Masterswarm

A robotic humanity.

Attention: Some robotic spoilers ahead.

As soon as I saw the post from Quirk Classics about reviewing Android Karenina, and getting a free advanced copy, I was all in. Immediately I emailed my information and anxiously waited for two weeks to receive my copy of the new (unreleased) Quirk Classic. I’ve read (devoured would be a more appropriate term) Pride and Prejudice and Zombies and Sense and Sensibility and Sea Monsters and loved them both. I’m a huge Austen fan, so naturally I was amused by the interweaving of zombies and sea monsters into her classic Regency romances. However, I had never read Tolstoy before diving into Android Karenina, so I was a little weary of this 538-page monster that was about to hit me. Nonetheless, I was overly ecstatic when I received my copy, and as soon as I finished my readings for classes (as a graduating senior from college, I had to stay on top of schoolwork first), I began the adventure with Anna, Vronsky, and the rest of our Russian friends.

From the opening line, “Functioning robots are all alike; every malfunctioning robot malfunctions in its own way,” I was hooked. I laughed even without having read Anna Karenina, but I was aware of the famous opening line in that novel as well. This promising beginning was reminiscent of the Pride and Prejudice adaptation with zombies, which states, “It is a truth universally acknowledged that a zombie in possession of brains must be in want of more brains.” The hilarious rewordings to the classic opening lines of these novels really solidify these Quirk novels as literature that is able to appreciate the classics, but also make them fun and more intriguing for those less inclined to pick up a novel about early nineteenth century England or late nineteenth century Russia (not to mention that Anna Karenina is over 700 pages long). But this makes us ask, would Tolstoy have included robots if the technology had been available to him? Would he have vacationed on the moon? It never hurts to ask.

Ben H. Winters answers this question—in full robotic force! The robots present in the novel are integrated so seamlessly that when one day I decide to pick up Anna Karenina for a light, summer read, I will be asking myself, but where are the robots? Where are the beloved Class IIIs? How can the characters function without them? The robots are a part of everyday life in this version, and with the discovery of groznium, it has been this way for generations. Life is impossible without mechanical assistance from the Class I dice at the gambling halls to the Class II governesses, and especially without the companionship of the Class III robots like Socrates, Android Karenina, and the quirky little Small Stiva. At first I was thrown off by all of the classifications and the different levels of machinery, but soon I was loving every moment of it. The brief note on Russian names at the beginning helped, and how the robotic names were similar to the human names helped as well, and created an interesting connection between the two species.

The characters create a complexity which I can only imagine Tolstoy in his original work did as well, but the addition of the robots, especially the severe dependence on them, creates even more layers to their characters as well. The separate android Class IIIs are like the mind and soul of the humans, where they store their memories and rely on their robots for guidance and feelings. The humans seek comfort in their Class III machines, and to many of them, especially to Anna, they are more than just mere scraps of metal and hardwiring. So when Anna’s estranged husband, Alexei Karenin, and his “Face” (a robot which has begun to take over his mind and body) start gathering up all of the Class IIIs (and eventually the Class I and II robots as well), you wonder, “But aren’t these Class III machines people too?”

Ah, but how can machines—metal, groznium, and wires—be people? For that you must define what is a person, which is a complicated definition to give. Can something that thinks for itself, feels emotion, and can carry on affairs independently of its master be considered a person—even if it is a machine? I think this is one of the great overarching questions of the novel, which makes the reader think about what it truly means to be a person, to be human, and to be functioning member of society. Were not the Class IIIs treated like humans, as loyal friends? Most of them were, which makes it even more outrageous when we learn that Karenin has collected all of them with his Toy Soldiers (machine-men themselves) and melted them all. But throughout the novel, robots are changing and evolving, developing more and more human characteristics. Eventually Anna is approached by her beloved Android Karenina, but alas, it is not her Class III that she knows, it is a Class IX robot from the future, more advanced than Anna could even realize. Horrified, Anna also learns that she too, is not truly human, and is actually a Class XII version of Android Karenina, which terrifies her and eventually helps lead to her suicide by the strange “train” mechanism introduced by her mostly-machine husband.

