On Fri, Jun 12, 2009 at 2:39 PM, Jonathan Sherwood < [email protected]> wrote:
> I just listened to this (RoboMonkey) during lunch. I know I should reserve > my opinion until the meeting, but I'll be away the week of the next meeting, > so I'll say here that it left me really flat. If I'd just stumbled upon it > in a magazine, I would have thought, "That was cute," but nominated for a > Hugo? It makes me think I'm missing something major - either in the story or > in the tastes of the reading public. > And if I might be so bold - it's not spec fiction. The robo-monkeyness had > nothing to do with the story. Replace the monkey with a troubled child and > the story reads exactly the same. > Yeh...you know... we so often say that. We should have a name for it. It's close-cousin to le Guin's "Poughkeepsie test": Take a fantasy story, replace the place-names with ones from our world; if it doesn't change the sense of it, it's not really fantasy. It's an interesting exercise, but totally invalid for most contemporary fantasy, and in any case it's so easy to imagine cases where it doesn't apply. Let's call it the Robot Monkey Test: If we can change out all the robot monkeys for troubled children and it doesn't change whether the plot or character interactions make sense, it's not 'speculative'. More generally: Replace the SFnal elements (robot monkeys, spray-on TV screens, strange alien interlopers) with "non-SFnal" functional replacements (troubled children, flat-screen LCDs, illegal aliens), and see if any of the story-elements (plot, character interactions, dialogue) no longer make sense. I'd be hard put to find an example of a story I've read in the past two years that wouldn't arguably fail the Robot Monkey Test. Of course, that's because I've stated it in such a way that almost anything will fail. For stories to not fail, we need to add some other criterion or criteria: Something that captures the point of "speculativeness." Let's consider the robot monkey: What if we replace him with a troubled child? Let's for the moment ignore the fact that the troubled child would be on display in a zoo, and compare the scenarios: Augmented chimpanzee acts out violently when presented with intolerant behavior. He's confronted by the one human he trusts, who explains that the augmented chimp must give up the one thing he loves as punishment for his bad behavior. Troubled child acts out violently when presented with intolerant behavior. He's confronted by the one adult he trusts, who explains that the child must give up the one thing he loves as punishment for his bad behavior. There are several things we need to look at. First, do the story arc and character interactions still make sense if the robot monkey is just a child? Ignoring the cage, obviously they do. Second, does the story lose anything in interpolation? Clearly it does: Because with a child, you have a lot more baggage (or 'assumed context', if you will). We raise children, and so are in loco parentis -- we're assumed to act in their interest; we have instant nurturing impulses toward children that we don't necessarily have to a powerful, adult chimpanzee (which I thought was a nice touch: adult chimps are incredibly powerful and dangerous animals). (Another nice touch: Delilah wants to punish Sly because he 'used the clay for an anger display.' I.e., she's applying human behavioral standards to a chimp, which is kind of absurd, and thus raises a really interesting question: Why would you make an intelligent chimp, and expect it to not behave like a chimp -- e.g. flinging poo, or proxy poo?) Given those losses, it seems to me that substituting a child for the chimp may be exactly what Kowal would most like us to do. But let's say we don't use a child. The situation is much more analogous to that of a damaged adult. There are some key and interesting losses here, too. First, again, the identification factor: Sly's not human. True, you could get the same effect by making him hulking and Lenny-like, but that would bely the articulateness of his speech and his own lack of a sense of mental deficit. (Sly doesn't think humans are any smarter than him, just more powerful -- Sly-the-human would simply feel that way about other humans.) I've ignored the question of what "SFnal" elements would give to the story so far, because I wanted to demonstrate that SFnal elements (robot-monkeyness) aren't necessary for "speculativeness". But let's consider that though. What if Sly were not a robot-monkey? What if he were just a preternaturally intelligent monkey -- quirk of fate? Or a human? I'll note two things that come to mind immediately: First, Sly has been modified by others to be as he is, and this modification is what isolates him. His masters made him as he is, and he knows that he has little choice in the matter. Second, his masters (even the "good" one) control him the way masters control creations or slaves. If you think of it that way, it becomes clear that the "SFnal" elements afford us an opportunity to see human relations in a new way. So I think this is a very essentially "speculative" story. You really coulnd'nt tell this story with a human adult or child and expect people to read it through with a fair and clear mind. FWIW, I don't get the "cute" or "slight" critique, for that matter. It's short, to be sure, and it's not earthshatteringly profound. But it accomplishes what I've long felt was the most important thing that an SF story can accomplish: It affords the opportunity to consider something mundane (caretaker-dependent relations, in this case) in a new way. -- eric scoles ([email protected]) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "R-SPEC: The Rochester Speculative Literature Association" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/r-spec?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
