Vulcan's Hammer: Interesting idea, too bad the novel kind of sucks.

Vulcan's Hammer
Philip K. Dick
1960

Imagine. You write science fiction for a living. In the last seven years you've written at least one novel per year, along with dozens of short stories, and a good half of this output has described life in a dystopian future. In these visions of dark possibility, you've examined a handful of different ideologies around which we may organize a "perfect society"---whether randomness, relativism, "moral reclamation," or anti-space colonization prejudice---and found each wanting. So why not phase out the human element altogether and instead envision a planetary government run by a single omniscient machine, one free of our primate psychological hangups and irrational biases? What would that look like? Would it work?

Dick called this government Unity, this godlike machine Vulcan 3, and, in the format of a political thriller of sorts, he explored those questions. Alas, while there is a good deal of potential in the concept of a technocratic utopia gone bad (as evinced by scores of films about machines supplanting and/or annihilating humanity), there is little good about Vulcan's Hammer as a novel. It suffers from dull characters and a hackneyed, careening plot that would have left the rails if it hadn't been for that pat, sentimental conclusion at the end of the line.

There has been a third world war, and in its wake humanity has created a "one-world government" controlled by an artificial intelligence of almost unimaginable power. Unity is total in its scope: it educates the kids, employs many of the adults, levies taxes, and enforces its laws under pain of death by "pencil beam." Yet even in this paranoid panopticon, a movement of dissenters called the Healers has arisen, guided by a man called Father Fields. The novel begins when a young Unity agent is murdered while staking out a rally of Healers. The North American Director of Unity, William Barris, is perturbed by the absolute lack of response to the Healers on the part of Vulcan 3, but when his request for more information is refused on the grounds of a piddling technicality, his perturbation turns to mutiny and he travels to Geneva, to Unity headquarters, to meet with Managing Director Jason Dill face-to-face and find out why Vulcan 3 hasn't formulated policy regarding the Healers.

We discover that Dill has been secretly consulting with the predecessor to Vulcan 3, the aptly named Vulcan 2, and that the earlier model has warned Dill of a possible bug in the Unity system. Vulcan 3, it turns out, is so complex that for all intents and purposes it is not only intelligent but also alive; Vulcan 2 realized that if its successor were ever to learn about the Healers then it would do what any living thing does when threatened---defend itself. And with a near-infinite amount of resources, Vulcan's ability to wage war would be, like all other aspects of Unity civilization, total.

Dill's efforts to censor Vulcan 3's information intake fail, however, because Vulcan 3 realizes that there is something missing from all the data that Dill does feed it; its conspicuous absence is the very sign of its existence. Because his human attendant Dill won't do what is needed, Vulcan 3 devises flying robots ("hammers") equipped with pencil beams to be his eyes and talons. Vulcan 3 arouses the Unity organization to the presence of "enemies," in the form of Barris and Dill. The plot lurches from the heated trial of Dill before all the Unity Directors to the meeting with Father Fields where we discover that it was Vulcan 2, and not Fields, who was the mind behind the Healers to the scene wherein it is revealed that the wife of the murdered young Unity agent from the beginning is actually Fields' daughter, and, finally, to Barris' bombing of the central Vulcan 3 CPU. In the end, you can almost see the sunset they're staring off into as Barris, Fields, and Fields' daughters contemplate their rebuilding of a new Unity and a new world.

As my daughter would say, "Yawn."

Time Out of Joint: Some don't accept the reality of the world with which they are presented

Time Out of Joint
Philip K. Dick
1959

Ragle Gumm lives with his sister Margo and brother-in-law Vic, doing little apart from flirting with his neighbor's wife and obsessively playing and winning a nationally syndicated puzzle called Where Will the Little Green Man be Next? Although he appears to be little more than a couch potato, Ragle's puzzle-solving manages to bring more money into the household than does his brother-in-law's honest work at the local grocery store. Little does he know that, in true PKD fashion, his simple life is not at all what it seems.

This revelation takes place gradually. Vic has a moment of deja vu when he reaches for the light cord in his bathroom only to remember that the bathroom lights have a wall switch and not a pull cord. Then in the midst of a bout of self-loathing, Ragle watches stunned as a soft drink stand dissolves into emptiness, leaving behind a slip of paper reading "Soft Drink Stand." (This reminded me of the Roddy Piper vehicle They Live, in which everyday objects are revealed to be alien artifacts imprinted with subliminal messages---like this fistful of dollars.)

