‘Through the Portal’ anthology arrives! (photos by Nina Munteanu)
Just before the Canada Postal strike halted mail dead in its tracks, I got a box full of books; pre-release copies of the anthology that Lynn Hutchinson Lee and I have been nurturing along from our idea three years ago when we pitched it to Exile Editions.
I cracked open the box, like it was Christmas, and cuddled a book, so beautiful!
Ever since we had both had climate fiction stories appear in Exile Edition’s CLI-FI: Tales of Climate Change,Lynn and I had been discussing the possibility of collaborating on something. We liked the idea of something hopeful and Exile’s publisher agreed on the lure of something optimistic. We pitched the concept and Portal was born.
Writers, mostly Canadian, but also from the United States and around the world, submitted to us. We whittled down some 245 submissions to thirty-five stellar short stories, poetry, and flash fiction that reflected the theme of the anthology: hope in the face of ecological adversity.
This was a labour of love, grounded in optimism and hope: to create a collection of optimistic dystopian short stories that celebrate the spirit of humanity in a changing world. As one reader said, “We definitely need more optimism and hope to offset the bombardment of negativity that is running rampant these days.”
Hopeful dystopias are so much more than an apparent oxymoron: they are in some fundamental way the spearhead of the future – and ironically often a celebration of human spirit by shining a light through the darkness of disaster. In Through the Portal: Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia, award-winning authors of speculative fiction Lynn Hutchinson Lee and Nina Munteanu present a collection that explores strange new terrains and startling social constructs, quiet morphing landscapes, dark and terrifying warnings, lush newly-told folk and fairy tales.
Exile: This is a fascinating collection of all-new, modern-day speculative storytelling, with insightful “Tales from a Hopeful Dystopia” featuring Agata Antonow, Sarah Christina Brown, Mary Burns, K.R. Byggdin, Petra Chambers, Katie Conrad, M.L.D. Curelas, Matthew Freeman, R. Haven, Liam Hogan, Cornelia Hoogland, Vanessa Hua, Jerri Jerreat, Zilla Jones, Katherine Koller, Erin MacNair, Melanie Marttila, Bruce Meyer, Isabella Mori, E. Martin Nolan, Avery Parkinson, Ursula Pflug, Marisca Pichette, Shana Ross, Lynne Sargent, Karen Schauber, Holly Schofield, Anneliese Schultz, Gin Sexsmith, Sara C. Walker, Jade Wallace, and Melissa Yuan-Innes. These authors show us that now, more than ever, our world urgently needs stories about hope.
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Marcescent oak leaves tremble in the cold wind of November, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I parked my car by the closed gate and walked inside along the road. The park was closed but not for me, I thought. The walk through this magnificent pine forest with its fresh pungent aromas of coming winter, invigorated me with thoughts of hope and wonder. I felt at home in this unviolated forest. It felt natural and I realized that I was desperately seeking “natural”…
Oak leaves blaze in the grey-green hemlock-pine forest, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I live close to a riparian forest and a large river. But there is little natural about it. Despite supporting an abundance of wildlife (e.g., squirrels, chipmunks, muskrat, skunk, groundhog, mink, ermine, voles, and red fox), the forest is disturbed and infested with invasive species. When I walk through this forest, the sounds of traffic are never far away, and I yearn for the sounds and smells of Nature inviolate.
Small trail through pine and aspen to the meromictic lake in Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Petroglyph Park lies in the Kawartha Region of Ontario and is an hour’s drive north of where I live. Here, the sounds of Nature prevail: the wind raking through pines, the shrill haunting cry of a bluejay or aggressive chittering of a red squirrel. Nothing else. It was gloriously silent; except for the sound of my boots crunching along the trail or when I scared up a deer that scampered with the rush and rattle of leaves through the anonymity of the brush into a deep silence.
Road through tall red pine forest, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
It was a crisp and fresh November day. I’d packed a lunch and my camera and set off down the road and along various trails to explore the park, not worried about getting lost.
Forest fades from single oak tree into a fog of grey-green pine and hemlock, Petroglyph Park (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
And I did get wonderfully lost, particularly when I ventured off the main trail, seeking adventure. I didn’t mind being lost; when you lose yourself you find another part of you through adventure…
Marcescent beech and oak trees add bronze colour to the grey-green of the pine forest, Petroglyph Park, ON (Photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
It’s early winter, when the chill winds carve through mixed forests in a restless howl, snatching leaves of deciduous trees and sending them flying. But in this primeval ancient forest of evergreens, the few deciduous trees mimic their conifer cousins by stubbornly clutching their leaves. In winter, the leaves of oak and beech trees cling to their branches, marcescent. To the silver greens of pine and hemlock, they add flames of copper and gold
Red pine trees tower over a deer trail near the lake, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
I found myself walking on the spongy ground, a carpet of leaves, needles and debris, not far from Gilford Lake, among a tall stand of red pines, whose thick canopy created a green ceiling overhead. Breathing in the strong scent of pine and loam, I set up my camera and tripod to capture the mood of a natural path through the forest. I’d just set up the camera, hand poised on the shutter, when a deer wandered in front of me—just three metres away! It saw me and stopped mid-step. We stared at one another in a halting pause, a moment made eternity. Then the deer leapt gracefully away, disappearing within seconds into the dark forest and leaving me in the silence of rapture. I felt laughter tease up my throat; I hadn’t taken a picture.
Road winds through the mixed forest in Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Winding road through mixed forest in Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
My walk through this natural forest is both thrilling and comforting, uplifting and restful. I am living outside myself, sensing the textures, sounds and tastes of the forest—in sublime discovery. It is here, where the sounds and smells of the natural world abide, without regard to me, that I feel most at home.
I am simply being…
Mixture of oak, beech, pine and hemlock conspire in a wash of colour and texture, Petroglyph Park, ON (photo and rendition by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
My upcoming book Gaia’s Revolution (Book 1 of The Icaria Trilogy by Dragon Moon Press) explores a collapsing capitalist society in Canada through ravages of climate change and a failing technology. The story is told through the lives of ambitious twin brothers Eric and Damien Vogel, and the woman who plays them like chess pieces in her gambit to ‘rule the world.’
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It is 2032 and Eric Vogel sits in the Canadian prime minister’s office, ruminating on the changes coming. He imagines what a post-capitalist world will look like and how his twin brother Damien—left behind in Germany—would disagree with his vision:
Over a hundred years ago, Spartacist Rosa Luxemburg—who was shot by the right-wing Freikorps—argued that the “Bourgeois stands at the crossroads, either transition to socialism or regress into barbarism.” Both he and Damien agree with sociologist Wolfgang Streeck who argues that the end of capitalism—of a reigning bourgeois, in love with the objects that define them—is already underway. The signs are neon loud: a ruthless downward trend in economic growth, social equality, and financial stability. All reinforced by climate change and the ongoing collapse of the planet’s sustaining environment. Any system and dialectic based on a concept of infinite resources in a finite world is bound to fail eventually. That collapse has already begun and its catastrophic end is imminent. Already, climate refugees and refugees of resource war (which amounts to the same thing) have flooded northern nations, like Canada, and caused tension and strife. Germany is just one example where left and right have torn the country apart as an influx of foreigners challenged the already tenuous German identity. When Canada granted asylum to over two million climate-refugees in ‘28, with no viable plan for the new residents during a time when unemployment was higher than it had been in decades and housing prices were skyrocketing due to environmental uncertainty, this sparked renewed tensions between ultra-right and ultra-left and opened the gap for a new party based on science and reason. The party now in power: the Technocratic Party of Canada.
But what will life after capitalism look like?
It’s no surprise that he and his brother disagree on what a post-capitalist world should look like and how to best achieve that world. Damien too easily prescribes to the old leftist shibboleth of Nature being the answer to everything and Market being evil. His deep ecology utopia would spring from an atavistic rejection of modern life, a return to ‘the ancient farm.’ But how that fantasy could be achieved without a drastic population reduction is beyond his brother’s imagination. Damien fetishizes the natural world. Just like he does their mother. The naïve fool is a blind romantic, refusing to see reality right in front of him: that Nature is ultimately cruel, cold, and preoccupied with its own survival. Just like their mother.
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Brother Damien recalls an earlier argument the two brothers had in Berlin that ultimately motivated him to follow his twin to Canada. They’d been debating about the effect of climate change on the human population:
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Pulled down by a truculent mood, Damien responds to Eric’s usual glib solutions by painting a dark vision of a humanity descending into some pre-technological ‘dark age’ apocalypse.
