacked the humans, and the humans did NOT attack with an equal and opposite force. As we know, the humans barely won that battle. So what does that leave the humans to do in Ender's game? The answer lies in Anatol Rapoport's strategy for the prisoner's dilemma: tit for tat.

In 1984, Robert Axelrod designed a tournament for the prisoner's dilemma. The goal of the tournament was to determine the best strategy for winning the prisoner's dilemma. Each outcome was given a certain point value, with cooperation having a high value, deceiving your opponent and succeeding having the highest value, being deceived having the lowest value, and simultaneous deception having a low (but not the lowest) value. From this setup, the strategy that consistently had the highest score was probably the most simplistic - do whatever your enemy does. Anatol Rapoport named his strategy tit for tat, where if your opponent cooperates, you automatically cooperate in return. But, if your opponent deceives you, your continual return deception guarantees you'll never suffer the greatest loss.

From this, it's pretty clear that Card at least on some level agrees with the tit for tat strategy, and employs the human race in Ender's Game as the player ready to respond just as his opponent had in the last round. So then, why is this more than just a tragedy for Ender, but a tragedy for the human race? It all comes back to the lack of communication. We learn that it's built into Bugger biology that they've never had any need for what we understand as communication. Because all the workers are psychically linked with the queen, they're more like hands than individuals. That completely undermines a need for language, writing, or even speaking. So it's easy to see how the Buggers could be incapable of understanding humans. Therefore, neither of the species can collude and prevent war. The tragedy is that under these conditions, war isn't only more likely, it's BETTER for both species to destroy each other than to take the chance of attempting to collude. Ender's xenocide was inevitable.

Substantive: Ender's Game

I promised myself that when we got to Ender's Game I would do my best to look at it objectively and (more importantly) be very, VERY careful not to talk about the rest of the series. That being said, this book shows a child in what is probably the most remarkable and disturbing bildungsroman ever. This group of children at the Battle School are essentially trained to forgo the positive parts of their humanity (kindness, caring for others, etc.) and to suppress these instincts in favor of something significantly more primal. I will not argue that this is uncommon--the nature of the individual is not particularly heralded in contemporary military organizations--but I think it touches on an interesting taboo. They are doing this to children. Literally alienating Ender--the word choice is purposeful--so that when the time comes he is capable of doing something that is almost inhuman in its proportions: committing xenocide. I have always, always looked at this book as showing, in many ways, how humanity can often be more alien than the aliens, for it is humanity who, fully knowing what they are doing, decides on the wholesale destruction of an entire race, and enlists a young boy to help them do it.

That being said, I think the parallels here between the world in which the Wiggin children live and the circumstances of the 1940s are too clear to ignore. It reminded me, in many ways, of a comment I heard during a class on the Vietnam War--that a lot of children grew up wanting to be Audie Murphy, firing at Nazis from the top of a burning tank. The Buggers seem to be roughly akin to the Japanese--the children play astronauts and buggers in the hallway, and there is this kind of unquestioning patriotism on the part of humanity in every word that Graff says. Ender is born because the government dictates it to be so, he goes to Battle School when they tell him to, and there, everyone believes that the terrible, crushing hardship they are suffering, subduing ego and kindness, is for the good of humanity, in the immediate peril of the Buggers' return. Until we discover that they are not returning, that in fact humanity is taking the war to them, and Ender commits the wholesale destruction of an alien race because he wants the game to end.

The last thing I wanted to mention, which is perhaps the most important, is how much Ender grew to love the enemy he was fighting. He studied them constantly, they got into his head (quite literally), and to a little boy to whom humanity had been nothing but cruel and alienating, this strange, unearthly presence must have been like a beacon in the darkness. And how different the Buggers' attitude towards humanity was than humanity's unequivocal attitude towards them! A hive mind considers its workers expendable; the hive queen did not realize that every single human life is individual, precious, unique, etc. The regret that the Buggers had, coupled with the near-extinction of their species, is so different from the victory in which humanity revels, except for one thing: Ender mourns. And then writes the Hive Queen and the Hegemon, in which the two enemies of his childhood--the Buggers and his brother--are explained, loved, and understood. How that impacts the rest of humanity, and the rest of Ender's life, is a topic we'll have to address when we read Speaker for the Dead.

