I finally got around to your latest episode, and I wanted to say I enjoyed it, although I hesitated because I don't have answers to *any* of your questions! I feel like a kid who hasn't done his homework. Ah well.
Still, I do have a few, almost entirely all minor, notes.
First, just to note, the traditional age at which Christ was crucified was 33, not 32 (or 31.8, as the story's math implies), so I'm afraid that doesn't work. (I always think about it in terms of the Thomas Kinsella poem, "Mirror in February": Now plainly in the mirror of my soul/I read that I have looked my last on youth/ And little more; for they are not made whole/That reach the age of Christ.")
Second, one little detail you didn't note was the (I think we would say today) sexual assault on Eyebem when he's in the plane to his assignment: "a human girl with inquisitive fingers came and strapped me to my couch, giving herself a lesson on how our anatomy differs from theirs." Interesting in thinking about what the story has to say about dehumanization, robot humanization, and the like.
Third, when you spoke of humans living always in cities and never venturing outside, particularly in the context of robots, I personally thought of Asimov's The Caves of Steel. Worth noting, perhaps, since you say this is the story where Wolfe goes beyond the Asimovian robot (I personally think he was already there in HORARS).
Fourth, one small ironic note: recently, decades after Wolfe wrote his story, Kivalina, Alaska, (a largely Native American town) has been in the news as a town that *might* have to be abandoned due to global warming — they tried to sue Exxon over the issue, and plans have been drawn up. I don't know what Wolfe had in mind when he spoke of the "abandoned city of Kivalina", but this has turned out to be prophetic in a rather horrific way.
Fifth and finally, I think the one aspect you slightly underplay in Eyebem is the character of Mark. Why, for instance, is he given that name, that name that robots and humans share? The easy answer is to ask if he's possibly actually a robot, but I think that is clearly wrong. Rather: I think it's not his name, and he gives it to try to make the other robots feel comfortable, as Eyebem suggests ("to put us at our ease"). What I think this points to is how Mark is always trying to be kind to the robots — he worries about them after he's gone, the name he gives, his response to Eyebem's anger at the end. Whereas Eyebem, while having moments of feeling sorry for Mark, also has a huge amount of anger towards him. This is how I took the "eyes burning" comment, by the by — as Eyebem projecting his own anger onto Mark, and imagining (he can't actually see it!) Mark as angry. When actually, as even Eyebem at times admits, he has done everything he can for him. (There, I guess I weighed in on *one* of your questions after all.) I'm not sure where to go with this, but in this story Mark ends up being more humane that Eyebem, in contrast to the human robots that Wolfe tends to create.
Thanks for the episode, as always.
Regarding possible environmental catastrophes. Back in the 70's, people were worried about ozone layer depletion. This sort of ties into the mention of UV light damaging Ceedeesy's skin, since upper atmospheric ozone filters UV light. Some of this might have been published early enough for Wolfe to have picked up on it for this story. I distinctly recall it being mentioned in a comic book I read in the late-70's and I'd like to think that Gene Wolfe would have known a lot earlier than 7 or 8-year-old me.
This might be a reason people stay indoors, out of the sun, and why the ranger is retiring at 30.
To re-assure everyone, the international community did a bunch of work to get ozone depleting chemicals, such as certain refrigerants, out of the supply chain in the 80's and 90's. The ozone layer is actually rebuilding now: https://www.unep.org/news-and-stories/story/rebuilding-ozone-layer-how-world-came-together-ultimate-repair-job
Revisiting Eyebem.
Just read this myself and will re-listen to the podcast shortly.
A few things I noted:
Eyebem almost has to be IBM, like Ceedeesy is CDC/Control Data Corporation. Not sure what the 887332 designation means, though lots of chips started with 8, like the Intel 8008, which came out in 1972, after this story was published originally.
The mention of the neo-Catholic Saint Kennedy the Lesser running a "gorge on the Colorado" (Grand Canyon?) on an air mattress made me laugh, but also suggests a long enough span of time has gone that the Kennedys could pass from storied political family to legends to sainthood.
I liked how the station boss was completely different (fixed cabinet with sensors all over the station), but still regarded as "one of us". That tells me the cybernetic beings have a separate culture that is pretty inclusive.
Regarding Eyebem's need to keep power on to not lose all his programming: that makes sense to me in the computer science of the day. Stored data access was really slow in 1970, so storing a program in RAM and re-using it worked better. This was still true even in the 1980's when I was in college, working on FORTRAN77 programs for a professor. We had an early fluid dynamics modeling program that we would load and run multiple simulations with different inputs overnight, then our timeslot would be over and someone else's work would be loaded up.
