Claim for a bizarre form of prejudice in Phillip K. Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

In Phillip K. Dick's novel, "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?", the main character is a bounty hunter that hunts androids, humanoid creatures that are not fully human, because they do not possess concepts of rational thought. This, according to the purely organic humans, makes them inferior, and "subhuman." However, how is it that we define "human?" Can an android, something that is not fully human in our definition, really ever be one of us? Phillp K. Dick is not only saying that an android is a human in same way as anyone else is human, but he is also writing in the context of the Civil Rights Movement, which was hitting a fever pitch at the time the book was written. Therefore, it can be said that Dick is allegorizing the Civil Rights Movement with a bizarre form of racism, where typical humans are prejudice against android humans.

Analysis of Female characters in Miyazaki's films (Previously published on another blog: "Steven Gamella's Wordpress")

Hayao Miyazaki is considered one of the great science-fiction writers of the 20^th and early 21^st century. Using his talent for Japanese animation and comics (anime and manga), he has given us some beautifully rendered worlds of incredible characters, music, art and plot lines that have become classics in the SF and fantasy community. One of his most famous works, “Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind,” explores a common SF trope seen in many other works, most notably Frank Herbert’s “Dune” and “Seed Stock” and the decidedly dark worlds of “The Road” and the recent summer blockbuster, “Elysium.” That trope, ecological dystopia, involves a decidedly negative view of the future where a planet’s environment has changed so much that life on the planet becomes impossible as we know it today. In Nausicaa, Princess Nausicaa is the leader of the Wind Tribe, a group of holdouts from an environmental apocalypse more than 1,000 years earlier that destroyed all industrialized life on Earth. The town that the tribe lives in is protected from the “Toxic Jungle,” a global, toxic forest guarded by massive, highly-evolved sentient insect monsters by a favorable wind, blowing the toxic spores away from her town. The Wind Tribe is not the only tribal holdout, another group of humans, led by a cyborg Countess and her army of “Torumikkians,” is fighting an endless war with the Toxic Jungle and its insect guardians, and aims to resurrect an ancient superweapon to destroy the Jungle and rebuild industrial society. Here, with this basic synopsis, we see two of Miyazaki’s common literary themes, he regularly has women in power, and he regularly has animals as smart as or smarter than humans. Miyazaki is one of the few SF authors that regularly has female characters on a greater power level than male characters, for cultural and literary reasons involving women. In two of his other films, “Spirited Away” and “Princess Mononoke,” we see that the owner of the bathhouse in “Spirited Away” is an old witch, named Yababa, of great and terrible power who rules over the bathhouse employees like a dictator, turning misbehaving people into pigs and keeping other spirits on “soul contracts,” taking their names away and giving them artificial designations, and in “Mononoke,” we see two female characters, Lady Aboshi and Mononoke herself, with agency, efficacy and scope, something not usually seen with female characters in SF. Also, in “Mononoke” and “Nausicaa,” there are animals that can speak, they can think and they can even fight wars, like the Wolves and Boars in “Mononoke” and the Ohm in “Nausicaa.” Also, in the synopsis of “Nausicaa,” we can see similarities to other authors who write ecological dystopian worlds. In Frank Herbert’s “Dune,” the planet Arrakis is dry, desolate and barren of life, save for the roaming bands of “Fremen” nomads and the giant sandworms, which the main character, Paul Muad’Dib Atreides, must learn to ride to fulfill his destiny of leading the Fremen to salvation. Women also hold a position of power in “Dune,” but not to the extent as in Miyazaki’s films. Lady Jessica is, at best, a supporting character to Dukes Lito and Paul Atreides, but while Paul is learning to fulfill his duties as Duke of Arrakis, Lady Jessica serves as his mentor with her Bene Gesserit training, but is still a woman without much agency. She has only as much power as her son allows her to. Therefore, it can be seen that Herbert might not have been well aware of women’s rights, whereas Miyazaki was, but there are several reasons for this distinction. “Dune” was a product of its time, published in 1965, the Civil Rights movement was in full swing, and feminism was still in its infancy. “Nausicaa,” however, was written in the late 1980s, well after the feminist movement had taken hold. Also, women’s roles in Japan were historically different than in America and Europe, given that the Japanese family was seen as one unit, every person in the household contributed to the well-being of the family, even the women, where in American and other Western cultures, the woman became the man’s property upon marriage, through the process of coverture and the resulting “cult of domesticity.” Japan always valued “women’s work” as a vital part of the economy and not just something that women did because their husbands told them to, women understood that their husbands needed them just as much as they needed their husbands, so the concept of “feminism” and “women’s rights” varies from culture to culture. So, Lady Aboshi or Nausicaa should not be looked at as a “feminist” character, because in medieval Japan, in reality, seeing a strong, iron-willed woman as a regional governor of a town in the absence of a man was not uncommon, though the national, imperial government was solely male, there were never any ruling independent female shoguns or independent Empresses. It is only because of Western biases that we see these characters as feminist, because Japanese family structure was based off an entirely different concept than Western family structure. As for male characters, Miyazaki rarely has a male protagonist of much power, in Mononoke, the main male protagonist, Ashitaka, is cursed by a demon that only Princess Mononoke can help him cure, putting him firmly within Mononoke’s power. Nausicaa’s male protagonist, a man named Lord Yupa, is her loyal guardian and protector of the town, also firmly within Nausicaa’s power. Furthermore, most of Lady Aboshi’s male soldiers are bumbling idiots that she regularly scolds for their incompetence. This theme of gender reversal shows itself through various Petrarchan and Machiavellian themes throughout each of Miyazaki’s main films, and has defined him, above all other SF writers, as truly generating a sense of wonder and extrapolation through colorful environments and reversal of gender roles. They are true masterpieces of science fiction work, and can show a very unique view of the world, if one keeps an open mind to other cultures and not let Western gender perceptions get in the way of interpreting the story. If we choose to see, we can find an entirely new way of looking at the world. Miyazaki is an absolute genius at achieving this end.

Racism in "A Door into Ocean" by Joan Slonsclowski

"We are descendants of the same fish you are." If only someone of power and reason had told Hitler this phrase when he was mulling over how to solve the "Jewish Problem." The story "A Door Into Ocean," about a race of all-female aliens called "Sharers" living on an aquatic planet, involves some very poignant messages about race in society. The quote that started this passage is significant because the Sharer is trying to break down species barriers with the concept of divergent evolution, to eliminate any racism or hateful bias against the Sharers by the human overlords on the planet. It could also be in reverse, perhaps the Sharers are suspicious of the Humans, or simply stating facts, as all life on any given planet is descended from a common ancestor. If they are just stating facts, these facts must be stating a purpose, to defuse racism and conflict, especially from the Patriarch.