Substantive on Ender's Game

In my opinion Ender’s Game is not only an impressive work of science fiction, but poses a number of intriguing questions about human nature, the future and interaction with aliens. On the topic of human nature, it seems to be a common theme in many science fiction works that the problems that plague the world today are still prevalent in the future. This brings us back to the question I raised in class. How far has humanity truly progressed? Ender’s world continues to be racked by authoritarianism, racism, religious persecution, violence and international rivalry, just as it is today and just as it has been for thousands of years. Will the human condition prevent us from advancing to a certain point, or will humanity be able to overcome some of its’ more base attributes? The reason the buggers were able to advance was because they operated with a “hive mind” under the control of one sentient being and there appears to be no indication of infighting within the species. On the other hand, by putting “all your eggs into one basket” and relying on one sentient being the buggers were easily wiped out. There seems to be a similar phenomenon in District 9. The aliens in the film were essentially mindless except for a few intelligent beings that had the capacity to lead. On the other hand there are humans, who as a whole are sentient, but also self interested and divided. Perhaps then a more successful alien species would be characterized not only by sentience but also an empathetic and symbiotic mentality.

Another question that Ender’s Game raises is what human-alien interactions would entail. Because two species may have entirely different mindsets and thinking patterns, it is not unrealistic to believe that misunderstandings and conflicts could occur, such as the ones between the buggers and the humans. To one species life may seem precious, to another expendable. Hopefully, though, if a civilization has advanced to the point of intergalactic travel it has socially evolved into a benevolent society as well. This would be in accordance with the Fermi paradox. On the other hand, the alien species could simply be proficient at wiping out other civilizations and not its’ own. In terms of contemporary times, I believe that if aliens were to visit Earth today that humanity’s response would be extremely diverse. Many people might launch an armed attack or flee in fear that the aliens had come to wipe us out. Others might be empathetic, diplomatic and rational by making genuine attempts to communicate with the aliens. Some might even try to manipulate the aliens for profits. Besides this I feel that religious fanatics might view other sentient beings as demonic and be uncompromisingly violent as they would view human’s as the only species created in God’s image. Personally I feel that aliens haven’t contacted us yet because they view us as a “developing planet” that is not yet mature enough to engage in intergalactic politics.

Another question that Ender’s Game made me ponder was that of intergalactic travel. Even at light speed a trip to another galaxy would take years and by the time a vessel returned everyone that you knew would be dead. Thus, I believe that intergalactic travel would entail an artificial wormhole or portal that would be much more efficient as it would bring a vessel from one point to another. Such a device would open up not only new galaxies to exploration, but dimensions as well.

Reflection: War of the Worlds

In the autumn of 1883, H.G. Wells enrolled into the Royal College of Science in South Kensington, London. Previously enrolled in what he considered simplistic trade schools, this was Wells's first outing into academia. A year later, Wells became a student of biology under Thomas Henry Huxley, renowned Darwinist and rabid supporter of his own mentor, Charles Darwin. Undoubtedly, being a student under Huxley played a role in Wells's own science fiction works. In War of the Worlds, it enabled him to give almost lab-report like summaries and descriptions of Martian biology and behavior. However, beyond just giving Wells an edge on the description of his own inventions, Huxley's ravenous belief in Darwinism inflicted upon Wells a deep sense of the process of natural selection. The 19th century was also the era of social Darwinism, in which Darwin's principle of natural selection was pressed upon members of society in a "survival of the fittest man". According to this belief, those who were strong minded and strong willed were destined to rise above the destitute and ill-willed. This sense of social Darwinism pervades within War of the Worlds, pushing Wells's writing beyond simple scientific descriptions of natural selection into realms of social Darwinistic acts befalling characters. Within his writing, one primary characters display Wells's application of natural selection to humanity: the curate.

