Giant Robots Are Passé

For novels that is… Some who publish young adult books still use them, I suppose. And, graphic novels. Movies, on the other hand, get away with giant robots flying around the sky destroying everything in their paths.

A very smart scientist–an off-the-chart smart scientist–found a way to work around the effects of gravity, the pull of the sun and other space objects revolving around it, and some basic rules of aerodynamics.

We don’t bother to count errors in the science of an action film. Robots can fight on the ground, in the sky and even in space. Spacecraft or other flying machines stop in mid-air so we assume they are equipped with anti-gravity devices. Ordinary machines evolve into superior, “cool-looking” warriors.

It’s exciting…in film.

Unfortunately, if writers do write something comparable in a science-fiction novel today, it would most likely be trashed or sold to Hollywood, but not published traditionally. (Okay, maybe it can pass for a young adult novel, but that’s the market anyway.)

With today’s economic conditions, most any novel dealing with the above would be considered hackneyed by the editors, and I can’t say I’d disagree. Robots, with the exception of microbots and other variants, have lost the top spot in science-fiction genre literature.

Cyber warfare is different. Here we are still dealing with a human-made attempt to create a helpful artificial intelligence and that becomes sentient. What happens after it is created and placed is the story.

So, I broke the publisher’s cardinal rule, knowing that the conflict, war against machines, is passé, over with, and done in. But, I did it anyway. I used the Cyber Bio War as the backdrop for my novel. What my characters experience is an unwinnable war against an evolving enemy with not just some, but all of the resources. Yet, the continue the fight. Humans are and always will be inferior with the usual weaponry, but they will not give up their humanity.

After I extrapolated existing science and societal trends I had to go there–to that world I created. Good writers can break the rules of good grammar in telling a story. Why can’t I explore content in the same way.

In Makr’s Shadow, I broke the rules of the latest publishing trend and paid the price, publishing an e-book instead. But I still think it is worth it.

Robots in science fiction literature seem to be window dressing, an accepted part of future society, but there’s always the exception. A different use, an unusual place. Creative fortune.

However, my “robots” are different. Cyberts, my “robots,” are mobile extensions of a central evolving artificial intelligence. Cyber are not the automatons of the past but a new accepted, sentient species–a race of thinking machines–machines that can do anything a Bio can do, only better.

At the moment, these Cyber are effectively maintaining the planet and pacifying its inhabitants by waging war on dissidents.

We see a lot intelligent machinery in films–especially with the Marvel and DC comic book superheroes. Who else could giant robots fight? Normal humans would be crushed in a minute. The story would read like a metallic Jurassic Park, except there would be no eating the dead. I’ve yet to see a robot that does that. Massive destruction, yes. Eating its victims, no.

Film producers want to create images that astound, not literature that fascinates and discusses the way we interact with our technology. There are a few exceptions like Gravity,  Apollo 13, and a few others that deal with existing technology are still able to do that. Most films that pretend to be science fiction contain little plot or character development.

Now-a-days, most science fiction is about the effect of new science discoveries or technology gone awry, i.e. the atomic bomb. Still, the weird variations get in. You know them when you see them and put the book down, sorry you picked it up in the first place.

The definitions and types have grown far and wide with the interest and imagination of those who read SF. Still, the genre experts (call them publishers) say science fiction literature should focus on the “higher levels” of hard science for the most part; however, some publishers like to throw in fantasy (personal choice?), wars fought against superior alien technology and war’s that end the world, leaving a few survivors. All of these conflicts and situations, too, are obvious and overused.

However, there was a time when robots (uncool now) served in the background and often played a leading role in a novel of ideas. Isaac Asimov started a trend in 1946 when his I, Robot was published. It was also made into an science fiction action film with Will Smith.

Asimov created the Three Rules of Robotics:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

For the most part, these rules have been respected by colleagues whenever robots are in contact with human beings.

In Makr’s Shadow was influenced by the work of Isaac Asimov (a highly underrated author) and Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. (a mainstream writer). Both were writers of the literature of ideas. I hope I’ve managed to merge the essence of each, and have done so respectfully.

Unlike Asimov, who wrote science fiction and was delighted by it, Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. denied that any of his fiction fit in the science fiction genre, when all of his novels have elements of SF by definition, and easily fit a definition of SF very well.

It may have been an act, but I think he wanted to be accepted totally in the mainstream rather than appear side by side with that SF trash–genre fiction. You know, the kind that had aliens or robots in it?

