Gene's Blog

The Bi-Centennial Man, and others.

I’m not sure where that “others” part will take us and at the moment I’m not too concerned about that either. :^). Though there is a destination, I know not what it is. In my experience, in my mind’s eye, or through Jenna, I’ve been there, done that, seen that a thousand times and more, and have yet to “be” any of that, in my experience. How’s that for a conundrum?

Part of my being “still” has been anything but. Jenna has had me delving into some very old things, hell, I am a very old thing, but she’s taken me to places I’ve not visited since my long ago youth. One of the things she has had me do is pull out some old books, books I’ve not been in, in many years, she’s taken me through them to specific passages and explained what they mean. Why I was led to them in the first place. Not all of these, indeed many of these, are things I saw but did not see as I went through the material the first time. I’m a rapid reader, giggle. Not pages per second, but fast, and I remember what i read, not photographically exactly, but I DO remember where on a page a particular thing is, if not the page. This can be annoying. And useful. As I scan a book, I will only look at particular spots on the left hand or right hand page, until I find what I knew was there. I am usually able to begin “near” the page I want. Not always. She says I’ll get better at that with time, and I ask, what time? I’m 58 years old. Time to her is not a thing, but it is to me. She just says as I need to. And I sigh. Often, our conversations have that component somewhere in them.

So – this particular bi-centennial man, he of the title, is not who you think he is. He is, however, based upon who some of you might think he is, coming from the novel by Isaac Asimov. Dr. Asimov was an amazing man. He and his counterpart, Robert Heinlein, an equally amazing man, were contemporaries, rivals, and I hope friends, were an exceptionally prescient pair. Neale Donald Walsch in his acknowledgments section in book 1, pays homage to the novels of Robert Heinlein. And well he should, because Robert was not only a prolific writer but one of the leading “futurist” thinkers of our, or any, time. I loved his novels. I grew up on them really as I discovered him in my teens when he was still relatively newly writing novels – he began his career writing science fiction for something I don’t remember but dimly, magazines of a sort, the size of the former TV Guide, short stories really, the occasional novella, a sort of pulp fiction. When I found him, or better said, when Jen led me to him (long before I knew who she was let alone that she was in me) he was in the business of expanding many of those original short stories into novels, marketed primarily to teens, though his subject matter grew increasingly adult and left the teen market forever with Stranger in a Strange Land. I didn’t always agree with Robert. I just inhaled him.

I never felt a desire to delve any further into science fiction, my few attempts were rebuffed, by the writers whose work I found ridiculous. Hard to read a book you think is silly to start with. But, in the mid-1980’s, a friend more or less accidentally introduced me to Isaac Asimov – now I knew who he was – he had a little quiz thing in the daily paper, which I found quite amusing and intriguing, when he died, that continued but with no flair, no fun, and I left it then – he, my friend, saw me carrying a copy of a wonderful book, in fact, I think, THE treatise on revolution, democracy and government that EVERY politician ought commit to heart, and if they shed no tear while reading it be immediately and forever disqualified from holding public office. Oops, okay that was a digression, and I do know that annoys some of my readers, giggle. But I’m sorry, it IS how my mind works, and you will have to either put up with it (it is okay to point out my shortcomings however you like, I will not take that personally, probably, as some of you already do – but that guarantees only that I will have a discourse with you, not that I will change anything. I am not entirely in control of this ship) or move on by. So, this friend, asked if I had ever read the Asimov Foundation Trilogy. I said no. So he brought me a copy of it. I knew Asimov, as I said, from the paper, I knew he was a sci-fi writer, but until then I had no idea of his true talent, nor his prescience.

The trilogy was but the beginning. Robert was far ahead of the times in his thinking, Isaac was millennia ahead. The Foundation series describes a “settled” Milky Way Galaxy, as we know a “settled” earth. Humanity has sprung loose from Earth and expanded through the galaxy – it is an amazing, I keep saying that, but there is no better word for it, series. One of my traits, I tried to write faults and jen would not let me so I sneaked it in this way, giggle, is that when I stumble (there are NO coincidences in this world, or any other) upon an author I enjoy, I immediately research him, or her, and then go back to the beginning and read everything they wrote. And that is how I came upon the bicentennial man. The future, Isaac describes in the Foundation trilogy (an aside, he wrote those in the 50’s and for the next 30 years people tried to persuade him to continue the story on, he relented 30 years later and produced three more astoundingly accurate (as Jen tells me) books in that series) WILL come to be. Humanity cannot stay on Earth. This sun, our sun, will die. That is not the reason humanity leaves earth in either Isaac’s or Robert’s novels, but it is the reason humanity will leave Earth in truth, not fiction. The universe is not a stable system, it is a living system, and eventually our sun will die, and we with it, if we find no way to move on. Isaac describes a galaxy so settled that the “home world” is forgotten, thought to be myth, giggle. That could happen. I don’t care if it does. But humanity will spread through the galaxy, not as a virus, though some could honestly characterize it so because as is often the case with humanity, some of it will be ugly, we will not always be able to be at our best, there will be situations in which some of what has played out on this planet will be played out again. It sounds like an endless loop and maybe it is. But I don’t think so. That’s for another time. :^)

