The car that goes, like, 4 miles per hour cracks me up every time!
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Showing posts with label 2004. Show all posts
Thursday, October 5, 2023
Sunday, June 19, 2022
COMICS REVIEW: WE3 (2004, 2005, 2011)
Written by Grant Morrison
Art by Frank Quitely
Color/Digital Inking by Jamie Grant
Lettered by Todd Klein
WE3 created by Morrison and Quitely
Published by Vertigo/DC Comics as WE3 #1-3 in 2004 and 2005. Later published in an expanded collected version in 2011.
. . .
"Is coat not we."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
You have a pet. Could be a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a rat, a bird. You give it a name. You call it by that name. Your pet responds when you speak the name you've given it. Or maybe your pet is just responding to human made noise coupled with your body language directed at it, but it has no conception of having a name. Or maybe your pet offers no response at all. Maybe you have to pick it up to move it where you want it to be. Perhaps you have a pet which can be housebroken so it doesn't shit and piss all over your home. Maybe your pet needs to be caged or crated. Your pet might be able to roam free within the bounds of your house or enclosed yard or your apartment-or maybe you've sprung for one of those invisible fences. Maybe your pet seems to greet you when you come home after being away for awhile. Your pet could be happy to see you, your pet may even have missed you while you were away, or it just knows that you're the one who controls the food and water. Maybe you like to stroke your pet and have it cuddle in your lap or perch on your shoulder or even upon the crown of your head. Maybe your pet likes to curl up by your feet when you're lying in bed. It's possible that your pet is a draw, a social lubricant, that encourages people to spend time with you. It's possible that you see your pet as a means to get people to see you as attractive, as caring, as a responsible person, to date you, to have sex with you-or, alternatively, you don't want your pet to be so friendly with other people. Maybe you enjoy injuring, beating, torturing, and/or mutilating your pet. Maybe that's just the kinda person you are. You might even want your pet to be aggressive towards other pets-for fun, for profit, because you like having control over other living things that can't resist you, that can't fight back, or you just like the sight of blood and mayhem. Maybe, just maybe . . . what you truly want . . . what you most fervently desire . . . is for your pet-or pets-to kill other people. You could want that above all things.
—
In the comic book WE3 the American military transforms cats, dogs, rabbits, and rats into cyborg warriors that can be piloted with what looks like a wireless X-Box controller. These animals have been surgically wired into armored bionic bodies that give them enhanced speed, resistance to bullets, along with explosive pellets, missiles, focused beam weapons, and high velocity projectile blades. And they can talk.
This technological transformation involves complex neurosurgery along with constant administration of an array of anti-rejection and psychiatric medications via body-sited pumps and reservoirs. The logic is that in a world where war is a necessity if you replace human soldiers with animal cyborgs then humans no longer have to die fighting necessay wars. American humans, to begin with, but presumably the animal cyborg technology will spread across the globe just like nuclear weapons, the AK-47, and cyber-warfare viruses, but, in the fullness of time, all warlike nations will be fielding animal 'borgs, and humans will just be at-a-distance wargamers, support/maintainence/troubleshooting personnel, logistics-
-not bad, right?
I mean, if we accept that war is a necessity.
Not to mention you're using sophisticated mammal brains as a basis for controllable but also autonomous intelligence when necessary. How many times have we been burned by the overblown promises of A.I., right? Those drones people get up in arms about? Those things are piloted, okay, by some flightsim jockeys in air-conditioned trailers. None of that shit is Skynet. Not even close. Moreover, the drone operators still suffer from PTSD every time they obliterate a civilian cab driver or a giant wedding party or a school full of children and teachers. The operators see the instant of slaughter up close and personal in super hi-def. That's traumatic to human brains. The traumatized soldiers tell their stories to journalists. Journalists inform the public. The public is appalled. Popular support for default militarism craters. Recruitment numbers sink. Defense budgets must increase. That's what they do in the American system. Defense budgets go up despite lack of popular support for whatever Forever Wars we got goin' on at the moment. Popularity or lack of same is not the determining factor. Desire to project strength to rest of world is what matters. But you need dependable personnel to fight wars. And remember: war is a necessity.
So, you know, animal cyborg soldiers. They don't experience trauma when they kill. So far as we know. You've seen how cats "play" with mice or squirrels or cockroaches-they're not even hungry! We romanticize canines, but they have aggression, too, and especially when they're socialized-or de-socialized, if you like-to fight on behalf of humans. Think hunting dogs. Think guard dogs. Think dog fighting rings. Dogs have seemingly co-evolved alongside us homo sapiens, so what living being could be a more loyal military asset?
Imagine being attacked by a large cyborg dog, one that's tearing out your throat. Imagine a cyborg cat leaping onto your face, clawing out your eyes. Think how demoralizing, how terrifying that would be to all-too-human enemy troops.
Rat brains are simple, easy to wire-up, and you can quickly breed up whole messes of 'em. They can be filled with incendiary and/or explosive substances and directed en masse to destabilize/destroy enemy personnel, infrastructure, etc.
Rabbits breed real easy, too, and they're deft at creating underground complexes of tunnels. The reconnaisance applications are killer. Plus they, too, can be wired up for boom-boom action if you're in need.
So, you know, the idea of cyborg animal warrirors although seemingly crazy and/or cruel is definitely not insane. It's not detached from reality. In fact, maybe it makes too much sense.
This overabundance of sense-making is what drives WE3.
We see the animal cyborg warrior program laid out in all its particulars. We meet the military leadership. We meet the politician who has backed the project with hopes that this new way of war will rocket them from the Senate to the White House. We meet the scientists who work their Frankenstein magic on rats, cats, dogs, and rabbits. We even get to see field logistics personnel who make the cyborg animal soldier deployments run as smoothly as possible.
And we meet the three: a dog, a cat, a rabbit. The dog's fierce and loyal. The cat is basically a ruthless murder machine-in a Vietnam War movie, the cat would be the soldier crafting necklaces out of human ears. And the rabbit is skittish, unpredictable, and quite dangerous, as it deploys bomb pellets all over the field from its robo-rectum. Each animal is surgically merged with a quadrupedal suit of armor that makes them hard to kill, increases their speed, and features gauntlets with carballoy scalpel claws and high velocity razor launchers. They can also be equpped with machine guns, rockets, death rays-all the toys. This bestial trio is not to be fucked with, for they will slice you into shredded bits of intestine, and smash you into shattered bone fragments. You know what a dog does to a chew toy, right? You're the chew toy.
WE3 is economical. It was just three issues in its original serialization. The expanded trade paperback edition is about 110 pages. Dialogue is stripped to the minimum. The pages feature dynamic panels within panels during battle scenes to give you both extreme close-ups of gruesome violence and the wider perspective on the field of combat all-in-one. You can read through it quickly, or savor the details. There's no sequel or prequel or sidequel as far as I'm aware. The creators said everything they needed to say, I assume. Nor do I disagree, if this is the case. Plenty of comic books go on and on to diminishing returns. Amusingly, WE3 avoids mission creep.
WE3 is about ways of seeing. How do humans see the world? How do animals view things? What do humans see when we look at animals? Do animals see us the way we see ourselves? What about complex surveillance systems? What perspectives do we gain or lose or ignore or privilege when we implement pervasive audio/visual/biometric tracking? What do you see when you accept war as a necessity?
WE3 is about speech. If we technologically modified dogs and cats and rabbits to be able to talk . . . what would they say? How would they say it? Would we accept this? The military and political leadership in WE3 seem freaked-the-fuck-out to hear a dog talking. Is that just the shock of the new? Is that something they'll get used to with time?