Eric just laughs. He pokes his fork into the sauerkraut as if to make a point in his argument and scoops up a pile that he shoves into his mouth. He leans forward and argues with a full mouth, “The real question is not whether humanity will survive an ecological collapse, but what part of humanity will survive. You can be sure that the stinking boujee plutocrats will find a way to survive at the expense of everyone else.” He chews down the sauerkraut followed by a gulp of beer and a loud burp. “The stinking rich are already doing it, Dame. They’re already creating their Elysium right here, right now.” Fork now swings like a conductor’s baton. “The future is already here; it’s just unevenly distributed.”
Using his fingers, Damien pulls apart some crisp skin off the pork knuckle—his favourite part—and feeds his mouth. Arguing with Eric always makes him hungry despite his surly temper. He crunches down, enjoying the tasty juices of brazed salty pork skin, and retorts, “You politicize everything and resort to cheap references in pop culture. You always do that: over-simplify the crisis and Nature’s existential power to sustain life. Trophic cascades caused by ecosystem simplification would irreparably devastate the planet and all adapted life. With the Sixth Extinction Event there won’t be any boujee plutocrats because there won’t be anything left to monetize—”
“You’re such a doom-gloom lefty, Dame!” Eric grabs the last of the pork skin—also his favourite— and shoves it into his mouth. He smacks his lips and counters, “The stinking rich will always have technology at their disposal. I’m talking about genetic engineering, nano-technology, gene modification, cybernetics, and even environmental control. For instance, look at Harvard’s RoboBee: tiny robots that mimic flying insects that can fill in as pollinators for the crashing bee populations.”
“You over-estimate technology’s ability to save the planet—and us by extension.”
Eric finishes the pork skin and wipes his mouth on his sleeve with a sniff. “I’m not talking about saving the entire planet—just enough of it. You underestimate what we’re willing to do to survive.”
That is when he brings up E.P. Thompson’s paper on stages of a neoliberal capitalist civilization and the ‘extermination endgame.’ “You’re the population ecologist, Dame, but it’s obvious that when a neoliberal capitalist society exceeds its carrying capacity— when technology makes the masses surplus—there’s no alternative in the scramble for resources and ecological support. Get rid of the surplus. That simple. Thompson tells us that under military capitalism—and you have to accept that all countries are militarizing—the ‘outcome must be the extermination of multitudes.’”
“For God’s sake, Eric!”
“Technology will save humanity, Dame,” Eric insists. He leans back and stretches his legs under the laminate table in self-pleased satisfaction. “One way or another.”
Damien shakes his head and gulps down the last of his beer. “Whatever is left of humanity, you mean. And you accuse me of giving up on humanity. So, the greedy capitalist wins?”
“That’s why the world needs us, Dame. To keep humanity from going down the wrong road.”
And what is that for Eric, Damien wonders. Increasingly, he feels discomfort at what that might be. Eric leans forward, eyes bright with inspiration. He resembles a great bird of prey, long hawk-like nose—the iconic Vogel nose—and copious dark hair cresting back from a high forehead. It’s like looking at a more confident version of himself in the mirror, thinks Damien. And sometimes disconcerting, particularly when it reminds him of what he is not.
“You and I know that humanity won’t stop climate change,” Eric goes on animatedly. “Too many tipping points are already upon us and the direction we’re all going in now…” He swings his fork around the room to indicate this place, Germany, the world. “… isn’t promising to check that. Change is inevitable.” He points the fork at Damien. “But, if we can direct how humanity adapts to our changing environment, we can still win…” Before Damien can charge in with a rebuttal, Eric pushes his face forward, raptor eyes scintillating like sapphires on fire. “So, how do we de-thrown the ultra-rich elite—who are mostly a rabble of materialist self-serving hedonists with no vision or care for the future—and ensure a meritocracy of responsible citizens who can take humanity through the changes to come? … Like establishing a universal basic income toward an egalitarian society. Putting a full stop to fossil fuel mining and adopting clean energy. Re-wilding key ecosystems. Engaging reforestation and dedicating large areas to Nature.”
Damien shakes his head, lost for words. Where is his brother going with this? Will he suggest violent revolution to establish a dictatorship? How else would the rich give up their riches? And how is that any different from the Bolsheviks of 1917 or the Nazis of 1933 or the Stasi-run DDR? Those fascist Reichsbürgers would happily reinstate a society of surveillance, repression, and incarceration that would threaten to slide into the final solution of genocide of an unwanted ‘surplus’. A society of disposable bodies, a biopolitical world of exterminism. Damien thinks of Nietzsche’s aphorism: Beware that, when fighting monsters, you yourself do not become a monster … for when you gaze long into the abyss, the abyss gazes also into you. Violent revolution is not the answer, he decides.
Eric pulls out the worn copy of Walden Two from his jacket pocket. He slaps it on the table and pushes it toward Damien. “That’s the answer, Dame.”
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Models of a Post-Capitalist Future Society
In his book Four Futures: Life After Capitalism , sociologist Peter Frase considers effects of climate change and automation in possible outcomes of a post-Trump election America. Frase envisions four scenarios based on abundance and scarcity and whether a society operates by equality (e.g., communism under abundance / socialism under scarcity) or hierarchy (rentism under abundance /exterminism under scarcity).
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With scarce resources, the following scenarios are possible:
Socialism (aka Ecotopia) may arise within an egalitarian society if driven by altruistic notions of self-limitation. Ecologists describe such a self-limiting system as K-selected (see my discussion of K-selection and r-selection in “Water Is…”). A K-selected population is at or near the carrying capacity of the environment, which is usually stable and favors individuals that creatively compete, through cooperation, for resources and produce few young. The K-selected strategy runs on a successive gradient of maturity, from initially competitive to ultimately cooperative. Competition is a natural adaptive remnant of uncertainty and insecurity and forms the basis of a capitalist economy that encourages monopolization and hostile takeovers. Competition results from an initial antagonistic reaction to a perception of limited resources. It is a natural reaction based on distrust—of both the environment and of the “other”—both aspects of “self” separated from “self.” The greed for more than is sustainable reflects a fear of failure and a sense of being separate, which ultimately perpetuates actions dominated by self-interest in a phenomenon known as “the Tragedy of the Commons.” Competition naturally gives way to creative cooperation as trust in both “self” and the “other” develops and is encouraged through continued interaction.
Exterminism (aka Mad Max) may arise under a hierarchical model, driven by greed and exacerbated by uncertainty in the environment—not unlike what we are currently experiencing with the planet’s system and cyclical changes. In this scenario, in which resources are both limited and uncertain, those with access to them would guard or hide them away with desperate fervor.
“When mass labor has been rendered superfluous [through automation], a final solution* lurks: the genocidal war of the rich against the poor.”—Peter Frase
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References:
Frase, Peter. 2016. “Four Futures: Life After Capitalism.” Verso Press, London. 150pp.
Luxemberg, Rosa. 1915. “The Junius Pamphlet: The Crisis in the German Democracy.” Marxists.org.
Munteanu, Nina “Gaia’s Revolution.” Book 1 of the Icaria Trilogy, Dragon Moon Press, upcoming.
Munteanu, Nina. 2016. “Water Is…The Meaning of Water.” Pixl Press, Vancouver. 586pp.
Streeck, Wolfgang. 2014. “How Will Capitalism End?” New Left Review 2 (87): 47p.
Thompson, E.P. 1980. “Notes on Exterminism: the Last Stage of Civilisation, Exterminism, and the Cold War.” New Left Review 1(121).
*the Final Solution was originally used by Nazi Germany as “the Final Solution to the Jewish Question”: the Nazi plan to exterminate the Jews during World War II, formulated in 1942 by Nazi leadership at the Wannsee Conference near Berlin, culminated in the Holocaust, which murdered 90 percent of Polish Jews.
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Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Early editions of “I, Robot”: 1950 1st edition hardcover by Gnome Press; 1950 dust jacket of 1st edition hardcover by Grosset & Dunlap; 1950 1st book club edition by Doubleday; 1952 1st UK edition by Grayson & Grayson; 1956 Signet cover; 1958 Digit Books UK; 1961 Signet 3rd printing; 1968 Signet 6th printing; 1970 Fawcett Crest; 1968 Panther Science Fiction
I reread Dr. Isaac Asimov’s 74-year-old masterpiece, I, Robot, in preparation for the 2004 Twentieth Century Fox motion picture of the same name, knowing fully well that to appeal to today’s action-thriller rollercoaster-addicted audience there was no way the movie and the book could even come close. I was right. But not the way I thought I would be.
The movie, directed by Alex Proyas, begins with the three laws of robotics:
First Law: that robots must not harm a human being;
Second Law: they must obey human orders, so long as this does not violate the first law; and
Third Law: they must protect their own existence, so long as that doesn’t violate laws one and two.
