Author Topic: EP136: Bright Red Star  (Read 49939 times)

Listener

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Reply #25 on: December 17, 2007, 02:39:39 PM
Maybe I was going in a different mental direction, but I expected the little girl to be one of the Shardi in some sort of disguise.  When I figured out the twist -- it was 6:15am, so I was a little slow on the uptake -- I was a little surprised, but not blown away by it necessarily.

I think this story paints a more realistic picture of what will happen when humans eventually do become a spacefaring race:  someone else who's more powerful, who we have no comprehension of their reasoning or even who they are, will kick the crap out of us.  We as a planet are (for the most part) so anthropocentric that we can't seriously believe there is someone out there better/stronger/faster/more vicious than us.  (That's why I liked Titan AE so much... for all its flaws, it showed that humans were not the be-all end-all.)

I might have wanted to know more about the Shardi, but given the nature of the narrator, I understand why I wasn't informed.  The exposition was from a soldier's point of view, so while not necessarily the best story-telling method, it was understandable why the choice was made.  I do have a minor problem with narrators who are about to die telling a story and then dying at the end.  Can't articulate, though.

I didn't really care for the choice of the reader this week.  It may be partly due to the editing -- it sounded rough when transitioning from the girl to the narrator.  Also, I had some trouble differentiating the narrator from Hunter.  I don't know how to describe it, but the voice sounded too "round" to me.

I enjoyed this story to a point, but I have a hard time really getting behind it.  I noticed the info-dumping that nobilis pointed out, but you get that sometimes with short sci-fi.  Unfortunate, but forgiveable.

My first thought was that this was a bit heavy-handed in just how mindlessly evil the Shardi were. They attacked without provocation, had no interest in any kind of dialog, much less negotiation, exterminated all humans on sight, and performed vile experiments on those they captured alive. On later reflection, I thought that this might make sense as war-time propaganda. We see the Shardi as pure monsters because that's what the soldiers are told in order to justify the horrors in which "our" side engages. I think the story would have worked better for me if we saw a hint somewhere that this was the case, and that the situation was more complex than our soldier thought.
I smelled propaganda in this as well, but I don't think it was meant to be ficticious.  In this story, the ends justify the means.
Are the good guys still the good guys when they slash the throats of little girls?  The author seems to be arguing to the affirmative.
The use of an utterly implacable, incomprehensible enemy seems to be fairly bare plot mechanism used to illustrate a point.  There's proabably a word for that, but I don't know it.
Those issues aside, I still think the story was well written.

I was with you on the propaganda thing.  There was some foreshadowing that could've led to a propaganda issue a la Starship Troopers, but I was able to believe that the Shardi were just that evil.  We simply didn't know enough about them.

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eytanz

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Reply #26 on: December 17, 2007, 03:44:37 PM
Quote
I smelled propaganda in this as well, but I don't think it was meant to be ficticious.  In this story, the ends justify the means.
Are the good guys still the good guys when they slash the throats of little girls?  The author seems to be arguing to the affirmative.
The use of an utterly implacable, incomprehensible enemy seems to be fairly bare plot mechanism used to illustrate a point.  There's proabably a word for that, but I don't know it.
Those issues aside, I still think the story was well written.

I was with you on the propaganda thing.  There was some foreshadowing that could've led to a propaganda issue a la Starship Troopers, but I was able to believe that the Shardi were just that evil.  We simply didn't know enough about them.

I think the main thing is that - unlike Starship Troopers (the movie, I haven't read the book so I don't know about it), we get everything filtered through a narrator. Who is entirely sincere and relibable. And not only thinks that his actions are justified for some ideological reason, but believes they are justified for very concrete reasons. So yeah, he could have been misled. This story can be situated in a universe where the narrator knows the real truth. Or it could be set in a universe where the Shardi are really good guys coming to take everyone to the Big Rock Candy Mountain, and the entire "they kill everyone they don't convert into a tormented weapons system" is a pure lie by the Human Government. But the story isn't about the Shrardi, it's about the narrator, and his internal motivation for his actions, which remains justified, as he is acting by the truth he has.



gelee

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Reply #27 on: December 17, 2007, 04:50:54 PM
I guess I'm looking at it more from an ideological point of view.  I got the idea that the author started with a point: "The ends justify the means in military conflict.  How can I demonstrate that?"  To that end, some ETs were created to embody the perfect threat, stripped of any sort of intellect, desire, motivation, or any other trait.  The only thing anyone knows about the Shardies is that they kill people and steal their heads for computers.  In the face of such an absolute, existential threat, the author/main character can rationalize anything.  I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the authors position, I just didn't like the way the question was handled.



