Highway To Mars

We have only done one musical on Highway and certainly not devoted an episode to a song but after 243 episodes – why not.

There is a specific reason for Radioactive to make the cut and it comes down to something else we haven’t really talked much about despite it being one of my personal favorites – puppets.  There is something irresistible about the idea of Lou Diamond Phillips being taken down by stuffed toys.

Over recent times I have been going through an audio course on science fiction, it’s history, it’s phases and development.  Not unsurprisingly feminism was given a chapter and in a way the heroine of this piece embodies the ways in which women have been relegated to the background – silent, a little angry, willing to kick tail and walk away knowing that men just won’t acknowledge her even in defeat.

Then again she walks away with the cash and the knowledge that today she conquered.

AND PUPPETS!!!!!!!

Why are there not more music videos with puppets?

There is something poetic in the title of the Undiscovered Country.  It speaks to pretty much every time in history and all politics.  Do we fear or embrace the future.

History though tells us no matter how long we deny it, in some cases centuries, the future has caught up with us no matter how much we try and hold onto the status quo.  Eventually the world moves forward, even if it’s at a shudder.

The Kirk-Spock dynamic has never more embodied these two views.  Spock in this case the man who believes the undiscovered country is a better place, Kirk not being so sure.  In the end it has to be said that Spock wins the ideological battle but not before suffering a few lost battles and having to learn to take account of those that don’t share his views.

This is the lesson of the Undiscovered Country.  The future is a brighter place, but not everyone is able to cross the chasm into the future without help.  Some will never make it, they will simply exist within the world that has been left behind no matter what.

None the less, we should always strive to carry as many people with us as possible.

1984 is pretty much the top of the list when it comes to Politics and Science Fiction.  More than any other dystopian society thought of, 1984 demonstrates the evils of totalitarian societies.

However bad the western world seems and there are problems with the ways in which institutions such as Universities have implemented policy unchallenged, we are a long way from 1984.  Which means I am mistrustful when people make the comparison.

I am equally mistrustful of comparisons of Trump to Hitler.

I get it, some places like Canada have undertaken social experiments in some of the modern social thinking and certainly has created working environments and school environments that contrary to intention are less tolerant than they proclaim to be.  That is still a long way from the world of 1984.

Can we get to 1984?  Possibly, but not without some big things going wrong enabling a totalitarian regime to rise.  In places like Canada with a minimalist military to start with there is a long road to true thought police.

I get it, people like to highlight the worst case scenario but I think in doing so they undermine their core argument.  If something is bad, let it be judged on it’s merits.  You don’t need to harken to some Orwellian society to make that point.

Ghost in the Shell is a very influential piece, having provided many pieces of motivation for the Matrix.  In truth we should have gotten to this movie before now but better late than ever.  Ghost in the Shell covers off on many of the themes we have discussed.  It goes the next step though to normalise that idea that humans will go beyond their current limitations, that they will accept cybernetic enhancement and that will even invoke new questions on what it is to be human.

I am glad that we are coming to the end of Transhumanism as it’s been a long journey but equally I am glad that the last movie confirmed at least in my mind that biology alone is not going to take us to where we want to go.

Am I keen to try out transhumanism?  Can’t say that I am but only because the technology is still new.  If it were at the same point as ghost in the shell, it would be a very different story.

Okay, the Avengers is popcorn transhumanism but it is hella fun.

While the superhero genre can’t be taken as serious transhumanism because lets face it, nobody will become the hulk anytime soon, it does open up a huge discussion on what sort of form we want to take.  One only needs to attend a comic convention to see how many people take superheroes pretty seriously, doing everything they can to replicate characters in comics.

This is to me one of the least thought through yet I think potentially appealing parts of transhumanism.  Identity has become the “thing” of the 21st century.  While gender identity has become the go-to it’s just the latest in a long list of issues around identity.  The fact is that many are now looking to go past their physical identity.

What if transhumanism enabled them to do so?

What if you could become captain america through transhumanism.  What if you could become squirrel-girl?  What if you could become a pokemon?

Don’t tell me that people wouldn’t take up that option.

The comics genres have opened a door, not just in terms of characters and storytelling, they have given us something to aspire to in terms of new shapes and forms.  The powers may not be possible but there is no reason to think that transhumanism couldn’t deliver the form.

After all in the 21st century, image is everything.

For the briefest of moments in the Hitchhikers Story, Arthur finds happiness and love.  It wouldn’t last but it has been earned.  This story more than any other gets into the head of Arthur and tells us what makes him tick (or fuck as the case may be).

What we learn is Arthur is an ordinary man who yearns for the boring consistency of normal life, but has now been so infected by the extraordinary that he can’t escape it.

There is a moment in the book that sets Arthurs fate (to come) in progress.  A small moment where Fenchurch admits she has read the guide and wants to see the universe.  Arthur could stand his ground and say – no more, I am done.  Yet he is trapped.  He is in love in a way he never imagined possible and in his mind to stand here would risk true happiness.

