Matthew S. Williams's Blog, page 231
May 10, 2011
Liability now available on Lulu.com
May 3, 2011
What does Osama's death mean (part II)?
What is to be done? Well for starters, the US and its coalition allies should withdraw from Afghanistan. If history has taught us anything, its that occupations are a losing battle, especially in places like Afghanistan. That country has made a name for itself grinding up invaders and spitting them back out. It's mountainous terrain, hardened people and impenetrable network of tribal loyalties have always proven to be the undoing of invaders, no matter who they were or what kind of technological superiority they possessed. But above and beyond all that, it is startling how much Afghanistan is beginning to look like Iraq, which in turn showed the same signs of failure early on that haunt all occupations and foretell their failure. To break it down succinctly, there are five basic indicators that indicate that an occupation has failed.
1. Insurgency: If the population turns against you and begins mounting an armed resistance, you know you've lost. Little to nothing can be done at this point because tougher measures will only aid in their recruitment, they have the home field advantage, and can recruit endlessly from their own population. The occupier, no matter how benign their original intentions, can't allow violence to go unchecked, and so they inevitably play into the hands of their enemy. Already Afghanistan has mounted its own insurgency in the form of a resurgent Taliban that is actively recruiting from the country's Pashtun majority. Recruit spill over the border on a regular basis from Pakistan, where millions of Pashtuns also live, and there is little the US and Coalition can do about it because the Khyber Pass (the mountainous region that spans the border) is too vast and rugged to keep sealed. Much like in Iraq, what we're seeing is a major resistance that is actively recruiting from a major ethnic group that is fighting to regain the power it once enjoyed. In some ways, it worse, because the Pashtuns constitute the largest ethnic group in Afghanistan with 40 percent of the population, the remaining 60 being made up of Tajiks, Uzbeks, Turkmen, Arabs, and many other groups. In short, they constitute a larger chunk of the population, and their counterparts are disparate and divided.
2. Weak/Crooked Allies: Hamid Karzai, an ethnic Pashtun who served in the post-Soviet Afghani government, has a long history of ally himself to US interests. During the Russian occupation, he was a secret contact for the CIA and helped run guns and money to the mujahedeen from neighboring Pakistan. During the Taliban's rise to power, he became a vocal opponent and a major ally of the US after 9/11. It is also rumored that he was a consultant for Unocal, a major oil firm with strong ties to the Bush family. It's little wonder then why he was installed as president once Coalition forces had ousted the Taliban. Unfortunately, since the invasion, his government has been notorious for both its corruption and its impotence. In the former category, his election win in 2009 was tainted by scandal and blatant instances of fraud. His family have also thrived under his rule and committing criminal acts, the most notorious of which his half brother Ahmad Wali Karzai, a prominent drug trafficker and CIA contractor.
In the latter category, Karzai's political impotence is legendary. In fact, he is often playfully referred to as the "mayor of Kabul" because his power does not extend beyond the capitol. Warlords who owe no allegiance to him or coalition authorities, who were bought off in order to fight the Taliban, are largely responsible for controlling the other regions of the country. Though corrupt and weak, Karzai's remains an important political ally to the US because of his background and ethnic-ties. He is able to put a Pashtun face on a government dominated by non-Pashtun groups, and is a long-standing enemy of the Taliban which it is still doing battle with.
3. Civil War: When the people turn on each other as a result of the occupation, you know you're not doing a very good job. Iraq is a prime example of this, with the Sunni minority doing battle with the Shia majority and the US and its allies playing the role of arbiter. No one, especially the Iraqi people, can forget the carnage of that episode. But worrying still is how Afghanistan is beginning to go the same way. While the country is no stranger to civil war, it is clear that it has been inching in that direction for years now and another civil war seems inevitable. And when that happens, the general chaos tends to be blamed on the occupation force. Not only is their presence seen as the catalyzing force, which it usually is, but their inability to contain the situation also makes them accountable.