The Curate

The curate within Wells's world presents a look into Wells's interpretation of religion. While in general a vague character (we never really find out any details as to his exact position in pre-Martian English society), the narrator spends a great deal of the book living alongside the curate. First impressions for the narrator do not go well - the curate cannot hold his own in the world, and makes no effort to sustain himself against the Martians. The narrator takes it upon himself to rescue the curate from the roadside, but is quickly trapped for 2 weeks with the man when the fifth cylinder crashes in the vicinity of the house they hide within. During this time the curate suffers wild mood swings, between claims that God has forsaken humanity, to arguing about the little food left within the house for them to share (often hoarding the food and exponentially over-eating). For all intents and purposes, the reader is made away that during this period, the curate stays alive only due to the actions of the narrator. But the narrator is hardly benevolent. The narrator is not ignorant of these harsh actions - in fact, he calls upon the reader to forgive his rash behavior and struggles with the curate. As the weeks go by, the narrator finds himself getting into physical conflict with the curate. Perhaps these physical tests of strength between the two characters is one of the clearest examples of Wells's writings reflecting social Darwinism. Just as two animals fight over food and survival against the greater threat of predators, so does the narrator and the curate wrestle one another to exhaustion. The fighting between the two characters culminates eventually in the narrator's attempted murder of the curate with the hilt of a kitchen knife, thwarted at the last second by the abduction of the curate by the neighboring Martians. While the narrator did treat the curate harshly, Wells clearly exposes the narrator as the stronger willed and stronger built of the two men. In essence, the lack of consequences against the narrator, and in fact his continued survival, seems almost a implicit endorsement of the narrator's prowess, and therefore, an endorsement of the process of natural selection applied to man.

Reflection: War of the Worlds class

It's a little odd, and perhaps slightly funny, that my thoughts on Anglocentric science fiction inevitably fall back to Doctor Who. But I thought a great deal about it during our discussion of War of the Worlds, particularly regarding the question of which race, the humans or the Martians, were more monstrous, analytical, etc. There is an episode of the Doctor Who revival entitled "The Christmas Invasion," during which an alien race named the Sycorax appears in an organic-looking ship above the surface of the planet Earth on Christmas Eve. Of course, as it is Doctor Who, the British are the very first to come into contact with this alien race, who holds one third of the world hostage, poised on the roofs by virtue of something called "blood control."

What is really, genuinely interesting, however, is that, at the culmination of this episode is xenocide. The Doctor, the Time Lord defender of Earth (and more particularly, Great Britain), has defeated the Sycorax in honorable combat, and they have agreed to leave. The Prime Minister has other plans, and gives the orders for their wholesale destruction, blasting the alien ship out of the sky under the excuse of planetary defense. The first, definitive alien contact, broadcast across the entire world, ends with that race's elimination. Mind you, in much the same way that, in War of the Worlds, the Martians start by killing off people, so do the Sycorax. They have, however, by the end of the episode reached enough of an impasse to agree to leave, and never return. It is the Doctor himself who pinpoints the terrifying problem of humanity's obsession with its own survival: "I gave them the wrong warning. I should have told them to run, as fast as they can. Run and hide, because the monsters are coming - the human race."

The Martians in War of the Worlds are defeated in much the same way as the Native Americans of Latin America were in the 1500s, through diseases to which they have no immunity. And yet the humans take this victory into themselves, the very fact of their survival seen as triumph. Throughout the book there is this sense of the Martians versus humanity, and when the Martians are dead humanity seems to glory in its own survival. "By the toll of a billion deaths man has bought his birthright of the earth," the narrator says, "and it is his against all comers; it would still be his were the Martians ten times as mighty as they are. For neither do men live nor die in vain." This passage shows, in my mind, the same dangerous ethnocentric tendency that forces Doctor Who's Prime Minister to destroy the Sycorax: humanity above all else, and the destruction of a species reckoned less than the survival of our own.