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Reply #28 on: December 17, 2007, 05:38:02 PM
Quote
I smelled propaganda in this as well, but I don't think it was meant to be ficticious.  In this story, the ends justify the means.
Are the good guys still the good guys when they slash the throats of little girls?  The author seems to be arguing to the affirmative.
The use of an utterly implacable, incomprehensible enemy seems to be fairly bare plot mechanism used to illustrate a point.  There's proabably a word for that, but I don't know it.
Those issues aside, I still think the story was well written.

I was with you on the propaganda thing.  There was some foreshadowing that could've led to a propaganda issue a la Starship Troopers, but I was able to believe that the Shardi were just that evil.  We simply didn't know enough about them.

I think the main thing is that - unlike Starship Troopers (the movie, I haven't read the book so I don't know about it), we get everything filtered through a narrator.

I haven't read the book in a while, but I remember the film being MUCH more heavy-handed with the propaganda.  I believe I read somewhere that that was Verhoeven's decision when he oversaw the film.

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eytanz

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Reply #29 on: December 17, 2007, 05:45:04 PM
I guess I'm looking at it more from an ideological point of view.

Your own ideology? Or one that you assume the author has, for some reason that's unclear to me?

Quote
  I got the idea that the author started with a point: "The ends justify the means in military conflict.  How can I demonstrate that?" 

That doesn't make any sense (as motivation for the author, not as a position, though I disagree with it) - if that's the intention, then the author chose a really bad way of going about it. To whit:

Quote
To that end, some ETs were created to embody the perfect threat, stripped of any sort of intellect, desire, motivation, or any other trait.  The only thing anyone knows about the Shardies is that they kill people and steal their heads for computers.  In the face of such an absolute, existential threat, the author/main character can rationalize anything.  I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the authors position, I just didn't like the way the question was handled.

So, in other words, you believe that the author was trying to say "in military conflict, the ends justify the means", and he went about doing that by setting up a scenario that has little in common with actual military conflict? Why assume that the author has a motivation that the story he created doesn't support? Do you have any reason to believe he is not particularly competent at getting his point across?

I think the author's motivation was "What is a case where the ends would justify the means?" The fact that the author had to create such an extreme situation indicates to me that he doesn't think that real wars are such a situation. If he did, he could have written a story situated in a facsimile of one.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2007, 05:48:05 PM by eytanz »



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Reply #30 on: December 17, 2007, 05:52:10 PM
Quote
I smelled propaganda in this as well, but I don't think it was meant to be ficticious.  In this story, the ends justify the means.
Are the good guys still the good guys when they slash the throats of little girls?  The author seems to be arguing to the affirmative.
The use of an utterly implacable, incomprehensible enemy seems to be fairly bare plot mechanism used to illustrate a point.  There's proabably a word for that, but I don't know it.
Those issues aside, I still think the story was well written.

I was with you on the propaganda thing.  There was some foreshadowing that could've led to a propaganda issue a la Starship Troopers, but I was able to believe that the Shardi were just that evil.  We simply didn't know enough about them.

I think the main thing is that - unlike Starship Troopers (the movie, I haven't read the book so I don't know about it), we get everything filtered through a narrator.

I haven't read the book in a while, but I remember the film being MUCH more heavy-handed with the propaganda.  I believe I read somewhere that that was Verhoeven's decision when he oversaw the film.

