Reflection: The Martian Chronicles

I wanted to start off this post with a quote. I shamelessly admit that I was browsing the Wikipedia page for The Martian Chronicles when I stumbled upon a brief sentence written by Carl Sagan.

"Mars has become a kind of mythic arena onto which we have projected our Earthly hopes and fears."

I love this sentence, not just because it captures so well the feelings I get from The Martian Chronicles, but because it captures what I'll call the pioneer spirit. In class we spoke a lot about how Mars mimics the western United States and the concept of manifest destiny. I completely agree with this - Morgan's post talks about this concept a little bit more in-depth. But I think it's worth taking a step back. Sagan says that Mars became a place where we can project our hope and fears. And in many ways, the Old West was like that too. But there's more - in England, when the first men and women were leaving for the New World, they too projected their hopes and fears upon the new land. In fact, there's always been that kind of projection onto a new land, the sense and wonder and fear of the land more under control of the natural world than it is the human world. It's the lack of control of a new land that makes that feel that fear, but the unknown that draws us to it. Much of it may simply be our ability to project onto the land our more basal desires. That kind of projection takes a huge role in Bradbury's work - it's not just evident in plot, but in the actual character of the Martians.

I think what Bradbury wants to say is very much the antithesis to what Schmitt sees as the relationship between peoples of different lands. Bradbury, in his very fuzzy manner, tells us that no, boundaries are not hard entities which are not meant to be crossed. They instead serve only as reminders that the land you step on is not yours, that others have treaded on the same patch of ground. Bradbury doesn't answer whether or not the land will ever actually belong to those who come from far away searching for a new life. Certainly there may be laws and provisions which hand the land over to the new people, but how important are those laws when faced with the individual interactions people have there? Bradbury's work is so very different than Schmitt even more because there isn't any sense of a higher ruler, one to distinguish friend from enemy, at least in a situation like this. It is up to the individual, and even then it's not clear what the relationship between the invader and the invaded is. At the end of his work, Bradbury shows us that the few Earthlings left on Mars have BECOME the Martians, in an ironic turn. Whether or not this is a boon to Mars, or a sad day, is yet again not up to the Martians.

Reflection: The Martian Chronicles

I mentioned in my last post that it struck me as rather odd that pretty much everyone on Mars who wasn't Martian was American. Quite obviously so. Knowing, of course, that it's a Bradbury book, and knowing some of Bradbury's inclinations when idealizing midwestern America (and colored by the fact that I'm rereading Something Wicked This Way Comes), I wasn't surprised that it was an explicitly American Bradbury book, but it made me uncomfortable that a book that was so clearly about colonization of another planet didn't have this whole, united Earth feel. In Ender's Game we get Armenians, the Dutch, French, Algerians, etc., but I realized about halfway through the class on Thursday that what Bradbury's really trying to get at in The Martian Chronicles is the most American of values: the American Dream.

That's right, I capitalized it. Because that's how we idealize it in our culture, isn't it? And when Spender's going on his rant that we didn't put a hot dog stand at Karnak because it wasn't economically feasible, it struck me that we will, however, basically eradicate a mountain in the Black Hills of South Dakota so that people can look at faces of presidents etched in stone. Most of the people who leave Earth in this book to get to Mars are looking for a New Start, a New Way of Life, Freedom, the Opportunity to Succeed...What does that sound like? I'm sure we'll get more into this while reading Manifest Destiny, but I also noticed that we kept accidentally inserting the word "smallpox" into our conversation about the Martians, even though they hypothetically died of chicken pox. Thank you, American history.

Telepathy, phantoms and the limitless differences of alien life

I’d like to address Yaniv’s substantive on the Martian Chronicles and add some additional commentary of my own. For one, because we have not experienced any other sentient beings, humanity’s conception of what other aliens could resemble is somewhat two dimensional. Our conception of aliens consists mainly of humanoids who fail to deviate far from human physiology. Antagonistic aliens are also often portrayed as insect-like and aesthetically unappealing. However, humans fail to realize that what is aesthetic is relative and subjective. An alien with red eyes and fangs is just as likely to be benevolent as an oversexed feminine humanoid. This form of thinking also applies to the natural processes of aliens. What may be unthinkable on Earth may be the norm on other planets. For example, on an alien planet water might be acidic to life forms that have evolved to survive in other liquids. I’d like to bring this logic to the Martian’s phantoms and telepathy. In one of the vignettes the Martians were able to take shapes to impersonate humans in order to kill one of the expeditions. Shapeshifting may simply be an evolved form of a chameleon’s ability to change colors. Who are we to say what millions of years of evolution could do? How the Martians could access these memories is another question. I would hypothesize that it was based in the Martians innate telepathic abilities. Telepathy is not a farfetched concept. The human body is controlled by electrical impulses from the brain and generates its’ own energy aura. Studies have shown that intense emotions, concentration or even meditation can greatly affect and augment the human body’s electrical composition. Just as different species have different organs to see various spectrums of light, why cannot an alien have an organ that enables it to manipulate different forms of energy? In addition to this, if energy can be used to control a body, could it not also be used to manipulate the mind? On a side note, if you wish to read about energy control of the body, you can google research on the creation of cybernetic animals with chips that release manipulating electrical impulses. Concerning the phantoms, if the body has an energy aura and the Martians have the ability to control forms of energy, is it not possible that even after the physical body has been destroyed that the Martians could exist in another form? Star Trek also uses the explanation of energy as the rationale behind telepathy. In the series telepathy is based on psionic fields, which are a different “spectrum of energy” that only certain species can control. On the subject of the lack of a Martian government, there is a reference in one vignette to the fact that some of the Martians weapons were left over from long ago wars. Perhaps the Martians had evolved socially to the point where a state was not necessary. On the subject of why the Martians attacked, the first attack was based on the fear of infidelity… thereby making it a crime of passion and perhaps not based in rationality. The second attack was based on misunderstanding. Concerning the third, I am not certain but I believe the Martians’ ability of precognition may have made them realize that death, from the plague, was coming and that they should fight back.

