W: LP: GRP: IA: I, Robot

I, Robot by Isaac Asimov

My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I will come back to this collection of stories with more in-depth analysis as I have time. The stories contain prose that is sparse, and the characters are somewhat stereotypical, but the real appeal to me are the great ideas and the tightly reasoned development of society with the ubiquitous use of robotics in lieu of personal computers. For now I shall just quote the conclusion of the last story in this collection:

[Quote:]
“That I don’t see at all.”

"Then listen. Every action by any executive which does not follow the exact directions of the Machine he is working with becomes part of the data for the next problem. The Machine therefore knows that the executive has a certain tendency to disobey. He can incorporate that tendency into that data,--even quantitatively, that is, judging exactly how much and in what direction disobedience would occur. Its next answers would be just sufficiently biased so that after the executive concerned disobeyed, he would have automatically corrected those answers to optimal directions. The Machine knows, Stephen!”

“You can’t be sure of all this. You are guessing.”

“It is a guess based on a lifetime’s experience with robots. You had better rely on such a guess, Stephen.”

“But then what is left? The Machines themselves are correct and the premises they work on are correct. That we have agreed upon. Now you say that it cannot be disobeyed. Then what is wrong?”

“You have answered yourself. Nothing is wrong! Think about the Machines for a while, Stephen. They are robots, and they follow the First Law. But the Machines work not for any single human being, but for all humanity, so that the First Law becomes: ‘No Machine may harm humanity; or, through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.’

“Very well, then, Stephen, what harms humanity? Economic dislocations most of all, from whatever cause. Wouldn’t you say so?”

“I would.”

“And what is most likely in the future to cause economic dislocations? Answer that, Stephen.”

“I should say,” replied Byerley, unwillingly, “the destruction of the Machines.”

“And so should I say, and so should the Machines say*. Their first care, therefore, is to preserve themselves, for us. And so they are quietly taking care of the only elements left that threaten them. It is not the ‘Society for Humanity’ which is shaking the boat so that the Machines may be destroyed. You have been looking at the reverse of the picture. Say rather that the Machine is shaking the boat--very slightly--just enough to shake loose those few which cling to the side for purposes the Machines consider harmful to humanity."

"So Vrasayana loses his factory and gets another job where he can do no harm-he is not badly hurt, he is not rendered incapable of earning a living, for the Machine cannot harm a human being more than minimally, and that only to save a greater number. Consolidated Cinnabar loses control at Almaden. Villafranca is no longer a civil engineer in charge of an important project. And the directors of World Steel are losing their grip on the industry-or will."

But you don’t really know all this,” insisted Byerley, distractedly. “How can we possibly take a chance on your being right?

“You must. Do you remember the Machine’s own statement when you presented the problem to him? It was: ‘The matter admits of no explanation.’ The Machine did not say there was no explanation, or that it could determine no explanation. It simply was not going to admit any explanation. In other words, it would be harmful to humanity to have the explanation known, and that’s why we can only guess-and keep on guessing.”

“But how can the explanation do us harm? Assume that you are right, Susan.”

“Why, Stephen, if I am right, it means that the Machine is conducting our future for us not only simply in direct answer to our direct questions, but in general answer to the world situation and to human psychology as a whole. And to know that may make us unhappy and may hurt our pride. The Machine cannot, must not, make us unhappy.

“Stephen, how do we know what the ultimate good of humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its! Perhaps, to give you a not unfamiliar example, our entire technical civilization has created more unhappiness and misery than it has removed. Perhaps an agrarian or pastoral civilization, with less culture and less people would be better. If so, the Machines must move in that direction, preferably without telling us, since in our ignorant prejudices we only know that what we are used to, is good--and we would then fight change. Or perhaps a complete urbanization, or a completely caste-ridden society, or complete anarchy is the answer. We don’t know. Only the Machines know and they are going there and taking us with them.

“But you are telling me, Susan, that the ‘Society for Humanity’ is right' and that Mankind has lost its own say in its future.

"It never had any really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand--at the whims of climate and the fortunes of war. Now the Machines understand them; and no one can stop them since the Machines will deal with them as they are dealing with the Society,--having, as they do the greatest of weapons at their disposal, the absolute control of our economy.”

“How horrible!

Perhaps how wonderful! Think that for all time all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines from now on are inevitable!”

