Scifi Roundup

Jim Henley gets the new season of Battlestar Galactica exactly, fantastically right:

The Cylons’ failure is an inability to separate the concepts of benevolence and control. Even Caprica-6 and Galactica-Sharon haven’t advanced so far in their thinking as to conceive of Cylon-Human relations that don’t involve Cylon governance of the humans. Thus they have no real alternative to present the harshest elements in the irreconcilable coalition that runs the occupation.

The Cylons could have simply detached themselves from humanity. They could have opened negotiations as equals. They could have thrown themselves on humanity’s mercy. They did none of those things, because what they can’t give up is the idea that, as God’s instruments, they must shape human destiny.

What Jim neglected to say is that this has absolutely no relevance whatsoever to contemporary events. Any comparisons to Iraq mark you as a Communist and a homosexual.

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Culled from comments at Henley's blog, this article is an excellent analysis of Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card. It actually explains how Card became a total Bush-loving nutjob, if you read it right. You have to be a bit familiar with the book, but a decent Cliff's notes would be that Ender is a character who, despite killing people, isn't actually a killer because he doesn't feel like one.

If, therefore, intention alone determines guilt or innocence, and the dead are dead because of misunderstanding or because they bring destruction on themselves, and the true sacrifice is the suffering of the killer rather than the killed—then Ender’s feeling of guilt is gratuitous. Yet despite the fact that he is fundamentally innocent, he takes “the sins of the world” onto his shoulders and bears the opprobrium that properly belongs to the people who made him into their instrument of genocide. He is the murderer as scapegoat. The genocide as savior. Hitler as Christ the redeemer.

I include the Hitler comparison simply for the completion of the text. Staying away from the issue of Nazi comparisons, however, we can still see this mindset in people who continue to support the Iraq war. You see, it doesn't matter that the invasion of Iraq has been a total catastrophe from beginning to end, or that hundreds of thousands of people are dead because of it, or that no positive outcome could possibly justify the costs at this point. Because we meant well.

As an aside, Ender's Game is a book I loved when I was younger, and it's still an excellent story. But even though it's not even an Ayn Rand book, I would say like The Fountainhead at this point it's definitely a book you should stop praising effusively after your 20th birthday. The book is all about how a young, tormented child actually turns out to save the world - Harry Potter with spaceships. (When I read Philosopher's Stone, I called it Ender's Game with broomsticks.) These stories have an obvious appeal for young people, especially adolescents of the nerdier persuasion. But the flip side of Ender's story is that even after he brutally murders his tormenters, he's still blameless and pure. And Card, this article argues, spins that story out to build an entire ethical code where we can only be blamed or credited for our intentions.

Indulging in the occasional violent fantasies is probably natural for young people - God knows I did. But I'm not 13 anymore, and don't wish to inflict pain and death on people who upset me. Or as the author of the article put it:

God, how I would have loved this book in seventh grade! It’s almost as good as having a nuclear device.

The problem is that the morality of that abused seventh grader is stunted. It’s a good thing I didn’t have access to a nuclear device. It’s a good thing I didn’t grow up to elaborate my fantasies of personal revenge into an all-encompassing system of ethics. The bullying I suffered, which seemed overwhelming to me then, was undeniably real, and wrong. But it did not make me the center of the universe. My sense of righteousness, one that might have justified any violence, was exaggerated beyond any reality, and no true morality could grow in me until I put it aside. I had to let go of my sense of myself as victim of a cosmic morality play, not in order to justify the abuse — I didn’t deserve to be hurt — but in order to avoid acting it out. I had to learn not to suppress it and strike back.