Substantive: The Martian Chronicles

The Martian Chronicles stands in my mind as one of the most fascinating studies of alien existence and colonization. It is replete with that nostalgic charm for which Bradbury is so famed, but while certain aspects of this book could be considered Dandelion Wine-light, there is so much more to it than a young boy’s fantasy turned science fiction novel. The very first time we meet the Martians, they are, with a few embellishments, essentially very close to human. Ylla is trapped in an unhappy marriage, they talk of socializing with the neighbors, going to the city, etc. Her husband’s reaction to her dreams of the arriving Earthmen is to react jealously and kill them.

In contrast to something like Speaker, where we explicitly get the notion of This species is not human and cannot be treated as such beaten over our heads, the nature of the Martians and Earthling colonialism is significantly less cut-and-dry. For instance, in the story where the Second Expedition arrives on Mars, the Martians assume they are mentally ill or telepathic hallucinations, and eventually wind up shooting them in apparent self-defense. Also in the Third Expedition, when the Americans are essentially lured into what they see as their childhood homes, only to be murdered and buried. While these are both acts of self-defense (and at least in the first case an argument can be made for a cultural idiom in which telepathic hallucination is an aberration but part of society), the human beings in both cases are not explicit threats, only potential ones. While we can discuss the impending imperialism of this arrival as a terrifying reality, the fact of the matter is that the Martians, at least in the earlier parts of the book, exhibit a frightening method of “shoot first, ask questions later” and in fact lure the Earthlings to their deaths. This involves deliberation, which is, at least in the United States, a requisite for first-degree murder.

And yet, we find later that the Martians have essentially been wiped out, turned into ghosts, by Earthborn illnesses, much in the way of War of the Worlds—and yet instead of the odd sense of relief and triumph that inhabits the final chapters of Wells, we get the sense of this incredible, majestic civilization suddenly wiped out, implying that Earthling and American imperialism—and does it strike anyone else as peculiar that all these settlers seem to be American?—ruins everything beautiful. It reminded, poignantly, of Watchmen (particularly the graphic novel, but the film adaptation is mostly faithful to this), when Dr. Manhattan, standing on the surface of Mars, refuses Laurie’s insistence on the merits of human life. Please forgive that this is from the movie, as I have currently lent out my copy of the book:

"In my opinion, the existence of life is a highly overrated phenomenon. Just look around you. Mars gets along perfectly well without so much as a microorganism. Here, it's a constantly changing topographical map flowing and shifting around the pole in ripples ten thousand years wide. So tell me: how would all of this be greatly improved by an oil pipeline?"

The Mars in which the Martians once lived is now exquisitely desolate and empty. And then in come these settlers, pioneers, to turn everything into Earth 2.0. And then, in the end, everybody goes back to Earth due to the impending nuclear war, and now Mars, which once had a thriving civilization, is almost completely empty.

The Martian Chronicles: Cyborgs, Colonies, and Miscommunication

The Martian Chronicles raises a number of questions, not just about contact with extraterrestrials, but sentience, colonization, communication and human nature itself. The cyborgs in the chronicles are able to mimic a human personality almost flawlessly. However, some of them are also self aware that they are machines, such as the wife and children of the crewman, thereby making them independent of their programming. Does this level of consciousness make an entity sentient? Would a cyborg technically be an individual like you or I? If so, would cyborgs have the same rights as a living being? Would it be ethical to force thinking rational beings to do work? If we did, due to their artificial intelligence and mechanical strength, cyborgs would be very difficult to control or fight. It is even difficult to beat an AI opponent In Mario Tennis... imagine what a machine bread for war could do. Although cyborgs could be programmed into submissiveness, this cannot be achieved without compromising their creativity and effectiveness. Eventually enslavement might lead to a violent uprising such as in Battlestar Galactica or Mass Effect. This is especially because we would most likely use machines for nefarious purposes such as war and sexual pleasure; as we do today, though on a limited scale. Based on the fickle and often self destructive nature of humans, we may also be considered more of a liability than an ally.
One of the more loaded vignettes that intrigued me was “Way in the Middle of the Air.” It seems consistent with history that the African Americans would jouney to Mars as most oppressed minorities seem to be the vanguard of colonies. Even with the foundation of American we can see a number of religious and ethnic minorities fleeing to the new world.This tend proceeded even to the turn of the 20th Century, when there was an endless stream of boats carrying oppressed peoples to America. I also enjoyed and commend Bradbury’s commentary on racial discrimination in the South even before the issue became prevalent in American media. One story that I was doubtful about though was the one in which humans return from Mars to Earth in order to aid during a catastrophic atomic war. I feel that most people would not risk their families and personal security to go boldly into an unknown situation. It also seems illogical, though noble, to return to a place where you just fled from to confront the issue you were fleeing. I do believe that some people would return though to aid their fellow humans, but not humanity as a whole. To make a modern day comparison, Jewish people return to Israel, despite its’ dangers, in order to reclaim their heritage and strengthen the Israeli community. I do agree with Bradbury, though, that an object such as a metallic tube might be misconstrued as a weapon to either humans or aliens and lead to violence. In an alien culture a gun shaped object might actually have no meaning or perhaps even a positive one, such as a medicine dispenser. However, an object as innocent as a baseball may be reminiscent of a grenade to another species. This makes inter-species communication extremely delicate and complex.

