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Monday, December 14, 2015

Childhood's End (UPDATED)

(UPDATE at the end.) I'm planning to take a break from grading to watch the beginning of the (insultingly monikered and branded) "SyFy" Network's adaptation of Clarke's Childhood's End. The novel, like many of the milestones in classic SF qua "Literature of Ideas" is a symptomatic mess of infantile wish-fulfillment adolescent angst and superannuated patriarchal white privilege. It has also long been declared unfilmable, and I expect bland fare roiling with ugly assumptions and aspirations poking up through the surface from time to time -- which is usually a worthwhile breadcrumb trail to follow in this quintessentially futurological (neoliberal) era. Those who lack the patience for the three day spectacle are directed to this adjacent production:


UPDATE: Childhood's End has ended. I actually don't think it was bad in all the ways I feared it might be, but when all is said and done I did find it to be the bland business I expected, the acting at best minimally-competent, the cheese factor higher and higher each successive night, and not enjoyably so. I watched all three nights, which is something, but then I watch a hell of a lot of science fiction and it doesn't really take that much to keep me on board. The real draw, for me as for most people, quickly became the fact that The Expanse (and then The Magicians, which I thought pretty disastrously bad as someone who appreciated the books) was coming on right after each CE installment ground its way to a halt.

I got some pushback for declaring CE, like so much "Golden Age" Science Fiction symptomatically white-racist, mostly due to the famous inclusion in it of Jan Rodricks as The Last Man. The investment of the televised version of Rodricks with actual social-cultural-positional substance makes the case a little less cut and dried for the mini-series -- as does its omission of the whole poor persecuted whites of post-Apartheid South Africa, hardy har har. But I always found Rodricks worse than just the exception that proves what we all know was and to an ugly extent remains the "hard sf" rule on race: in making the written Rodricks such a conspicuously non-threatening abstraction, such a non white-guilt inducing liberal "post-racial" fantasy of Blackness I still actually consider the gesture a symptom rather than an overcoming of racism. I am happy to concede the point is arguable, but that really has always been the way it felt to me personally in the book.

Some dumb transhumanists linked to this post, castigating its absurdly idiotic comments. Since the post was mostly expressing a few anticipatory fears rather than making any kind of extended argument or critique (of something I had not yet seen after all) it is perplexing what is supposed to be so "idiotic" about saying so, unless it is the link to the Carpenters video that is the problem, which was admittedly just a bit of silliness pretty clearly offered up as such. If you read the linked article in which my post is derided for its idiocy you will find that it goes on to make a case for transhumanists flying their freak flags high and admitting that they are really (actually? aspirationally?) Overlords themselves. Of course, that the transhumanists are Overlord-Wannabes is more or less what makes them robot cultists in the first place, so it is hard to see why they pout and stamp when I say so about them myself on a regular basis. It is especially hilarious to realize that, strictly speaking, in both the book and the mini-series the Overlords are really just the Orc army to the Overmind's Sauron, too stupid to be psionically fattened up into a meal satisfying the tastes of the top predator in the cosmic food chain (not a bad way to think of God if one really must) like humans and the unlucky denizens of the other "supervised" planets turned out to be. The Overlords are just dumb grunts doing the dirty work of the Universe's Ultimate Hungry Hungry Hippo. Leave it to body-loathing abacus-wannabe transhumanoids to swallow the Overmind's line that eir prey are somehow transcending childhood to become "pure" energy bliss-borganisms as they get digested. Yeah, get a load of our robo-cultic "Overlords"! Hey, they can't fly in space or cure cancer but they've got website manifestos about how great it would be to be a math problem in the cloud.

7 comments:

jimf said...

> . . .a symptomatic mess of infantile wish-fulfillment
> adolescent angst. . .

I dunno about that. Having just listened (twice) to a
YouTube audiobook of the novel within the past few months,
my lingering impression is that while there is, in the creme-filled
center of the novel, the usual technophilia and "superannuated
white privilege" -- if you can call it that, since one of the
main characters in the book, if not in the TV show, is in
fact black [call it male privilege, if you must -- the book
has a distinctly 1950s flavor vis a vis the relations
between the sexes, how could it not?], the overall arc of
the story is very dark, very bleak, and quite moving.

---------
Then Jean said quietly: "Good-bye, my darling," and tightened
her arms about him. There was no time for George to answer,
but even at that final moment he felt a brief astonishment as
he wondered how she knew that the moment had arrived.

Far down in the rock, the segments of uranium began to rush
together, seeking the union they could never achieve.

And the island rose to meet the dawn.
====

jimf said...

> [I]n both the book and the mini-series the Overlords are really
> just the Orc army to the Overmind's Sauron, too stupid to
> be psionically fattened up into a meal satisfying the tastes
> of the top predator in the cosmic food chain (not a bad way
> to think of God if one really must). . .

Well, I didn't watch the mini-series, but I have to say I've never
thought of the Overmind as evil in a Sauronian sense. The book's
theme is certainly Clarke waxing mystical (the way he does in _2001_)
in a "transhuman" mode. The adjective "Stapledonian" also comes to mind.
But as far as I could tell, idea was that the human race was about to undergo some
sort of psionic metamorphosis driven entirely from within (nothing
to do with AI or genetic engineering or any of the contemporary >Hists'
hopes), with or without the intervention of the Overmind.

The Overmind intervened (via its servants the "Overlords" -- a
human designation, and not one that Karellen particularly liked,
as I recall), because this metamorphosis, unguided, would certainly
have turned into some kind of malignancy. We have no guarantee of this,
of course, other than Karellen's (or Rashaverak's) explanation.