Gumm keeps a small metal box in the pocket of his coat in the hall closet, and in this small box the strange slip of paper keeps company with its five predecessors. Thus far Gumm has seen a door, a factory building, a highway, a drinking fountain, and a bowl of flowers disappear in the same way as did the soft-drink stand. "The time is out of joint," he muses, quoting Hamlet as his world begins to fall apart around him. He then discovers that his nephew has also found several similar slips of paper in "the Ruins," a collection of abandoned lots, and on his subsequent journey there Gumm uncovers an odd phone book that references unfamiliar telephone exchanges. In the Ruins Gumm also finds a magazine featuring someone named Marilyn Monroe who is apparently quite famous although no one that Gumm knows has ever heard of her.

Of course, at this point Gumm thinks he is losing his mind. His neighbor Bill Black, who knows more about these goings-on than he reveals, suspects something different. He fears that Gumm is becoming sane.

This is indeed the case, as Gumm (and the reader) discovers after he and his brother-in-law manage to escape their small town via a stolen truck on the highway. It is not 1959, as Gumm, his family and (all but one) neighbors accept unquestioningly:

Anyhow, he thought, we've been out and we've seen that it is 1998, not 1959, and a war is in progress, and the kids now talk and dress like West African natives and the girls wear men's clothing and shave their heads. And money as we know it has dropped out somewhere along the line. Along with diesel trucks. But, he thought with sudden pessimism, we didn't learn what it's all about. Why they set up the old town, the old cars and streets, kidded us for years... (p. 217)

Then he figures it out. The war is being fought between the Earth--now under the control of the "One Happy World" government--and lunar colonists known as "loonies" or "lunatics."

A civil war.
I know what I do, now. I know what the contest is, and what I am. I'm the savior of this planet. When I solve a puzzle I solve the time and place the next missile will strike. I file one entry after another. And these people, whatever they call themselves, hustle an anti-missile unit to that square on the graph. To that place and at that time. And so everyone stays alive... (p. 222)

One more question remains to be answered, and one more surprise awaits Gumm. Why was the elaborate deception necessary to keep Gumm "playing the game" and saving the people of the Earth from lunar missiles? Because Gumm had actually planned to turn traitor and leave the Earth behind in order to migrate to the lunar colonies---after he got his first taste of zero gravity, he saw through the anti-space migration chauvinism. Luckily for all involved, his final defection to the "lunatics" is not accompanied by the extinction of the human race courtesy of the loonies space arsenal. In fact, the only thing preventing a cessation to all hostilities had been Gumm's continual playing of the game. His liberation into sanity is also the liberation of humanity.

This was Dick's sixth published novel, and the third that I have re-read for my "PKD project." As with Cosmic Puppets, I originally read much of this book whilst riding the BART trains between SF and the East Bay. I distinctly remember reading this book on a concrete bench outside the Dublin-Pleasanton station, biding time until my wife and mother-in-law arrived from Modesto to pick me up. I think that was Christmas vacation back in 2005 or so. My memories of the book are that it was so-so, and that the wild ending really came out of nowhere; on second reading, the novel holds together better than I remember, but the ending still doesn't seem to gel completely. What is initially a philosophical exploration of a man's awakening from the dream of his daily life turns into a classic SF genre story about war between the planets and a paean to space migration. It's definitely well worth a read, as are all of PKD's novels, though its premise won't be that much of a shock to folks familiar with The Truman Show (a film that is not based on this novel, from what I can tell and contrary to some online rumors).

Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: Do androids dream of mechanical oddities?

Robots, Androids, and Mechanical Oddities: The Science Fiction of Philip K. Dick
Philip K. Dick, edited by Patricia S. Warrick and Martin H. Greenberg
Southern Illinois University Press, 1984

Warrick and Greenberg did a masterful job collecting these stories. They focus on Dick's ideas while also showing his gifts as a coherent short story writer (much more so than as a novelist). They also provide brief, yet illuminating, essays that situate each story in the context of PKD's personal life, literary output, mental state, the state of affairs in American politics, etc. This is a model anthology and a book my wife recommends I keep.

