Dynamic Subspace

Category: Science Fiction

  • Cyberspace and the New Mind

    Neil Easterbrook recently sent an email to the SFRA listserve regarding The Atlantic article, “Is Google Making Us Stupid?” by Nicholas Carr, which is available here.  Neil was using this article as a prompt for his inquiry for SF works that address the neurology of reading and how the act of reading changes the way people think.  I suggested Richard Powers’ Galatea 2.2 as a possible text, because the AI, Helen, evolves over time as she learns the literary canon from the fictional “Richard Powers.”

    I argree with Carr that Google and the Internet are changing the way we think.  As are cell phones and other digital necessities such as the iPod.  What I’m concern about is how something like Google can be employed to shape the way we think.  This is an idea that comes from thinking about Chomsky’s work on the self-censorship in the media, because of such effects as the increasing usage of government press releases in place of real reporting (which costs money and cuts into the bottom line).  In the case of Google, companies can sponsor links so that they appear higher in search results.  Also, as Carr’s article states, Google eventually wants to give users of its service just what they’re looking for.  Combining these two things together may not be exactly what a user is looking for, but an approximation based on the shaping of results toward capitalistic ends.  I fear the future won’t be about a Google AI supplanting our way of thinking, but rather about the buying and selling of our way of thinking.  I believe that capitalism already shapes our thinking, our consciousness, but in the Google model, where users don’t pay for services, but are given a service in exchange for the implicit agreement that advertising in some way pays for their access to Google’s services, users can’t pay to opt out of this new form of consciousness shaping.  They don’t want users to engage in the system in this way, because the system’s thought shaping serves corporate interests, including their own, which are diametrically opposed and mutually exclusive with an empowered user/individual/consumer.

  • Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren Intro

    Samuel R. Delany’s Dhalgren will fuck with your dreams.

    It’s an amazing work, and I’m glad to have read it. However, I feel the urge to read it again in order to make more sense of the vectors and puzzles that shot off the rails of the “real.” That will have to wait until I’m caught up with everything else.

    I regret not having read this book a long time ago.

  • Warren Ellis’ Crooked Little Vein

    Warren Ellis’ (no relation) Crooked Little Vein is the BEST novel I’ve read in a long while.  It sinks its teeth into the heart of American sexual fetishism and perversion in a weird tale that’s part alternate history, SF, and the New Weird.  I read the first half of the novel sitting at Starbucks a couple of days ago, and I got stares from the people sitting around me upstairs.  Why?  Because I was laughing my ass off!  There’s a lot to be said about this novel, but all I’m saying right now it go out and read this book so we can talk about MHP (macroherpetophile), saline injections, and roulette parties.  Stay tuned for more!

  • The Cigarette Smoking Man and Ms. Yutani in AVP2 Requiem

    Another interesting aspect of AVP2 Requiem is the appearance of the Cigarette Smoking Man from The X-Files. Okay, so the character is called Colonel Stevens, and he’s played by Robert Joy and not William B. Davis. However, he serves a similarly shady function within the AVP2 narrative. This American government/military official donning a black suit instead of uniform, orders the nuclear strike on the small town Alien infestation. Additionally, after the survivors make it out of the blast zone, they are intercepted by Special Forces members, who disarm them of the Predator energy weapon. This weapon in turn is then given by Col. Stevens to Ms. Yutani (Françoise Yip). This is an interesting development, because it serves to strengthen the bonds between government and corporate bodies. As you may know, Yutani is the other half of Weyland-Yutani, the mega-corporation from the original Alien and Aliens films (the Weyland aspect of the corporate puzzle is explained in AVP with the appearance of Charles Bishop Weyland played by Lance Henriksen). AVP2 does not go into the reasons why a government official would give otherworldly technology to a corporation, and my assumption is that this is a retelling and continuation of Cold War tropes embedded in Eisenhower’s military-industrial complex. Perhaps this signifies the hard currency payback by the government for its wholesale purchase by corporate interests in the here-and-now.

    More AVP2 commentary on Dynamic Subspace here and here.

  • More Thoughts on Forced Fellatio in AVP2 Requiem

    There’s one point that I didn’t make that clear in my last posting on Aliens Vs. Predator Requiem and that is the underlying problematic nature of the hybrid Alien-Predator. It signifies the ambiguous sex of transsexuals. Its body contains the Predator’s vagina-like mouth, which in turn houses the Alien’s phallus-like mouth extension. Through this imagery of design, the Alien-Predator hybrid represents both the female and male sexes. Which leads me to wonder if the Alien-Predator hybrid’s forcing a pregnant woman to have unnaturally impregnating fellatio represents a culturally derived fear of transsexuals and the intersexed? Is the Alien-Predator hybrid the new barbarian at the gates? Intersexed persons are most definitely individuals and human subjects, so how do these SF images of the marauding/barbaric/primitive/animal Alien-Predator hybrid Other challenge cultural progress in regards to sex and gender? It’s time to reread Sandy Stone’s “The Empire Strikes Back: A Posttranssexual Manifesto.”