4. Unclear Enemy: While the US and its allies have always claimed that their fight is with the Taliban on behalf of the Afghani people, the reality is quite different. The line between Taliban and Pashtun's became blurred sometime ago, with US and Coalition forces now waging war on the dominant ethnic group. This is not a choice position for an occupier to be in. When you can't tell the difference between your enemy and the general population, you know you're in trouble. When the line that separates them becomes blurred, and not just to you, you know your mission is doomed to failure! In any failed occupation, this is precisely what happened. What began as a controlled, limited engagement, spilled over and became messy, brutal and confusing. This is what happened to the United States in Vietnam and to the Russians in Afghanistan, not to mention every colonial ruler everywhere! And, inevitably, it backfired… horribly!
5. Criticism at Home and Abroad: When your own people begin to criticize you, not to mention your allies, you know you've overstayed your welcome. In any democracy, one cannot prosecute a war without popular support. Dictatorship's fare slightly better with domestic opposition, but sooner or later, any war effort can be broken because of popular resistance. For years now, public opposition to the presence of US and Coalition troops has been on the rise. Recent survey's conducted by US news services even went as far as to claim that Afghanistan was becoming "Obama's Vietnam". A comparison to Iraq would be more apt, but the existing metaphor has more power. In addition, Karzai himself has become increasingly vocal in his condemnation of Coalition forces "methods". In this respect, he is not unlike Nouri al-Maliki, the current Prime Minister of Iraq, who also skirted the fine line between supporting and condemning his US-allies. In time, Maliki even began to go as far as to say that Iraq would demand a total withdrawal of US forces if things continued on their current track. Karzai may not be in that kind of position, he knows he cannot survive without US support for the time being, but he also cannot sit idly by while Afghani civilians are killed and not speak up. In time, as civilians casualties mount, he may very well be forced to choose sides, no longer able to skirt the line between his allies and his people.
6. Widening Conflict: When your conflict begins to spill into neighboring countries, you've got a full blown quagmire! Remember the US bombing of Cambodia during the 70′s, which took part because US forces believed the Viet Cong were running guns through that country? Well, the outcome – hundreds of thousands of people killed, no change in the course of the war, and the rise of Khmer Rouge in Cambodia – was hardly a success, regardless of what Nixon would say. Much the same is true of Iraq, where Iran began exercising a sizable influence over Shia politics in the south and had to be called in to mediate. Turkey's border conflicts with the Northern Kurds is another example, lucky for everyone it did not end in an invasion! But in any case, the rule is clear. If you have to widen the scope of the conflict to strike at your enemy, you got a problem and need to examine your options. For many years now, this has been the problem in Afghanistan. The conflict has been spilling over the border into Pakistan, due in part to the fact that Osama found refuge there, but also because the shared border region, which remains unsealed, is heavily populated by militants, most of whom share ethnic and cultural ties to the Pashtun's of Afghanistan. The US began conducting Predator in the area in 2008, and has since expanded its involvement to include special forces and CIA operatives. While the death of Bin Laden is certainly a symbolic victory for this expansion, it cannot be expected to make the war in Afghanistan itself any easier. In the long run, its more likely to destabilize Pakistan's already shaky government, and create a permanent haven for Islamic militants, much like Cambodia became a radical communist regime.
So, since the war in Afghanistan possesses all of these things in abundance, I would argue that the time has come to pack up and leave. In addition to it being a potential disaster, and that its really not making life any better for those affected, there is also the fact (as stated in my previous article) that it ceased being about Al-Qaeda and Bin Laden some time ago. Now that he is dead and his whereabouts confirmed, perhaps this is just the justification that's needed to put an end to the last war in the "war on terror."
May 2, 2011
What does Osama's death mean?
I did not start this blog with the intention of getting into politics. There are few things more subjective and divisive then where one stands when it comes to various issues, political parties, or where they fall in the big spectrum. However, once in awhile something comes along and you just have to take to whatever forum you have available and comment on it. And so I come here, to my webpage where I usually do reviews, to comment on this groundbreaking story.