Here are my thumbnail synopses of most of the stories in this collection:

• "The Little Movement," 1952 --- Dick's first tale involving a robot presages Toy Story, albeit with a much darker tone. Toy soldiers are plotting something insidious against Adults by controlling Children; the soldiers understand them to be two entirely different species. Their machinations are thwarted by other toys, although whether for good or ill purposes is left unclear. Less like SF, more like a Twilight Zone teleplay.
  

• "The Defenders," 1953 --- A more hopeful predecessor to the novel Penultimate Truth, in which an 8-year war has been raging on the surface of the planet, carried on by robots while humanity toils in safety of the underground bunkers. A human contingent investigates the surface and discovers that the war has actually not been going on, and that the world is intead a verdant garden that the robots have been stewarding. The robots, it seems, have realized the illogical nature of war and are preserving the earth until humanity is mature enough to emerge to the surface.

• "The Preserving Machine," 1953 --- An inventor creates a machine to "preserve" music by somehow rendering it into the form of a living animal-like creature. One of the creatures is allowed to "evolve" through prolonged exposure to the world and it becomes feral. When it is translated back into music, the music is absolutely alien and strange. The inventor concludes that everything evolves. The story explore themes of evolution (particularly the idea of evolving ideas--prefiguring the notion of memes), chaos, and preservation as translation.
  

• "Second Variety," 1953 --- After being driven off-world to the Moon by the early attacks of the USSR, the US/UN government begins creating robots ("churning sphere[s] of blades and metal") to ambush and slaughter Soviet soldiers, which they do with chilling efficiency. The story begins when Major Joseph Hendricks is called to meet with some of the surviving Russians. Along the way, he meets a small, apparently traumatized boy named David who clutches his teddy bear while saying little. He discovers, thanks to the intervention of a handful of remaining Soviet soldiers, that "David" is a lethal robot, one of three varieties believed to exist. ("David" is a type III robot. The type I is designed to resemble a wounded soldier. No one has yet encountered a type II robot.) During the night, one of the Soviet soldiers kills the other, claiming that he believed him to be the second variety of robot. Major Hendricks, the surviving soldier (Klaus), and Tasso, a prostitute who had been with the Soviets when their fellows soldiers were wiped out by robots, decide to trek back to the US bunker, only to find it overrun with scores of "Davids" and "wounded soldiers." During the ensuing melee, Klaus is revealed to be a type II robot. A gravely injured Major Hendricks, hoping to escape to the Moon Base, leads Tasso to a hidden rocket, only to find that it is a one-person vehicle. Tasso convinces him to let her fly to the Moon Base, the secret location of which he reveals to her, in order to send back a rescue mission. It is only after she leaves that Hendricks considers that there might be more than three varieties of killer robot...
  

• "Imposter," 1953 --- It isn't bad enough that PKD imagined a world where an observer couldn't distinguish between a robot and a human; what's worse is this well imagined story in which the observer and the robot in question are one and the same. The protagonist expects a normal day at work only to discover that he is suspected of being an android replica of himself---a replica containing a U-bomb, intended to be used by the alien Outworlders in their war against the human race---and therefore destined for immediate termination.
  

• "Sales Pitch," 1954 --- A nightmare scenario of everyday life in the future. After an extraterrestrial commute at 60,000,000 mph during which individually tailored advertisements are beamed directly into commuters' brains, the protagonist finds himself held hostage in his own home by a giant robot selling itself and not taking "no" for an answer. This astute story left me in stitches and also in awe of Dick's insights into the ubiquity of commercial dross and the inability of the average Joe to escape it.
  

• "The Last of the Masters," 1954 --- In a post-nuclear war future, members of the Anarchist League wander the world and maintain a sort of anti-government in which no one is allowed to amass power over others. It turns out that one of the war robots, machines programmed to maintain military-industrial civilization at all costs, escaped destruction at the hands of the AL. A few AL members, in cahoots with the robot's own people, kill the robot and prevent a military invasion of the surrounding territories. But there's always tomorrow.
  

• "Service Call," 1955 --- What is a swibble? That's the question on the reader's mind throughout this delightful story about a repair person who comes to the wrong address.
  