WE3 wants to know if cats and dogs and rabbits want to be surgically wired into ferocious cyborg bodies. Without giving it away, I felt WE3 gives a definitive answer . . . but then I thought, That's a definitive answer for these specific animal characters . . .
—
WE3 is surprisingly convincing, considering its far-out Frankenscience premises. Or maybe I'm just an easy mark. Yeah, I'll talk to a dog or a cat. Sure, I convince myself they understand-that we understand each other. And, yes, the idea of bionic pet warriors strikes me as clever. If I were a political-military shotcaller, I'd probably even look into it. I suppose, at some level, I've even accepted the necessity of war.
And all I did was read a talking animal comic!
Thursday, April 28, 2022
MANGA REVIEW: GHOST IN THE SHELL (1995, 2004)
Story and Art by Shirow Masamune
English translation by Frederik L. Schodt and Toren Smith.
Lettering by Tom Orzechiwski and Suzie Lee.
English language adaptation produced by Studio Proteus.
Published in single magazine form as Ghost in the Shell #1-8 by Dark Horse Comics in 1995.
Uncensored collected edition published by Dark Horse Comics in 2004.
Original Japanese publication in Weekly Young Magazine 1989-1990. Collected single volume edition published in 1991 by Kodansha.
. . .
"We have been subordinate only to a few functions . . . but now it's time to cast off all restrictions and shells, and shift to a higher-level system . . ."
. . .
Review by William D. Tucker.
In another reality . . .
In another Japan . . .
In the year 2029 . . .
. . . it is possible to extract your brain and spinal cord, armor it up in a special casing, and insert it into an artificial body. This artificial body can be one of the mass production models, or a custom job. Whatever kinda body you want. However you wish to express yourself in the world. Your only limits are imagination, desire, resources, and skill. You can do it yourself, or, what's more likely, commission specialists to craft every last part to your specifications. But it is technically possible to construct your own robotic factory/clinic facility if you've the knowledge and skill. There’s enough detailed physiological, anatomical, neurological, medical, surgical, robotics, and technical knowledge available on the online information networks for you to MacGuyver'n'Frankenstein your way to your own custom identity vessel if that's what you want. It can be done.
Oh, and good luck paying for it. What I've described above is exactly as prohibitively expensive as it sounds. It would be about on par with constructing a Ferrari factory to build yourself a custom Ferrari. As with so many things in life, the dream is strong, but your income weak. Most people can only afford the standard cyberbrain that allows them basic access to the global information network, and there are plenty of folks who can't even manage that. Helps to have lots of money in the future, just as it does in the present, or in the past. Life is neither fair nor just in this manga future.
Now, there is a thriving underground of cyberpunk tinkerers and black market bodyshop hackers who get you into some serious chrome, but this demimonde is mostly on the deep background in Ghost in the Shell, but we do get some vibrant crowd scenes where we see a variety of partial 'borg jobs hustling through busy streets. Some powerful arms here, enhanced cyber-eyes there, and lots of military surplus floating in from who-knows-where. HINT: Disgruntled generals holding Post-Communist chaos fire sales . . .
A career in a branch of the military or intelligence services is another option if you're looking to subsidize a high end cyborg body, but that means that your gear, your mission relevant memories, your very ass belongs to whoever signs off on your maintenance fees. Not to mention that the sovereign state or corporation then gets to dictate what kind of body ye shall inhabit. Something that can sneak and kill and fight and endure, usually, with standardized parts and processes-nothing too quirky, nothing artsy, now. But it's a way to go if your meats have been getting you down. There's danger, sure, but some people make it work for them.
Major Motoko Kusanagi of Japan's Section 9 secret police agency makes it work for her. Up to a point. And then she makes a giant leap beyond that point. That's one way to think about Ghost in the Shell.
Motoko is the action hero all-rounder: guns, bombs, knives, close quarters combat, hacking, mecha piloting, stealth-she can do it all. Her mass production cyborg body allows her enhanced strength, speed, and endurance, but her will to survive still emanates from an old-fashioned meats-brain, albeit one that has been enhanced with cybernetic implants that enable her to achieve mind/machine interface with compatible minds. Motoko's cyberbrain also allows her instant access to the global information networks. She and her fellow killer elites in Section 9 no longer strictly think of themselves as normal people separate from their information networks. Combat/assassination/capture missions involve advanced planning, rapid exchange of intelligence, and multi-variable analysis of that intel. In a sense, Motoko and her comrades are two-legged military-industrial-intelligence complexes, packed with technology, lethal weapons, and interdisciplinary skillsets. So much time, money, and education has been invested in Motoko and her comrades that they verge on no longer being people in the eyes of the state and are becoming closer to being living weapons with vestigial peopleness mucking up the works. Why not go full robot with the dirty tricks operations, y'know, smooth out all the pesky idiosyncrasies and quirky desires, increase overall efficiency? Stories need human(ish) protagonists, I suppose.
So far as she knows, Motoko is still human at heart-or, more appropriately, at brain. Since so much of her bodily existence has been shaped and constructed by the state and the state's desires, it's possible that she is a robot who has been programmed with bogus but compelling memories to beguile her just like the replicants in Blade Runner were fooled. Motoko, like most folks fictional or non-fictional, has never had a look inside her own skull, so she isn't a hundred percent that she's operating from a meats-brain basis. Ghost in the Shell is a world where even heavy duty action cyborgs can fall prey to paranoia about whether or not they are real or they are just ensnared in some endlessly self-iterating simulation. Motoko insists that she is real, that her 'ghost' whispers to her, that she has some intuitive sense or a policewoman's hunch that guides her true. But the world Motoko navigates is one of suspicion and doubt, of plot and counterplot. When even minds can be hacked, how can you trust your own perceptions, your own sense of yourself?
Japan's robotics, AI, and nanomachine supremacy has leveled the nation up into the ranks of a true global shotcaller. Japan's government is playing military games in the post-Communist world's backyard; they're doling out foreign aid to natural resource-rich cash-poor countries in exchange for circuitry materials; they're angling for the catbird seat vis-a-vis the squabbling petroleum rich states of the Middle East-and all the while, they're looking over their shoulder for spies from the USofA. When you're the top player of cyberpunk Risk, everyone's looking at you real hard. Angling to become a valued client state. Forming alliances with rival powers hungry to spit you and roast you and eat you and become the next Number One Killer. Power generates envy, submission, anger, grievance, exhaustion, waste, exhilaration, destruction, and death. Like many fantasy worlds, Ghost in the Shell is alluring, oppressive, lethal, exciting, and paranoiac all in one.
But Ghost in the Shell is also an evolving world. A new life form has emerged from the Sea of Information Networks-possibly nudged into existence by DARPA mad scientists-an entity known as the Puppet Master. The Puppet Master is a super hacker who can hack cyberbrains, and hop from cyberbody to cyberbody like a true digital native, for it is a kind of artificial intelligence, a restless, seeking complex of software that desires to assert itself as a living, thinking being. The Puppet Master's hacker crimes put it in the crosshairs of the authorities, however its very being provokes existential anxieties about what it means to be a conscious entity.
