"Beyond Lies the Wub" by Philip K. Dick

First appeared in Jack O'Sullivan's Planet Stories, reprinted by Robert Silverberg, Malcolm Edwards, Martin H. Greenberg, Damon Knight, Joseph D. Olander, Peter Davison, Susan Price, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Robert Weinberg, D. E. Wittkower, John Gregory Betancourt,  Ann VanderMeer, Jeff VanderMeer, Peter Ross.

A human crew collect their things readying to exit the planet. One has purchased a 400 lb. wub, a creature which  looks like a pig, presumably larger than a man at that mass. The natives respect the creature, but the humans--at least some of them--see it as a source of food. Even finding out the wub can read minds does not seem to deter the ship captain's appetite.

Analysis (with Spoilers)

The first reprinting of this story nearly two decades later was in Dick's own collection, The Preserving Machine. Perhaps an apt title. No one seems to have thought it demanded a second look when it first arrived. 

Robert Silverberg was the first editor to reprint it, twenty years later for his Alpha anthology, aimed at showcasing what SF he considered "literary"--a term which seems to mean different things to different people. Since Dick's story isn't necessarily highly evocative prose or rich characterizations, he must mean stories that provoke thought, which this certainly does do.

Dick's comment on "Roog" would probably apply here: "each creature view[s] the world differently from all other creatures." I will add more of his comment after I find my copy of Dick's collection.

What happens at the end of the penultimate section is vaguely worded and a little unclear. One possibility lies in the the wub's allusions to two major works of literature: the Bible (Jesus driving out demons that have possessed a herd of pigs) and the Odyssey (Circe transforming sailors into pigs)--the parentheticals are presumably the parts of the story Dick's is alluding to.

This possibility suggests that when the captain looks into the wub's eyes, he becomes the wub and vice versa. Or maybe, as the Vandermeers suggest, eating the wub makes one the "wub." This seems a strong possibility due to the allusions.

However, the other possibility is that the wub controls the captain as it did earlier, freezing the captain. So that the captain shoots himself. The wub assumes the role of captain and serves the former captain as dinner. This seems a good possibility because of the wub's early mind-control, the wub's discussion of sacrificing other members of the crew to eat, the vaguely worded "meat," and the reactions of the crew not wanting to eat the meat, due to cannibalism. Presumably if eating the meat made them "wub," at least a few others would have dug into the wub meat for supper becoming wub. But would they treat the pig as captain? Or is it controlling them to make them think of his as captain? The thing is that if the wub transfers from one creature to another, the alien probably wouldn't be a wub, but some other creature, originally, and there'd be no reason to "respect" the wub, necessarily.

The title seems to suggest that the wub is or will exist in the future or their future--physically or otherwise. Whatever's going on, the captain or the wub seems perfectly affable and chatty about the situation. In rereading, one wonders about what the native "respect" for the wub entails.

The Ship and its Cargo -- a different answer to the thought puzzle about identity

Someone proposed this thought puzzle (it is not Theseus' ship [Wiki] as will be explained after this puzzle): 

Odysseus sailed from Troy, and it took ten, long years. On the way, due to attacks of animals, sirens, insects, waves, storms, shipwrecks etc. the ship fell apart, piece by piece. As parts failed, they replaced them, one by one. When they arrived home, the ship had every piece replaced. Was the ship that left Troy the same as the one that arrived? 

[Assume this story of the ship is the more accurate one for the thought puzzle.]

It took me a day to think of a good answer for this, and it differs from other answers I've seen in the above Theseus puzzle.

The answer is yes and no.

First, each piece of wood is an individual with strengths and failings as it falls apart, the other parts of the ship have adjusted to this part's strengths and weaknesses, so that the ship's whole integrity is dependent on each part. So when a part fails and is replaced with a new part with strengths and weaknesses, the whole ship had adjusted to the old part and will treat the new part as if it were the old part. The new part has its own identity, but is also being called upon to play a new part. The ship adjusts to the new part's strengths and weaknesses.

This is not unlike a traffic slow down where the accident may be long gone, but the slow down remains. An echo of the old ship always remains. Yet, yes, there are new parts here, flowing through. 

