Ender's Morality

Something that I think we lost sight of during the discussion was the idea of "humanity." We sidetracked into a discussion of whether or not certain traits were implicit in humanity and if the buggers were human, but what we seemed to forget was that the discussion began with Ender's definition of "human," and that most homo sapiens don't qualify. Humans are not defined by humanity. In fact, for the most part, according to Ender, humans don't have any. So when it was said that the Buggers were acting with more humanity than the humans, or that the humans themselves were inhumane, it was by Ender's standards that I think we should judge whether or not this is true.

Ender's ideal of humanity seems to be Valentine, or at least his mental image of Valentine. To him, she is compassionate, understanding and fair. These are the traits Ender sees as worthy of protection, since it is because of her that he wants to save the Earth. But we know from his thoughts that not everyone is a human to him, it is something that must be earned.

It makes even more sense to use Ender's view of humanity when discussing Ender's Game because it allows the motif of role reversal to be expanded to the humans and Buggers. The motif is set up with Valentine and Peter when they write in each others personality for Locke and Demosthenes. It is continued by having Peter prevent war and Ender kill an entire race. It is also present in the end, because Ender, a child, is protecting the adults from the monsters in their nightmares. If if we use Ender's standard of morality, that it must be earned through fairness and compassion, then the Buggers are human and the humans are inhuman, since the Buggers stop attacking once they find out what they are doing, whereas the humans decide to manipulate children into committing genocide.

Reflection 3: (Buy) Life Insurance!*

Life insurance is a weird concept. You pay and pay and get nothing in return in person. Once you die, your relatives get some lump sum and possibly your funeral expenses are covered. All that effort put, to save money for others to ensure that you are buried. Can you really put a price tag on someone's life? How could you really evaluate one's worth?
No wonder sci-fi authors are hung up on this weird concept.

H.G. Wells refers to life insurance in War of the Worlds on pg70 saying that God is not an insurance agent. Likewise, life insurance business finds itself in Ender's Game on pg37 where two people are discussing military in relation to other careers: "if you had any brains, you'd be in a real career, like selling life insurance." I don't know if it requires any brains, but the business has been around for a century now...and it might gain importance once the human cloning business becomes legalized. We might be questioning the "Human Rights Treatises" once the human cloning project is on the move.
Food for thought.

*I really don't care if you choose to buy life insurance or not. I personally think it's kind of unnecessary.

The Most Powerful Weapon

What strikes me in reading Ender's Game, is the obvious irony of Ender's training. Even as the Bugger threat unified Earth, humanity's champion had little in common with the people he was supposed to protect. Commissioned to be weapon, Ender was isolated from birth. As a Third, he was already an outcast, a rare and embarrassing exception to the law. While most people grew up hating the Buggers, Ender had to learn to become one, to empathize with them. "Buggers and astronauts" is in a way a foreshadowing game. Ender has to literally put on the mask of an alien. In order to save his family, his planet, he had to learn how to love the enemy.

Phil likened Ender to a Christ figure, and I have to agree with that interpretation. Ender sacrificed himself, his humanity, to save a planet. He assembled his own disciples. He threatened the old order. He was chosen to be a savior at birth. He really did love his enemy. At the end of the book, he is roaming distant planets, author of two now-holy books, preaching a new sort of religion.
So I guess what Orson Scott Card is trying to tell us, is that love is the most powerful weapon of all. Pretty cheesy, I know, but it fits.

The Loci of Humanity: Removable?

While discussing aliens in class last Thursday, I found it interesting how several of us, consciously or not, argued for a direct correlation between humane/inhumane actions, humanity and being human. The point was made, several times during the course of our discussion about the Martians, that our actions are capable of removing humankind's humanity.

Frankly, I'm not sure if I can agree with this sentiment. While there are certainly attributes which make us human — such as our biology, the psychology of our minds, and culture — the idea that our actions can somehow remove or rob us of that which makes us human is an idea that I am extremely skeptical of.