But the Overlords are set up by the author to be regarded
as being both far more intelligent than humans and also extremely ethical
by ordinary human standards (did the TV show have the business about the
Overlords' putting an end to gratuitous cruelty to animals?).
Whether either of the O's is in fact good by any ultimate cosmic
ethical standards is, of course, unknowable. Maybe that's part
of the point. But I think Clarke's opinion is pretty clear.

There's also the business (in the book, at least) where Karellen,
after he finally comes completely clean to the remaining,
now childless, adult people of Earth, says something like
"It might be kinder to destroy you. But this I cannot do."
Also, it's clear (and there's no particular reason to doubt
their sincerity at that point) that the Overlords **envy**
the capacity of the human race to metamorphose in this way
into something that can join the Overmind, a capacity which
the Overlords themselves lack and which they study the end in
as much detail as possible (with Rodricks' voluntary participation)
as part of a long-term research program in hopes of overcoming
that limitation in themselves some day.

There is one plot weakness in the book I noticed last time
I read (or listened) to it -- **why** exactly can't there be
any more children after the transforming youngsters are
taken away? Just because the remaining adults are too demoralized?
Clarke may have been edging away from controversy at that
point by drawing a discreet veil over the possibility of
any more explicit intervention on the O's part to keep that from
happening.

Anyway, in the YouTube trailers I loved Charles Dance as the
voice of Karellen. Did the show at least live up to that?

Dale Carrico said...

But the Overlords are set up by the author to be regarded as being both far more intelligent than humans and also extremely ethical by ordinary human standards

The Overlords are grunts, but possibly a little ethically sensitive or at any rate weirded out by some aspects of their role in the whole make the world a paradise so we can psionically fatten up a generation of mind children hors d'oeuvres (pigs with apples in their mouths in cyberspace), certainly more than the Overmind which, I'm telling you, Jim, I'm telling you, is like totally eating all those kids. That's my reading and I'm sticking to it.

Charles Dance as the voice of Karellen

Oh, yeah, by far the best thing in the series. His acting, his voice, butter throughout. He even carried off the rubber devil suit with panache.

jimf said...

> I'm telling you, Jim, I'm telling you, is like totally eating all those kids.

You mean -- it's a **cookbook**!!?

;->

Dale Carrico said...

You don't miss a trick, my friend.

jimf said...

> > [I]n both the book and the mini-series the Overlords are really
> > just the Orc army to the Overmind's Sauron. . .
>
> Well, I didn't watch the mini-series, but I have to say I've never
> thought of the Overmind as evil in a Sauronian sense. . .

------------------
_Morgoth's Ring_ ("The History of Middle-earth", Vol. X)
J.R.R. Tolkien (Christopher Tolkien, ed.)
Part Five, "Myths Transformed"
pp. 395-396

[A]s 'Morgoth', when Melkor was confronted by the existence of
other inhabitants of Arda, with other wills and intelligences,
he was enraged by the mere fact of their existence. . . Elves,
and still more Men, he despised because of their 'weakness':
that is their lack of physical force, or power over 'matter';
but he was also afraid of them. . . [H]e became so far advanced
in Lying that he lied even to himself, and pretended that he
could destroy them and rid Arda of them altogether. . .

Sauron had never reached this stage of nihilistic madness.
He did not object to the existence of the world, so long
as he could do what he liked with it. He still had the relics
of positive purposes. . .: it had been his virtue (and
therefore also the cause of his fall, and of his relapse)
that he loved order and co-ordination, and disliked all
confusion and wasteful friction. (It was the apparent will
and power of Melkor to effect his designs quickly and masterfully
that had first attracted Sauron to him.) Sauron had, in fact,
been very like Saruman, and so still understood him quickly
and could guess what he would do. . .
====


http://www.moreright.net/reaction-as-a-return-to-natural-order/
(via
http://amormundi.blogspot.com/2013/09/de-twitterized-privacy-treatise.html )
------------------
Reaction as a Return to Natural Order
Posted on June 10, 2013 by Michael Anissimov

From Julius Evola, Men Among the Ruins (1953):

. . .

The Reaction is. . . about. . . offering positive
principles for stability and civilizational
success — . . . traditional principles of hierarchy and authority,
which foster order. . . Leaders that lead, instead
of simply following popular opinion. The whole idea is remarkably
simple, and stood on its own for thousands of years without being
contrasted with anything else except chaos and anarchy.
====

http://www.chakoteya.net/startrek/24.htm
------------------
Space Seed
Stardate: 3141.9
Original Airdate: Feb 16, 1967

SPOCK: There was the war to end tyranny. Many considered that a noble effort.

KHAN NOONIEN SINGH: Tyranny, sir? Or an attempt to unify humanity?

SPOCK: Unify, sir? Like a team of animals under one whip?

KHAN: I know something of those years. Remember, it was a time of
great dreams, of great aspiration.

SPOCK: Under dozens of petty dictatorships.

KHAN: One man would have ruled eventually. As Rome under Caesar.
Think of its accomplishments.

SPOCK: Then your sympathies were with. . .

KHAN [pounding on table]: We offered the world **order**!!
====

;->

jimf said...

> Elves, and still more Men, he despised because of
> their 'weakness': that is their lack of physical
> force, or power over 'matter'

"I am not angry for being unable to love. I equate love with weakness.
I hate being weak and I hate and despise weak people (and, by
implication, the very old and the very young). I do not tolerate
stupidity, disease and dependence - and love seems to encompass
all three. These are not sour grapes. I really feel this way."

-- Sam Vaknin
http://samvak.tripod.com/journal3.html