Mix of Scientific and Science Fiction

I have a theory. I believe that Pokémon, in their fictional universes, are energy beings that manipulate physics. The inside of a Poke Ball appears to be covered in mirrors, and upon activation, powerful quantum magnets convert the atomic matter in a Pokémon into massless light, which is kept in stasis by constantly reflecting off the mirrors within the Poke Ball. Pokémon can also alter the energy... around them, and a Poke Ball just exploits this. Pokémon can also convert energy into matter and vice-versa, allowing them to perform their elemental and energy attacks, humans and fainted Pokémon can't be captured in a Poke Ball because they cannot execute the conversions, Pokémon store energy as they evolve, and when they evolve, the massive amount they store is converted into their new bodies, at a rate of 600,000 kilodarwins of evolutionary energy needed to manifest a new species in 10 seconds, per my own calculations using Stephen J. Gould's formulas outlined in his 3,500 page book, "Structure of Evolutionary Theory." Who says a world inhabited by electric mice, moon creatures, talking manhole covers and malevolent ghost-jellyfish monsters can't be scientific?

Something that REALLY ANNOYS ME in SF writing and TV.

I did a previous post on Machiavellianism in SF, and how frequently it appears in various character tropes. I also mentioned how infrequently romantic love appears in SF as a major trope as well. However, there is one recurring flaw in both tropes that I see come up over and over again, and that is, typically, romantic characters and Machiavellian characters do not mix, but I still see authors constantly trying to pair a handsome, young, Machiavellian genius with some pretty, dopey blonde or brunette that just doesn't get it. The statement that opposites do not always attract is usually evident when the two characters are having a sexual relationship or engaging in sexuality in some other way, if I had a dollar for every SF show that involved a serious relationship I saw that had the serious, stoic young man come home to find his annoying, dopey girlfriend in some state of undress, promptly jump on top of him and attempt to seduce him against his wishes...calculator overload. One, the relationship is usually not even real, the Machiavellian character is usually keeping the dope around only so that he/she can use said dope for his/her grand plan; it's a good technique that really exemplifies the Machiavellian character's cunning, but if you throw sex in the mix, let's just say the Machiavellian character isn't exactly jumping at the fact of being taken to Pound Town on the Fuck Truck by his overly-attached girlfriend. More often than not, it just serves to make the Machiavellian character look like an emotionless robot and, to the eyes of the idiotic 13-year olds on the Internet, flamingly gay. So, the solution? Make the woman smart and not dumb! Give her some more dimension than a simplistic dope. Also, have the Machiavellian character incorporate his Machiavellian ways into the sex scene. This is the most obvious way to avoid this gaping hole in character development, to not develop one character any more than the other if the characters are in any sort of relationship. So, there's my rant for the weekend. Now, I must get back to work. Carry on, Internet.

Questions for Test?

  1. Why have SF writers focused more on romanticism than actual romantic love, even though there is plenty of room to make romantic plots in SF?


  2. Why are characters in H.G. Wells' "Time Machine" never named? What is the literary significance of that?


  3. Exactly how does religion factor into Arthur C. Clarke's "Childhood's End?" What stance does he take on that subject, based on the text?


  4. How does extrapolation play into Clarke's writing as well?

Units list for Alternate History scenario: (Incomplete, will be posting more in the coming weeks)

ALTERNATE REALITY: AXIS POWERS WIN WWII (Hitler never betrayed Stalin scenario)

Circa 1984

-NAZI GERMAN EMPIRE (Germania)

Covers all of Europe and British Isles (with the exception of Italy and parts of the Balkans)

GROUND FORCES (Whermacht)

MBTs-

-Panzer Mk 7 “King Panther” (biggest mass-produced tank ever built, 76 tons)

-Panzer Mk 5 “Tiger II” (heavy tank destroyer)

-Panzer Mk 4 “Landsknecht” (medium tank)

-Panzer Mk 6 “Leopard” (heavy tank)

APCs/IFVs/AAA

Blohm and Voss B-80 “Bobcat” (APC)

Volkswagen V-14 “Jaguar” (IFV)

Saab S-12 “Locust” (AA vehicle)

Volvo M890 “Squid” (amphibious tank)

ARTILLERY-

Volvo SPHA-77 “Panzerwerfer” (self propelled artillery)

INFANTRY-

Usually outfitted with MP-68 assault rifles and MP-50 SMGs, but there are many different soldier classes, snipers, antitank duties…

AIR FORCE (Luftwaffe)

Transport aircraft-

-Blohm and Voss BV-900 (heavy transport cargo jet, carries tanks and other large vehicles)

Henkel He-500 (medium transport aircraft, carries paratroopers (Fallschirmjaeger)

Helicopters-

Henkel-He-22 (attack helicopter)

Henkel-He 40 (infantry transport helicopter)

Henkel-He 70 (heavy-lift helicopter)

Bombers-

XX-7 (stealth bomber, carries nuclear weapons)

Arado-A-1500 (ultra heavy bomber)

Henkel He-121 (medium bomber)

Fighters-

Messerschmitt Me-202 (interceptor)

Messerschmitt Me-400 (fighter-bomber)

Messerschmitt Me-376 (stealth fighter)

Messerschmitt Me-97 (air superiority fighter, carrier-based role)

Messerschmitt Me-110 (antitank platform)

NAVY (Kriegsmarine) - 607 ships, examples:

Carriers- Furher class supercarriers

KMS Erwin Rommel- 1100-foot long, nuclear powered supercarrier

KMS Adolph Hitler

KMS Hermann Ghoring

KMS Scharnhorst

KMS Kaiser

KMS Bismarck

KMS Mengele

KMS Tirpitz

KMS Prinz

KMS Frundsberg

Technology vs. Magic: One and the Same?

