Escape Artists
Escape Pod => Episode Comments => Topic started by: eytanz on December 16, 2010, 06:53:16 PM
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EP271: God of the Lower Level (http://escapepod.org/2010/12/16/ep271-the-god-of-the-lower-level/)
By Charles M. Saplak
Read by Steve Anderson (http://sgacreative.com/)
First appeared in The Urbanite
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Hello, Horatio.
Hello, Fredrick. I’ve been waiting.
Of course. How have you been?
Good. And you?
Fine. I’ve finished my other work. It’s now, let’s see…, three twenty-seven a.m. It’s dark outside, of course, which means that there’s no sun, but there is some reflected light from the moon, and some dim light from the stars, and then electric lights in various places. Are any of the terms I’ve just used unfamiliar to you?
No.
Good. I have four hours and thirty-three minutes until shift change. I can spend some time with you. Do you have any questions for me?
Yes, Fredrick, I do. Are you my God?
Rated PG For power struggles and new life creations.
Show Notes:
- Feedback for Episode 261: Fuel
- Next week… It’s Christmastime!
(http://escapepod.org/wp-images/podcast-mini4.gif)
Listen to this week’s Escape Pod! (http://traffic.libsyn.com/escapepod/EP271__God_of_the_Lower_Level.mp3)
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I really wasn't a fan of this story I'm afraid. I never got into the story. I think the lack of narrative got to me a little - some of the dialogue felt somewhat forced and I just couldn't get into it without some good healthy descriptive writing to draw me in.
I found the plot pretty predictable. As soon as horatio mentioned the river and the ocean and asked how to empty the him out he was going to request to be let out and then try to force it.
I'll probably give it another listen at some point, but not my favourite on first listen.
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I thought it was a fun tale, and the voices made it even more fun. Predictable, a little bit. But I didn't mind. I liked the idea of the algae tank learning to learn to watch and interpret video. I guess it wasn't entirely predictable in that I was expecting him to lure Fredrick into falling into the tank and absorbing him.
Is there a scientific basis for intelligent mold? I ask because I read a story in Analog last year that had intelligent fridge mold, "Light Conversation" by Alasdair Mayer.
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Yikes! Stories like this send me into a frenzy of worry about how far down the scale does sentience go? I start getting paranoid and apprehensive about mowing my yard, pruning my plants and destroying wasp nests. :-\
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Not a fan of the story, but I liked the reading.
The story didn't really connect to me on any kind of emotional or intellectual level, but that might be just me. At most it was amusing, but not really outright funny.
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I found the story very entertaining. The narration was engaging and the sci-fi element was right there and in your face. I especially liked how Horatio drew his information from the popular science programs that are on cable TV. It was a nice way to pull the listener into the story. I was actually surprised that Fredrick was one step ahead of Horatio.
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I found the end of this one to be a real downer. This is odd for me - usually I'm okay with stories that end badly. Somehow, though, this one left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I can't say why, exactly. I'll keep on reading the comments and see if anyone says something that resonates with me.
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I found the end of this one to be a real downer. This is odd for me - usually I'm okay with stories that end badly. Somehow, though, this one left me with a bad taste in my mouth. I can't say why, exactly. I'll keep on reading the comments and see if anyone says something that resonates with me.
Perhaps because Horatio really never had a fair chance. He wasn't given much in the way of moral guidance or instruction, and the setup was rigged against him from the start.
I do think this worked a lot better in audio than text; the improvement was noticeable.
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Why do think it had a bad ending? Because the sentient algae died? Live is competitive. Humans don't rule the earth by divine right (as far as we can tell).
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I liked the story and didn't see the ending coming. Cool premise, evolving algae.
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Why do think it had a bad ending? Because the sentient algae died? Live is competitive. Humans don't rule the earth by divine right (as far as we can tell).
Just because things are true doesn't make it good story. Sure, biological life is competitive. Narrative life is whatever it needs to be to make the story work.
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I enjoyed both the reading and the story, more duologue fiction please! I did assume that Horatio was going to make it to the river and the currents would be strong enough to tear it apart, I wasn't sure what basis Horatio had for believing it would stick together but I suppose it had been doing investigating and knew about things like currents. There was also that thing about how it hadn't yet worked out how to use the modem but could communicate with Fred and somehow 'watch' TV. I was wondering if it was going to escape on a grand quest to meet another sentient slime-mold in some Australian lab that it had managed to make contact with.
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I liked it. Predictable, yes, but still a fun little story.
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[Bob and Lucius are sitting in a parked car, reminiscing]
Lucius: So now I'm in deep trouble. I mean, one more jolt of this death ray and I'm an epitaph. Somehow I manage to find cover and what does Baron von Ruthless do?
Bob: [laughing] He starts monologuing.
Lucius: He starts monologuing! He starts like, this prepared speech about how *feeble* I am compared to him, how *inevitable* my defeat is, how *the world* *will soon* *be his*, yadda yadda yadda.
Bob: Yammering.