Yes, it finally happened. After ten years of obscurity and unconfirmed whereabouts, after years and years of being told "we think he is in the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan", Bin Laden was not just found, but killed. And the big question that seems to be on everyone's lips, what will this mean now? Obviously, 9/11 was a turning point in history. Whether or not you agreed with the assessment that it "changed everything" you had to admit that it was what Gibson described as a "nodal point" in our history. It changed many things, for better or for worse, including but not limited to how the world thinks of terrorism, how the US executed its foreign policy, what that policy entailed, and had a huge impact on international relations. It also put a face on global terrorism, again for better or for worse*. And with Bin Laden's escape from the US-led invasion of Afghanistan, and the subsequent invasion of Iraq and torture controversies, many people have been left wondering about the course of the whole "war on terror" and whether or not it was even worth pursuing anymore.
And now, ten years, and two inconclusive wars later – not to mention "enhanced interrogation techniques", hundreds of thousands dead, and a whole lot of unanswered questions – the man responsible for 9/11 and this detour in our history, is finally dead. But the question remains, what now? Does Bin Laden's death mean anything for the "war on terror", even though the term has been dropped, and will it effect the fortunes of Al-Qaeda or US foreign policy? Second, and perhaps of equal importance, is a question I asked myself today. How will future generations look at this period in our history? Will they see it as an aberration, like we do Vietnam, or will they see it as something that began with tragedy and ended with triumph, albeit with some bumps along the way.
Personally, I think the answer to the first question is a resounding no. While Bin Laden's death is certainly a symbolic victory, and definitely a victory for Obama (if he exploits it just right), his death really doesn't change things vis a vis the bigger picture? Why, because the war on terror ceased being about Osama many years ago. He ceased to be the source of the US's problems shortly after Afghanistan was invaded. Which, I think helps to answer question two, but one thing at a time! As it stands, the US is still engaged on a number of fronts with its former "war on terror", and its enemies go far beyond Bin Laden and his small band of people. Whether it's the resurgent Taliban, Islamic militants in Pakistan, or the possibility of Al-Qaeda in Yemen, the US finds itself committed to war on several fronts. And they aren't going so well.
On the plus side, the US has pulled out of Iraq after seven disastrous years of occupation. The long-term effect that it will have the region are also unclear, but one thing is for sure, after an insurgency, civil war and most areas of the country still living in fear and dire poverty, things couldn't get much worse. Any hopes the neo-cons have that something good will come out of the Iraqi war, hence saving Bush's legacy, cannot be taken seriously anymore. There are those who predict it will get even worse, that the sectarian violence is nearing phase two, that the current government can't possibly control the country, and that some kind of fundamentalist autocracy is likely to take over, most likely with strong ties to Iran. Some think there's nowhere to go but up, but even many of them believe that it was the withdrawal of the US that now makes this possible. I.e. nothing good could happen so long as the occupation continued, the Iraqis needing to "build democracy" on their own.
So realistically, Osama's departure from the international scene is really not a decisive factor anymore. At least, not in my humble opinion. And this, like I said earlier, goes a long way towards answering how this whole episode will be viewed by future generations, provided I'm right of course 
. So for the sake of argument, let's assume that Osama, the architect of 9/11 and the man chiefly responsible for the big response it got, no longer plays a central role in the war on terror. Is this not a pretty good indication that future generations will look at this whole affair as big, messy thing that began with tragedy, took a terrible detour, and didn't even end with the architects demise? Well… sure! The fact the US can't use this as a pretext to pull out of Afghanistan, the fact that this won't bring back the half a million plus dead Iraqis who died as a result of the war, occupation, insurgency, and civil war in Iraq, the fact that it can't undo the torture of hundreds of detainees in Guantanamo Bay and Abu Ghraib, most of whom had little to no evidence connecting them to any kind of terrorist acts, the fact that it can't heal US relations with its snubbed allies, the fact that it won't end the defiance of North Korea with its nuclear testing, nor curb the rising influence of Iran in the Middle East, help the US economy recover, or stem the tide of Putin's evil rise to power in Russia. It can't give us the last ten years back, all the lost opportunities, wasted time, wasted money, and most importantly, wasted lives. All of this would seem to indicate that the war on terror has been a resounding failure. And while Obama and his crew may have dropped the term from their vocabulary, while they may have withdrawn from Iraq, it is clear that the same kind of policy decisions and advisers are still in key positions, and that his administration is not immune to their influence.