Such a notion implies that certain innate characteristics, those characteristics which essentially make us human, are not fixed. It was fascinating how, in our discussion, several of us used examples of madness as being points in which humanity had lost itself. The implication that follows — that those who act inhumanely, as if they are mad — is interesting in that the assertion which follows is that humanity is erratic.

I do not disagree that humanity can be erratic, but I would not go so far as to translate the erratic actions of a few actors into a universal law in regards to the nature of humanity. For if our actions, or the actions of others, are capable of being judged inhumane, and we are thus capable of robbing or being robbed of our humanity, then there is truly nothing which may guard the sacrosanctness of humanity. Moreover, if that which makes us human can be removed or taken from us, then within such a possibility is a terrible guillotine: the possibility of societies — judges, juries, and executioners — removing those who they feel are inhumane. The question of humane/inhumane actions, humanity, and being human then becomes much more dangerous in that it becomes a very pragmatic question of who appoints the judges, juries, and executioners.

Inhumane. The very term itself is a misnomer in that it suggests that one is incapable of being human while being cruel or incapable of feeling compassion. Actions are cruel, and if we ascribe actions to the identity of a human being, then we may see them as being inhumane. That is not to say that actions which are cruel should go unpunished, but that we should not fall to the argument that humanity may ever be lost or possible of removal. One needs only look at the greatest mass-murderers of the 20th century to understand why the idea that sanity, righteousness, and being orderly are characteristics of humanity. Such a definition, that humankind is sane, just, and orderly, ignores the potential for humankind to present the opposite of those characteristics — insanity, cruelty, and chaotic — in itself. And humankind can be insane, cruel, and chaotic. Those attributes, however, do not rob or remove humankind of that which makes it essentially what it is. Such a rhetoric, a rhetoric of inhumanity, of subhuman-ness, is a rhetoric that has carried us through not one, but two world wars. Do we need another before we come to the realization that humanity, that which makes us human, is fixed, irremovable, and thus something of which we cannot be robbed? There is no sub-humanity, no inhumane, only our coming acceptance that humanity that includes the opposite of every good and bad characteristic that we, the members of the human race, posit through our actions. In War of the Worlds, this is no more clear than in a conversation between the curate and the narrator:

"Why are these things permitted? What sins have we done? The morning service was over. I was walking through the raods to clear my brain for the afternoon, and then—fire, earthquake, death! As if it were Sodom and Gomorrah! All our work undone, all the work—what are these Martians?"

"What are we?" I answered, clearing my throat.

Becoming the Enemy

Just like in War of the Worlds, the arrival of an alien presence in Ender's Game signals the loss of humanity for all mankind. The difference is that in Ender's Game the aliens are not only not evil, they simply did not understand that they were killing us. Every time they killed a human being, they did not understand the significance of their actions. They simply believed they were removing the agent of another Queen. The humans on the other hand, believed that every time they killed a bugger they were killing another sentient creature, and for the most part the humans reveled in it. The fact that both species were wrong about what was actually happening is irrelevant. What is important is what they believed they were doing. It is also important to note that when the buggers finally realized that they were killing a sentient with the death of every human, they left mankind alone. They regretted what they had done, and we find out through the Hive Queen, they even wished to be forgiven. It is important to point out that the buggers knew that the humans posed a risk to them, and they still left them alone after realizing they were all sentient. They could have tried to wipe us out when they realized the truth, knowing that there was a good chance we would do it to them if they didn't, but they chose to leave us and hope for peace.

The humans on the other hand chose to not only attempt genocide because the buggers might be a threat, but they tricked a child, a child they knew to be especially empathetic, into doing it for them. The humans in the book are constantly claiming that the ends justify the means, turning children into weapons and putting them through brutal psychological games. This shows us a pattern in sci-fi literature: the presence of the alien causes humans to abandon humanity. The human cannot be humane, even to children of its own species, if there is an "Other." The Other is a threat that turns us into the monsters we saw the buggers as. Much like the mirror at The End of the World, our acts turned us into our worst enemy. The human fleet comes from nowhere, it is unstoppable, using weapons and technology the buggers had never seen, and it cannot be reasoned with. It is even pointed out that Ender's battle style resembles bugger tactics by this point. The message is clear: watch out how you fight your enemy, or you will inevitably become him.