The Starship Trooper propoganda in the movie was just Verhoeven re-hashing the ads he had in Robocop.  Same trick different subject.  He also did it in Total Recall.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2007, 05:53:42 PM by Russell Nash »



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Reply #31 on: December 17, 2007, 05:56:03 PM
I actually like the fact that the motivation of the aliens is completely inscrutable.  Most of the time aliens are just humans with antennae and their characteristics are caricatures of humans and human cultures.  I like it that these aliens are unfathomable and nothing they do makes sense.

Although it does make perfect sense if the Shardis view humans as vermin.  Do you try to open communications with the cockroaches in your basement?  Negotiate a with them?  Understand their culture?  No: You just spray them until they're all dead, and if they prove more resilient than you'd first expected, you get some better poison.  My interpretation of events would be the Shardi are a god-like race who view humans as garden pests and have thrown the equivalent of a Raid bomb at them.  They don't try to communicate because they don't consider humans worth communicating with.

It would also make sense if humans are somehow inherently dangerous the Shardi.  Perhaps they are a psychic race and human thoughts are a deadly toxin to them?  In such a case, they would dispatch machines to destroy the humans while keeping themselves well away.

Or they could be religious fanatics who think humans are demons and that communicating will defile them.

The action of the Shardi only seem implausible if we assume they are fundamentally anthropoid, like Star Trek aliens.  If they are radically different in either mind or body, then there are a number of plausible explanations for why they would act as they do.

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gelee

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Reply #32 on: December 17, 2007, 06:16:00 PM
I guess I'm looking at it more from an ideological point of view.

Your own ideology? Or one that you assume the author has, for some reason that's unclear to me?

Quote
  I got the idea that the author started with a point: "The ends justify the means in military conflict.  How can I demonstrate that?" 

That doesn't make any sense (as motivation for the author, not as a position, though I disagree with it) - if that's the intention, then the author chose a really bad way of going about it.

As I said, this was the impression I recieved.  It is not unheard of for writers to try and use a story to illustrate a position.  When I see all the pieces necessary to illustrate a position, I entertain the idea that this is, in fact, the intention of the author.  I do not wish to imply that I know the author's state of mind.  This is simply my best attempt to understand the piece at hand.  In this case, my impression was further reinforced by the attitude of the farmers who did not resist, and by the point cryptoengineer makes.  To borrow a phrase, why not glass it from orbit?

Quote
To whit:

Quote
To that end, some ETs were created to embody the perfect threat, stripped of any sort of intellect, desire, motivation, or any other trait.  The only thing anyone knows about the Shardies is that they kill people and steal their heads for computers.  In the face of such an absolute, existential threat, the author/main character can rationalize anything.  I'm not saying I agree or disagree with the authors position, I just didn't like the way the question was handled.

So, in other words, you believe that the author was trying to say "in military conflict, the ends justify the means", and he went about doing that by setting up a scenario that has little in common with actual military conflict? Why assume that the author has a motivation that the story he created doesn't support? Do you have any reason to believe he is not particularly competent at getting his point across?

I guess I don't understand how the story does not suppport that line of reasoning.  Under such circumstances as those presented, the actions of the characters are completely necessary and entirely justifiable.  If I were attempting to construct a hypothetical situation to support the statement that "The Ends Justify the Means," I might present a very similiar situation.  As to his competence, I don't question it at all.  I think the point is very well made.
As to this bearing similarity to real miliary situations:  It doesn't have to.  All he has to do is set up a situation in which a person of presumably ordinary morals/ethics could approve of that actions taken by the principals, and he does that quite well.  I probably shouldn't have specified military conflict, but that does appear to be the context of the story.

Quote
I think the author's motivation was "What is a case where the ends would justify the means?" The fact that the author had to create such an extreme situation indicates to me that he doesn't think that real wars are such a situation. If he did, he could have written a story situated in a facsimile of one.
Why use a facsimile of one?  Sadly, there are plenty of real ones he could use.  He creates a fictional situation to eliminate other variables: politics, race, religion, philosophy, etc.  Who could argue against the necessity of preserving humanity?  That allows his question to be examined in a sort of vacuum.