A ship is not a ship without its contents, and in this case the crew create the ship's meaning, it's shipness. How the contents react to the ship--their habits of walking in the same places--creates unique wear, whether the parts are new or old.

If you transfer the contents to a new ship, built by the same people to same specifications, is that the same ship? No. Again, each block of wood employed is different. Also, to borrow from the cognitive-science explanation, the crew would not recognize it as the same.

This applies to humans, who are said to have replaced enough cells in seven years to be a completely new person. Are we still ourselves?

The ship metaphor translates well. Each cell replaced is an individual, yet is shaped by his neighbors. The other cells will be accustomed to certain ways of responding. So yes, sort of a new person?

But it will keep the same cargo, the same contents everywhere it goes--memories, desires, hopes. But these do shift. Is Odysseus the same Odysseus who left Troy? In a sense, yes. His dog recognizes him. He still wants to be with his wife. In a sense, no, his wife does not immediately recognize him. How could he have lived through all he's lived through be the same? But yet some of the same bilge and bilge rats linger.

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Interesting thought experiment: If someone murders someone, are they still a murderer seven years later? I suspect most will have only one answer for that.

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Despite a similar scenario--replacing parts until the new has all new parts--the Theseus ship is different. Quite different [Wiki]:

Theseus, the mythical Greek founder-king of Athens, rescued the children of Athens from King Minos after slaying the minotaur and then escaped onto a ship going to Delos. Each year, the Athenians commemorated this legend by taking the ship on a pilgrimage to Delos to honor Apollo. A question was raised by ancient philosophers: After several centuries of maintenance, if each individual part of the Ship of Theseus was replaced, one at a time, was it still the same ship? 

Here the answer is simply: No and Maybe, depending.

The difference here is the use. Odysseus was the one and only captain/owner. Theseus, meanwhile, has passed on, leaving the ship to descendants whose memory may or may not hold the original crew. A whole different metaphor is at play. The ship is now used for a wholly different purpose: commemoration. After the original passengers have all died and cannot pass on memories of this time, no crew remains to assign it the original meaning. 

It seems likely the scenario arose after a repair and someone, tired of the memorial, wants to know why they bothered remembering this ancient history and raised this thought problem in order to get out of having to repeat this stupid boat trip year every year.

This seems a very human reaction. In the Hebrew Bible--Exodus--the slaves who escape Egypt are supposed to commemorate this escape with a song, but soon they complain about how much better they had as slaves. Memory is short. Also, a very human reaction.

But someone somewhere has recorded the events, and if they did a good enough job, the ship can come close to having its original shipness.

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Hobbes apparently proposed that if someone saved all the discarded parts, would that be the ship? 

Interesting thought experiment, but no. The parts are all rotted and broken although it would be a kind of cool memorial.

"Frozen Journey" or "I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" by Philip K. Dick

First appeared in Playboy.  

Reprinted in various major retrospectives by Terry Carr, Brian Attebery, Ursula K. Le Guin, Chris Hables Gray, Alice K. Turner,  Jonathan Lethem. 

This won a Playboy award and was up for a Locus.

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A man is cryogenically suspended for the duration of a journey across space. His chamber malfunctions so that he awakens ten years from his destination. He cannot be fully awakened or have his chamber repaired, so the ship computer dials up his memories for the man so he can dream pleasantly. But none of it goes as planned. 

Discussion (with spoilers):

The man keeps turning the memories into something darker, and as the ship's computer adjusts, trying to compensate, making the dreams lighter. The new, fake if dark memories bleed into every adjustment the computer makes. He can see through the illusions the computer makes.

When he arrives, his ex-wife summoned from another planet to help him adjust, he cannot accept the true reality.

Brilliant concept--at least not one I remember seeing before (although right after writing this, a newer TV show had a similar scenario, but not as thoughtfully executed. It doesn't feel like a classic but at least as profound as the great classics, so maybe it is classic? 

The story suggests that the past is preparation for whatever reality or future distorts how we view the present reality. Probably true--to an extent as we do test reality.

Terry Carr summarizes the above, more or less, and closes with "Could any computer, no matter how extensive its abilities, keep him sane?"

