The Man Who Fell To Earth

Once upon a time ago before I read any work by Ayn Rand I saw The Man Who Fell To Earth starring David Bowie. I didn’t enjoy sitting through it and the one scene that stuck with me depicted a nihilist denouncing innovation. Having never read a word of real philosophy at the time I merely saw the character as being stupid.

After the recent death of Mr. Bowie a local film society held a showing of the film. I won’t claim the excuse of brain damage in deciding to see it. I had actually forgot how truly awful it was.

It wasn’t just the fact that the director was a no talent hack with delusions of cleverness.

Nor was it his insistence on using Manhattan skyscrapers as an anatomical reference along with inserting two pointless scenes that stop just short of actual pornography.

No.

Every second of the film was an expression of the hatred of human life and after only half an hour I walked out.

Remember the nihilist? When I originally saw the film I could not understand how any character could be so stupid. I now understand that in denouncing any improvement in the tools used by man he was denying the value of human life.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot?

As part of my current novel writing project I'm attempting to re-read Dorsai(!) by Gordon R. Dickson.  The reason is that I plan on basing some of the bad guys on the Dorsai mercenaries.  And while I am having some difficulties due to vision problems and brain damage it is clearly a badly written novel.  In fact I'm left to wonder how it could ever have been published to begin with.

Thought Of The Day

Back in December after the Sandy Hook Massacre I was involved in a discussion on firearms ownership on an Objectivist Mailing list.

One list member, who I will not identify to save him from further embarrassment, wrote:

Again drawing from fiction, in The Weapon Shops of Isher and its sequel The Weapon Makers the author A.E. Van Vogt uses the phrase: “The right to buy weapons is the right to be free,” which I think most astute. In this classic science fiction story the Weapon Shop weapons are only capable of being used in self defense.

The list owner correctly declared that this was metaphysically impossible.

Let’s examine the premise.

Consciousness Is Identification.

Consciousness is the process of seeing things as they actually are.

In order for an artifact, such as a firearm, to be able to identify the difference between a valid target it must be a conscious being. In practical effect the weapon is a person. As a piece of property this person is a slave.

Furthermore, if the weapon owner, or the operator it is issued to, cannot identify the difference between a valid target –- statists and criminals -- and innocent persons, then the owner or operator in this respect is unconscious. To require that the attribute of consciousness be constructed into a weapon demonstrates that the potential owner or operator is not fit to hold it.

As Consciousness Is Identification, what can we say about those in government who cannot or willfully refuse to identify the difference between citizens and criminals? Or unable to simply identify any fact of reality at all?

We would have to identify them as being unconscious.

What are your questions on this block of instruction?

Thought For The Day

I went home with a waitress, the way I always do,
How was I to know, she was with the Cylons too?

A Literary Demolition Of DORSAI!

Or how not to write a science fiction novel.

As part of my project to write a science fiction novel I am re-reading DORSAI! Yes, the exclamation point is part of the title. This is the first novel in a series of ubermensch fantasies by Gordon R. Dickson. I am reading it with the intent of deconstructing it as an example of military science fiction with mercenaries. My goal as a novelist is to create a depiction of a similar band of mercenaries and show how a rational nation would be deal with them.

Here’s the first paragraph from the chapter titled MERCENARY III:

Returning again up the corridor toward the bow of the ship, Donal allowed himself to wonder, a little wistfully, about this incubus of his own strange difference from other people. He had thought to leave it behind with his cadet uniform. Instead, it seemed, it continued to ride with him, still perched on his shoulders. Always it had been this way. What seemed so plain, and simple and straightforward to himself, had always struck others as veiled, tortuous, and involved. Always he had been like a stranger passing trough a town, the ways of whose people were different, and who looked on him with a lack of understanding amounting to suspicion. Their language failed on the doorstep of his motives and could not enter the lonely mansion of his mind. They said “enemy” and “friend”; they said “strong” and “weak”–“them” and “us”. They set up a thousand arbitrary classifications and distinctions which he could not comprehend, convinced as he was that all people were only people–and there was very little to choose between them. Only, you dealt with them as individuals, one by one; and always remembering to be patient. And if you did this successfully, then the larger, group things came out right.

Can you understand that? Was Dickson an English Literature major at the U of M?

ASTOUNDING SCIENCE FICTION, the periodical that published this serially in 1959 did pay a penny a word. But this amount of barely incomprehensible verbiage is simply absurd.

Dickson attempts to recreate the European political environment prior to the Treaty Of Westphalia (1648), a time when the use of specifically raised and organized mercenary units was commonplace. Civil wars within what should be sovereign nation states are commonplace. Dickson also creates a moral nightmare. A universe where the Right Of Life is legally negated. An individual may be conscripted by the state and forced to work on another world in trade for another worker with knowledge in another field. Or die as cannon fodder in a foreign war. And the penalty for an individual who broke this so-called contract is death.

Dickson may not have understood the concept of government. But then he was a graduate of the University Of Minnesota.

What is very apparent when reading this and the other works in the series is that Dickson adopted a Platonist metaphysics. What passes for philosophy is a gibberish of Eastern Mysticism and Racial Collectivism along with the open practice of magic. In fact the overall plot of the series, such it was, is completely dependent on the occurrence of magical events. It would more accurate to describe this series as a work of fantasy instead of science fiction. In THE FINAL ENCYCLOPEDIA, Dickson actually wrote a scene set on the Platonic World Of Forms. And at the end of the initial novel Dickson has his protagonist literally commanding the antagonist to suffer. And the antagonist magically does so.

If reality is unreal in a fictional universe, why bother to write about it?