4 ms·

> While Japan had what could be called slavery, it was never at an industrial scale. The "but it wasn't industrial” is a vague and arbitrary line. Yes, the Wes

> While Japan had what could be called slavery, it was never at an industrial scale. The "but it wasn't industrial” is a vague and arbitrary line. Yes, the Western slave trade was massively horrific and incomparable. But in context the sentence is suggesting the Japanese don't have a deep understanding of being oppressors or oppressed, which doesn't withstand a glance at history. The burakumin, minority groups like the Ainu, Korean relations under Hideyoshi where they collected Korean ears and noses, or in WWII with the system of comfort women... Japan wasn't somehow immune to the forces that lead to oppression between groups. More broadly the whole article seems premised on the fact that there's some prominent Western sci fi Frankenstein stories, like Terminator, and some notable anime about cyborgs. But Japan has Frankenstein stories too. Some of the most famous sci fi out of Japan is about how science and technology is dehumanizing. And Western sci fi is obsessed with Frankenstein stories, at least partly as an accident of literary history, because Frankenstein itself just grabbed hold of the popular imagination in an era where Gothic horror was popular and scientific ideas were gaining traction. Asimov has a few rants against Frankenstein stories, and most of the original I Robot stories are an attempt at an antidote. Worth actually reading if you want something different. He had to work really hard to make something different, suggesting the reason so many authors keep repeating the same stories about evil robots might be more just because they are lazy rather than tapping into something profound.

repsilat 8y ago
> Frankenstein stories Funnily enough, this idea -- the meme of "Frankenstein" being about the perils of science or technology -- is totally at odds with the book itself. Popular culture has obviously not had much contact with the original text. In the book, Frankenstein's monster was the good guy -- he was clever, sensitive and persecuted for his humanity. The lesson of the book was about the judgemental inhumanity of society, not the danger of progress. It warns against the fear of the unknown -- the opposite of the popular understanding. It's nothing at all like Terminator.
- majos 8y ago
  The real-world popular mistaken impression of Frankenstein's monster ("an abomination!") is the same as the in-novel popular mistaken impression of Frankenstein's monster. This is a neat trick.
- jsjohnst 8y ago
  I would venture to guess that less than 1% of folks here even, let alone in popular culture as a whole, have read the original version at an age old enough to actually understand the message it conveys, if at all.
- dragonwriter 8y ago
  > the meme of "Frankenstein" being about the perils of science or technology -- is totally at odds with the book itself. But not with many of the movies based (loosely) on the book, which is probably where the popular perception of “Frankenstein” and the usage at issue come from. OTOH, I think a good argument can be made that, whether or not it was Shelley's intent (though I think it very clearly is part of that intent), the book itself is a powerful message about the perils of science and technology, specifically, the perils when science and technology, no matter how moral the application would be in the ideal context, outpace the what society is prepared to deal with. It is exactly, that is, about the dangers of technological action from an ivory tower that doesn't consider the real context in which the action takes place. > It warns against the fear of the unknown It does, but it warns just as much about disregarding the existence of such fear and, by extension, other aspects of the existing society which would turn your neat technical innovation into a catalyst of horrors.
- darren_ 8y ago
  > In the book, Frankenstein's monster was the good guy -- he was clever, sensitive and persecuted for his humanity Er, no he wasn't (the good guy. he was clever etc). He wasn't a villain, per se, but he spends most of the book stalking and threatening Frankenstein so that he'll make a wife for him, and then proceeds to murder Frankenstein's beloved when he doesn't (after, you know, killing a bunch of other people). I'll grant that the monster had a genuine grievance, but he's in no way the good guy. And he's not persecuted for his humanity, either, he's quite literally persecuted for his obvious inhumanity - the whole sequence where he meets the family with the blind grandfather (father?) is explicitly about that. It's also quite a lot like terminator insofar as there's a superhuman unstoppable obsessed force that will never stop chasing you.
  - throw20180804 8y ago
    Abe Chutiye book toh padh le .... Bhosadbillu maa ke laude bhen chod teri maa ki chut madarchod bhenchod teri maa ka lund gaandu bhosdike
ianai 8y ago
Many scifi tropes are just lazy retellings. I’m sick of watching the same time loop BS, killer robots, despotic techno-tyrannical governments, killer aliens, etc. Granted, few people have the knowledge that Asimov had. I read an account of an author calling Asimov up for help with a story. The author was writing about a character colonizing Venus (?) and the author needed to know what the character would be up to on Venus. Without much thought Asimov had a credible answer for him. Asimov had quite an ability to merry knowledge and story telling. He and Roddenberry could make technology seem a way to a better world. They’re missed.
- brownbat 8y ago
  My first reaction is that Venus is awful no one would go there, but I really love that Asimov would never say no to a premise. Fantastic Voyage for example, he was like, ok, this is crazy, but here's what would happen at those scales. And he proceeded to patch logical flaws from the movie in his novelization, which turned out far better.
MichaelMoser123 8y ago
During world war two slavery was quite massive. Shintoism did not seem to have had a problem with these abuses. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Japan ... more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kōa-in (East Asia Development Board) for forced labour.[32] According to the Japanese military's own record, nearly 25% of 140,000 Allied POWs died while interned in Japanese prison camps where they were forced to work (U.S. POWs died at a rate of 27%).[33][34] More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma Railway.[35] The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[36] About 270,000 of these J Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate as high as 80%.[37]

