Apex Book Company

by Adrienne Jones

My nineteen-year-old nephew is a fellow Star Trek fan, which is fabulous since you don’t see many Generation Y Trekkies, and it gives us something in common to bridge the gap. But what I love most about conversations with Josh is that, although he’s extremely enlightened for his age, he still possesses the childlike honesty he’s had since he was three, when he sat down next to a girlfriend of mine, looked up at her with his Disney baby eyes, and said “Wow, your legs are HUGE!”

So he got me thinking in a recent Trek conversation when he said, “They’re crazy; I’d be in that holodeck ALL the time, and my programs wouldn’t be boring.” Of course, any Star Trek fan has had the same thought: the crew can live out these fantasy scenarios in a setting that looks, feels and tastes like reality, but they pop in to play Sherlock Holmes or some such lameness? Not that Trek hasn’t touched on the more visceral, gluttonous potential of the holodeck. We’ve seen Lt. Barclay’s bouts with holo-addiction, and even the ever prim Captain Janeway experienced a crisis of conscience when she got a crush on a holo character.

But is the tepid holo-use reflective of the show’s PG rating, or is it indicative of a core truth at the base of fiction’s centuries-old love affair with artificial life? We don’t want AIs for mere entertainment or stimulation. We’ve been at the top of the intellectual food chain for the duration of our species’ life span, and our fulfillment with each other is waning. It’s why toothless yahoos stare at the night sky looking for aliens. What we want is something new, an alternate intellectual companionship, a desire both provocative and terrifying.

Pinocchio scared the crap out of me when I was a kid, though not for its intended reasons. Like many child fantasy stories, the theme was to stick to your roots, quite literal in Pinocchio’s case since he was carved from a tree. Playing on abandonment fears, the story shows us what happens when we leave home and hearth to venture out into the big bad world: predators, loneliness, the struggle for survival. There’s no place like home. But I was more bothered by the quagmire of Pinocchio’s existence. He’s a talking piece of wood that wants to be human. Aside from the clichéd B horror films depicting an evil, murderous Pinocchio, did this concept not make anyone else nervous? I mean, there’s a whole forest of trees out there, what if they all decide to follow in Pinocchio’s clogged footsteps? They could take over in no time!

While the more amicable I-want-to-be-a-real-boy Pinocchio theme continues to pepper science fiction with characters like Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation, twice as many variations portray artificial life forms going terribly awry to the detriment of humanity. From Frankenstein to The Terminator, our hankering to create life from the inanimate comes with the underlying threat that it’ll come back and bite us in the ass. Yet, despite this blatantly obvious moral to the ongoing fairy tale, the theme will not die. Humans are fascinated with creating something sentient outside of our own gene pool, a concept with a cul-de-sac of contradictions.

Despite the planet’s overpopulation and cornucopia of differing cultures and races, we’re just freaking bored with ourselves. If it were merely about creating life, we’d all have babies and be satisfied. But no, we want talking dolls, regardless of their potential to pick up a knife and skitter around in homicidal glee.

Even Star Trek couldn’t decide which route to take with this. The characters on the holodeck were to be treated as ‘just a program’, never to be approached with feeling, (and prone to become dangerous adversaries on the many occasions that the safeties malfunctioned, in which case they could pick up weapons and kill you in a very real and permanent way). Yet The Doctor, an emergency medical hologram was to be treated as part of the crew, with sensitivity given to his needs and emotions.

Naturally the technological advancements of late have added a whole new spectrum to the quest for artificial life, edging toward a manufactured brain based on the same principles as a biological one. But these ideas are geared toward enhancing our own species toward an evolutionary reprieve from the bonds of physical mortality, potentially providing the ability to advance technologically and possibly further into the realms of outer space.

But while the computer age bridged the gap of fantasy and reality, giving the ghost in the machine themes of past films a primitive feel, it’s had an adverse effect on cyberpunk. Humanity’s growing knowledge of technology has taken the mystery out of machines, so we’re not as intrigued by the concept of robots turning their guns on us. So what’s left to feed the need?

I see fiction going back to Mary Shelley basics. We’ve come on in leaps and bounds technologically, but the Millennium has come and gone, and so far Skynet has not become self aware and obliterated eighty percent of the planet. Quite frankly I think people were a little disappointed. So we’re turning our need inward rather than outward again, reaching not for the stars, but for our own flesh, as evidenced in the upsurge of zombies and other genetically mutated foes to conflict with our humanity. If we can’t make something new out of nothing, then by God we’ll alter ourselves! A zombie may not be the best company, particularly the flesh eating variety, but damn it, they’re different.

Adrienne Jones is a speculative fiction and award winning humor writer, and author of the books Brine, Gypsies Stole My Tequila and The Hoax. Despite a well publicized belief in fish people, she’s managed to convince most she’s perfectly normal. Visit her author site at www.hoaxthenovel.com.

All three of Adrienne’s books can be ordered from the Apex aStore.