Apart from these three laws and the use of the same title and some of the character names, the motion picture appears to radically depart from Asimov’s book, first published by Gnome Press in 1950. To give Twentieth Century Fox credit, the film does not pretend to be the same as the book; I noticed that in the credits the movie was “suggested by,” rather than “based on” Asimov’s work. But how different was it, really? I submit that the two are much more similar than they first appear.
The robot Sonny causes a great ruckus when he ignores the three laws
Surficial differences between book and motion picture are nevertheless glaring. First off, Asimov’s, I, Robot, is essentially a string of short stories that evolve along a theme; much in the vein of Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury. The book is told largely from the point of view of Dr. Susan Calvin, a plain and stern robo-psychologist, who gets along better with robots than with humans. Dr. Asimov uses this cold and colourless character as a vehicle to stir undercurrents of poignant thought on the human condition through a series of deceptively mundane tales. I, Robot offers a treatise both of humanity’s ingenuity and its foibles and how these two are inexorably intertwined in paradoxes that speak to the ultimate truth of what it is to be human. Each of his nine stories discloses a metaphoric piece of his clever puzzle. The puzzle pieces successively tease us through the three laws of robotics, as ever more sophisticated robots toil with their conflicts when dealing with perceived logical contradictions of the laws. For instance, there is “Robbie,” the endearing nursemaid robot. Cutie (QT-1) is a robot Descartes in “Reason.” In “Liar,” Herbie has problems coping with the three laws as a mind-reading robot. And in “Little Lost Robot,” Susan Calvin must out-smart Nestors — or the NS-2 — model robots, whose positronic brains were not impressioned with the entire First Law of Robotics. The larger question and ultimate paradox posed by the three laws culminate in Asimov’s final story, “The Evitable Conflict,” which subtly explores the role of “free will” and “faith” in our definition of what it means to be human.
The book jacket of the mass market 1991 Bantam book aptly describes I, Robot this way: “…humans and robots struggle to survive together — and sometimes against each other … and both are asking the same questions: what is human? And is humanity obsolete?” Interestingly, the latter part of the book jacket quote, which accompanied the 1991 Bantam mass-market edition, can be interpreted in several ways.
Asimov’s stories span fifty years of robot evolution, which play out mostly in space from Mercury to beyond our own galaxy. Proyas’s movie is set in Chicago in 2035 and condenses the time frame into a short few weeks with some flashbacks from several years prior. This serves the film well but at some cost. What is gained in tension and focus is lost in scope and erudition, two qualities often best left to the literary field. Asimov’s tales are quirky, contemplative, and thoughtful. The film version is more direct, trading these for a faster pace, pretty much a prerequisite in the film industry today.
Chicago of “I, Robot” in 2035
The original screenplay, entitled “Hardwired” by Jeff Vinter, was reworked by Akiva Goldsman into a techno-thriller/murder mystery directed by Alex Proyas (Dark City) with its requisite hard-boiled detective cop (Will Smith) and a ‘suicide’ that looks suspiciously like murder. Smith’s character (a Hollywood invention, so don’t go looking for him in the book) is a 20th century anachronism: a Luddite who wears retro clothes and sets his computer car on manual. The story centers on Spooner’s investigation of a so-called suicide by Dr. Alfred Lanning, robot pioneer and the originator of the three laws of robotics. Lanning was an employee of U.S. Robotics, a mega-corporation run by Lawrence Robertson (Bruce Greenwood). Robertson relies on the real brains, V.I.K.I, the corporation’s super-intelligent virtual computer.
the NS-5 robot Sonny with VIKI in the background
NS-5 robot assisting in the home
By this time, technology and robots are a trusted part of everyday life; except for robo-phobic police detective Spooner, who nurses a guilty secret for his prejudice.
With a “simple-minded” plot (according to Roger Ebert, Chicago Sun-Times) and a lead character who is little more than a “wisecracking … guns-a-blazin’… action-hero cliché” (Rob Blackwelder, Splicedwire), the motion picture rendition of Asimov’s ground-breaking book seems to promise little but disappointment for the literate science fiction fan according to many critics.
I disagree.
I was not disappointed. This is both despite and because of director Alex Proyas’s interpretation of Asimov’s book and his three laws. Several critics focused on the surficial plot at the expense of the subtle multi-layered thematic sub-plots contrived by a director not known for creating superficial action-figure fluff. I think this critical myopia was generated from critics admittedly not having read Asimov’s masterpiece. Familiarity with Asimov’s I, Robot is a prerequisite to recognizing the subtle intelligence Proyas wove into his otherwise playful and glitzy Hollywood techno-thriller.
Detective Spooner talks to Dr. Lanning’s holo at USR after his apparent suicide
While literate science fiction fans will certainly recognize the names of Lanning, Calvin and Robertson, these movie characters in no way resemble their book counterparts. Dr. Calvin (Bridget Moynahan) is a robo-psychologist, but in the movie she is far from plain and fails to disguise that she is clearly ruled by her feelings, unlike the coldly logical book character. The lead character in the film, Detective Del Spooner (Will Smith) is, of course, a Hollywood fabrication, along with an entourage of requisite techno-thriller components: spectacular chase and battle scenes, explosions, lots of shooting, and some romantic tension. The film is also fraught with Hollywood clichés: for instance, repressed psychologist (Moynahan), who typically speaks in three-syllabic words, encounters cynical anti-hero beefy cop (Smith) whose rude attentions help transform her into a gun-slinging kick-ass warrior.
Megalithic USR vehicles housing killer robots close in on Spooner’s car in a rousing car-chase scene
Of course, there is also the ‘evil’ machine that turns against its masters to rule the world. But Proyas also treats us to some of the most convincing portrayals of a futuristic metropolis, complete with seamlessly incorporated CGI-generated robots and an evocative score by Peter Anthony. Dr. Asimov fans will, of course, also recognize certain aspects of the book in the movie, such as a scene and concepts borrowed from “Little Lost Robot.”
NS-4 Fedex courier in future Chicago
Despite the clichés and comic-action razzle-dazzle, Proyas manages to preserve the soul and spirit of Dr. Asimov’s great creation. He does this by allowing us to glimpse some of Asimov’s elevated theme, if not his more complex questions.
The most poignant scenes in the movie are those which involve the ‘humanity’ of the robot called Sonny (Alan Tudyk). A unique NS-5 model with a secondary processing system that clashes with his positronic brain, Sonny is capable of rejecting any of the three laws and hence provides us ironically with the most complex (and interesting) character in the movie. Sonny is both humble and feisty, a robot who dreams and questions. For me, this was not unlike the several stirring scenes in Asimov’s “Liar,” where the mind-reading robot, Herbie, when dealing with the complex nature of humans, unintentionally caused its own destruction (with the help of a bitter Dr. Calvin) by trying to please everyone by telling them what he thought they wanted to hear. Sonny’s complex character (like any character with depth) keeps you guessing. Sonny asks the right questions and at the end of the film we are left wondering about his destiny and what he will make of it. This parallels Asimov’s equally ambiguous ending in “The Evitable Conflict.”
As Spooner searches for him, Sonny hides among his own
Sonny holds a gun to Dr. Calvin’s head
Which brings me back to the foundation shared by both book and movie: the three laws of robotics, the infinite ways that they can be interpreted, and how they may be equally applied to robot or human. The laws may apply physically or emotionally; individually or toward the whole of humanity; long-term or short-term … the list is potentially endless. Asimov’s collection of stories centers on these questions by showing how robots deal with the conflicts the perceived contradictions present by the laws. Asimov’s last story describes a world run by a network of powerful but benevolent machines, who guide humankind through strict adherence to the three laws (their interpretation, of course!).
USR vehicles dominate the streets of Chicago
Taking his cue from this, Proyas cleverly takes an old cliché—that of ‘evil’ machine with designs to rule the world—and turns it upside down according to the first law of robotics. His ‘evil’ machine turns out not to be evil, but misguided. V.I.K.Y acts not out of its own interests, like the self-preserving HAL in 2001: A Space Odyssey, but in the best interests of humankind (at least according to the machine). Citing humanity’s self-destructive proclivity to pollute and make war, V.I.K.Y decides to treat us as children and pull the plug on free-will. Viewed from the perspective of the first law, this is simply a logical, though erroneous, extrapolation of ‘good will’; and far more interesting than the workings of simple ‘evil,’ which I feel is much overdone and overrated in films these days. The well-meaning dictator possessed of the hubristic notion that he holds all the keys to the happiness and well-being of others smacks of a reality and a humanity all too prevalent in well-meaning governments today. It is when the line between ‘good-intentions’ and ‘wrong-doing’ blur that things get really interesting.
Doctor Calvin prepares to terminate Sonny
Both Asimov and Proyas explore this chiaroscuro in I, Robot, though in different ways. The challenge is still the same: If given the choice of ending war and all conflict at the expense of ‘free will,’ would we permit benevolent machines to run our world? Or is it our destiny—and requirement for the transcendence of our souls—to continue to make those mistakes at the expense of a life free of self-destruction and violence?
