Delaney's Stars in My Pocket Like Grains of Sand

The longer  I stay in graduate school, the more I feel I have to give a disclaimer before saying . . . well, anything. Today’s disclaimer is that I write this having yet to finish Delaney’s tome. In other words, if the novel later contradicts what I’m talking about, well . . . that’s why.

Having disclaimed myself, I’m going to blog about something completely outside the world of linear plot: the presence of technology in Delaney’s novel. It might seem like this is a tertiary part of the novel, given the density of other themes. However, as this is science fiction, there needs to be at least one plug at the presence and influence of technology.

Chapter 3 of Luckhurst considers (at length) the relationship between technology and humanity—the glorification of the engineer because of technological daring-do (I paraphrase). Here in Stars, we see something we have never seen before in class: a universe completely SATURATED with technology. (Granted, the case could be made that Le Guin’s The Left Hand of Darkness is a universe saturated with technology, but in the scope of that single narrative, the technology is limited to the world of Gethern/Winter. Genly has an ansible, but that’s about it in terms of technology existing outside our current, historical understanding. Although THAT statement also is problematic, as our 2013 technology (Google Glass, anyone?) marches onward and upward, leaving Stars’ 1984 (historical, not the novel) far in the dust. I digress.) I suppose Luckhurst would be further problematized by the presence of a host of non-human entities in Stars. How do we measure the impact of technology upon humanity when so little is actually human? (Again, this can be refuted by the near-universality of human figures and behaviors, so much so that interspecies relationships can take place.)

                                               (Google Glass Promo Video)

Back to the idea of a universe saturated with technology.

Let’s look at just one major example, as we very well couldn’t look at all of them.

First and foremost, (and only, I suppose) is General Information (GI). This tech offers information on almost any subject to the user—pretty instantaneously. The information banks are, at least in some instances, available as a planet by planet basis. They are also corruptible—as shown by the tampering loop created to hide the cultural fugue around planet Rhyonon. GI, as amazing as it is, does not shock me in the least—it’s essentially a glorified, instant and wireless, spoken version of Wikipedia, is it not? All we would need is Siri in our ears to read us Wikipedia pages and we’ve got GI.

But from the scale of universality, instructing and giving guidance to countless billions, how does something like GI change the face of “humanity?” In the instance of Korga (the as-yet-unnamed Rat Korga) in the prologue, the GI-like glove device drastically changes his life. In this case, though, Korga already functions on a drastically changed level—the RAT process has stripped him of much of his humanity, hasn’t it? How has near/instant-information changed the way we (in 2013) think about the world? About each other? A smartphone gives pocket-sized access to an impossible wealth of information, popular culture, news, gossip, entertainment, distraction, advice, celebrity, history, and so on ad nauseum. Asking how GI has changed the humanity of Stars is, essentially, asking the same question of ourselves and our internet obsession.

There are also numerous predictions involving GI and cultural fugue (although if Dyeth and Korga’s relationship brings a world close to cultural fugue, I don’t know the extent the connection  GI, in and of itself, has to CF), perhaps implying such information brings about the “extra-human” judgment of other-worldly beings? (The Xlv, as one of the only Other completely otherized by its physical apartness and lack of knowledge/understanding, acts in many ways as a supernatural harbinger of doom.)

I’m reminded of the Bing commercials, the search overload ones. As ridiculous (and entertaining as they are), there’s a lot of truth in them. Here’s a reminder, if you don’t remember them:

If we’ve come this far with our own GI, how far are we away from Cultural Fugue?

Just saying.

The Marginalization of Women in Science Fiction Short Stories from the 30’s, 40’s, and 50’s.

I need to begin with a disclaimer: I am not an accomplished feminism scholar. I haven’t studied the theory at any great length, nor can I name drop like it’s yesterday’s business. However, having read the four short stories for today’s class, I find it almost impossible not to comment on the positioning, treatment, and absence of women in Campbell’s ”Twilight,” del Ray’s “Helen O’Loy,” Godwin’s “The Cold Equations,” and Moore’s “No Woman Born.”

Let’s break down the initial situations: in “Twilight,” we’ve got a situation of female absence. The narrator (Bart) is male, the storyteller (Bendell) is male, and Ares (the “hitchhiker”) is male. The human representatives Ares finds seven million years in the future are predominately male—and the only future human to be named is male. “Twilight” is the easiest story to position, gender-wise: there are only men. I admit that women are mentioned in passing, as the humans seven million years from now continue to procreate (sexually, I assume), but at a much slower rate.