A reflection on the resistance question

Yesterday I was greatly disappointed when class ended and our discussion could not continue or branch out onto other subjects. One comment I wanted to make in class was that there is a scene in the first Terminator film that almost seems to directly challenge the artilleryman’s resistance plan. In this scene the protagonist returns from fighting cold and ruthless machines to a dingy sewer like bunker. Unlike the artilleryman’s hypothetical sewer, however, the sewer in the film is filled with the old, the desperate and mischievous children. The women that the protagonist encounters in the sewer and in battle are portrayed as heroic warriors rather than the fragile creatures that the artilleryman makes many women out to be. I believe the way Cameron filmed this scene was to show that humans have an inner strength and common bond, and this is what makes them unique and strong. If the Resistance was cold and rational, they would shun all those who couldn’t serve and were a waste of resources. However, it does not. If the Resistance had, it would be no different than the machines. The same would go for the artilleryman’s resistance. Should it have cast out the “unfit” and let the Martians slay innocent people as an act of appeasement, it would be just as ruthless as the Martians. In the Terminator series, it is through unity, ingenuity and bravery that the humans finally defeat the machines. This is a reflection of the human condition: with a capacity for evil and self preservation humans also have a capacity for love and selflessness. In the end, who would you rather be with: the artilleryman’s emotionless resistance or the Thunder Child’s selfless crew that destroyed two Martian tripods and saved countless lives?

Substantive on "The War of the Worlds"

Although to some The War of the Worlds brings with it the image of a campy alien invasion or B rated horror, Wells’ novel is deserving of the title of classic and is flooded with sociopolitical commentary. For one, the novel reflects Darwinian ideas that were controversial during the era the novel was written. This is seen when both the red weed and the Martians succumb to Earth’s microscopic organisms, as well as when the red weed smothers and overtakes much of the plant life it encounters as it has no natural competitors. Wells’ most poignant praise of Darwinism is when he states that humanity had earned its’ command over earth with the billions of lives lost to diseases and sicknesses. He also suggests that the Martians have existed longer than humans and therefore have more evolved intellects. In this way Wells is using science fiction to mask his support for Darwinism, which at the time was anathema to Victorian society and Christianity. Besides this, Wells uses his novel to reflect growing concerns of war in Europe by using the Martian invasion as an allegory for an invasion by another European foe. Perhaps the coldness and inhumanity of the Martians makes The War of the Worlds a piece of propaganda in a sense.
The way the narrator describes the “vastness” and “coolness” of the Martian intellect in The War of the Worlds leads to the question of what future mentalities will be characterized by. Will future thought processes entail a Vulcan like stoicism and be characterized by cold rationality, or are empathy and caring necessary for a civilization to advance? On the other hand, could an ideal mentality be prescribed to another species? Could certain concepts even be understood between different species? For example, would a welfare state work for the Martians that must feed off other creatures and reproduce like plants? Would the idea of “right to life” be an alien concept to certain extraterrestrials? Such conundrums led to the question of what interspecies diplomacy will entail and whether or not a failure to communicate will lead to future wars between worlds.

What is science fiction?

In class the topic of what defines science fiction was discussed, resulting in a variety of diverse opinions. Although the definition of science fiction is limited in scope, science fiction has become in today’s society a generic term for almost any media with spaceships, a futuristic setting, extra-terrestrial aliens or artificial beings. Examples of this overextension of the penumbra of science fiction would include films in the Star Wars franchise as well as the Mass Effect game series. Despite being viewed as prime examples of science fiction by the general public, these works would actually fall under the category of “space opera” or “space fantasy.” If general themes cannot be used to describe science fiction, then what can? In class I proposed that science fiction was separated from other forms of fiction in that the fantastical elements in the story can be understood with a “pretense of a rational, or perhaps pseudo-realistic or scientific, explanation.” This is opposed to a supernatural or mystical explanation that might be used in fantasy work. I used the phrase “pretense” because although an explanation might sound sound when coming out of Captain Picard’s mouth, it does not necessarily mean that it would stand up to scientific tests. Rather, as Professor Jackson stated, the explanation must instead fit within the “consistent framework” of the work. Beyond this it is very hard to limit the scope of science fiction. For example, it would be wrong to say that aliens are necessary for science fiction when there are works such as I, Robot. There does not even have to be a futuristic setting (i.e. Eifelheim). Perhaps there will never be one true definition of science fiction. For now, the general public will probably view anything with an alien or a robot as science fiction, giving support to Mark C. Glassy’s quote: “science fiction is like pornography… you don't know what it is, but you know it when you see it.”
Another point raised in class was that science fiction often relates to the human experience or condition. I would also argue that science fiction media are often used as a social and political allegory. For example, Cameron’s Aliens and Terminator 2 reflect the dangers of the military industrial complex and technophobia. Avatar, Cameron’s most recent feat, is seen to reflect growing concerns over ecological damage done by humans and disrespect for indigenous cultures. War of the World is supposedly part of a trend of stories in England during the turn of the 20th century that reflected a fear of a German invasion. In the novel it is interesting to see that England is the only confirmed country to be attacked and that France came to its’ aid after the invasion, reflecting these two nations’ alliance during WWI. Science fiction is somewhat ideal for allegories as it enables authors to entertain readers with original concepts while making social and political commentary behind a protective veil of figurative allusions.

