"Herbert West: Reanimator" (a book review post)

This is by far the longest piece by Lovecraft that I've read so far. Not because I'm avoiding his longer works but because, after reading several of his short stories, I decided to read his works in the order in which he wrote them. I don't know; I guess I just wanted to see the evolution of his writing.

It is in some ways disingenuous to say that this is a longer work. It is in actuality six short stories about the same two characters, Herbert West and his narrator assistant. Each story begins with a somewhat distracting recap of events which is meant to string the events of each episode together into a coherent whole. This is only partially successful as there is no need to have read any of the stories to be able to read any of the other stories except for the last one, "The Tomb-Legions," which requires that you have read all of the other pieces.

I have to say that this... I don't know, let's call it an experiment... was unsuccessful. Lovecraft called the story a parody of Frankenstein, but I don't think it succeeds even at that. It's too clumsy, both copying the novel and being unrelated to it at the same time. And, in the end, Lovecraft pulls in some of his unexplainable otherworldly esoterica to draw the story to an unsatisfying conclusion which is so unrelated to anything in Frankenstein that it manages to undermine any claim that this is a parody.
 It turns it into a poor attempt at stealing this particular story idea, that of bringing the dead back to life.

Lovecraft has some stylistic choices which specifically don't work in Herbert West:
1. Lovecraft is a "teller," not a "show-er." This robs his stories of immediacy and works against them being true horror. They might leave you feeling creepy, but it's difficult to ever feel any real fear for the characters since everything is told from some far removed point to the actual action.
2. He almost never uses dialogue, resorting, instead, to just telling us what was talked about. This follows point 1.
3. He cheats on descriptions (CONSTANTLY!) by telling us it's too unspeakable for words. Sorry, as a pattern (which it is), that's just deficient writing skills. Every once in a while, that can work to heighten just how horrible something is, but, when that's your go-to descriptive phrase, it shows that you just can't come up with anything.

The above points don't cause problems in any individual short story, but they cause longer works to drag and become uninteresting. Thankfully, even as a longer work, Herbert West wasn't all that long, and I was able to finish it, but I was glad when I did. I kept thinking as I was reading, "Geez! Just get to the point!" Unfortunately, the point wasn't really worth getting to.

Ghostbusters (a movie review post)

I feel like a movie review should not be a place for political commentary unless, you know, the movie has to do with politics. Or commentary. Or some combination of those things. I feel like I should be able to review this movie on the merits of itself as a movie. However, a certain contingent of inflammatory misogynists have made that impossible. There is no legitimate way to address this movie and the fact that it has women in it and not just in it but starring in it as the main characters.

So... Let's talk about the fact that there are four women starring in it and that some people seem to have let that "destroy" their childhoods:
1. If that they have cast the leads in the new Ghostbusters as women has caused your testicles to get all knotted up, the problem is clearly with you, and you need to go take a long look at yourself in the mirror and figure out what your own issues are. Or see a therapist and discuss your mommy issues. Or something.
2. It's a movie! Oh, wait, let me rephrase that: It's a fucking movie! If you are actually bent out of shape and allowing a movie made more than 30 years after the original to retroactively destroy your childhood, then, again, you need to take yourself back to that mirror and figure out what your problem is. I mean, this isn't Star Wars; it's not that important. Oh, wait, if you were one of those guys who allowed the prequels to "rape" your childhood (that is the way those guys put it, right?), you still need to be in front of that mirror. It's not like them putting in a new cast for this movie changes the experience you had of the original.
3. I find it unsurprising but somewhat interesting that the demographic screaming about the women stars of this movie are the same demographic who support Trump, which also matches the demographic who voted yes on the Brexit vote. It reduces all of this to a white, male power thing, and I'm just going to say that the only people threatened by equality are those who have had an unfair advantage. Again, go look at yourself in the mirror and don't come away from it until you can recognize that you're not better than other people and the fact that you feel threatened is entirely on you. And it's a fucking movie! It's not like it's walking up to you on the street and punching you in the balls. Then, you'd have a right to complain. There shouldn't even be any metaphoric balls involved in this.

Speaking of all of this, one of the most brilliant moments in the movie is when they're reading actual comments people (men) made about the movie just from the announcement that it would have a female cast.