• "Autofac," 1955 --- Life will find a way. Automated factories (the titular "autofacs") have virtually become life forms, cranking out weaponry for us in fighting one another as proxies in a long-lost war. Humanity has survived, but the autofacs insist on producing everything, as per their programming. In the process they completely monopolize all the planet's natural resources, preventing humanity from reasserting its prerogative to global primacy. People try to sabotage the autofacs, but the simple, elegant directives guiding these autofacs drive them to evolve.

• "To Serve the Master," 1956 --- This story, published in 1956 and never reprinted before appearing in this anthology, complements the earlier story "The Last of the Masters." Applequist (you have to love those PKD character names) is wandering through a ravine when he comes across the wrecked remains of a dying robot. It calls out to him. Over the next week, he visits with and helps to repair the robot, in return for which the he learns the history of the robot-human war; his efforts to obtain information about the war from his own locked-down human society avail nothing and so he believes everything the robot tells him. Much to his chagrin.
  

• "Electric Ant," 1969 --- Waking up after crashing his flying-car, Garson Poole discovers that he has lost not only his hand, but even more shockingly his very humanity. He is not a human being but is instead an "electric ant," an android whose subjective experience derives from a player piano-like roll of tape spooling through his thoracic cavity. In a fairly transparent reference to the culture of psychedelia prevalent at the time, Dick has Poole experiment with the tape and note the effects of these experiments on his perceptions of the world. Finally, Poole cuts the tape; the effects were catastrophic, and chillingly so. Dick himself had this to say about the story:

  "Again the theme: How much of what we call 'reality' is actually out there or rather within our own head? The ending of this story has always frightened me ... the image of the rushing wind, the sound of emptiness. As if the character hears the final fate of the world itself."

• "The Exit Door Leads In," 1979 --- Although I don't know it for sure, I suspect that this story came out of Dick's friendship with Paul Williams, author of the biography Only Apparently Real. That's because it was written--on the request of the editors, no less--for Rolling Stone College Papers, a short-lived spin-off publication of Rolling Stone, for whom Williams wrote on PKD. In this story, Bob Bibleman--again, what a name!--faces a dilemma: should he reveal classified information and in so doing save millions of lives, or follow the rules set by the authorities and return the information to them. He makes the "right" decision and returns the information, only to find that it has been a test that he has failed. He is expelled because he falls prey to conformity too easily and does what authority tells him rather than what he knows to be right. A pretty transparent parable about free will and moral agency in an authoritarian context.

Some of these stories have haunted me for decades

Across the Universe: The DC Universe Stories of Alan Moore
Alan Moore
DC Comics, 2003


V for Vendetta and From Hell are two of my favorite graphic novels, due in no small part to the brilliant ideas and prose of Alan Moore. Because I first read both books in the `00s, I'd just assumed that Moore was only a contemporary comic book writer. Imagine my surprise, then, that upon picking up this volume at the local library, I discovered not one but three stories that affected me so profoundly when I read them as a kid that they still stick with me twenty-plus years later.

Two of these stories, both of which involve the Green Lantern Corps, still come up in my comparative religions class when I am reflecting on perception and frames of reference. In "Mogo Doesn't Socialize," Bolphunga the Unrelenting has come to a remote planet in search of the great Green Lantern Mogo. Suffice it to say that Bolphunga and the reader both discover precisely why Mogo can't be found anywhere on that remote world in a perceptual shift worthy of the Twilight Zone. "In Blackest Night" challenges a Green Lantern to communicate with a blind being from a dark planet who knows (and, more importantly, can know) nothing of "green" or "lanterns." This story drove home the point that you need a common frame of reference in order for ideas to translate.

The third story, "Brief Lives," filled a single page spread and came from something called Vega. As with the latter of the GL stories, this one was all about perspective. Two giants, whose lives encompass epochs of geological time, encounter---in the form of an almost imperceptible little cloud of dust---the futile attacks of a race of militant insectoids. The punchline, delivered by one of these eons-old creatures to his colleague, is that he shouldn't worry too much about the dust cloud because "life is too short." Wonderful!

