Subject: File: "FEMINISTSF-LIT LOG0207C" ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 20:46:35 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: cyborg politics: He, She & It Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: <20020710171015.FNZP14925.priv-edtnes04.telusplanet.net@[161.184.43.74]> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I just finished Body of Glass, or He, She and It. I enjoyed and am impressed by Piercy. I am afraid I can't respond on the academic level of the previous post... There is a *lot* to think abuot in this book. Lots of different stuff happening. How to reconcile it with Women on the Edge of Time, the glop, the multis, the jewish influence. I would have liked it Piercy had had the COuncil making a (what's the word for after death? post-humous (?) verdict on Yod's "humanity"- whether or not he was entitled to citizenship- and of course, deciding that he was. I would have foudn that satisfying. I think its pretty hard for an author to write a good ending, and given that this book did not have a "happy" ending, I think it could have been a lot worse, a lot less satisfying. I felt slightly cheated in a way... bceause Yod's story was so closely paralleling Joseph's, and it was so obviously inevitable that Joseph would be "put down", it seemed also obvious to me that something similar was going to happen to Yod. For me, that diminished the "reality" of the book- made it seem more fable-like. I must admit that I didn't really empathise with the whole moral/ ethical conundrum of the novel- ie, whether it is ethical to create a consciousness for a specific purpose, to serve someone and have no free will, no right to self determination. I guess that was because I was so involved in the actual story. Then again, maybe its cause I think there are too many variables to ever make a decision about it- well, about whether or not cyborgs should ever be created in the first place. The people of Tikva sort of had no other choice- they needed Yod, who could do what no human could. Perhaps he should have been created less.. conflicted. But then- woudl that make him any less a person? If he had been simpler, less complex? Its like the question of , is there a god, or, whats on the outside of the universe. I can't answer it, so, after a few bouts of mental circling, I give up. I hate to admit this, it seems shallow, but I found the section about Joseph a little distracting. It's not actually that I didn't enjoy them though. I think I just found them a combination of, not as interesting, and also, requiring a different mental reading mood, so they jarred a little with me. I wanted to be reading feminist science fiction, not The Secret History of Ash. ( I guess its only the golem factor that kept remindig me of Ash- there arent any real similarities). Anyway, I considered this book to be an achievement, perhaps slightly over-complicated to be widely popular? I enjoyed it, and I like to think about hwo it connects with the futures in Woman on the Edge. Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Angela Barclay > Sent: Wednesday, 10 July 2002 8:23 PM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: [*FSF-L*] cyborg politics: He, She & It > > > >How do we reconcile a peoples' freedom fighting with the use of owned > >beings... should Yod and Joseph have the same rights as human persons and > >is the discussion of rights applicable in this situation. > > Joseph and Yod were created to be supersoldiers like so many of > the cyborgs > in our popular culture (the Terminator . . . Robocop . . . Max and her > cohorts on "Dark Angel" . . .) and then snuffed out because they fulfilled > their obligations too well. In my opinion their deaths were akin to being > put to sleep by "parents" (or pet owners) who were not willing to take > responsibility and properly train their offspring. What do you think? > > It seems to me that Piercy created them through her Drs. Frankenstein and > then had an abrupt change of heart at the end. I thought Shira's flirting > with the idea to recreate Yod was an awkward ending. It also seemed that > the ideas it is > immoral and cruel to create a conscious weapon and wrong to manufacture a > sentient servant occur to the characters as an afterthought. While Joseph > and Yod have undeniably dangerous propensities, they also show equally as > strong capabilities to care for and nurture others. Their flaws perhaps > made them even more human. I'm interested in hearing what others > thought of > the ending and of the fate of the golems. > > Piercy acknowleges that Donna Haraway's Cyborg Manifesto influenced her > writing. Haraway celebrates the cyborg as being a hybrid creature which > inhabits both fantasy and reality and serves to collapse the > boundaries and > binary oppositions (he/she, human/machine, self/other, inside/outside, > nature /culture) inherent in patriarchy. FSF scholar Jenny Wolmark claims > "Haraway's cyborg metaphor is a playful but deeply political response to a > perceived need to contruct other, inclusive narratives in which diversity > and difference are significant rather than peripheral. The subjectivities > could, therefore, be regarded as its most valuable characteristic > and it is > undoubtedly one of the reasons for its continued usefulness in > feminist and > cultural theory (1999, p. 