So are these androids people? Can they be functioning—and even independently functioning—members of society? Anna couldn’t deal with the knowledge (that and the fact that it was her destiny to murder her husband), and she threw herself in front of a train. Would you throw yourself in front of a train if you realized you weren’t fully human?

Quirk Classics always graciously adds a “Reader’s Discussion Guide” at the end of each novel, and I will leave you with my favorite of these questions:

“9. Are you really a human being, or are you a super-intelligent cybernetic organism created by scientists in a laboratory, and programmed to believe that you are, in fact, human?

10. Are you sure?”

My review was too late to have you enter the prize giveaway…so sorry! 😦

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Cultural imperialism has been happening for centuries, and in Ursula Le Guin’s The Telling, she moves the imperialism from the earthly sphere (Terra) that we are used to, to the extraterrestrial world of Aka. Le Guin uses this planet to illustrate the negative implications of cultural imperialism, but through Sutty’s “telling” of her history we can also see the extreme cultural imperialism on Terra (Earth) with the Unists and their religious and moral domination.

On Aka, the city of Dovza creates the dominant society (the Corporation), forces it on everyone, and punishes those who deviate. The Dovza culture dominates in every aspect including language, education, exercise, and sexual practices. When Sutty is sent to observe the society that lives on the outskirts of the dominant Akan society, she discovers a group of people who are silently resisting this cultural imperialism. This silent resistance is first shown when Sutty visits the man in the perfume shop and begins to read what is written on the walls, when he slaps one hand over his mouth and one on the table and says, “Not aloud, yoz” (59). This scene shows the secretive nature that the people of this rural society, the people of the telling, must adhere to in order to practice the telling. When he says, “Not aloud,” it could also be perceived that what she says is not allowed by the Corporation, because it is against their law. The Corporation is fully against the telling, and anyone who is found practicing it is seen as an enemy to the state.

The strict regulations that the Corporation places on all the citizens of Aka create a strong connection between that situation and cultural imperialism. The Corporation is literally forcing its culture on these people, and if they do not adhere then they are duly punished. There punishment consists of being sent to “rehabilitation camps” and many of them die in them. They must conform or they face the repercussions.

Sutty also hints at the cultural imperialism that the Unists forced on the Terrans (from earth) when she speaks with Tong Ov. He asks her incredulously, “So during that period when the Unists refused ansible contact with the Stabiles on Hain, they were…converting Akans?” (16). The Unists were trying to spread their cultural imperialism past the sphere of Terra and create interplanetary imperialism by spreading to Aka.

These examples from the book show a great parallel between the globalization of today’s society, especially concerning America and the western world. Many Americans believe that people should assimilate to American culture and bombard other countries with American companies, television, and other forms of influence. One thing that can be clearly seen is the American desire to spread its ideal of democracy to other countries, especially in the Middle East.

Perhaps if people were able to live peacefully in the way that they wanted, if they weren’t harming anyone, then there wouldn’t be contempt for the dominant society, or maybe there wouldn’t even need to be a dominant society at all.

*Le Guin, Ursula K. The Telling. New York: Harcourt, 2000.

Nikanj and Lilith?

The sexless ooloi in Octavia Buter’s Dawn (1987) are just plain creepy. Of all the Oankali, they seem the most alien, and we see that portrayal of them through Lilith’s observation. She gets accustomed to Jdahya when she is first awakened and begins her assimilation into Oankali society, but she can at least view him as a man and takes comfort in that fact. The ooloi are a completely different story. They seem so strange from the first introduction of them (one translation of ooloi is also “treasured strangers”) and Lilith’s imagination runs wild when Jdahya explains that oolois are able to understand human anatomy by study: she imagines humans in cages, dissections of live people and corpses, and letting disease persist for the sake of study. Immediately, we get a strange and very alien (not just extraterrestrial) feeling about the ooloi. Why are they so gifted this way? Why do they carry these seemingly special powers of learning?

