So...His Master's Voice, where to start?
I am really exhausted after devoting my day to understand this book, and I could not figure out the place this book has in the framework of alien-human encounter of our syllabus, simply because it is very ambigious in the text. One other problem I found with the book was...it was simply too realistic. The time-period, setting and the pre-text are all too familliar to me as a reader to consider it sci-fi. Then again, by changing only one dimension of the current world I guess we are presented an alternative reality. I cannot wrap my mind around a lot of things in this book, so I will try and talk briefly about each and hopefully we can talk about them in class. I will save my ideas on "denial," "information control" and Communication patterns to our class discussion. Here are rest of the things I feel like discussing tonight:
1. Can science have answer to moral questions?
A theme I saw implicitly throughout the book. On pg14, Hogarth says that: "in various fields one can acquire knowledge that's real or the kind that only provides spiritual comfort-and those two need not agree." I found this approach rather unsettling. Human beings for the most part find comfort in reaching a solution i.e. finding the answer. If there are 2 different answers to same question, why ask the question in the first place? (Coincidentally, there is also a TED Talk on this very topic, and the speaker has an absolute Yes as his answer to this very question. Then we are left with question of cultural imperialism. )
2. Civilization as accidental- and occidental.
Lew executes very solid arguments on various things throughout his book including his account of human existence on this planet being a mere statistical possibility as well as the existence of civilizations. So, from that perspective this is a pure critique of Hegel and all others that believe in the universal truth and the metanarrative of a pre-determined fate for civilizations. Math argument- an acultural approach- sounds plausible but I would argue that civilization in and of itself assumes a homogenous population, at least in linguistic perspective. "Orient" in that sense would not account as a civilization. Such an approach to the Civilizations is oversimplistic. Their existence falls in between what we perceive as real and artificial from our subjective perspectives.
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"Truth is stranger than fiction; fiction has to make sense."
ReplyDelete— Leo Rosten
I think we absolutely have to pay attention to two important characteristics of the context of the writing that Mr. Lem took full advantage of.
(1) This is science fiction, right? Anything goes as long as you are building off of one premise and then sticking to the rules that you (the author) make, right? Think about it....
(2) This entire work is written in the form of a journal/diary. This book is, for all intents and purposes, a living, science fiction memoir. This is interesting because it gives Mr. Lem an incredible amount of leeway when it comes to writing this novel in that: First (a), by being a work of science fiction, he can pretty much make it as kooky as he wants it to be, and as long as pigs don't fly, he's SAFE. And second (b), by being a diary/journal, Lem crosses into the realm of fictional memoir, WHERE ANYTHING GOES. Here's why:
If I can make a brief literary genre argument here... When writing fiction vs. non-fiction: It's okay if your style is sloppy when you write non-fiction, because it's the content that matters. As opposed to fiction, where you're pretty much creating your own ball game, rules and all, it suddenly becomes more important that you follow those rules and, and content get's de-emphasized.
So...what happens when you combine the fiction with the journal/diary non-fiction subgenre? You get the best of both worlds. Not only are you free to explore your fictional world as much as your little heart desires, but you also get the added benefit of not having to make sense. And that apparently...MAKES SENSE! We are talking about fictional non-fiction here, folks. Invented non-fiction is still fiction. You just get to have a little more fun with it....
....and that's exactly what Lem did with HMV. It doesn't have to make sense that the signal can basically teleport an atomic blast to anywhere around the planet, but it does because it is fictional non-fiction. Great points of inquiry in the essays, monologues, and what have you. But the parameters of the story-telling are absurd. The context doesn't have to work because it is non-fiction, and it doesn't matter if the content doesn't flow as well as it should, because it is also a work of fiction. The parameters are absurd, because there are none!
1) I'm extremely interested in the science/morality question that Harris poses in his TED talk, and he also posted an extensive defense of his talk here:
ReplyDeletehttp://www.project-reason.org/newsfeed/item/moral_confusion_in_the_name_of_science3/
for anyone who's interested in hearing more on this topic. I think that there are probably irreducible scientific answers to moral questions, but that most of them are complex, and that we should be extremely rigorous in avoiding cultural imperialism until those answers are readily available and implementable. Hogarth, a mathematician and statistician, places an extreme amount of faith in the ability of science to give us direct answers to moral or philosophical questions. Of course, his hubris is repaid by nearly being forced into history as one of its most infamous figures. What Lem might be getting at here is the failure of science to give us answers to moral questions, but I think it more likely that he is trying to chide humanity for giving less serious scientific thought to questions of morality than questions of industrial or military significance. If we don't spend more effort trying to find out why humans reason one way or another, we might end up killing ourselves by accident.
2) I love the style, and I utterly agree with bogdan on that point. It reminded me of so many 19th century sci-fi stories like Frankenstein or Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. The memoir style recounts a scientific mis-hap, also giving some commentary on the present culture or "human nature".