And the fire behind the quartz went out and only a curl of smoke was left to indicate its place.

“And that is all,” said Dr. Calvin, rising. “I saw it from the beginning, when the poor robots couldn’t speak, to the end, when they stand between mankind and destruction. I will see no more. My life is over. You will see what comes next.”

I never saw Susan Calvin again. She died last month at the age of eighty-two.
[Unquote, bold mine.]


*So say we all; so say we all.

View all my reviews

W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS and Later Novels final

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

Just finished the fourth novel in this collection, "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer," and I found this story similar to VALIS in some ways but the focus was more on the loss that entails when those around you that you love start 'offing' themselves. The whole thing was poignant with sadness, yet we still had the profound explorations of philosophy and religion and human nature that is the hallmark of these late novels. It has been somewhat difficult to slog through these novels in this collection, but now that I have made the effort, I have that satisfied feeling of making it back from across the universe.

W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 03

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

{Update}
I just finished this novel, what a magnificent achievement for the first novel of a nineteen year old writer!!!
I want to quote a sublime soliloquy from the monster of Frankenstein, but before looking at that elevated passage, I'd like to relate the following intelligent feminist thought:

{Safie related that her mother was a Christian Arab, seized and made a slave by the Turks; recommended by her beauty, she had won the heart of the father of Safie, who married her. The young girl spoke in high and enthusiastic terms of her mother, who, born in freedom, spurned the bondage to which she was now reduced. She instructed her daughter in the tenets of her religion, and taught her to aspire to higher powers of intellect, and an independence of spirit, forbidden to the female followers of Mahomet. This lady died; but her lessons were indelibly impressed on the mind of Safie, who sickened at the prospect of again returning to Asia and being immured within the walls of a harem, allowed only to occupy herself with infantile amusements, ill suited to the temper of her soul, now accustomed to grand ideas and a noble emulation for virtue. The prospect of marrying a Christian, and remaining in a country where women were allowed to take a rank in society, was enchanting to her.}

--You see here proto-feminist thought but with the recognition that the status of women is indeed elevated in a Christian culture. Thus wherefore is this artificial divide between the humanizing of women brought about by the Christian faith and the modern alien propaganda against the faith? This doesn't have to be.


But now on to our soliloquy:

{"Oh, it is not thus--not thus," interrupted the being; "yet such must be the impression conveyed to you by what appears to be the purport of my actions. Yet I seek not a fellow-feeling in my misery. No sympathy may I find. When I first sought it, it was the love of virtue, the feelings of happiness and affection with which my whole being overflowed, that I wished to be participated. But now that virtue has become to me a shadow and that happiness and affection are turned to bitter and loathing despair, in what should I seek for sympathy? I am content to suffer alone while my sufferings shall endure: when I die, I am well satisfied that abhorrence and opprobrium should load my memory. Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding. I was nourished with high thoughts of honour and devotion. But now crime has degraded me beneath the meanest animal. No guilt, no mischief, no malignity, no misery, can be found comparable to mine. When I run over the frightful catalogue of my sins, I cannot believe that I am the same creature whose thoughts were once filled with sublime and transcendent visions of the beauty and the majesty of goodness. But it is even so; the fallen angel becomes a malignant devil. Yet even that enemy of God and man had friends and associates in his desolation; I am alone.

[Is not this description above not the picture of all human hearts? If everyone is honest deep down in their soul, without pretense or excuse, to remember our omissions and our commissions, this poetic passage above aptly describes us.]

[There is more to this soliloquy, but I'm out of time for this post. See pages 240 to 242 in the hardbound edition referenced in the picture of the cover.]

W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS and Later Novels

Divine Invasion

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick


In the novel "Divine Invasion" (#3 of 4 in this collection), we have the retelling of the historical moment of Christ's incarnation in science fiction terms with the limited understanding that an unbeliever would have in these matters.

It is an alternate future in which the Earth is ruled by a global government made of a coalition of two major factions. One faction is the Catholic-Islamic Church sharing power with the Scientific Legate, the other faction. The S.L. is a trans-statist power controlling at least half of the Earth, an alliance led by the Communists.

This Earth under totalitarian control is slowly colonizing the nearby star systems. A female colonist is impregnated by an alien being, but the offspring is fully human. She is assisted by an unwilling fellow colonist to return to Earth with her unborn child. The powers of Earth notice her arrival through the stellar frontier immigration checkpoint and immediately want the child dead.