By the way, I'd like to point out that, as I stated in my first comment, I did enjoy the story.  The language was used well, and the dialogue had good flow.  Characterization could have been stronger, but you have to let some of that go sometimes to avoid cluttering things up.  On the whole, the story was well written.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2007, 06:33:43 PM by gelee »



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Reply #33 on: December 17, 2007, 06:23:11 PM
I thought it was a fine tight story that got a lot done in a little space, but....

The mission didn't make sense to me. The reason for the stealth aspects
of the start of the mission (melting spacecraft, etc) was never explained,
and then the stealth itself was blown by using explosives, apparently
'just to be sure' - they even mention that the Shardies are coming as a
result.

Wouldn't a few nukes from orbit have turned the settlement site (which
had only 40 people) into a radioactive hole in the ground - vaporizing
any stray braincells in the process?

To waste highly trained and expensively augmented supersoldiers as
well as a spaceship on this mission seems very inefficient.

CE



eytanz

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Reply #34 on: December 17, 2007, 06:52:11 PM
I guess I don't understand how the story does not suppport that line of reasoning.  Under such circumstances as those presented, the actions of the characters are completely necessary and entirely justifiable.  If I were attempting to construct a hypothetical situation to support the statement that "The Ends Justify the Means," I might present a very similiar situation.  As to his competence, I don't question it at all.  I think the point is very well made.
As to this bearing similarity to real miliary situations:  It doesn't have to.  All he has to do is set up a situation in which a person of presumably ordinary morals/ethics could approve of that actions taken by the principals, and he does that quite well.  I probably shouldn't have specified military conflict, but that does appear to be the context of the story.

Yes, it's the context of the story, but it's not what the story is *about*. Or maybe I misunderstood you. There's a big difference between saying "The ends justify the means in military conflict" and saying "It's possible to find situations in a military conflicts were the ends justify the means". The situation depicted here is *not* in any way representative of actual military conflict. And I'm saying this as someone who grew up in Israel, surrounded by military conflict, and who was three years in the military, albeit in a non-combat role. War is messy. And no matter how much propoganda you hear, at the end of the day, you are facing people who are just like you in all ways except a quirk of politics. *That* is the reason why, in military conflict in general, it is not true that the ends justify the means. By making the aliens so inhuman, the author essentially removed the one thing about military conflict that directly relates to the point. I can't see that as not being deliberate.



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Reply #35 on: December 17, 2007, 07:48:51 PM
The mission didn't make sense to me. The reason for the stealth aspects
of the start of the mission (melting spacecraft, etc) was never explained

My impression was that the stealth was required to buy them time to find the survivors before the Shardies showed up.  However, to answer your point of "why not just blow it all up", I don't have a good answer.  Maybe I'll have to listen again.

Overall I thought the story was very well told, even as dark and sad as it was.

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Czhorat

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Reply #36 on: December 17, 2007, 08:15:56 PM
I guess I don't understand how the story does not suppport that line of reasoning.  Under such circumstances as those presented, the actions of the characters are completely necessary and entirely justifiable.  If I were attempting to construct a hypothetical situation to support the statement that "The Ends Justify the Means," I might present a very similiar situation.  As to his competence, I don't question it at all.  I think the point is very well made.
As to this bearing similarity to real miliary situations:  It doesn't have to.  All he has to do is set up a situation in which a person of presumably ordinary morals/ethics could approve of that actions taken by the principals, and he does that quite well.  I probably shouldn't have specified military conflict, but that does appear to be the context of the story.

Yes, it's the context of the story, but it's not what the story is *about*. Or maybe I misunderstood you. There's a big difference between saying "The ends justify the means in military conflict" and saying "It's possible to find situations in a military conflicts were the ends justify the means". The situation depicted here is *not* in any way representative of actual military conflict. And I'm saying this as someone who grew up in Israel, surrounded by military conflict, and who was three years in the military, albeit in a non-combat role. War is messy. And no matter how much propoganda you hear, at the end of the day, you are facing people who are just like you in all ways except a quirk of politics. *That* is the reason why, in military conflict in general, it is not true that the ends justify the means. By making the aliens so inhuman, the author essentially removed the one thing about military conflict that directly relates to the point. I can't see that as not being deliberate.