And speaking of the women, they, also. were brilliant. I already love Kristen Wiig, and she doesn't disappoint. Ironically, this is a somewhat more serious role for her in that it doesn't rely on her particular brand of awkwardness as the basis for her character. She has her moments, but it's a more three-dimensional part than what she's known for (and so much more satisfying than her recent role in The Martian).

Melissa McCarthy is also a bit more toned down for Ghostbusters. Despite her initial appearance wearing some weird gizmo hat, she is the voice of reason in the movie. She wears the part well. Which is not to say that she turns off the funny, because she doesn't. He ongoing feud with Bennie, the Chinese delivery guy. is great.

I was unfamiliar with both Kate McKinnon and Leslie Jones before seeing this, so I have nothing to compare to in regards to their performances, but they were both great, especially Kate McKinnon. In many ways, McKinnon stole every scene she was in by being this crazy professor type, kind of a cross between Doc Brown from Back to the Future and Dr. Frankenstein from Young Frankenstein with a dash of Q (the James Bond one). And that might make it sound like Leslie Jones is the weak link here, but she's totally not. The four women worked well together bringing the same kind of chemistry to the screen as the original quartet of men did.

But let's talk about the movie in general:
I laughed. A lot. To put it more specifically, I laughed throughout the movie, and, for a movie meant to be a comedy, it did its job. More than did its job. In fact, I probably laughed more in this one than I ever did in the original.

Which is not to say it doesn't provide some scares. The opening scene is pretty scary, and I thought for a moment that my daughter was going to ask to leave, it freaked her out so much.

Speaking of the opening scene, it features Zach Woods, who is quickly becoming one of my favorites. Mostly, I know him for his own special brand of awkward but, in his smaller roles,he's shown that he's capable of more than that. This is no exception.

And then there's Chris Hemsworth. He's almost worth the price of admission himself. I really didn't expect much from Hemsworth after Thor. I mean, he was a great Thor -- he was Thor -- but I figured that kind of role was all he was ever going to bring to the table, but he's shown that he has a lot of range, and his role has the clueless receptionist was fantastic.

The only real negative I have is...

Oh, wait, this is a spoiler, so close your ears and say "la la la" or something.

The only real negative I have about the movie is the bad guy:
1. That there was a "bad guy" at all, and
2. That the actor playing the bad guy lacked any real menace. In fact, the only good part with the bad guy was once he had possessed Kevin, and that part was hilarious.

I don't really know why I dislike there being a villain, but it just felt a little too convenient, I guess. And it was so much "the world hasn't been fair to me, waaah!" He was just lame, I suppose. It would have been better if it had just been the ghosts driving the conflict.

The movie is a winner, though, despite the lackluster villain. Unless you just have no sense of humor or can't get over the fact that there are no y chromosomes among the leads, there is no reason you shouldn't like this movie.

Oh, and the cameos are great.

The Imitation Game (a movie review post)

I'm going to start by saying that The Imitation Game is a great movie; however, it takes a lot of liberties with the subject matter. The broad sweeps are okay, but the details were, shall we say, exaggerated, no, actually, twisted to make the movie "better." It's a little unfortunate, because I'm sure the movie could have been just as good if they had kept to the straight facts (and, yes, I realize the irony there) rather than the dramatic "truth."

That said, Benedict Cumberbatch was incredible. He is really setting himself up as the go-to guy for any anti-social genius type of character. It would be unfortunate if he ends up being typecast as that guy and never gets any other kind of role, though, as good as he is at it. I think I may be becoming convinced he's more than just that.

It's actually very interesting what Cumberbatch did with the part. He started out with a kind of Sherlock level of human interaction and descended into a kind of Frankenstein's monster thing like he did in the National Theatre Live presentation of Frankenstein. It's too bad Alan Turing wasn't actually like that. Eccentric, yes, but he wasn't unfriendly and without the ability to operate in a social setting as the movie showed him to be.

Keira Knightley was also quite good. Well, she was mostly what you'd expect of Keira Knightley, but it was good. She was a good foil to Cumberbatch's portrayal of Turing, which is to say that her character was not quite accurate, either. Joan Clarke was probably quite a bit more socially awkward than she was in the movie but, then, in the movie, it's Joan who mediates between Turing and his team and enables him to work with them, so she had to be socially savvy for that work.