On the surface, Proyas offers the obvious answer. He likens the benevolent machine to an overprotective parent, who in the interests of a child’s safety, prevents the enrichment of that child’s heart, soul, and spirit otherwise provided by that very conflict. Asimov is far more subtle in “The Evitable Conflict” and while these questions are discussed at length, they remain largely unanswered.
In one of his most clever stories, “Evidence,” near the end of his book, Dr. Asimov expounds on the three laws to describe the ultimate dilemma: of defining and differentiating a human-looking robot with common sense from a genuine human on the basis of psychology. Asimov’s Dr. Calvin says: “The three Rules of Robotics are the essential guiding principles of a good many of the world’s ethical systems. Every human being is supposed to have the instinct of self-preservation. That’s Rule Three to a robot. Also every ‘good’ human being, with a social conscience and a sense of responsibility, is supposed to defer to proper authority. That’s Rule Two to a robot. Also, every ‘good’ human being is supposed to love others as himself, protect his fellow man, risk his life to save another. That’s Rule One to a robot. To put it simply, if [an individual] follows all the Rules of Robotics, he may be a robot, and may simply be a very good man.” Proyas metaphorically (if not literally) explores the question of “what is human” with his robotic character, Sonny.
Spooner discovers older robot models, grouped together in a storage container
In a stirring scene of the motion picture where Sonny is prepared for permanent shut down, Dr. Lanning expounds on his belief that robots could evolve naturally: “There have always been ghosts in the machine… random segments of code that have grouped together to form unexpected protocols. Unanticipated, these free radicals engender questions of free will, creativity, and even the nature of what we might call the soul… Why is it that when some robots are left in the dark they will seek the light? Why is it that when robots are stored in an empty space they will group together rather than stand alone? How do we explain this behaviour? Random segments of code? Or is it something more? When does a perceptual schematic become consciousness? When does a difference engine become the search for truth? When does a personality simulation become the bitter moat of the soul?”
Where abandoned robots congregate
I found myself following a less dazzling but deeper thread in the movie version of I, Robot. One steeped in metaphor that pulled at my emotions. Throughout the film, we were given subtle and brief glimpses of old robot models discarded as new ones were designed and launched. I remember one scene in particular that saddened me; alongside the cheerful rollout of the NS-5s, the NS-4s were unceremoniously removed and stored offsite to spend their remaining days in the darkness of storage.
In a later scene in the movie, these older models are hunted down by newer models and violently destroyed. It’s a slaughter. When Spooner stumbles on this robot-carnage, one injured NS-4, fearing for Spooner’s welfare, urges him to run.
Injured NS-4 exhorts Spooner to run away to save himself
Why did I find these scenes so sad? Was it the curiously disarming design of the ND-4? They did not fight back; designed to be kind, they simply let themselves be destroyed.
Perhaps I was reminded of how we can so easily abandon an old thing once loved for a new and shiny toy. No longer useful they are carelessly cast aside as somehow less than they might have once been. We’ve seen what becomes of anything we deem inferior or unworthy of our compassion. How we treat a perceived lesser being can often be cruel and careless. One need only look to our long history of human slavery, of animal abuse, of environmental exploitation, and even of material destruction. Our capitalist world lies replete with examples of neoliberal consumerism that favours a throwaway ethic. We have become a user society, addicted to the next big thing; the next i-phone, the next shiny car, the next new friend… Toss the old away without a care while we embrace the new…
Abandoned NS-4s left in storage with no purpose
Near the end of the film, Sonny, having fulfilled his initial purpose (i.e., stopping V.I.K.Y. to save humanity from oppressive subjugation), asks Spooner, “What about the others [the NS-4s and the NS-5s, recalled for servicing and storage]? Can I help them? Now that I have fulfilled my purpose I don’t know what to do.” To this, an enlightened Spooner answers: “I guess you’ll have to find your way like the rest of us, Sonny… That’s what it means to be free.”
Sonny finds a following
Proyas gives us a strong indication of what his film was really about by ending not with Spooner—his lead action-figure character who has just saved humanity from the misguided robot army—but with Sonny, the enigmatic robot just embarking on his uncertain journey. The motion picture closes with a final scene of Sonny, resembling a messianic figure on the precipice of a bluff, overlooking row upon row of his robotic counterparts.
We are left with an ambiguous ending of hope and mystery. What will Sonny do with his abilities, his dreams, and his potential “following”? Will his actions be for the betterment of humankind and/or robots? Will society trust him and let him seek and find his destiny or, like Asimov’s fearful “Society for Humanity,” will we squash them all before they get so complex and powerful that not only do we fail to understand them but we have no hope of controlling them? This parallels Asimov’s equally ambiguous ending in his book. In it, Stephen Byers (a humanoid AI), and robo-psychologist, Susan Calvin, discuss the fate of robots and humanity. Ironically, it is through her interaction with robots that Susan discovers a human trait that may be more valuable to humanity than exercising “free will”: that of faith. It is she who confronts the coordinator with these words: “…How do we know what the ultimate good of Humanity will entail? We haven’t at our disposal the infinite factors that the Machine has at its.” Then to his challenge that human kind has lost its own say in its future, she further responds with: “It never had any, really. It was always at the mercy of economic and sociological forces it did not understand … at the whims of climate, and the fortunes of war…Now the Machines understand them…for all time, all conflicts are finally evitable. Only the Machines, from now on, are inevitable.” This quote in Asimov’s final story may horrify or anger some, even as it may inspire and reassure others. But, if true “free will” is largely a self-perpetuated myth of the Western pioneer movement, then we are effectively left with respect and faith in oneself and in others. Perhaps, ultimately, that is what both Asimov and Proyas had in mind.
It is interesting to note that Harlan Ellison and Asimov collaborated on a screenplay of I, Robot in the 1970s, which Asimov said would provide “the first really adult, complex worthwhile science fiction movie ever made.” Am I disappointed that this earlier rendition, most likely truer to the original book, did not come to fruition? No. That is because we already have that story. You can still read the book (and I strongly urge you to, if you have not). Proyas’s film I, Robot is a different story, with a different interpretation. And like the robot’s own varying interpretation of the three laws, it is refreshing to see a different human’s interpretation expressed.
“I, Robot” movie poster
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
My guest today is author Simon Rose, who has published nineteen novels for children and young adults, eight guides for writers, more than a hundred nonfiction books, and many articles on a wide variety of topics. Today, we’re looking at his latest novel for young adults, An Untimely Death:
Nina: So, what’s the book all about?
Simon: An Untimely Death is an exciting science fiction and historical fantasy adventure for young adults. When Peter’s great-grandfather, Ted, passes away, Peter is looking through his belongings in the attic. Peter knows about Ted’s experiences with the Canadian Army in World War II and absentmindedly flips a coin. To his astonishment, Peter finds himself in the heat of battle in 1944, where he embarks on a highly dangerous mission to ensure that history is placed back on track.
Nina: What’s the story behind the story?
Simon: In the present day, Peter is fourteen and lives in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. He’s long known about the stories concerning the experiences of his great-grandfather during World War II. Peter knows that Ted participated in the invasion of Normandy in 1944, then in the Allied advance across Europe and into the Netherlands and Germany following D-Day.
When Ted passes away, Peter is looking through his great-grandfather’s belongings. Peter looks at some of Ted’s campaign medals, although Ted’s friend, Frank, had received the Military Medal, after saving the life of a young Dutch girl. The medal was awarded posthumously since Frank had been killed in action shortly after his heroic act. Peter also examines an old coin, which he knows Ted had found in a ruined house during the fighting in the Netherlands. The coin depicts the head of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands, and Peter is aware that Princess Juliana, who later became the Queen, lived in Ottawa during the war, establishing strong links between Canada and the Netherlands.
When Peter flips the coin, the attic around him vanishes. To his astonishment, Peter finds himself in the Battle of the Scheldt in the Southern Netherlands in 1944. He encounters the younger versions of Ted and Frank, as well as the Dutch girl, but Peter’s presence in the past has disastrous consequences for the world he knows when he returns to his own era. Suspecting that he may have very limited opportunities to make a difference, Peter embarks on a highly dangerous mission to ensure that history is placed back on track, before it’s too late.
Nina: You must have done quite a lot of historical research for this novel.
Simon: Yes, the story, main characters, and some of the settings in this novel are fictional but are based on true events that took place in World War II. I did lots of research into the latter stages of the conflict, the Canadian soldiers and their battles to liberate the Netherlands, the connections between the Dutch Royal Family and Canada, the beginnings of the Canadian Tulip Festival after the war, and the links between Canada and the Netherlands that still exist today.
