Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick (continued)

In Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, specials and androids are both considered to be below regular human beings. Androids are considered inferior because of their lack of empathy, something that regular humans possess. Rick Deckard is classified as a regular human, yet he seems to lack a good deal empathy. Not only does he kill androids without remorse (and at one point, he declares even to be excited to begin the hunt for the Nexus-6 androids), but he also doesn’t seem to show much compassion or love for living animals. They are a way to demonstrate one’s wealth and status. He didn’t seem to care much for his wife’s real sheep because, as he describes, he feels the same when taking care of the electric sheep as he did taking care of the real one. His only regret was for having taken poor care of such a valuable item as the sheep. Rick, who looks down upon androids as compassionless and subhuman, seems to have as little compassion as an android. In fact, when he was accused of being an android with false memories, I believed it. If compassion is what makes androids inferior to humans, then, by these standards, it would seems as if Rick was also subhuman. Plus, androids like Polokov and Pris have just as much vigor and compassion for their own lives as any human. So, if there are regular humans who lack empathy and androids who have a passion to survive, then compassion cannot necessarily be the defining factor between androids and humans. Plus, if specials like John Isidore show more compassion and empathy towards others than regulars like Rick Deckard, then lacking empathy cannot be a sign of inferiority.  

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? by Philip K. Dick

Written in the mid 1900’s, Philip K. Dick novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? takes place in the futuristic—and, at the time, distant—year 2020. The radiation and dust left over from World War Terminus has left the earth in a declining state of decay, causing many forms of animals to die out. In 2020, it is a rare and valuable thing to possess a real animal, and owning and caring for a live animal is not only a sign of compassion but also demonstrates one’s social status (animals have become rather expensive, so having one, or even more than one, is a symbol of wealth). It is also to demonstrate one’s compassion, because compassion is the one thing that separates humans from androids, who are considered to be sub-human. If you can’t afford a real animal, or if your animal has died out, advanced, life-like electric animals are available. That way, you can fool others into thinking that you have a real animal and, as a result, you will not be looked down upon or scorned by your neighbors.

            This idea of compassion for animals is a mixed one. Owning an animal is supposed to be a sign of compassion, of caring for another living thing, yet catalogs are made assigning prices to these living creatures, so that they may be bought, sold, and traded like furniture or other inanimate objects. For Rick Deckard, our protagonist, his objective at the beginning of the story was to own a real animal, not because he personally felt compassion for or cared about the animal (he said himself that taking care of his electric sheep felt the same to him as it had taking care of his wife’s real sheep when it was still alive), but because he wanted to show that he had equal status as his neighbors, so that he wouldn’t be looked down upon by others for having let the real sheep die and replacing it with an inferior robotic copy. Rick seems to view animals the way people today might view property in Martha’s Vineyard: just a way to denote one’s wealth and social status.

            On the other hand, when John Isidore vidcalls Mrs. Pilsen to tell her that her real cat Horace had died, she is in tears. When he, Dr. Sloat, and Milt first try to comfort her by offering her an electrical replacement, she explains that nothing could replace Horace, that her husband loved Horace so much that he couldn’t even get physically close to him out of fear of the pain of losing him. It’s then that she decides to order the electric cat, so as not to break Mr. Pilsen’s heart by telling him of Horace’s death. In this case, it seems as if both the real animal and the robotic copy both bring about compassion within Philip K. Dick’s characters. Yet this still doesn’t coincide with how little compassion is displayed in the market of selling and buying animals as items in a catalog. This seems to be demonstrating the contrast between humanity and industry, how humanity displays sympathy while the other a colder sense of self-gain. Industry, like the stereotypical androids and electric animals it creates, is itself robotic and compassionless.                       