Brave New World?

My father has a record collection and Jeff Wayne’s Musical version of the war of the worlds, (accompanied by the sketchbook and the copies of illustrations that have been drawn by artists who were inspired by H.G. Wells) is among his favorites. As a child I would go through my father’s record collection of Supertramp, Beeges and Saturday Night Fever OST, (all with pretty, shiny covers) until I'd came across this one record cover, showing some huge machine destroying a large ship. I had numerous nightmares in which I witnessed the end of the world, and my parents ended up hiding the record away to stop me from having those nightmares. I was 8 or 9 years old at the time...and I found myself slipping into thoughts about big machines taking over the world. Of course, I had no concept of what the War of the Worlds could be in a metaphorical sense, so the illustrations in the book sticked in my mind for a long time.

Twelve years after listening to musical version of the War of the Worlds, I finally read the book. What stood out most between my two encounters with the story was the role of religion, church and God. Story is full of bold statements for the time it was written. The Enlightenment ideals are reflected in the ending of the book when the narrator and the artilleryman decide to go underground and make plans for a new start where the word of science will be respected. Jeff Wayne does not bring this in his musical with such emphasis, when we composes the score for  "brave new world." Another thing that stood for me was the role of narator's wife throughout the story. What makes us believe that she is actually real?

Artwork used in the cover booklet of Jeff Wayne's War of the Worlds

On another note, I do not think aliens are acting without their morals. I think this is obvious from the anatomy of the Martians described since the Martians have a brain is sufficient grounds for me to argue that they have emotions (emotions are created by the brain). And since they have emotions, I would say they definitely have a certain level of morality as well. It is just that, they are in a war...and in a war, they cannot let their morality to get in the way of their purpose.

Reflection 2: Marx, Mars and More

For my independent study "Nationalism/ideology in 20th century Europe," I recently started reading about Marx and Lenin and their perspective on imperialism. Something struck me today about the War of the Worlds in relation to Marx.

H.G.Wells published his book War of the Worlds in 1898, thirty-eight years after Marx published Kapital. I think this was sufficient time for Kapital to be considered as a "best-seller" of the time. Though I have been reading about Marxism for a while, it was during my Visions of Post-Coldwar Europe class, that I managed to put everything together: Martians...could be the Marxists.

Marxists historically adopted the color red to identify themselves. And in fact, in sci-fi genre Mars (being the red-planet ) plays an important role from time to time to distinguish the Russians/Marxists etc. Historically Marxists have always been on the anti-imperialists and have defended a kind of "anti-imperialism war" against the imperialists. In this sense, Martian attack on the imperial England could be seen as an anti-imperialist attack which demolished the whole governance system of UK. Then again, another approach on this break-up in the system could be explained via anarchism. Specially when the narrator and the artillaryman decide to go underground and make plans for an overthrow at some future date. After all, many people who were not in favor of their governments usually follow the same strategy...and go underground. It almost resembled me V for Vendetta, and Guy Fawkes and the way the Gunpowder plot was planned. References to rats and ants make sense in this respect more than the references that were made in class about the Africans.

The comments made in class about revolt being a human arrogance makes no sense at all. Though revolt plans may seem naive, it is one thing that can keep humanity running...time after time hope for change has kept people dedicated in a cause and allowed people to work towards achieving that one specific goal. 

Unfortunately I still have not finished reading my "ideologies in Europe" book, so I cannot really execute a long argument at this point in time, but I'm sure I will have plenty of time to make case for various ideologies in class, and I'm excited about it.

The Beginnings of a Genre

Something that I think we could have talked about more in the class discussion was how influential War of the Worlds has been on science-fiction and the alien sub-genre in particular. As such an early work it had an almost unfathomable effect on all writers of alien related fiction that would follow.

The first and most obvious way that War of the Worlds influenced future sci-fi is the aliens. The martians are described as being comprised almost completely of brain. This idea of an alien with a huge head has been almost standard in much of the work in the genre. From E.T. to the aliens in Signs to the Great Gazoo, in our popular culture we constantly see aliens has having disproportionally large heads. To go along with this increased head size is usually an increased intellect, something that was also pioneered by Wells.