Which is what has generally gotten Arthur into so much trouble.  At each point where he can act, he lets circumstance roll over him in the way the steamroller threatened right back at the beginning of this journey.

In may ways that steamroller is a great metaphor.  You can ignore it, try to trick it but so long as you are in its path, you will be squashed.  Of course, you can just let it pass and accept what it brings.

Arthur never embraces that truth and so he is forever fated for the universe to dick with him.

Each of the Hitchhikers stories feels as though they are from a completely different sub-genre.  The first a buddy road trip, the second a hero’s journey, the third a sporting story, the fourth a romance and the fifth a dystopian horror ala the running man.

In the hands of Sir Terry Pratchett, such twists and turns become world building, in the case of Douglas I suspect it was less clearly planned.  In truth Douglas and Sir Terry are much the same beast using satire to make observations about the world at large.  Sir Terry embraced that reality, made it his mission and channeled it.

Douglas, like Arthur fought it to the end.  Douglas was never one to let the universe dictate to him.

The Daleks have been scary and ridiculous in equal measure. With their pepperpot shells and monotone robotic voice (and modern squiddy form) it’s easy to forget that they are the product of the most extreme form of transhumanist experiments.

The Daleks were born for a single purpose, to ensure the Kaled race survived beyond a brutal 1000 year war that poisoned their planet. Along the way, their creator Davros went to extremes using genetic manipulation, convinced the only way to ensure the Kaled race survived was to be the top species in the Universe.

If only their schemes weren’t so comical.

This story is how I like to remember the Daleks. Mutated lumps of flesh, devoid of any of the positive characteristics we associate as being human. They aren’t alien, they are simply what we could become if you take away all the things that make us – us.

The borg are us co-opted for a different species, to act as zombie workers in a giant hive. The Daleks are us, the mutated, concentrated essence of all the worst parts that make us human. The reality is, the right technology in the right hands could see such a being coming into existence.

That is what makes them scary to me.

It’s been a crazy couple of weeks and the plan to get the next heroine cast out hasn’t eventuated, even if we have recorded a lot of podcasts in the interim.

Never fear, we still have a number of episodes in the archives and here is one of my favourite movies – Labyrinth.

Lets face it every girl needs a cautionary tale of how to screw over that creepy tight pant pedo rapy stalker in their lives and Sarah manages it and then some.

So, is the Goblin King a stand in for her father, or is she just a little too noticeable to older guys.  While we all know that Bowie is hot, maybe this isn’t the right movie to show it off.

Still, isn’t every fairytale in it’s heart a story of (sometimes) near escape from rapy men who just want to have their way with young girls?

Just to be clear the movie also has a fantastic sound track and amazing puppets.  There is more to this than David Bowies codpiece.  Still, it does seem to occupy a lot of the screen.

I love labyrinth for the same reason I like the Dark Crystal and the Storyteller.  Henson was willing to make fiction that was unsafe for children that in exploring darker themes would teach them more about the world.

Is that the way we do it now?  So no.

Will I show this to my grandkids?  I am thinking I will let them get to at least 3 before they see it.  They really should know the words to the songs long before the meaning.

It’s taken us a while to make it to Star Trek but at least we picked a good story with one of the best villans of the modern era.

The Borg represt both what can be achieved with cybernetic enhancements, while at the same time embodying everything that we fear.  The machine will consume us, turning us into mindless zombie automatons – didn’t Picard get the memo.

The western world tends to reserve the best of the transhumanist transformations for the bad guys and the borg never fail to deliver.  While I am not overly convinced by their terminator esque go back in time to prevent the future machinations there is no doubt that from beginning to end of the movie, they are the scariest of the star trek villans.

Does cybernetics have to be scary?  There are a number of people that would literally give up their right arm for a working cybernetic one.  Why does that seam so nuts?  Wouldn’t it be great to have a limb that could be upgraded – try out new hand 4.2 with collaborative multitasking?

Unfortunately we never get to see what the borg have to offer.  From the borg queens perspective it’s all paradise, who knows, she could be right.

We are entering into a time when the world of Bioshock becomes less far fetched.  Genetic editing technologies such as CRISPR have the potential to seriously change the game for all of us and as science fiction comes closer to being science fact, we need to be aware of the benefits and the dangers.

While I think we are some distance away from an informed public discussion Bioshock has in three games provided a window into that past that might have been that informs the future that could be.

In this episode we look at the ways in which science (and science fiction) does not exist in a vacuum.  The ways science can be implemented are very much informed by the rules of the society that the innovation is created in.  Societies tend to be complex with shifting moral boundaries.  Rapture is at the extreme, abandoning conventional wisdom and government in favour of industry and the market.  In such a world morality is not only flexible, it can be completely absent.

This is not to say though it isn’t without it’s advantages.  The reality is the development of genetic technologies of the type used in Rapture would only be possible if you took away many of the restraints that exist in our world.

It has to be said that human advancement is often fastest during wartime where morality tends to take a back seat to necessity.