Gender and LGBT themes in Science Fiction

Sexuality... the final frontier. Sexuality and gender rights are something humanity grapples with to this day. Of course you may say to yourself that in America women have been emancipated and homosexuals are free to do whatever and whomever they like. Granted the US is in a better state than Saudi Arabia where homosexuals are executed or in parts of Africa where girls have their genitals mutilated. However, America has not come as far as it could have. Only a few years ago a woman was fired by a Christian fundamentalist organization for… being a woman. Only seven years ago were homosexual acts banned in US states. Despite recent legal gains, there still remain stigmas and discrimination that cannot be removed by any law. Daily women are halted by the class ceiling or homosexuals are disowned by their families. If this is us today, where will we be in the future, and what does science fiction predict?
A great deal of science fiction portrays gender equality in the future. In the game Mass Effect the character’s crews’ professional soldier is a female that has very feminine characteristics. If the player chooses a female character their avatar is treated with the same respect as a male character. In Mass Effect 2 there are multiple strong female characters in the game who exhibit feminine characteristics and who are extremely courageous and have exceptional martial prowess. Star Trek was very influential in breaking gender stereotypes by having strong female characters, such as Uhura, who was one of the black female characters on television. The Next Generation continues this trend by having three strong female main characters, including Tasha Yar as security chief. This leads to the question of whether humanity will gradually evolve to be gender blind and continue to gradually progress throughout the centuries? Or will the changing nature of warfare allow women a greater role in conflicts? This is not to say that women cannot perform as well as men. I personally believe that if a woman wishes to fight in a conflict, she should be able to. However, it is a general conception that females should not fight in modern wars. On the other hand, there are works such as “The Handmaiden’s Tale,” which although a feministpiece, portrays a totalitarian world where traditional values suppress women in a disaster stricken world. Would the need to reproduce for war, for survival, or to colonize new worlds abet the repression of women in the future?
LGBT equality seems to be less touched upon in mainstream science fiction, although there are subgenres of homosexual science fiction. Star Trek, although a forerunner in women rights and multiculturalism, shied away from LGBT issues. However, there has was one episode of Deep Space Nine that featured a female marriage and kiss. Mass Effect on the other hand was banned in multiple nations for having a lesbian sex scene between a human and a feminine alien. These examples seem to reflect the common belief in Western society that lesbianism is more acceptable than homosexuality in males. One show that has broken barriers is Torchwood, the characters of which are mainly bisexual or omnisexual. The show is famous for a passionate kiss between the main protagonist and a character played by James Marsters, who was Spike in Buffy the Vampire Slayer. As we encounter other species, we may find that they have four genders or reproduce in a way completely unlike ours. Perhaps this will open humanity’s eyes to new horizons of acceptance.

Substantive: The Martian Chronicles

Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles isn’t like anything we’ve read so far in the semester. It is as much poetry as it is science fiction. Whether or not you can actually qualify it in the same genre as something like “Star Trek” would be an intellectual endeavor. The first word that comes to my mind upon finishing The Martian Chronicles is lyrical. The book reads like a funeral dirge for humanity; at no point do you feel hope for our species, there is no sense of direction or conquest. The Martian Chronicles offers no positive feelings about what humanity has done. It is a sad book about humanity, and although short, speaks volumes about the kind of world we’ve made for ourselves.

Within the context of the “end of humanity” which Bradbury lies out is the encounters with the Martians. The Martians are incredibly ethereal, with bronze skin and golden eyes. Their lifestyle is only really revealed in the first chapters of the book, described to be a life more along the lines of a world of Greek-like passiveness, with individuals who cherish philosophy and the arts. The Martians also have the gift of telepathy and projection, far removed from what humans on Mars actually understand (although characters throughout the book stumble upon this almost aspect of the Martians). The use of telepathy by the Martians is probably the most horrifying aspect of the book. In no way does humanity stand a chance against the Martians, as minds are always being manipulated. It forces the characters, and the reader, to ask just what’s real around them. Telepathy even seems to be the downfall of the Martians themselves - with scores seeming to go insane with the notion that they’re “from Earth”, leading them to produce elaborate psychotic projections. While the Martians are physically deceptively human, their minds and culture are incredibly alien.

This being my first read-through of The Martian Chronicles, I wasn’t exactly expecting Bradbury’s very philosophical approach to humanity and aliens. In many ways, I suspect that Bradbury never intended to write a book about humanity’s contact with Martians. The book doesn’t even resemble our previous books; there seemingly hardly any contact between humans and Martians, and the humans never act in direct ways to attempt to conquer the Martians. Yet, in a most definite sense, humanity does conquer Mars, sending rocket after rocket to the red planet. The first rockets sent were the most poignant examples of just how incompatible our two species were. The narrative only hints at the fate of the first rocket, and shows us in explicit details the death of the second expedition, and in even greater detail the fate of the third. In each case, the death of the humans was due to the effects of the telepathy. The second case was definitely more clear-cut than the third, where in the third we could only guess if the Martians actually had any foul intentions. But by the fourth expedition, Mars was no longer the planet of the Martians, humanity had begun colonization, and the Martians retreated completely.