The other actors I really liked were Mark Strong and Matthew Goode. Strong played Stewart Menzies, a person that Turing probably never actually had any contact with, but he was a great movie character and added a bit of a spy edge to everything. Goode played Hugh Alexander, a chess champion who was on Turing's team. Even while I was watching the movie I didn't buy that Alexander was really as charismatic and charming as Goode played him to be, but he was fun to watch in the role.

Of course, the most interesting thing about the movie to me is not the movie at all; it's that the British government kept all of this secret, everything that Turing did during WWII, stuff which helped to end the war, for 50 years. 50 years! And, then, what they allowed to happen to him after the war was just... horrendous. And he was only posthumously pardoned in 2013. It's kind of unbelievable.

The main thing is, though, if you like those little electronic gadgets that you carry around everywhere and use all the time, you have Turing to thank for them. It was what he did during the war that lead to computers. Thinking machines were his thing. In fact, computers were originally called Turing machines.

Basically, I'd say to see the movie; it's worth it for Cumberbatch's performance alone, accurate or not. He might even deserve the best actor Oscar for it, though I haven't decided that for sure, yet. However, once you've seen it, check up on your Turing facts. It's all really quite fascinating.

Benedict Cumberbatch as Frankenstein

Back in 2011, Britain's National Theater put together a production of Frankenstein directed by Danny Boyle (who also directed Trainspotting, 28 Days Later..., and Slumdog Millionaire) with a new script written by Nick Dear. There were two things that set this production apart from previous iterations of Frankenstein:
1. The focus was on the creation, something that I'm not sure has been done since Mary Shelley wrote the book.
2. The production would feature two actors (Benedict Cumberbatch and Jonny Lee Miller, both of whom currently play Sherlock Holmes in separate television series) in the roles of the doctor and his creation who would switch off playing the two roles from performance to performance.

Fortunately, the National Theater has National Theater Live who film the performances for worldwide showings. Also, fortunately, one of the local theaters here (one that tends toward independent films) did special screenings of the production. Unfortunately, though, I was only able to see one of the variations, the one with Cumberbatch as the monster.

There were some clips before the "movie" started about the making of the production, and Cumberbatch talked about his method for learning how to move as the monster. He studied the movements of people who are in physical therapy to re-learn how to use their bodies after a stroke or accident. He was pretty impressive. He had this jerky, twitchy way of moving around, even after he "learned" how to move, that made it clear he wasn't quite in control of his body. Or, well, anything.

Overall, it was an excellent production; however, there were a few things I had issues with.

The play opens with the creature being "born." There's a long sequence of him learning to move his body around which culminates in the doctor coming in and freaking out to find his creation alive. He abandons the creature to the world. Then there's a long sequence of the monster discovering grass and the sun and rain and... people. People who persecute him for his ugliness. All of this is fascinating, especially Cumberbatch's depiction of the monster, BUT... It just went on for too long. The floundering around on the stage learning how to stand and walk took something like 15-20 minutes then another 15 to 20 minutes of the creature doing things like eating grass until he's finally chased away by a mob. So, while Cumberbatch's performance was impressive during this section, it was too much. His performance of the monster was impressive throughout the play and, once the play got into the story, it was good, too.

However, I was a bit underwhelmed by Jonny Lee Miller. He didn't really seem a "mad genius" or like someone playing God or anything at all like how I would think of Victor Frankenstein. Actually, he seemed much more like a kid throwing rocks through the windows of an abandoned house or pulling the legs off of a spider, doing it because he could but without much interest. I've heard that he was better as the creation, but that's just what I've heard; I can't verify that, because I didn't see that version.

I was also not impressed by the performance of George Harris (Shacklebolt in Harry Potter), who played Victor's father. He came off as rather flat to me, no real emotion in what he was acting. The people I saw it with agreed with me, but they saw the other variation of the play, also, and said he was much better as Victor's father when Cumberbatch was playing Victor. So, maybe, he was having an off night or, maybe, the synergy between Harris and Cumberbatch was better than it was with Miller.