In “Helen O’Loy,” there is no shortage of women. Strike that: there is no shortage of robotic women. There is Helen, the titular character, and Lena, a less-advanced robot. Granted, there is Mrs. van Syler and the servant girl her son is infatuated with, but they do little more than occupy a topic of conversation.

“No Woman Born” is somewhat akin to “Helen O’Loy,” as Deirdre is a cyborg created to give continued life to a relatively recently deceased woman. The human Deirdre’s brain is given new life in the android Deirdre’s body.

“The Cold Equations” has Marilyn Lee Cross, the eighteen year old stowaway on board the EDS. Marilyn is a fully functional, natural human.

Now let’s break each down a little further: Lena and Helen in “Helen O’Loy” are complete objects. Lena, as a less functional robot, doesn’t cut the order for her “masters.” As such, and probably because of this, she is essentially sold (as property) to pay off the debts accrued in acquiring Helen. Lena is chattel—she’s a slave. She’s also a robot, with much less humanity than Helen. But still.

Helen, on the other hand, is so much a human that she loves Dave entirely. In fact, both Dave and Phil love her back—Dave marries her and Phil pines for her silently until she and Dave are dead. In this instance, although Helen functions as a full member of society as Dave’s wife, she owes her existence to Dave and Phil: they changed her initial intention and programming, bringing her “to life.” This is, of course, reminiscent of patriarchal control—Helen never makes her own decisions, nor is she ever really allowed to.

Deirdre also owes her continued existence to a man: Maltzer. However, unlike Helen, Deirdre has not been created to mimic a docile, servant-of-a-wife. As a visually un-human cyborg, she does not look like a woman: her face is a blank mask devoid of mouth, nose, eyes, ears. However, where Helen and Lena are forced to live under the whims of men, Deirdre rises beyond her creative parameters and becomes, as she states, “superhuman.” In this instance, Deirdre overcomes the patriarchy to assert her new-found strength. Maltzer cannot even commit suicide in her presence. She denies him the action. Where Deirdre goes as a “free” woman, we aren’t told: the story ends with open possibility.

Marilyn Lee Cross does not have nearly as hopeful an end as Deirdre. In many ways, Marilyn is dehumanized beyond Deirdre, Helen, or even Lena. It is interesting that Marilyn’s position as a “girl” ensures her prolonged existence—Barton would have forced her into the space lock or shot her for resisting had she been a male. So in one sense, her being a woman saved her, but only temporarily. Regardless of this pity (based mostly on sex, although her youth plays a part—also linked to sex, I’m sure), she still falls subject to the rules of space and is jettisoned. In one way, the hesitation to kill her creates terror within her (a situation worse than a quick end), although Barton hopes she will come to accept her end.  Barton does what he “can” for her, except choose to jettison himself and allow her to ride the EDS to safety. (I had hoped for this to happen, but alas . . . oh, ethical dilemmas . . .) This possibility is never considered, at least not for the reader to see. It may be that it was impossible to teach her to land the EDS, but I should think there would be an auto-pilot? (Maybe I’m just reaching here . . .).

In the end, Marilyn is as marginalized as Helen, Lena, and the women seven million years in Earth’s future. I won’t get into whether or not the authors were men (I’m assuming three of the four were, at least). I’ll just leave with this position of being a woman in a science fiction short story: you won’t have much agency, if any at all.

Eugenics as Techno-Topia in Gilman’s Herland

I figured the technological advances of Gilman’s Herland utopia would go relatively under-utilized in the blog posts this week—so I figured I’d tackle it as best I could.

I would venture that all of the technological advancements in Herland stem from one area of science: genetic manipulation. To point to the second most obvious example, let’s look at the cultivation of the fruit bearing trees. All of the trees in Herland bear some kind of edible fruit or nut, even the single “beautiful” tree kept only for its aesthetic merits. This tree did not initially bear any fruit, but after 900 years of genetic cross-breeding, it now bears “nutritious seeds” (104).

The most obvious sign of genetic manipulation comes from the women themselves; once it was determined that population quantity needed controlled, population quality became something to strive for. Jennings tells us that for 1500 “uninterrupted” years the inhabitants of Herland quite deliberately controlled whose genetic material (and thus traits and temperament) got passed onto the next generation (97). This “weeding the genetic gene pool” resulted in such health that “the science of medicine” was hardly needed (97). In addition, the stronger gene pool resulted in significant advances in all areas, including education, psychology, ecology, public safety (no criminals for 600 years) (107), mathematics, distribution of labor, religion. All advancements easily explained by a perfected temperament, work ethic, and belief in the collected motherhood of the community.

