Monday 11 January 2016

In The Doubtful World Of Speculation

I've finally managed to go for a bicycle ride in Cambridge. On a previous Boxing Day I managed a run around Chesterton and the river, this time I was led along the river out towards Fen Ditton[1] then back into the very heart of the city.

Cambridge strikes me as curious city, calamitous and claustrophobic, yet calm clearings in the Commons and along the Cam. I have only dipped my toes into odd pages of Jeff VanderMeer's Ambergris[2], so that curiously cruel city is not a good comparison, though there's something mystical about Cambridge. Cambridge features in Douglas Adams's books, as a city of holistic detectives and time travelers[3].

Holistically there is a lot to take in. Bicycling helps, as it connects a person to an area in the same way a speculative text delivers a reader a world to explore. If one cannot be at one with the universe, the saying goes, at least be at one with one's bicycle. And with one's book.

Out on the Cam I was heading to a particular universe, though my head was full of the first part of Kazuo Ishiguro's The Buried Giant[4]. Here the world is shrouded in 'mist,' a forgetful, confused condition that is making Britons and Saxons do irrational things by amplifying their superstitions and beliefs. 

One particular section featured a ferryman and a widow, and relayed a tale of an crowded island that people went to seek solitude. It reminded me a little a lot about the Earthsea Quartet's The Farthest Shore[5], this island that helped individuals forget the toils of their day-to-day lives. In both books there is a link between forgetfulness and forgetting pain and the truth of being human, to die.

The pan-dimensional beings represented by mice are also human in that they will die. In Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy[6] the order the construction of Earth so that it can work out what the ultimate question to life, the universe, and everything actually was[7]. Prior to switching on Deep Thought there is a debate on the need for 'clearly defined areas of doubt and speculation[8].' 

Fiction texts are good at 'clearly defined areas of doubt,' they allow for the widest, wildest speculations. Yet doubts are to be avoided. Blade Runner[9], Ghost In The Shell[10], Sleeper[11], all discuss themes of what makes us human, what makes our experiences, what is it to be human.

To discuss Sleeper in particular, the film uses comedy to explore the extraordinary ordinary of the future. Dressed as a robotic manservant while his owner is throwing a fascistic party, Miles Monroe mixes food powder and water. In Star Wars The Force Awakens[12], Rey makes food in a similar way. Here the ordinary becomes extraordinary, we all need to eat, we just need to wait for the powdered bread. Or as the narrative of Back to the Future Part Two[13] has it, we have to wait for hoverboards.

A theme that is strong in both Sleeper and The Force Awakens[14] is whether the protagonist (or antagonist) is doing the right thing. Miles Monroe avoided eating red meat and smoking cigarettes as it would, he was led to believe, extend his life. Kylo Ren knows what he needs to do to both return to the light and to fully embrace the dark side. Both of these choices involve his family in general and father in particular. 

[Spoiler one paragraph] Those Skywalkers, always suffering with abandonment issues or problems with their father and grandfathers. Though this is familiar ground for JJ Abrams, as both Star Trek and Star Trek Into Darkness[15] rely on the relationships Kirk and Spock have with their fathers and their fathers' actions.

[Spoiler ends]

Back to the Cam and Cambridge. Along the river and along the footpaths and banks there is doubt, though not the doubt of existence but the quandary of whether or not my tyre would slip on wet leafs or mud. In my extraordinary ordinary I think I'd opt for better drained footpaths.

Notes and references
1 - "Honestly, with my hearing I thought you said Fern Ditton," as if that helps.
2 - City of Saints and Madmen (Third edition), 2004, Tor Books.
3 - Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency, William Heinemann, 1987. I would also like to mention that other timetraveller Adams was involved with, Doctor Who, in Shada (Douglas Adams and Gareth Roberts, 2012, BBC Books).
4 - 2015, Faber & Faber.
5 - Ursula K. Le Guin, 1972, Atheneum Books. 
6 - Douglas Adams, 1979, Pan Books
7 - The Mice had already received the ultimate answer, though I wonder if this might have anything to do with one of the Pyramid's proclamations to the residents of Night Vale (The Pyramid, 15 October 2012) that 'some of you have been given the questions, some have been given the answers, though not all questions and answers will match.' 
8 - I'm paraphrasing this as I don't have a copy at hand to check.
9 - Ridley Scott, 1982
10 - Mamoru Oshii, 1995
11 - Woody Allen, 1973
12 - J J Abrams, 2015
13 - Robert Zemeckis, 1989
14 - And to be fair, in all of the text mentioned in this.
15 - J J Abrams, 2009 and 2013

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