Substantive: War of the Worlds

Wells' War of the Worlds marks the early age of science fiction. In his time, Wells' only true contemporary was an aging Jules Verne. Even so, Wells wrote only a limited selection of science fiction, focusing on the genre only in his early career. But while Wells, perhaps unintentionally, became known as a timeless author, his works show a clear reflection of the era they were written in. The value of this particular tale lies in Wells' dedication to his realistic created scenario, and the applicability of the themes drawn from this created "disaster of all disasters".

War of the Worlds and Colonialism

War of the Worlds may seem to immediately strike the reader as pure invasion literature. Aliens invade and figuratively (and literally) stomp on humanity, creating a story rife with possibilities. The entertainment value from such a story is no doubt high, but if prompted, Wells' story offers up plenty fine points for the reader to chew on far after the Martians succumb to their inevitable end. Of course the most notable point of the plot is its setting. Wells, drawing from his own current residence, set the Martian invasion in what would be at the time "suburban" England. His characters darted around streets that he knew himself. But besides making this a personal narrative, Wells' choice of England as the site for invasion rings of a certain karma at work. With respect to the work's timing, War of the Worlds is written just before the turn of the 19th century, a century which, among other things, was the hey-day of British colonialism. It's difficult to avoid drawing a clear line from the atrocities committed upon the colonies of Britian by the British army to the atrocities committed by the Martians upon the English people. While I don't believe Wells reveled in the thought of his own people dying and suffering under the Martians, his characterization of the people of the countryside and the Martians certainly withstand comparison to actions they might have taken faced with native peoples. This kind of characterization is found throughout the first portion of the story, before the Martians begin wrecking havoc upon the country, where men and women from around the country side come visit the first Martian cylinder. In general, those visiting treat the object with disrespect, going as far as setting up food stands next to the crash site. One can imagine the same actions witnessed on the shores of Africa, with well-to-do citizens making a show out of the local natives. But Wells takes this and flips the scenario completely on the head - the Martians begin subjugating those who have done the subjugation. Again, this rings of a certain "divine retribution". Wells very well could have allowed other cylinders to fall across the globe and still have written the exact same novel. But he very specifically withheld invasion from the rest of the world, instead choosing for the Martians to only attack England. Certainly other countries at the time were just as guilty of rampant colonialism, but perhaps the actions of Great Britain were close and most easily drawn upon for Wells. Regardless, Wells effectively plays his plot out in a way which reflects the actions of colonial Britain back upon itself.

War of the Worlds and the Horror of Warfare

Although his main character is never named, the narrator of War of the Worlds tells his tale through very personal journalistic prose, as if writing the story for a local newspaper. Wells himself at the time had very similar inclinations to his narrator, as he often wrote accessible scientific and journalism pieces himself during this time. The style chosen for War of the Worlds, although somewhat lacking the passion of a direct first person experience (the story is a retelling of the events), emphasizes the realness and aids the reader in suspension of disbelief. Perhaps it is this style that made Wells' story so easily converted into a radio drama which shocked the US in 1938. But it was the realistic horror of war, and the description of the burnt landscape of the English country side, that truly marks Wells effective story writing and predictive ability. Written in 1898, 16 years before the outbreak of World War I, Wells weaves his storyline in a way which frighteningly resembles the wartorn countries during the Great War. The destroyed houses, burnt landscape, consistent gun fire, and general panic of the people all closely resemble scenes from the total war that was WWI. In fact, the Martian's own weapons resemble those used in the war: the heat ray can be compared to the flame thrower, while the black gas can be compared to the poisonous gas used on the battlefield. The style in which the Martians waged war, using powerful vehicular weapons, wasn't even fully realized until the Second World War (also having a striking resemblance to Wells' destroyed countryside). Wells accomplished in his narrative what few science fiction authors have been capable of: an accurate prediction of the future. Unfortunately for Wells, his prediction falls short at the end of the story. Wars are not simply ended on an instant, and these ends are entirely determined by humans.

