blackbootz flagamuffin So here we will discuss For a Breath I Tarry.
Let me know what you thought about the time allotted/other aspects of the club. Hopefully everyone got to read it this time.
Discussion Prompts:
Here's some prompts you may respond to if you want. You, of course, don't have to respond to the prompts and can just say whatever is on your mind about the story. However if you're drawing a blank hopefully responding to a prompt will incite some meaningful discussion.
1. Riffing on Genesis is a big thing here. There are lots of parallels and semi-analogous characters. Could you say that the story has some kind of commentary on religion or gnosticism?
2. Relating to the story, do you think a computer/machine could truly experience emotion?
Picking the material for the next installment
So let's include any suggestions for the next material here. Keep in mind that it should be free and/or short. I think for the first few installments we should stick to these requirements pretty strictly, unless there's overwhelming demand for something in particular.
Some suggestions still standing: (I'll update the list as the thread progresses)
Fantastic Planet - a French animated film. It's way out-there and pretty fun. I believe there are multiple sources online for watching it.
Blindsight - Free to download, but not exactly short. An amazing book though and it goes by fast. Very much loaded with material to discuss.
Golem xiv by Stanislaw Lem
Rendezvous with Rama
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Zelazny riffed on more than Genesis; the setup is the Book of Job (can man be tempted out of his faith) and the plot is Faust (what does selling your soul to the devil really mean). The story itself is an exploration of what it means to be human. Zelazny goes through a lot of pretty, allegorical scenery in order to arrive at the conclusion that it isn't action that makes a human, it's the motivation behind the action. It isn't the irrationality, it's the willingness to act on the irrationality. For whatever reason, it isn't until Frost is in meat that this comes to the fore - prior to that, he's still a machine intelligence. After, he's a scared organic intelligence trapped in silicon. I think it's also worth noting that Frost is the first thing any of the other robots respect as having "free will" - another touchstone that Zelazny integrates. Frost, after all, was made sort of by accident. There's a "divine spark" in his makeup that is missing in everything else. One of the themes in Zelazny's writing is that not only is God dead, but he was never more than a figment of our imagination. Despite being a figment, however, he is not without powers. Solcom made Frost because Solcom makes things; Frost entered a Faustian bargain because Frost is. I think it's always been one of my favorite stories because it's the most deeply optimistic post-apocalyptic tale I've ever read. Even with humanity thousands of years dead, there's still room for rebirth and romance. It's got a delicacy that Asimov or Heinlein or Clarke never had, and he's got a point which has always been my beef with Bradbury. And he's not a mean, cantankerous people-hater like Ellison.Yet there was something different about Frost, something which led Solcom to dignify him with a name and a personal pronoun. This, in itself, was an almost unheard of occurrence. The molecular circuits had already been sealed, though, and could not be analyzed without being destroyed in the process. Frost represented too great an investment of Solcom’s time, energy, and materials to be dismantled because of an intangible, especially when he functioned perfectly. Therefore, Solcom’s strangest creation was given dominion over half the Earth, ad they called him, unimaginatively, Frost.
I wrote a stunning and deeply insightful write up Mr Z's novella on my laptop and got to hubskis
Amazing new error page. I am home now out of regular nets range and will cobble together some lesser on my phone. As a take on Genesis I was impressed that Rog took the hermetic rather than gnostic route the fall into humanity was a good act. Frost/Adam required the limitations of a meat body to become a God. This contrasts nicely with the platonic soma-sema of the contempory futurist scene.
steve can prolly explain it better nominal Judaism is not the best teacher of hermetism. Human making robots who in turn make human reflects an influence by Lem? Z was not as playfull as everyones favorite pole. In the cyberiad the cycle is implied to have happed several times. So pretty much that with better spelling punctuation and tons of classical allusions
I suggest Golem xiv by Stanislaw Lem in was written in 1981 but covers everything the present futurology crowd is talking about iterative general intelligence, transhuman Intelligence etc. albeit from a sad sack Polish point of view. I think it would be right up theadvancedapes alley maybe Caldwell can chime in.
I dug this. it was a bit more my kinda sci-fi than the last one. I enjoy when AI in stories is used to examine the human condition. On the prompt on consciousness, I think a machine could experience emotion. The brain is basically a computer yeah? From what I've picked up we learn to feel based on how we are cultured, our brains are writing program as we grow and develop. As we learn more about the brain and A.I. I don't see why we wouldn't be able to create a similar system in a machine. I don't know enough about neuroscience or A.I. to know if this line of thought holds weight or if it's just made up of misrepresented facts in pop culture/science. I really don't have a vote either way on next weeks pick. I saw Fantastic Planet years ago and don't really remember much about it, but I'd be down to watch it again.
I'm gonna sit out any movie round, my list of films to watch is too long as is. I'll tentatively read scifi of any length. So this was an incredible short story, and accessible too -- I posted it on facebook and a couple of people who never comment on any of the links I put on my wall made a point of mentioning how enjoyable it was. What about the future-AI hypothetical that when we fully understand the human brain we'll be able to build computers that can do exactly what the brain does, in the same way -- synapses, impulses, reactions, etc. This strikes me as the closest we could ever come to a machine that experienced emotion, but I'm open to having my mind changed.
So regrading the second prompt and consciousness and machines, I think an interesting topic is the idea of a Chinese Room. It's a pretty fascinating idea that suggests that perhaps a machine could totally mimic consciousness without possessing it. The theme also comes up in Blindsight pretty significantly, which we might discuss here at some point. For next club, I'm gonna vote for Fantastic Planet for a nice change of pace.
Regarding next choices - 1) I've always hated Fantastic Planet. It's a shit movie. It has nothing to say, the animation makes Bakshi look like Miyazaki, and it goes on and on and on without a point. It's a pale imitation of John Christopher's Tripods trilogy, which are pretty kick ass for children's books. Fantastic Planet just adds boobs and brooding French voice actors. 2) Per your recommendation, I read Blindsight. I agree - very much loaded with material to discuss. I'll warn you, though: prior to reading it, my two most loathed works of writing were The Cold Equations by Tom Godwin and The Lady or the Tiger? by Frank Stockton. After reading it, my two most loathed works of writing are The Cold Equations and Blindsight. I enjoyed it for about the first 60%, then took a quick drive to the grocery store and realized how much of that book makes zero goddamn sense. The last half drove home the point that Peter Watts was not only winging it, he was passing it off as wisdom. A "change of pace" would be something optimistic and fun. "Short" would be good, too. Unfortunately, pretty much everything on this list is a stone-cold bummer. I'd recommend Rendezvous with Rama as "Blindsight without teh suck" but it's long-ish. If we're going to go for movies, I'd push for Forbidden Planet or Day the Earth Stood Still or 2001 because they're classics. I, Robot is mostly pretty up-tempo. It's short.
I get what you're saying about Fantastic Planet, but there's not a whole lot of consensus on what to go to next, and it did get some interest in the previous thread. Still, I do have a soft-spot for the '70s style animation and trippiness. So I guess you'll just have to rant about it next discussion thread. We have a lot of good suggestions at this point now. We just need people to pick from them. Next suggestion thread I'm just going to compile a list and have people vote for one.