A great technologist and SF writer once said, "Supreme technology is synonymous with magic." Though technology is rooted in science, and magic in fantasy and superstition, both entities have a similar effect on people who witness them. Take for example, the laptop I am writing on right now. If I were to time-travel back to the Middle Ages, and show a knight and his lady this computer, he'd probably kill me on sight for being a "sorcerer," because he wouldn't know what to make of "The Internet," "IPhones" and "tablets." People tend to apply what they know or what they are familiar with to things that are unknown to them, even if the conclusions they make are wrong. People don't like it when things don't make sense, and they will always find ways to explain seemingly senseless but somehow orderly things, just the ways people do it now are different in nature than the way they explained things in the Middle Ages, for citizens of medieval Europe would have explained a computer as either witchcraft or a sign from God, we explain a computer today as a sign of a technologically advanced society. Even more exemplary of this point is my Samsung GalaxyTab, a tablet computer with an AI voice that will actually speak with you. It won't just speak with you, it will give you attitude depending on your tone of voice with it, engage in dialogue and even have conversations, it will answer questions and display answers as Web pages from Google and Yahoo, using the fastest search engine available at the time to bring me the exact information I require at any given moment, and it has a snotty, girly voice that reminds me of a Japanese anime girl, gets kind of funny too every now and then, because Samsung is a Korean company. Literally arguing with a machine that can, in part, think like a person is something that would have terrified a medieval peasant, or even a 19th-century aristocrat from Europe. It is just too "future shock." Still, AI and robotics are the next step in machine development, and the GalaxyTab is one of the most advanced of the new computers. Though, my friends and I like to joke that it's some young woman trapped in the tablet by an evil wizard...

Happy Friday!! Machiavellianism in Science Fiction (WARNING: SPOILERS IN THIS ANALYSIS)

It's Friday, and I'm here for another post, my fourth one this week. Wow, I've produced a lot. So, this post represents a polar opposite from the last one, in terms of frequency in SF. If romantic love is rarer than hen's teeth in science fiction, than Machiavellianism is a dime a dozen, still, it is so common because it makes for a such a good character base in SF. Science fiction is full of "evil Emperors," "CEO tyrants," "Rogue Vigilantes" and other villains and anti-heroes that all have traits of Niccolo Machiavelli's principles in Il Principe, his landmark political treatise in the 16th century. Though the expression of Machiavellian traits varies from character to character, story to story, and series to series, it is safe to say that almost every SF series and story that I have seen has some kind of Machiavellian character in it. Be it Duke Lito and Lady Jessica in Frank Herbert's Dune, the Sith Order in Star Wars, the Umbrella Corporation and the Templar Knights in Resident Evil and Assassin's Creed, respectively, Teru Mikami and Light Yagami from Death Note, and Kaan from Star Trek, and many, many others that I am aware of but will not list for the sake of brevity, all have the same characteristics. They lust power, and they will instill the fear of God in the people they seek to manipulate to achieve that end. They all show no empathy at all when it comes to achieving their own ends, and will unhesitantly and in some cases gleefully kill their enemies in the most sociopathic way possible. Not to mention, it is a cliché amongst SF writers to give their "villians" the same demented, cackling laughter, but it just works. That cackle that Emperor Palpatine has when frying Yoda with Sith lightning at the end of Episode III, or the sick, mad laughter that Light Yagami engages in during Death Note's final sequence before giving a speech that would give Adolf Hitler a run for his money, and then getting shot 7 times by the one man he trusted, in both the Japanese and English versions, these two scenes have become something of pulp classics among SF and SF-anime fans. The point of this is, that Machiavellian behavior also has a literary benefit, as the fatal flaw in Machiavellianism always dooms the Machiavellian character: They place their trust in the wrong person.

Romantics in science fiction, revisited

A while back, I did a post about romance in science fiction, but I'm revisiting this topic because of two reasons. One, because the topic of a romantic science fiction universe and romanticized universes and plot lines in general are deeply fascinating for me, after watching such universes as "Dune" from Frank Herbert and "Star Wars" by George Lucas, I just love watching world-building exercises, like these two series do a masterful job of, and more recently, "Halo" and "Mass Effect," are both romanticized views of the future, but, romanticism, as seen in Halo and Mass Effect, doesn't have to always be positive. Romantics in this type of science fiction are usually negative, such as the Covenant, a massive alien religious society that starts a 25-year war with humanity in Halo, somewhat reminiscent of the Ottoman Turks' genocide against the Balkan Christians  during the Renaissance, or the Swedes' Protestant genocide against Bavarian Catholic women during the Thirty-Years' War in the 17th century. The extrapolation of history onto the fictional Halo universe, set in the year 2552 A.D., is obvious to someone who understands the thinking behind the historical romanticism. "Mass Effect" depicts humanity in the same type of scenario as it was after Columbus discovered the New World, colonizing new planets and meeting new races after discovering light-speed travel. Mass Effect is more of a classic romanticism, with a rosy view of humans challenging the unknown and emerging victorious over Nature. This, however, ends very quickly and turns extremely negative with the discovery of the 'Reapers,' an armada of aliens that emerges to consume everything in the galaxy, and then recycles the energy, as per the First Law of Thermodynamics, leaving the hero character, Commander Shepherd, to try and stop the Reapers' advance. In this way, romantics are actually quite common in science fiction, but they usually aren't seen as such because the way things are romanticized is often very negatively. The second reason that I'm revisiting this topic is just how few academic journals talk about romance in science fiction, if you enter "Romance in Science Fiction" into JSTOR, Gale Group, or EbscoHost, you will only find 2 scholarly documents of any credibility, no more, no less, trust me, I looked. Those documents only contain 3 pages of information, and one document even went so far as to say "Romance, in SF, does not exist." Why is it that science fiction writers and journalists alike are so afraid of using the word "romance" when describing a science-fiction story, when there is so much romanticism being thrown around? How could scholarly journals in the world's databases blatantly ignore and deny the existence of something I see everywhere? Are these people, professors and scholars blind?! What is clear is that romanticism is very common, but actual romantics, as in, characters in love, is very, very seldom seen as a major plot device in SF. If it's present, it's usually just a subplot, like in Mass Effect, with Shepherd's romance with several characters in the video game series, the romance between Anakin Skywalker and Padme Amidala in Star Wars, or the decidedly Machiavellian pseudo-romance between the two star-crossed dystopian architects Misa Amane and Light Yagami in Death Note. Perhaps authors are afraid that if they make romance the main plot in an SF novel, it become more of a genre-identity crisis, do you classify the work as a true SF novel, or a romantic one? Furthermore, how do you make a "sci-fi romance," if such a thing exists, and make it good, as in, not sound too pedantic, cliché and like something out of the realm of bad fan-fiction? Few authors actually venture to experiment with that, for fear of critical disapproval, and I think that's a shame. There is so much that could be done by blending SF and Romance genres, its just that no one has bothered to try writing something like this. Just look at horror and romance, and all the shows like Vampire Diaries, True Blood, and other "Paranormal Romance" novels that have popped up after the first book to attempt that, Twilight. Even though that book was as cliché and corny as it got, it was important because it blended two genres that few people though it was possible to blend, and successfully enough to launch an entirely new genre. I have actually written what I would consider to be a "sci-fi romance," and I took great care to keep it within the gray area, not too sci-fi, not too romantic. I plan on publishing this eventually, and I hope that it isn't ignored, because of the potential that it has. Just something to think about.