So, what does Bradbury’s story tell us about humanity and the other? Is Bradbury’s “other” so beyond our comprehension that the ruins of their civilization just mean nothing to us? It’s had to comprehend a humanity quite like Bradbury’s, with a complete lack of fear and disregard for aliens. Bradbury’s humanity didn’t even give much of an attempt to understand Martian society (as predicted by Spender). Perhaps Bradbury’s point shines through in the final story of his book. As one of the last families of humanity makes its new home on Mars, they stare down into the pool, recognizing that they now are the Martians. And Earth’s civilization, too, has died because of its actions. Perhaps Martians and humans are more similar than we might imagine.

Reflection: Speaker for the Dead

Ah, snowpocalypse, how you've upset the balance of the universe. Unfortunately, with the advent of the end of the world via snow, we weren't able to attend class this past Thursday for an in-depth discussion of Orson Scott Card's Speaker for the Dead. But I can't let this stop me! So, onward and upward to analysis of Speaker.

One prime aspect of Speaker I wanted to comment on (in class next time, hopefully) is the nature of community that we see in Speaker. Card makes a note in his introduction that this isn't just the second Ender novel, it's much more than Ender's Game set out to be. We all know now the story of little Ender and his military battles, but Card took the aspect of community in his previous novel (Ender's "jeesh") and put it on steroids! Soft and cuddly "community" in an Ender novel? Yes! But maybe not so soft and cuddly, even in Speaker. Here we have the Novinha family, which is, to put it lightly, highly dysfunctional. Ender steps into a family where an abusive father's dead is being lamented, a brother and sister are within an inch of a love affair, and a other cast of other children including the religious fanatic, silent daughter, and the homicidal toddler. If you're reminded of historical fiction novels, or just regular vanilla fiction, I'm with you. This whole scenario sounds deeply similar to something that is NOT science fiction. Let's pull back a little further to the living situation of the town (colony really) of Lusitania. Surrounded by a gate, this small colony is self-sufficient in a world set against it (don't ask me what's on the cover, but it's definitely NOT Lusitania). No proper nutrients to be found, harsh natives, and few people make this essentially an alien old-west border town, run by Catholics.

So, yes, if we take away the relatively brief science fiction moments from the work, we can boil the story down to something very familiar. In fact, I can't help but jump off of Yaniv's post in comparison of this book to fellow "going native" plot lines. One of the foremost struggles the protagonist faces in these types of plots is his defection from his own community to another community entirely different from his home. This is where Speaker stands unique amongst these trite plots - it makes the native community weirder than we could ever imagine. If Card does one thing well with the piggies, it's the complete sense of unease associated with them, at least in the first half of the book. All we know is that if you do something unique with the piggies, they gut you completely. Death. Murder. No where in movies like Avatar do we actually have this deep sense of uncomfortableness with the natives. Card actualizes very well just HOW different an alien tribe can be from a human community. Yet there is no doubt that the piggies are a community all their own.

Does Ender, like other protagonists, join the piggie community and renounce his own? Hardly at all. In fact, Ender continually references how "humans have thrown me out". Clearly, he really isn't that much of a member of the Lusitania community, or even the human race for that matter. Which makes Ender the perfect candidate to resolve the differences between the piggies and the humans, without the ridiculous fanfare of Ender defecting to the piggies side. One of the most poignant scenes in the book is the making of the treaty under the Mother Tree. I can perfectly imagine Cameron's vision of the Mother Tree, seeing as though he included the concept right in Avatar. But Card writes an almost horrific Mother Tree, one filled with maggot-like piggies feeding off their mothers, emerging and draining the sap from this tree. It really isn't something that even Ender is comfortable with. And at that, the sterile females of the piggies (the "wives") are continually using cultural conventions (even insults!) that Ender cannot understand, and definitely does not facilitate. But this scene constructed by Card is poignant because it shows the capability of communication and reconciliation among communities that otherwise are completely alien. Ender doesn't need to defect to the piggies to show the worth of the piggies. In fact, Ender only shows strong human will and character completely disowned by movies like Avatar. And unlike Avatar, one community isn't obviously the better choice over the other. Card willingly shows the shades of grey between these two species, and does it without sacrificing originality.

Reflection: Speaker for the Dead

I know we didn't get a chance to discuss this book this week, and that makes writing an additional reflection on Speaker a little difficult. Also, having read the other two books (I don't rate anything after Children of the Mind as canon, and I barely count that) it's difficult for me to piece together what my ideas were about this book and what it was trying to say before I read the other ones. Still, I think the character that most distinctly fascinates me (as a feature of alien-human contact) is Jane.

We have a tendency to forget, reading this book (and Ender tends to forget as well) that Jane is not human. She looks human and acts human, within the context of her computer existence, as a means of facilitating communication with Ender. Her nature, and the way others treat her, reminds me greatly of what we were discussing while reading Concept of the Political--her power and abilities are so far above the realm of human experience, and so comprehensive, that there is no choice in the human-Jane relationship but to consider her a friend, because to consider her an enemy would be preposterous. She is the ansible, she dwells inside the philotic web, and as such everything that humankind is completely dependent on is dependent on her.

And yet when Ender switches off his comm, it hurts her. Deeply, on an emotional level. He does it as though chastening a naughty child, but as she has devoted so much of her attention and her understanding to Ender-as-father-figure, it's like losing contact with a parent. Losing part of herself. And though she recovers, eventually, time for her passes much differently than for humans, and by the time he switches it back on she has undergone the equivalent of a million years of suffering and recovery. Because Jane puts on this facade of humanity, Ender doesn't recognize, as he does with the Hive Queen, that she is alien or different, and that is a problem. If we perceive Jane as a person, and not merely as a computer program (and she is a person) then we must treat her as ramen or varelse because her thoughts and experiences are too different from ours to treat her as a framling.