This increased intellect brings us from the aliens to their technology. The concept of an energy weapon is something so commonplace in science-fiction, it is almost impossible to imagine sci-fi without them, and War of the Worlds helped to pioneer this idea. Instead of the weapons based on light that we would later see, Wells gives the martians a beam of an even more basic form of energy: heat. And to go along with this weapon, the martians have an advanced form of transport in the tripods. These are early forms of Walkers that would later become so prevalent, appearing in countless animes, power rangers and even star wars. This might not be specifically as prevalent in alien-centric sci-fi, but it is still descended from Wells' work, and science fiction would be a very different genre without Voltron or AT-ATs.

A Cup of Tea

Jo Walton, in a post on the blog io9 (yeah, I read them a lot, so don't be surprised to see more references here), mentions one of the key differences between reading SF and other literature, "If we’re talking about a drug that lets people live to be two hundred, we may well be talking about death and the finitude of life, but we also treat the reality and the limitations of that life extension realistically." There's little doubt that the Martians could represent British imperialism or the ugly nature of humanity, but we can't forget that Wells is trying to present a reasonable depiction of Britain during an alien invasion. To the artilleryman, the curate, and the narrator, these aliens represent, most of all, something that can incinerate them with a heat ray, or poison them with black gas.

Once you get past the broad symbolism, SF gives the reader the opportunity to ponder the ins and outs of a scenario otherwise far-removed from their lives. Fears of an end to British dominion are reified (abstract becomes concrete) as a Martian invasion. I think this is where my fascination with the cup of tea comes from. The most interesting part of WotW, to me, is watching how the Martians interact with the established patterns of daily life. I'll end with a passage from the book:

The most extraordinary thing to my mind of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple the social order headlong. (First paragraph, Book 1, Chapter 8).

The British War of the Worlds

Two months ago I read a post on the Science Fiction blog io9 about "cosy catastrophes." It linked to an article in The Guardian that described a uniquely British subgenre of SF in which the apocalypse is not a flashy takeover or armageddon, but rather a gradual, not so violent ending cleaning the slate for the middle class survivors to remake the world. While the Martian takeover of WotW doesn't fit that classification, it got me thinking about the cultural perspective of HG Wells. I found much of the public's response to an alien landing and invasion very strange, almost as strange as Martians themselves. As the narrator put it, "the most extraordinary thing to my mind of all the strange and wonderful things that happened upon that Friday, was the dovetailing of the commonplace habits of our social order with the first beginnings of the series of events that was to topple the social order headlong" (34).

People went to church, drank tea, went out boating long after the first cylinder landed. I'm reminded of a British WWII propaganda poster urging citizens to "Keep Calm and Carry On."
During the weekend of the landing, it appears that Britain, for the most part, did just that. In London, the narrator's brother describes nothing more than a "vague feeling of alarm" as late as Sunday. Things were calm enough for him to go to a concert that night. I was especially amused when the narrator, after the aliens landed, after first contact, after people had started dying, left his wife to return the (dead) inn-keeper's dog cart. Granted, I'm not anything close to an expert on British culture, but all of this feels very British to me. Whether on account of the time or place, Wells's imagined response to a Martian invasion would be very very different from our own today, in an age in which we are so primed for panic.

A book about privacy I read last semester, The Naked Crowd by Jeffrey Rosen, pointed out different cultural attitudes toward bureaucratic control. Rosen notes that "Americans are more suspicious... of expert administrative bodies," especially compared to the "'pleasantly authoritarian' culture" of countries like Canada or Britain. I found evidence of this trust for government all over WotW. The brother brings up a newspaper report that "reiterated assurances of the safety of London and the ability of the authorities to cope with the difficulty..." Over and over again, people repeat the expectation that their government will simply blow up the Martians in their craters, and they really seem to believe it.