Following the story, the glossary has links to online sources where readers can learn more about the historical events, military campaigns, settings, and leading characters from World War II that are featured in the story. On my website, there’s a page dedicated to the book, along with links to separate pages featuring information regarding the book’s historical background and links to many online sources.
Nina: What are you currently working on?
Simon: I always have a few current projects and right now I’m working on another historical fantasy novel series, this time set in the early years of World War II. I’m also working on more books in the same genre as my previously published paranormal Flashback series, a fantasy series, and a historical fiction novel. I also continue to work on the adaptations of my Shadowzone series into screenplays for movies and TV shows, some other scripts, as well as teaching writing courses at the University of Calgary.
Anyone interested in keeping up to date with the projects that I’m working on is always welcome to subscribe to my monthly newsletter, which you can do at www.simon-rose.com.
Nina: You work with other authors, as well as on a variety of projects related to writing and publishing, don’t you?
Simon: Yes, I offer coaching, editing, consulting, and mentoring services for writers of novels, short stories, fiction, nonfiction, biographies, and in many other genres, plus do work with writers of scripts and screenplays. I’m also a writing instructor and mentor at the University of Calgary and served as the Writer-in-Residence with the Canadian Authors Association. You can find details of some of the projects I’ve worked on with other authors, along with some references and recommendations, at www.simon-rose.com.
Nina: Where can people buy An Untimely Death?
Simon: The book can be purchased at most of the usual places, as follows:
Nina:Thanks Simon, for being my guest here today and the very best of luck with the AnUntimely Death. I hope that the book sells thousands and thousands of copies in the coming months.
You can learn more about Simon and his work on his website at www.simon-rose.com, where you can also link to him on social media and at other locations online.
I recently gave my lecture / workshop on the Hero’s Journey plot approach to a group of writers for Culture Days in Newmarket, Ontario.
The event, organized by the WCYR (Writing Community of York Region), took place in the art gallery of the Old Town Hall, located in the old downtown part of the city—an attractive section of streets and lanes with eclectic shops, cafés, bistros and bookstores for curious amblers.
Bustling Main Street near the Old Town Hall, Newmarket, ON
Three guidebooks of the Alien Guidebook series for writers
Cathy Miles, the program coordinator, encouraged me to brings books for sale, so I certainly included the three books of my Alien Guidebook Series on writing: The Fiction Writer, The Journal Writer, and The Ecology of Story, all also available at Amazon, Kobo, Barnes & Noble and other quality bookstores, which I sold for a workshop price. Cathy gave me a wonderful introduction to a room full of eager writers and I also had the pleasure of meeting Janice Luttrell, the Recreation Programmer with the City of Newmarket, who was hosting the event as part of Newmarket’s Culture Days.
Drawing from several chapters in The Fiction Writer, I introduced the Hero’s Journey map structure, based on Ingrid Sundberg’s plot structure, and discussed the 12-step hero’s journey according to mythologist Joseph Campbell.
We also discussed the seven chief archetypes associated with the journey steps: hero, mentor, herald, threshold guardian, trickster, shapeshifter, and shadow.
Nina teaching “The Hero’s Journey” plot approach over the years in Nova Scotia, BC and Ontario
I’ve given this workshop many times and always enjoyed the lights that came on in participants; this time was no different. My session was fun and very well received. I saw lots of interest and received many good questions—a sure sign. One participant was quoted as saying:
“What a great event! Your presentation was insightful. I really appreciated being able to follow along in the book while listening to your explanations. That is going to help me remember the concepts as I read the book and then apply them to my writing.”
The WCYR book table at the event (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Elliott sells my books at the WCYR book table (photo by Nina Munteanu)
All in all, it was a good day…
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
The third of MetastellarMagazine’s ‘Best of’ anthologies The Best of Metastellar Year Three was recently released and is available at numerous booksellers. Available in print and ebook, the anthology hosts forty-six riveting short stories of science fiction, fantasy and horror. This anthology also features my dark speculative story “Virtually Yours.” Their second ‘Best of’ anthology contained my short story “The Way of Water.”
Virtually Yours in The Best of Metastellar Year Three: In a world of seamless surveillance where virtual and real coalesce in a teasing dance, love is the trickster…
The Way of Water in TheBest of Metastellar Year Two: A woman stands two metres from a public water tap, dying of thirst in a water-scarce world rife with corporate/government corruption…
Nina tickled when her copy of “The Best of Metastellar Anthology Three” arrives in the mail
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
When I was first tantalized by the high-speed head-smashing trailor for the Paramount motion picture, Aeon Flux, directed by Karyn Kusama (Girlfight) and released in late 2005 (now on DVD), I was blissfully unaware of its history: that it was based on the darkly irreverant and raunchy 1995 MTV Liquid Television animated SF series created by Korean American animator, Peter Chung. The series achieved cult status among a select audience of imsoniacs (it played at midnight on MTV, if that tells you anything). This may have worked in my favour. I had no expectations or preconceptions, except for a hair-flying ride. As a result, when the content (written by Matt Manfredi and Phil Hay) had merit as social commentary, I counted it as a bonus. But, then there was the matter of the reviews that emerged between the trailors airing and my seeing the film.
Aeon Flux, animated and movie character
Unfortunately for the motion picture, Paramount’s lack of press-screenings (and subsequent press reaction because of those lack of screenings) may have predisposed critics to dislike it. And many provided negative, though conflicting, reviews; as if they couldn’t all agree on why they didn’t like the film. Kieth Breese (Filmcritic.com) found the film “gorgeously surreal and vacuously arty.” According to Jami Bernard (New York Daily News), “in the dystopian future [of Aeon Flux], apparently, women will be bendable Barbies in leather scanties, and everyone will speak like brain-dead robots…a silly live-action movie.” Justin Chung (Variety.com) decided that AeonFlux portrayed “the future [as] alternatively grim and hysterical…a spectacularly silly sci-fier.” A.O. Scott of the New York Times said that Aeon Flux was “flooded with colors and chilly effects [but was] drained of emotional interest, to say nothing of narrative coherence.” And, finally, William Arnold of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer called it “too somber and cerebral for the young action crowd.” Silly or too cerebral? In truth, this disappointment is because the Aeon Flux movie was wrongly perceived (and wrongly marketed) as an action thriller; it is more aptly described as a dystopian political thriller—not the brazen cry of V for Vendetta—but a subtle cautionary tale of the consequences of complacency, greed and living in absence of—and trying to cheat—nature.
Trevor Goodchild played by Marton Csokas)
In typical dystopian fashion, we join the Aeon Flux story roughly four hundred years after an industrial-related virus has killed 99% of the world’s population. Scientist, Trevor Goodchild (Marton Csokas) has developed a cure and the Goodchild dynasty secures a home for the five million survivors in the last city on Earth, Bregna, a paradise walled off from the unrestrained wilderness that ever-threatens them. Dystopias, like Bregna, often appear utopian on the surface, exhibiting a world free of poverty, hardship and conflict, but with some fatal flaw at their core. A dystopia (“dys”=bad; “topos”=place) is a fictional society that is the antithesis of utopia. It is usually characterized by an authoritarian or totalitarian form of government or some kind of oppressive, often insiduous, social control. Other examples that depict a range of distopian societies in literature and film include: 1984, Brave New World, Fahrenheit 451, TheHandmaid’s Tale, Metropolis, THX-1138, Blade Runner, and V for Vendetta. Built from scientific premise and intended only as a temporary measure, the technocratic society of Bregna continues long after its intended span as the Goodchilds attempt to deal with an internal and enduring glitch (infertility) of the “cure”. Like most imposed provisional governments, this solution to a problem (cloning) has created yet another problem (fugitive memories from the previous clone’s life).
It is now 2415 and the walled society of Bregna appears utopian—clean and organized, beautiful, rich and spacious; but beneath the laughter and contentment, stirs an uneasy disquiet. Bregnans are losing sleep, having bad dreams, and are plagued by memories that don’t belong to them. Rebels who call themselves the Monicans challenge the Goodchild regime, run by Trevor and his brother Oren, and among the rebels is a highly competent and ruthless assassin, Aeon Flux (Charlize Theron), whose tools include whistle-controlled ball-bearing bombs, drugs that allow her to meet people on higher planes of existence, and interchangeable eyeballs. She is aptly named, as she serves a true agent of discord to Goodchild, the guardian of order and all that he naïvely believes is good.