Here is a passage that displays the moral corruption of these powers among other things (Linda Fox is some media star whose entertainment package is used to keep the colonists happy in their lonely outposts):

[Quote:]

"If Linda Fox will not decide for the S.L.," Galina said,"why don't you draw her aside and tell her that one day on her way to a concert engagement her private rocket--that gaudy plush thing she flies herself--will go up in a flash of flaming fire?"

Gloomily, Bulkowsky said, "Because the cardinal got to her first. He has already passed the word to her that if she doesn't accept sweet Jesus into her life bichlorides will find her whether she wants to accept them or not."

The tactic of poisoning Linda Fox with small doses of mercury was an artful one. Long before she died (if she did die) she would be mad as a hatter--literally, since it had been mercury poisoning, mercury used to process felt hats, that had driven the English hatters of the nineteenth century into famous organic psychosis.

I wish I had thought of that, Bulkowsky said to himself. Intelligence reports stated that the chanteuse had become hysterical when informed by a C.I.C. agent of what the cardinal intended if she did not decide for Jesus--hysteria and then temporary hypothermia, followed by a refusal to sing "Rock of Ages" in her next concert, as had been scheduled.

On the other hand, he reflected, cadmium would be better than mercury because it would be more difficult to detect. The S.L. secret police had used trace amounts of cadmium on unpersons for some time, and to good effect.

"Then money won't influence her," Galina said.

"I wouldn't dismiss it. It's her ambition to own Greater Los Angeles."

Galina said, "But if she's destroyed, the colonists will grumble. They're dependent on her."

"Linda Fox is not a person. She is a class of persons, a type. She is a sound that electronic equipment, very sophisticated electronic equipment, makes. There are more of her. There will always be. She can be stamped out like tires."

"Well, then don't offer here very much money." Galina laughed.

"I feel sorry for her," Bulkowsky said. How must it feel, he asked himself, not to exist? That's a contradiction. To feel is to exist. Then, he thought, probably she does not feel. Because it is a fact that she does not exist, not really. We ought to know. We were the first to imagine her.

Or rather--Big Noodle had first imagined Fox. The A.I. system had invented her, told her what to sing and how to sing it; Big Noodle set up her arrangements...even down to the mixing. And the package was a complete success.

Big Noodle had correctly analyzed the emotional needs of the colonists and had come up with a formula to meet those needs. The A.I. system maintained an ongoing survey, deriving feedback; when the needs changed, Linda Fox changed. It constituted a closed loop. If, suddenly, all the colonists disappeared, Linda Fox would wink out of existence. Big Noodle would have canceled her, like paper run through a paper shredder.

[Unquote.]


[Here is another passage from a conversation during the long journey to earth:]

"The Torah is the Law?" Herb said.

"It is more that the Law. The word 'Law' is inadequate. Even though the New Testament of the Christians always uses the word 'Law' for Torah. Torah is the Creator's instrument. With it he created the universe and for it he created the universe. It is the highest idea and the living soul of the world. Without it the world could not exist and would have no right to exist. I am quoting the great Hebrew poet Hayyim Nahman Bialik who lived from the latter part of the nineteenth century into the mid-twentieth century. You should read him sometime."

"Can you tell me anything else about the Torah?"

"Resh Lakish said, 'If one's intent is pure, the Torah for him becomes a life-giving medicine, purifying him to life. But if one's intent is not pure, it becomes a death-giving drug, purifying him to death.'"

The two men remained silent for a time.

"I will tell you something more," Elias said. "A man came to the great Rabbi Hillel--he lived in the first century, C.E.--and said, 'I will become a proselyte on the condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I stand on one foot?' Hillel said, 'Whatever is hateful to you, do not do it to your neighbor. That is the entire Torah. The rest is commentary; go and learn it.'" He smiled at Herb Asher.

"Is the injunction actually in the Torah?" Herb Asher said. "The first five books of the Bible?"

"Yes. Leviticus nineteen, eighteen. God says, 'You shall love your neighbor as a man like yourself.' You did not know that, did you? Almost two thousand years before Jesus."

"Then the Golden Rule derives from Judaism," Herb said.

"Yes, it does, and early Judaism. The Rule was presented to man by God Himself."

"I have a lot to learn," Herb said.