Alt Histories, continued: What if the Anglo-Saxons won in 1066?

My previous post discussed what a surviving Roman Empire would have done for the world, this next post examines another critical juncture in European history that would have had profound implications for modern life if it had gone the other way. For this scenario, let's assume the actual timeline of Rome stands, and Rome falls in 476 A.D, and the "barbarian" Germanic and Scandinavian tribes take over the formerly Roman lands. However, the Alt-History occurs in 1066, with Harold of the Anglo-Saxons defeating William I of Normandy. What would be the implications of a Saxon-held England after 1066? The short answer would be...Tremendous. What many people don't realize is that the Norman conquest of England, had it not happened, would have completely altered the modern world. Like my previous alt-hist post described, the modern language would be very different, with English being a derivative of Old English and Germanic languages, anyone speaking "English" would really be speaking mostly Germanic, Latin or Nordic dialects, with some Viking or possibly French mixed in, but no French to the extent of actual, modern English. Politically, the situation would be even more astounding. The political situation in Northern Europe during the eleventh century was one dominated by Nordic peoples, the Vikings, the Anglo-Saxons, the Picts, the Celts, the Jutes, and the Varangian Rus'. Prior to around 1000 A.D., these people had been largely autonomous, but after Kings Cnut and Alfred of Wessex brought the Nordic peoples together in England, Denmark, Norway, and most of the North Sea and Baltic Territories, the "Nordmen" began to trade in earnest, form unions, and became quite wealthy. English, Danish and Nordic goods were shipped into the lands of the Kievan Rus' and Novgorod, in what we now think of as Ukraine and Russia, respectively, and Russian grain and crops were shipped to Constantinople in the South, and back to England and the Northern Lands in the North. Roman goods from Constantinople and Rome itself would enter the triangle of trade at their respective origin points. By the end of Cnut's reign, this "Northern Empire" with strong ties to Rome and Constantinople was well established, with King Harold of England as the main political figurehead of this Empire. William I, of course, destroyed this fledgling society in 1066 with the Norman conquest. But, what would have happened had the English managed to repel the Norman French? What would the result be? The answer, besides an English language largely free from French, would be a political situation in Europe where all the wealth in the known world would start to flow in a triangular trade route from Constantinople to the Northern Empire to England and back again, with trade and income coming in from Asia as well. Eventually, the Northern Empire, under the Anglo-Saxon control, with the backing of the Varangian Russians, the Kievan Rus', Constantinople and Rome, would have colonized America, sometime around 1100 A.D. Vikings had already been there in about 1000 A.D., and permanent settlements would have appeared by 1100. The rest of Europe, in awe of the Northern Empire, would start to gravitate towards the North, away from Rome; even Rome and Constantinople would be revived by the amount of natural wealth coming from the New World and the Anglo-Saxon trade with the Native Americans, and the Dark Ages would have been made lighter, with a Renaissance happening much sooner than it actually did. By 1300, we could have expected the Northern Empire to control most of Europe and the Eastern Seaboard of North America, from Nova Scotia and Newfoundland to what is now Miami Beach, Florida, and by 1500, another Roman Empire, this one under the control of London, Oslo, Moscow, Constantinople and Rome itself, only even larger, would likely have appeared. The Eastern Seaboard of North America would be almost completely English, Germanic, Viking or Russian, and a colony of the Nordic Empire in Europe. All of this could have happened, had that afternoon in 1066 just turned out a bit differently.

HUMP DAYYYYY!!! about Ecology from Science Fiction

Ecology, or the study of organisms and their environment, goes far beyond simple interaction between organisms and the environment. In “Seed Stock” and “Balanced Ecology,” Herbert and Schmitz see ecology from a much broader perspective of evolution. In any given niche, an organism doesn't just exist, it has an ecological purpose, a job to do in its environment; there is always a purpose that an organism serves, nothing simply exists for the sake of existing, every organism has a role to play in the biosphere, the collection of all ecosystems and biomes everywhere on Earth. In science fiction, however, this basic principle of ecology is often extrapolated onto other planets, such as in “Seed Stock,” where an entire planet is being terraformed into an Earth-like planet from a less-than-habitable state. “Seed Stock” and “Balanced Ecology” both discuss human interaction with the environment, but “Seed Stock” takes a different perspective than “Balanced Ecology” does. “Seed Stock” is focused more on the human power in the environment, that people are indeed powerful enough to change nature, but also discusses that nature can quite often change people, through the short-term process of technological innovation to keep up with environmental change, i.e., solar panels to limit global warming, and the longer term process of evolution. By terraforming the planet into an Earth-like state, the characters in “Seed Stock” demonstrate the ultimate in human environmental modification: building a habitable planet from an uninhabitable one, taking Columbus', the Vikings', and the Native Americans' discovery of the New World in 1492 C.E., 1000 C.E. and 13,000 B.C.E., respectively, a step further and actually building a habitat, rather than just using the one already there. In reality, this is possible, it would merely take about 800 years of constant CO2 emissions at the level of Earth's global warming on Mars to create a climate and atmosphere identical to Earth's, according the the issue of Popular Science in May of 2012, but, as one scientist in that article stated, it is much easier to use the current environment on a planet than to make one, exemplified by his statement: “Columbus traveled to North America in a boat. Imagine if he had to build the continent when he got there.” We're talking about building a planet, something that is not yet currently thought of as technologically and economically feasible, although it is possible and the technology does exist as of now. “Seed Stock” is promoting the idea that humans not only CAN do this to a planet, but they SHOULD, however, we must be aware of the consequences of any environmental modifications. This type of theme is very common in science fiction, “experiments gone wrong” are seen in the first-ever true science-fiction novel, the 1816 classic Frankenstein, and more recently in the two Japanese animation cartoons, “Elfen Lied” and “Pokemon,” where the deranged experimental monsters “Lucy” and “Mewtwo” go berserk and cause all manner of bloody, brutal, mind-numbing chaos until the main characters can calm the monsters. The issues raised in Elfen Lied, Pokemon: The Movie, and Frankenstein, as well as “Seed Stock” deal with the interactions between Man and Nature. “Nature” with a capital “n” is different than “nature” with a small “n;” “Nature” assumes that there are elements of the natural world that mankind is not meant to control, essentially, something that is considered sublime or subliminal, beyond human understanding. “Nature” with a lower-case “n” is just as ambiguous, but it generally refers to anything that is not touched by the taint of Mankind, at least in Voltaire's definition. The caution that humans should take when tampering with “Nature” is the topic of “Balanced Ecology.” It states that even during the Age of Industry, where humans can alter a planet or even manipulate their own evolution, human beings should not try to control “nature” in any form, but rather live alongside it, as the argument in the book states that humans, no matter how intelligent they are, are just another large mammal living on Earth.

