This comment reminds me of Stanislaw Lem's slyly iconoclastic collection, The Cyberiad, and especially of its last story, "Prince Ferrix and the Princess Crystal." In case you all haven't had the pleasure, Lem was an utterly brilliant writer for whom the term "science fiction" does little justice; though he is most famous for Solaris, his best works are philosophical musings within a fictional framework that often seems to stretch imagination's boundaries to the limit. (In other words, they're hard to describe, but "Borgesian" is a start.)
The Cyberiad is a series of fables concerning the relationship of man to machine, and "Prince Ferrix" deals with robots who consider humans, though similar to robots in many ways, disgustingly low forms of life because humans are organic "globby substance" supported by "calcareous scaffolding" (i.e. flesh and bone) that have none of the beauty and incorruptibility of the metallic robots. Robots react to the almost robotlike humans with the same revulsion a human might react to a robot who is too humanoid. Nevertheless, a certain fascination exists in either case.
Bill Griffith, the creator of the most intelligent American comic, "Zippy the Pinhead," continually plays with concepts of "cuteness," "strangeness," and their extremes. Among other things, he has pointed out the horror in such icons of "cuteness" as "Ziggy" greeting cards and the strangeness in "Hello Kitty" everything. It's no surprise that's Zippy (not Ziggy or even Ziggy Stardust) is the truest heir to Alfred Jarry's pataphysical worldview.
Thank you, Momus and Live Journalists, for a fascinating discussion!
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Aye, Robot
Date: 2004-10-12 05:28 pm (UTC)The Cyberiad is a series of fables concerning the relationship of man to machine, and "Prince Ferrix" deals with robots who consider humans, though similar to robots in many ways, disgustingly low forms of life because humans are organic "globby substance" supported by "calcareous scaffolding" (i.e. flesh and bone) that have none of the beauty and incorruptibility of the metallic robots. Robots react to the almost robotlike humans with the same revulsion a human might react to a robot who is too humanoid. Nevertheless, a certain fascination exists in either case.
Bill Griffith, the creator of the most intelligent American comic, "Zippy the Pinhead," continually plays with concepts of "cuteness," "strangeness," and their extremes. Among other things, he has pointed out the horror in such icons of "cuteness" as "Ziggy" greeting cards and the strangeness in "Hello Kitty" everything. It's no surprise that's Zippy (not Ziggy or even Ziggy Stardust) is the truest heir to Alfred Jarry's pataphysical worldview.
Thank you, Momus and Live Journalists, for a fascinating discussion!