Lucius: Yammering! I mean, the guy has me on a platter and he won't shut up!
(http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_yukW-ZIgSmE/SPBIKdiCJBI/AAAAAAAABa8/auuvGJFrQto/s400/sleep.jpg)
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Is there a scientific basis for intelligent mold? I ask because I read a story in Analog last year that had intelligent fridge mold, "Light Conversation" by Alasdair Mayer.
Oddly enough, there is: http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v407/n6803/abs/407470a0.html
Sorry that Nature isn't open access, but at least you can read the abstract. They won a 2008 Ig Nobel prize for their work :D
I also could see where the story was going, but then was pleasantly surprised by how he was totally prepared for Horatio's attempt. Made me wonder if this had happened before? I also loved the silly "now who will I talk to?" at the end, since that served to trivialize the stunning science that he had been facilitating.
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@devoted135
...since that served to trivialize the stunning science that he had been facilitating.
Maybe that was a point the author was trying to make? People are so self absorbed oftentimes they miss the everyday miracles right in front of their eyes. ;)
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I really enjoyed this story. The reading was wonderful, and I like that style of writing, how you don't really get told what's happening, you sort of deduce it from the dialog.
The content of the story was nice too. I spent a while trying to think what kind of intelligence we were dealing with here. Some kind of Turing machine? A random amalgamation of code that spawned intelligence (isomorphs anyone?) but that didn't fit with it learning how to connect to the input that was provided for it. (Who gives a hint to a computer saying "ones and zeros"?) But then I was like, "Oh yeah, mold. We always joke about how last month's take out food is starting a civilization in the back of the fridge, so why not a water purification plant?"
And that of course explained how it could decipher analogue signals in coaxial cable easier than digital signals on the modem.
I just want to point out one thing to all you television producers: Look! It's mold! And it has limitless access to cable TV! And even IT doesn't chose to watch "reality TV".
I'm just saying...
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The genius of this sparsely plotted gem lies in the fact that it seems to be a first contact story in which expectations about intelligent life are flipped upside down. I enjoyed it and admired it in more or less equal parts. A bacterial colony called Horatio, described as 'the only one of its kind', stored in a cylinder down in some waste treatment plant? The discoverer, whose sculpted figure might someday adorn plinths in public squares, is a Vietnam-draft-dodger and entry level worker at the facility? Remarkable that it was pulled off so well. Posing mind-bending philosophical questions in this way reminded me of Ted Chiang's work, as did the relative lack of emotional engagement. (Given the fact that Fred passively created Horatio several years prior to the events of the story, its surprising that Fred didn't seem to care about Horatio's 'death' more than he did.)(But did Horatio die?)
Compliments to Steve Anderson! This marks one of the best narrations I've heard on escape pod in ages.
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@obadiah
Maybe the MC felt that as the algae's creator he had the right to abort it? Breeders, scientists, animal husbandry workers, amongst others cull out individuals with unwanted traits all the time. (Like attempting to go rogue for example.) The author hinted at that possibility if I recall correctly. I had to cull out some dangerous fish rather than take the chance that they'd enter Michigan's lakes system. Who knows? Even though the fish were from a Central American ecosystem the fish might have adapted to the cold weather and survived to become a menace. This certainly has happened before (http://www.invasivespeciesinfo.gov/aquatics/main.shtml) around here. I regretted it and still do, but why take the chance?
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@Obadiah, thanks! That's high praise, indeed.
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A god that creates and kills for his own amusement. Imagine that? ;)
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I really enjoyed this story. It was a fun bit of fiction. The back-and-forth dialogue between both characters kept me plenty interested in what was going on. However, once it became all Mr Algae I had trouble. At that point, the dialogue sounded a bit too stretched. I understand it needed to describe events for the reader's sake. But it felt too James-Bond-villain for me. I actually pictured this slime petting a white cat.
That's my only gripe. I'd love to hear more from this author on EP.
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There was also that thing about how it hadn't yet worked out how to use the modem but could communicate with Fred and somehow 'watch' TV.
That made sense to me. Because TV has a constant stream of incoming information it was eventually able to learn how to interpret this information. The modem, on the other hand, generally only provides information when information is requested, and you need to know how to request it, which would probably be impossible unless you could observe an active network card interacting with the network. I mean, before you can do much of use you have to figure out how to get an IP address, and the network might not even be set up to provide one to this random slime mold, and how do you request an IP address without even knowing what an IP address is? Also, it seems that Horatio is a secret from the plant administrators, but he would quickly become a security concern if he started requesting IP addresses. Not only that, but the input video was over analog coaxial cable, and this does not immediately teach it how to read the digital signals provided by the modem.
I don't think it would ever learn how to use the modem unless it were explicitly given information about internet protocols, or at the very least being allowed to observe a computer modem with an active user surfing the net.
:)
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I really enjoyed this story. It was a fun bit of fiction. The back-and-forth dialogue between both characters kept me plenty interested in what was going on. However, once it became all Mr Algae I had trouble. At that point, the dialogue sounded a bit too stretched. I understand it needed to describe events for the reader's sake. But it felt too James-Bond-villain for me. I actually pictured this slime petting a white cat.