6)." While Piercy may have been influenced by > Haraway's work, I don't see that _He, She and It_ celebrates cyborg > politics. Agreements? Disagreements? > > At the same time I don't like that the golems were killed off, I am > conflicted as to whether they should have be allowed to be > self-governing or > to create more of their kind and as such be given "human rights." Here we > run into a common theme in SF: the fear of being taken over by technology. > To tell you the truth I am also conflicted as to whether Avram or The > Maharal had the right to create Yod and Joseph in the first > place- to "serve > and protect" anyways. I guess that's the beauty of FSF: it gets > us thinking > about our own rights and dangerous propensities. > > Last summer, when I was struggling with Haraway's cyberfeminism, members > kindly pointed out the following sites: > >Donna Haraway's _The Cyborg Manifesto_ is available here: > >. > > > >You may also want to check out > > > > > > >>Janet Abbate uses some cyborg stories to teach the history of technology > >>http://www.inform.umd.edu/EdRes/Colleges/ARHU/Depts/History/Facu lty/JAbbate/cybo >>rg/ >> >>a list of fiction and criticism >>http://www.clovis.cc.nm.us/la/beenm/research/CyborgCrit.html >>Or, try Sandy Stone's homepage for some interesting theory re body / >>hybridity / etc >>http://sandystone.com/ Thanks for hearing me out- I find this cyborg business fascinating but confusing. I'd love to hear your thoughts on cyborg consciousness . . . politics . . . Angela ========================================================================= Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 12:18:12 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: cyborg politics: He, She & It Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I loved the book. A very good read. Lots to think about, many depths. Real characters - I imagined Piercy put a lot of herself into Malkah and Chava - but don't know enough about her. Her discussion of town meetings had the feel of someone who has been in a lot of meetings. Some good wisdom and thought provoking comments on love and life. A favorite of mine was, Malkah to Shira: "You love too hard. It occupies the centre and squeezes out your strength, If you work in the centre and love to the side, you will love better in the long run" (page 75 in my English Penguin edition). The key point there, I thought, was - if you work in the center you'll love better, not just life will be easier and more balanced (which might be more like some people's - mostly men's? - advice). There is in general a lot of wisdom: characters who would be cardboard cutouts in lesser novels, become full people here - Yod, of course, but also Nili (who is not just Xena with implants, but is also a mother) and Gadi (not just the pretty media boy, but someone with whom Shira can eventually start to be friends, who does Kaddish for his father, and is attracted to the one woman who is not impressed by him). I liked the ending. It was a nice irony that the one thing that most proved Yod's right to be considered a full person, was his decision that it would be best for everyone if he died and his kind were not created in future. This was a highly social, unselfish act. Piercy seemed to me to be saying, with Malkah (?I think) that the future lay with enhance humans like Nili, not with cyborgs. Cyborgs are just too potentially dangerous to be set free, and more than that, no one should ever own anyone. That is why Shira finally decides not to recreate Yod. Hardly the last word on the subject, though. At one point I wondered if Yod was going to relearn the cabbalistic knowledge that would enable him to resuscitate Joseph. I liked the two stories, partly because of the commentary on Israel that was involved. Another example of Piercy's evenhandedness, or breadth: Israel was presented as both the religious ideal and the failure of that ideal, and yet after its political failure came its rebirth as a new society in the ruins, closer to a utopia than the free towns. The parallel stories helped to make the point that this was a long-term philosophical problem, to do with beings created for human purposes. There are echoes here of religious debates about humankind: created to do God's will, or to make free choices, however disastrous? Philip Pullman's theology, in His Dark Materials, is all about the evil God being the usurper (in fact a rogue angel masquerading as God) who requires human obedience, while the original creator, further back, is the one who is love; and love implies giving freedom. So Eve (and Lyra in His Dark Materials), by eating the apple, pleased the creator God, while displeasing the Authority God. Is the next step for cyborgs the freedom to be citizens, not owned by anyone (similar to God giving people freedom to eat from the Tree of Knowledge)? But humans are hardly God, and Yod was a one-off: would all cyborgs be as trustworthy? Yod/Shira/Piercy made the conservative choice: don't go that route. Hard to disagree. Too easy to imagine cyborgs turning against us, as we have turned against God: only they could actually destroy us. God, being a figment of our imaginations, or else everything that is, is not so easily destroyed. Best thing about the novel in my view? That, as Rachel wrote, it is a cyberpunk novel where the democratic