All the other stories collected in this volume are strong, and most of them explore the nuances of interpersonal relationships, hardly the standard fare of superhero comic books. In "For the Man Who Has Everything," Superman is attacked by an alien plant-thing that renders him comatose while allowing him to live out an idealized virtual life on a Krypton-that-never-exploded with his wife and children. "The Jungle Line" finds the Swamp Thing gently, almost tenderly, rescuing Superman from the feverish grip of a lethal Kryptonian fungus. "Night Olympics" follows an evening out with socially conscious crime fighter couple Green Arrow and Black Widow as they encounter drug freaks, stereo thieves, and a would-be assassin. "Father's Day" is a troubling, if overlong, Vigilante story about a child-abusing, wife-murdering ex-con, and the complex, unfathomable relationship he has with his daughter. The closing story, "Mortal Clay," finds Batman dueling with the third incarnation of Clayface over the affections of an, um, woman.

Alan Moore has demonstrated time and again that he is a writer to be reckoned with. The implications of some stories in this collection took me by surprise decades ago, and their effects have still not worn off. I recommend the stories in this collection very highly.

(This review was originally written on November 19, 2007.)

Not the best book on the Heart Sutra, but valuable nonetheless

Profound Wisdom of the Heart Sutra: And Other Teachings
Bokar Rinpoche
Clearpoint Press, 2002

It is difficult for me to be critical of a work by an author whose goal was not egoic, seeking to be a literary star, but rather selfless and compassionate, seeking to benefit all beings.

That said, the two sections of this book that deal with the Prajnaparamita Hridaya Sutra are neither the most informative nor the most clearly presented that I have read. Admittedly, a good part of this criticism has to do with the layout and formatting of these sections, which seem disjointed at times. For example, Tibetan transliterations---idiosyncratic transliterations at that---are interspersed inconsistently throughout the text with brief commentaries that interrupt the flow of the commentary. As another example of the strange composition of the book, glossary-style definitions of terms will often simply appear, wedged between two sections of commentary, even though the book has a complete glossary at the back. ClearPoint Press is obviously not publishing these books to win prizes in book composition, though, so they can definitely be forgiven. :)

Composition and layout issues aside, the book contains a very powerful commentary on anger by the late author, Bokar Rinpoche, and a thoughtful lesson on karma by his primary disciple Khenpo Donyo. Two specific insights from these sections that continue to resonate like a bell within me are "Anger makes us stupid" and "If it impossible for us to immediately give up some aspects of our conduct, at least we can aspire that they will disappear sometime in the future."

All in all, a very worthwhile read, but perhaps not essential in a world increasingly saturated with books on Buddhadharma.

(This review was originally written on June 9, 2006.)

Dense, intricate, important look at the somatic side of Western history

Coming to Our Senses: Body and Spirit in the Hidden History of the West
Morris Berman
Bantam, 1990

Morris Berman begins his exploration of the "hidden history" of the West with a discussion of the nemo, a word he borrows from John Fowles' The Aristos which connotes the sense of non-existence at the core of the existential condition. The experience of this nemo, according to Berman, results from a developmental split between the felt sense of embodiment (somatic awareness) and the mental self image that comes from how others see us (specular awareness). Berman uses the history of mirrors and the human relationship to animals to demonstrate how this split has led historically to a de-valuation of somatic, embodied experience, a consequent preference for "cognitively top-heavy" abstraction, and various attempts to heal the breach between the two.

The core of the book is an exploration of four different periods in Western history---the origins of Christianity and Gnosticism, the Cathar/Albigensian heresy in Southern France, the rise of modern science from the practice of alchemy, and the modern phenomenon of Nazism. Berman investigates how these periods relate to the suppression of the body in favor of the abstracted intellect and to the return of that suppressed somatic experience in different forms (e.g,. Gnostic mysticism, romantic love, scientific abstraction, and Nazi mass murder).

Finally, Berman looks at our prospects for the future. Since the abstraction/experience split and our attempts to smooth it over are still going strong in modern Western societies, Berman fears the potential for a resurgence of fascism. (Given the tenor of the 21st century so far, it would seem that his fears are well founded.) Instead of advocating another mystical or political attempt to heal over the split and to fill in the nemo, Berman discusses the possibility of a "gesture of balance"---learning to accept the split and the feeling of the nemo without being compelled to fill it in or smooth it over. This radical acceptance of the gap might be the key to "resolving" the gap altogether.

In short, this is a book that demands serious attention from students of history, politics, religion, philosophy, psychology, and also for those dedicated to pursuing a spiritual path.

(This review was originally written on June 7, 2006.)

