Here's How It Is... Or Not

POSTED BY: 34cygni
UPDATED: Thursday, April 29, 2004 18:42
VIEWED: 3664
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SHINY

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 3:09 PM

Nice first post!

>>They come out of the byte. They come when you call."<<

Actually, the quote is:

"they come out of the black. They come when you call."

Personally, I think the malevolent AI taking over humankind is a little too well-worn a sci-fi path for Joss (especially recently *cough*Matrix*cough), although who knows? After 6 or 7 seasons, even he can run out of ideas, as he mentioned at the convention panel. :)

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SKYDANCE

Tuesday, April 27, 2004 8:05 PM

Your concept of an AI governing a race in conflict with the rest of humanity reminds me of the Deathstalker series (author forgotten). Of course, it has a more contemporary association with the Matrix movies ....

In a "high fantasy" story, I agree, Joss would need a "dragon" to slay. Remember, though, that Firefly is primarily a drama. There's plenty of evil in Men's hearts. Just look at the Reavers: those were human beings, once.

Despite the temptation to create machine intelligences or aliens, I believe it's all the more scary (and personally, I suspect it's Joss's vision) to show the dark side of humanity and what it can be. Minus Man, Red Dragon, Texas Chainsaw Massacre ... you don't have to go any further than reality to find the demons behind River's treatment. (Consider Niska, and the reference to that guy who tortured people to "meet the real person.")

Yours is a fine vision, but it's not needed, and there are no other hints of AI anywhere in the series. (The computers don't even talk; you flip switches, or touch spots on a piece of paper.)

"River's apparent psychic powers are, I think, an illusion ..."

Depends on how you view certain scenes. Watch the commentary by Joss for Objects in Space, though. He specifically says River is woken by the voice, in her mind, of Early. That's psychic, period.

Joss has also said psychic reading was as far as he was willing to take the "magical" powers in this series (again, this comes from one of the commentaries). That limit, of course, implies that the "psychic" element is there.

34CYGNI

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 12:38 AM

Thanks for the kind reception, one and all.

With respect to the AI theory, I stress that I'm not necessarily envisioning a silicon-chips-and-binary-code kind of AI, here, but more likely some variation on the old brain-in-a-jar meme. Joss showed us he can wring horror out of high technology when Buffy went to college, after all, and I'd be disappointed if he didn't go into his Big Damn Sci-Fi Show with something even more twisted up his sleeve.

I do respect the argument that involving an AI is potentially going against the humanocentric, "latex free" spirit of the show. However, I reiterate that a sci-fi show needs a sci-fi foe -- and let's not forget which network "Firefly" was on, y'know? There had to be an element in the pitch that satisfied their lowest-common-denominator instincts (I mean, aside from, "I've got two words for you: space hooker!").

Besides, the very best evil AI stories I've ever come across were all about humanity -- I refer you to the classic "I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream" by Harlan Ellison and "Press Enter" by John Varley (you could perhaps add "Frankenstein" to that list, but I don't want to get too high-falutin'...). These short stories are highly creepy, deeply human tales in which the godlike, malevolent AI is both omnipresent and yet mostly absent from the narratives.

There is also some merit in the complaint that building up to a climax in which Our Heroes destroy the evil AI and set humanity free is simply too grandiose for a show about "the people history stepped on." What gets me past that one is the idea that Mal must have honorable satisfaction. He was a True Believer in the independence movement, a rare combination of the best elements of a man of ideals and a man of action, and by God, sir, a man like that cannot be left without a dragon to slay. Letting him destroy the evil force behind the Unification war will allow him to fulfill the ideals that we saw get crushed at Serenity Valley in the pilot, and yet that heroic act will be followed up by the existential horror of the realization that it won't have any palpable effect on the day-to-day lives of the citizenry of the Alliance. At the end of it all, everybody will still get up and go to work the next morning, the mechanisms of government oppression will still be in place (though with new hands at the controls), and Mal will probably still be worrying about where he'll find his next paycheck to keep fuel in Serenity's tanks.

Mal may free the human race from bondage, but all that means is that we'll be free to wallow in misery of our own creation, rather than the misery the AI sought to inflict upon us.

In other news, does anybody else hear River say, "They come out of the black," instead of, "They come out of the byte," while Simon's scanning her brain in the episode "Ariel"? I popped in the ol' DVD to doublecheck, and under no circumstances can I make my brain hear her say the word "black" rather than "byte". I even turned the sound off and stared intently at her lips (...now I feel faintly unclean, and not in a good way -- sorry, Summer, wherever you are) to see if there was an L in there, but Simon's thumb is kind of in the way. I'm sticking by my original interpretation of that line.