We now come to the ultimate question: so what? What’s the big deal about Herland’s genetic manipulation, and what does it have to say about utopia?

My cop-out answer is: I’m not sure. Let’s explore it for a bit, though.

Utilizing genetic manipulation to achieve utopia challenges or calls into question our modern understanding of human rights. What right do we have to tell another person that he or she does not have enough genetic worth to reproduce? What about China’s recent one-child policy? (Now, in honor of Dr. Thompson, let’s try to avoid being anachronistic in our answer, shall we?) Thanks to the pdf of the review copy of Herland, we’ve at least two separate pieces of background material giving information on eugenics in Gilman’s time. Eugenics comes as a branch of Darwinism, (in one sense), as one of the conclusions of natural human evolution. Population growth has always been a problem, if only as an intellectual one to be tackled in the not-so-distant future.  (It calls to mind Swift’s “A Modest Proposal” of the 1700s).

But then again, do the Herlanders achieve utopia through eugenics, or was it in place before they began weeding out the genetically “inferior?” I think it went hand-in-hand. Although Herland had their religious beliefs about Motherhood, solidarity, and community before they needed to address population size/quality, they couldn’t reach their pinnacle without choosing which traits to pass on.

At the same time, however, the “modern” Herlanders are willing to re-introduce men into their world as they believe bi-sexuality to be superior to parthenogenesis (16). This is the missing picture of Herland: even this utopian society sees a need it cannot fulfill on its own—and that is enough to keep it from “full-utopian status.”

As I end my rant, I’ll leave you with this trailer for Gattaca, ca 1997.

  

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Rapid Fire Post (RFP) 4: Victorian Turkish Baths

Hmm . . . interesting.

I think that's the word for it anyway.

Here's what I thought was MOST interesting in the Victorian Turkish Bath site: it was created as a pet-project by a retired librarian. He was so interested in the idea of the Victorian Turkish Bath that he not only dedicated himself (and his time spent in retirement) to chronicling this un-chronicled topic, he even went so far as to earn a Master's Degree in order to do it better!

That's love, folks.

The site itself is somewhat dated--considering it was launched in 1999, it's no surprise. Some pages have updates from 2012, but the running page copyright on the bottom left hand side says 1999-2011. I found elsewhere (and then eventually through the site) that Mr. Shifrin gave a talk about the baths as recently as June 2012, so he remains active in the discussion.

Although dated, I didn't find the site that difficult to navigate, although it is visually VERY busy. The left hand column stays the same, providing master navigational options, while the right-hand column changes depending on your choices. I suppose Victorian Turkish Baths functions as a hub--a place where I can get all the information I might need to be informed on the Victorian Turkish bath. The wikipedia entry for Turkish bath cites victorianturkishbaths.org, but only for a count of how many baths still exist. The site doesn't even get a complete works cited entry, nor does it fall under the "External Links" section. Wikipedia is not giving our friend Mr. Shifrin a lot of love . . .

Best Clip relating to a Turkish Bath I could think of:

It's only part 1 of 3. ALSO: surprisingly a LOT of old Batman episodes on YouTube . . . not going to get much work done this fall I guess . . .

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Rapid Fire Post 3: Branch

Branching out:

Branch, as websites go, is but a wee babe! It launched in January of this year. As such, it is not surprising that some of the promised features haven't reached their final incarnation yet. For example, the timeline doesn't appear to have anything entered. The number of contributors is impressive, considering the site is only nine-published-months old. The googlemaps image of where the contributors are from is neat--shows the global approach to the website in a visual fashion.

I wonder about two things. 1: are articles multi-listed under the Topic Clusters? This tab shows 8 headings, with a total of 130 articles listed. From a brief look, it appears that each article only gets one tag--the two articles in "Culture/Religion" do not appear in "Identity/Religion." But this question leads me to my second . . . 2: the introduction makes a statement "differs from wikipedia," remarking that Branch is peer reviewed, etc. HOWEVER! If we're making comparisons to the venerable wikipedia, Branch has a long way to go before it gets the intertextuality I expect from its introduction.

Granted, these articles are thesis driven--they have been written as academic, argumentation vehicles. Contrasted with the "just the facts, ma'am" approach of wikipedia. Branch is an online article database, that attempts to give intertextuality, instead of an online encyclopedia.