I can see the story as reading that way, and it bothered me a bit as well. The problem isn't that it gives the message that the end justifies the means, it's that the deck is so heavilly stacked that, if you take the narrator's description of the conflict at face value, all moral questions are erased. The reason that I hit on the idea of wartime propaganda is that it makes sense and lends a level of moral complexity to the events in the story. I'll be the first to admit that nothing in the text explicitly backs my idea, and feel that the story would be stronger if we had hint that the Shardies aren't the implacable evil our narrator things them to be.

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Reply #37 on: December 17, 2007, 08:44:13 PM
The mission didn't make sense to me. The reason for the stealth aspects
of the start of the mission (melting spacecraft, etc) was never explained

My impression was that the stealth was required to buy them time to find the survivors before the Shardies showed up.  However, to answer your point of "why not just blow it all up", I don't have a good answer.  Maybe I'll have to listen again.

I thought they were supposed to lure in whatever kind of force the Shardis use to capture people and take out as much of it as possible, with assumption that they were going to loose and have to blow themselves up in the end.

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gelee

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Reply #38 on: December 17, 2007, 09:07:11 PM
Quote
I can see the story as reading that way, and it bothered me a bit as well. The problem isn't that it gives the message that the end justifies the means, it's that the deck is so heavilly stacked that, if you take the narrator's description of the conflict at face value, all moral questions are erased.
Czhorat, You are much better at describing this stuff than I am.  :)

Quote
The reason that I hit on the idea of wartime propaganda is that it makes sense and lends a level of moral complexity to the events in the story. I'll be the first to admit that nothing in the text explicitly backs my idea, and feel that the story would be stronger if we had hint that the Shardies aren't the implacable evil our narrator things them to be.
I use the term propaganda because there are those who frame every conflict in similiar terms.  You could replace the name "Shardie" with "Commie" or "Nazi," "Confederates," "Redcoats," "Indians," and it might not sound so much like speculative fiction any more.  In some cases, those terms are appropriate.  In others, they are not.  One might use this story to argue that such terms should be applied to a given situation "See?  Situation A is just like this!  Our Enemies are just like the Shardies!  No sacrifice is too great to ensure their defeat!"
Orwell was fond of that sort of writing.



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Reply #39 on: December 17, 2007, 09:14:11 PM
I thought it was a fine tight story that got a lot done in a little space, but....

Wouldn't a few nukes from orbit have turned the settlement site (which
had only 40 people) into a radioactive hole in the ground - vaporizing
any stray braincells in the process?

I like stories to have a kind of 'logic within the story' and this one was way off the mark.
It spoiled an otherwise gripping yarn.
The cost of a few nukes would be way, way less then losing highly trained, modified soldiers every time that a group of people are discovered on an evacuated planet, not to mention the problems you would have in finding enough volonteers for this kind of mission.
Pre-nuking any world a few days after the evacuation deadline would have an even better effect in deterring people to stay behind.
...mind you, it would have cost us an otherwise nice story  ;)

Yeah, well..how is your Dutch then eh?


Czhorat

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Reply #40 on: December 17, 2007, 09:18:03 PM
I use the term propaganda because there are those who frame every conflict in similiar terms.  You could replace the name "Shardie" with "Commie" or "Nazi," "Confederates," "Redcoats," "Indians," and it might not sound so much like speculative fiction any more.  In some cases, those terms are appropriate.  In others, they are not.  One might use this story to argue that such terms should be applied to a given situation "See?  Situation A is just like this!  Our Enemies are just like the Shardies!  No sacrifice is too great to ensure their defeat!"
Orwell was fond of that sort of writing.

Well-said. It fits with the overall theme of most wartime propaganda which is to dehumanize the "other". The fact that in this case the other is literally non-human doesn't change my distaste at seeing them portrayed as morally (and, perhaps, intellectually) less than human. I feel that SF war stories make better allegories for real wars when our foes are either humanized on some level (Ursula Leguin's Vietnam War story The Word For World is Forest comes immediately do mind, as did Katheryn Kristine Rusch's "Sparks in a Cold War" from a few weeks ago here) or given some plausible, even if alien, reason for agression (ie, the Taurans in Joe Haldeman's The Forever War or buggers in Orson Scott Card's Ender's Game). Otherwise it comes across to me as propagandistic and heavy-handed.