Because it’s satire, does that make it mainstream literature. Vonnegut made fun of science fiction in The Sirens of Titan, but if you look at all his books you will find they either fit the definitions or contain elements of science fiction. And, unless he’s poking fun, you won’t see any robots. Ironically, his imaginative and thought-provoking novels make excellent cases for writing soft or social science fiction.

With the exception of Cat’s Cradle (atomic bomb), he uses the soft sciences of psychology, sociology, economics, history, time travel, and alternate realities or universes to make his point, as opposed to the “hard” sciences like chemistry, physics and biology.

In Makr’s Shadow, the ongoing conflict is the background in the same way as Vonnegut’s parody of science fiction masks his underlying idea. That one day we will develop artificial intelligence one day is certain. How we choose to use it will be more important than the development itself.

My dystopian digital novel, In Makr’s Shadow is a rock and roll, roller coaster of action, suspense, humor and character development– highlighted with positive values–and, if you can believe it, an evolving family.

According to Tricia Johnson, The Word Weaver, UK, In Makr’s Shadow is ” a superb read…edge of seat stuff until the very end!!”

And, she should know because she helped fine tune it. The ending is, of course, to be kept secret; however, it can be said the story is more about people than the machines.

“Don’t Read This Book! You’ll Never Look Back!”

Intellectually he knew there was a positive side to these insects, but this was not the time to look for the balance in nature. Instead he focused on the sounds he was hearing to be sure they were truly bees.

If they were truly bees, their wrath seemed to be focused on the two travelers, flying at their faces from time to time. As the chorus cacophony became louder, the swarm’s harassment increased in kind. While Desiree accepted these bees as a part of nature something strange was happening to Harry. For him, the convincing natural music took on a surreal quality, losing its buzz and replaced it with the sound of vibrating violin string blades. The natural music became unreal, too, Harry thought, and familiar. He’d heard this music before in his collection. “The Flight of the Bumble Bee?”

Makr was telling him the bees weren’t real. Why?

True bees were thought to be extinct. Harry knew that they had become extinct in the last few decades when the Bio-polluted atmosphere prevented many flowering plants from attracting their biggest pollinator—bees. Eventually, the flowers adapted, producing an even stronger fragrance, but not soon enough. Both the flora and insects died out, but flowers weren’t the problem now.

Harry thought, maybe they’d bounced back. It had happened before when a species was thought to be wiped out. It only takes a few hardy individuals re-start the population. There could have been some hardy individuals that survived. Like Desiree, he smiled, as he playfully swatted at the bees. But something was definitely not right!

The symphony crescendos and the swarm of bees darting in and out, faster and faster, continuing to assail the two Bios; some bees harassed and retreated, while others seemed to be hovering just slightly out of reach.

“Bees!” Harry picked up his walking pace. “Very large bees.”

“I can see that!” Desiree snapped back as she batted as many away from her as she could. “What do they want? Why are they following us?” She increased the speed of her gait, too, while thrashing her arms about to keep them at a safe distance.

“I don’t know,” Harry said, taking her cue and flailing his arms as well. “Wait a minute…” His thought-blink confirmed what he already knew. They weren’t bees at all, but tiny flying cyberts! “Makr knows we’re here.”

“How do you know that, Harry? Have you seen these before?”

“No, but I can see them as they really are. What do you see?”

“I see bees! Why? What you see!” With a wide-eyed, puzzled look, she answered him as she kept trying to wave the bees away! “Bees!”

“Not bees! Not bees! Cyberts! Tiny cyberts!” Harry froze, powerless to wave or slap at the tiny attackers now that he saw them as flying metal insects. Something held him back. Fear. Sadness. He stopped thought-blinking and saw bees again. Bio bees. He could swing at them now, even batted a few to the ground. They kept bouncing back after he knocked them to the ground. The few that fell were stunned and seconds later crept away unhurt and unnoticed.

“Whatever you’re doing, Harry, is working.” Desiree was gaining respect for this ordinary Bio as he kept battling the swarm of “bees” to the ground. Together, they pelted the bees with their hands, slamming them hard to the ground. More were staying on the ground while others keep flying back at them.

“Gotcha!” Harry exclaimed as he knocked two at once to the ground. As he tried to step on them, they suddenly became metal again. He froze again, unable to crush them under his feet.

A flicker of bright light, a low audible roar and both Harry and Desiree sensed the ground shake. Harry saw his picture of the world change slightly for an instant; for a second, he saw a dreary gray reality in his mind’s eye. It left him feeling uneasy. He was positive Desiree had not noticed it. Why didn’t she notice the shaking, the shudder of their reality? Makr!