Aye and Gomorrah... by Samuel Delany

In the world of Samuel Delany’s Aye and Gomorrah, spacers are astronauts who, to prevent the harmful affects of radiation, have been neutered. They are, in a sense, genderless. They can transport from place to place as they wander about between the earth and the rest of the galaxy. They often look for frelks—people who are sexually interested in spacers—for physical pleasure throughout their travels. However, spacers are viewed as outsiders to the rest of human society—a situation that, as our spacer narrator implies, can feel lonely at times. One day, our narrator (who remains nameless throughout the story) meets a young female frelk in Istanbul, and together, they discuss their respective experiences. Throughout their conversation, there are times when our narrator becomes defensive, believing that the frelk misunderstands him, and often pits her actions as something that all frelks do. The frelk, in turn, replies that she is being misunderstood by the spacer, and often has to explain the reasoning behind her decisions. In the end, they go their separate ways.

            What I find fascinating about this story is that, even though the spacer claims that he is being misunderstood by the frelk, he, too, fails to understand the frelk. He (our narrator, as we later learn he was born male) feels that the frelk is making generalizations about spacers, while he, at the same time, seems to judge frelks as all behaving the same way. She calls spacers “loose meat” (pg.130); he refers to frelks as “you frelks” (pg. 131). The calm with which the narrator listens to the frelk’s rants about how disgraceful the whole spacer-frelk sexual relationship is signals that the narrator has come across this sort of tirade before—and is accustomed to it. The spacer is used to being stared at, judged, and told to leave wherever he goes. Bias against him is everywhere. And yet, he still fails to get past his own biases against frelks in order to understand this woman. No one is innocent in their stereotyping of others. Not even the ones being judged. As readers, it forces us to examine our own biases, not just simply in terms of sexual identity, but everywhere. Everyone has their biases; that’s simply the way the world is. But are you willing to recognize them, so that you may go beyond them to truly see the other person, is the question.         

No Woman Born by: C. L. Moore (continued)

            The idea behind robotics goes way back in history. However, interest in the modern concept of robotics didn’t come into play until the late 1800’s into the 20^th century. In particular, Karel Capek’s 1921 play “R. U. R.”  (Rossum’s Universal Robots)—which introduces humanoid robots working as the labor forces in factories—captured public interest in robots. In the play, the robots eventually overthrow the humans, an outcome which no doubt raised certain anxieties about the use of advanced robots. In the early 1940’s, Isaac Asimov’s stories about robots, including a series of stories about Robbie, a robot who cares for and protects a child, helped create the notion of robots with human feelings. Meanwhile, Asimov’s “Three Laws of Robotics,” which set rules for robots that forbid robots from harming or disobeying humans, reflect a growing fear of the possibility of the power of machines over humans.

            No Woman Born is ripe with a commonly shared idea about robots: whether robots can feel human emotions. Throughout the story, Harris, Maltzer, and Deirdre are faced with the question of her humanity, whether to be human is to simply behave humanly and feel emotion, or to sense the world through all five senses. In the last scene, Maltzer argues that Deirdre “is not wholly human” but instead she “must always be less than human,” for, in having a robotic body, she has “lost the senses of perception that kept [her] in touch with humanity” (pg. 55), and is only left with the limiting senses of sight and sound. Her lack of humanity, he argues, is the cause of her sadness. However, Deirdre argues that she is not “subhuman,” but “superhuman” (pg. 63), and that instead of her lack of senses, the reason for her unhappiness is that she is, in fact, increasingly filled with the very human feeling of loneliness, with nobody else to share her anxieties with: “I wish there could be others like me. I’m…I’m lonely, Maltzer” (pg. 63).

            The story also reflects public fear of robots posing as a danger to humans. In the end, as Maltzer is about to jump out the window, Deirdre rushes to his side and pulls him back inside with inhuman speed “no normal eyes and brain could perceive” (pg. 59). She then proceeds to respond to his belief that she is fragile: “’Do you still think of me as delicate?’ she demanded. ‘Do you know I carried you here at arm’s length halfway across the room? Do you realize you weigh nothing to me? I could…tear this building down…I could tear my way through these walls, I think” (pg. 61).  Deirdre demonstrates how she can make the building shake with her highly tuned sound pitch. However, she decides that she won’t. She could, but she won’t. One could attribute her ability to control herself to her humanity.        