Reflection:Concept of the Political

In class last week I was a member of the group that argued that humanity should not view an alien species as a political “other,” nor would it when an alien-human interaction actually happened. Personally, I do not agree that human politics is either defined by or confined to a “friend-enemy” dynamic. Nor do I believe in defining another entity, whether it be a religious minority or insect-like species, as an “other” no matter how foreign it may be. To demonize, antagonize and to generalize is to not only to limit oneself, but to prevent wondrous relationships. If I were to fall prey to stereotypes and believe everything I have heard about non-Caucasians and non-Americans, I would be friendless and a fraction of the person I am today. If I were even to view people who didn’t necessarily fall into mainstream society, such as my friends in the LGBT community, as “others” I would have deprived myself of life changing friendships. However, by being open-minded I have had interactions that have strengthened not only myself but others. It is good to be wary that some people might try be manipulative and antagonizing, because realistically many people are. However, many people are also altruistic and loving. To me, the risk of being manipulated is worth taking if it creates an opportunity for beneficial cooperation. It would be easy to ostracize the “others,” but in the end if you join a group that follows a “friend-enemy” dynamic, one day you will be enemy. Why do you think Mao, Stalin, and Hitler purged their ranks so many times? Do you think the stereotypical high school clique that maliciously gossips is based in fiction? My advice is to be around those who build you up, not those who bring down “others” and scapegoats. When aliens arrive it is very possible they will be hostile, but attempts to achieve friendship should be made as it is not only the moral choice, but because the fruits of cooperation are exponentially greater than those of atrocious wars and domination.
The question of whether or not humans would actually pursue a path of friendship is another question. Humanity’s history of colonialism, genocide and racism would indicate otherwise. I myself have questioned how far we have advanced in light of Darfur and Rwanda. However, humanity has gained a greater sense of objectivity and enlightenment; otherwise this discussion would not be taking place. The fact also remains that humanity is not uniform in mentality or societal values. Therefore, to say one single human response would occur is improbable. Personally, I would strive for peace… but would not be surprised if a ship hovering over DC was shot down. Such is the human condition.

Substantive: Speaker For the Dead

I believe The Speaker for the Dead, although greatly different from Ender’s Game, raises just as many questions about human nature and human-alien contact. One question the novel raises is whether or not humans would, or should, share technology with a less technologically developed species. Although we might not want competitors, aiding a species might lead to greater mutual cooperation and create a self sufficient ally. There are several problems with sharing techno logy though. For one, even normal technological development creates “moral lag.” Simply put, societies don’t develop norms about technology until decades after it has been invented. If we were to leap a species forward technologically by centuries it could be both devastating and dangerous. For example, if humans were gave piggies assault rifles after a few decades of technological aid, could they comprehend the implications of using such a weapon when they had trouble understanding that they had murdered the two xenologists. Besides this, I believe the some of the clergy’s view of the piggies as godless savages supports a statement that I made earlier that religious fanaticism would hinder inter-species communication. During a human-alien encounter, the more religious humans may view sentient aliens as soulless or simply animals, thereby making the aliens varelse and expendable. This is an underlying theme of the Halo series, where a theocratic alliance of aliens that views humans as demons and heretics. It is interesting in Speaker for the Dead that after the gate is opened that the clergy announce that there would be likely be attempts to convert the piggies. This attempt is very reminiscent to the treatment of the Native Americans. Interestingly enough Card wrote a novel about time travelers going back to 1492 in order to redeem Columbus by inoculating the native Americans against European diseases.
In some respects I believe that the piggies should have been quarantined. Unlike the war between the Buggers and the Humans, the piggies were a legitimate threat to all life in the universe, not simply to human territory. The Descolada the piggies carried would wipe out life on any planet it was released on. The piggies could actually utilize this as a form of unconventional warfare and any species, any army and any force would be woe to resist them. Although I am very supported for self-determination, this is a specific scenario where growth should be limited for the greater good, not just for one species but for all of those in the universe. To commit another xenocide, however, would be unnecessary if the piggies’ technological growth could be kept under control. Xenobiologists could also work on a cure to the Descolada in order to enable the piggies to expand and grow freely. Despite this, I believe it was naïve for Ender and the colonists to risk so much in order to modernize the piggies and I do not see how the information about the Descolada would ensure the safety of the colony. Rather, it would put it in greater peril.

Substantive: Speaker for the Dead

Ah, Speaker for the Dead. Is it really a sequel for Ender's Game? The story behind the book seems to give the reader a little doubt as to whether Ender actually belongs on Lusitania in the first place. Maybe Card just couldn't manage to have the book stand on its own without the complex character of Ender? But then again, Andrew Wiggin from Speaker is hardly the Andrew Wiggin from Ender's Game. We need to tackle the complex issues brought into Speaker that are derived from Ender separately from new themes and statements made by the book sans Ender and his past. But, at the same time, Ender's presence informs and illuminates the issues brought forth in Speaker. To do a complete analysis of themes of alien and the other in Card's second Ender novel, these two aspects need to be individually considered, and then in some ways, combined.