War of the Worlds

The most interesting and, in my mind, important thing about War of the Worlds is not its presence as a seminal work of science fiction, but why it is there in the first place. Upon first glance, this looks like any other now-overdone alien invasion story--until one glances at the publishing date and realizes that, on the contrary, the whole point of this book is that it was among the very first of its kind. Wells was not fighting the cliches of bug-eyed monsters and little green men. He was not concerned with explaining why the Martians invaded (though it is obliquely suggested that, as they somehow live off of the blood of other living organisms, that it was for reasons of sustenance), but discussing the all-consuming terror that their invasion warranted. London (and the rest of the British Isles, but this is only brought up near the end) is invaded, and the world thrown into chaos.

As Wells points out in his epilogue, "We have learned now that we cannot regard this planet as being fenced in and a secure abiding-place for Man...the broadening of men's views that has resulted can scarcely be exaggerated. Before the cylinder fell there was a general persuasion that through all the deep of space no life existed beyond the pretty surface of our minute sphere." This goes back to last week's discussion re: the merits of science fiction as a genre. Even here, even this early, before science fiction was even coined as a term, Wells is using his writing to postulate the effects of an alien invasion on a very insular human race, and suggests that it would encourage space travel and eventual colonization. Wells contends that this horrible event, an alien attack that has destroyed families, homes, and cities, is useful in drawing humanity out of its complacency and into a position of universal understanding.

Another interesting question that Wells raises (perhaps unintentionally) has to do with Worlds's treatment of religion. Both the narrator and his brother spend a considerable time in the book praying, and, when the Martians have died, the narrator comments that he "believed that the destruction of Sennacherib had been repeated, that God had repented, that the Angel of Death had slain them in the night." Sennacherib, I believe, refers to the deaths of the nearly two hundred thousand Assyrians marching toward Jerusalem during the time of the Assyrian empire; the event was considered, for all intents and purposes, a deus ex machina. These references to God and religion in the face of alien invasion raise the question: if we are created in God's image, how does the focal point of religious belief and doctrine change when the added element of life on other planets is introduced? In this case, much as in the case of the Assyrians, the Martians are brought down by the Angel of Death--in the form of terrestrial bacteria to which they have no immunity--thus affirming a very ethnocentric view of religion.

Reflection: What is science fiction?

In Orson Scott Card’s book How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy, he spends quite a bit of time on this subject. He does, however, describe it chiefly as a publishing issue—defining science fiction versus fantasy. “A rustic setting,” he says, “always suggests fantasy; to suggest science fiction, you need sheet metal and plastic. You need rivets” (Card, 4). So it is better, perhaps, to start out with defining what is “speculative fiction” as terminology and narrow it down from there.


To me, speculative fiction is about trying to explain the world through a different lens. In a sense, it is about taking something contemporary and running with it. For example: Frank Herbert’s Dune takes the notion of a struggle for resources and exaggerates it to develop an entire galactic empire locked in a battle over spice. The native peoples of the planet Arrakis must sacrifice their desire for a moisturized world in order to keep the sandworms, the source of the spice, alive, and therefore maintain the galactic economy. In doing so Herbert is able to depict the contemporary environmental issues facing our world today, particularly regarding oil consumption and the destruction of natural habitats.


Dune does not have that many rivets. It is as much caught up in the myth and legend of the story as it is in the spaceships and biological science. Even though Herbert has come out with saying that “the scarce water of Dune is an exact analog of oil scarcity” (Genesis of Dune) the story also addresses the making of a myth and a legend. So what precisely separates Dune from, for instance, Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast?