Sources: 

http://robotics.megagiant.com/history.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_robots

http://www.used-robots.com/robot-education.php?page=robot+timeline

No Woman Born by C. L. Moore

            For this week, our class was assigned to read the first half of No Woman Born, a story by C. L. Moore. Deidre was a wonderful young actress who enchanted the world—and her manager, John Harris—with her talent, confidence, and radiant personality. But when a fire broke out in a theater one year ago, her body was destroyed, leaving only her brain alive. The decision was made to give Deidre a new, mechanical body to keep her alive, and over the course of the year, she worked closely with Maltzer, the doctor who designed her body, to help her get acclimated to her new physical form. The story begins when Harris meets Deidre in her new body for the first time since the fire, and he is both relieved and unsettled by her new body.

            From my perspective, I have the strong feeling that Deidre’s new, seemingly perfect body is a time bomb for disaster. Harris emphasizes how wonderfully imperfect Deirdre was before in her human body, and how that was her charm: her talent, yet at the same time, her human imperfection. However, Deirdre’s new body makes her dance movements almost too fluid, gives her an even larger vocal range in her singing, enables her to move in ways normal human bodies can’t. She’s too perfect. The fact that this unsettles Harris is foreboding. Even Maltzer fears that she has become too confident. Deirdre is confident that people will love her once more, just as they used to. But even Harris is afraid that people will shun her. I, too, feel the same way. I think that this surprise return performance that Deirdre has planned is going to end badly. I predict that one of two things will happen: either people will shun her as a “freak,” as she puts it, or people will admire her perfection too much, something which could easily get into her head and cause problems.

            Another possible problem is Harris’s biased view of her. Deirdre spoke of men giving life and character to the machines that they use and love, and that the machines seem to take their “personality” from the men who create them. This occurs with both Harris and Maltzer. Maltzer created Deirdre’s body, so his perspective of her is only of a machine (albeit a brilliant machine) that he himself created, not as the human woman she used to be. This thus prejudices his view of her as only a machine, and not as a human. He knows this, as he warns Harris at the beginning of the story that he is too close to her to be able to see her clearly. Harris, on the other hand, has only ever known her as a human woman, with certain traits, features, and quirks. Deirdre’s new body has no features, and so she cannot make facial expressions or use any of her old features. However, Harris’s old view of her makes him just as biased. When he looks at her, he sees only the old Deirdre she used to be, projected unto the featureless body she now possesses. He sees what she was, not what she is. He wants to believe she hasn’t changed at all, and so he allows himself to buy into his illusion. He knows that he’s deluding himself, but he can’t help it. He’s blinded because he wants to believe she is still the same Deirdre he was so enchanted by. And this could lead to trouble down the line.  

I believe an introduction is in order...

            Welcome, welcome, welcome! I see you’ve stumbled upon my blog. Come on in! Grab a seat and put your feet up while I tell you a little bit about myself:

My name is Ariana Rahman, and I’m a freshman here at the beautiful Wellesley College. Outside of class, you can find me playing the piano, singing, or acting in a theatrical production. I love watching Downton Abbey and—as you probably already guessed—The Big Bang Theory. I am a huge fan of the humanities, and enjoy immersing myself in different languages and cultures both in and out of the classroom, as well as discussing and debating over literature in my English courses.

In fact, you’re probably wondering what this blog is all about. “The Big Bang!” is where I post comments and thoughts about my first year writing course Alternative Worlds (WRIT 134) here at Swelles. For class, we’ll be reading works of science fiction and studying how they relate to the real world.

Why Alternative Worlds, you ask? One of my favorite classes that I have ever taken was a creative writing course called Found Voices at Dana Hall School with my wonderful teacher Ms. Holstein. There, we learned to create and write stories about ourselves, and about topics that mattered to us. For the most part, the stories I wrote were mostly along the genre of non-fiction (or just barely scratching the surface of fiction). I hadn’t had much experience with science fiction in high school, and I was really curious to try writing about science fiction—maybe even try sketching out a few ideas for a short story one day. So, when I came upon Alternative Worlds, I was ecstatic at the idea of being able to learn from the works of authors who could pen out parallel worlds and realities with ease.

So, here I am, embarking on my quest to learn about the realms of science fiction, and how they relate to everyday life. I hope you will accompany me on my journey.