"Read," Elias said. "'Cape, lege,' the two words Augustine heard. Latin for 'Take, read.' You do that, Herb. Take the book and read it. It is there for you. It is alive."

As their journey continued, Elias disclosed to him further intriguing aspects of the Torah, qualities regarding the Torah that few men knew.

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 02

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

I am further along in this novel and I have reached the part where Dr. Frankenstein meets his creature (he had rejected it shortly after it's creation and it had fled); so now we have an Inception-like feature--within Dr. Frankenstein's story (within the letters) is the creature's story. This is a somewhat interesting account of a fully cognizant being learning how to communicate and about the cruelty of humanity. This story isn't anything like any of the movies made of it, but it is still fascinating. Mary Shelly brings out relational and psychological aspects of the characters that I think is sometimes missing from modern literature. So far this novel is better than I thought it would be because it is so different.

W: LP: GRP: MS: Frankenstein 01

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley

As I have been using Goodreads to track my current reading and catalog some past reading, I have noticed that there are some 'classics' of speculative fiction that I have missed. I have seen many movie versions of Frankenstein, but I had never actually read the original novel. I have just begun this story and so far it looks like it is, among many other things, a critique of modernism.

Since I am somewhat used to archaic ways of novel writing, in the sense that to 20th and 21st century ears, novels written in the early 19th century and before seem archaic, I have no problem 'getting into' the spirit of the story. The book starts out as an epistolary novel but within the letters, the narrative story of Dr. Frankenstein emerges. I'm sure more unusual features of the novel will be revealed as I progress further along. (More to come, but in the interim here following are a few interesting quotes:)

[Quote (this exemplifies the hunger of the discoverer or explorer):]

What may not be expected in a country of eternal light? I may there discover the wondrous power which attracts the needle; and may regulate a thousand celestial observations, that require only this voyage to render their seeming eccentricities consistent for ever. I shall satiate my ardent curiosity with the sight of a part of the world never before visited, and may tread a land never before imprinted by the foot of man. These are my enticements, and they are sufficient to conquer all fear of danger or death, and to induce me to commence this laborious voyage with the joy a child feels when he embarks in a little boat, with his holiday mates, on an expedition of discovery up his native river. But, supposing all these conjectures to be false, you cannot contest the inestimable benefit which I shall confer on all mankind to the last generation, by discovering a passage near the pole to those countries, to reach which at present so many months are requisite; or by ascertaining the secret of the magnet, which, if at all possible, can only be effected by an undertaking such as mine.

[Unquote.]

[Quote (against the hyper specialization of our modern era in the sciences):]

"Chemistry is that branch of natural philosophy in which the greatest improvements have been and may be made: it is on that account that I have made it my peculiar study; but at the same time I have not neglected the other branches of science. A man would make a very sorry chemist if he attended to that department of human knowledge alone. If your wish is to become really a man of science, and not merely a petty experimentalist, I should advise you to apply to every branch of natural philosophy, including mathematics."

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: PKD: VALIS and Later Novels

VALIS and Later Novels by Philip K. Dick

After finishing "VALIS", I accidentally skipped ahead to "The Transmigration of Timothy Archer", but I'm only three chapters into the novel, so I'll stop and go back and read "The Divine Invasion" first. But first a few comments on this novel. The novel is written by a man (Philip K. Dick) in the first person from a woman's POV making it somewhat unusual. And right away the reader is thrust into the post-psychedelic era in California, where the lost traded in their drugs for spiritualism. I came across a short passage that exposes one aspect of this New Age movement:

[Quote:]

A terribly thin kid who resembled our friend Joe the Junkie stopped me, saying, "Ticket?"

"You mean this thing?" From my purse I got out the printed card that Barefoot had mailed me upon receipt of my hundred dollars. In California you buy enlightenment the way you buy peas at the supermarket, by size and weight. I'd like four pounds of enlightenment, I said to myself. No, better make that ten pounds. I'm really running short.

"Go to the rear of the boat," the skinny youth said.

[Unquote.]

{UPDATE}

I just started "The Divine Invasion", and on the first page (p.401) I came across a couple of lines that I liked (emphasis mine):

The two of them took the local rail to the school. A fussy little man met them, a Mr. Plaudet; he was enthusiastic and wanted to shake hands with Manny. It was evident to Elias Tate that this was the government. First they shake hands with you, he thought, and then they murder you.