fight-back is happening and starting to get serious traction. In that way, it's a more hopeful novel than the near-future dystopias it draws on. But then I wonder how that squares with the incredibly depressing premises of the whole given situation: plague, famine, apparent victory of the multis. Like WOTEOT, Piercy has provided a highly compressed (and in my view unrealistic) time scale for a lot of history to happen in, and this time it is all bad. Malkah is a contemporary of ours, alive today as a young woman. Are things likely to get that bad that fast? There have been a lot of doom scenarios over the last 30-40 years since I have been paying attention, and which of them have come true? AIDS is the worst in fact, the biggest plague of all time in numbers, (but not at all in terms of percentage killed, which horror belongs to the native Americans killed by the variety of Euro-Asian diseases to which they had no immunity - more than 90%). We do know now how to roll AIDS back, as in Uganda, which is good news, though the failure of either the rich world or the poor to get to grips with the issue as well as we could is depressing. But as it gets worse, response is growing, and even Jesse Helms gets converted - we don't yet seem set on a course that would create Piercy's nightmare. Other predicted horrors have not happened, such as: running out of resources (basically all resources are cheaper now than 30 years ago), more starving people (the world population has doubled and there are actually less starving people, while the percentage of starving has about halved), nuclear war (still terrifying, but more thought of now as a rogue action of terrorists, or a 'tactical weapon' of the US military - I don't know which would be worse, but neither would lead to nuclear winter), pollution (getting worse in poor countries but getting better on almost all scales in rich countries), mass species die-offs (still a prediction for the future, but the earlier claims - that got much play in environmental circles - that 40,000 species were dying a year have now been rejected by everyone). My problem with near-future dystopian novels is that they may engender a feeling of hopelessness - the corporations are all powerful, the people have lost. When in fact in many ways things are getting better. We need major efforts to extend democracy here and now, not least in the USA. Does Piercy's novel help or hinder that task? I don't know. I think the left has to be shaken into some honesty about the things that are going well: if Chicken Little says the sky is falling all the time, she will be trusted about as much as the boy who cried wolf. In that sense, Piercy seems to me to be stuck in a previous mindset. But it was still a wonderful read, and one that believed in democracy, or people's power in that context (if not in our own - or how would things have got that bad that fast?). To me, it's as if she combines in her novels the worst of human beings (the fate of Israel, partly its own fault as she sees it; the famines, plagues, multis) with the best. It's easy to write about how terrible humans are: much harder to write convincing fiction that gives hope. If Piercy's worst seems a little more cardboard to me, not so convincingly drawn, it's perhaps because she takes that more for granted, and puts her best writing into the human response to those evils. Who could complain about that? And in the era that had the Nazi gas ovens, Dresden, Nagasaki, you name it, it's no wonder we are sometimes overly impressed by doom warnings. Dave Dave Belden web page: www.davidbelden.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 08:44:47 +1000 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Maire Subject: Re: cyborg politics: He, She & It- OT Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Just wanted to ask a few things- First of all, i raely liked your post... what prompted me to respond immediately was though, the fact that you said that pollution is getting better in rich countrys. ???? What parameters are you measuring pollution by? Tasmanian Aboriginals were entirely wiped out... people back then constructed a human net across the island to catch the last few free aboriginal people. Horrific. Maire > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > Sent: Tuesday, 16 July 2002 2:18 AM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] cyborg politics: He, She & It > > > I loved the book. A very good read. Lots to think about, many depths. Real > characters - I imagined Piercy put a lot of herself into Malkah > and Chava - > but don't know enough about her. Her discussion of town meetings had the > feel of someone who has been in a lot of meetings. Some good wisdom and > thought provoking comments on love and life. A favorite of mine > was, Malkah > to Shira: "You love too hard. It occupies the centre and squeezes out your > strength, If you work in the centre and love to the side, you will love > better in the long run" (page 75 in my English Penguin edition). The key > point there, I thought, was - if you work in the center you'll > love better, > not just life will be easier and more balanced (which might be more like > some people's - mostly men's? - advice). There is in general a lot of > wisdom: characters who would be cardboard cutouts in lesser novels, become > full people