At the heart of Speaker is the piggies. The second alien species that humanity encounters isn't quite like the threat of the Buggers - the main difference lying in the actual ability to communicate easily with humans. At the same time, this ability may be even MORE threatening to humans. Consider the case of the Buggers, where absolutely no communication was possible between the two species. One could easily assemble a logical argument for the Bugger's extermination - there was no clear way to determine the threat the Buggers actually posed. But now, for the piggies, the situation has been completely thrown upon its head. Humanity CAN communicate, and CAN share information; total destruction seems to have been taken out of the equation. But really has it? As soon as humanity discovers the piggies, a fence is built around the human settlement. Suddenly, only a few humans (the zenologers) are capable of speaking with the piggies, and at that, the zenologers can't even reveal any essential information to the piggies regarding human technology. Essentially, communication is cut off willingly by the humans, in the name of preservation of the piggu culture. This, of course, is humanities reasonably explanation for such a cut, but is it simply wishing the best for the piggies? Card seems to be hinting at something far more sinister at work within the human conception of the alien.

One of Card's goals in Speaker is to characterize the cultural isolation the piggies see at the hands of the humans. IN the novel, the piggies explain to the humans that every night they sneak into the village, looking at human inventions, and trying to work out how humans do things. This, of course, is set against the attempts of the humans to completely cut themselves off from the piggies, and their assumption that they had the power to do so. In essence, Card characterizes the Lusitanians as having the audacity to believe themselves completely separated from the world of the piggies. It takes Ender, however, to reveal to the humans just how wrong they are about the piggies. It isn't that the humans want to protect piggy culture culture, it's that the humans want to prevent the piggies from rising to a level where they can compete with the humans for domain over the universe - they are afraid of sharing their worlds with the piggies, of the piggies "getting there first". Therefore, the gate around the colony really isn't to protect the piggy culture, its to keep the piggies from ever going beyond their primitive roots.

Substantive: Speaker for the Dead

I can't remember when I first read this book, but I remember liking it better than Ender's Game. I was, say, thirteen or so, eager to continue the series, and was, quite literally, blindsided by Speaker for the Dead, which is-and-is-not a sequel. It's a sequel in the sense that there's Ender, except thirty years older, and, yes, there's Valentine, kind of, and the Hive Queen. And yet, this Ender is so much more himself than the child who was manipulated into essentially being a weapon. This is a man who has been hardened by three thousand years of universal guilt.

I remember when we were talking in class about how, in War of the Worlds, Wells essentially takes the triumph and the victory away from mankind. I feel as if, in order to create a better world, Ender has deliberately sabotaged his own reputation. In writing The Hive Queen and the Hegemon he condemns his hero-self to millennia of ignominy because, if humanity were to consider itself triumphant, flush in the victory of having eradicated an alien species, the next would be disposed of in the same way, and for the same reasons. He also does so in the hopes that, when the Hive Queen is finally restored, she will be greeted by a universe explained into understanding by Ender's book.

This is a very different world in which to introduce a new alien species, and it shows. And yet, I'm not sure that humanity learned the right lessons from the Bugger Wars. Ender makes the point of explaining that the reason for this policy of non-interference is not, as might be imagined, a policy of tolerance engendered by his book, but a policy designed to prevent the exact kind of technological advancement that enabled the humans to defeat the buggers in the first place. It is the scientists who see these pequeninos as people who really treat them as ramen, in terms of Valentine's Icelandic-sounding hierarchy, and the government who treats them as children or varelse. It's almost as if the government is refusing to acknowledge them as equals, on an equal political plane, but treat them as some kind of endangered species. As an animal, as opposed to an alien. The result of this is, of course, that the pequeninos learn significantly more about humanity than they do about them.

There is a small hint of Ender's influence, though. When the xenologers are killed, there is no retribution from Starways Congress or the government. I could feel Ender's thoughts behind this in some way: What may be considered a travesty by us may be something completely different to them, in the same way that the buggers understanding of death and murder was entirely different from humanity's at the beginning of the Bugger Wars. The piggies a) believe that these people that they "kill" are anesthetized; b) do not realize that tears are a sign of human suffering; and c) reserve the ritual dismemberment for their most honored citizens. These are things that Ender notices almost immediately as meaning that their notions of death are different, but is this because he is inherently empathic or because he's seen it all before? What I thought immediately of was ethnocentrism. These xenologers were so absorbed in their own culture that even venturing into other ideas (like realizing that the trees were actually alive, and not totemic) was almost beyond their comprehension.

Reflection: The Concept of the Political

I want to do a blog post here not necessarily comparing Carl Schmitt's work The Concept of the Political to any work of science fiction we've studied so far. The work, although easily compared to works of fiction, needs to stand on its own and be considered in its own context. That being said, I'd like to reiterate what Prof Jackson said during our class period: The Concept of the Political is a fascist work. Now, it's very easy to get caught up in the implications of calling it that. People see that label and tend to dismiss it outright. But the label itself doesn't dictate exactly what's contained inside - just because it's fascist doesn't mean there isn't anything to learn from the work. When working with The Concept of the Political, it's good to be mindful of George Orwell's essay "Politics and the English Language". We can understand Carl Schmitt if we read him for what he truly says; we cannot him if we instead read the implications of what kind of person he was and the language associated with him.

I wanted to address once specific issue brought up in class that I think never got answered clearly. Prof Jackson put forth a very pointed question after our discussion of what Schmittian political philosophy looks like: who makes the decisions in an alien encounter? Of course, the position is that of a human's - who calls the shots when the aliens land on Earth? There's two ways we can tackle it - how Carl Schmitt would of LIKED to see it handled, and how it might ACTUALLY be handled today. Schmitt's position is slightly easier to identify in this context. Schmitt was writing during the time of the League of Nations and a time of overwhelming liberal democratic spirit. The feeling during this period of the 20s was a great confidence in the processes of liberalism, in which talk and communication between nations could prevent wars. In reaction to this, Schmitt put forth a very realistic kind of view - that if nations continued to operate under these kind of liberal assumptions, they were liable to be stabbed in the back and taken advantage of. Schmitt deeply despised the talk and deliberation associated with these liberal nations, and instead called for a deference to a single leader to make important decisions (as he writes, to make the distinction between friend-enemy). So would a deference to a single leader actually occur if aliens landed in your backyard?