W: LP: GRP: BS: Distraction

Distraction by Bruce Sterling

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Published in 1998, the story takes place in the years 2044 to 2045, but it is a thinly veiled commentary on what is going on currently (as of this writing--c.2011AD). Mr. Sterling is a skilled writer, so the story gets a higher rating because he has accomplished the first goal of publishing a book--it needs to entertain. I was entertained and found some of the ideas in the story quite interesting; it's worth your time to read this novel. I liked a number of passages in this book, so I'll quote them here:



[Quote:]

It had never occurred to the lords of the consumer society that consumerism as a political philosophy might one day manifest the grave systemic instabilities that Communism had. But as those instabilities multiplied, the country had cracked. Civil society shriveled in the pitiless reign of cash. As the last public spaces were privatized*, it became harder and harder for American culture to breath. Not only were people broke, but they were driven to madness by commercials, and pitilessly surveilled by privacy-invading hucksters. An ever more aggressive consumer-outreach apparatus caused large numbers of people to simply abandon their official identities.

It was no longer any fun to be an American citizen. Bankruptcies multiplied beyond all reason, becoming a kind of commercial apostasy. Tax dodging became a spectator sport. The American people simply ceased to behave. They gathered publicly to burn their licenses, chop up their charge cards, and hit the road. The proles considered themselves the only free Americans.

[Unquote.]

[Quote:]

She looked at him with sudden pity. "Poor Oscar. You've got it all backward. That's not why I feel guilty. I'm guilty because I know it's going to work. Talking with those Moderators for so long...I really understand it now. Science truly is going to change. It'll still be 'Science.' It'll have the same intellectual structure, but its political structure will be completely different. Instead of being poorly paid government workers, we'll be avant-garde dissident intellectuals for the dispossessed. And that will work for us. Because we can get a better deal from them now than we can from the government. The proles are not so new; they're just like big, hairy, bad-smelling college students. We can deal with people like that. We do it all the time."

He brightened. "Are you sure?"

"It'll be like a new academia, with some krewe feudal elements. It'll be a lot like the Dark Ages, when universities were little legal territories all their own, and scholars carried maces and wore little square hats, and whenever the university was crossed, they sent huge packs of students into the streets to tear everything up, until they got their way. Except it's not the Dark Ages right now. It's the Loud Ages, it's the Age of Noise. We've destroyed our society with how much we know, and how quickly and how randomly we can move it around. We live in the Age of Noise, and this is how we learn to be the scientists of the Age of Noise. We don't get to be government functionaries who can have all the money we want just because we give the government a lot of military-industrial knowledge. That's all over now. From now on we're going to be like other creative intellectuals. We're going to be like artists or violin-makers, with our little krewes of fans who pay attention and support us."

"Wonderful, Greta. It sounds great!"

"We'll do cute, attractive, sexy science, with small amounts of equipment. That's what science has to be in America now. We can't do it the European way, where there's all kinds of moral fretting and worrying about what technology will do to people; there's no fun in that, it's just not American. We'll be like Orville Wright in the bicycle shed from now on. It won't be easier for us. It'll be harder for us. But we'll have our freedom. Our American freedom. It's a vote of confidence in the human imagination."

[Unquote:]







*I don't think Bruce foresaw America's sudden lurch toward statism or the 2008 beginning of our economic collapse.



View all my reviews

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 04

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

from page 376 (and I ask this question of the corporatist oligarchy masquerading as a Republic here in the USA):

"But you've tried to tell us what we should want. You came as a solemn army to bring new life to men*. You tore that life you knew nothing about, out of their guts--and you told them what it had to be. You took their every hour, every minute, every nerve, every thought in the farthest corners of their souls--and you told them what it had to be. You came and you forbade life to the living. You've driven us all into an iron cellar and you've closed all doors, and you've locked us airtight, airtight till the blood vessels of our spirits burst! Then you stare and wonder what it's doing to us.

Well, then, look! All of you who have eyes left--look!"

[Unquote.]

*In our case it was an army of salesmen followed by a galactic sized force of bureaucrats, do-gooders, utopianist experimenters, and many other cozy country club betrayers and revilers of God.

W: LP: GRP: AR: We The Living 03

We the Living: 60th Anniversary Edition by Ayn Rand

Here is another scene from this novel that captures the betrayal of the revolution by that lowest of human types, "the climber" or "the opportunist", the Grima Wormtongue:

[Quote:]

"Comrade!" Morozov panted. "Let me go!"