Eyebem has an interesting concept of death, very close to a human one - the loss of consciousness, not physical destruction. Presumably, the cybernetic body can be recovered, repaired, and reprogrammed/trained. But it will never be Eyebem again.
Anybody else note the parallels between Eyebem and Jack London's To Build a Fire?
In London's tale, the Man takes on nature and fails to survive, while the looked-down on Dog has the skills to survive.
In Wolfe's story, Eyebem dies because he has no access to a high-tech power source. Eyebem considered Mark and humans to be "passe," but Mark is able to survive because he has the skills to kill and eat a seal.
What an awesome reading of Eyebem as The Gospel of Mark. I'm certainly convinced that Wolfe was playing around with the Christ story here, which of course we will see him do again at greater length. I've never really thought about the Wolfeish nature of the gospel text before, but you point to some good places where Wolfe would notice narrative technique and perhaps also think about the relationship between Mark and the other gospels and how they often relate the same episodes but emphasize different details. I think we'll want to revisit this story before we cover The Book of the Long Sun.
Another great podcast!
My first take on this story was that Eyebem shows all the hallmarks of what we call human consciousness - He shows a sense of community with his kind, he feels friendship for other robots, he has a sense of humor and appreciates in-jokes, he feels empathy and compassion for the imagined discomfort of Mark at being excluded, he feels some jealousy at the outdoorsky skill of the human Mark, he can appreciate the beauty of the outdoors, he recognizes hierarchical relationships, he aspires to be recognized as a human, he can commit a kind of falsehood at pretending to eat and drink, he can recognize a complex social situation (the cafe owner's willing suspension of disbelief that there are robots in her business) and finally at the end of his lifespan, he experiences bitterness and rage against the dying of the light. My initial takeaway was that humanity created robots in the image of themselves, yet they lack any sense of personal immortality. Humans - most of them, statistically = are comforted by the idea of an hereafter, or at least some kind of afterlife, which will be denied to the creations we made. Eyebem and his fellow robots know that for them, life's a bitch, and then you die. I think Wolfe saw this as a tragedy, and may be likening it to the end-of-life process for a non-theist. I'm not sure.
What Eyebem describes as the result of a total losss of battery power (in what seems to us now a very antiquated data-storage model) seems much like death - "the total erasure of my personality as well as the loss of all my training [memories]." If we presume consciousness is just an epiphenomenon of the physical brain, and that there is no dualistic consciousness or soul, this is what death is like for organic as well as mechanical brains. (Although nowadays one would think that a robot brain could be periodically backed-up and downloaded, stored as a back-up copy or in the cloud, and uploaded into a new body, the robotic equivalent of reincarnation.)
Looking at the story again after a few years, I wonder what else may be going on as well. That first, blanket admission that Eyebem is lying could not, I think, be unintended by Wolfe.
If so, what is he lying about?
The repeating loop for the last hour, like a flight recorder, is an odd detail that jumps out, as does the unexpected burst of anger at Mark on the last page.
There is something I think about Glenn's observation that the consumption of the seal may have invoked horror in Eyebem, raised to be a game ranger. There also seems to be some deep hostility at Marks' greater organic adaptability and likelihood of survival. Does he kill Mark, or is he about to, as the story ends? We know there is a gun inside the igloo (from the oblique reference to Mark shooting the seal.) Is this why Eyebem refers to a search team looking for "me" and not "us"?
In re stephenfrug's question about what differentiates Mark from the other Gospels, I'm not sure if Wolfe intended the Marcan references but a) it probably is the first written and oldest `Gospel; b) it is centered to a greater degree than the others on the passion and the death of Christ. It's been described as a text about the death of Jesus, with an extended introduction concerning His life. Eyebem's story is thanocentric as well, as it opens and ends just before his "death", circular like the cyclic loop inside him.
Eyebem's outburst of anger at Mark also has something of the nature of Christ's cry on the cross, the last words recorded by Mark (although the other Gospels expand on those), "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?" Eyebem's last recorded words to Mark: "Why don't you help me?" Mark's Gospel also ends apruptly, with the appearance of a young man at the opened tomb who announces the resurrection to Mary, but does not include any post-Resurrection appearances. One of the keynotes of the Marcan Gospel is that events are not always protrayed in chronological fashion, but by category of event, grouping events linked by theme even if not in the order presented in the other Gospels. This story begins in the igloo, flashes back to Eyebem's time in the creche, before taking us back up to meeting Mark and going to Alaska. Could there be some repetition of theme here, which is why events are out of order? (Other than the helpfulness ofthe flashback trope to storytelling) I'd have to look closer. Mark's particular presentation of Jesus to the reader is also, to be honest, somewhat Wolfeian. Mark's Jesus tells stories (parables) to the listeners, but conceals the true meaning or significance from the audience, only sharing it with his apostles afterwards. Jesus seems to want the audience to decipher the true meaning of his stories on their own.