As I said, overall it was an excellent production, and I would really like to see it from the other perspective with Cumberbatch as Victor. It looks like it might get a DVD release, so, hopefully, I will get the chance. If there happens to be a showing of this near you, I would highly recommend it, if nothing else, just for the chance to see the "live" performance.

How To Be... a Genetic Engineer

One of the earliest loves of my younger son was Pokemon (his first love was Star Wars at all of one year of age, but that's a story for another time). I suppose this was back around when he was four or five, although the exact age when all of the Pokemon stuff started is a little hazy. However, I do remember that he was, at first, disappointed to find out that Pikachus

do not really exist, but that passed quickly into a determination to grow up and make one. With the way things are going, that may actually be a possibility by the time he is of an age to do so.

Genetic engineering, as we most commonly think of it, the direct manipulation of DNA by humans (not including selective breeding or mutagenesis), has only existed since the 70s, but we have come oh so far since then (check last year's post for some of the things we've already accomplished). The real issue is that, right now, we don't really know where we're going with it, and some people are scared of the field in its entirety. And, hey, who can blame anyone for being scared with all of the zombie fear? Genetically engineered diseases are at the root of many of these ideas.

However, with the sort of wide openness in the field of genetic engineering, it leaves a lot of room to do with it what you want. Right now, there is no "genetic engineering" degree. It's not like electrical engineering where you can go to school and learn the basics. There are no real basics for genetic engineering. Well, there are, but they are very basic. Like, you need to know a lot about biology (in general), cell biology (in specific), chemistry, biochemistry, and... well, and whatever it is you want to be working with. Plants? Animals? Microbes? You need to know about it.

Once you have the background knowledge you need, it's really just about finding someone willing to hire you on to work in a lab working on genetic engineering projects. Well, that, or taking that Dr. Frankenstein route and doing it yourself, which seems completely plausible assuming you had the resources to do it. Like I said, no one really knows, yet, where we can go with genetic engineering or what is and is not possible, so, maybe, my son will grow up and engineer his own Pikachu.

Gender Shift in Reading

Over the last few decades, something has happened to the reading world. Some people probably  think it's about time and, in some ways, that's true; however, that doesn't make it a good thing. Maybe it's a necessary thing; I don't know.

Historically, reading (and writing) has been a man's game. Like so many things, reading was for men and writing was done by men, and that's all there was to it. Part of that is because education was for men. Sure, girls got some basic education, but higher education was for men, and, therefore, writing was done by men. This is not to say that there were not exceptions, like the Bronte sisters, but, by and large, it was all for men by men. Even Frankenstein was somewhat of a fluke, because what Mary really did was manage Percy's career, so to speak. She was never trying to be a writer; she just ended up writing that one, excellent novel.

Then the 20th century came along and equal rights for women and everything began to change. Not noticeably at first, but most changes don't happen all at once; they happen by degrees, and you don't notice them until you've been boiled like a frog. Which is not to say  that I think we have been boiled like frogs, except, maybe, men have been boiled like frogs with these current changes.

I'm not going to go tracing back through all of what I think brought us to where we are. There are really only two important things of note:
1. Women began to realize that they could write, so they did. Mostly under male sounding pen names, at first, or using their initials. This is still somewhat true today in the midst of our female-centric writing world. Note J.K. Rowling, because the publisher didn't want to scare away male readers.
2. Because women began writing (women like Judy Blume), girls began reading. Not that girls hadn't read prior to that, but the ones that did read read the same stuff aimed at male readers. When women began writing, they began, more and more, to gear their writing to female readers, so girls started reading more.

From that point on, it became a cycle rather in the same sort of way that a hurricane starts, and, so, now, we are in the midst of a storm of women writers and girl readers. Don't get me wrong, I don't have any problem at all with women writing and girls reading; I'm all for it, in fact. The problem, though, is that boys have quit reading because of all of this. In effect, reading has become a woman's game, and men don't want to play anymore.