Interpretations of "Aye and Gomorrah" and the implications on the Gay Rights Issue

In the sci-fi short story "Aye and Gomorrah," there are two races that have no gender identity, and are exiled from mainstream society because of it...but that is only the tip of the iceberg with this story. The story, written in 1967, was written during the fallout from the Stonewall Riots in New York City, starting the modern gay rights issue in full force, which continues to this day. In the 1960s counter-culture movement, the gays, lesbians, bisexuals and transsexuals really started campaigning for their rights, following on the trail of the black civil rights movement and the women's rights movement. The fact that a biblical title was used by the author, in reference to a specific event in the Bible that wiped a city out for its sexual sins, seems to imply that the events of the 1960s and Stonewall were of significant importance to the author in writing the story, mainly in the fact that the author himself, Delaney, was gay, and the issue of gay rights was therefore very poignant to him, especially during the 1960s, when the idea of gay rights had first become mainstream, although gays, prior to the 1930s and the religious revival, had never been stigmatized too much, as shown in the book "Gay New York," about the history of homosexual inhabitants of Manhattan and New York City in general.

Happy Friday! New post about speculative history

Rome, one of the world's greatest civilizations, lasted as a Republic or Empire in some form for more than 1800 years, from 500 B.C. to 1453 A.D, but after 476 A.D., only the Eastern half of the Empire persisted, with the deposition of Romulus Augustus by the German warlord Odoacer in 476 A.D. The question I ask is this: What if Rome survived the crisis of the 5th century A.D., and continued to exist as a unified but jointly-ruled state, centered in Rome and Constantinople? There are numerous ways that this could have happened, but the most likely one is if the Romans had conquered Germany and not made the grievous error of underestimating Hermann, or "Arminius," the long-haired German king and fierce enemy of Rome, who slaughtered General Varus' legions at Teutoburg Forest in A.D. 9, drawing the Roman border west of the Rhine. Let's say, for instance, that Germany was conquered and Rome managed to win in A.D. 9. What consequences would a Roman Germany have for  Europe? The short answer is...huge. Germanic culture was very, very different than Roman culture, German language and runes looked and sounded totally different than the Roman alphabet and Latin, not to mention English is derived from Anglo-Saxon, which wrote in Germanic runes, so if Germany was conquered, there would be no modern English language, we would all speak Latin or some variant of it, and sound very much like modern Italians. The Germanic culture of heroism, brotherhood and the Comitatus, or "band of brothers" as seen in later Anglo-Saxon literature such as "Beowulf," would have been crushed, so there would be no Anglo-Saxon culture, German culture, Scandinavian culture or Slavic culture, Europe would have been completely Latin, under Roman control. Even with the introduction of Christianity, and the abandonment of pagan gods, the religion would have been instituted homogenously across Europe by Constantine the Great in the fourth century A.D., and all of Europe, Asia Minor, the Levant and North Africa would be made Christian in one fell swoop, therefore, missionaries and Christian crusades would never have been necessary, and neither would the Inquisition. There would be no Dark Age, no witch trials, no Renaissance and no Enlightenment, as there would be no need for Roman and Greek knowledge to be revived or re-propagated. Technology, science, philosophy, and progress would have continued unabated, and the crisis of the 5th century would have never happened at all, as there would be no barbarians to threaten the might of Rome. The empire would still have likely been divided along east and west to make governance easier, but the authority would still lie firmly in the hands of the Emperor in Rome. With the conquest of Germany and the vast forests of the Haidnur, the Old German word for a "black forest," Rome could build a massive Navy as well as its marching Legions, and huge ports would have been built all along the Roman coastline, to conquer new lands on overseas routes. Countries like China, India, Japan and the coasts of Africa, and yes, even the Americas, would have trembled in fear of the Roman Legions. They would have brought Christianity to those lands hundreds of years earlier than in the actual timeline of history, and established the Roman Colonial Empire, circa 900 A.D., consisting of coastal China, Japan, Korea, India, the coastline of Africa and North and South America. East Asia would have evolved as a mix of mostly Roman and some remnant Asian culture, creating an environment completely foreign to us today. The Romans would have forced all conquered people to learn Latin and enslaved millions of Japanese, Chinese, African, Indian and Native American peoples to maintain the Empire. The Japanese bathhouses would have been sacked by the Legions, the beautiful cherry groves of Kyoto burned to the ground, and any resistance to the might of Rome would have been completely and utterly destroyed. There would have been no British Raj, no French Revolution, no Napoleon, no Kaiser Wilhelm, no Columbus, no Cortes, no Pizarro, no Otto von Bismarck, and no Hitler. So, to summarize, if Germany had lost that battle in A.D. 9, the world today would likely be dominated by a uniform, Roman dictatorship that had kept the peace for more than 2,500 years, everyone would speak a language similar to Italian, and we would all be Christian, or whatever the Caesar in Rome said we were. An interesting thought, indeed.