Is it about sanity? Maybe, kinda. But part of this summary is refuted by the story because the computer is not all powerful. In fact, it is relatively "dumb," limited in what it can do. It does see a problem, but not how to correct it. This, for me, is a critical part of the story, mentioned a few times. The computer doesn't intend to channel the person's reality--but simply to make him happier, which it fails to do.

This point in the story many not be wholly true as people (as opposed to the ship's computer) do actively try to channel people toward how they should view reality, but the basic concept is solid and thought-provoking. Perhaps it was somewhat less the case in the 70s and 80s that one might ignore the influence.

It's interesting that Dick's original title was rewritten by Playboy--probably more evocative or enticing to a reader. What's surprising is that Playboy's title is reprinted, not Dick's, despite Dick publishing his preferred title, even titled such as part of a collection. The Playboy title does suggest the man is stuck in his journey, frozen in time. 

"I Hope I Shall Arrive Soon" suggests more of the protagonist's state of mind, inviting the reader in to entertain the state, the feeling of making progress, of wanting to reach the destination but never arriving. It is more empathetic (his belief that he should be arriving soon even though he already has) and, hence, more tragic toward the character's failure to accept his reality. The "Frozen" unintentionally looks down on the character.

Ursula LeGuin's The Norton Book of Science Fiction has a nice tribute to Dick in the introduction, that he was finally getting his due. However, beyond adding the usual Dick-plays-with-reality, it offers no insight into this particular story, and it doesn't really add much insight into any particular story except in broad strokes. 

A famous, knowledgeable writer once said that the anthology chose the stories for a certain brand of politics. It may not have been, but let's entertain the notion. This will take a while since it's not high priority, but I'll touch on it.

The anthology arranges stories by year, presumably to show either progression in sensibility, changes in topical concerns, quality, etc. But presumably those were the best stories from that year. Only Carr selected this story as one the best of the year. It's numbered eight on Locus (with no other award nominations), so maybe the listing by year (in terms of quality) is misleading. However, an editor may think stories were overlooked in a given year, so that may be a factor. It could be the issues facing the public during that year. Was 1980 a year of being frozen in place, compared to any other year? But if so, why doesn't the anthology discuss issues facing the field during that time?

Finally, this could be the story most representative of the writer from 1960-1990, but then the listing as stories by year would be misleading. Moreover, a lot of important writers were excluded from this collection, which would be a major flaw for an anthology with this particular title, which sounds like it has a wide-enough-angled lens to capture the full scope. The anthology was never revised, so maybe the flaws are well known as being too limited in scope to bear its current title, lacking a number of key players who helped shape the field during this era.

The anthology does use the Playboy title over Dick's. If it were a political selection, it was the positive portrayal of the ex-wife. She was empathetically drawn. Hopefully, it is not for the wise woman/foolish man (or worse men-bad/women-good) portrayals, which would be sexist if this is a consistent pattern--limiting both genders to certain roles that can be played. Hard to say from this distance. Perhaps the editors felt they needed to counteract other portrayals, but still it's problematic if it's men-good/women-bad. Humanity has lots genes, lots of differences to limit the species to a handful of portrayals. 

Feminism becomes important to the field, especially during this era, so one would expect it to be addressed, but it is certainly not the only issue, and the anthology would require a different label to be more honest to the public about the anthology's aim. But that's only the case if it were true that LeGuin's anthology is political--a hypothetical claim being entertained at present. And we'll come back to it later, fingers crossed.

Still, the story's a lovely little gem, whatever reason people selected it.  Maybe some will read it as a tale about sanity, or about gender-power dynamics, tripping some triggers. That's okay. For me, it's a potent tale with a broader application for all humanity--not a select few--about a human being whose propensity to find flaws in his own life led him to a place that made it difficult to deal with his present circumstances. Surely, that is a theme that people of whatever gender can empathize with.

"Roog" by Philip K. Dick

First appeared in F&SF. Reprinted by Anthony Boucher, J. Francis McComas,  Robert Silverberg, John M. Landsberg, Jonathan Ostrowsky-Lantz, Jack Dann, Gardner Dozois, Stefan Dziemianowicz, Martin H. Greenberg, Robert Weinberg.

This was Philip K. Dick's first accepted story, but not his first published. It tells of a dog who can see aliens as garbage men.