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eytanz

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Reply #41 on: December 17, 2007, 09:28:52 PM
Ok, I think I understand where you are coming from better, but that still feels pretty bizzare to me. Moreso, because I actually agree with you on many of the premises. I just disagree on the conclusion.

Czhorat said:
Quote
Well-said. It fits with the overall theme of most wartime propaganda which is to dehumanize the "other". The fact that in this case the other is literally non-human doesn't change my distaste at seeing them portrayed as morally (and, perhaps, intellectually) less than human.

Two comments:

- One, if you look back to the first page you'll see that I complained about much the same thing. I said that it's easier to compare the shardies with a plague or virus or something than with humans. I don't really think it's valid to plug historical groups into the Shardies and keep the story making sense. But plug "bubonic plague" into the same slot and the story makes perfect sense. If this story *was* about a viral plague, would you be complaining that the virii are de-humanized?

- Where did "less" come from? The inhuman is certainly portrayed as different, morally and intellectually, from the humans. But nowhere in the story is a moral judgement made. Heck, for all we know the Shardies are righteous and are eradicating humanity because of its sinful state. Unlikely, but entirely compatible with what is in the story. I feel that you're bringing in a lot of interpretation that is not supported by the story but rather by what you expected the story to be about.



Czhorat

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Reply #42 on: December 17, 2007, 09:39:01 PM
Two comments:

- One, if you look back to the first page you'll see that I complained about much the same thing. I said that it's easier to compare the shardies with a plague or virus or something than with humans. I don't really think it's valid to plug historical groups into the Shardies and keep the story making sense. But plug "bubonic plague" into the same slot and the story makes perfect sense. If this story *was* about a viral plague, would you be complaining that the virii are de-humanized?

- Where did "less" come from? The inhuman is certainly portrayed as different, morally and intellectually, from the humans. But nowhere in the story is a moral judgement made. Heck, for all we know the Shardies are righteous and are eradicating humanity because of its sinful state. Unlikely, but entirely compatible with what is in the story. I feel that you're bringing in a lot of interpretation that is not supported by the story but rather by what you expected the story to be about.

<some snipping for length>

If it was about a viral plague or a natural disaster I'd obviously not talk about dehumanization, but would still complain if the deck was stacked to the point that any solution save the slaughter of apparently innocent people for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time was impossible. That would make it, in my view, a very poor allegory for the difficult moral decisions that need to be made while combatting real plagues or natural disasters.

As far as my second point is concerned, the Shardies were portrayed as being cruel, merciless, and agressive. They refused to negotiate or even acknowledge communication. They slaughtered innocent populations with what was described as ruthlessness. They experimented on people, performing grotesque surgeries on them without the benefit of anasthesia. I know that I don't always have the most optimistic view of humanity, but I would consider any of this to me morally sub-human behaviour.

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Reply #43 on: December 17, 2007, 10:04:49 PM
I read this story in last year's best of SF, but I didn't recognize it until the mention of the aliens' name: Shardies. So the unknown aliens were the most memorable part of this story to me.

But they aren't what make the story great. The soldier himself does that. Ultimately, I found him to be sympathetic--because the Shardies are morally less than human as Czhorat pointed out. (They attack without provocation. They never attempt to understand the humans as best we can tell.) So the soldier is fighting a worthy cause. But there's the problem, and the conflict that makes this story so powerful to me. The soldier believes in a cause so much that he goes on a suicide mission to kill innocent people, including children.

No matter what your take on current events, it's scary when that perspective is sympathetic and reasonable.

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Reply #44 on: December 17, 2007, 10:19:34 PM
I'm loving this discussion.  I don't mean to influence its direction, but if anyone's interested, Bud Sparhawk put some notes on his own motivations behind the story on his bibliography page:

Quote
Bright Red Star is my reaction to the events of September 11, 2001. I tried to get inside the heads of someone who answers to a higher morality but sacrifices something very human in the process. The core of moral choice in this story is the use to which the protagonist puts a little girl, and the logical consequences of that choice.