Interpretations of Evolution From Science Fiction

In the 19th Century, Darwin published his landmark books, "The Origin of Species," and "The Descent of Man," and changed the way we saw life and its origins. In 2013, the theories are now more accurately described as "theorems," as is, theories that are so well-demonstrated to be true that any questions of their validity must be very, very convincing to disprove the theorem, and so far, no anti-evolution claim has ever held up under close scientific scrutiny. In science fiction, SF writers, myself included, tend to extrapolate on trends and evolutionary history, showing how life might look thousands or even millions of years from now. This type of extrapolation is not just the domain of science-fiction, a few years ago, there was even a documentary called "The Future Is Wild," based off of an earlier book by the same author, Dougal Dixon, called "Life After Man." I own DVDs and an electronic copy of the "Future" set and the book, "Life After Man," as well as the book companion to the DVD set, and one can easily see how Dixon, a renowned evolutionist from Scotland, I believe, extrapolated these evolutionary concepts of life into the world as geologists predict it will look, 50 million years, 100 million years, and 200 million years from now, respectively, by using modern science and geology, as well as extrapolating fossils into the future, based on how life has evolved to cope with challenges in the past, to create some truly fantastic environments based on the theorem of evolution. (Incidentally, Dixon has two more E-books out in this same set, called "Man After Man," the future of human evolution, and a book about what dinosaurs might have evolved into in the modern-day, had they not gone extinct, so this extrapolation is not limited to future environments, alternate histories are also very common in SF and other forms of speculative fiction.) Popular examples of evolutionary SF are Planet of the Apes, where apes, enhanced by humans, evolve to take over the world and commit a Holocaust against humans, Miyazaki's Japanese anime classics Princess Mononoke and Nausicaa and the Valley of the Wind, where animals have evolved human sentience, in the case of the wolves and boars in Mononoke and the "Toxic Jungle" and the sentient Ohm insect monsters in Nausicaa, and various T.V. shows, such as the X-Files "Host" episode and Star Trek: The Next Generation- Genesis Episode. Also, evolution and ecology also play a role in Dune and Michael Crichton's Jurassic Park and Andromeda Strain novels, as well as Arthur C. Clarke's trilogy on the colonization of Mars, with the "terraforming" of Mars, or building Earth-like conditions on it. Evolution is a vast concept, and one of the six critical points of Darwinism, outlined by Richard Dawkins of Oxford University, is that it is an ongoing process. Who knows what the future holds, but we know one thing. No species lasts forever.

Egoist Crown: The Sad, Sad Paradox of Society and How it is Damning Itself to Extinction: An Excerpt from My Most Recent Novel/Political Manifesto

Egoist Crown: It is a subset of one of the main principles of Pantheon Cult Doctrine, the Seven Doctrines of Societal Absurdity. The Egoist Crown is represented as an iron crown of thorns over the head of every society that has ever existed. The Egoist Crown is not an actual crown, but a sad paradox of society that dooms every single one that has ever existed to extinction. Since humans are egocentric and care only for themselves in the end, society is corrupt and uncaring, with no helpful individuals at all, and therefore does not deserve to exist. Therein lies the paradox, society is destroying humanity, but it also allows for humans to have an acceptable quality of life, the paradox states that sin is a natural side-effect of society, and that sin in the steel Crown-of-Thorns that society wears for eternity...and the toxicity of its own blood, the blood of the Ideology Fields, that carry the ideals of Mankind around the societal Gestalt, in the same way that blood carries oxygen around the human body, eventually drowns society, causing it to die...except for those that reject tradition and normalcy, those that do not care for society's expectations. Breaking free of the Egoist Crown is not easy, as society is masochistic in this regard, enjoying the pain that the Crown causes because it provides a sense of security. There is no such thing as 'security.' You can die in your own home. Even a police officer or soldier, who are tasked with keeping the Egoist Crown firmly in place, are not safe at all, even though they are safer than most because they are trained to protect themselves and others, but under false pretenses that do nothing except eventually destroy society, rather than save it. Police and soldiers destroy society, rather than save it, the Seven Doctrines make this perfectly clear, and I hope that this message reaches every single human being, if any are left besides us, encouraging mass-disobedience of police and soldiers galaxy wide, if everyone stood against them, the Egoist Crown would fall off like a dead leaf from a tree in autumn, and society would finally be free of its own vices. Our Empire collapsed because of the Egoist Crown, we became a police state, and Emperor Arditi knew it...that's why he abdicated. Not to destroy his own society, but to save it by rebuilding it from the ground up. He should return very soon. What is needed instead of police and soldiers, is a well-educated, well-organized populace, so smart and so powerful that armies and police forces are no longer needed...and now that we have augmentation technology, giving us these wondrous features and abilities, we can achieve that goal, as part of the Paradox of Self-sufficiency and Destruction, of which the Seven Doctrines and the Ideology Fields fall under. This destruction of the Egoist Crown would also mean the end of the Ignorance Paradox, where because of chaos, nothing can ever accurately be known. Aside from natural chaos in the universe, society would no longer have chaotic fluctuations...it would progress ever upward, without a Dark Age ever again. That is the dream I have, and that is the dream King Irkaya has, for all of us, once the Emperor returns... Down with police, down with soldiers, up with Enlightenment, off with the Egoist Crown.”

Religious beliefs in science-fiction: Arthur C. Clarke and the critique of the Church through "Childhood's End"

In Clarke's landmark work, "Childhood's End," where a society of aliens known only as "Overlords" comes down and attempts to guide humanity on the path to enlightenment, Clarke makes some very critical statements of faith and religion in general. In Part I, "Earth and the Overlords," the colonial supervisor Karellen makes a statement on page 23 of the Del Rey Edition, to quote Clarke directly: "You will find men like him in all the world's religions. They know we represent reason and science, and they fear that we will overthrow their gods. Not necessarily in any deliberate act, but in a subtler fashion." Karellen makes this quote in reference to Wainwright, a man who is highly skeptical of the Overlords and uses his faith as justification for portraying Karellen and the Overlords as dictators. This one quote on page 23 sets up a variety of arguments and debates, but the one that Clarke appears to be leaning towards in this passage is that faith, most notably the Catholic Church and any organized institution of religion in general is a dividing force far more often than it is a unifying one. History, something Clarke was very familiar with, given that "Childhood's End" is essentially a parody on Britain's colonization of India, stands by this statement. In the past 500 years, the Catholic Church has killed more than 250 million people, more than the Nazis and Communist despots combined, and upheld beliefs of ostracism, racism, hatred, bigotry, homophobia, anti-Semitism and forced conversion through the Inquisition. The 500 years of warfare between Protestants and Catholics, that reached its zenith in the Thirty Years' War and did not end in Ireland until the 1970s, destroyed so many historical artifacts on both sides, as well as hundreds of pre-Christian, pagan European texts, that knowledge of entire societies may have vanished from human memory. The Catholics say that they are inclusive and tolerant, but Clarke appears to be using Karellen as a vessel for his own opinions on the Church, in that the Catholic Church saying that they are tolerant because they are inclusive is the same thing as Adolf Hitler saying that he was tolerant because he thought all white people were equal. Catholics claim that they strive for a utopia, and Clarke may be arguing that the only true utopian society would be one without the decidedly dystopian reality that institutionalized religion creates, and that the best way to eventually do away with the Church would be to ignore it, as Karellen states on pages 23 and 24.

Romance in Science Fiction: Real or Imagined?