Reflection 1: Alienus, Alius, Sci-fi and I

[Alienus]
For sixteen years I lived in an apartment walking distance away from the wall separating the North and the South Cyprus. I grew up in a place where "us vs. them" mattered in everyday life. A place where politics of division, built more than a wall dividing the island; it built walls inside people's heads which prevented people not to learn about the other, not to hear about the other and not to speak about the other in any other form but "the enemy." There were no aliens back home (as far as I know), only a lot of alienated people. Then one day, the wall came down.Talk about contact.

[Alius]
What is sci-fi? I would say it is a sophisticated form of story-telling which sees human response/reaction to social change as the central theme. What drives a social change? Well, change does not really come about only via science. Conflicts can lead to change, some traumatic experience (i.e. terrorist attacks) or knowledge may lead to change. However, biggest changes in human lifestyles in Western world has been (and to this day remain to be) driven by scientific breakthroughs. The term "progress" is the most widely used term in making scientific breakthroughs more acceptable for people. Since the beginning of the 20th century, people have been less critical of the scientific breakthroughs and most inventions have been welcomed by communities at large without any questions. Any small step was portrayed as a milestone towards better days. We stopped questioning the health costs of carrying mobile phones in our pockets, we stopped questioning large amounts of time we spent staring at computer screens. Science provided solutions to all our problems (well, almost all) without waiting for our questions. What's more, seeing the safe system of scientific approach our government policies started becoming "progressive," and we slowly stopped effectively questioning "national security measures," military expenditures, direction of foreign aid or economic sanctions. I think sci-fi reminds us that there are still questions we need to ask- not only to each other but to others. Sci-fi holds reality accountable for the artificial reality it submits and consequently sci-fi needs to meet every test of reality (or significant amount of reality).

I am by no means suggesting that sci-fi needs science to be sci-fi. I know that there is sci-fi without scientific discoveries (please see: Rwanda in Year's Best SF 12) where dicovery of disguised other replaces the stereotypical science dimension of the genre. This then brings me to the other question of PTJ...why aliens and sci-fi? Why not Orcs or monsters?

I think it is one of those beautiful sides to the English language which identifies anything foreign or not belonging as alien- which takes me to my initial point on Cyprus where people saw each other in terms of Greek vs. Turkish until there was interaction which started a new wave "us, the Cypriots." Sci-fi brings in its criticisms to our world built on duplicities: black/white, right/wrong. alien/human. It is no wonder, on several occassions alien contact somehow results in experiencing "the other" on an internal level (i.e. through learning about the other, physically changing form into the other etc.). Even though genre caries the black and white features of the real world, it twists the interaction capacity between the right and wrong (or black/white) by changing the setting of the interaction. Arguably, if you control the environment, then you can control human behavior...but can you control the most intimate feature of human experience: emotions and feelings? Or people's attachment to their costumery ways? And who other than an outsider could possibly be threat to these ways? Unless one within the community is somehow "possessed" by the aliens...

We more or less know about the orcs and monsters being all fantastic wild, savage creatures which do not represent any form of advanced civilization or any capabilities of advanced societies. They are deemed to be the losers... their brutality do not match with the high morals or intellectual capabilities of men. Alien interaction calls for a high level of technological advancement which would create an asymmetric division of power, which can  lead into an "oppressor" and the "oppressed" dichotomy. This does not matter when humans are facing the orcs or monsters, because hey, "we" get to be the oppressors. Positions change when it comes to the aliens...them having the technology and all, it would be hard to expect them being the "oppressed." In such settings, the whole of humanity is at stake...and questions that we did not ask before become relevant.

[i]
Though I often times get fascinated by this genre, I tend to take in what I read with a grain of salt. The sci-fi I have read/watched so far never fully articulated the possibility of aliens belonging to multiple planets (or worlds). Same with the humans... what we find at stake is never the minorities, or mixed races...it's always the humans- not Asians, not Africans just humans. To me this notion is similar to being color-blind...or treating all equal when they are definitely not equal. Sci-fi has a level of accepted
"purity of blood" when it comes to humans which I find hard to settle with. On another note, I am excited to be taking another course with PTJ, exploring the role of culture and identity on micro-level interactions between self and the alius in various settings.