“Some call Bregna the perfect society,” Aeon tells us in the opening scenes of the motion picture, “Some call it the height of human civilization…but others know better…We are haunted by sorrows we cannot name. People disappear and our government denies these crimes…But there are rebels who…fight for the disappeared. They call themselves the Monicans. I am one of them.” Several critics disliked the narrative introduction. I found that it particularly worked, by adding a reflective literary quality to the motion picture. It is noteworthy that in the original animated series, Trevor Goodchild often frames each episode with his reflections; only fitting that Aeon gets her chance in the film version. The reflective narrative of the motion picture is meant to enlighten its audience that this is not your ordinary action thriller. What follows is a fast-paced yet thoughtful story, with elements of romance, that explores notions of longevity, social structure and connection, faith and greed.
Aeon fights an opponent inside Goodchild’s fortress
Twitchfilm.net aptly called the motion picture “biological science fiction”. Trevor’s treacherous brother Oren says: “We’ve beaten death. We’ve beaten nature.” The film’s clean organic high-tech look faithfully captures the “sense of biotech gone wild” of the TV series by exploring several paradigms inherent in a society that lives deliberately in the absence of nature’s chaos. Indeed, the lack of connectivity resonates throughout the motion picture in its exploration of friendship, family, loyalty, and purpose. When her sister is murdered in the beginning of the film supposedly by Trevor’s men (but in actuality by his scheming brother, Oren), Aeon’s mission becomes personal: “I had a family once. I had a life; now all I have is a mission.” We never learn what the animated Aeon’s motives are.
Various scenes of Aeon Flux motion picture
The film truly launches into stylish action and intrigue when Aeon gladly accepts a mission to assassinate Trevor, thinking that this violent act will make it all better. Instead, it unravels her, beginning with when she confronts him; finding him uncomfortably familiar and alluring, she hesitates and decides not to kill him. “What do you want?” Trevor asks her. “I want my sister back. I want to remember what it’s like to be a person.” It is indeed he—or rather what he knows—that holds the key to who she is. The key is that she, like he and all those in Bregna, is a 400 year-old copy of someone before the virus. Four hundred years ago she was the original Trevor’s wife.
Trevor and Aeon on the run
Filmed in Berlin, the movie is visually stunning, from the opening shot on the steps of Sans Souci to the labrinthine wind canal used by the Nazis. Displaying an eclectic mixture of spareness and mid-century design the film is acted out in a fluid dance to Graeme Revell’s (Sin City) haunting score. The action is rivetting and seamless with both plot and underlying theme of bio-tech gone awry. Early on we are treated to a thrilling sequence of Aeon and her biotech-altered rebel colleague negotiating the security of Goodchild’s sanctuary that consists of a beautiful but deadly garden, guarded by patches of knife-sharp blades of grass and poison dart-spitting fruit trees.
Wind canal in Berlin serves as entrance to Goodchild’s fortress
Aeon champions moral ethics and single-handedly destroys the relicor, the supposetory of the clone DNA, pursuing honour at the expense of loyalty (to Goodchild) and heralding in a new age of “mortality”. The movie ends as it begins, with Aeon’s narrative: “Now we can move forward. To live once for real and then give way to people who might do it better…to live only once but with hope.” This is truly what Aeon Flux represents and what her very name embodies.
The relicor, repository of Bregna’s clone DNA flies overhead
Keeper of the precious DNA storage in the relicor
The term Aeon comes from the Gnostic notion of “Aeons” as emanations of God. Aeon also means an immeasurably long period of time; the Suntelia Aeon in Greek mythos symbolizes the catastrophic end of one age and the beginning of a new one. This is apt for our heroine, who, at least in the movie version, pretty well single-handedly destroys an old corrupt world, and heralds in a new age. Aeon was “emanated” after four hundred years by the gentle oracular Keeper of the relicor, whose original version saved her DNA and kept it hidden and safe until the right moment.
Aeon Flux captures a fly in her eyelashes
Fans of Peter Chung’s baroquely violent animated Aeon Flux will recognize some similarities between Kusama’s 2005 film adaptation and the original MTV cartoon. While admitting that the motion picture version was only based on Peter Chung’s characters (check the credits), Karyn Kusama intended to “honor [the cartoon version’s] wierdness in spirit and…pay homage to its esoteric boldness and…strange energy.” Homages to the animated series include: Aeon’s signature fly-catching with her eyelashes, demonstrating a woman extremely in tune with her body; Monican anarchists (though in the film they are subversives within Bregna rather than from an adjacent society); a virus that kills off most of the population and assassination attempt on Goodchild (Pilot); the harness worn on the torso that transports the wearer to another dimension (Utopia or Deuteranopia?); passing secret messages through a french kiss (Gravity); issues of cloning and two colleagues crossing a weaponized no-man’s land together (A Last Time for Everything). Original and movie adaptation also share at their core the exploration of the consequences and ambiguities of choices in life and the role that nature plays, subversive or otherwise.
Aeon Flux stands at the wall into Bregna, ready to scale it
Although they share recognizable motifs and characters, the 2005 movie adaptation contrasts in some important ways from the six 5-minute shorts of 1991 and 10 half-hour episode TV series that aired in 1995. Chung’s avante garde series is set mostly in a surrealistic dark future Earth (presumably) where two communities, Bregna and Monica, are juxtaposed but separated by a wall (not unlike East and West Berlin). Bregna is a centralized scientific-planned society and Monica is Bregna’s ‘evil twin’, an anarchistic society. Chung’s innovative use of “camera angles” reminiscient of cinematography, together with a spare, graphic choreography, portrays a sprawling Orwellian industrial world. Peopled with mutant creatures, clones, and robots, it features disturbing images of dismemberment, mutilation, violent deaths and human experimentation as Chung explores post-modern notions of cloning, mind and body manipulation, and evolution through a series of subversive aggressively non-narrative pieces. On the subject of his cloning experiments (A Last Time for Everything) Goodchild says to Aeon: “My work offends you. Why? Human beings aren’t so unique, just a random arrangement of amino acids.” To which Aeon retorts, “These people you’re copying are already superfluous. You’re trafficking in excess.”
The title character in the animated version is a tall, scantily-clad anarchist (featuring the sultry voice of Denise Poirier) skilled in assassination and acrobatics, who infiltrates technocratic Bregna from the neighbouring revolutionary society of Monica. As with the movie character (elegantly portrayed by Theron), the animated Aeon is a stylish dance; completely in tune with her body. Says Chung of his creation: “The way she’s dressed, the way she looks, the way she moves was tailored to seduce the viewer to watch more, even though they may not understand at every moment what was happening.”
Despite their similar intelligence, physicality and drive, the two Aeons depart as characters. For instance, one of the major differences between original animation and adapted film is the ongoing relationship between Aeon and her nemesis/lover, Trevor Goodchild (John Rafter Lee). The sexual and intellectual tension between Flux and Goodchild is far more palpable in the TV series and does not explain itself or resolve itself like it does in the movie. The opening of the animated series describes their odd relationship, which suggests that their destinies are bound together: Aeon: “You’re out of control.” Trevor: “I take control. Who’s side are you on?” Aeon: “I take no side.” Trevor: “You’re skating the edge.” Aeon: “I am the edge.” Trevor: “What you truly want only I can give.” Aeon: “You can’t give it, you can’t even buy it and you just don’t get it.”
Goodchild and Aeon interacting
The Gnostic “Aeons”, emanations of God, come in male/female pairs (aptly represented by Flux and Goodchild). As with the Gnostic “Aeon pairs”, Flux and Goodchild make up inseperable parts, the yin/yang (complementary opposites) of a whole, and represent the paraxical oxymoron of chaos in order. Long-limbed and continually in fluid motion, Flux dances through Goodchild’s rigid scientific world of order with an ease that stirs both his fascination and his fury. He, in turn, enthralls her and ensnares her with his intellectual hubris. The Gnostic “Aeon” male/female pair (called syzygies) of Caen (Power) and Akhana (e.g., Love) closely parallel Goodchild and Flux as they flirt with each other in a complex dance of power and love. Their attraction/antagonism mimics the characterizations of Eris (Greek goddess of discord) and Greyface (a man who taught that life is serious and play is a sin) in the Discordian mythos. Like Eris and her golden apple, Aeon Flux stirs up trouble for Goodchild’s complacent technocratic regime, constantly challenging his hubristic notions of human evolution, perfection and even love.
Aeon and fellow Monican discuss tactics
The cartoon Aeon Flux—and Trevor Goodchild, for that matter—are also far more compelling than those depicted in the movie. Headstrong, foolish and selfish but also dedicated and deeply compassionate and honourable, Chung’s Aeon Flux is a paradox. She scintilates with passionate self-defined notions against an industrial tyranny, while nurturing a naïve desire for personal love; the target of both being found in one man, Trevor Goodchild. Often cruel at times, she shows moments of selfless consideration, compassion and humour. Despite her violence, perverted fetishes and lustful obsessions, she is as appealing as she is strange; a discordant rock tune, which often enough hits a resonating note that draws out one’s interest and captures one’s empathy.