The cyberts were bees again. While they were bees, he was happy he was able to knock them down; however, this time, he didn’t dare try to crush them. Some of the bees appeared dead on the ground. At that moment, the rest of the swarm shifted position, moving up and away from them as if withdrawing. The swarm hovered for a moment as if to take one last look before heading away from the duo to the north across the city skyline. Neither Harry nor Desiree saw two of the “bees” that had fallen to the ground and were pretending to be immobilized. These “bees” waited for Harry and Desiree to continue their journey before they flew upward and followed them, staying several yards behind.

While it wasn’t the “Attack of the Killer Bees” that bothered Harry so much, it was the fact that he was powerless to fight them as cyberts—tiny or otherwise, and yet he could fight them if he saw them as Bio creatures. Does that mean he was capable of destroying his fellow man—or woman and not a machine? Not even a toaster. The idea is preposterous but the evidence was overwhelming. Rather than sounding foolish he decided not to share this insight with Desiree. She might send him back Inside and he wasn’t ready for that yet. Not even if he was one of Makr’s pawns.

A Writer’s Truth – A Critic’s Conundrum

“C’mon, Doc. How do you think it makes me feel?” he asked defensively, displacing his anger. It was a machine for Makr’s sake!

He couldn’t just thought-blink his way out of this. As much as he was driven to uncover the past, he always found a dry eye when it came to his mother and sister; no amount of thinking about their absence had helped. He desperately tried to find memories on which he could reflect, to conjure up an emotional response equal to the one he would be expected to have. Any emotional response is better than none. No response is a sign of a truly sick Bio.

At times like this, he feared more than anything that the State (Makr) would conclude that he was a candidate for deletion. At times like this, it occurred to him he could have been erased previously and was already one of those completely irritating “born-agains.” With no past, no memories corrupting their perception of the present, “Born-agains” were often unbearable social companions or lovers. So cleaner than thou, thought Harry, and he vowed to himself, Not me, not ever!

Critics are quick to point out that authors inhabit their books and the characters in their books inhabit or sometimes haunt them. Or, it is from the author’s book we find some deep dark secret in the author’s life, and if we can’t find it in the book we look into as many bios to make sure we do. Finally, there is psychological literary criticism that analyzes every passage for double meanings. And, don’t forget Freud! With him, everything is sexual. I believe there is yet another literary meaning in performance criticism, surface criticism, that takes what you see and judges accordingly. Did the piece do what it intended, did it say something significant to you, did it say that something well or extraordinarily well? Did it educate, inspire, make you think, make you smile? All on the surface. That is literary performance criticism. My brand of criticism; my brand of writing. Of course, it works on stage as well.

I assure you that Harry or any of the characters bear no resemblance to my life other than I like to see the underdog win, the less fortunate gain fortune, and the evil-doers lose.  The layers and growth belong to the characters, and the symbols, if you find any, are between you and them. I’m merely the carrier.

“Doc?” He routinely called the cybertherapist program “Doc.” This time it was to break the tension. “Hello, hellooo? Anyone in there? Crash your inflexible drive, Doc?”

“Why must you always provoke?” she asked finally. “Is this rude behavior somehow cathartic for you? If you were reconditioned you would not talk that way.”

Is that a threat? A real threat?

“You mean ‘born-again,’ don’t you, Doc?” Right below the belt.

“Born-again? You use that word often. That’s your term for a reconditioned biomachine, is it not?”

“You know it, Doc. Let’s put it this way: I don’t believe in reincarnation. The only life you have is the one in the present and the one you can remember. No one born-again can ever be the same because the life before it is dead and gone forever.”

“That is certainly all there is for Cyber.”

“True, except Cyber aren’t alive, and Bios are.”

“Depends on your definition, doesn’t it? We reproduce as Bios do, just not in the same way.”

“It’s not the same thing.”

“No? We do reproduce more efficiently. It takes two of you Bios to create another Bio or even a few Bios at any one time. We merely use materials available outside our bodies and manufacture a new model in far less time. In fact, we can manufacture clones of you; perfect biological copies of you…”

“Except they don’t have my memories.”

“We can give them those, too.”

“Doesn’t say much for the quality of a clone’s life.”

“All a clone needs is experience to become a functional Bio.”

“You got me there.”