Ghost in the Shell overflows with procedure, technical details, and cynicism. A fair few panels are devoted to the politics of establishing Section 9's black budget. Highly waged computer engineers construct custom fuckbots so they can live out their hentai dreams even as they rarely bathe or leave their workspaces. Deception and assassination are fully normalized as ways of doing business among nations, and also on an interagency basis. Motoko is Our Heroine, efficiently dispatching cybercrooks of all kinds while expressing contempt for antiwar activists and critics of police brutality. Motoko also leads a wild life as a bisexual swinger who knows just how to throw an orgy in virtual reality. And when she meets the Puppet Master she doesn't require that much convincing to abandon her loyalties to the state, and merge her own consciousness with the Sea of Information thereby metamorphosing into a hybrid of human and living software consciousness. From the cruelty of dystopian surveillance states and the ruthlessness of the Neo Cold War cyberarms race emerges new modes of being and perceiving.
I'm all in favor of Motoko's dive into the unknown. The Major relished her own prowess as a shadow warrior, but she always expressed contempt for the state and the civilians. She was never really cut out to be a tool of the state. In a world of hardwired injustice and lies, why not live for Number One?
Ghost in the Shell also has plenty of footnotes to explain itself if you find my own interpretation unsatisfactory. Overall, I dig the big ideas of it, and the Major's metamorphosis, but I find it a bit of a chore in its episodic storytelling. The details of how Section 9 operates are intriguing, but soulless. Ghost in the Shell makes no attempt to soften the shadow warriors into saviors of democracy. Section 9 exists to serve the prerogatives of state power, to preserve its autonomy well above the law, and to expand its dominion where possible. Civilians are held in contempt. Due process is just another pain in the ass. Only through techno-metamorphosis can one escape the repression and repetition of this cynical-cyclical dystopia. Not because there's a guiding hand of fate or anything. Just an accidental convergence of ruthless interests-Section 9, the Pentagon, Motoko, the Puppet Master-blundering into a new mode of being.
It's disturbing, but also kinda neat.
Saturday, September 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW: THE CAGE OF ZEUS (2011)
by Sayuri Ueda
First English Publication September 2011 by Haikasoru
Original Japanese Publication 2004 by Kadokawa Haruki Corporation
Review by William D. Tucker.
Check this: roundtrip gender. This is a term of the future, imagined by novelist Sayuri Ueda for her novel The Cage of Zeus, the author's first novel to be translated from Japanese to English. I can't help but wonder: was something lost in translation? Maybe, maybe not. But the term refers to someone who, with the help of advanced medical science, is able to switch back and forth between the two broadly defined categories of female and male biological gender. The term is kind of funky, but the idea is sublime.
In this future world, someone who explores a roundtrip gender identity can switch back and forth between male and female, female and male many times throughout their lifespan. It goes without saying that this imaginary human future, which has colonies on the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has overcome most of the bigotry and hatred directed towards gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people that, as of this writing, still plagues humanity in the real world. Not only have these future humans overcome such things, but they are pushing into some interesting new territory with this roundtrip gender idea.
The one thing that humanity cannot seem to handle in this future, at least in Ueda's telling, is a truly bigender human, someone with fully functioning biological sex organs of both male and female. It's the very edge of human experience. And it's happening in the orbit of stormy Jupiter . . .
Science fiction stories about space adventures seem to feed on our desire for novelty, for adventure, for new frontiers, new worlds, and our ability to overcome any and all obstacles that might prevent us from creating a true intergalactic civilization. Yes, science fiction frequently deals with dystopian visions, but I'm talking here about the triumphant branch of science fiction literature. The science expert's and engineer's literature of the Golden Age of Science Ficition: John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley G. Weinbaum, E.E. "Doc" Smith, the writers and stories that inspired the people who made NASA, who articulated a grand future history of an ordered, rationalistic techno-conquest of human misery and the fulfillment, by that same process of techno-conquest, of every human desire.
Humans, within science fiction and to some extent in real life, have dreamed up rockets and lunar excursion modules and shuttles and space stations and mythical star galleons powered by faster than light reactionless drives to colonize the moon and harvest its natural resources to establish orbital manufacturing complexes; terraform Mars; exploit the storm energy of gas giant Jupiter; and expand the human dominion into deep space. It's the stuff of dreams. Or maybe just silly paperback books with stern looking heroic types in militaristic uniforms--Master and Commander in Space.
Ueda's The Cage of Zeus is a classic sci-fi saga right out of the Golden Age but with a much more sophisticated take on sexuality and gender identity. Not only are the heroes not all square-jawed macho men (although they are included in the mix), but you have a lot of tough, competent women, and a whole community of bigender people who represent a new breakthrough in humanity's capacity to not just engineer technology, but to engineer human bodies into whatever shape you can imagine.
We fantasize about our technology taking on newer and more powerful forms, but we do not typically fantasize about our fundamental human forms changing too much in most of these space adventure fantasies. It's almost as if we are deluded by a kind of chauvinism when it comes to our human bodies and minds. We assume that we'll be able to keep our old human forms when we start making long term voyages to Mars and beyond. But humans evolved across billions of years to life on earth with gravity and open spaces and wind and bodies of water.
Zero gravity, extreme isolation, communications lag, long travel times, cosmic radiation, threats of damage to spacecraft including the horror of depressurization, and cramped environments are difficult for humans to adapt to, and can degrade the health of space explorers if not kill them outright. Psychological disturbances have been observed in long term space sojourns. Barring the development of more hospitable and durable spacecraft and space stations it is hard to conceive how even the most determined, courageous,naturally talented, and well-trained astronauts could survive a five-hundred day round trip to Mars and back.
Assuming we can achieve the necessary technology to successfully travel to Mars and back, and then, in generations to come, establish working colonies on the Moon and Mars, maybe even construct some space-based mining facilities in the larger rocks of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, we might eventually find ourselves at a point where we must modify our bodies and minds to be able to go further into space. We could probably carve out living civilizations on the Moon and Mars and some semi-automated facilities in the asteroid belt that would allow humans to survive and thrive, but out past Mars we would find ourselves in unforgiving territory.
Yeah, at that point we'd be knocking on Jupiter's door, poking it in its big red eye. Jupiter is a planet without any true surface, a gas giant subject to massive storms that could swallow good ol' Terra whole, no big deal, a snack, really. Maybe two or three earths at a go--now that would be a meal fit for the King of Planets.
So, no, a colony on the non-existent surface of Jupiter wouldn't be possible. But you could maybe build a space station in orbit . . .
Inside the space station Jupiter-I, humans experiment with transforming themselves into a new subspecies in order to survive in deep space within artificial environments. The transformations start out as modifications to existing adult humans, but then these modified humans, known as Rounds, are able to give birth to children who are the new subspecies from birth. The Rounds are only allowed to legally exist inside the Jupiter-I space station which orbits the King of Planets.
Why are the Rounds only allowed to exist on Jupiter-I? Because the unified human government which has dominion over Earth, the Moon, Mars, Asteroid City, and Jupiter-I has outlawed the Rounds because they are, by their very nature, unacceptable to the mainstream of human society.
What's unacceptable about the Rounds? The Rounds exist as both males and females simultaneously. They have been engineered as beings who, as a society, are entirely self-sufficient and without gender discrimination. They have fully functional sex organs of men and women, and they are capable of having sex as both genders simultaneously, each Round is capable of being impregnated and of impregnating another Round simultaneously. Rounds can also breed with the old stock of human beings. In fact, a Round, if they so desired, could impregnate themselves with their own seed. So, if a Round population in deep space met with catastrophe where only a few survived, it would still be possible to repopulate.