These are wonderful suggestions, Stephen, and I'm most grateful for them. I'll start treating this as a phenomenon worth commenting on when we see it rather than something to hide from.
Gosh, yes, even the church-going students tend to have very little knowledge of scripture, church history, or theology. But I had one student in my medieval survey course last semester who was able to quote or at least paraphrase most of the Gospels on command, which always made my day.
Merry Christmas to you as well!
I don't think I am knowledgeable enough about the synoptic gospels to pick out what Mark would mean as opposed to Matthew or Luke. (I like to think I'm fairly knowledgeable about Christianity as far as Jewish atheists go, but that only goes so far. (Though I always did get a kick out of having to explain New Testament references to my putatively Christian students in class...))
On gender: I don't think it's only early Wolfe; I think it's all Wolfe. I've been revisiting New Sun (via the audiobook: I wouldn't recommend it to anyone as a first experience with the book, and some of the line readings are wonky, but nevertheless having been through the books more than once I am benefiting from it: audiobooks force you to read every part of the text at every speed, which lets me notice things I haven't previously), and boy, the sexism is *all over* those books. I know the traditional answer is that it's Severian, not Wolfe, who is a sexist: but given the persistent pattern throughout Wolfe's work, I don't think that that can be maintained. It's throughout. I know one serious reader (quoted in Lexicon Urthus) who stopped reading Long Sun because a female character spent a long time nude for no reason & they simply found it too off-putting. And I recall one of his later novellas — The Ziggurat, I think, but I'm not sure as I never read it—causing a huge uproar on gender grounds.) I think Wolfe is, simply, a serious traditionalist when it comes to gender; which translates, in Twenty-First Century terms (including mine) into being a sexist. I certainly don't think this means that Wolfe ought to be ignored, nor that he is a moral monster, etc; but I think it's a persistent flaw in his work, and I can understand why some readers simply won't be able to read him for that reason, and certainly can't fault them for it.
How should you all deal with it? My suggestion would be dual: I think it's worth mentioning throughout, and not just in a special episode— don't beat it to death or use it to dismiss him, but confront it as a persistent issue. And then, also, perhaps devote an episode to it later on — I know New Sun best, so I'd like to see you talk about it there, but I suppose you could do it any time. — Obviously, your call, but that's my suggestion.
Looking forward to "Sonya, Crane Wessleman and Kittee" in the new year.
Stephen, thanks as always for your great comments and critiques.
I love your understanding of Mark and of Eyebem's description of his burning eyes. I agree that Mark is probably not that character's given name, and that he has chosen it (as Eyebem suggests) to make Eyebem feel more comfortable. I also would like to read it as invoking the Gospel of Mark in some way -- I don't know what that way is, but I'd love to hear ideas. I think names are always full of meaning for Wolfe, and this is a particularly interesting feature of this story in which all of the names are false in some way.
That's a great reading of the sexual assault scene, and we should have discussed it. I don't mind saying that I (at least) have been a little uncomfortable with the way that Wolfe deals with gender in his early work. It's no surprise, of course, and the discomfort is mild compared to what I feel watching many episodes of Star Trek -- which explicitly is a socially progressive sci-fi story. My co-host on our Star Trek podcast has worked on gender in Renaissance Italy, and I've been thinking about asking her to visit The Gene Wolfe Literary Podcast in that capacity if we encounter a story that really addresses gender. We'd be grateful for suggestions.
Gosh, I haven't read Caves of Steel since high school! But, depending on how our vote goes, we may be covering Wolfe's "Slaves of Steel," which is about a robot version of Sherlock Holmes. I might need to revisit some Asimov (and some ACD) before we do that one.
We are finding quite a lot of ecological concern in Wolfe's work. I guess we all know this from the Solar Cycle, of course, but I've been delighted to find it lingering in the background of a lot of these early stories, and it's (sometimes) a feature of Operation ARES, as well. On a larger note, I've really enjoyed seeing just how prophetic Wolfe was in the 60s and 70s, though we also find some instances in which he was really wrong (mostly about the Cold War).
You are quite right to point out my goof. 32 is the age at which Christ began his ministry, not the age at which he was crucified -- but Brandon's understanding of Ceedeesy's age paralleling Mark's age is more convincing anyway. It's just that I have a reputation to maintain as the guy who is always searching for a Christ figure.
And, on that last note, we hope you have a marvelous Christmas.