"Sit still!" Timoshenko roared. "Pour yourself a glass and drink. Do you hear me? Drink, you bastard! Drink and listen!"

Morozov obeyed; his glass tinkled, shaking, against the bottle.

"You see," said Timoshenko, as if each word were tearing his throat on its way out, "I don't mind that we're beaten. I don't mind that we've taken the greatest of crimes on our shoulders and then let it all slip through our fingers. I wouldn't mind it if we had been beaten by a tall warrior in a steel helmet, a human dragon spitting fire. But we're beaten by a louse. A big, fat, slow, blond louse. Ever seen lice? The blond ones are the fattest...It was our own fault. Once, men were ruled with a god's thunder. Then they were ruled with a sword. Now they're ruled with a Primus.* Once, they were held by reverence. Then they were held by fear. Now they're held by their stomachs. Men have worn chains on their necks, and on their wrists, and on their ankles. Now they're enchained by their rectums. Only you don't hold heroes by their rectums. It was our own fault."

"Comrade, for God's sake, comrade, why tell it all to me?"

"We started building a temple. Do we end with a chapel? No! And we don't even end with an outhouse. We end with a musty kitchen with a second-hand stove! We set fire under a kettle and we brewed and stirred and mixed blood and fire and steel. What are we fishing now out of the brew? A new humanity? Men of granite? Or at least a good and horrible monster? No! Little puny things that wiggle. Little things that can bend both ways, little double-jointed spirits. Little things that don't even bow humbly to be whipped. No! They take the lash obediently and whip themselves! Ever sat at a social-activity club meeting? Should. Do you good. Learn a lot about the human spirit."

"Comrade!" Morozov breathed. "What do you want? Is it money you want? I'll pay. I'll..."

Timoshenko laughed so loudly that heads turned and Morozov cringed, trying not to be noticed. "You louse!" Timoshenko roared laughing. "You fool, near-sighted, demented louse! Who do you think you're talking to? Comrade Victor Dunaev? Comrade Pavel Syerov?
Comrade..."

"Comrade!" Morozov roared, so that heads turned to him, but he did not care any longer. "You...you...you have no right to say that! I have nothing whatever to do with Comrade Syerov! I..."

"Say," Timoshenko remarked slowly, "I only said you should have. You and he and Victor Dunaev. And about one million others--with Party cards and stamps affixed. The winners and the conquerors. Those who crawl. That, pal, is the great slogan of the men of the future: those who crawl. Listen, do you know how many millions of eyes are watching us across land and oceans? They're not very close and they can't see very well. They see a big shadow rising. They think it's a huge beast. They're too far to see that it's soft and brownish and fuzzy. You know, fuzzy, a glistening sort of fuzz. They don't know that it's made of cockroaches. Little, glossy, brown cockroaches, packed tight, one on the other, into a huge wall. Little cockroaches that keep silent and wiggle their whiskers. But the world is too far to see the whiskers. That's what's wrong with the world, Comrade Morozov: they don't see the whiskers!"

"Comrade! Comrade, what are you talking about?"

"They see a black cloud and they hear thunder. They've been told that behind the cloud, blood is running freely, and men fight, and men kill, and men die. Well, what of it? They, those who watch, are not afraid of blood. There's an honor in blood. But do they know that it's not blood we're bathed in, it's puss. Listen, I'll give you advice. If you want to keep this land in your tentacles, tell the world that you're chopping heads off for breakfast and shooting men by the regiment. Let the world think that you're a huge monster to be feared and respected and fought honorably. But don't let them know that yours is not an army of heroes, nor even of fiends, but of shriveled bookkeepers with a rupture who've learned to be arrogant. Don't let them know that you're not to be shot, but to be disinfected. Don't let them know that you're not to be fought with cannons, but with carbolic acid!"

[Unquote, emphasis mine.]

*The Primus was the name of the small cooking/lamps using kerosene and ubiquitous in the common usage by the citizens of Petrograd and represents the meager consumer/comfort device allowed to the proletariat.

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 03

Here are some closing quotes from PJL's book:

[Quote:]

"Vapor" pictures the world as impossible to control. But vapor is also a veil, a screen. Think of how hard it is to drive through a thick fog. Everything disappears. You know there's still a world and a road out there, but the vapor keeps them hidden away. To say that all is vapor is to say that it's hiding something, and Solomon is suggesting that the vapor of the world screens us from God himself, who for the time being, "under the sun," modestly remains behind the veil of the vaporous world.