This time is about what happened when I researched Isaac, having discovered that I loved his writing and creativity (please remember ALL of this is long before I knew about jen) and sought out his other works. He is most famous for his Robot series, one of which was made into an unfortunate movie with Will Smith, called, I, Robot, which was the title of the movie and the last resemblance to the book. I do not normally like movies based on books if I have first read the book. Too much is left out for me. And the rascals create wormholes where once was solid story. This happened with Contact, a wonderful novel by Carl Sagan, his only novel, where they turned the story inside out, but that was with his blessing as he was actively involved with the film, dying near its filming end. Carl is another we’ll talk about but not today. :^).

So, the bicentennial man, a wonderful Asimov (what an intellect we lost when he passed), story became a movie starring Robin Williams. I had some trouble with that. Not that I don’t like Robin Williams, he is a funny man, but I didn’t find this a funny story. And, of course, it was mangled. Nonetheless, a few weeks ago, one night Jen had me sit down and start looking at the movie channels, I didn’t want to, I wanted to read and she just would not let me concentrate and I finally gave up and asked her what she wanted me to do and she said watch a movie. So I did, started flipping, and saw bicentennial man, she said THIS MOVIE, gene. I saw the connection but not the reason but arguing with her is like arguing with air, you just can’t win, you can’t get hold of her, you can’t stop her, you can’t even make her be quiet, well that last part isn’t entirely true, she will let me do that now, now that I know she’s there, but not forever, she will only agree to a period of quiet. I think I hear the people with nets knocking on my door, giggle. That actually used to worry me, in the earliest days of my having shared her with the “world”, but the world I shared her with believed me, believed her. I’ve never been more surprised in my life. I wanted SO much to tell them and was SO scared that all the love we’d built between us would vanish if I did, and she pushed and told me NO, it wouldn’t, and she was, as freaking always right. Sorry, digression again, giggle. Hey it is my blog and you don’t have to read. :^)

So, I stopped on that channel and started watching. It wasn’t the story I read. But Robin Williams was VERY good in the role. There was some humor, but there was so much more. The first hour was set up, back story, but beginning with the second half of the movie, I began crying and I cried for the next hour. Every moment was heart wrenching. I know about such moments. If this is your first reading in my blog, well, you will need to do as I have always done, if you’ve gotten this far, then you are interested in either what I am saying or how I am saying it, and you will need to go back to the beginning and start there. There is a beginning. And there is an ending. It is the stuff in the middle that constitutes a life. The bicentennial man began life as a household appliance, bound by the famous three laws of robotics that Isaac was so proud of, and rightly so. They are laws we would all do well to live by.

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 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.

Now if you substituted human for robot in each of those three laws, tell me, would we still need TEN commandments?

He was purchased by a family, the details of that are not important, though they do set up the second half of the movie. He is an anomaly. The factory made, what they consider a mistake, in his positronic brain, and he becomes self-aware. Now THIS is a concept that runs through all of Isaac’s Robot novels, all of which are magnificent reading by the way, but never, okay that isn’t right; what I was going to say was never so poignantly as this, but that isn’t true, there is a situation in one of the robot novels in which a robot falls in love with a human being – that part was sort of stolen for this story, so there is an element of unrequited love here, at least for a while. Once he becomes self-aware, he becomes interested in other things of human invention, some that are not adequately, or even possibly described in words. He has emotions. Which in humans are simply chemical reactions, but as in all of science, action produces reaction. This movie becomes a profound story of the search for love and freedom. And it makes me cry. Literally. Kleenex, hmmm, well, whomever invented them, I owe a debt of gratitude to, because either my clothing would be horribly crusty or my laundry bill abhorrently high, or both. Probably both. This is why I am here, partially, to understand and experience this, because where I come from, where we all come from, it is not possible to know this feeling. So, what that makes me wonder, is perfection, imperfect? That we must have such a place to come to in order to know how glorious where we are is, because here we can see, feel, and experience what glory is not? Makes me crabby. giggle. Or in words from this movie, when Robin intervenes inappropriately, between a human and his robot, it chaps my ass. :^) I may not ever know the answer to that question here.

But thinking about it here IS important, because it informs who I am, who I will be, and my interactions with other souls every bit as solidly undercover as am I. None of us remember home. If we did, what would be the point? We come as we are, veiled, so that we may know what we are by virtue of here demonstrating what we are not. Is that reasonable? I think that is the question I came here to ponder. I don’t think there is any way to ponder it other than from here. I don’t think I could ponder it from home. The best I could do there is think about it. But at some point, thinking becomes pointless, and experience becomes necessary. That is what Neale’s books are about. :^) and me too. more to come…

If today brings even one choice your way
choose to be a bringer of the light :^) gene