Of course, culturally, we want to blame it on the boys. As if it has always been a problem getting boys to read, but that's just not true. I don't have any statistics for you (because, frankly, I couldn't find anything that appeared even remotely reliable (everything seemed geared toward proving whatever the author of whatever study wanted to prove with the study)), but there are a few things that were consistent among several reports:
1. Girls (traditionally and currently) begin reading fiction at an earlier age. In fact, girls begin reading by reading fiction.
2. Boys (traditionally and currently) begin reading non-fiction. (This was certainly true for me. I started out reading about things I was interested in: dinosaurs, astronomy, historical figures.)
3. Traditionally, girls' interest in reading would taper off as they got older and interested in whatever it used to be that got girls got interested in. That's where the stereotype of the nerdy girl that read all the time came from; it used to be weird for a teenage girl to be interested in reading. Not so anymore. It's rather expected, these days, for girls to be reading.
4. Traditionally, boys' interest in reading would morph from non-fiction to fiction and boys would continue to read. Not all, of course, just like not all girls continue to read these days, but it was normal for teenage boys to be interested in reading, i.e. not seen as weird. However, today, boys are no longer morphing to the fiction stage. Instead, they are losing interest in reading.

Let's focus on point 4 for a moment.
There are all sorts of arguments about why this is happening and they encompass everything from TV to video games to the fact that "boys are boys," as if that should be enough to explain it. But I really don't think any of that is what's at the root of the issue. Sure, there are many distractions to reading these days, but there have always been distractions to reading. I read a lot when I was a kid (as in I won the school reading contest in 4th grade and should have won it in 3rd grade, but that's another story (and I didn't win in 5th and 6th grade because I changed schools)), and it was still the last thing I did every day. I mean, I only read when I didn't have something more exciting to do, so distractions have always existed. Also, parents are no less likely these days to encourage reading than they've ever been, so that, also, is not a factor. So what's changed?

Books have changed. Yeah, yeah, I know. All of those older books still exist, but you also know that people don't naturally gravitate to what's older. I mean, you don't see anyone out there boasting about their Atari 2600 anymore, right? Or, even, their Wii. Generally speaking, people become invested in what's new before they begin to explore what's old. At least, if they're left to do it on their own, as most kids are with reading.

What this means is that you get books that are new and hot and geared toward... girls. Like The Hunger Games and Twilight, books that boys just aren't all that interested in. Not that no boys read them, but most boys do not. Most boys have no interest in those stories. We have a remarkably feminine market, and it doesn't have a lot of room for boys at the moment.

The writers are women. The agents are women. The publishers are... well, they're probably all old men, but they're just in it for the money and probably don't read anyway. And, so, if you're trying to sell a book through traditional publishing, as most people are still trying to do, you're writing to the market. Just recently, I was reading through the first couple of chapters of a book I was asked to critique by a male author. Good voice. No real grammar issues. Female main character. Why? Because that's what the market wants. At least, that's what we think the market wants. (And I'm not saying there's anything wrong with guys writing female leads, but, really, unless you have a specific need for that, why not write what you know?)

Oh, and before anyone says "Harry Potter!" at me, yes, I know. Harry was a male lead character, but, really, who was the backbone of that story? Who got Harry through all of his predicaments? Who was it that was talented and strong and smart? Let me just say, it wasn't Harry.

So what am I getting at here? You know, honestly, I don't know. This is all from a series of conversations I've had with my wife about how books today are not the same as books when we were kids. Honestly, when I was a kid, I didn't read anything aimed at my age group. I did read new stuff, but I shopped in the sci-fi/fantasy section of my book store, because there wasn't really a young adult section. Well, there was, but that's not what it was called, and it was full of teen romance books aimed at girls. Stuff I had no interest in. The books in the young adult section are not much different from that today. Mostly. They're still teen romance stories, they just have a bunch of paranormal stuff and killing thrown in to disguise them. So it's no wonder that boys aren't interested.

What we do know, as a society, is that we want kids to read. I mean, we say this, but we don't do much about it. Especially, right now, we want boys to read. This is not something that needs to be an either-or situation. It's not either girls read or boys read. There should be plenty of opportunity for both. Bringing boys back into the game is going to take two things:
1. Parents willing to invest the time to make their boys read. Yes, I said "make." Learning to read is like learning to ride a bike; it's hard at first, but it's easy once you get the hang of it. If you've ever taught a kid to ride a bike, you'll know that it's (generally) not a pleasant task. We used to enforce reading on all of our children just like we made our kids learn to ride bikes. It was never a fun thing making the kids sit and do reading, but, now, all of them do it because they want to do it.
2. Getting guys back into the writing game and getting them back into writing their own stories, not stories for the market. I think guys have it a bit rougher in the publishing world, right now, because of the whole thing from agents about needing to "be in love" with the story before they'll give you representation. Most agents are women. I'm not going to spell that out for you. You're smart people. I'm sure you can figure that out on your own. At any rate, what it means is that stories geared for boys just aren't making it out into the market.