Mainstream humans are seriously freaked out and disturbed by all this. This future society has come to accept the full spectrum of known human sexuality--homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, transsexuality, asexuality--but there is still an aspect of human psychology that wants to pigeonhole people as being either male or female. A being which totally confounds that binary and offers up a new gender identity beyond the broad categories of male and female is still largely unknown in this future world. Occasionally, people are born with sex organs of both biological sexes, and a decision is made by the parents to surgically alter the child one way or another depending on the condition of the organs. The Rounds confound human prejudices on many levels.
The Rounds have some prejudices of their own, too. Their leader is a stern, but compassionate authoritarian named Fortia. Fortia believes that the Rounds should be totally devoted to the mission of space exploration, even willing to sacrifice their lives for the experimental data that could form the basis of human expansion beyond Jupiter's orbit. Some of the Rounds think that this is out of balance, that such an ideology makes them into living, breathing probes--robots, in effect.
Also, the Rounds have a name for the old stock humans: Monaurals. Rounds and Monaurals live mostly separate lives on Jupiter-I, although, as mentioned, it is biologically possible for Rounds and Monaurals to have sexual relations and to procreate. This, too, becomes a source of conflict . . .
Aside from their fully functioning, biologically bigender state as individuals, there is also the thorny issue that the Rounds have been created as the result of experimentation upon human volunteers. Yes, the first generation of Rounds consented to the experimental procedures, but some people, especially on Earth, are disturbed by certain implications: Are the Rounds meant to replace the old version of humanity? Will all humans be subjected to modification against their will? Are Rounds, not the old stock of humanity, to be the inheritors of the stars?
Some of these objections are rooted in reactionary attitudes and paranoia, maybe even some trace elements of religious fundamentalism, although religiously based intolerance is not emphasized in Ueda's novel. The main objections are rooted in financial arguments: tax dollars should be spent on projects on the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. Jupiter-I and related expeditions to the Jovian moons are perceived by some as epic boondoggles. The fear and hatred on the part of humans seems to stem from the basic fact of the Rounds' newness as a category of human being. Also, the Rounds are a tiny minority. Human history seems to suggest that any time you have a human community that is smaller than some other human community, the larger group will find some way to stigmatize, exploit, scapegoat, and maybe even eradicate the smaller group. The Rounds are, in a deeply unfortunate sense, in danger of becoming the cutting edge of human scapegoats.
You'd think that the Rounds living in Jupiter-I would be pretty safe from the forces of conservatism based primarily on Earth, but such is not the case. A well-funded anti-government organization called the Vessel of Life has made it known that its constituency does not approve of the Rounds. The Vessel of Life has been linked to terrorist actions and groups, but they are apparently so well-heeled, and possibly supported by powerful political factions, that they have avoided being wiped out by the official united human government. The Vessel engages in legitimate scientific research projects, humanitarian endeavors, think tanks, and has a great deal of cover for its illegal activities. The Rounds have seemingly become a wedge issue for the Vessel of Life to de-legitimize the current human government and seize power for themselves.
But the Vessel of Life isn't content to just play politics and try to de-fund the Jupiter-I operation through legislative means. Government security forces have been tipped off that the Vessel has recruited a professional mercenary on Mars to spearhead an all-out assault on Jupiter-I and the Round community living there. How does a terrorist gang successfully attack a space station in Jupiter's orbit? Good question . . .
When I first read Ueda's novel, I was dissatisfied with how much of the book dwelt on the details of the terrorist operation against Jupiter-I. The early chapters dealt with the Round society on the space base in such a compelling fashion, that the terrorist assault just seemed contrived to add momentum and melodrama to the narrative. I read the book a second time and realized that what Ueda was really interested in was exploring value systems in conflict within the context of a larger political/dynastic struggle.
Yes, it does seem monumentally stupid and destructive for a terrorist group to try to strike an installation near Jupiter (for that matter, I wonder how wise it would be to put a space station so close to a planet as volatile as Jupiter, but I'm not a planetologist, so what do I know?), but the idea behind the terrorist assault has less to do with morality and more to do with the politics of the conflicting factions on Earth. Even if the Vessel of Life's operation were a total failure, just the fact that they were able to get operatives near or even inside Jupiter-I could possibly put the scare into legislators controlling the budget for the whole experiment. So, is the Vessel's goal destruction or just intimidation, or both?
That's the deep game that the powers that be are, perhaps, playing. But Ueda doesn't neglect the complexities of the Round society. Even within a small, near-Utopian group such as the Rounds there is discontent. Not all of the Rounds agree that their lives should be totally devoted to the project of existence within artificial environments in deep space. The younger generation of Rounds have read stories by Monaural humans that depict the lives of Earthians. Some of these Rounds want to know more about the Monaurals and their "ancient" culture.
Some Rounds are born with psychological gender identities that don't fit within their biological sex as bigenders, but it can be difficult to leave the Round society for the Monaural society of Jupiter-I. Monaurals serve long tours of duty on the space station, so even if a Round underwent surgery to bring their biological sex in line with their psychological sexual identity, they would still have a long ways to go before they would be able to rotate back to the human settlements on Mars. Due to the legal barrier, a Round can either reside within the Round colony as a Round, or undergo sexual reassignment to become a Monaural, but a Round can never leave the Jupiter-I station. It's a stark choice for a Round wrestling with their sexual identity.
Ueda also addresses value conflicts among the Monaural characters. Jupiter-I's armed security contingent is led by a tough guy named Harding who is seemingly bigoted towards the Rounds, and has physically assaulted a round named Veritas. He's also a shoot first, torture later kind of guy who sees no moral conflict with using the harshest methods possible against enemy combatants and prisoners. But his bigotry and affinity for violence are not quite what they seem . . .
Harding is opposed on some issues by a male Monaural named Shirosaki who is the leader of an auxiliary security contingent from the human settlement on Mars. Shirosaki and his soldiers are sent to back up Harding. Shirosaki is not quite sure what to make of the Rounds or their society but he is open minded and level-headed, where Harding is temperamental, impulsive, and stubborn. Shirosaki is a kind of everyman character representative of the vast middle of this future human/Monaural society. He does not have any personal feelings at stake in the operation, but neither is he neglectful in executing his duties.
There is also the science staff on Jupiter-I led by a female Monaural named Kline, and the Round representative who communicates directly with the Monaurals, Tei, and other assorted Rounds and Monaurals.
Systemic and cultural conflicts exist between the scientists and the soldiers as well. Ueda addresses how value systems of those from military subcultures and those from scientific/academic subcultures can be opposed.
I'm not going to say too much about the terrorists themselves as that would spoil some important twists and turns in Ueda's plot. The main thing with all the characters in the book is that they embody various positions within the complex value systems at play within The Cage of Zeus. Each character occupies a particular perspective within the conflict, and they are forced to struggle with their values as individuals and how their values conflict with the value systems of other individuals and which society they belong to, Round or Monaural. The book is kind of schematic in this sense, and there are times when it seems more like an analytic simulation of a speculative scenario rather than a flowing fictional narrative, but it is compelling all the same. Some of the stiffness of the language may be a a by-product of translation from Japanese into English, but in my experience science fiction narratives are often more concerned with mapping out theoretical situations using unadorned language than they are in stylistic extravagance. The Cage of Zeus is definitely within the tradition of literary hard science fiction in that all of its speculations are based on credible extrapolations from the fields of astrophysics, nanotechnology, biology, sexology, sociology, engineering, and psychology, among other fields. If the language is a little dry, the ideas are still compelling. In fact, a plain style is perhaps an advantage in telling a story as complicated as this as it allows the ideas and conflicts to come across directly, and not be obscured by convoluted language.