So indeed… what now? What can be done to salvage the situation that 9/11, Osama Bin Laden, and the "war on terror" has left us with? What can we do, short of turning back the clock and killing him back in 2002 when the opportunity first presented itself, thus avoiding all the crap that happened between now and then?
April 26, 2011
Of Dune and its Alternate Ending
Not long ago, I joined a few Dune fansites and became part of the growing trend of Herbertians who are disillusioned with the path his franchise has taken (see the link below for the specific web sites). All of us were in agreement about how poor a job his son Brian and KJA have done since they stepped into his shoes. Amongst us, there wasn't a single person who didn't think they had exploited, abused, misled, and even raped the franchise for all it was worth. Foremost amongst our complaints was the rather cliched and shallow way they would present characters, construct plots, and just generally fail to meet our expectations. To be fair, Frank set them pretty high, but nevertheless…
Another MAJOR gripe we all had in common was how the Dune franchise ended. None among us could accept that Herbert EVER left notes indicating that his story was to conclude with robots returning to the known universe to wreak havoc and get their revenge. Nor could we believe that it was all meant to climax with a meeting between Duncan Idaho (the ghola-turned Kwitatz Haderach) and Erasmus (Evil the robot), and working out an agreement whereby humans and robots would learn to live together. Not only was it a terrible cliche, a ripoff of the Matrix, totally shallow and bereft of any of the original depth and commentary that Herbert wrote into his originals, it made no sense! The evil robots returning did not fit with Herbert's original books at all, at no point was the Butlerian Jihad anything more than deep background, and no mention made of them at all when talking of humanity's future of Leto's "Golden Path". Nor was there ever any hint that the robots were evil, that was merely the product of Brian and (much more likely) KJA's juvenile mind! So really, that ending could only have been the result of them wanting to tie the ending to their own terrible contributions.
But the question remained, what WOULD have been a good ending by actual, Herbertian standards? How would he have ended the whole thing, if in fact Dune 7 were really meant to be an ending and not just another installment? For example, who were the old man and woman in the garden that Duncan kept having visions of? What was the true nature of the threat that the Honored Matres were running from? Why was it they needed the Bene Gesserit's famed defences against poisons and toxins? How would the Bene Gesserit, Tleilaxu alliance deal with it? In book six of Dune (Chapterhouse), they had already found a way to neutralize the HM's sexual imprinting by programming it into Duncan. Odrate and Lucilla managed to bring down the HM and orchestrate a merger by taking over the leadership of their sisterhood. And the remaining Tleilaxu master was in possession of the ghola genes of many of the Old Empire's most famous people, something which the old man and woman seemed marginally concerned about. And Duncan had plotted their no-ship to fly to another galaxy, in the hopes of getting away from the old man and woman and exploring new space with his crew. So the question remained, where was Frank going with all that?