Of course this doesn't make any other interpretation wrong.  Once a story is written, my personal opinion is that the author has no more authority about what it means than any other reader.  >8->

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gelee

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Reply #45 on: December 17, 2007, 10:27:36 PM
Ok, I think I understand where you are coming from better, but that still feels pretty bizzare to me. Moreso, because I actually agree with you on many of the premises. I just disagree on the conclusion.
Czhorat said:
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Well-said. It fits with the overall theme of most wartime propaganda which is to dehumanize the "other". The fact that in this case the other is literally non-human doesn't change my distaste at seeing them portrayed as morally (and, perhaps, intellectually) less than human.
Two comments:
- One, if you look back to the first page you'll see that I complained about much the same thing. I said that it's easier to compare the shardies with a plague or virus or something than with humans. I don't really think it's valid to plug historical groups into the Shardies and keep the story making sense. But plug "bubonic plague" into the same slot and the story makes perfect sense. If this story *was* about a viral plague, would you be complaining that the virii are de-humanized?
- Where did "less" come from? The inhuman is certainly portrayed as different, morally and intellectually, from the humans. But nowhere in the story is a moral judgement made. Heck, for all we know the Shardies are righteous and are eradicating humanity because of its sinful state. Unlikely, but entirely compatible with what is in the story. I feel that you're bringing in a lot of interpretation that is not supported by the story but rather by what you expected the story to be about.
Yes, I think we agree on the details, but arrive at different conclusions as to their meaning.
I have tried very carefully to tippy-toe around the most contemporary examples of my interpretation, as I don't want this to veer off into a political argument.  There are some who would try and draw an analogy between real-world conflicts and this story.  They would like to frame some on-going conflicts in the real world in the same "us or them" terms, claiming that the continued existence of one party is dependent on the eradication of the other.
The Shardies should not be treated as a virus or a plague of locusts.  They are (apparently) sentient beings endowed with reason, at least on some level.  Interstellar travel is, I think, not the baliwick of insects and fungi.  To present them as mechanistic bad guys bent on murder and destruction is, at best, an intellectual short cut.
There isn't anything inherently wrong with 'bug hunt' stories.  They can still be fun, but I don't think this is that kind of story.  I think this is political allegory disguised as a 'bug hunt' story.



eytanz

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Reply #46 on: December 17, 2007, 10:35:29 PM
Edit: I switched the order of the quotes and my responses to them, since that makes my post make more sense, even though I'm not responding to Czhorat out of order.

As far as my second point is concerned, the Shardies were portrayed as being cruel, merciless, and agressive. They refused to negotiate or even acknowledge communication. They slaughtered innocent populations with what was described as ruthlessness. They experimented on people, performing grotesque surgeries on them without the benefit of anasthesia. I know that I don't always have the most optimistic view of humanity, but I would consider any of this to me morally sub-human behaviour.

Ah, but it is you that are doing the judging. The story isn't portraying them as less than human. It is portraying them as non-human, and you as a reader decide that their particular brand of non-humanity is inferior to us. To give a far more extreme example, imagine a story with aliens who are identical to humans in every way except that they have pitch black skin. A forum poster might then say "I didn't like that the story portrayed the aliens as less than human.", and when asked to elaborate, would say "The aliens have black skin. The darker the skin, the worse you are". Now obviously, you are not being racist, and the values you are exhibiting happen to be ones I share. But that doesn't change the fact that you are complaining about something that is essentially brought to the story by you, not by the author.

Quote
Two comments:

- One, if you look back to the first page you'll see that I complained about much the same thing. I said that it's easier to compare the shardies with a plague or virus or something than with humans. I don't really think it's valid to plug historical groups into the Shardies and keep the story making sense. But plug "bubonic plague" into the same slot and the story makes perfect sense. If this story *was* about a viral plague, would you be complaining that the virii are de-humanized?

