Margaret Atwood on Robots . . .

Margaret Atwood

NYT

Margaret Atwood, a Canadian novelist, has written on future dystopias, though not on robots . . . until now, in "Are Humans Necessary?" (Atwood, NYT, December 4, 2014). Interestingly, she seems not so harsh on the robots:

Every technology we develop is an extension of one of our own senses or capabilities. It has always been that way. The spear and the arrow extended the arm, the telescope extended the eye, and now the Kissinger kissing device extends the mouth. Every technology we've ever made has also altered the way we live. So how different will our lives be if the future we choose is the one with all these robots in it?

More to the point, how will we power that future? Every modern robotic form that exists, and every one still to come, depends on a supply of cheap energy. If the energy disappears, so will the robots. And, to a large degree, so will we, since the lifestyle we have built and come to depend on floats on a sea of electricity. Hephaestus' bronze giant was powered by the ichor of the divine gods; we can't use that, but we need to think up another energy source that's both widely available and won't end up killing us.

If we can't do that, the number of possible futures available to us will shrink dramatically to one. It won't be the Hurrah; it will be the Yikes. This will perhaps be followed - as in a Ray Bradbury story - by a chorus of battery-powered robotic voices that continues long after our own voices have fallen silent.

In her dystopian writing, Atwood appears to treasure that inhuman silence . . .

Post-Apocalyptic Miltonic Times?

"Snowman wakes before dawn"
By Jason Courtney

I'm still reading Margaret Atwood's novel Oryx and Crake, in which Snowman, so-called because of his whiteness and sensitivity to the sun, recalls his pre-apocalyptic lover in his post-apocalyptic time, and imagines her saying:

Paradice is lost, but you have a Paradice within you, happier far. (Oryx and Crake, 362)

Snowman imagines this because all he has left of her are memories and fantasies, though he is not happier, but sadder by far, so these words are questionable. This line, however, recalls Milton's line (587) in a passage of Paradise Lost 12.581-587:

. . . onely add
Deeds to thy knowledge answerable, add Faith,
Add vertue, Patience, Temperance, add Love,
By name to come call'd Charitie, the soul
Of all the rest: then wilt thou not be loath
To leave this Paradise, but shalt possess
A Paradise within thee, happier farr.

That's also questionable, I suppose, but what isn't? There's another direct allusion in Oryx and Crake to Milton's epic poem, one I noted mentally, thinking I would remember, but I now can't recall what it was! Perhaps some reader can jog my memory. Speaking of drawing upon Milton, I do so in my novella several times, as here:

I fixed my gaze on the drink, reflecting that this proffered taste hadn't come quite so freely as I had initially anticipated, but to obtain an entire bottle for a few drops of blood was surely a good bargain and therefore a wise choice. So thinking, I reached across the table in that moment and plucked the oddly heavy bottle from where it invitingly sat. Intent now wholly on a taste and regarding nothing else, I poured the big glass full to the brim with the heavy, dark beer and took a sip. It had the kind of flavor that one could describe as full-bodied, but there was also a possible hint, strangely enough, of something eldritch and gamey . . . something redolent of goat. Maybe satyrical? Was that even a word? And where had I picked up "eldritch"? I sipped again. No, no gamey taste at all. I had been in error. The flavor was delightful, as if the brewed barley had come from a perfect garden of earthly delights. Whether the bottle was truly so good, or merely fancied as such due to my thirst, I now drank greedily, without restraint, knowing not the drinking depth of that bottle, which easily filled the glass a second time full, again to the brim with the dark, strong beer. Downing it all, I poured another, and another, and another. Satiate at length and heightened with the alcohol, jocund and boon, feeling as though all of nature were as trembling with intoxication as myself, I thought, "Ah, virtuous drink, I now know, what I earlier held in obscure infamy, defaming at a glance Shoggoth's Old Peculiar, to be a blessing in disguise, for experience is the best teacher of wisdom in this, as in all things."

Homework for my readers: Identify my Miltonic sources, and other sources, for that matter. Not that anybody is interested . . .