Naturally, it couldn't have been that the old man and woman WERE Omnius and Erasmus, the evil hive mind and his sidekick! And the purpose of the gholas couldn't have been to just bring them back for no reason except so that all the original characters could have another run at life and live happily ever after! But strong hints were given that the threat to the HM's, personified by the old man and woman, were in fact, evolved face dancers who had broken free of their masters and were now a threat to the Old Empire itself. As for their interest in Duncan, they seemed to think he was a threat to them, otherwise they wouldn't have bothered trying to catch him in their tachyon net, which itself seemed to have something to do with fold space technology. All the while, there was the fact that the BG were once again producing natural spice, turning Chapterhouse into a new Dune now that the original had been destroyed. In so doing, they were once again breaking the hold of any one group on the production and distribution of the product, and were once again breeding Leto's sandworm. By this point in the story, Leto's hold on humanity was broken with the death of the sandworms and destruction of Arrakis, but it had also been revealed (in the storehouse he left for them to find) that he had foreseen this crisis and was still urging them towards a special purpose.
All of that was established. So what was about to happen? Well, whereas many of my counterparts felt that by this point in the books, Leto's vision (the "Golden Path" as it was called) was at an end, I felt that it was still going. I believed, based on my own reading of the text, that Leto had been preparing humanity without its knowledge for the threats that would be facing it come book 5 and 6 in the original series. The Famine Times and the Scattering were part of his initial plan, the consequences of his 3500 years of rule and deliberate control over spice production. These, in turn, served the purpose of breaking humanity's addiction to spice and forcing them to develop alternatives, and ensuring that they were scattered in many directions so that no fate could claim them all. The development of the HM's and their return to the Old Empire was also a result, therefore one could argue that it was something Leto had intended. By this logic, I felt that this threat had to be the thing that threatened humanity's extinction.
In the original works, nothing was ever said about an external threat to the Old Empire. However, ample page time was dedicated to saying that humanity had become complacent, too static, too dependent, and was not prepared to deal with threats to survival. Teaching about survival was the main theme of Leto's "Golden Path", preventing humanity's extinction the overall purpose. While other fans suggested that those threats came and went, I believed they were just on their way. And my own feelings were that they had something to do with two things: one, a possible alien race, once hinted at when it was said that one of the main reasons humanity kept its nukes was because of the possibility of encountering another "intelligence". Two, the ongoing hints that the worm and the spice were not indigenous to Arrakis, but had come from somewhere else. Leto's Scattering placed humanity in different galaxies and universes, perhaps one of these was the original source of both? And, now that humanity had reached out, perhaps they had found them and were drawing their attention, bringing them back into the Old Empire. An alliance between the HM's, the BG's with the various houses, Ixians, Guild and remaining Tleilaxu, was what was needed to defeat them.
Or not… Chances are, I'm wrong on several or all fronts. But that's because I'm not Frank Herbert and chances are, only he ever knew what Dune 7 and/or the conclusion to the saga would really look like. His death had deprived us of that vision, and his son and KJA are either unaware or it too, or are unwilling to share it as originally presented. I HAVE to believe that, because there's no way I'll ever believe they based their Hunters and Sandworms of Dune on his original notes! Could be wrong on that too, but I doubt it!
For more on these and other Dune related topics, check out these sites:
Hairy Ticks of Dune
Jacurutu – The Cast Out
April 25, 2011
Eyes in the Dark now available!
The story of the Argentine and a flotilla of survivor ships, making their way to a distant star in the hopes of ensuring the future of their people and the human race. Now available at Lulu.com and coming soon to Kindle!
April 24, 2011
Source – chapter 5
In this installment, the people back home are beginning to suspect something is up. Strange packages with government seals begin showing up on certain people's doorsteps, aerospace contractors are hired to design a secret new project, and some people even begin to disappear…
April 22, 2011
Icarus now available on Kindle
My second Kindle installment, Icarus, is now available through Amazon.com! More titles to follow, so stay tuned!
April 18, 2011
April 14, 2011
Of Clarke and his Odyssey's
No doubt about it, 2001: A Space Odyssey was one of the coolest, most memorable, and enduring movies I ever saw. Strange, considering there wasn't that much dialogue in the film, and some would say that not much happened. But that's the thing about Kubrick movies, they are very subtextual. And of course, Clarke's involvement can not be minimized. But I'm here to talk about Clarke specifically, and the many books that came out of this screenplay that he and Kubrick created.