repsilat 8y ago

> Frankenstein stories Funnily enough, this idea -- the meme of "Frankenstein" being about the perils of science or technology -- is totally at odds with the book itself. Popular culture has obviously not had much contact with the original text. In the book, Frankenstein's monster was the good guy -- he was clever, sensitive and persecuted for his humanity. The lesson of the book was about the judgemental inhumanity of society, not the danger of progress. It warns against the fear of the unknown -- the opposite of the popular understanding. It's nothing at all like Terminator.

majos 8y ago
The real-world popular mistaken impression of Frankenstein's monster ("an abomination!") is the same as the in-novel popular mistaken impression of Frankenstein's monster. This is a neat trick.
jsjohnst 8y ago
I would venture to guess that less than 1% of folks here even, let alone in popular culture as a whole, have read the original version at an age old enough to actually understand the message it conveys, if at all.
dragonwriter 8y ago
> the meme of "Frankenstein" being about the perils of science or technology -- is totally at odds with the book itself. But not with many of the movies based (loosely) on the book, which is probably where the popular perception of “Frankenstein” and the usage at issue come from. OTOH, I think a good argument can be made that, whether or not it was Shelley's intent (though I think it very clearly is part of that intent), the book itself is a powerful message about the perils of science and technology, specifically, the perils when science and technology, no matter how moral the application would be in the ideal context, outpace the what society is prepared to deal with. It is exactly, that is, about the dangers of technological action from an ivory tower that doesn't consider the real context in which the action takes place. > It warns against the fear of the unknown It does, but it warns just as much about disregarding the existence of such fear and, by extension, other aspects of the existing society which would turn your neat technical innovation into a catalyst of horrors.
darren_ 8y ago
> In the book, Frankenstein's monster was the good guy -- he was clever, sensitive and persecuted for his humanity Er, no he wasn't (the good guy. he was clever etc). He wasn't a villain, per se, but he spends most of the book stalking and threatening Frankenstein so that he'll make a wife for him, and then proceeds to murder Frankenstein's beloved when he doesn't (after, you know, killing a bunch of other people). I'll grant that the monster had a genuine grievance, but he's in no way the good guy. And he's not persecuted for his humanity, either, he's quite literally persecuted for his obvious inhumanity - the whole sequence where he meets the family with the blind grandfather (father?) is explicitly about that. It's also quite a lot like terminator insofar as there's a superhuman unstoppable obsessed force that will never stop chasing you.
- throw20180804 8y ago
  Abe Chutiye book toh padh le .... Bhosadbillu maa ke laude bhen chod teri maa ki chut madarchod bhenchod teri maa ka lund gaandu bhosdike

ianai 8y ago

Many scifi tropes are just lazy retellings. I’m sick of watching the same time loop BS, killer robots, despotic techno-tyrannical governments, killer aliens, etc. Granted, few people have the knowledge that Asimov had. I read an account of an author calling Asimov up for help with a story. The author was writing about a character colonizing Venus (?) and the author needed to know what the character would be up to on Venus. Without much thought Asimov had a credible answer for him. Asimov had quite an ability to merry knowledge and story telling. He and Roddenberry could make technology seem a way to a better world. They’re missed.

brownbat 8y ago
My first reaction is that Venus is awful no one would go there, but I really love that Asimov would never say no to a premise. Fantastic Voyage for example, he was like, ok, this is crazy, but here's what would happen at those scales. And he proceeded to patch logical flaws from the movie in his novelization, which turned out far better.

MichaelMoser123 8y ago

During world war two slavery was quite massive. Shintoism did not seem to have had a problem with these abuses. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Japan https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_Japan ... more than 10 million Chinese civilians were mobilized by the Kōa-in (East Asia Development Board) for forced labour.[32] According to the Japanese military's own record, nearly 25% of 140,000 Allied POWs died while interned in Japanese prison camps where they were forced to work (U.S. POWs died at a rate of 27%).[33][34] More than 100,000 civilians and POWs died in the construction of the Burma Railway.[35] The U.S. Library of Congress estimates that in Java, between 4 and 10 million romusha (Japanese: "manual laborer"), were forced to work by the Japanese military.[36] About 270,000 of these J Javanese laborers were sent to other Japanese-held areas in South East Asia. Only 52,000 were repatriated to Java, meaning that there was a death rate as high as 80%.[37]