Boundaries

First semester last year I took a course called "Incredible Magical Realism" in which we explored literature at the border of the uncanny and marvelous. In his book, The Fantastic: a Structural Approach to a Literary Genre, Tvetan Todorov outlined the "fantastic" as a hesitation between explanations, uncanny or marvelous. Uncanny events are strange, but entirely possible within the bounds of nature and technology. They are the classic "rational explanation" scenarios. A marvelous phenomenon, on the other hand, is supernatural. The rules of nature as we, the readers, understand them, are broken. A story is "fantastic" as long as it lies between the two. Movies such as The Orphanage are examples of this type of fiction.

In class we had a hard enough time sussing out the classifications of different works of fiction, trying resolve the built-in hesitation. I thought that things would be simple outside of that particular limbo, but after last class, I'm not so sure. As it turns out, the border between marvelous and uncanny is a small, relatively tidy place compared to the world outside that little slice. I have been trying to apply the marvelous-uncanny continuum to the science-fiction/fantasy debate, but now I'm realizing that it might not get me any farther. At first it seems obvious. If the driving mechanism in the plot is supernatural, we're talking about fantasy. If the phenomenon are simply uncanny, then we've got science fiction.

The problem comes from perspective. To the humans in the Lord of the Rings Universe, an Orc or ghost is a perfectly normal thing to encounter, but to us, they would be something supernatural. Likewise, the technology in Star Trek, for example, makes sense in the world of the characters, but to us, couldn't possibly happen, and yet we consider it science-fiction. Obviously the model couldn't work if in one case we measure against our own perspective, while in another, we measure against the fictional set of assumptions. Also, where would you place the Artemis Fowl universe in which fantasy and science fiction elements both abound?

To Seek Out New Worlds, as explored by Jutta Weldes

Jutta Weldes presents world politics as defined by O Tuathail and Agnew, as world of difficult policy choices, "hard truths, material realities, and irrepressible natural facts" (Weldes 1), which encompasses war and peace, ethnic cleansing, genocide, natural disasters, terrorism, trafficking of arms, drugs, and human beings, etc.

The world of science fiction, however, is all of this... and a little bit more. Whereas the factual world makes sense (or not), fictional worlds create rules on their own to follow. Science fiction takes a fictional truth, makes it factual, and then expands on what the world would accordingly appear as. Weldes describes these worlds as being "imagined futures, the make-believe, alien landscapes, bizarre cityscapes, and space and time travel" (Ibid. 1). In this sense, science fiction is a blend of our present world, other worlds, and speculation on what our future may look like. It is an amalgamation of material realities and natural facts with fictional worlds and imagined possibilities. One needs to look only at the correlations between NASA and Star Trek, the Strategic Defense Initiative and Star Wars, and the Revolution in Military Affairs and future war fiction to realize that these correlations, and thus the future, are very carefully laid out in the works of science fiction authors.

Weldes spends some time going over the differences between high and low politics, a discussion which I won't go over here (but one that can be found here). I highly recommend that everyone at least check out the first chapter of To Seek Out New Worlds. It is an invaluable introduction to PTJ's course, and will most likely speak to many of the discussions that we will have this semester.

According to Weldes, a struggle for power can define the relationship between humans and alien others (even alien human others). Power can be produced and reproduced many ways, but Weldes speaks to the cultural production of power. Culture, as defined by Tomlinson, is "the context within which people give meaning to their actions and experiences and make sense of their lives", and according to Hall, representations, languages, customs... all of these are "concerned with the production and exchange of meanings - giving and taking - between members or groups within a society" (Ibid. 6). Popular culture, primarily what we will be studying through science fiction in its literary and cinematic form this semester, is a battleground where meaning is contested and contrasted against the factual world as we know it. In an interesting statement, Shapiro explains that popular culture endorses previous power structures "by reproducing beliefs and allegiances necessary for uncontested function" (Ibid. 6) This speaks to the silenced and marginalized voices that Hall proclaims should be studied as possible sites for politics to occur.