There is something about fantasy, I feel that, in contrast, to science fiction, is fundamentally organic. This is probably what Card means when he talks about rivets. Fantasy does not have, as science fiction does, a desire to explain itself in the same way. I do not, from a first reading of Titus Groan, have any idea why, where, or how the castle of Gormenghast exists. I do not have any idea how the One Ring of Tolkein fame was made, or how Sauron derives power from it. I do, however, know that the Bene Gesserit in Dune derive their witch-like power from intense training, combined later with effects from the spice melange. I can talk, with relative ease, about the concept of psychohistory in Foundation as a mathematical and sociological phenomenon as opposed to a force of prophecy.


We have a tendency to get caught up in the categorizing of things. It is a human trait, and hardly surprising. In this case, the most important thing you can say about science fiction, as a category, is not the presence of rivets or sheet metal or plastic, but the presence of speculative thought made concrete in fiction. Science fiction as a genre enables us to look and think critically at our world but placing its problems in another.

Reflection: What is Science Fiction?

Science fiction is a broad genre that pervades through most of modern media and culture. Born in the late 19th century and booming within a large portion of the 20th century, this relatively new form of artistic expression lacks the immediate recognition as art that other older genres posses. Simultaneously defined as a realm of great literary fiction and the current residence of bad TV B-movies, the genre struggles to find a definitive voice among the conflicting quality of works. While other genres posses the same quandary of works polar opposite in quality, they retain a certain immunity in the scholar's eye. The romantic genre is often stuck between the poorly written love novel and William Shakespeare's "Romeo and Juliet", but rarely is the genre written off completely in terms of an academic or literary study. However, academic banishment seems to be the pervasive case with science fiction, often lumped together with fantasy as drivel for unrealistic young men. Yet the fantastical imagery that influences scholars to dismiss the genre is the aspect of science fiction which makes it worth academic analysis. Science fiction has an inextricable link to humanity and the current human condition; it is a bridge between the fantastic and the real.

"My definition of fantasy is something which we would like to happen but it can't in the real world, and science fiction is something which we would like to happen and it probably will." - Arthur C. Clarke

In one of his final interviews before his death in 2008, Arthur C. Clarke explained to futurist Jose Cordeiro his conception of science fiction as a genre. In many ways, Clarke's definition strikes at the heart of what it means to write true science fiction. Clarke's statement also addresses directly the emerging meta-genre of "sci-fi/fantasy" that publishers have seen fit to promote. In the case of both science fiction and fantasy, Clarke underpins both genres with a desire to be something, or to witness some fantastical event. Yet his words "can't" and "can" cut the genres along a very distinct line. While the formation of the Fellowship in Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings may represent a human desire (the joining of nations and wills against a greater evil), it is not something humanity can realistically grasp within its hands. Nine individuals cannot realistically battle against a purely evil army in hope of destroying a magical ring. Within this distinction lies the gap between the genres. Tolkien himself wrote that his Middle Earth was not to be an analogous work; it was to be a world in itself, internally consistent, meant to entertain the reader. In essence, fantasy represents an element of escapism; a retreat to a world unbound from natural laws.

Science fiction shares elements of removal from the realistic with fantasy, but it is hardly complete, and serves a vastly different purpose. The genre plucks at the fabric of reality, removing elements in some areas, adding elements to other areas. This modification may be gentle, or it can be extreme. While science fiction avoids pure escapism through the retention of large portions of the human universe, the genre consists of a wide gray-scale of modifications to the real universe. Science fiction closest to the real world is often considered "hard" science fiction, while stories far away from reality are sometimes referred to as "space opera" or "space fantasy". However, the maintenance of this link to human experience is the most pertinent element to academic study of the genre. The modification of the universe, and the removal from the realistic, serves to modify and add upon that link to humanity. Therefore, while no one reader can truly 100% identify with a character from science fiction, the presence of the modified universe, and its elements used to drive the story, enrich the readers experience beyond what any typical setting could express. In essence, science fiction better expresses its elements and themes better because of its modification of reality, and in some cases, is only able to express these elements and themes in a modified universe. Science fiction is present because it cannot be told in any other manner.