For starters, the books were quite different from the original movie. They contained only trace elements of the fear and intense awe that were there in the original movie. In fact, Clarke can be accused of being quite dry, in my opinion, his books somewhat technocratic and devoid of a lot of the complex emotions human beings are known to have. In fact, I was generally disappointed with the ending he wrote, how astronaut Frank Bowman was perfectly okay being whisked millions of light years away from home and transformed into the "Star Child". One would think that a person's psyche would shatter under the strain of knowing that they were being transported across the universe, never to see home again. One would also think that a process of metamorphosis, whereby a human being was being forced to leave behind their corporeal body in favor of some higher form, would be absolutely terrifying. One would think that, but nope! Still, Odyssey's main strength lay in its scientific explorations of a future world as well its explorations of extra-terrestrial intelligence. The idea of an alien race that was so advanced and evolved that it had effectively left its bodies behind was groundbreaking, as was the idea of a monolith. The perfectly proportional shape, rectangles laid out in a ratio of 1:2:3; much better than bulky spaceships and little green men I must say! Also, the story introduced the world to Hal, the AI who, thanks its exposure to human intrigue, becomes homicidal, all the while with that perfect, clinical manner of his! Frightening as he was in the movie, the book contained more depth and drew out the conflict between him and Bowman. In the end, Hal tried to decompress the ship when he realized he had lost control of the mission, which was much more effective than the rather truncated flow of events that happened in the original screenplay.
2010: Odyssey Two, was similarly interesting. In this installment, a second mission is mounted to discern what came of the first. They discover the ship, reactive Hal, and learn that the secrecy surrounding contact with the Monolith was what drove him nuts and was the real purpose of the original mission. Ultimately, it is realized that the alien presence around Jupiter has to do with the moon of Europa, which was featured prominently in the original story because of new discoveries being made about the planet at the time. For those who don't know, it is widely believed that life exists beneath Europa's outer crust, composed of ice and rock, since the oceans that lie beneath are warm from Jupiter's intense radiation and magnetic field. As a case of art imitating life, Clarke decided that in his second book, the reason for the monolith's presence around Europa – facilitators, if not creators, of life – was to help the natural process of life along. By turning Jupiter into a second star – scientists have long known that the gas giant could have become a star if things had happened marginally different in our solar system – Europa's ice crust melted, atmosphere formed, and life was able to crawl from its oceans. The book also reintroduced Bowman to the story, who is now a living entity inside the monolith around Europa. After communicating with the crew, letting them know that "something wonderful" is about to happen and they need to leave, he disappears, only to show up near the end and invite HAL (who's about to die when Jupiter goes Nova) to come with him. By the end of the story, Bowman and HAL, speaking from the Monolith, warn humanity never to go to Europa. The monolith's experiment in life is to flourish freely there, they advise, without human interference. In the movie adaptation, there's also a saccharine bit about how the Cold War powers should live in peace, but that was thrown in there for the sake of the 80′s audiences who were still dealing with the Cold War. Much like most of the US-Soviet competition that characterized the movie, it never made it into the original book.
Then, years later, Clarke wrote Odyssey Three, his third installment in the series. Set in 2061, this book was again inspired by real events, the return to the Solar System of Comet Halley. Since it was not scheduled to return until 2061, he set the book in that year and began writing about a mission to go study it up close, during which time they will be doing a flyby of Europa. So Floyd, main character of book II, a "celebrity guest", goes on this mission with a new crew. The main purpose is to investigate Halley's comet, but the main story thread picks up when scientists on Earth and nearby Ganymede notice a new mountain that has formed on Europa ("Mount Zeus) which cannot be a volcano because of its asymmetrical nature. For reasons that are never fully-explained, the mission is hijacked and the crew become stranded on Europa. During a rescue attempt, Floyd's son, Bowman's grandson, and the Afrikaaner character see the monolith on Europa and a wreck of a Chinese ship that tried to investigate earlier, in defiance of the monolith's warnings. They see the monolith and the mountain confirm that it is, in fact, a giant diamond, a piece of Jupiter that broke off when it went nova and landed on the moon. All of this is consistent with scientific articles of the time that said that Pluto and Neptune had diamond cores, the result of carbon compression, and that the same was probably true of Jupiter. In the end, the crew is rescued, Bowman makes an appearance in the dreams of a few people, and they come to realize that his consciousness now resides inside the monolith. The mountain also disappears beneath the surface of Europa's ice. From all this, it is now clear that Europa is evolving, that Bowman and HAL are still alive in some form, and that a monolith is there, acting as guardian and watchman to the whole process.