I'm not preaching any kind of conspiracy here. That's not what I'm saying at all. There's nothing nefarious going on. What is going on is human nature. However, if we really want boys to start reading again, we have to start making the reading world a place that's more friendly toward boys than it currently is. And that doesn't mean pandering to them either. Boys aren't looking for books about action and mindless violence. When they want that, there are plenty of video games that do that better than a book ever will. Boys want books that speak to them, about the kinds of issues that they face, just like girls want books that speak to them. They want something deeper and more meaningful than a video game. They want something real.

Maybe it's time we start giving it to them...

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Jekyll and Hyde

Robert Louis Stevenson spent much of his life sick. He was a sickly child that grew into a sickly adult. And he died young. Many of his tales are stories of the adventure that he must have dreamed about as a boy but couldn't have. He couldn't even go out and play pirates, because he spent so much time in bed. It's no wonder he wrote books like Treasure Island and Kidnapped!

Although most of his works are about adventure and daring-do, one particular story stands out from all the rest and has had a huge cultural impact: Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Walk with me a moment...

Remember how I said that Stevenson spent most of his life sick? Well, some people believe that the medical field itself formed a large part of the inspiration for Jekyll and Hyde. Doctors looked so nice, pleasant and respectable on the outside, but they would do horrible things to you behind closed doors. Remember, Stevenson wrote Jekyll in the same time period as Wells wrote Dr. Moreau. Vivisection was common practice. Much of medicine was painful for the patient, so some believe Jekyll was social commentary. Stevenson never said so, but you can't just dismiss these things that were certainly part of what formed Stevenson's personality.

At any rate, whether it had anything to do with the dichotomy of the medical profession or not, Stevenson was incredibly interested in dual personalities. In his teens, he was intrigued with Deacon Brodie, a respectable businessman and politician in the late 1700s. [Deacon was a trade title, not a church title.] Well, apparently respectable, at any rate. At night, he was a thief, using his knowledge of people's homes (from his work which involved locksmithing) to break in. He went 20 years before he was caught and found out, and Stevenson was fascinated to the point of writing a play about Brodie while he was still in his teens. Many scholars feel this fascination with Brodie laid the foundation for Jekyll and Hyde which followed about 10 years after his play about Brodie.

Whatever the case, RLS had a dream in September or October of 1885 that he claims set the basis for Jekyll and Hyde. Or a nightmare. He was screaming, and his wife woke him up. It was Jekyll and Hyde that he was dreaming about, and he set out to write the story immediately thereafter. He wrote it at a frenzied pace, finishing his first draft in a matter of days. Most sources say his wife found it so terrifying that he burned the manuscript. But he couldn't let go of the story and, almost immediately, started on it again. The new draft was also completed in a matter of days, and it was published in January of 1886 (don't you wish things happened that quickly these days?).

It just so happened that the idea of dissociative disorders were just beginning to be formed by psychologists in the late 1800s. Starting in the 1880s, to be more exact. Prior to this, these types of episodes as RLS describes in Jekyll and Hyde would have been attributed to demon possession, but psychologists were just realizing that traumatic events in life could cause long-term disorders. It was into this intellectual field that Jekyll and Hyde sprang, and it changed the way psychology looked at dissociative identity disorders.

The idea, the wrong idea, of split personalities developed and is still popular today even if it is inaccurate. The phrase "Jekyll and Hyde" has meaning beyond the fact that it's the name of RLS' story, and we don't use that term nicely when speaking about another person. It's a rare thing that an idea like this will escape the pages it was bound in and become a larger idea. Like Frankenstein. But it's an idea that has shaped more than a generation of thought and had a huge impact on actual science and scientific thought. Because a writer was fascinated with an Idea. In this case, the idea that one man, one person, could, in truth, be more than just one man.