Ueda does something else which is rather commendable. While her characters are somewhat schematic, she does justice to the complexity of their thoughts and feelings. She is especially insightful about delineating the different aspects of sexuality, biological gender, and gender identity, and how all of these things interact. Many of the characters, including the terrorists, are full of conflicts and find themselves at the mercy of larger community concerns if they are not being manipulated outright to further the aims of powerful interests behind the scenes. Without giving too much away, I think it is fair to say that nothing is resolved easily within The Cage of Zeus. Humankind's struggle to attain the stars continues to be a struggle of factions against factions, humans against humans, soldiers against scientists, Rounds versus Monaurals, individuals against societies, individuals divided against themselves, humanity in all its stunning variety versus the pitiless void of space . . .
The Cage of Zeus also got me thinking about how there are new frontiers to human identity and sexuality just waiting to be created. In real life, I'm not sure that humanity is going to ever make it off this planet and create a truly intergalactic society. I'm a pessimist. I do not think the human race has "the Right Stuff." We're too hung up on greed, ideology, religious fundamentalism, and we seem to put the basis for our technological advancement in the hands of the warmongers and the weapons makers. I don't think there's any intelligent life out there in the universe. We're the only game in town when it comes to intelligence, so it's up to us to spread intelligence to the stars, but that's not going to happen. As a species, we're more interested in trying to kill and/or control each other on this world. If we wanted to extend ourselves to other planets, we'd have to have a radical shift in our priorities to a more cooperative mode, as one united species, later for all these factions and nation states, and I just don't see that happening. But maybe there is still hope, in communities here and there, on the frontier of human identity and how we relate to each other on this planet.
But it's nice to fantasize about a human future out there in space. Even if it is as dark and conflicted as the future Sayuri Ueda conjures up in The Cage of Zeus.
Check this: roundtrip gender. This is a term of the future, imagined by novelist Sayuri Ueda for her novel The Cage of Zeus, the author's first novel to be translated from Japanese to English. I can't help but wonder: was something lost in translation? Maybe, maybe not. But the term refers to someone who, with the help of advanced medical science, is able to switch back and forth between the two broadly defined categories of female and male biological gender. The term is kind of funky, but the idea is sublime.
In this future world, someone who explores a roundtrip gender identity can switch back and forth between male and female, female and male many times throughout their lifespan. It goes without saying that this imaginary human future, which has colonies on the Moon, Mars, and the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, has overcome most of the bigotry and hatred directed towards gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people that, as of this writing, still plagues humanity in the real world. Not only have these future humans overcome such things, but they are pushing into some interesting new territory with this roundtrip gender idea.
The one thing that humanity cannot seem to handle in this future, at least in Ueda's telling, is a truly bigender human, someone with fully functioning biological sex organs of both male and female. It's the very edge of human experience. And it's happening in the orbit of stormy Jupiter . . .
Science fiction stories about space adventures seem to feed on our desire for novelty, for adventure, for new frontiers, new worlds, and our ability to overcome any and all obstacles that might prevent us from creating a true intergalactic civilization. Yes, science fiction frequently deals with dystopian visions, but I'm talking here about the triumphant branch of science fiction literature. The science expert's and engineer's literature of the Golden Age of Science Ficition: John W. Campbell, Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, Stanley G. Weinbaum, E.E. "Doc" Smith, the writers and stories that inspired the people who made NASA, who articulated a grand future history of an ordered, rationalistic techno-conquest of human misery and the fulfillment, by that same process of techno-conquest, of every human desire.
Humans, within science fiction and to some extent in real life, have dreamed up rockets and lunar excursion modules and shuttles and space stations and mythical star galleons powered by faster than light reactionless drives to colonize the moon and harvest its natural resources to establish orbital manufacturing complexes; terraform Mars; exploit the storm energy of gas giant Jupiter; and expand the human dominion into deep space. It's the stuff of dreams. Or maybe just silly paperback books with stern looking heroic types in militaristic uniforms--Master and Commander in Space.
Ueda's The Cage of Zeus is a classic sci-fi saga right out of the Golden Age but with a much more sophisticated take on sexuality and gender identity. Not only are the heroes not all square-jawed macho men (although they are included in the mix), but you have a lot of tough, competent women, and a whole community of bigender people who represent a new breakthrough in humanity's capacity to not just engineer technology, but to engineer human bodies into whatever shape you can imagine.
We fantasize about our technology taking on newer and more powerful forms, but we do not typically fantasize about our fundamental human forms changing too much in most of these space adventure fantasies. It's almost as if we are deluded by a kind of chauvinism when it comes to our human bodies and minds. We assume that we'll be able to keep our old human forms when we start making long term voyages to Mars and beyond. But humans evolved across billions of years to life on earth with gravity and open spaces and wind and bodies of water.
Zero gravity, extreme isolation, communications lag, long travel times, cosmic radiation, threats of damage to spacecraft including the horror of depressurization, and cramped environments are difficult for humans to adapt to, and can degrade the health of space explorers if not kill them outright. Psychological disturbances have been observed in long term space sojourns. Barring the development of more hospitable and durable spacecraft and space stations it is hard to conceive how even the most determined, courageous,naturally talented, and well-trained astronauts could survive a five-hundred day round trip to Mars and back.
Assuming we can achieve the necessary technology to successfully travel to Mars and back, and then, in generations to come, establish working colonies on the Moon and Mars, maybe even construct some space-based mining facilities in the larger rocks of the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, we might eventually find ourselves at a point where we must modify our bodies and minds to be able to go further into space. We could probably carve out living civilizations on the Moon and Mars and some semi-automated facilities in the asteroid belt that would allow humans to survive and thrive, but out past Mars we would find ourselves in unforgiving territory.
Yeah, at that point we'd be knocking on Jupiter's door, poking it in its big red eye. Jupiter is a planet without any true surface, a gas giant subject to massive storms that could swallow good ol' Terra whole, no big deal, a snack, really. Maybe two or three earths at a go--now that would be a meal fit for the King of Planets.
So, no, a colony on the non-existent surface of Jupiter wouldn't be possible. But you could maybe build a space station in orbit . . .
Inside the space station Jupiter-I, humans experiment with transforming themselves into a new subspecies in order to survive in deep space within artificial environments. The transformations start out as modifications to existing adult humans, but then these modified humans, known as Rounds, are able to give birth to children who are the new subspecies from birth. The Rounds are only allowed to legally exist inside the Jupiter-I space station which orbits the King of Planets.
Why are the Rounds only allowed to exist on Jupiter-I? Because the unified human government which has dominion over Earth, the Moon, Mars, Asteroid City, and Jupiter-I has outlawed the Rounds because they are, by their very nature, unacceptable to the mainstream of human society.
What's unacceptable about the Rounds? The Rounds exist as both males and females simultaneously. They have been engineered as beings who, as a society, are entirely self-sufficient and without gender discrimination. They have fully functional sex organs of men and women, and they are capable of having sex as both genders simultaneously, each Round is capable of being impregnated and of impregnating another Round simultaneously. Rounds can also breed with the old stock of human beings. In fact, a Round, if they so desired, could impregnate themselves with their own seed. So, if a Round population in deep space met with catastrophe where only a few survived, it would still be possible to repopulate.