Then, to finish things, Clarke wrote 3001: The Final Odyssey. This book I read when I was about twenty, at a time when my literary and critical reading skills were being honed by some seriously awesome teachers and course loads. Perhaps because of this, or because Clarke changed things up drastically in the last book, I was very disappointed. Quick synopsis, the character of Frank Poole, the astronaut who was killed by HAL in book I, is brought back. His body floats back into the Solar System after having done a circuitous route to the outer rim, and since it's 3001, they are able to revive him. The first half of the book is then spent showing Poole how different the future is, revising Clarke's predictions about stuff that happened in the book 2001 but not in real life, deals with all kinds of millennial themes (since the book was written just a few years shy of 2000 and is set just after the third millennium), and asserts the rather weak conclusion that a person from 2001 would have little trouble adapting to life in 3001, as opposed to someone from 1001 adapting to 2001. Why? Because by 2001, most things that will become a reality by 3001 would be being postulated. Now this I found weak for a few reasons. First, it assumes that what we predict will be taking in 3001 actually will. It assumes that progress is a completely linear thing, that history is devoid of repeats or regression, and is generally an example of Clarke's technocratic mindset. It also manages to gloss over the fact that Clarke was wrong about most of his predictions for 2001. For one, the Cold War didn't continue into the future, commercial space travel was not invented, there were no colonies on the moon, and there were no exploratory missions to the rim of known space. These he attempted to minimize by saying that these things were at least in the planning stages. Yeah! In the same way that a trip to the Moon was in the planning stages during H.G. Wells time, but that didn't make it close!
Another major disappointment of the first half is the fact that the technological innovations he mentions look like they were ripped directly from Star Trek! For one, they have holodecks (or a close approximation)! They have brain caps they wear that download information directly into your brain. And (this one was my favorite!) genetically engineered dinosaurs that do manual labor! …WHAT??? Are you freaking kidding me?! To make that worse, he throws in a bit about Poole was surprised to see this, even though he saw all the "Jurassic movies" as a kid. This, along with several other pop-culture references in the first half, made we want to gag! To be fair, its hard to write a book about the near future, especially over and over while the actual future is taking place. But these kind of revisions, penciling in the things that happened in real life, is just annoying! If anything, the real historical record should be minimized in the background. Much like his talk of all the scientific feats that didn't happen, it was probably something that should have been tacitly dealt with, but not talked so much about. Oh, and of course, his comments on religion. The way Clarke saw it, humanity had created a universal church in the future after the fall of Christianity. He figured that at some point in the future, the Vatican would open up its archives and it would subsequently fall in the same way the Kremlin did when it did the same. Are you kidding me? Sure, its a neat parallel, but everyone already knows the church's crimes, they've been documented endlessly. And the archives aren't exactly sealed, they're just not open to the general public. So what would opening them to the public really change? Furthermore, to suggest that humanity could do away with faith because technology meant it no longer needed it is both shallow and naive. It's the same kind of dogmatic thinking that goes into fundamentalism, that asserts that humanity can't live without religion because it would be totally lost without all its dogmatic signposts and explanations. My own theory, humanity's need for faith, as with everything else, is ambiguous and will not be subject to any one influence. Chances are, we will never outlive our need for spirituality, but that does not mean we can't live without specific institutions. And we will NEVER be able to invent some bland, universal, all-inclusive faith. Not that we won't attempt to, but chances are it will fail.