Just to put into perspective how popular Jekyll and Hyde was: It sold 40,000 copies in its first six months of publication. This was astounding at the time. By 1901, it had sold more than 250,000 copies. This was at a time when the common person on the street couldn't read at more than the most basic level. Many couldn't even write their own names. Public readings of Jekyll and Hyde were not uncommon.

So... a thing, an Idea, doesn't have to become tangible to become real. Ideas that shape society are just as real as, say, an automobile or an airplane.

The A to Z of Fiction to Reality: Artificial Intelligence

"Artificial Intelligence," as a term, was not invented until 1956, but, as a concept, it goes back much further. As a term, it means the science and engineering of making intelligent machines; as a concept, it means man, through science, creating intelligence where there was none.

Generally speaking, when we think of artificial intelligence, which I will just call AI, we think of computers. Past that, we think of robots. Computers, games in particular, have gotten sophisticated enough that the term AI is already being applied to them even if it's not precisely correct. The thing is is that computers are capable of learning. Adapting. The only real issue is that we're not quite sure, yet, how to determine at what point something becomes capable of thought. Independent thought. Pondering. And how does something become self-aware, which is a component we seem to believe is necessary for intelligence.

At any rate, the idea that computers will achieve the ability to think and become self-aware has been a huge focus of science fiction since before computers were actually a thing. Let's just pretend that that part where humans are trying to build machines that have legitimate intelligence isn't really happening. Or has happened?

Anyway...

Although, Isaac Asimov was not the first person to write about robots, he was the first person to write about them extensively, and his robot stories and novels laid the foundation for all future robot literature. His work is so fundamental, in fact, that people sometimes refer to his Three Laws of Robotics as if they were an actual, real thing, not something from a short story.

I remember the first time I heard of the three laws. It was an episode of Buck Rogers. I was 10 or so. The robot Twiki had had some sort of problem and was being re-booted. He quoted the laws, and the doctor/scientist guy got all excited and commented in awe about how they were hearing (for what sounded like the first time ever) Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics.

All of that to say, that Asimov has been instrumental in our cultural understanding of what artificial intelligence is even though he was first writing his robots stories at least 70 years before artificial intelligence would exist. His ability to see the possibilities of what could be were extraordinary.

Why has Asimov become such a central figure in the foundation of literature involving artificial intelligence? Well, I think I have an explanation for this. Robots, machine men, were commonly being used as the symbol for how technology and the pursuit of knowledge would destroy mankind. Yes, this is in the 1930s. But, then, if you look at what was going on in Germany and what would happen in World War II, this is somewhat understandable. Basically, robots were only used as an example of the Frankenstein complex: the creation rising up and destroying the creator. Asimov wanted to change this. He felt it was a tired cliche and supported the view that knowledge and the pursuit of knowledge is bad or wrong. First and foremost a scientist, Asimov believed in  the pursuit of knowledge, so he sought to make robots into something more realistic in his writing, not just a symbol of technology leading to our downfall. Not that that is not still a common symbol and fear, but he broadened our horizons on the subject and set the foundation for modern artificial intelligence in fiction.

Just as an aside, the character Tik-Tok from Ozma of Oz is probably the first significant use of a robot with its own intelligence in fiction. The term "robot" hadn't even been invented yet. There are a couple of other earlier mechanical men in fiction, but those works have mostly faded with time, while Baum's Oz books are still read and enjoyed today. That makes Tik-Tok the first (significant) artificially intelligent machine in literature.

But speaking of the Frankenstein complex...

I'm going to make a leap here and say that Frankenstein is really the first source of artificial intelligence in literature and fiction. There are often earlier sources cited, but they involve the use of magic, and I want to confine this to intelligence created through scientific means. Of course, the monster created by Dr. Frankenstein was a human machine, but the intelligence created, the mind created, was new and unique. Shelley's novel may be the first example of technology, of man's creation, rising up against him. As mentioned, it is the name that has come to be applied to those types of stories.

I'm not going to say that we, as a race, are striving toward the creation of artificial intelligence because of fiction, but fiction writers certainly saw it coming long before science did. Because our cultural awareness is so influenced by what has gone before, I would find it difficult to believe that whatever is coming in the realms of artificial intelligence will not have fantasy and science fiction at its roots. It will not surprise me at all to find one day that Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics have, indeed, become reality.