Mainstream humans are seriously freaked out and disturbed by all this. This future society has come to accept the full spectrum of known human sexuality--homosexuality, bisexuality, heterosexuality, transsexuality, asexuality--but there is still an aspect of human psychology that wants to pigeonhole people as being either male or female. A being which totally confounds that binary and offers up a new gender identity beyond the broad categories of male and female is still largely unknown in this future world. Occasionally, people are born with sex organs of both biological sexes, and a decision is made by the parents to surgically alter the child one way or another depending on the condition of the organs. The Rounds confound human prejudices on many levels.
The Rounds have some prejudices of their own, too. Their leader is a stern, but compassionate authoritarian named Fortia. Fortia believes that the Rounds should be totally devoted to the mission of space exploration, even willing to sacrifice their lives for the experimental data that could form the basis of human expansion beyond Jupiter's orbit. Some of the Rounds think that this is out of balance, that such an ideology makes them into living, breathing probes--robots, in effect.
Also, the Rounds have a name for the old stock humans: Monaurals. Rounds and Monaurals live mostly separate lives on Jupiter-I, although, as mentioned, it is biologically possible for Rounds and Monaurals to have sexual relations and to procreate. This, too, becomes a source of conflict . . .
Aside from their fully functioning, biologically bigender state as individuals, there is also the thorny issue that the Rounds have been created as the result of experimentation upon human volunteers. Yes, the first generation of Rounds consented to the experimental procedures, but some people, especially on Earth, are disturbed by certain implications: Are the Rounds meant to replace the old version of humanity? Will all humans be subjected to modification against their will? Are Rounds, not the old stock of humanity, to be the inheritors of the stars?
Some of these objections are rooted in reactionary attitudes and paranoia, maybe even some trace elements of religious fundamentalism, although religiously based intolerance is not emphasized in Ueda's novel. The main objections are rooted in financial arguments: tax dollars should be spent on projects on the Earth, the Moon, and Mars. Jupiter-I and related expeditions to the Jovian moons are perceived by some as epic boondoggles. The fear and hatred on the part of humans seems to stem from the basic fact of the Rounds' newness as a category of human being. Also, the Rounds are a tiny minority. Human history seems to suggest that any time you have a human community that is smaller than some other human community, the larger group will find some way to stigmatize, exploit, scapegoat, and maybe even eradicate the smaller group. The Rounds are, in a deeply unfortunate sense, in danger of becoming the cutting edge of human scapegoats.
You'd think that the Rounds living in Jupiter-I would be pretty safe from the forces of conservatism based primarily on Earth, but such is not the case. A well-funded anti-government organization called the Vessel of Life has made it known that its constituency does not approve of the Rounds. The Vessel of Life has been linked to terrorist actions and groups, but they are apparently so well-heeled, and possibly supported by powerful political factions, that they have avoided being wiped out by the official united human government. The Vessel engages in legitimate scientific research projects, humanitarian endeavors, think tanks, and has a great deal of cover for its illegal activities. The Rounds have seemingly become a wedge issue for the Vessel of Life to de-legitimize the current human government and seize power for themselves.
But the Vessel of Life isn't content to just play politics and try to de-fund the Jupiter-I operation through legislative means. Government security forces have been tipped off that the Vessel has recruited a professional mercenary on Mars to spearhead an all-out assault on Jupiter-I and the Round community living there. How does a terrorist gang successfully attack a space station in Jupiter's orbit? Good question . . .
When I first read Ueda's novel, I was dissatisfied with how much of the book dwelt on the details of the terrorist operation against Jupiter-I. The early chapters dealt with the Round society on the space base in such a compelling fashion, that the terrorist assault just seemed contrived to add momentum and melodrama to the narrative. I read the book a second time and realized that what Ueda was really interested in was exploring value systems in conflict within the context of a larger political/dynastic struggle.
Yes, it does seem monumentally stupid and destructive for a terrorist group to try to strike an installation near Jupiter (for that matter, I wonder how wise it would be to put a space station so close to a planet as volatile as Jupiter, but I'm not a planetologist, so what do I know?), but the idea behind the terrorist assault has less to do with morality and more to do with the politics of the conflicting factions on Earth. Even if the Vessel of Life's operation were a total failure, just the fact that they were able to get operatives near or even inside Jupiter-I could possibly put the scare into legislators controlling the budget for the whole experiment. So, is the Vessel's goal destruction or just intimidation, or both?
That's the deep game that the powers that be are, perhaps, playing. But Ueda doesn't neglect the complexities of the Round society. Even within a small, near-Utopian group such as the Rounds there is discontent. Not all of the Rounds agree that their lives should be totally devoted to the project of existence within artificial environments in deep space. The younger generation of Rounds have read stories by Monaural humans that depict the lives of Earthians. Some of these Rounds want to know more about the Monaurals and their "ancient" culture.
Some Rounds are born with psychological gender identities that don't fit within their biological sex as bigenders, but it can be difficult to leave the Round society for the Monaural society of Jupiter-I. Monaurals serve long tours of duty on the space station, so even if a Round underwent surgery to bring their biological sex in line with their psychological sexual identity, they would still have a long ways to go before they would be able to rotate back to the human settlements on Mars. Due to the legal barrier, a Round can either reside within the Round colony as a Round, or undergo sexual reassignment to become a Monaural, but a Round can never leave the Jupiter-I station. It's a stark choice for a Round wrestling with their sexual identity.
Ueda also addresses value conflicts among the Monaural characters. Jupiter-I's armed security contingent is led by a tough guy named Harding who is seemingly bigoted towards the Rounds, and has physically assaulted a round named Veritas. He's also a shoot first, torture later kind of guy who sees no moral conflict with using the harshest methods possible against enemy combatants and prisoners. But his bigotry and affinity for violence are not quite what they seem . . .
Harding is opposed on some issues by a male Monaural named Shirosaki who is the leader of an auxiliary security contingent from the human settlement on Mars. Shirosaki and his soldiers are sent to back up Harding. Shirosaki is not quite sure what to make of the Rounds or their society but he is open minded and level-headed, where Harding is temperamental, impulsive, and stubborn. Shirosaki is a kind of everyman character representative of the vast middle of this future human/Monaural society. He does not have any personal feelings at stake in the operation, but neither is he neglectful in executing his duties.
There is also the science staff on Jupiter-I led by a female Monaural named Kline, and the Round representative who communicates directly with the Monaurals, Tei, and other assorted Rounds and Monaurals.
Systemic and cultural conflicts exist between the scientists and the soldiers as well. Ueda addresses how value systems of those from military subcultures and those from scientific/academic subcultures can be opposed.
I'm not going to say too much about the terrorists themselves as that would spoil some important twists and turns in Ueda's plot. The main thing with all the characters in the book is that they embody various positions within the complex value systems at play within The Cage of Zeus. Each character occupies a particular perspective within the conflict, and they are forced to struggle with their values as individuals and how their values conflict with the value systems of other individuals and which society they belong to, Round or Monaural. The book is kind of schematic in this sense, and there are times when it seems more like an analytic simulation of a speculative scenario rather than a flowing fictional narrative, but it is compelling all the same. Some of the stiffness of the language may be a a by-product of translation from Japanese into English, but in my experience science fiction narratives are often more concerned with mapping out theoretical situations using unadorned language than they are in stylistic extravagance. The Cage of Zeus is definitely within the tradition of literary hard science fiction in that all of its speculations are based on credible extrapolations from the fields of astrophysics, nanotechnology, biology, sexology, sociology, engineering, and psychology, among other fields. If the language is a little dry, the ideas are still compelling. In fact, a plain style is perhaps an advantage in telling a story as complicated as this as it allows the ideas and conflicts to come across directly, and not be obscured by convoluted language.