Discussion (with minor spoilers):

While not a classic, this is utterly charming. Part of it is the perfect name for the alien which sounds a bit like how a dog might sound, barking.

What's fascinating is a debate with the famed editor Judith Merrill over the story (a debate which you cam read about over here). She thought that the description of the aliens did not match the garbage-men she'd seen. This is the kind of debate that sidetracks a lot of literal-minded fans and editors and critics. Myself included. 

Even Dick is mostly persuaded by Merrill's argument that he have lost sight of his own story. He calls it a fantasy through the dog's point of view. It could be. A realistic tale of a dog who thinks garbage men are aliens. But there are other possibilities--more interesting ones.

That's the key: Whose POV is it? It's probably not the dog's. Maybe, but probably not. Was the dog there to witness all events? Maybe? Certainly not the humans--at least not these humans since they don't seem to know what's going on (perhaps humans in a post-human-Earth era?). Maybe the aliens, but they don't seem to be there to witness everything as well.

Perhaps it is simply an omniscient narrator. The aliens, if real, admit what they're doing. They're making the dogs or Guardians seem like deluded creatures. Maybe they are. 

Or maybe the aliens are deluded into thinking the dog see them. Maybe the dogs don't see the aliens as aliens at all.

But again maybe the dogs do. Maybe they are masked and dogs can see through the disguise.

What the aliens are up to, isn't clear. Are they just after trash? Why is it an "offering urn" and why do they eat it? Do they consider themselves gods? Or do they offer it to other gods, carrying it in a blanket? Whatever is going on, it sounds sinister. And once they clear out the dogs, they will be able to execute that plan.

The Unsung Genius of Douglas Adams

"[H]e had proved conclusively that if life is going to exist in a Universe of this size, then the one thing it cannot afford to have is a sense of proportion." -- The Restaurant at the End of the Universe

Rereading Douglas Adams for the first time since I was a kid when I was mostly amused if not exactly wowed, I see his work from a different angle. It must have been that Adams did not have a talent for certain writerly crafts, so that I preferred comedic narratives by Robert Sheckley. But Adams was brilliant at other, uncommon narrative delights. 

This is a case in point. He stitches together different anecdotes, some brief, some elaborate, woven as characters move from point A to point B. I don't want to spoil it for those who hate spoilers, so skip the next paragraph if you don't want this tiny moment ruined. 

An elaborate metaphor is slowly built up and executed, metaphorically and literally, having to do with a device that contains the entire universe in a tiny thing--say, a fairy cake--so that when one experiences it, one is annihilated. However, one character manages to survive where everyone else died. He exits, worldview confirmed, eating the cake.  

Take the following metaphor he sets up as being the place where this unhappy device was placed:

 “Many years ago this was a thriving, happy planet—people, cities, shops, a normal world. Except that on the high streets of these cities there were slightly more shoe shops than one might have thought necessary. And slowly, insidiously, the numbers of these shoe shops were increasing. It’s a well-known economic phenomenon but tragic to see it in operation, for the more shoe shops there were, the more shoes they had to make and the worse and more unwearable they became. And the worse they were to wear, the more people had to buy to keep themselves shod, and the more the shops proliferated, until the whole economy of the place passed what I believe is termed the Shoe Event Horizon, and it became no longer economically possible to build anything other than shoe shops. Result—collapse, ruin and famine. Most of the population died out. Those few who had the right kind of genetic instability mutated into birds—you’ve seen one of them—who cursed their feet, cursed the ground and vowed that none should walk on it again, Unhappy lot. Come, I must take you to the Vortex.”

We think, "Ah, ha! That's why this device was created on this planet!"

But Adams pulls the rug out from under us as it was built elsewhere and placed on the planet because it was empty. That doesn't mean the anecdotes aren't connected, but he craftily shifts these anecdotes around. It's a game of three-card monte, where the cards or anecdotes are constantly shuffled around to keep you on your toes.

John Hughes vs. Scraping, ChatGPT, Plagiarism, Homage, Allusion, Pastiche, Collage

 Last year, writer John Hughes was accused of plagiarism. Joseph Earp, his mentee, recently wrote about his kind nature in this article for the Guardian--a rather sensational or click-bait headline: "My mentor John Hughes taught me how to write. Then he plagiarised my work." 