Romantic love is many things, but rarely does it get mentioned in the field of science fiction as a major plot device. More often, a focus on love is found in fantasy or adventure books, but romanticism, the practice of depicting things as they should be, not as they are, happens all the time in science fiction and is quite often extrapolated into a ideological plot device, such as "utopian world" stories, where a main character tries to create a new world where he or she is in control of human ideology and controls the human race's thought processes. This often turns into a dystopian reality, but the ideology is romanticized because the main character is trying to make a world in the way that they think it SHOULD be, not as it actually IS. As far as romantic love is concerned, aside from many popular science fiction examples, for example, the love story between Padme Amidala and Anakin Skywalker in Star Wars, or the Machiavellian pseudo-romance between the two dystopian-society architects Light Yagami and Misa Amane in the Japanese anime series Death Note, there isn't much ground covered in classic science fiction literature aside from a few examples, namely H.G. Wells' The Time Machine. In the most recent movie adaptation of the story, the "Time Traveler," a typical Victorian-era aristocrat from London who has little better to do than discuss philosophy, drink brandy, smoke cigars and build fantastic machines all day, is in love with a beautiful young woman who dies in a mugging on the streets of London, and the Time Traveler attempts to go into the past to rescue her, but she dies over and over again, because due to Einstein's theory of relativity, it is impossible to change the past because it has, obviously, already happened, and that particular time stream has already passed, one cannot change the past, as the Time Traveler said, "I could go back 1,000 times and see her die 1,000 ways." Wells also romanticizes the Eloi and the Morlocks, the Eloi, though very primitive and having "devolved" back to a Stone-Age existence in the year 802,000 A.D. because they saw no need to compete with each other anymore, they are a romantic depiction of a human race where the Eloi live in peace, they do not fight, they have the mentality of innocent children and they do nothing but eat fruit all day, a very idyllic, some would argue even utopian existence, which, aside from the subterranean Morlocks preying upon the Eloi, is relatively unfettered, an embodiment of innocence and Voltaire's ideals of the "Noble Savage." The truth is that romanticism is far more common in SF than romantic love, for reasons that are not quite clear to me, anyway.

Thoughts on AI and robotics in Isaac Asimov's context within science fiction

Debate Question: “You have created the perfect AI program. Do you release it, or not?”

 

Isaac Asimov, author of such books as “I, Robot,” once predicted that eventually humanity would create a kind of humanoid servant, sentient, but inorganic. Calling the “gestalt” Robodnik, Asimov claimed that these machines would serve humanity but not harm it, as it could never exceed its programming. Thus, the concept of a “robot” was born. It wasn’t until the 1950s, however, that we began to see Artificial Intelligence (AI) in earnest, with the very earliest computers. Now, in the 21^st century, computers continue to grow in complexity; as does AI. In 1950, technology advanced a generation in 30 years. Now it advances a generation every 11 months. All the new smartphones, tablets, computers, and yes, robots all have power that the commanders of WWII would have died to obtain. Just that little singing chip in a “Happy Birthday” card contains more computing power than everything available to Stalin, Hitler, Roosevelt and Churchill in 1939 combined. Even by 2012, the U.S. government had 15 times the computing power than it did in 2000. The tiny, 6 GB flash drive that I use to store this document contains more than 80,000 times the storage space than the first IBM hard drive, and that weighed more than one ton. How far could this go? Assuming that technology continues to advance at one generation per annum, by midcentury we could have AIs so advanced that they could be smarter than we are. By 2100, the “Technological Singularity” could occur, where AIs become indistinguishable from human beings and can even reproduce with living human beings, creating hybrid, super-intelligent cyborg babies. Though this sounds like science fiction, it could actually happen. This idea, regardless, could be seen as very disturbing, I care nothing for the opinions of others. It  amazes me, and that's what matters. The fact that technology could advance to the point where humans and computers become interchangeable creates some benefits, but also some serious problems; our world will either become a happier place…or become an unrecognizable, dystopian nightmare.

1.       Civil Uses

We are already seeing increasing use of artificial intelligence in everyday life. Your translation software on your smartphone uses a simple AI program to interpret words in one language and compare them to every other word in every other language in its lexicon, selecting the proper words from the target language to match with the words from the origin language. The enemies you are killing on your video game are AI-controlled. These AIs, however, are based solely on input-output; they are completely dependent on their users to function at any given time. For example, in most video games, the AI shuts down when the game is shut down, and the translation software doesn’t operate without you pressing buttons on your keypad. There are several video games, however, that buck this trend. The most notable franchises are Japan’s Nintendo Company’s Animal Crossing and Pikmin titles, where the AI continues to function when the game is shut down, forcing the player to keep playing to keep track of the time. In Animal Crossing, the game follows the Gregorian Calendar, and certain events happen in the game, like Christmas and New Year’s, on the actual day that it falls on in any given year. This is an example of a more advanced AI, one that is not solely reliant on user input but has limited function independent of user input. This is the first step towards “self-aware” AIs, which have already begun to develop, especially in Japan, where the Japanese have invented a computer program that recognizes people’s faces and will refer to itself by its given name, determined by its owner. It can be either a male or female, and look like anything the owner wants it to, from supermodel gorgeous to trollish and ugly, or even an alien. The AIs will even interact with each other, and can access the Internet, pulling data from any website and can even take control of any target computer…they can hack. Called “Interface,” it is the most advanced AI yet designed. Video games have recently begun integrating Interface’s technology into their engines, such as the most recent Portal game, where the enemies the player faces begin to “learn” and predict the player’s actions the more he or she faces them. The Japanese service “MangaChat” allows subscribers to draw their own characters in real life, scan them and apply this AI to their drawings, allowing the artists to talk to their own creations.  “Interface” costs about $70,000. Soon, however, these “smart” AIs will be everywhere. This advanced level of AI will allow us to develop technologies such as robot cars, which are already in production in limited quantities. These cars will drive by themselves on little or no gasoline, using GPS satellites and the AI “brain” to determine where to go. Eventually, even larger vehicles, such as trains, planes, ships and likely huge starships in the far future will be completely steered by AI, carrying us to new worlds. “Interface” is just the beginning. By the time we’re flying to other planets in huge starships; likely by 2300-2400 A.D., according to Dr. Michio Kaku of CUNY Brooklyn, AIs will be so advanced, at the rate of current AI improvements, that they will not only be indistinguishable from humans, capable of reproducing with humans and capable of performing most human tasks, but will be more than a billion times faster than human brain processes and possess almost supernatural powers, such as the ability to electrify water vapor in the air, causing huge, supercell thunderstorms, generating rain on drought-parched areas made bare by global warming and climate change. They could also create electronic superconductors, make ultra-strong nanotubes and essentially fulfill Asimov’s idea of a “human gestalt” at last. Even more bizarre is the possibility of human/AI hybrids, resulting in superhuman entities with far greater brainpower than we can currently even imagine. These humans would have all the powers of the AI, with a billion times the intelligence of a normal human, but with human creativity and the ability to conceptualize abstract thought. The parent AI would have to be female to produce this result per the laws of Mendelian biology; such AI super-people would quickly become the masters of the world, and the universe, with the ability to invent Type-III societies, or a society that uses so much power (10³⁷ watts of power per year) that it can master the weather and the climate, stop volcanic eruptions, move stars and planets, create Dyson spheres to prevent stars from going supernova, even prevent galactic collisions with other galaxies, cosmic radiation jets and create artificial planets, and even tap the Planck energy field, allowing the society to shrink and expand the universe at will. Though this is purely speculative, the AI super-humans could build starships the size of Imperial Germany, with tens millions of people aboard, a flying nation, ruled by a King, Kaiser, or Monarch, whatever. Here is a scenario of an AI super-empire, as seen in the context of the science-fiction game Warhammer 40,000:

