Perhaps it may turn out a sang,
Perhaps turn out a sermon.

-- R. Burns Epistle to a Young Friend

Saturday, February 14, 2009

Bluetooth Man

I started to post an old piece I had written, but I just finished the Walker Percy novel, and it has me thinking about philosophers and novelists and what a hard job it is to write a modern/post-modern/post-post-modern book that people will actually read. The various genres of literature – fantasy, science fiction, westerns, historic, etc., take us out of our mundane world in a fairly straightforward way. We move into the writer’s world or into their time, learn the rules and the boundaries, and the story then unfolds before us.

Sometimes things throw us off. I remember several years ago reading a Max Brand western called, I think, The Seventh Man. The hero is not a bad man, but he is a wild throwback of sorts who lives outside civilization. He helps a man sought by the law by taking the fugitive’s mare, Gray Molly, and leading the sheriff and his men away from their quarry. One of the pursuers deliberately shoots the mare in an attempt to end the chase. The hero escapes but vows revenge on all the members of the posse for the mare’s unnecessary death. He is able to carry out his revenge, in part because of his companions -- a magnificent stallion and a highly intelligent wolf or wolf-hybrid. The climax of the story is a long chase across country, and the hero is nearly undone by something he doesn’t understand: technology. Though those who are after the hero have no horses that can match his steed, the telephone has made its appearance, and it is used by a clever official to run down the avenger.

I was ambivalent. I understand the use of new technology as a plot point, whether it is the telephone, the telegraph, railroads, barbwire or whatever – man versus machine, the end of the frontier – all of those things are part of the historical reality. Technology changes and forces the culture to change. Dealing with it can make an interesting story, just generally not one I prefer. I like worlds where there is no GPS, no computers, no cell phones, telephones, or telegraphs, where there’s open space and room to get lost.

The more gadgets you hang on anything, the less it becomes a human endeavor. Sure, humans still build the gadgets – at least I think humans were involved in creating Vista – but many of these devices create limits as much as they create opportunities. I’m obviously not against technology, but I think we have to be careful and choose wisely to find things that make us stronger and more independent rather than weaker and more dependent.

It seems to me that as we have less and less privacy, it becomes increasingly difficult to describe or diagnose the human condition. The more our lives are open and viewable, the less we actually see. Consider the celebrity phenomenon. You can know everything about a sports figure or a movie star or a politician, but their actions, thoughts and beliefs can become contaminated by their own image. We see too much of them, and, they, in effect, see too much of themselves. That is, they see too much of what they are trying to make themselves appear to be. I am afraid we will soon learn this is precisely the case with Obama. He is like a man caught in a hall of mirrors unable to distinguish where he actually stands.

Any literary work that attempts to depict man in the late 20th and early 21st centuries is forced to work with and around rapid technological advances. It is difficult not to get trapped by gadgetry. Take, for example, that classic movie The Thing, made, I believe, about 1982. The computers and some of the other equipment look archaic, but it works for the story. Try to remake that movie and set it in 2010 and the plot would have to change in several points to make sense. I wonder how many recent movies or action/adventure novels set in the current time frame have a conveniently inconvenient loss of cell phone service or loss of the cell phone at some point. Stories often turn on isolation and the lack of communication between various parties. It is going to look more and more contrived for people not to think of Google or not having security videos or not taking pictures with their camera phones.

Look there -- it's a David Gemmell heroic fantasy novel and a guaranteed bluetooth-free zone. I know where I'm headed.

5 comments:

JWM said...

Slightly off topic here, I know-

The Thing, John Carpenter's film from the eighties, was a remake. The original was done in the late fifties, and had James Arness as the monster. The plot points were the same though- scientists trapped in an arctic outpost with an alien on the loose. And speaking of that- Alien, was a redux of another fifties monster flick called It-The Terror From Beyond Space. Same film: monster on a spaceship only with crummy special effects, and an outdated view of the future. Actually- both movies revolve around the same basic theme: you're locked up somewhere with a monster on the loose. Some years back I ran across some Robert Heinlen sci-fi from the late forties. I don't recall the title of the particular story, an odd blend of sci-fi, and magic but this one detail I do remember that struck me- he had a character in his future world who needed window putty, so he proceded to make some up using linseed oil, and powdered clay. I thought it odd that Heinlen had predicted a world with an ambient power grid that ran everything with some sort of broadcast energy, but he hadn't anticipated the creation of a material that would replace old fashioned window putty. I like outdated sci-fi for just that reason. It's interesting not only to see what they predict, but what they miss.

JWM

mushroom said...

Not off topic at all. Like I had a topic.

Heinlein's one of those guys that really got in over his head when he tried to wax philosophical, but he was good cool scifi with Tunnel in the Sky, Starship Troopers, et al. He describes what we now know as a camelbak in Tunnel in the Sky.

I've seen Alien and Aliens but not the third one. I love Sigourney Weaver. Right on the premises being about the same, and not only are you locked up with 'em, you're not sure where or who they are.

My 14-yo granddaughter watched The Thing (DVR'ed off TV so most of the language was tamed down) with me a couple of weeks ago and then I saw she had it listed as one of her favorite movies.

mushroom said...

OK, so it just dawned on me that Matt Dillon was the Thing. And didn't Sam the bartender -- Glen Strange -- once play the Frankenstein Monster?

Rick said...

Mushroom,
This is another of those, “we were separated at birth” posts.
The War does not and will not ever have any technology below archetype tools – ones that will never be surpassed; such as the shovel, hammer, hat, canteen, pail, piano, axe, backpack, rake, glass. If it did, it would lock itself into a specific, much too literal time period and that would be counter to the reason for writing it. It occurred to me the other day that the word “tool” itself spoke the end of technology in that sense. Once the tool was invented (or more appropriately, recognized as such) it could never be transcended by any other tool regardless of its sophistication. There will also never be any dragons in The War either :-) If I forget these, please remind me.
I actually feel freer writing it with these constraints. I don’t have to worry if a slick wizbang will look laughably inadequate 100 years from now.
:-)

mushroom said...

It's good to have a brother.

I like the point on the tools. With the basic tools the only improvement really is in the materials, and even that is questionable in a lot of cases.