August 27th: Robots, Zombies, People
Asimov and Heinlein

Announcements

• University Career Center's Fall Career Expo
• Triota Recruitment

Moodle2 Posts

I have a prompt for you on Moodle2 to respond two by 11:59pm on Thursday, August 29th. I will try to have the pormpts for Thursdays up by class on Tuesdays.

Finish up Culture Discussion from Thursday

Where did we leave off...

• Manifest Destiny
  • American Exceptionalism
• "City upon a hill"-reference to Jesus telling followers to allow their good deeds to be seen. The world should look to us.
• This is a popular reference for Conservative politicians.
• Makes an appearance as "City of Peace" in Birth of a Nation (1915) @ 2 hrs 58 min 45 secs.
• Although predominantly of Christian origin and myth, American Exceptionalism is rooted in the belief that we're somehow destined by a divine power to be better than other nations.
• Youth Culture
• Business Culture
  • Read the culture in this job ad
  • How about this job ad

Literary Vocabulary

We didn't get to our literary terms on Thursday, so let's go back for a little bit and review them: Literary Vocabulary.

Asimov, Isaac "Reason" (1941)

From a Biblical example to, well, perhaps, quite the opposite. Asimov is certainly making a comment about religion, but it's not so simply an anti-religious comment.

Before getting into the religious discussion, think about QT's position: He's on a spaceship with no memory of Earth. He recognizes he's superior to Powell and Donovan, so he starts drawing conclusions that are quite similar to the conclusions those promoting an American exceptionalism ideology draw—we're better.

Things We Most Likely Can't Disagree About

We carry on our lives without truly understanding the forces at work—social, scientific, and technological. We'll return to social and political forces, but we'll look at science and technology—the two major themes of Science Fiction texts. When we use mobile phones, computers, cars, etc., we don't have to understand the science or engineering behind how they work. Of course, some of us do but only if one is in a technical discipline or just really curious.

Calories

What is a calorie? Although it might not seem very scientific, much marketing is devoted to giving us (sometime dubious) information about food science. Of course, general (lay) audiences don't speak the jargon of experts on the subject, so companies carefully pick and choose what to communicate to consumers (you'll often hear me call consumers or readers users when I refer to a group that passes on technical information). Consumers have varying levels of understanding regarding nutrition, but, predominantly, most people know that calories are important to know when thinking about weight loss (or gain). Many groups try to educate the public about healthy eating habits. Generally, the more calories something has, the more likely it will cause weight gain. Even though we know that all calories aren't the same, this general guideline is accepted by consumers (it doesn't have to be universally accepted).

But what is a calorie, and how do nutritionists determine the numbers? Most of us haven't stopped to think about that. The process is described here and another process is described here. The point isn't to understand how nutritionists come up with calorie counts; instead, it's to reinforce that we carry on and go about our day making decisions (or fretting over the consequences) based on a science we don't fully comprehend.

Take a look at the calorie counts from Subway:

Turkey Breast, 280 calories

Black Forest Ham, 290 calories

Turkey Breast & Black Forest Ham, 280 calories

Shouldn't the combination of turkey and ham be 285???

Back to QT, the Existential Robot

This is a reading, an interpretation of many other possible ones, but it will come back in other science fiction texts. The robots in "Reason" and the rest of Asimov's robot stories (see I, Robot for his most famous ones) are humans. We make up stories about where we come from; we participate in hierarchies for efficiency (or the assumption of efficiency); we create tools to accomplish goals. QT is in space making sure he serves the Master, and Earth gets the energy it needs. We're here on Earth using mobile phones and don't need to know anything about satellites, towers, or signals. We've seamlessly weaved most technologies into ours lives without having a full understanding of them. Another theme in science fiction this will bring up is the anxiety of not being fully in control of our destinies. Authors create alien invaders with superior technologies to play out these (mostly) unconscious social anxieties.

Heinlein, Robert. "All You Zombies—" (1959)

Heinlein is a famous (and controversial) science fiction writer. He might be best known for his novel Starship Troopers (1959), which has a movie adaptation that pokes fun at the audience. Heinlein and Asimov (along with Arthur C. Clarke) are considered the three greatest science fiction writers from the "Golden Age of Science Fiction" (the 1950s were part of that age but in a transition). Although this stigma is still part of people's views of science fiction, Heinlein was instrumental in raising the literary bar of science fiction from goofy entertainment to a thought-provoking genre.

Heinlein is important as a bridge between an artificial distinction in science fiction:

• social science fiction: concerned with social aspects of imagined worlds and projections of technology and science.
• hard science fiction: emphasizes technical or scientific accuracy in narratives.

Of course, this class is more concerned with social science fiction because we're reading science fiction in order to discuss culture. Fans of hard science fiction often get hung up on the plausibility of technologies and might consider a works value based on it ability to predict the future. Heinlein was an engineer, so he understood the science behind space flight, satellites, and communication technologies. Heinlein and other science fiction writers of this Golden Age were instrumental in exciting public imagination about other worlds and space travel. That's important for citizens to get behind government initiatives for rockets, satellites, and, of course, the space race.

The Paradox of Jane/Bartender/Single Mother

This isn't just a story about a guy who, using time travel, fathers and mothers himself and spills his/her guts to himself who serves him drinks. That's confusing, but we need to think metaphorically. Although we're not coming up with THE meaning and, instead, looking for a meaning, let's consider the following themes Heinlein's story could be directing us to think about:

• (pre)destiny
• individualism
• reality
• zombies
• issues of time travel

Heinlein's text could be telling readers that we construct our own realities. Think about this with a postmodern lens—no grand narrative. Even if we're social products, we still pick and choose and filter information from our own points of view. The word solipsism is good for this discussion: only the self can actually be known and knowledge beyond oneself can't truly be verified.

Next Class

Make sure you keep up with the reading. The F. T. Marinetti readings (for Thursday) are all online.

• Futurism (background information)
• "The Founding and Manifesto of Futurism"
• "Destruction of Syntax—Imagination without strings—Words-in-Freedom"
• "War, the World's Only Hygiene" (excerpt)

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