It is also strange to think about a sexless creature in terms of feminism. However, when Kahguyaht and Nikinj are introduced, I immediately identified them as male, instead of sexless. It was very hard for me to imagine them as “ungendered,” but it was very difficult, and ultimately I wasn’t able to separate these “people” from an assigned sex. I found myself wondering why this was, and I think that it has been imbedded in my mind that male is the “default.” Due to my culture and my social constructions, male seems to always be the default, but now that I have consciously realized that I think I will try to resist it more now. Why should man be the default?

However, when Lilith meets Paul Titus, the first man that she has interactions with, he seems to assume a sex to the ooloi. Paul refers to Nikanj as a “he” and Lilith corrects him that Nikanj is an ooloi, an it. Paul responds, “Yeah, I know. But doesn’t yours seem male to you?” and then later says, “When they woke me up, I thought the ooloi acted like men and women while the males and females acted like eunuchs. I never really lost the habit of thinking of ooloi as male or female” (89). Paul does have a point though, because it seems as though Jdyaha and his female partner Tediin never seem to be sexually attracted to each other (up to that point), however, she sees the sexless ooloi as the most sexually stimulated. Especially with those extra arms that cover their starfish-like sexual organs, and Lilith’s part in Nikanj’s perceived ability to mate.

I guess I, like Paul, continued to assign the ooloi a sex rather than think of them as plainly sexless like Lilith. Either way, they’re still just creepy.

After reading over my last two posts, I’ve realized that I have strong aversion to the traditional notion of a housewife. Just thought I’d acknowledge that since it seems to be such a central focus of my posts so far! 🙂

Exhibiting the gross androcentric attitude: why does this still exist?

It’s been said before many times by many men, and this phrase represents the androcentric view that the majority of people holds, especially men. In Lisa Tuttle’s story “Wives” (1979), this idea that a female’s place in society is solely to please her husband screams out at the reader. However, this situation is a little different than the society that we know on earth, but not much. Men have conquered an unnamed planet inhabited by (seemingly) female aliens, which the men have essentially forced to become earth women through the use of “skintights” and makeup. The reader is unaware what the alien women fully look like in their normal state, aside from the extra breast and sharp teeth. A parallel can be drawn between the way that these alien “women” dress up for the men and the way that real women dress up for earth society. Women are viewed as incomplete if they do not make themselves up and dress like a woman “should” and are criticized as being unfeminine or possibly even labeled lesbians if they do not fall into this prim and proper category. When Susie goes to visit her friend Doris (who is in heat) she thinks that Doris “was as dolled up as some eager-to-please newlywed and looked, Susie thought, more like a real woman than any woman had ever looked” (Larbaliester 191). This shows the extent that these alien females go to in order to please the earth men and it reflects the way in which women from earthly societies dress themselves up to look good for men. Women are only a part of society in order to please men, for that is their only purpose and not only do the men hold this view, most of the women do as well. Tuttle’s story is oozing with feminism and creates a grossly androcentric world. By using the character of Susie, however, Tuttle is able to show the exceptions to those women who view themselves as stuck in this male-dominated world and who try to fight back. Though in the end she ends up dying for her belief because the other women feel threatened by her rebelliousness. Even after the initiation of the women’s liberation movement, this aspect of the story still shows the helplessness women have against the heteropatriarchy without the support of other females. They will continue to be caught in this vicious cycle if they cannot work together to achieve liberation from the male domination. Even after Susie is killed, another “extra wife” takes her place in her husband’s house and he doesn’t even know the difference, which shows what is really most important to men: “Three tits and the best coffee in the universe” (Larbaliester 198). It doesn’t matter what’s on the inside of a woman, as long as she’s subservient and her outside looks good, then she satisfies her man and perpetuates androcentric society.

You tell him, sister!