But I digress… the second half of the book deals with Poole deciding that he wants to go to Europa to see what became of HAL and his old colleague. So he goes, and unlike other ships that have tried and failed, he makes it. Then comes more disappointments, Frank and HAL are not transcendent entities as was suggested in previous books. They are merely downloads, digital copies of their original selves preserved inside the monolith – which isn't a conscious being but is itself a computer. BORING! After all that talk about intelligence and reaching the next great leap in cosmic evolution, this is what it all turned out to be? Bits and bytes in some big storage machine? And then there was the status of the Europan's. Basically, that too, contrary to the hopes inspired by previous books, hasn't gone so well. The Europan's chemical and biological makeup, it is revealed, does not inspire confidence. The lifeforms are too basic, too slow and stodgy, to ever evolve into dynamic intelligent beings it seems. So humanity won't have counterparts then, children from the "other sun" to deal with in the future? 'Nuther big letdown man! Well, the book wasn't over so I went on reading. After all this slow build-up, we finally come to the climax of the story. Turns out, the monoliths are coming back to the Solar System. Why? The last transmissions they sent out were over 900 years ago, back when humanity was contemplating its own nuclear annihilation and breaking the quarantine on Europa. This causes the monoliths to conclude that humanity is too aggressive, an experiment gone wrong. So… humanity needs to prepare. They look at all weapons they have in their arsenal, but could possibly stop the monolith's, a race eon's older? They opt for a computer virus, another attempt by Clarke to pay homage to the time in which he was writing. They download the virus into the monolith on Europa in the hopes that it will transfer it to the others that are on their way. Frank and HAL are meanwhile stored in a data crystal to preserve their identities, and before everything hits the fan, it all stops. The monolith's get the virus, doesn't really effect them, but they see that humanity has changed since they last saw them and decide to give them more time. Kind of a letdown. The final words, that humanity is still young and their God "still a child", and they will be granted a reprieve until "The Last Days" were kind of chilling, but it still felt like an abortive climax.
Thus ended the Odyssey series. Some attempts have been made to keep it going by fan-fiction authors, but the less said about them, the better. Nothing worse than fan-fic's who try to keep a series going after its creator retired it (see Dune and it's Descendants for more on this point!). And while I was disappointed with the ending, I do think the series was very enjoyable and worthwhile overall. Some of the concepts, transcendence, ancient species, directed cosmic evolution, were all picked up on by some of the best sci-fi minds, not the least of which were J Michael Straczynski (creator of Babylon 5) and Katsuhiro Otomo (creator of the cyberpunk anime Akira). Where he was weak was in his fundamental understanding of human beings and history; how he felt that people are mere subjects to technological evolution and would continue to progress on a linear pattern. Human beings are certainly affected by technological change, but that change is not altogether positive. In fact, the changes it engenders are often negative and lead to backlash and rejection as a result. Far from replacing religion, technology is often seen as a substitute religion, inspiring the same kind of mindless devotion as fundamentalism, or encouraging people to revert to simple beliefs in the hope of being delivered from its cold rationality. These are the kinds of things I would hope for in any investigation of the future, the social as well as technological upheaval and how they were connected, or at least a balanced look at these kinds of issues.
But Clarke is not that type of guy, he's a futurist so it's naive of me to expect it from him. In the end, he got me thinking, both in tune with his thoughts and against them, so I have to be thankful. In the end, that's what good author does, gets your mind going and your blood pumping. And he left an enduring legacy, many titles to his credit and millions of people inspired by his word, so I say kudos to him! Thanks for all the memories and inspired thoughts, Mr. Clarke. Hope you found a quiet place amongst the stars now that you've transcended that final barrier. Rest in peace, Star Child!