An interesting idea, but not always an interesting read

The Self-Aware Universe: How Consciousness Creates the Material World
Amit Goswami
Tarcher, 1995

The author, famous/infamous for his appearance in the film What the Bleep Do We Know?, begins with a fascinating premise-that the only metaphysical interpretation of quantum physics that accounts for all data is monist idealism. This monist idealist interpretation of quantum physics is akin to the worldview of Advaita Vedanta, in which there is, absolutely speaking, one fundamental reality-Mind/Conciousness (the Sanskrit word is Atman or Brahman, depending on whether one approaches it from the perspective of the individual or the whole). This nondual, nonlocal fundamental reality is apprehended dualistically as the subject of experience (the noumenal world of the individual mind) and the object of experience (the phenomenal world of individual objects). Goswami's most interesting thesis is that the quantum level of mind is that empty silence wherein free choice and novel creativity occur, whereas the classical level of mind is the conditioned chatterbox that operates on habit and repetition; this "two truths" approach allows his model to include and transcend the insights of behaviorism, etc.

As I said, this is a fascinating interpretation, and one that resonates with the philosophical-religious worldview that has been called the perennial philosophy. Alas, this book is not as well written as I would have liked; sometimes the parables he relates don't connect meaningfully to the material at hand and at other times each paragraph seems only slightly related to those preceding and following. As well, the prose is often stilted and occasionally even embarassing (although, in his defense, he is a professor of physics and not creative writing). He only spends 1/3 of the book developing his thesis, a big mistake when you are rocking the boat so thoroughly. Another problem with this book is that the last 1/3 is a completely unnecessary (in my opinion) application of this interpretation to the spiritual path. There are scores of better books on the religious/spiritual practice of nondualism, so why bother? Is it to give the imprimatur of science to something that had previously been merely religious, and therefore suspect? Or is to fill pages?

In short, Goswami's book expresses an interesting idea, although it is not always an interesting read.

(This review was originally written March 28, 2006.)

Nuanced, if rambling, prose makes for an interesting look at the history of Western thought

The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our Worldview
Richard Tarnas
Ballantine Books, 1993

I once heard a story that Tarnas would fire up a doobie before sitting down to write material for this book, and the rumor seems true in light of Tarnas' regular use of extended turns of nuanced phrase. That prose style is at once the major strength and weakness of this work. The fact that each paragraph comprises several precisely written (if overlong) sentences each containing at least one exhaustive list of examples makes for cumbersome reading, as I often have to reread the same sentence three or more times for the whole import to sink in. At the same time, this style does a fine job of articulating the manifold, complex, and often contradictory ways in which the seminal themes of Western thought have interacted. (For example, Tarnas does a brilliant job of showing how many of the ideas of the Protestant Reformation ironically contributed to the later undermining of Christian certitude and the rise of scientific materialism.)

I have other issues with the book, most of which have been described elsewhere on this site. Tarnas' lack of citations and primary sources (i.e., where he is getting his information?) make this a less-than scholarly review of Western thought, his repeated emphasis on astrology left me cold (which is odd, considering that I am a Leo-Virgo), his chapters on the late modern period and postmodernity need to be expanded upon, and his epilogue is a bit flakier than even I like.

That said, I will re-read this book and will recommend it to any reading about Western philosophy. It is a lively introduction to Western thought that does a darn fine job of pointing out the complex inter-relatedness of disparate elements and how they've played out over the last 2500 years.

(This review was originally written March 6, 2006.)

A fine catalog of Quantum METAphysics

Quantum Reality: Beyond the New Physics
Nick Herbert
Anchor Books, 1987

A catalog of quantum worldviews. Herbert discusses the various interpretations of how quantum mechanics describes reality. In other words, what does it mean about the underlying reality of the world to say that electrons (and all other subatomic "building blocks") are both/neither waves and/nor particles? Herbert presents eight different, yet overlapping, interpretations of quantum mechanics. The ones that I remember most clearly are the Copenhagen interpretation (i.e., that there is no underlying reality), the multiple worlds interpretation, the consciousness-only interpretation. Needless to say, all of the interpretations were, in one way or another, counter-intuitive and weird.

Another point that Herbert drives home is that, however we understand reality in light of quantum physics, it is definitely non-local (everything is everywhere and everywhen) as demonstrated conclusively by Bell's theorem.