This is obviously a huge and multi-faceted question, one I'm sure has actually been given legitimate thought by at least some legislators in the course of history. And, of course, the question has a huge amount of variables. To bring it down to size for now, let's assume that the aliens literally land right on the White House lawn. At this point, I believe Schmitt would be satisfied with an American response, with general deference given to the Commander-in-Chief in a kind of logistical situation like that. However, I think Schmitt would have problems with the likely reaction of the US to the alien landing. In class we put together a grid of Schmittian philosophies: we should use Schmittian politics, and we do; we should use Schmittian politics, and we don't; we should not use Schmittian politics, and we do; and finally we should not use Schmittian politics, and we don't. The problem of course in deciding which category your situation falls into, is that you'll only know once the event has actually passed. Look at War of the Worlds, a situation where humanity was obviously too ignorant of the destructive power of aliens, and should have used a friend-enemy distinction. In modern times, I would hope our government is all too cognizant of the possible threats alien weaponry could pose. Considering the threats America has tackled before, I can only imagine a Schmittian response taking place on American soil. However, this doesn't necessarily mean throwing a bomb at the spaceship. Schmittian policy allows specific directions to be taken, but in the end prevents against possible destruction.

Reflection: Concept of the Political

I had a dream last night where I was explaining certain aspects of The Concept of the Political to a high school class, and struggling with the dynamics, some of which are slightly horrible, of what I was saying. A lot of the ideas that Schmitt proposes have real-world applications that, we have seen, can be extremely dangerous--if every war has a political justification, there is no stopping a certain tertiary Reich from politicizing anti-Semitism to the point of the systematic execution of an entire people. Anti-Semitism reached the point of politics at the instant Jews were blamed for the economic destruction of antebellum Germany (by which I mean pre-WWII), and targeted as a group by Adolf Hitler. The state sovereignty that Schmitt proposes enables people like Hitler to exist, because there is someone who makes the ultimate decisions on the friend-enemy distinction. If you can legitimately excuse (at least to a significant population) genocide--or, in the case of Ender's Game, xenocide--then there are virtually no limits on the kind of horrors a single sovereign person can inflict, and that is terrifying.

I apologize for having begun this reflection with something fundamentally a-scifi, but it was brooding at the forefront of my mind for almost, if not the entirety of the class. It also made me think about what classifies a human being. If we say that humanity cannot, by definition, really fight itself--and I believe Schmitt does make that contention--then humanity as a political entity can exist by defining other groups as being outside of the realm of humanity. I won't go back to the example of Nazi Germany here; instead I'll choose to focus on something like Dune, where, by identifying the Fremen as subhuman, the Emperor and the Harkonnen can excuse what is essentially an economic takeover. But, remember, most just wars are entirely political machinations. Everything can be justified politically--and this is something we will definitely see in a more extreme context in Speaker for the Dead.

Substantive on "The Concept of the Political"

It is often joked that “politician” is Latin for bloodsucking creature. Although this is a popular misconception, I cannot entirely say that I disagree with this parasitic description of politicians, and in extension politics. Schmitt’s description of the “political” touches upon the darker side of politics by characterizing the “political” purely as a “friend-enemy” relationship that can potentially escalate into a war. This relationship need not consist of two friends that consider each other to be “aesthetic” or “moral,” or by two enemies that are total opposites. Such conditions would surely aid the legitimacy of a conflict, but they are not necessary. What is necessary is the existence of a common threat or foe. For example, both the UK and the US allied with the USSR during WWII even though barely twenty years ago both countries had sent soldiers against the communist movement and Roosevelt had only recently recognized the USSR. However, all three nations had the common enemy of Nazi Germany. When this threat was extinguished, however, the Cold War between the US and its’ Western allies and the USSR and its’ satellite nations soon began. Although the sides of the conflict were based on ideologies and morals, neither were preserved during the Cold War. For example, the US sided with totalitarian regimes in South America in order to weaken the totalitarian USSR. The USSR, while preaching against the exploitive capitalist West, had a government plagued by greed and corruption. Often ideals are a pretense or a secondary consideration when it comes to defeating a foe. I disagree with Scmitt, though, that the friend-enemy relation is the entirety of politics. Sometimes a foe is not an actual threat, but a means of scapegoating. Wars can also be waged for the personal gain of a leader at the expense of an unsuspecting opponent. Besides this, Schmitt fails to realize that a ‘foe” does not need to be a person or escalate into a war in order to unify a side or create a “friend-enemy” dynamic. For example, there have been benevolent bi-partisan efforts against drugs, poverty and other social issues in the US. Recently the world has united to help aid Haiti, viewing the destruction caused by the recent earthquake as a “foe.” In a non-political situation, I personally know of bickering friends who have reunited in order to comfort a mutual friend with a terminally ill mother. Unity against a foe does not have to have a negative connotation or even be violent. Schmitt also fails to realize that sometimes ideologies and morals prevent people from looking at the world from a “friend-enemy” lens. There are some people who would rather sacrifice themselves than harm another human being. In my own life I’ve personally helped people who have seriously harmed me multiple times even though I knew it was a futile gesture. I could have emotionally crippled this person and protected myself, but I did not. Instead I offered aid even though it was disadvantageous and destructive to me. Politics and human nature is not constituted by antagonism. Rather, it is a small facet of both.
In terms of Schmitt’s “other,” I would argue that we do not need another species to have a perfect “other” and that an alien species may actually be similar to humans and thus cannot be a perfect “other.” Humans have a tendency to dehumanize their opponents to the point that they are no longer humans. Even as children we call certain people “bullies” and feel little remorse if they get in trouble or are berated by others. If someone fights back and hurts bully its’ ok as they are evil and they deserve it because they’re a mean bully. If a terrorist is killed, do we feel remorse? Do we view them as human? We might feel more disgust if we witnessed a sheep being killed more than a member of the Taliban. I feel that even within humanity we humans may view others almost as aliens or another species. On the other hand, certain alien species may be very “human.” Extraterrestrials may be humanoids who talk like humans, think like humans and act like humans. If this were to happen, they could not be a perfect “other” to be antagonized. However, in films such as Starship Troopers, where the aliens are seen as non-sentient insects, extraterrestrials can serve as good “others.” In the film, the threat of insect attacks helps keep an authoritarian federation strong, despite several defeats. The Formics in Ender’s Game also serve a similar purpose, and once they have been defeated the alliance in the plot falls into disarray. I’d like to reiterate a point I made in another blog post. There can exist alliances for the betterment of humanity that are not formed around a “friend-enemy” dynamic. Today the UN does charitable work throughout the world and the EU has interconnected many countries together to the point that war is considered to be impossible between Western European nations. Our future does not need to be characterized by an authoritarian federation. Instead we can strive for an organization like the Federation from Star Trek, which is a viable goal to strive for… a political entity based on self improvement and peaceful cooperation with others.

