Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

November 2005

"The Power of SF and Fantasy"

In doing science, when we have a complicated system to analyze, we build and rebuilt a model until the model sort of behaves like the real world system.

This year, we’ve been exploring an extremely complicated system composed of a number of "black boxes" – areas that take in information in one form and output it in another without us being able to discern how that transformation occurs.

A human being is such a black box. A Group Mind is a black box. A government is a black box. By observing what goes in and what comes out, we can guess how the transformation happens, and maybe guess what components are operating inside the box. But it’s just a guess – a "model" of the problem we’re trying to solve.

In this case, we have been observing the Hero Trance described at http://www.herowithin.com/HeroTranceCampaign.html and searching for the next such myth that might dominate our collective behavior – our Group Minds.

SF and Fantasy are the genres that specialize in extrapolation and modeling human society, and it is here that the Hero’s story is told repeatedly. And I believe it is here that the next myth to control our mass behavior will emerge.

Current SF however rarely reaches the heights we saw in the mid-20^th century. C. J. Cherryh is a towering exception. Her work in general and her Foreigner Series in particular, is a new high water mark for SF. Her newest Foreigner novel, Destroyer, models the definition of peace for us with exquisite elegance.

Remember, with Star Trek The Original Series, Gene Roddenberry went to the mat to fight for the inclusion of Spock, a half-alien, in the Enterprise’s crew? He almost lost the show over that one issue, but without Spock it wouldn’t be the Star Trek we know and love.

Why? Because Spock was not raised in human society. He can look at us from the outside. That perspective reveals our unconscious assumptions about the nature of reality, and the nature of our selves.

We often think that some behavior that is common (cheating on your spouse, girls playing with dolls) is inherent in human nature. But much of what we regard as "human" is just cultural conditioning.

In the last 35 years or so, we’ve seen the "girls just naturally play with dolls and boys don’t" idea overturned. If it had been true, it wouldn’t be possible to overturn it. Examine that overturning process and you will find a model for what will happen to the Hero Myth as a new one, also not necessary true, emerges.

C. J. Cherryh’s Foreigner Series shows us how to think "outside the box" of our cultural conditioning. Humans don’t have instincts, and as a result we are open to conditioning which soaks into the place animals fill with instinct.

Now, C. J. Cherryh is human. I know. I’ve met her. So she can only imagine what aliens would be like. She can only provide us the illusion of a real alien.

But since her background is in language, and she is an astute observer of human nature, she has created in the Atevi species a consistent model of a truly non-human species with a different definition of peace.

How would human beings behave if, instead of being a type of primate bonded in communities, we were herd creatures like the Atevi?

Cherryh postulates that intelligence, the spark of "soul" would set such a herd-people on a path convergent to humanity’s, producing a society that echoes those found on Earth. That very outward similarity would be the most treacherous trap for the human mind so prone to assumptions. Cherryh has spotted a few traits "hard-wired" into the human brain that would surely lead humans and Atevi to war not peace.

One such human trait is evident even in a chimpanzee community. Chimpanzees and humans maintain life long family relationships, and reach out in friendship bonding to individuals within the community. Friendship is a concept that is deeply rooted in the basic human brain. Atevi brains can not encompass even the root of the concept Friend.

Atevi still have the instinctive need to follow a leader or to follow one who is following a leader. They don’t have "communities" as humans do. They have "associations" which are not geographically defined. They have families that maintain association life-long, but their family ties do not impel the kinds of behavior that human families do.

For Atevi, the human adage, "Home is where they have to take you in when you go there," seems like insanity.

Atevi are also all "idiot savants" in mathematics. All of them. Thus polite conversation requires intense mathematical calculating ability beyond most humans.

In Destroyer, we are once again given a working introduction to the premises of this series, so it’s a reasonable place to start reading.

In this novel, the translator, Bren Cameron, is returning from a successful mission to rescue some humans marooned on a space station around another star. It’s been two years since he left an apprentice translator in charge of the interface between Atevi and humans. And sure enough, the situation has gone over the brink of war. We don’t know exactly why – but given the communication difficulties which Bren himself is still discovering, we assume it was a linguistic/mathematical error and Atevi politics.

Now, the Atevi leader who has created "peace" enough for the Atevi to learn technology from humans, has been deposed and is in hiding. The novel is about the effort to find this leader and help him regain power. Remember, these are herd creatures who have to follow a leader, but they’re human enough that it matters which leader.

As we come to understand Atevi politics, based on their way of looking at the world, we see another way of "controlling" "power" – another kind of power to control, a power over a herd instinct. As we work our minds into the Atevi philosophy of "felicitous numbers" we come to see the concepts "peace," "war" and "strife" in a way we never did before. Remember, the Atevi don’t have "rulers."

In that exercise of becoming non-human, we can ask questions that would otherwise be "unthinkable." Therein lies the power of reading SF/F: a great spiritual benefit wrapped up in an evening or two of sheer enjoyment and great fun – for C. J. Cherryh’s work is always fun to read. The Foreigner Series is surely one of her best.

Contrast this exercise in SF reading, becoming alien and looking back on humanity, with these next two "horror" style novels where humans look out on the alien. Both have a kind of real-world contemporary setting, with vampires – so they could be classed as "Dark Urban Fantasy."

Darksome Thirst by Morven Westfield is set in a computer lab of the 1970’s and in a local coven. A vampire moves into their storage building, training a new vampire, and feeds on a technician, enslaving a guard, and disturbing the peace. A coven member who works as a programmer brings the power of the coven in to restore peace.

The interesting thing here is how very careful the coven is to consider the vampire’s rights, and the soul-deep consequences of what they must do to control his power.

They "bind" the vampire in full ceremony, thus binding themselves to the vampire. This creates a situation which is a stasis that could be mistaken for peace. Surely there will be a sequel.

Dance with the Dragon by E. F. Watkins, an instructor on simegen.com, takes us into the realm of a cult run by a vampire who is making his followers into vampires. It makes one wonder what Atevi vampires would do.

But Watkins gives us a glimpse of an FBI guy caught between the "human" need to free the victims of a cultist (I doubt Atevi would feel such a need) and the precise letter of the law (which Atevi might not feel bound by). Dance with the Dragon turns on secrets spun within secrets and various sorts of betrayal and trust. It should be read with the June column on the 7 of Swords in mind.

Destroyer introduces us to an Atevi child, heir to the deposed leader, who has spent a third of his pre-pubescent years among humans, absorbing human fiction before his instincts take over and make humans nonsensical. What do you suppose he would make of these two vampire novels?

Linnea Sinclair, author of Finders Keepers, reviewed here in August, has provided a view of Destroyer and the search for peace from the Buddhist perspective that might give you a clue. It is posted with this column on http://www.simegen.com/reviews/rereadablebooks/2005/