here - Yod, of course, but also Nili (who is not just > Xena with > implants, but is also a mother) and Gadi (not just the pretty > media boy, but > someone with whom Shira can eventually start to be friends, who > does Kaddish > for his father, and is attracted to the one woman who is not impressed by > him). > > I liked the ending. It was a nice irony that the one thing that > most proved > Yod's right to be considered a full person, was his decision that it would > be best for everyone if he died and his kind were not created in future. > This was a highly social, unselfish act. Piercy seemed to me to be saying, > with Malkah (?I think) that the future lay with enhance humans like Nili, > not with cyborgs. Cyborgs are just too potentially dangerous to > be set free, > and more than that, no one should ever own anyone. That is why > Shira finally > decides not to recreate Yod. Hardly the last word on the subject, though. > > At one point I wondered if Yod was going to relearn the cabbalistic > knowledge that would enable him to resuscitate Joseph. I liked the two > stories, partly because of the commentary on Israel that was involved. > Another example of Piercy's evenhandedness, or breadth: Israel > was presented > as both the religious ideal and the failure of that ideal, and > yet after its > political failure came its rebirth as a new society in the ruins, > closer to > a utopia than the free towns. > > The parallel stories helped to make the point that this was a long-term > philosophical problem, to do with beings created for human purposes. There > are echoes here of religious debates about humankind: created to do God's > will, or to make free choices, however disastrous? Philip Pullman's > theology, in His Dark Materials, is all about the evil God being > the usurper > (in fact a rogue angel masquerading as God) who requires human obedience, > while the original creator, further back, is the one who is love; and love > implies giving freedom. So Eve (and Lyra in His Dark Materials), by eating > the apple, pleased the creator God, while displeasing the > Authority God. Is > the next step for cyborgs the freedom to be citizens, not owned by anyone > (similar to God giving people freedom to eat from the Tree of Knowledge)? > But humans are hardly God, and Yod was a one-off: would all cyborgs be as > trustworthy? Yod/Shira/Piercy made the conservative choice: don't go that > route. Hard to disagree. Too easy to imagine cyborgs turning > against us, as > we have turned against God: only they could actually destroy us. > God, being > a figment of our imaginations, or else everything that is, is not > so easily > destroyed. > > Best thing about the novel in my view? That, as Rachel wrote, it is a > cyberpunk novel where the democratic fight-back is happening and > starting to > get serious traction. In that way, it's a more hopeful novel than the > near-future dystopias it draws on. But then I wonder how that squares with > the incredibly depressing premises of the whole given situation: plague, > famine, apparent victory of the multis. Like WOTEOT, Piercy has provided a > highly compressed (and in my view unrealistic) time scale for a lot of > history to happen in, and this time it is all bad. Malkah is a > contemporary > of ours, alive today as a young woman. Are things likely to get that bad > that fast? There have been a lot of doom scenarios over the last > 30-40 years > since I have been paying attention, and which of them have come true? AIDS > is the worst in fact, the biggest plague of all time in numbers, > (but not at > all in terms of percentage killed, which horror belongs to the native > Americans killed by the variety of Euro-Asian diseases to which > they had no > immunity - more than 90%). We do know now how to roll AIDS back, as in > Uganda, which is good news, though the failure of either the rich world or > the poor to get to grips with the issue as well as we could is depressing. > But as it gets worse, response is growing, and even Jesse Helms gets > converted - we don't yet seem set on a course that would create Piercy's > nightmare. Other predicted horrors have not happened, such as: running out > of resources (basically all resources are cheaper now than 30 years ago), > more starving people (the world population has doubled and there are > actually less starving people, while the percentage of starving has about > halved), nuclear war (still terrifying, but more thought of now as a rogue > action of terrorists, or a 'tactical weapon' of the US military - I don't > know which would be worse, but neither would lead to nuclear winter), > pollution (getting worse in poor countries but getting better on > almost all > scales in rich countries), mass species die-offs (still a > prediction for the > future, but the earlier claims - that got much play in environmental > circles - that 40,000 species were dying a year have now been rejected by > everyone). My problem with near-future dystopian novels is that they may > engender a feeling of hopelessness - the corporations are all > powerful, the > people have lost. When in fact in many ways things are getting better. We > need major efforts to extend democracy here and now, not least in the USA. > Does Piercy's novel help or hinder that task? I don't know. I > think the left > has to be shaken into some