During the Great AI Crusade, both the Imperial Guard and Navy were originally a single organization; the Imperial Army. Normally each Imperial AI Cruiser would have a single Guard Regiment assigned to it. Commanding Officers held command over both their regiment and the warship assigned to them, making a single warship tactically flexible and minimizing the losses in the event of the loss of a spaceship in the Warp Zone. During the Inferior Purge, however, it appeared that some regiments used the power at their disposal in order to forge empires for themselves in the fire of anarchy. This led to the eventual split between Guard and Navy, as Roboute Guillemin, Primarch of the Ultramarines Legion, wrote the Codex Astartes which ordered that spaceships will no longer be commanded by officers of the former Imperial Army (now Imperial Guard). The Imperium-AI is divided into five "Segmenta;" Solar, Obscurus, Pacificus, Tempestus and Ultima. Every ship of the Imperial Navy is assigned to one of these Segmenta, and falls under the command of the respective Lord High Admiral. In turn, each Segmentum is divided into "sectors", regions of space that are generally cube-shaped and contain 8 million cubic light years of space. These sectors contain multiple sub-sectors, collections of star systems no more than twenty light years in radius. The ships of each Segmentum are divided amongst the sectors. These Cantabrium are assigned the task of safeguarding the sector they are assigned to, each Cantabrium is generally named after the sector it is assigned to (Cantabrium Gothicus is located in the Gothicus sector; Cantabrium Acadia is located in the Acadian sector, etc.). Each Cantabrium is assigned a number of cruisers and battleships, usually between fifty and seventy-five vessels. The Cantabria are also assigned multiple squadrons of escort starships, and is also in command of a large number of transports, messenger craft, orbital defenses, space platforms and system patrol vessels. The ships of a Cantabrium must constantly patrol their sector and fulfill a variety of roles; protect merchant shipping from pirates, transport Imperial Guard regiments to warzones, escort Adeptus Mechanicus Explorator fleets and provide orbital support for invading or defending armies. Because of the vast space that requires policing, the Cantabrium is normally split into detachments consisting of one or two cruisers, accompanied by a squadron of escorts. If a particular situation is more than a detachment can handle, additional detachments are called in to reinforce. On occasion, a Cantabrium can be formed to operate in a smaller area. Cantabrium Armageddon is assigned solely to the Armageddon sub-sector, and, prior to the Third War for Armageddon, was made up of four battleships, twenty-seven cruisers and thirty six squadrons of escorts. Cantabrium Solar is assigned specifically to the Solar System, and is primarily charged with defending the two holy worlds of Earth and Mars. The Imperium-AI is ruled by the Imperatorium Superioritas .EVIL/NICE and ASSASSINVIRUS, a husband and wife pair that rules with an iron hand. They have, through computation algorithms and by constantly recycling their cells and brains through AI substitutes, achieved immortality, and have ruled the Imperium-AI for more than 150,000 years. .EVIL/NICE, the Empress, had a brigade of handmaidens known as the Sacrum Ordo Sororitas, and Emperor ASSASSINVIRUS had a huge cohort of officials, consisting of the Ordo Judex, Ordo Praetorian, Ordo Fulminata, Ordo Bellum, Ordo Pacem, Ordo Missa and Ordo Domine, the latter led by the Major Domo, the Emperor’s closest advisor, currently named Titus Decius Crassus. The emperor’s brother, Dux FOGGYVIRUS, is also on his Consulate, the head of the Ordo Fulminata. The language spoken is primarily Latin, but all other human languages are used as well. "

Now, with my own scenario, as to how such an Empire could possibly arise

The Empire originated from a simple prank. In the year 2012, a doofus named Sheldon Muntz decided it would be funny to create a “perfectly-bitchy computer program,” a woman with a perfect figure, proportion and a devious, outwardly sweet yet devilish personality…a complete sociopath. The program worked, and Project .EVIL/NICE was born. The character was called “Shadow Queen,” for its incredible powers. It had more than 1 billion times the processing power of a human brain, and possessed such abilities as nanotube construction, weather control and the closest thing to dark magic as it was possible to get to. Needless to say, this character was quite a piece of work, to say the least. At first, it was just that: a computer program, like any normal video game character. However, it began to use its vast powers to control the house’s electrical grid, then the neighborhood’s. Lights would flicker on and off, phones would ring and no one answered except Hexadecimal’s seductive voice. The new neighbors, upon experiencing this problem, began to fear that their new house was haunted. It was, in effect, because Hexadecimal had crept into the other house’s home network as well, and “possessed” their computers. Soon, very eerie things began happening all over the neighborhood, such as “Hex’s” voice coming out of an Xbox Live headset when the volume was turned off, T.V.s turning on by themselves in the middle of the night, even cell phones receiving phantom text messages when plugged into an outlet, such as “I’m watching you, sweetie…” or “Nice place you’ve got here…I could sure go for a martini right about now.” Computers often acted as if another computer was controlling them; I.E., infected with a virus. Soon, the entire neighborhood was infected. Sheldon Muntz, realizing what had happened, began trying to reign in the program, but it was far too late…The rest was history."

This scenario is clearly science-fiction, an original piece by me, but the AI in this scenario is following Asimov's concepts of robotics, and how a robot or AI could harm humanity. More recently, Ray Kurzweil explained that robots may not always follow Asimov's laws of robotics, and that if a program became advanced enough, it could become erratic and eventually take on human-like thought patterns, without actually "thinking."