- Where did "less" come from? The inhuman is certainly portrayed as different, morally and intellectually, from the humans. But nowhere in the story is a moral judgement made. Heck, for all we know the Shardies are righteous and are eradicating humanity because of its sinful state. Unlikely, but entirely compatible with what is in the story. I feel that you're bringing in a lot of interpretation that is not supported by the story but rather by what you expected the story to be about.

<some snipping for length>

If it was about a viral plague or a natural disaster I'd obviously not talk about dehumanization, but would still complain if the deck was stacked to the point that any solution save the slaughter of apparently innocent people for the crime of being in the wrong place at the wrong time was impossible. That would make it, in my view, a very poor allegory for the difficult moral decisions that need to be made while combatting real plagues or natural disasters.

True. But I don't think this is a story about a difficult moral decision. The decisions were made before the story started - there was no wavering on behalf of the protagonist, no second doubts. This is a story about carrying out difficult actions, not about deciding.

Which in a way, I guess, is why I fail to see this story in the same light as you and gelee - the setting, the background, the aliens - they are just a way to set up an envrionment in which it is imaginable that such a decision was already made. The story is a thought experiment on how it may be for the people doing it (and actually, Steve's post which came in while I was writing this seems to confirm this). Whether or not the decision was the right one is not really at stake. In other words, responding to gelee's post which also came in while I was writing this, this is neither a bug hunt nor a political allegory. The shardies are neither the real enemy nor the quarry in terms of the story. They are the setting.
« Last Edit: December 17, 2007, 10:37:25 PM by eytanz »



DKT

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Reply #47 on: December 18, 2007, 12:29:52 AM
Remember back when the Starship Troopers movie came out and people were excited to see power armor and then we found out there wasn't any power armor?  This story was kind of like that for me.  There were cool cybernetic/hardware upgrades but we never really got to see much of them used.  And who are they up against?  Not aliens but a bunch of renegade pitchfork-less farmers.  Are farmers really supposed to be a threat to guys named Savage and Hunter?  Maybe it wasn't supposed to be much of a challenge, maybe it was supposed to be more horrific, but I didn't really find it chilling until the very end.

But I interpreted the story in a different way than most did, more along the lines of becoming a monster to defeat the monster.  If this was supposed to be a story where I'm made to believe the ends justify the means (which I'm not convinced it is), it didn't work.  Killing kids never seems justifiable to me. 

This may be coming across a little harsh.  It's not that I hated the story, I just wasn't really that into it, and aside from a brutal twist at the end, I'm kind of left shrugging my shoulders.  That said, I do agree with Thaurismunths.  I love EP for the variety of stories Steve chooses here and I thought this was an interesting selection (and wouldn't mind hearing more stories along similar lines/tones), this one just didn't hit me the way it seemed to hit most everyone else.

EDIT: I should note I read Steve's comment after I posted this.  Oops. 
« Last Edit: December 18, 2007, 04:38:57 PM by DKT »



Faldor

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Reply #48 on: December 18, 2007, 01:59:18 AM
I enjoyed this story whilst I listened to it but unlike many Escape Pod's I doubt i'll still be pondering it for the next few days. Although I certainly appriciate the variety of stories that EP presents, Whilst I can't say I don't want to like every episode, I like that I don't know what expect every episode.  :)



ericnay

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Reply #49 on: December 18, 2007, 02:43:27 AM
This was GREAT!  I have been a lurker here for almost 50 episodes, and this episode was good enough to get me to get off my encounter-suited-butt and join the discussion groups.

I have to say what this episode reminded me of: being 12 and reading "The Cold Equations" by Tom Godwin, 1954, as found in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume One, Edited by Robert Silverberg.  If you've seen that story you will recognize the similarities, but that doesn't stop it from being one of the most poignant pieces of short fiction as have ever been written.

In fact, I'd recommend EP consider using some of this older stuff.  Some of the best episodes of EP seem to draw from the same creative well as The Nine Billion Names of God by Arthur C. Clarke, Born of Man and Woman by Richard Matheson and Huddling Place by Clifford D. Simak.

Some of these are a little (!) dark, but I would still place them in EP rather than PseudoPod territory.  But maybe that's just me.

Eric