Branch states it has 200 promised articles that should find their way on the site in the next 2 years. For one things, 200 articles is great--but in Dr. Wisnicki's words, "I'm not impressed." 200 seems paltry compared to the hundreds of thousands of scanned documents some resource sites we've looked at claim to have. However, we're also looking at something completely different--if this were a brand new PRINT journal, planning to have a twice-yearly publication rate, with an average of MAYBE ten articles each edition--200 in two years is HUGE! (Forgive the excessive capitalization . . . )

The 2 years comment also makes me question whether or not Branch will continue asking for articles after 2014. Is this site designed to continue, or will it become a fixed digital artifact?

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<postscript>
Sorry I don't have any pop culture videos . . . I fail. I mean, I could have thrown up a Michelle Branch music video, like this one:

Or maybe some kind of "branch" illustration, like this one:

(white tree of Gondor, btw)

But mostly those felt out of place, and silly.

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Rapid Fire Post 2: Old Bailey Online

<disclaimer>
 I just gotta start with this:

When I hear or see "Old Bailey," this is what comes to mind.
I'm not British. I'm also not an anarchist. I don't like seeing buildings blown up.
Old Bailey.
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Rapid Fire Post 2: Old Bailey Online

First impression: BUSY. I see links everywhere. (Okay, maybe not everywhere, but pretty close.) The navigational tabs under the header are ALSO on the left side of the margin. The search box is on the right. Under the search box are THREE other digital resources that allow for searching through the archives. (THIS, I believe, is a poor choice. I understand the desire for intertextuality, supporting others' projects, and giving all possible resources to those researching, but unless these three sites offer something different than the 197,745 criminal proceedings--why lead researchers elsewhere? I want the Old Bailey Online to give me all I need.)

I also don't like the advertisements on the left side. HOWEVER, these obviously bring in revenue, and the user has to scroll down to find them, so I'll forgive the visual discord. I actually liked the links on the bottom to other supporting institutions--they have a good visual presence.

Getting to actual business: one of the best aspects of this site are the tutorial videos. Here's one of them:

For advanced researchers, some of this video might seem redundant, but the effort behind its creation is much appreciated.

Finally, I thought the "Publications that Cite the Old Bailey Proceedings Online" page was intriguing.
I don't know how many publications are cited, but it's a decent amount. This is the "we're being used--keep funding us" page. This was a question that was brought up last class in regards to NINES.org--is the cite we look at worth the time, effort, and money used to create it? Here, the OBPO offers its own evidence of its worth.

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<postscript>
The tools the OBPO have developed (or utilized, I can't tell which) through the Old Bailey API pages are interesting--and are the stuff we're craving, aren't they? The new tools, the new ways through which we can utilize the technology in ways we haven't even thought of before. ALSO!!! The Data Warehouse Interface was developed in part by Geoffrey Rockwell--who co-wrote the article we read for last week. HUA.

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Rapid Fire Post 1: 19th Century British Pamphlets

<disclaimer>
It occurs to me, having gone through a blog-post drought, of sorts, that I approach the world of blogging incorrectly--or at least, I don't utilize best practices of blogging. I've tried to read all the material at hand, and then come up with some all-encompassing post that would bring all the elements together.

Sounds great.

Only problem: way too much information, way too little time.

So I propose my new approach: rapid fire posting. I'm going to shoot out little blurbs about each work I read, each website I peruse, each listserve email I open up. (The last one might be a little much, so we'll see).

Let's rock and roll.
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Post 1: 19 Century British Pamphlets.

Second thing I did at this site, after looking through the homepage's major tabs ("Home," "About," Collections," etc.), was to follow the resources linked on the right side of the page.

"For Researchers," the Post-graduate pdf, I did not find to be that revolutionary--it was more of a "how-to-use-JSTOR" than anything else.

"Scanning Specifications" pdf, on the other hand, was something really interesting. Nothing more than a "This-is-how-we-did-what-we-did" explanation sheet, it functions in the same way a methodology section in a research paper. Ideally, I could reconstruct the scanning myself. It also reveals some of the behind-the-scenes work done by the scanners.

What I REALLY liked/appreciated/found fascinating, was the "Project Plan" pdf--the 54 page proposal/description of the entire digitization project. THIS is what I'm looking for (now, after discussions in class) when I go to a website: how they did what they did, why they did what they did, and what they hope to accomplish. Directly contrast this with the GALE sites, that give off a "for profit" vibe. . . . cause I'm pretty sure they charge for memberships? (JSTOR also charges for memberships, especially when the 19th Century British Pamphlets are available to the British universities, and might require new subscriptions for other universities . . . but I digress.)

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