One knows the situation: Just as one has found an interesting area, someone else comes and hunts one way. A great pity if the area is the whole univerOne knows the situation: Just as one has found an interesting area, someone else comes and hunts one way. A great pity if the area is the whole universe and one humankind and the other overlord aliens and any violation could lead to extermination.
It doesn´t really matter if it´s done to protect the incarcerated from themselves and self-extermination, everyone from them, to build an intergalactic zoo attraction or just for fun, it sucks if you can´t go out for a spaceship ride, terraforming, and total galactic domination. Stupid aliens.
But to make the best out of the bad situation, the alien or in this case human civilization can try to deal with the situation as good as possible what opens many trope options and questions. Do they go the green or the technological way and develop a Gaia or techno core civilization? Ignore the problem and do as if there was nothing outside or try to get rebellious. Focus on hard science and enable an AI to become the master or stay human and use tech to build the ultimate and never-ending voting process in the directest democracy possible by mixing humanities with Psitek.
One main, underlying question is where the perfect balance between total technocratic logic optimization cult and ultra hippie back to the routs alternative sustainability may be.
Clarke chooses immortality, super entities, mind uploading, claustrophobia, ecotopia, telekinesis,... but it can and will go so many other routes both in fiction and reality, because one thing is sure in space, no matter if the isolation is enforced or just caused by the vast distances: Anything that can be done will be done. ( I am very biased towards an AI overlord with a green thumb because I don´t trust humans as much as machines, sorry dear reader, but nevertheless thanks for reading.)
Overlord and Overmind come to open up many questions about the meaning of life and stuff.
The main underlying theme is how much of the presents given dOverlord and Overmind come to open up many questions about the meaning of life and stuff.
The main underlying theme is how much of the presents given during a first contact event should be used or not and this trope grew to a redwood tree size and may evolve to a planet tree in the future with all the subfields, new interpretations, use in a mainly Social Sci-Fi setting, etc.
How Sci-Fi was written those days would be close to unsellable today because each agent would just step back as wide as possible while his panicked eyes that are screaming: "Not enough bucks to make due to far too high complexity."Although this might be limited to the philosophical, complex, and far over my poor little mind concept works many of the behemoths of classic and golden age sci-fi used to deal with these bad, old days. Bad cause human evolution = technological progress moves on, being the only thing distinguishing us from apes. Not feeling sorry for telling the truth.
The science part, on the other hand, has exploded to ultra hardiness in many new works and can often easily be skimmed and scanned without losing much of the inner plot logic and red line. Subjectively I deem that the reason why science got big and higher philosophy got lost in the genre, because the ideological concepts have to be integrated into the whole thing and one can´t just jump over the difficult parts. Feels too much like work rereading many passages to get it.
It´s really, brrr, shivers, sometimes more feeling than learning, getting knowledge or, in general, nonfiction and not like easygoing, funny, and quick entertainment. Be warned, because it hits hard to find out that one has invested time in something that is called fiction or formula literature and suddenly one opens the book again and finds out that one is completely off track and undertands nothing anymore. But maybe I´m just slow on the uptake, not the sharpest knife in the shelf, biasing and cognitive dissonancing my way around that sad, self- made incompetence and unconsciously fake newsing about my favorite genre. Maybe, or very probably, sorry for that.
Clarke and Lem are definitively the worst in this case of overachieving in sophisticated mind game complexity, it blows little minds like mine on a general level. Lem is the only one, I know so far at least, who comes close to Clarke and has a much darker, sarcastic, and pessimistic underlying tone. The cynical, disillusionized uncle who makes one laugh while Clarke is sitting in the other corner of the sci-fi family meeting and is still wanting one to believe in a quick realization of a positive outlook on humankind and life in general. Not absolutely, but still optimistic in contrast to the grumpy, black comedy alternative.
It's really quite tricky to read Clarke (and Lem and some parts of Heinleins´work that aren´t too weird), compared to the much more easy-going and more plot-driven and space opera style Asimov, Herbert, etc. because it´s so fully packed with this amazing language and so many characters talking like college professors that, without full focus, much of the additional value and the understanding gets lost.
But being left with many philosophical thoughts about life, death, immortality, the future of humankind on earth and in space, alien invasions, visits, visitation, medical examination (yes, that thing), etc. is fully worth it.
Mario the lone bookwolf
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Books:
clarke-arthur-c
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