I was only recently made aware of this book. In my teens, I devoured Arthur C. Clarke, Isaac Asimov, Jerry Pournelle, and many other popular sci-fi authors of the era between 1960 and 1980. But I had, for whatever reason, never heard of David Gerrold. Once alerted to it, the premise of the novel was too much for me to pass up.
I have already done an analysis of 2001: A Space Odyssey,
centering my focus on HAL and what he means in the context of story, and this is yet another opportunity to delve into the philosophy and psychology around our desire to project ourselves into machines in our mythology. For what it’s worth, my reviews are intensely critical on purpose. But, it should not be interpreted as a discouragement. Indeed, I would highly recommend getting a copy of the book and reading it.
I have recently come round to the opinion that the original 1967 Star Trek TV series is one of the best things ever produced in the 20th century. I have been going through the old original series one episode at a time, to refamiliarize myself with it and to recapture a portion of the experience of having watched it as a boy.
When I was a boy, most of what was going on in the episode ran past me. I mainly just wanted to see Kirk and Spock get into pickles that they had to get themselves out of, and to see them shoot lasers at aliens. I’m much older now, and the euphoria of special effects and monster costumes has mostly worn off. But what I am seeing now is so much more rich and interesting than mere action sequences could offer. Star Trek is brimming with questions of ontology, epistemology, ethics, and even theology and psychology. To be fair, in a 48-minute episode where they have to pack in as much drama and visual spectacle as possible, there’s very little time to explore deep questions. Still, attempt them they did – and sometimes with surprising subtlety.
In a Psychology Today interview posted today, Stevan Harnad has this to say, in response to criticisms over his equating The Holocaust with animal slaughter. I’m going to set aside his All Capital Letters Defense Of His “Eternal Treblinka”, and instead, focus on his argument defending “sentience”, which as we’ll see, is only barely an argument:
…The Holocaust is Humanity’s Greatest Crime Against Humanity. But the Eternal Treblinka we inflict on animals is Humanity’s Greatest Crime. The difference is obvious: Jews were slaughtered because they were Jews; animals are slaughtered for the taste. For the victims, it makes no difference.