honesty about the things that are > going well: if > Chicken Little says the sky is falling all the time, she will be trusted > about as much as the boy who cried wolf. In that sense, Piercy seems to me > to be stuck in a previous mindset. But it was still a wonderful read, and > one that believed in democracy, or people's power in that context > (if not in > our own - or how would things have got that bad that fast?). > > To me, it's as if she combines in her novels the worst of human > beings (the > fate of Israel, partly its own fault as she sees it; the famines, plagues, > multis) with the best. It's easy to write about how terrible humans are: > much harder to write convincing fiction that gives hope. If Piercy's worst > seems a little more cardboard to me, not so convincingly drawn, > it's perhaps > because she takes that more for granted, and puts her best > writing into the > human response to those evils. Who could complain about that? And > in the era > that had the Nazi gas ovens, Dresden, Nagasaki, you name it, it's > no wonder > we are sometimes overly impressed by doom warnings. > > Dave > > Dave Belden > web page: www.davidbelden.com ========================================================================= Date: Tue, 16 Jul 2002 11:19:31 -0400 Reply-To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Dave Belden Subject: Re: cyborg politics: He, She & It- OT Comments: To: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia In-Reply-To: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="Windows-1252" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit I'm at work and don't have the statistics to hand. The controversial Bjorn Lomborg http://www.lomborg.com/ has laid out a huge mass of research in his recent book. As I understand it, after reading the book and some of the debates about it, e.g. in Scientific American, the statistics he quotes are mainstream, and have been rather little questioned or gainsaid. It's his conclusions that people disagree with, myself included. His basic conclusion, that we should be working to end world poverty first, and that the environment gets cleaned up when people are wealthy enough to do so, is a sort of truism that means little, because if you take away money for cleaning the environment, it doesn't somehow automatically go to ending poverty. The reason that air quality is getting steadily better in America is the Clean Air Act and new technology, not least the State of California's improved car emissions standards. The reason Houston suddenly figured as the most air polluted city in America a while back was not that Houston's air was getting worse - it was actually getting better - but that LA's air had got better faster. Still, the headlines were not about good news, but bad news: Houston is worst. See Gregg Easterbrook's A Moment on the Earth, a more responsible book than Lomborg's. An example close to my home: the Hudson River, a dead river when Pete Seeger and co. got going on the problem, is now swimmable again, though you still won't catch me eating any fish from it. Even under Geo Bush (who is going seriously backwards on cleaning up polluted sites), the EPA is forcing General Electric, after a long battle, to dredge its PCBs out of the Hudson. The Hudson and most other US rivers are on the right track. The thing Lomborg seems to ignore, and the reason conservatives love him, is that an enormous amount of the improvement in US and European pollution is due to activism, not to some 'natural working of the market'. (I would love to see someone try to calculate that out - a great topic for some major research). Lomborg's conclusions would seem to argue against continued activism - but this would obviously alter the trends that he convincingly shows are currently in the right direction. Take away the activism, and the trends won't look so good. But I think it's impossible to read Lomborg and the debate around him carefully and not conclude that pollution trends in the US and other rich countries are in the right direction: another set of (interim, partial) victories for the people! Why are people on the left so committed to defeat that they can't recognize victories when they have achieved them? Success so far should energize us to get more scrubbers on coal fired power stations, a massive government effort to reduce energy needs, promote windpower, enforce tighter emissions standards nationwide, penalize SUVs etc. etc. We're winning! Keep up the pressure! Give hope to poor nations, that their turn will come. I recall an Ethiopian saying to me he wished for more pollution - it would mean more factories, cars, development, less starvation, misery, death. OK, but the more we develop clean power generation, clean cars, low resource alternatives (such as satellite phones or glass fiber lines, instead of stringing copper wire all over the world) the more those will be available to poor countries as they industrialize: they don't have to mess up their land as badly as we did ours. Cleaning the environment and tackling poverty actually have to go hand in hand. I know I'm one of the worst offenders at taking these discussions off topic, but this was all about whether Piercy's ultra-grim vision of the near future is helpful or harmful to current activist efforts. I know she wants to support, inspire activism. She, of