Ueda does something else which is rather commendable. While her characters are somewhat schematic, she does justice to the complexity of their thoughts and feelings. She is especially insightful about delineating the different aspects of sexuality, biological gender, and gender identity, and how all of these things interact. Many of the characters, including the terrorists, are full of conflicts and find themselves at the mercy of larger community concerns if they are not being manipulated outright to further the aims of powerful interests behind the scenes. Without giving too much away, I think it is fair to say that nothing is resolved easily within The Cage of Zeus. Humankind's struggle to attain the stars continues to be a struggle of factions against factions, humans against humans, soldiers against scientists, Rounds versus Monaurals, individuals against societies, individuals divided against themselves, humanity in all its stunning variety versus the pitiless void of space . . .
The Cage of Zeus also got me thinking about how there are new frontiers to human identity and sexuality just waiting to be created. In real life, I'm not sure that humanity is going to ever make it off this planet and create a truly intergalactic society. I'm a pessimist. I do not think the human race has "the Right Stuff." We're too hung up on greed, ideology, religious fundamentalism, and we seem to put the basis for our technological advancement in the hands of the warmongers and the weapons makers. I don't think there's any intelligent life out there in the universe. We're the only game in town when it comes to intelligence, so it's up to us to spread intelligence to the stars, but that's not going to happen. As a species, we're more interested in trying to kill and/or control each other on this world. If we wanted to extend ourselves to other planets, we'd have to have a radical shift in our priorities to a more cooperative mode, as one united species, later for all these factions and nation states, and I just don't see that happening. But maybe there is still hope, in communities here and there, on the frontier of human identity and how we relate to each other on this planet.
But it's nice to fantasize about a human future out there in space. Even if it is as dark and conflicted as the future Sayuri Ueda conjures up in The Cage of Zeus.
Tuesday, September 6, 2011
BOOK REVIEW: MEDIC! THE STORY OF A CONSCIENTIOUS OBJECTOR IN THE VIETNAM WAR(2002)
by Ben Sherman
Published 2002 and 2004 by Ballantine Books/Presidio Press
Review by William D. Tucker.
Ben Sherman was willing to serve his country, he was no protester, but he saw little point in invading Vietnam. He did not believe that Vietnam was a clear and present danger to the United States. He had serious moral objections to taking human life. But he didn't want to break the rules. He did everything in his power to legally register as a conscientious objector and seek alternative service status. He filed all the necessary forms in triplicate. He was directed to attend a hearing before a board of three World War 2 veterans. The Selective Service Board No. 23 in Sacramento, California asked him esoteric philosophical questions about how he would decide who would die in a situation involving a bus full of crippled school children, failing brakes, a precipitous cliff drop, and a baby left out in the middle of the road. Sherman asked them who left the baby out in the middle of the road, and they asked him if he was a communist. The board voted down his appeal 5-0, even though there were only three members present.
Sherman was inducted into the US Army. He tried to tell his superiors that he would never fire his gun at another human being. They called him a fucking commie. But Sherman was otherwise a model soldier and performed well at boot camp. But all that CO bullshit landed him in barracks arrest for four months, followed by an office assignment, and then, finally, due to recognition of his competence, he was placed with the Medical Corps.
Sherman went to Vietnam as a medic, and endured horror and folly. He survived and after many years wrote this book which is disturbing not so much for its descriptions of the horrors of war, although that is very much a part of his story, as it is for how the mobilization of a nation to war can destroy the capacity for individual citizens to make moral and ethical choices.
People got drafted into military service back during the Vietnam War, which meant, if you were an American male of appropriate age, and your number came up you were going into some branch of military service. Your legal choices were limited. You could apply for conscientious objector status. Some got student deferments. Sherman was consistently denied in his legal appeals to become a CO.
You could go outside the legal choices. You could desert. Some people faked mental illness, or went on the lam, or did everything in their power to convince the military gatekeepers that they were pinko commies or homosexuals or otherwise unfit for service. Those were the options. You went when your number came up, you tried to get a student deferment, you applied for objector status, or you left for Canada, or you tried to go on the run in the US, or you used deception to get booted out of the system.
Sherman went through all the legal channels to apply for objector status because he wanted to be honest, because he believed that stating his convictions clearly and unambiguously and within the legal framework was the honorable way to go. It would seem that honesty is not always the wisest strategy to get what you want. At the very least, Ben Sherman will never be known as a liar.
It's an open question whether the same can be said for Mr. Sherman's government.
Why did we wage war against Vietnam? You could fill a library with the books that have been written attempting to answer this question. To fight communism? To counter the Domino Effect? To prop up a massive military industrial complex with an excuse to crank up the arms factories? Maybe it has something to do with who shot JFK if you're a conspiracy fruitcake.
Let's keep things simple: did Vietnam ever pose a true strategic threat to the United States? No. Could they have ever invaded our shores? No. So why did we go to war over there? I know of no sane answer. And, no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I can sympathize with those that see far-reaching plots and schemes behind all the folly and bloodshed. I can understand why so many Americans came to lose faith in their government. Considering our early 21st century invasion of Iraq, and the open-ended War on Terror, we seem hell-bent on reenacting the same mistakes over and over again, on a geometrically expanding scale. Vietnam was a matter of invading just one country. Now we are committed to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no clear parameters for victory. Presumably, we are staying until we kill all the terrorists. This is probably neither possible, nor morally defensible when one factors in the inevitable destruction of civilian lives as collateral damage and the certain blood sacrifice of American and allied soldiers and contractors, but that doesn't stop dreamers from dreamin'.
But Sherman's book is no left-wing screed, I'm just bringing my own rants to the party. And even if you're a right-wing warmonger, there are plenty of reasons to read Sherman's book. The man writes vivid, no bullshit prose. Sherman includes many of the letters he received from the Army to document his ongoing status as a draftee, and his efforts to assert himself as a conscientious objector. He also includes personal letters exchanged with family and loved ones. All of this illustrates the kinds of words that he was confronted with, and what those words meant for someone who lived in the era of the Draft.
Sherman begins with a description of his first assignment as a medic: the body bags and the corpses that got stuffed into them. Sherman and the others on Graves Registration duty treated those dead soldiers with utmost care and respect, carefully brown bagging all the personal effects and belongings, and grooming the unkempt faces, to restore their dignity, and so that they got back to family and friends in as presentable a shape as possible. Sherman talks about the near unbearable smells, and plugging rectums with cotton balls.
Sherman begins with this description of Graves Registration duty, I believe, so that the reader knows right from the beginning that people get killed in a war. It's not Nintendo. It's not a game. When the decision is made to invade another nation with military personnel, people are going to die on a massive scale.
Soldiers, no matter how well-trained, no matter how noble the cause, will be killed on the battlefield. They will not be coming back. Civilians will die. No matter how careful, no matter how grand the strategy on the part of military planners and leadership, unarmed non-combatants will be killed as a matter of course. Property and infrastructure will be obliterated, and whole populations will be displaced.
The costs are enormous both to the invader and the invaded. Politicians are fond of saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes time to do away with entitlement programs for the poor, but they never seem to apply the same logic to defense entitlements. Drawn out military engagements drain the coffers and do damage to the trust that citizens are willing to put into government institutions. Many soldiers come back traumatized by the experience of war to failing economies, scant job prospects, and inadequate health care.