Chung’s Aeon Flux on a mission
Kusama’s Aeon Flux being targeted by another Monican
In contrast to the super-hero competence and aloofness of the movie Aeon, the animated Aeon is wonderfully flawed; she is a complex paradoxical character, who makes mistakes, blundering often due to over-confidence and poor decisions (usually connected with her feelings for Trevor). Chung’s Goodchild is equally complex, and is, unlike the naïve and rather feckless scientist of the movie, a true equal to Flux’s energetic and often misplaced heroics. Kusama’s Goodchild is neither menacing nor diabolical; rather, he is a well-intentioned and watered-down version of the Machiavelian scientist that Chung created. And, though quite appealing, he is also less compelling as a result. Chung’s Goodchild is a visionary pedant, who often spouts twisted Orwellian diatribe: “That which does not kill us makes us stranger.” “The unobserved state is a fog of probabilities…” “There can be no justice without truth. But what is truth? Tell me, if you know, and I will not believe you.” Flux cuts through Goodchild’s dogma with her own one-liners—“Trevor, don’t trouble me with your thin smile”—and usually shuts him up with either a smack or a kiss.
Aeon dispatches masked baddies
The animated series is far more gritty and edgy than the movie version, featuring twisted eroticism and dark humor amid scenes of graphic violence. It oozes with a delicious perversity that the movie version abandoned in favour of cohesive narrative (and a PG-13 rating). Showing a healthy and irreverent disregard for that very narrative continuity, Chung’s animated series successfully makes commentary on various societal notions and behaviours through his uniquely disjointed and liberating form. Chung asserts that this plot ambiguity and disregard for continuity were meant to satirize mainstream film narratives. I think it does far more than this as art form, by providing a journalistic style of reporting the nuances and filigrees of life that gives it an immediacy hard to overlook. Chung’s apparent intention was to emphasize the futility of violence and the ambiguity of personal morality. This is best shown in his six 5-minute shorts and pilot, created in 1991. The shorts commonly featured a violent death for the title character, sometimes caused by fate, but more often due to her own incompetence.
Chung’s Aeon Flux
The TV Aeon Flux flows like a subversive movement; punctuated by a series of abstract, often garish, statements on various themes of soulless biotechnology. Each episode is a vignette that explores singular questions of integrity, honour, loyalty, belief and love using the clever platform of the kiss/kill dynamic of Aeon and Trevor.
Their interactions scintillate with clever wordplay, often amid physical-play that usually involves a pointed weapon: Aeon: “You’re psychotic. You no longer have a common conscience with your fellow man.” Trevor: “I understand the will of evil…[it] is like an iron in a forge…conscience is the fire.” Aeon: “you’ve lost the substance by grasping at the shadow.” The underlying question of connectivity and what it is to be human filter through his discordant series primarily through the twining of his two main characters, both loners with little connection to anything except to one another (which they both seek and abhor). The motion picture version pursues through a more structured and lengthy narrative, the same theme of connectivity (with nature, with others of our society, with family, and our beliefs) and the consequence of living a life with out meaning, though on a far more simple level. At the end of Kusama’s movie, Aeon challenges Trevor’s assertion that cloning is their only answer for survival: “We’re meant to die. That’s what makes anything about us matter…[otherwise] we’re ghosts.” In contrast, at the end of Chung’s episode, Reraizure, Trevor closes with these words of reflection: “We are not what we remember of ourselves. We can undo only what others have already forgotten. Learn from your mistakes so that one day you can repeat them precisely.”
Aeon and Trevor come to terms
Kusama’s film version chose narrative coherence to make its statements by sacrificing character for story and challenging its audience cerebrally. Chung’s cartoon version challenges us more deeply, at a visceral level, through the interplay of his characters where cohesive narrative doesn’t matter. In the final analysis, the motion picture version pursues the same questions posed by Chung’s original animated version. Only, Chung isn’t so eager to provide answers, leaving both interpretation and conclusions to the individual. Both versions are mind-provoking and a celebration of excellent art. While the film’s moralistic tale resonated and lingered like a muse’s long forgotten poem, the subversive kick of the comic series (which I thankfully saw later) struck deep chords and left me breathless with questions.
Enforcers attack Monicans
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
In the passage below of my eco-fiction dystopian novel A Diary in the Age of Water, the year is 2065 and the diarist Lynna (a limnologist at the University of Toronto) reflects on the steeply growing infertility in humans and our tenuous future. Lynna draws on the factual study published close to fifty years earlier (in 2017) by Hagai Levine and others at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who found that sperm counts among western men had reduced close to 60% in four decades:
Back in ’49, Daniel and I had several discussions about the environmental triggers and epigenetic mechanisms of infertility in humans. Daniel went on about how it was all about the men. While women showed signs of increased infertility, men’s rate of infertility was more than double that of the women, he said. Taking an inappropriately gleeful tone, Daniel cited the classic 2017 paper by the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the one that started it all. Their findings were startling: men’s sperm count in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand had diminished by sixty percent in forty years, between 1973 and 2011. The scientists predicted that by 2060, virtually all men in these parts of the world would have little to no reproductive capacity.
It’s 2065 and they’re right. Only it’s worse. Before the twenties, only the developed countries seemed to be affected, but then sperm counts started to plummet in South American countries, like Argentina and Brazil, where GMO, pesticides, and solvent manufacturing were exploding.
You get out what you put into the ground. India and Asia—where endocrine-disruptive chemicals are finding their way into the water—are reporting very low sperm counts in their men as well as higher incidents of intersex humans.
You get out what you put into the water. We are over two thirds water, after all. I find it a little ironic that we’ve inadvertently produced a non-discriminatory way to control the problem of humanity’s overpopulation. Infertility. And that infertility results from defiling the environment we live in.
But now climate change is shouldering its way in. Climate change is shutting us down.
Is this the first sign of our impending extinction?
–excerpt from “A Diary in the Age of Water”
That environmental perturbations impact our ability to reproduce has been proven. In their 2017 article, Levine et al. write that:
“Sperm count and other semen parameters have been plausibly associated with multiple environmental influences, including endocrine disrupting chemicals (Bloom et al., 2015; Gore et al., 2015), pesticides (Chiu et al., 2016), heat (Zhang et al., 2015) and lifestyle factors, including diet (Afeiche et al., 2013; Jensen et al., 2013), stress (Gollenberg et al., 2010; Nordkap et al., 2016), smoking (Sharma et al., 2016) and BMI (Sermondade et al., 2013; Eisenberg et al., 2014a). Therefore, sperm count may sensitively reflect the impacts of the modern environment on male health throughout the life course (Nordkap et al., 2012).”
This rain falling on an Ontario marsh most certainly contains forever chemicals (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Thanks to chemical companies such as DuPont and others, forever chemicalsare currently in rain water globally, and in many places in unhealthy concentrations. These endocrine-disrupting and cancer-causing chemicals often end up in drinking water and include PCBs, phthalates, PFAS, BPAs (used in pesticides, children’s products, industrial solvents and lubricants, food storage, electronics, personal care products and cookware).
Heavy rain in Mississauga, ON (photo by Nina Munteanu)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Illustration depicting ‘Rocket Summer’ (image from The Black Cat Moan)
They came because they were afraid or unafraid, happy or unhappy. There was a reason for each man. They were coming to find something or get something, or to dig up something or bury something. They were coming with small dreams or big dreams or none at all
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles
When I was but a sprite, and before I became an avid reader of books (I preferred comic books), I read Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles. It changed me, what I thought of books and what I felt about the power of stories. It made me cry. And perhaps that was when I decided to become a writer. I wanted to move people as Bradbury had moved me.
The 1970 Bantam book jacket aptly describes The Martian Chronicles as, “a poetic fantasy about the colonization of Mars. The story of familiar people and familiar passions set against incredible beauties of a new world…A skillful blending of fancy and satire, terror and tenderness, wonder and contempt.”
Rockets land on Mars overlooking Bradbury Lane (illustration from Sutori)
The Martian Chronicles isn’t really about Mars. True to Bradbury’s master metaphoric storytelling, The Martian Chronicles is about humanity. Who we are, what we are and what we may become. What we inadvertently do—to others, and finally to ourselves—and how the irony of chance can change everything. Despite the knowledge of no detectable amounts of oxygen, Bradbury gave Mars a breathable atmosphere: “Mars is a mirror, not a crystal,” he said, using the planet for social commentary rather than to predict the future.