We don't yet see God putting everything right. We don't see the sovereign hand of poetic justice. Innocents die, sages are ignored, moral pygmies rule the airwaves and the movie screens and many nations. That's what it's like to live in a world of vapor. And that's just what we should expect once we wake from our modern Promethean nap and realize we are creatures, mad from dust, living in a world made from nothing at all. On what were we drunk when we began to imagine we could figure it all out?

[Unquote.]

W: LP: GRP: PL: Solomon Among the Postmoderns: 02

Here is some more Peter Leithart from his book, “Solomon Among the Postmoderns”; these thoughts are useful to me in constructing the specifics of the aesthetic I will try to apply to a Steampunk story (consider that an alternate history in which the rate of modernization and technological advancement in mechanics, including mechanical computers has advanced to give analogous steam-tech solutions to society’s technology needs would all the more create the social pressure toward a post-modern effect):

[Quote:]

Postmodern skepticism also arises from the intensification of scientific progress: as science becomes more and more specialized, it becomes less and less obvious that it is all one project. The very successes of modern science produce a postmodern ghettoization, an inversion of modernity that produces postmodern tribalism—the tribe of physicists at war with the tribe of biologists, and each tribe plagued by its own subtribes—astrophysicists versus particle physicists, biochemists versus microbiologists.

Alongside these inversions, postmodernism unmasks truths that modern science has tried to hide. The truth, for instance, that scientific experiments require very special conditions and constraints and therefore don’t offer the direct and transparent access to nature that they pretend to. Science has acted as if scientific methods quietly seduce Dame Nature to unveil herself to expert gaze, naked and unashamed; postmodernists often see science as something more like gang rape. To take another instance, postmodernists unmask the truth that scientific theories are never as uncontested as the textbooks make them appear. There are always anomalous facts that stubbornly refuse to fit the elegant lines of the dominant paradigm, and there are always cranks who gleefully point out where the undergarments are showing through the straining seams of theory.

[Unquote, p.80-81]

[Quotes from p.100-101]

Under the sun, during this time, we are surrounded by diffusion, differance, death, and decay. Under the sun, the self is elusive, and we all die. Solomon says there is no profit “under the sun,” that is, there is no apparent accumulation, no guarantee of surplus or progress. Under the sun, our projects slip from our fingers like mist. Under the sun, we cannot get a panoramic view of the times and seasons, cannot tell a master story that organizes and places every event of history. In this time under the sun, all is vapor—our lives, our books, our words, our projects. All is so much futile shepherding wind.

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How can Solomon, after emphasizing the vaporous character of reality, speak with the confidence he does? The key to understanding Solomon is to recognize that he deliberately limits his observations to what is true “under the sun” or “under heaven” (Ecclesiastes 3:1: cf. 1:3, 9, 14; 2:11, 17-18; etc.)

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Unlike most postmoderns, however, Solomon does not believe that the world “under the sun” is the only world there is. One of the things Solomon says he knows is that God will bring all wickedness to judgment (3:16-17). He knows this, but he doesn’t know it by observation of the world. Observation of the world would lead him to the somber conclusion that the wicked will triumph. If Solomon knows that God will judge the world, that every wrong will be put right, it is because he trusts that God will not let evil triumph forever. Like Abraham, Solomon knows that the God who is the Judge of all the earth will do right.

In knowing that God will judge, Solomon also knows that Derrida is wrong: waiting for the messianic is not fruitless waiting. There is a final word, a word that closes out the time under the sun and begins the time after the time under the sun, a word that sets the final horizon for all words, all thoughts, all selves. And this omega-word is, Christians confess, also the alpha-word, Word who was from the beginning, the living Word who is with God and who is God, the living Word. The words of the wise who fear him are not vaporous breath but “well-driven nails.” For Solomon and for Christian faith, there is a time after the time under the sun, and scripture teaches that there is treasure, a surplus beyond imagining, waiting for us there (Matt. 6:20; 1 Pet. 1:3-5). In the time after the time under the sun, there is a judgment, a final word. In the time after the time after the sun, death and decay are swallowed up in incorruptible life.

[Unquote:]