I am Legend FreeWrite

I am Legend- I decided to look at this book because the movie really did some interesting things with technophobia of biotech and the possible effects on the human body and humanity itself. I liked how in the movie we could see that the “mutants” did actually have a sort of tribal society and emotional drive that the main character who is a scientist can not actually see. He talks into his recorder saying “All signs of humanity are lost.” He in turn becomes a sort of monster, hunting these creatures down and doing experiments on them. When other humans actually do come along he can not easily interact with them, drawing his own humanity into question. Religion is brought up as well but in a sort of heavy handed, god has a plan sort of way.

The story itself is vastly different from the movie and there are only a few places that might be interesting for my project. The book does give an interesting look at a scientific attempt to explain something seemingly irrational, that being the existence of vampires, through a scientific exploration of bacteria. Science is what saves him from a total break down at one point. Where as in the movie the bacteria is man made, in the book it has existed for a very long time and is natural occurring.

In the end there are people who have made medicine that allows them to exist in a livable state with the bacteria in them and they go out hunting the “true” vampires as well as the main character himself, sine he has been going around killing them as well because he can not tell the difference between the two. The last line of the book is “I am Legend,” because he has become the monster of their new society, hunting them in their sleep like some horrible vampire.

FreeWrite on Synners

Synners- As I read more and more “cyberpunk” literature I notice there is this reoccurring theme of an organism or entity coming into existence within the internet (in whatever fashion it is imagined at the time). Synners is interesting in the way that it proposes two different purely electronic beings. One is created by the immense complexity that is the internet mixed with a sort of learning virus (Artie. Fish/ Dr. Fish) and the other is a human who, with the help of a direct neural interface with electronics, leaves his body behind and becomes a purely electronic entity (Visual Mark). I think an important thing to keep in mind, particularly in Synners, is that the body is not fully left behind. Both of these characters have to deal with being transported at different points as well as the possibility of being destroyed by a roving “virus” like thing that is the result of a stroke visual mark has while his body is connected to the internet. Art Fish has moments where different manifestations of himself have not caught up with other parts, so he will have a conversation with a character at one point and then again latter but will not be aware of the information passed to him in the previous conversation.

The concept of the Synner that the book gets its title from is one that looks at the human as a sort of synthesizer of information, connecting the human with the machine world. We process information and put it back out into the system, becoming part and parcel of the machine world, even possible the tools of the machines themselves. Visual Mark has a saying that pops up again and again of change for the machines. He first says it because he needs some change for a coffee machine but as the story progresses it takes on the new meaning of humans changing for the machines, become different to facilitate their expansion.

Body modification or direct interfaces is also equated with sickness in some interesting ways. The creator of the direct neural interfaces and the lover who finances the venture are found dead at one point, having directly connected their brains together. Both are shown to be highly unstable characters with possible signs of masochism/sadism, perhaps even anorexia and megalomania. Even one of the more benign and actually helpful direction machine interfaces (A computer that uses the human like a potato to create power) is initially approached as if it’s an abomination that should not be used.

The city here is also referred here to as some sort of organism with various networks as its organic systems and computer viruses similar to actual sickness, (but just as there are beneficial bacteria in the human system, so are there in the electronic system) It’s interesting that both this story and DR. Adder take place in L.A. and have some very similar overtones. There is an area called the Mimosa that is similar to the Interface but with far less sex traffic. The city as organism metaphor in Synners does not run as deep as in DR. adder but there are still moments that would be fruitful to examine further.

The closing of the novel has a very interesting moment/quotable piece about technology:

“Appropriate technology. That’s how I live.”

“Yah?...think on this one. All appropriate technology hurt somebody. A whole lot of somebodies. Nuclear fission, fusion, the fucking ford assembly line, the fucking airplane, FIRE for Christ’s sake. Every technology has its original sin. Makes us original sinners.” Brings in the religious note in an interesting way.

FreeWrite on Dr. Adder

There are three themes in Dr. Adder that stand out to me. They are 1) landscape as organic entity, 2) Desire towards and of the altered body and 3) the removal of the conscious in the integration of the machine with the body. All of these share the concept of the cyborg in that there is a breakdown of the concept of the natural or whole body into a more complex that is more malleable. They all seem to circle around the idea of some sort of sickness as well.

L.A. as an entity seems to be colored as potentially sick, its various organs or systems polluted or in some cases, literally referred to as insane (the Visitor). It many ways it is a body in conflict with its self, the interface the main battle ground. Dr. Adder is representative of one side and Mox the other side. Since Mox has uploaded his conscious and become solely electronic based he seems to be aligned with the mechanical. If that is the case, the mechanical is also aligned with a sterilizing sort of morality (Thinking both of Mox’s goons but also his own castration). Argument can then be made for Dr. Adder as the biological side with his focus on the body and sexual desire. Of course this sort of binary opposition is problematized with Dr. Adders own fixation with gaining a mechanical prosthesis as well as Mox’s fixation on wholism or purity when he himself has gone through what might be seen as the ultimate amputation/modification of his body. The interface can also be representative of a human machine interface.

Dr. Adder’s surgical modification of men and woman are an interesting twist to the ideas of cybernetic prosthetics. Here we have the drastic modification of the body via the technology of medical science but without a mechanical replacement. Any sort of addition is purely biological in appearance. These modified bodies are objects of extreme desire and sexuality within this text. This makes me think of some of the other sexualized characters in other cyberpunk fiction. William Gibson’s character of Molly Millions is probably the most prominent example of a sexualized (but powerful) character whose status as an object of desire is partially derived from her modified body. (I should look for more examples of this). It’s interesting that all of the clients who are modified go on to be come prostitutes. It seems that the alteration of the body either always results in the person becoming a sort of commodity OR is always a result of some sort of market force. No one gets modified (except perhaps DR. Adder) for their own personal gratification. All of the male patients are automatically aligned with sadism and all the female patients are masochists. This could perhaps be a critique of the Hollywood created ideas or precepts of gender that people buy into.

The last interesting bit has to do with the cybernetic arm that Adder attaches to himself and how it results in an initial removal of his conscious. He becomes a mindless killing machine (perhaps the alignment with the machine with the military complex) that eventually collapses in exhaustion. There is a fear expressed here of the capability of the machine to take over and override what is human when we interface with it. This seems like a similar move in a lot of the more recent zombie stories, where some sort of biomedical agent results in a mindless flesh eating killer. In Adders case the machine allows a sort of clarification of his true identitiy. The posthuman nature of Dr. Adder (that he is not one singular ego with an intense drive but a complex system of sometimes conflicting entities) comes to the forefront and the control of Dr. Adder as a system switches to another part of his system, one seemingly more stable