From “Rocket Summer” to “The Million-Year Picnic,” Ray Bradbury’s stories of the colonization of Mars form an eerie tapestry of past and future. Written in the 1940s, the chronicles long with the nostalgia of shady porches with pitchers of lemonade, ponderously ticking grandfather clocks, and comfortable sofas. Expedition after expedition leave Earth to investigate and colonize Mars. Though the Martians guard their mysteries well, they succumb to the diseases that come with the rocketeers and grow extinct—not unlike the quiet disappearance of the golden toad, the Pinta giant tortoise, or the Bramble Cay melomys. Humans, with ideas often no more lofty than starting a tourist hot-dog stand, bear no regret for the native alien culture they exploit and eventually displace.
It is a common theme of human colonialism and expansionism, armed with the entitlement of privilege. Mars is India to the imperialistic British Empire. It is Rwanda or Zaire to the colonial empire of the cruel jingoistic King Leopold II of Belgium. Mars is Europe to Nazi Germany’s sonderweg. We need look no further than our own Canadian soil for a reflection of this slow violence of disrespect and apathy by our settler ancestors on the indigenous peoples of Canada.
Mars was a distant shore, and the men spread upon it in waves… Each wave different, and each wave stronger.
The Martian Chronicles
Tyler Miller of The Black Cat Moan makes excellent commentary in their 2016 article entitled “How Ray Bradbury’s ‘The Martian Chronicles’ changed Science Fiction (and Literature).”The article begins with a quote from Argentinean author Jorge Luis Borges (in the introduction to the Spanish-language translation of The Martian Chronicles: “What has this man from Illinois done, I ask myself when closing the pages of this book, that episodes from the conquest of another planet fill me with horror and loneliness?”
Remember, this was the 1950s … halfway through a century dominated by scientific discovery, and expansion. The 1950s saw developments in technology, such as nuclear energy and space exploration. On the heels of the end of World War II, the 1950s was ignited by public imagination on conquering space, creating technological futures and robotics. The 1950s was considered by some as the real golden age for science fiction, still a kind of backwater genre read mostly by boys and young men, that told glimmering tales of adventure, exploration, and militarism, of promising technologies, and often-androcratic societies who used them in the distant future to conquer other worlds full of strange and disposable alien beings in the name of democracy and capitalism. (In some ways, this is still very much the same.Though, it is thankfully changing…)
(Bantam 1951 1st edition cover)
Many scientists deeply involved in the exploration of the solar system (myself among them) were first turned in that direction by science fiction. And the fact that some of that science fiction was not of the highest quality is irrelevant. Ten year‐olds do not read the scientific literature.
Carl Sagan, 1978
First edition book covers of Martian Chronicles (Doubleday, 1950); I, Robot (Grayson & Grayson, 1952); Childhood’s End (Ballantine Books, 1953); and Starship Troopers (G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1959)
Large idea-driven SF works that typified this time period included Robert A. Heinlein’s Starship Troopers, Arthur C. Clarke’s Childhood’s End, Isaac Asimov’s I, Robot and his Foundation series.
It was at this time that Ray Bradbury published The Martian Chronicles. Though filled with the requisite rocket ships, gleaming Martian cities, ray guns, and interplanetary conquest, from the very start—as Borges noted—The Martian Chronicles departed radically from its SF counterparts of the time.
(Illustration on album cover of “Rocket Summer”, music by Chris Byman)
Instead of starting with inspiring technology or a stunning action sequence, or a challenging idea or discovery, Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles opens with a domestic scene.
One minute it was Ohio winter, with doors closed, windows locked, the panes blind with frost, icicles fringing every roof, children skiing on the slopes, housewives lumbering like great black bears in their furs along the icy streets.
And then a long wave of warmth crossed the small town. A flooding sea of hot air; it seemed as if someone had left a bakery door open. The heat pulsed among the cottages and bushes and children. The icicles dropped, shattering, to melt. The doors flew open. The windows flew up. The children worked off their wool clothes. The housewives shed their bear disguises. The snow dissolved and showed last summer’s ancient green lawns.
Rocket summer. The words passed among the people in the open air, airing houses. Rocket summer. The warm desert air changing the frost patterns on the windows, erasing the art work. The skis and sleds suddenly useless. The snow, falling from the cold sky upon the town, turned to a hot rain before it touched the ground.
Rocket summer. People leaned from their dripping porches and watched the reddening sky.
The rocket lay on the launching field, lowing out pink clouds of fire and oven heat. The rocket stood in the cold winter morning, making summer with every breath of its mighty exhausts. The rocket made climates, and summer lay for brief moment upon the land…
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Rocket Summer
Bradbury’s focus was on the domestic. Housewives fighting off the ice and snow of Ohio. A Martian woman “cleaning the house with handfuls of magnetic dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind.”
They had a house of crystal pillars on the planet Mars by the edge of the empty sea, and every morning you could see Mrs. K eating the golden fruits that grew from the crystal walls, or cleaning the house with handfuls of magnet dust which, taking all dirt with it, blew away on the hot wind. Afternoons, when the fossil sea was warm and motionless, and the wine trees stood stiff in the yard…you could see Mr. K in his room, reading from a metal book with raised hieroglyphs over which he brushed his hand, as one might play a harp. And from the book, as his fingers stroked, a voice sang, a soft ancient voice, which told tales of when the sea was red steam on the shore and ancient men had carried clouds of metal insects and electric spiders into battle…
This morning Mrs. K stood between the pillars, listening to the desert sands heat, melt into yellow wax, and seemingly run on the horizon.
Something was going to happen.
She waited.
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, Ylla
Bradbury’s gift to literature—and to his SF genre—was his use of metaphor. Unlike the science fiction of his colleagues, Bradbury’s stories are a lens to study the past and the present. According to Miller, “The Earthmen’s exploration and desolation of Mars allowed Bradbury to look not forward but backward at exploration and desolation on Earth, namely the European arrival in the New World. Just as Europeans landed in North and Central America wholly unprepared for what they found there, Bradbury’s Earthmen are unprepared time and again for the wonder and the horror of Mars. And just as European diseases decimated native people in the Americas, it is chicken-pox which wipes out the Martians.”
The back cover of the 2012 mass market paperback Simon & Schuster Reprint edition of The Martian Chronicles reads:
Bradbury’s Mars is a place of hope, dreams and metaphor—of crystal pillars and fossil seas—where a fine dust settles on the great, empty cities of a silently destroyed civilization. It is here the invaders have come to despoil and commercialize, to grow and to learn—first a trickle, then a torrent, rushing from a world with no future toward a promise of tomorrow. The Earthman conquers Mars … and then is conquered by it, lulled by dangerous lies of comfort and familiarity, and enchanted by the lingering glamour of an ancient, mysterious native race.
“Ask me then, if I believe in the spirit of the things as they were used, and I’ll say yes. They’re all here. All the things which had uses. All the mountains which had names. And we’ll never be able to use them without feeling uncomfortable. And somehow the mountains will never sound right to us; we’ll give them new names, but the old names are there, somewhere in time, and the mountains were shaped and seen under those names. The names we’ll give to the canals and the mountains and the cities will fall like so much water on the back of a mallard. No matter how we touch Mars, we’ll never touch it. And then we’ll get mad at it, and you know what we’ll do? We’ll rip it up, rip the skin off, and change it to fit ourselves.”
“We won’t ruin Mars,” said the captain. “It’s too big and too good.”
“You think not? We Earth Men have a talent for ruining big, beautiful things.”
Ray Bradbury, The Martian Chronicles, And the Moon be Still as Bright
Ray Bradbury’s The Martian Chronicles is a profound and tender analysis of the quiet power humanity can wield unawares and how we define and treat ‘the other.’ It is a tragic tale that reflects only too well current world events where the best intended interventions can go awry. From the meddling friend who gossips to “help” another (only to make things worse) to the righteous “edifications” of a religious group imposing its “order” on the “chaos” of a “savage” peoples … to the inadvertent tragedy of simply and ignorantly being in the wrong place at the wrong time (e.g., the introduction of weeds, disease, etc. by colonizing “aliens” to the detriment of the native population; e.g., smallpox, AIDs, etc.). Bradbury is my favourite author for this reason (yes, and because he makes me cry…)
Mars terrain (photo by NASA)
Nina Munteanu is a Canadian ecologist / limnologist and novelist. She is co-editor of Europa SF and currently teaches writing courses at George Brown College and the University of Toronto. Visit www.ninamunteanu.ca for the latest on her books. Nina’s bilingual “La natura dell’acqua / The Way of Water” was published by Mincione Edizioni in Rome. Her non-fiction book “Water Is…” by Pixl Press (Vancouver) was selected by Margaret Atwood in the New York Times ‘Year in Reading’ and was chosen as the 2017 Summer Read by Water Canada. Her novel “A Diary in the Age of Water” was released by Inanna Publications (Toronto) in June 2020.
Nina Munteanu Writing Coach 