all people, is not 'just' a fantasist. She didn't write this as just a good read, but as something true, mythically if not literally. I totally appreciate the activism of her characters in He, She and It: in cyberfuture, all is not lost. Really, that should be enough. The people can win. Dave > -----Original Message----- > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Maire > Sent: Monday, July 15, 2002 6:45 PM > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] cyborg politics: He, She & It- OT > > > Just wanted to ask a few things- > First of all, i raely liked your post... what prompted me to respond > immediately was though, the fact that you said that pollution is getting > better in rich countrys. ???? What parameters are you measuring pollution > by? > Tasmanian Aboriginals were entirely wiped out... people back then > constructed a human net across the island to catch the last few free > aboriginal people. Horrific. > Maire > > > > -----Original Message----- > > From: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and > > Utopia [mailto:FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU]On Behalf Of Dave Belden > > Sent: Tuesday, 16 July 2002 2:18 AM > > To: FEMINISTSF-LIT@UIC.EDU > > Subject: Re: [*FSF-L*] cyborg politics: He, She & It > > > > > > I loved the book. A very good read. Lots to think about, many > depths. Real > > characters - I imagined Piercy put a lot of herself into Malkah > > and Chava - > > but don't know enough about her. Her discussion of town meetings had the > > feel of someone who has been in a lot of meetings. Some good wisdom and > > thought provoking comments on love and life. A favorite of mine > > was, Malkah > > to Shira: "You love too hard. It occupies the centre and > squeezes out your > > strength, If you work in the centre and love to the side, you will love > > better in the long run" (page 75 in my English Penguin edition). The key > > point there, I thought, was - if you work in the center you'll > > love better, > > not just life will be easier and more balanced (which might be more like > > some people's - mostly men's? - advice). There is in general a lot of > > wisdom: characters who would be cardboard cutouts in lesser > novels, become > > full people here - Yod, of course, but also Nili (who is not just > > Xena with > > implants, but is also a mother) and Gadi (not just the pretty > > media boy, but > > someone with whom Shira can eventually start to be friends, who > > does Kaddish > > for his father, and is attracted to the one woman who is not > impressed by > > him). > > > > I liked the ending. It was a nice irony that the one thing that > > most proved > > Yod's right to be considered a full person, was his decision > that it would > > be best for everyone if he died and his kind were not created in future. > > This was a highly social, unselfish act. Piercy seemed to me to > be saying, > > with Malkah (?I think) that the future lay with enhance humans > like Nili, > > not with cyborgs. Cyborgs are just too potentially dangerous to > > be set free, > > and more than that, no one should ever own anyone. That is why > > Shira finally > > decides not to recreate Yod. Hardly the last word on the > subject, though. > > > > At one point I wondered if Yod was going to relearn the cabbalistic > > knowledge that would enable him to resuscitate Joseph. I liked the two > > stories, partly because of the commentary on Israel that was involved. > > Another example of Piercy's evenhandedness, or breadth: Israel > > was presented > > as both the religious ideal and the failure of that ideal, and > > yet after its > > political failure came its rebirth as a new society in the ruins, > > closer to > > a utopia than the free towns. > > > > The parallel stories helped to make the point that this was a long-term > > philosophical problem, to do with beings created for human > purposes. There > > are echoes here of religious debates about humankind: created > to do God's > > will, or to make free choices, however disastrous? Philip Pullman's > > theology, in His Dark Materials, is all about the evil God being > > the usurper > > (in fact a rogue angel masquerading as God) who requires human > obedience, > > while the original creator, further back, is the one who is > love; and love > > implies giving freedom. So Eve (and Lyra in His Dark > Materials), by eating > > the apple, pleased the creator God, while displeasing the > > Authority God. Is > > the next step for cyborgs the freedom to be citizens, not owned > by anyone > > (similar to God giving people freedom to eat from the Tree of > Knowledge)? > > But humans are hardly God, and Yod was a one-off: would all > cyborgs be as > > trustworthy? Yod/Shira/Piercy made the conservative choice: > don't go that > > route. Hard to disagree. Too easy to imagine cyborgs turning > > against us, as > > we have turned against God: only they could actually destroy us. > > God, being > > a figment of our imaginations, or else everything that is, is not > > so easily > > destroyed. > > > > Best thing about the novel in my view? That, as Rachel wrote, it is a > > cyberpunk novel where the democratic fight-back is happening and > > starting to > > get serious traction. In that way, it's a more hopeful novel than the > > near-future dystopias it draws on. But then I wonder how that > squares with > > the incredibly depressing premises of the whole given situation: plague, > > famine, apparent victory of the multis. Like WOTEOT, Piercy has > provided a > > highly compressed (and in my view unrealistic) time scale for a lot of > > history to happen in, and this time it is all bad. Malkah is a > > contemporary > > of ours, alive today as a young woman. Are things likely to get that bad > > that fast? There have been a lot of doom scenarios over the last > > 30-40 years > > since I have been paying attention, and which of them have come > true? AIDS > > is the worst in fact, the biggest plague of all time in numbers, > > (but not at > > all in terms of percentage killed, which horror belongs to the native > > Americans killed by the variety of Euro-Asian diseases to which > > they had no > > immunity - more than 90%). We do know now how to roll AIDS back, as in > > Uganda, which is good news, though the failure of either the > rich world or > > the poor to get to grips with the issue as well as we could is > depressing. > > But as it gets worse, response is growing, and even Jesse Helms gets > > converted - we don't yet seem set on a course that would create Piercy's > > nightmare. Other predicted horrors have not happened, such as: > running out > > of resources (basically all resources are cheaper now than 30 > years ago), > > more starving people (the world population has doubled and there are > > actually less starving people, while the percentage of starving > has about > > halved), nuclear war (still terrifying, but more thought of now > as a rogue > > action of terrorists, or a 'tactical weapon' of the US military > - I don't > > know which would be worse, but neither would lead to nuclear winter), > > pollution (getting worse in poor countries but getting better on > > almost all > > scales in rich countries), mass species die-offs (still a > > prediction for the > > future, but the earlier claims - that got much play in environmental > > circles - that 40,000 species were dying a year have now been > rejected by > > everyone). My problem with near-future dystopian novels is that they may > > engender a feeling of hopelessness - the corporations are all > > powerful, the > > people have lost. When in fact in many ways things are getting > better. We > > need major efforts to extend democracy here and now, not least > in the USA. > > Does Piercy's novel help or hinder that task? I don't know. I > > think the left > > has to be shaken into some honesty about the things that are > > going well: if > > Chicken Little says the sky is falling all the time, she will be trusted > > about as much as the boy who cried wolf. In that sense, Piercy > seems to me > > to be stuck in a previous mindset. But it was still a wonderful > read, and > > one that believed in democracy, or people's power in that context > > (if not in > > our own - or how would things have got that bad that fast?). > > > > To me, it's as if she combines in her novels the worst of human > > beings (the > > fate of Israel, partly its own fault as she sees it; the > famines, plagues, > > multis) with the best. It's easy to write about how terrible humans are: > > much harder to write convincing fiction that gives hope. If > Piercy's worst > > seems a little more cardboard to me, not so convincingly drawn, > > it's perhaps > > because she takes that more for granted, and puts her best > > writing into the > > human response to those evils. Who could complain about that? And > > in the era > > that had the Nazi gas ovens, Dresden, Nagasaki, you name it, it's > > no wonder > > we are sometimes overly impressed by doom warnings. > > > > Dave > > > > Dave Belden > > web page: www.davidbelden.com > ========================================================================= Date: Sun, 21 Jul 2002 15:55:48 +0200 Reply-To: p.mayerhofer@web.de Sender: friendly STRICTLY ON TOPIC discussion of Feminist SF/Fantasy and Utopia From: Petra Mayerhofer Subject: BDG Schedule Reminder Comments: To: feministsf-lit@uic.edu, feministsf@uic.edu MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit The upcoming discussions within the BDG on the feministsf-lit list are August 5 -- The Fifth Sacred Thing, by Starhawk September 2 -- The Annunciate, by Severna Park October 7 -- The Books of Great Alta, by Jane Yolen _The Books of Great Alta_ consists of _Sister Light, Sister Dark_ (originally published in 1988) and the sequel _White Jenna_ (1989). The current BDG discussion is on _He, She, and It_ (= Body of Glass) by Marge Piercy. The next selection round for the BDG will be probably in September. Info for the newcomers: The BDG is one (and only one) feature of the feministsf-lit. It's purpose is to focus discussion on a particular book at a particular time. Every four months four books are selected to be discussed within the next BDG round. Other books can be discussed in parallel to the BDG, of course, and past and future BDG books can be discussed at any time on the list. The difference to a 'normal' list discussion is that in BDG messages spoilers (for the BDG book under discussion) have not to be pointed out (the 'BDG' in the subject line is the actual spoiler warning). Further info on the BDG you can find at the BDG website http://www.geocities.com/bdg_volunteers/ Petra -- Petra Mayerhofer p.mayerhofer@web.de