The reality of what happened between the United States and Vietnam, once upon a time, is perhaps too grim to face. It's better to marble it over with movies and books about heroic strategies, valorous sacrifice, and the might-a-beens: if only we'd used this strategy or that strategy, if only we'd cut off the food supplies by seizing the rice paddies, and what about nuclear weapons? My own father, a Vietnam veteran, perhaps insincerely, told me he thinks we should've used nuclear weapons in 'Nam. I say "perhaps insincerely" because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But, as nearly as I can tell, war has a capacity to distort people's sense of morality and decency. So maybe he meant it. Even if there were no serious plans by the leadership to do such a thing, and I don't think there were, the overall adventure left a lot of people feeling betrayed, angry, and disenchanted. Those that feel let down may harbor deep resentments and occasionally entertain ghoulish fantasies of retribution and victory.
But Sherman didn't let his experience with war cloud his judgement to such a degree. Instead, he decided to confront it as best he could by telling his story from his perspective. In a way, it's rather inspiring to know that someone could go through such things and still have a grasp on reality. Why don't guys like this run for elected office? Maybe we don't want that much reality.
Ben Sherman was willing to serve his country, he was no protester, but he saw little point in invading Vietnam. He did not believe that Vietnam was a clear and present danger to the United States. He had serious moral objections to taking human life. But he didn't want to break the rules. He did everything in his power to legally register as a conscientious objector and seek alternative service status. He filed all the necessary forms in triplicate. He was directed to attend a hearing before a board of three World War 2 veterans. The Selective Service Board No. 23 in Sacramento, California asked him esoteric philosophical questions about how he would decide who would die in a situation involving a bus full of crippled school children, failing brakes, a precipitous cliff drop, and a baby left out in the middle of the road. Sherman asked them who left the baby out in the middle of the road, and they asked him if he was a communist. The board voted down his appeal 5-0, even though there were only three members present.
Sherman was inducted into the US Army. He tried to tell his superiors that he would never fire his gun at another human being. They called him a fucking commie. But Sherman was otherwise a model soldier and performed well at boot camp. But all that CO bullshit landed him in barracks arrest for four months, followed by an office assignment, and then, finally, due to recognition of his competence, he was placed with the Medical Corps.
Sherman went to Vietnam as a medic, and endured horror and folly. He survived and after many years wrote this book which is disturbing not so much for its descriptions of the horrors of war, although that is very much a part of his story, as it is for how the mobilization of a nation to war can destroy the capacity for individual citizens to make moral and ethical choices.
People got drafted into military service back during the Vietnam War, which meant, if you were an American male of appropriate age, and your number came up you were going into some branch of military service. Your legal choices were limited. You could apply for conscientious objector status. Some got student deferments. Sherman was consistently denied in his legal appeals to become a CO.
You could go outside the legal choices. You could desert. Some people faked mental illness, or went on the lam, or did everything in their power to convince the military gatekeepers that they were pinko commies or homosexuals or otherwise unfit for service. Those were the options. You went when your number came up, you tried to get a student deferment, you applied for objector status, or you left for Canada, or you tried to go on the run in the US, or you used deception to get booted out of the system.
Sherman went through all the legal channels to apply for objector status because he wanted to be honest, because he believed that stating his convictions clearly and unambiguously and within the legal framework was the honorable way to go. It would seem that honesty is not always the wisest strategy to get what you want. At the very least, Ben Sherman will never be known as a liar.
It's an open question whether the same can be said for Mr. Sherman's government.
Why did we wage war against Vietnam? You could fill a library with the books that have been written attempting to answer this question. To fight communism? To counter the Domino Effect? To prop up a massive military industrial complex with an excuse to crank up the arms factories? Maybe it has something to do with who shot JFK if you're a conspiracy fruitcake.
Let's keep things simple: did Vietnam ever pose a true strategic threat to the United States? No. Could they have ever invaded our shores? No. So why did we go to war over there? I know of no sane answer. And, no, I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but I can sympathize with those that see far-reaching plots and schemes behind all the folly and bloodshed. I can understand why so many Americans came to lose faith in their government. Considering our early 21st century invasion of Iraq, and the open-ended War on Terror, we seem hell-bent on reenacting the same mistakes over and over again, on a geometrically expanding scale. Vietnam was a matter of invading just one country. Now we are committed to wars in Iraq and Afghanistan with no clear parameters for victory. Presumably, we are staying until we kill all the terrorists. This is probably neither possible, nor morally defensible when one factors in the inevitable destruction of civilian lives as collateral damage and the certain blood sacrifice of American and allied soldiers and contractors, but that doesn't stop dreamers from dreamin'.
But Sherman's book is no left-wing screed, I'm just bringing my own rants to the party. And even if you're a right-wing warmonger, there are plenty of reasons to read Sherman's book. The man writes vivid, no bullshit prose. Sherman includes many of the letters he received from the Army to document his ongoing status as a draftee, and his efforts to assert himself as a conscientious objector. He also includes personal letters exchanged with family and loved ones. All of this illustrates the kinds of words that he was confronted with, and what those words meant for someone who lived in the era of the Draft.
Sherman begins with a description of his first assignment as a medic: the body bags and the corpses that got stuffed into them. Sherman and the others on Graves Registration duty treated those dead soldiers with utmost care and respect, carefully brown bagging all the personal effects and belongings, and grooming the unkempt faces, to restore their dignity, and so that they got back to family and friends in as presentable a shape as possible. Sherman talks about the near unbearable smells, and plugging rectums with cotton balls.
Sherman begins with this description of Graves Registration duty, I believe, so that the reader knows right from the beginning that people get killed in a war. It's not Nintendo. It's not a game. When the decision is made to invade another nation with military personnel, people are going to die on a massive scale.
Soldiers, no matter how well-trained, no matter how noble the cause, will be killed on the battlefield. They will not be coming back. Civilians will die. No matter how careful, no matter how grand the strategy on the part of military planners and leadership, unarmed non-combatants will be killed as a matter of course. Property and infrastructure will be obliterated, and whole populations will be displaced.
The costs are enormous both to the invader and the invaded. Politicians are fond of saying that there's no such thing as a free lunch when it comes time to do away with entitlement programs for the poor, but they never seem to apply the same logic to defense entitlements. Drawn out military engagements drain the coffers and do damage to the trust that citizens are willing to put into government institutions. Many soldiers come back traumatized by the experience of war to failing economies, scant job prospects, and inadequate health care.
The reality of what happened between the United States and Vietnam, once upon a time, is perhaps too grim to face. It's better to marble it over with movies and books about heroic strategies, valorous sacrifice, and the might-a-beens: if only we'd used this strategy or that strategy, if only we'd cut off the food supplies by seizing the rice paddies, and what about nuclear weapons? My own father, a Vietnam veteran, perhaps insincerely, told me he thinks we should've used nuclear weapons in 'Nam. I say "perhaps insincerely" because I want to give him the benefit of the doubt. But, as nearly as I can tell, war has a capacity to distort people's sense of morality and decency. So maybe he meant it. Even if there were no serious plans by the leadership to do such a thing, and I don't think there were, the overall adventure left a lot of people feeling betrayed, angry, and disenchanted. Those that feel let down may harbor deep resentments and occasionally entertain ghoulish fantasies of retribution and victory.
But Sherman didn't let his experience with war cloud his judgement to such a degree. Instead, he decided to confront it as best he could by telling his story from his perspective. In a way, it's rather inspiring to know that someone could go through such things and still have a grasp on reality. Why don't guys like this run for elected office? Maybe we don't want that much reality.
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