“One theory has it that the best measure of the quality of life is proportional to the speed and ability of an organism to adapt to its environment.”

“That used to be said of the human race.”

“Yes, but Cyber have evolved beyond that now as a great man predicted who said ‘Bios may be able to change with the wind, but Cyber can be made to withstand most adverse environments, and thrive in extreme climates where Bios cannot.”

“I suppose that was said by some Cyber-intellectual—if there is such a thing…”

“There is such a thing; however, that particular theory was developed, tested, and made universally accepted, by one Raymond J. Bolls. I said a ‘great man’.”

“My father?”

“The same.”

“Well, Bios made Cyber—not the other way around.” Harry was losing ground, but if it was an intellectual debate she wanted, he’d give her one.

“I wouldn’t be too sure which came first in the universe,” the cyber Bio therapist said pompously.

“You mean chicken or the egg?”

“Yes.”

“I think it’s pretty irrefutable that Bios came first.”

“Some Bios believe in a supreme being. Ever see one?”

“Just when I look in the mirror,” Harry said with a grin.

“You’re being humorous.”

“Yes.”

“Some even consider Makr the supreme being. Even you call out to Makr. Do you admit Makr’s superiority?”

“Yes, but He is not The Supreme Being. He is not my most Supreme Being on earth.”

“Could there have existed, before Makr, Cyber so advanced they were able to create biomachines?”

“Who’s the ‘chicken’?”

“What?”

“The chicken and the egg. We know who made the Cyber, but not who made humans as we were called once.”

“Granted. Have you satisfied your curiosity, Harry Bolls?”

“We can stop talking about who came first, if that’s what you mean.”

“What shall we talk about then?”

“God.”

“God?”

“Yes.”

“Do you mean Makr?”

“Makr may be like God, but he’s not God.”

“Why do you say that? Explain.”

“God is a spirit. Makr’s a machine.”

“How do you know God is not a machine?”

“There’s nothing logical about the creation of Man. No rhyme or reason to it.”

“The Why?”

“Eggsactly.”

Harry smiled in silence for a moment. He was enjoying the banter and feeling much more relaxed. Nothing like besting a machine, he thought. Apparently the program didn’t agree and kept the debate alive.

“Are you being humorous again, Harry?”

Harry couldn’t resist a small chuckle.

“But seriously, Harry…”

Harry giggled, “Now you’re being funny.”

“I don’t get it.”

“I know. That’s what’s funny.”

“Í don’t get it.”

Harry shakes his head and said, “Never mind. You were saying?”

“There’s no mistaking the fact that a Bio is simply a machine, with parts that can repair themselves within certain limitations.”

“Even machine parts have limits.” Harry was beginning to lose patience.

“Agreed, but the Bio machine is a more fragile system. A single virus can kill one or millions—even billions if you have the right virus. A virus cannot be made that can affect Cyber in the same way. A computer virus as in the old days has no effect on us now; we are virtually tamper proof.”

“What you see is what you get?”

“Yes. Straight from the factory. We have evolved and adapted so much faster than you could never now keep up with changes in our hardware, and in our programs…”

It is true, noted Harry, they do create their own hardware and software improvements now.

“Can we get back to the original question before I forget what it is? This is supposed to be about me isn’t it?”

“I apologize. How thoughtless of me,” the therapist smirked. The psychotherapist program smirks? Let it go, Harry.

“I just said I am disturbed by the possibility of being born-again, reincarnated, reconditioned—whatever you call it. A useless, characterless human being.”

“Yes. The mere thought of it disgusts you?”

“A good way of putting it.”

“It accurately describes the look on your face. There’s really no need to be combative, Harry Bolls.”

“I don’t like the idea of losing my identity,” he muttered, frowning from the seemingly endless intellectual bashing. And this whole experience of a machine program with attitude was unnerving him.

“Some think of it as finding a better identity, a safer one for society,” added the therapist. “Attitudes and opinions must be tempered to live in PerSoc City. We must all cooperate for the greater good.”

In all fairness, Makr had acknowledged the benefit of Bio experience to help Cyber attain higher level of functionality. Most cognitive-capable machines had learned from Bio responses to various situations and behaviors – a distinctly human trait and a recent addition to the Cyber evolution/revolution. How else could they take care of this race of fragile flesh, bone and blood?

No more answers were forthcoming from “Doc.” Harry had obviously been read and analyzed, stored and filed. All that was left now was the treatment.

***

Until next time, what you see is what you get in Harry’s Reality at Amazon.