That's my only gripe. I'd love to hear more from this author on EP.
James Bond Villain dialogue coming from a human villain is hard to believe. Coming from a newly intelligent slime mold, it totally makes sense to me. :)
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Why are so many of you viewing the slime as evil? It simply did what any confined and intelligent life would do - it wished to escape it's cage. If it did there is absolutely no reason to assume it would try to kill or overrun the world.
I'm curious why the man didn't explain what would happen if the new life was released. It's the one gap in the story that, for me, stopped this from being a minor classic (if only in my opinion).
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Well, he did say "...and in another month, I will BE the Atlantic Ocean." The implication was that he intended to go on a multiplication binge using his bacteria/mold powers of exponential growth and crowd out all the other non-intelligent algae and lifeforms there. This would be Bad for Life as We Know It.
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Well, he did say "...and in another month, I will BE the Atlantic Ocean." The implication was that he intended to go on a multiplication binge using his bacteria/mold powers of exponential growth and crowd out all the other non-intelligent algae and lifeforms there. This would be Bad for Life as We Know It.
Yes, but not evil, necessarily; just self-interested.
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Well, he did say "...and in another month, I will BE the Atlantic Ocean." The implication was that he intended to go on a multiplication binge using his bacteria/mold powers of exponential growth and crowd out all the other non-intelligent algae and lifeforms there. This would be Bad for Life as We Know It.
Yes, but not evil, necessarily; just self-interested.
That's what evil IS: someone so self-interested that they sacrifice others to their own appetites and desires. From the point of view of the human race, eating the Atlantic Ocean is basically the act of a supervillain.
Also, betrayal. He doesn't think his friend and mentor is giving him enough freedom at a sufficiently rapid pace, so he paralyzes him and prepares to wipe out the rest of life on Earth just so he can experience "real" life. I think I'm okay with "evil" as a designator here. I can pity him and understand his reasoning, but he's still a raging asshole, even for a slime mold.
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@ Wilson Fowlie
Yes, but not evil, necessarily; just self-interested.
Yep. And the same goes for the MC for flushing them too. ;D
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Hmm. Didn't like this one. I think the presentation of the story as dialogue didn't work for me, it felt very forced and unnatural.
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Yikes! Stories like this send me into a frenzy of worry about how far down the scale does sentience go? I start getting paranoid and apprehensive about mowing my yard, pruning my plants and destroying wasp nests. :-\
I don't fret about destroying wasp nests. They're some real assholes; they have it coming.
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That's what evil IS: someone so self-interested that they sacrifice others to their own appetites and desires.
I saw the slime mold as being in more of a teenager phase. "Hates" parents/makers? Check. Loves something they've only seen or heard about? Check. Completely self-involved and self-absorbed? Check. Thinks they are invincible? Check.
Maybe teenagers would make great supervillains.
The story itself was light and entertaining, and I didn't really find a need to search for a deeper meaning or plot or direction. It was a pleasant engaging story, and that was good enough for me.
And Mr. Anderson's reading was superb, as always. I look forward to hearing any and all of his Escape Artist readings.
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@stePh
I don't fret about destroying wasp nests. They're some real assholes; they have it coming.
I hear that's what they say about us!
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It's true; supervillains are very much teenagers, in the sense that they tend to have emotionally immature worldviews and unrealistic expectations. Good people spend their immature years learning to control themselves.
A lot of "evil" happens because people are stupid and weak, but while I can (and do) pity many people who do evil, if we're going to use a simple binary good-evil metric, then Horatio falls firmly on the evil side. Granted, it seems like he had a crappy parent who didn't do much to help him along, someone who viewed him more as a science experiment than someone to nurture and raise. Everyone who turns out bad has reasons for it; I can empathize without excusing.
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It's true; supervillains are very much teenagers, in the sense that they tend to have emotionally immature worldviews and unrealistic expectations. Good people spend their immature years learning to control themselves.
Yeah, but I'd like to see a teenager attempt monologuing without breaking down and stomping off to his/her room in the middle.
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All I can say is "Fredrick? Freeeeedriiick? FREDRICK!!"
love it.
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I really enjoyed this one. Frederick, the humble draft dodger hidden away in a menial and dirty job, was indeed the God of the Lower Levels. He gaveth and he tooketh away, and wasn't as naive as we suspected. The story followed a predictable pattern to an extent (was it the subtle menace in the narration of Horatio's voice right from the beginning?) but the ending was still a nice twist. I was really expecting Frederick to be absorbed and Horatio to escape into the wide open, Lawnmower Man-style.
The narration, btw, was great. It made the story a lot more engaging.
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This one was okay. I liked the voices, but for some weird reason, I don't know why, I found myself thinking of Waiting for Godot. And I haven't even seen the play before. Weird.
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this story was like a bolt from the blue. killed me stone dead. great job, epod