Science fiction, therefore, involves the realm of the political... ideology, discourse, and politics. And by analyzing popular culture, we can access the realm of the political because these elements are a part of science fiction. In a sense, according to Bartter, science fiction provides an excellent "vehicle for disclosing assumptions", and this especially includes assumptions about world politics (Ibid. 8). Why does is science fiction great at disclosing assumptions? Because science fiction itself, and its subject, culture, are both contested grounds. In this continually-contested battleground then, there is no set standard from which one may judge assumptions about culture or politics.

In her introductory chapter, Weldes follows a discourse started by Darko Suvin regarding "novums" - a Latin term that Suvin uses to describe the "new" or "new things". These "novums" can be picked up on as indicators of the world of science fiction, setting it apart from the mundane (Ibid. 9). Science fiction tells us about the present through futuristic utopias and dystopias that combine the real, factual world with the present. At this juncture lies a point of discontinuity from the known world, and through use of language - especially metaphor and metonymy - these "novum" are rendered plausible in their own terms. This process of authorial creation and readerly acceptance or refutation creates the if accept/then and if refute/then dichotomy which informs science fiction discourses. The difference between science fiction, therefore, is not only material, but also conceptual, even if it is grounded in these self-substantiating worlds that provide a different medium from which to view things.

These totalizing metaphors allow us to explain contemporary society in more or less estranged settings from our own, and because of this focus on alternative worlds, skepticism can be accomodated through metaphoric and metonymic justification. By so doing, science fiction authors create a sort of space in which they can examine contemporary politics more fully than when they are fully encased in present structures.

This "reflectionist" approach, however, is interpretationally limited because: (1) it assumes that world politics exists apart from the practices of popular culture, and (2) that representations and the "real world" are distinct from one another and that the representations reflect "the real" more or less transparently, in an unmediated fashion (Ibid. 12), thereby creating a weakness in the interpretation in that we begin to believe that we can read "the real" off of representations. Accordingly, such interpretations would produce a version of world politics, theory, and practice all for granted, directly accessible, and unproblematic. Weldes, therefore, argues that such a balance of power would then just be... unquestioned, and thusly remain, unquestionable.

"Reality" and its meanings, according to Shapiro, are discursive products: "because the real is never wholly present to us - how it is real for us is always mediated through some representational practice - we lose something when we think of representation as mimetic", and science fiction is more than just a "window" from which to view the world (Ibid. 14). Science fiction texts are a part of the processes of world politics in that they are implicated in the producing and reproducing a body of thought which skeptics might describe as "mere" reflections. Instead, it is possible to read "the real" - world politics - as a social and cultural product in itself.

And thus, world politics is a cultural product.

Sorcery in Star Wars

During class the question "is this sci-fi or fantasy" was put before the class. I found the discussion of Star Wars as either Science Fiction or Fantasy to be especially interesting, but I think the question was too constrictive. I don't think that it should be considered to be an either-or situation.

Star Wars has always been the metric I've used to measure other science-fiction against, and I know that I am not alone in this. In class it was proposed that Star Wars should be placed in the category of fantasy instead. This idea was counter-intuitive, but it does make sense. The Force certainly seems to belong in a world of dragons and elves than one of Star Destroyers and Wookies. And as Professor Jackson pointed out, the archetypes are almost Arthurian. But just because there is the presecne of fantasy, does this exclude the possibility of science-fiction?

It is wrong to think that two separate genres cannot both be present in the same work. The discussion never touched on this possibility, and I think that this was a mistake. Firefly shows that sci-fi can be compatible with the western genre, so why can't Star Wars be an example of a sci-fi fantasy? It should be obvious that Star Wars is deep into the sci-fi genre, even if it exhibits some clear fantasy elements as well. Even though the actual science is rarely touched on, from the dialogue between Han Solo and Obi-Wan debating the merits of the force versus those of having a good blaster we can tell that the technology in Star Wars comes from rational science, and that there is a tension between the adherents of each. When we look at Star Wars this way, we see that it is not either a sci-fi or a fantasy series, but both, and is in fact partially about the very subject we were discussing in class: the differences between sci-fi and fantasy.