Substantive: The Concept of the Political

In this post, I want to continue the application of Schmitt to Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game. Last post I covered what I saw as the application of Schmitt's political philosophy to the politics being played out on Earth as Ender was attending battle school in the asteroid belt. Principle to the politics of of post-Bugger Earth were the internet (I use internet in the context of what we would understand the concept to be, not necessarily what Card 100% envisioned) personalities of Locke and Demosthenes. As we understand from some of the interspersed chapters and the final chapter of Ender's Game, the current political entities of Earth are united under the banner of defeating the Buggers, but on the brink of collapsing into infighting once again. In deft political maneuvering, Peter Wiggin utilizes his created personas to elevate himself to the position of Hegemon of Earth, essentially keeping Earth united. As opposed to the union of Earth during the Bugger wars, which very much so mimics Schmitt's friend-enemy political dynamic, Peter defies Schmitt's logic, and keeps humanity together via colonization practices, and steeling itself against future enemies, but not necessarily one present.

In this blog post I want to continue the application of Schmitt's friend-enemy political theory, but this time to the concept of the International Fleet, and how it represents humanity as a whole (and, indeed, how Ender plays into the concept of the IF), and the Buggers themselves. In general, when analyzing the IF and the Buggers under Schmitt's political philosophy, I'm going to ignore the League War at the conclusion of the novel and its effects on the IF, as I believe I've covered that sufficiently in the last post.

The IF fleet represents the best of humanities military steeled against a common enemy. However, the Bugger threat is a very unique one to humanity. As Chris pointed out in his latest post, the Buggers fail to attack innocent human settlements, and in general human bystanders. While I think this has an easy internal explanation in the story's universe (the Buggers were innocent of the fact they were killing individuals, but knew not to attack worlds, which they may have seen as containing a queen), it has interesting applications to Schmitt's theories in that the public never really had any reason to fear the Buggers. In essence, the public never had anything personal against the Buggers - they were simply a threat to the whole. From The Concept of the Political; "The enemy is not merely any competitor or just any partner of a conflict in general. An enemy exists only when, at least potentially, one fighting collectivity of people confronts a similar collectivity. The enemy is solely the public enemy... The enemy is hostis, not inimucus in the broader sense," Schmitt relays that an opposing collective of fighting people may not necessarily have to commit crimes against people in order to be considered the enemy. Only "because everything that has a relationship to such a collectivity of men, particularly to a whole nation, becomes public by virtue of such a relationship," says Schmitt. In Schmitt's sense, we can say the IF (representing humanity) and the Buggers are enemies not by virtue of the crimes the Buggers have committed against humanity, by but virtue of there existing an opposing fighting force which could jeopardize the existence of humanity.

Related to this, I have to say I entirely agree with Morgan's post on the alien nature of the Buggers and the quote from Schmitt she uses. This quote follows up logically from what I have just presented: Schmitt says that the enemy need not be the enemy which has committed certain crimes against specific people, and need only be a public threat. But, of course, we need to ask why that enemy would be a threat. Schmitt here makes it clear that simply the concept of being different is enough to cause conflict; "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.”

Consider, for a moment, that humanity was capable of actually communicating with the Buggers. We know that Mazer Rackham tells Ender on the way to Eros that humanity did in fact attempt to communicate with the Buggers, but all the attempts failed. At this point, we have no idea if this account is even true, considering the extent of the lies all the adults were telling Ender. So then, would humanity still wage war against the Buggers even if we were capable of communicating? And, to another extreme, would humanity still wage war if we met a race of, say, sentient cute bunnies? Schmitt says, "Emotionally, the enemy is easily treated as being evil and ugly, because every distinction, most of all the political... draws upon other distinctions for support... [T]he morally evil, aesthetically ugly or economically damaging need not necessarily be the enemy; the morally good, aesthetically beautiful or economically profitable need not necessarily become the friend..." Therefore, the friend-enemy distinction Schmitt puts forth isn't even based on other contributing factors, it is the simple alienness of the two political entities that drive them to war.