I discarded the theory that River was being indoctrinated to become a Bluehand because she's just too durn cute and way too ruttin' smart. Bluehands should be relatively inconspicuous on the street, another person in a nice suit who isn't worth a second glance but for their curious taste in gloves, and I suspect that they're just muscle, not the brains of the operation. (...So, do you suppose a female Bluehand would wear a dress, or would she go for a sort of grim, spare Annie Hall look? )

As for River being psychic, it potentially strengthens the case that she was being turned into a sensory organ for the evil ubermind. After all, it presumably already has full access to the vast reams of data harvested every second from all the security cameras, phone calls, security checkpoints, medical scanners, and what-all-e

DELIA

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 2:09 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 34cygni:

In other news, does anybody else hear River say, "They come out of the black," instead of, "They come out of the byte," while Simon's scanning her brain in the episode "Ariel"?

I heard "black" and that's what I saw when I looked up the shooting scripts online. The subtitles, for the record, offer the curious "they come out of the bike," so I suppose its possible that Blue Sun grew out of the Tour De France. Or Harley Davidson.

Quote:

So, do you suppose a female Bluehand would wear a dress, or would she go for a sort of grim, spare Annie Hall look?

Well, did you see Diane Keaton at the Oscars?

Lots of thought-provoking stuff on this thread. I'm enjoying it.

Delia

EMBERS

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 2:46 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by 34cygni:

...Mal must have honorable satisfaction. He was a True Believer in the independence movement, a rare combination of the best elements of a man of ideals and a man of action, and by God, sir, a man like that cannot be left without a dragon to slay. Letting him destroy the evil force behind the Unification war will allow him to fulfill the ideals that we saw get crushed at Serenity Valley in the pilot,

I find myself wondering if you have listened to the commentaries, particularly the one Joss did for 'Objects in Space'?
Joss is an existentalist...he is not into happy endings, and I don't think he is likely to allow Mal 'fix' the world...

I think the most Mal & his crew can hope for is to continue to run under the radar and be happy within themselves and with each other...

Similarly w/Buffy and Angel...evil exists, and inspite of all our best efforts, it will remain.

CYBERSNARK

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 2:44 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Delia:
The subtitles, for the record, offer the curious "they come out of the bike," so I suppose its possible that Blue Sun grew out of the Tour De France. Or Harley Davidson.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA!!!*wheeze*

-----
We applied the cortical electrodes but were unable to get a neural reaction from either patient.

DELIA

Thursday, April 29, 2004 12:04 PM

Cybersnark,

You don't see it? The whole Alliance could be run by the preserved brain of Lance Armstrong, power by blue handed men riding stationary bicycles nonstop like little hamster in wheels.

Or not.

Actually, its probably just best to ignore anything I say for a while. It's the end of the semester, I'm running on three hours of sleep a night and a ridiculous amount of coffee.

Hey, maybe Blue Sun grew out of Starbucks. . .

Delia

SAMURAIX47

Thursday, April 29, 2004 6:34 PM

Welcome aboard!

I have to disagree with 2, maybe 3 points...

The use of the term galaxy by makers of scifi movies and television shows has been appalling. They use it like it means "the house next door." Just to travel among the billions of stars in our own galaxy would take eons. If they found a solar system with enough room for the whole of human population it would probably have to be within 100 light years of Earth-that-was in order to transport the billions of people in a short amount of time. And so far in many of the solar systems with planets that have been deduced or detected are all of the size of gas giants and closer to their primary than our Jupiter is to the sun... so extrapolating from that... there are probably more moons around the gas giants then there would be earth-like planets around the star, gas giants with moons the size of planets. So the Firefly verse is all within one solar system. The core worlds may be earth-like and earth-size... And all the rest are on moons. Also the 2 blue-hands guys on board the alliance cruiser say they had travelled 86 Million miles... Earth-that-was is only 93 million miles from the Sun, 1 AU. That means they are traveling within a solar system.

Next point... why would an AI have anything to do with humans? Humans are wasteful, inefficient, lazy, good for not much... Why would an AI try to control us? If anything it would try to get rid of us in favor of AI brethren (see Terminator). Or it would be so controlling as to stifle all human development (see Colossus: The Forbin Project). Or it would go mad, succumbing to chaos (see 2001: A Space Odyssey). I just can't see an AI acting human (mimicking emotion is not having a sense of humanity) by being the mastermind behind the alliance. Computers and machines are just tools of humanity and will never be able to, nor allowed to be in charge. Human foibles are what's behind the Alliance government... people with agendas... politicians, and their lapdogs.

I don't think a unified field theory, or the controlling of the force of gravity, will necessarily lead to, nor allow for, Faster-Than-Light travel.

Jaymes

KUGELBLITZ

Thursday, April 29, 2004 6:42 PM

I disagree on the AI's motivations. Since we have no data at all on how an AI would act, anything goes.

An AI could be capable of a variety of behaviors, with their origins either completely understandable or alien in the extreme. The hypothetical AI could still have some parameters at the base of its flabby black core that direct it to act towards a specific set of goals like-maximise productivity for Blue Sun Corp, or protect our assets or tinker with DNA until something sool happens and so forth.

Also there can be mutiple systems within a light year or less of one another, and we could see travel in system of one place and short hops or full burns connecting one system to another nearby one. Don't limit your setting to our local neighborhgood, there are denser places in the 'verse.

"We are exporting democracy because we have all of this unused democracy lying around at home. Why not make some money doing it?"

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