LITR 4632: Literature of
the Future
Web-Highlight 2005
Monday, 27 June: scenario: utopia / dystopia / ecotopia: K. S. Robinson, “Introduction” to Future Primitive. "Chocco," (FP 189-214); "House of Bones," (FP 85-110); "They're Made out of Meat," (VN 69-72
Web-highlighter:
Kevin Kaup
ON “CHOCCO”…
Among the ecotopian selections, "Chocco" by
Ernest Callenbach reminded me of some African literature that I have read. Jon
and Mikal were competing for the position of their community's "griot."
[CG, Final ‘99]
With the introduction to Future Primitive, an
entirely different take on the possibilities that the future may hold is
presented. In "Chocco" it
is not the age of machines that has had the most lasting influence upon the
world, but rather the more ancient practices of much earlier human societies
which have triumphed to stand at the gateway to the future.
The solution for the ills of our present society are presented as coming
from our distant past. [TP, Final
‘01]
In “Chocco”, we learn of a tribal group trying to
decide who will be their “memory keeper”.
Chocco describes a culture that has survived a dying out period, and that
they have improved themselves by incorporating technology and spirituality.
But the main thing is that they learn from the dystopia in order to
create a utopian society. “We
must learn a hard and dreadful lesson from the example of the Machine
People—that sometimes human beings would rather die out than change their
cultural ways.” They have learned
a balance. [ES, Final ‘01]
ON “HOUSE OF BONES”…
In House of Bones the narrator describes himself as a holy fool that
was humored and accepted into the primitive tribe that he describes as,
"Their bodies and their minds are pure Homo sapiens but their souls are
different from ours by twenty thousand years." It is this soul like quality
that the reader sees not barbarism, but artists, singers, and poets all
emotionally expressive people. At the end of this story he realizes that people
have always had the innate ability to care and love others. He tells B.J,
"You wanted to see if I was really human, right? If I had compassion, if I
could treat a lost stranger the way I was treated myself". If these traits
are always present in human beings then it makes it very difficult to apply an
emotional character into a non-expressive world. [KC, Final ‘01]
Science can only go so far and that it’s the other
stuff, which science can’t deal with, which is most important.
This low tech fiction reminds us that tech is just tech, it’s just
stuff, and it’s people and how we relate to them which matter most…In House
of Bones our time traveler was tested on how compassionate he was to the
Neanderthal. After he passed by showing kindness, then he was accepted
fully. [GH, Final ‘01]
"In House of Bones" a knew way of looking at the
early societies formed by the ancestors of Homo Sapiens is shown.
New ways of thinking about our ancestry are directly linked to new ways
of thinking about what our future may hold.
If our ancestors were not the barbaric, violent, and stupid creatures
that we have at times perceived them to be, perhaps it is our perception that is
faulty. [TP, Final ‘01]
In “House of Bones”, the character learns about his
humanity by not killing. He thinks that because he is more evolved than his early man,
that he has nothing to learn from them. “All
the time that I was congratulating them for not being the savages I had expected
them to be, they were wondering how much of a savage I was.
They had tested the depth of my humanity; and I had passed.
And they finally see that I’m civilized too.”
He learns from who he thought were savages about his won humanity. [ES, Final ‘01]
ON “THEY’RE MADE OUT OF MEAT”…
Alien
contact is of even less importance, but the further out into the future you go,
then the more important it becomes. I
think this category will surpass everything in ranking of important eventually,
but that’s on a very long term time horizon.
We see this in Poplar, Made of Meat, Belonging Kind, and even Hinterlands
and Homelandings to a certain extent. If
it happens, as in Hinterlands or Homelandings, it become important, very
important. But with made of Made of
Meat, if we’ve already been looked at and they don’t want to deal with us,
it doesn’t matter to us right now. We
have other things to worry about. If
people are being snatched for studies, that doesn’t really matter for the long
term survival of the species as a whole. People
disappear everyday and it never means anything to the overall scheme of things.
And if aliens are walking around, existing side by side with us, it’s
big news if you can prove it, but it doesn’t really matter if no one knows
about it. Even the Coneheads made the effort to fit in, pay their
taxes, be on the PTA and simply live among us peacefully. It didn’t matter in the slightest that they weren’t from
France. [GH, Final ‘01]
In “They’re Made Out of Meat” we see…another, supposedly superior race operating on the basis that different is bad. Having come to Earth and probed a few humans the aliens realize that to them we are made out of meat. They discriminate against the humans, knowing that they are intelligent enough to send signals into outer space, because we are not made of the same biological matter. It is easy to wonder if it truly matters that they discriminate when there is no chance we will ever see these aliens again but it is also easy to wonder what could have happened if the two species were made to be in contact. Because the aliens thought it too chaotic to take a chance with meat, they may have missed a valuable learning experience and even a moral experience. Discrimination is always a dystopian idea. [SB, Final ‘03]