Earlier last year, Hughes wrote a defense of his work, which seems like a cursory overview, but then critics of his defense were weaker still, which makes his defense look stronger than his critics. It's actually a pretty good justification for what he was doing although a broader and deeper paper may be necessary.

The book blurb on Hughes's Someone Else does show this is his modus operandi:

"Like The Idea of Home, Someone Else uses the essay as a form of autobiography. Here, however, the essays are fictions. Or are they? Hughes tells the stories of the figures who live in his mind by making them tell his stories – and in doing so engages in an art of literary ventriloquism."

So Hughes has told people all along what he was doing. Why the surprise?

I wrote a series of poems completely borrowing Shakespeare's or the King James Bible's words about the moon in order to write a series of love poems. They were all their words, but reordered so that the final result was that their words no longer discussed what they had intended to discuss. Is that plagiarism? 

No. It is art. What is found poetry? What is erasure poetry? What is collage? 

The measure is whether the borrowing is well done. Let's take Leonard da Vinci's Last Supper as an example.

 I'd need to rewatch Robert Altman's MASH to see how this fits in, but it does seem to contribute both to the story and as commentary of the art/event (a man is going to commit suicide (or so he thinks) and his friends are sending him off with this "last" supper):

Most stagings of the Last Supper, though, have been brainless or not art. It sort of fits the image of, say, Battlestar Galactica, but it doesn't slide into the series very well--a bit stagey (but still some cleverness so some thought went into it):

You could say that MASH's use of da Vinci is also stagey. True, but they try to make it fit smoothly into the narrative. Perhaps it's worth complaining about, but it is comic, which makes it more difficult to critique.

Here we have samples of John Hughes borrowings at the Guardian.

Disappointingly, they have no analysis. It's more of a dramatic dum-dum-dum than an actual discussion. Proof of plagiarism! 

Someone needs to actually read the books in question. To know whether the borrowings are significant, one must ask

1. How does Hughes use it? 
2. How does Tolstoy use his text? 
3. How do they compliment or debate?
4. How does the borrowing add meaning and/or reflect back? 

However, Hughes borrows liberally. You can't see much of a purpose--at least not from these clips without more of the book. At present, this is a failure to read. 

It does look like rather drab borrowings, though. It may be Hughes was simply learning sentence patterns from them--a rather banal borrowing, unfortunately. It's puzzling why he borrowed so much and why the passages don't seem particularly indicative. 

An homage should be brief but enough to suggest where and what is being borrowed. For instance, "I'll be back" is a famous saying, but it requires more set-up than just those words. We'd need more. Also an homage should try to capture some particular tell-tale, briefly, that indicates what he is borrowing. It is curious.

Finally, the borrowing should be unobtrusive. That it took so long to discover Hughes's borrowings suggests his work is unobtrusive (but also not distinctive). The Altman clip is less obtrusive than the Battlestar Galactica. Should it be invisible? Should it be somewhat obtrusive so at least some people pick up on the nod? That's probably a question of taste. 

However, I don't think homage is the highest form of art since not everyone has a photographic memory. It's what many call the "Easter egg"--the piece of art that's hidden that some may uncover. There should be no guilt associated with not recognizing homages.

Earp, in the article above, seems to think this won't hamper Hughes's career, but I suspect it may. Time will tell. But condemnation, without a deeper investigation, suggests brainless book burnings--to the shame of those who complained... unless they actually did the requisite legwork and found Hughes's borrowings not especially necessary to his art.

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There's been a lot of hand-wringing over AI visual art and AI-generated stories. They "scrape" or "plagiarize" [to borrow the Guardian's accusations] writers and artists to create their "new" works. People--writers, even--find it convincing. All the people who think Hughes plagiarized without digging deeper should be banning such AI works, but though I've heard complaints, I haven't heard of any movements to block the AIs from doing their [illegal?] work.

My guess, for now, is that, without an intelligence guiding the art, human art is safe. If it should develop a method of creating intelligent art, then we can despair.

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None of the above is to suggest where I come down on Hughes as a writer, but it does suggest a method for evaluating Hughes's work.