Mousunderstanding by Carl Frederick
A while back I had a conversation with a friend about Bitcoin. She was convinced that it couldn’t have any value because it was a made up currency. Her words, not mine. So I asked her a simple question, why do dollars have any value. She tried a few different answers, but settled on because the government says it does. Which I still argue is just as made up as bitcoin. Beyond that though she argued that we should be on the gold standard because, as everyone knows gold is one of the most valuable things there are and so long as you can trade in your currency for gold it will always have value. The problem with that is one that ”Mousunderstanding” by Carl Frederick explores and cuts down to size pretty effectively.
The story of “Mousunderstanding” is that a small island nation on another world has decided to begin trading with humans from Terra. After noticing that the frames of the pictures they will trade are solid gold the traders from two different countries rush to the planet to begin negotiations. While they are talking the cultural liaison of one of those groups explores the city and learns about their culture.
The culture is based, largely accurately I think, on India’s culture. One of the main things being that they are entirely nonviolent, so much so that they do not even kill flies and have people sweep in front of them so they don’t accidentally step on an insect. They also have a different thought the value of money. In part they have modeled their economy on that of India when it used cows as a symbol of wealth, except in their case they used mice. The reason for this choice isn’t explored all that carefully in the story, but I assume it’s because they were easier to import and breed, taking up less room than the cows.
Where the problem comes in is that at some point the enemies of the state brought in and began to breed cats and since the people are nonviolent, they can’t do anything about the cats but let them be as they devastate their mouse based economy.
Having watched Star Wars I could have been convinced that trade negotiations was the death of all joy in any narrative, but “Mousunderstanding” makes the discussion of economics and trading interesting while asking a simple question. Why is a mouse-based economy any more strange than basing an economy on a useless metal? In fact, why isn’t the mouse-based economy better. People have a natural source of economic growth and it’s hard to counterfeit a mouse. In fact, the only real issue is that people think one makes sense and that the other doesn’t but as bitcoin has proven there are plenty of people who can learn to accept a currency so long as it appears to have value.
“Mousunderstanding” by Carl Frederick is a fun and smart story that explores culture and economics in a way that is enlightening. More important, it is enjoyable to read, with enough real humor to allow you to get past the fact that it has a pun in its title. You can find it in the January 2014 issue of Analog Science Fiction and Fact or you can find more on Carl Frederick at his website Darkzoo.net where you may get to learn about Crypto-Stochastic Space-Time theory, whatever that is.
god, yet these six movies are about a religious order and this disconnect from God allows us to look at the ideas without the debate.
The chief religious idea of Star Wars is that there is a force outside of us. Something that connects all living things and allows for a priesthood who can perform miracles. One of the important aspects of this mysticism is that it is unexplained. This is something that just is.
This idea that there is something greater than us is the universal center of all religion. We may disagree on what that force is or what it wants of us but the core of religion is its existance and Star Wars has that core.
The Enlightenment
Star Gate, though it is almost exclusively about religion, deals with it very little. The Egyptian gods are safe because very few people on earth belive in Ra and they don't watch science fiction TV series. but it does examine one aspect of religion very carefully in later episodes through the character Daniel Jackson.
That idea is that of enlightenment. The idea of ascendancy through some type of moral or physical purity is as idea of great importance to religion and yet even through this enlightenment we soon find that they are imperfect. Even those with true godlike power can make mistakes and be corrupted like the Ori.
Another important concept in the idea of ascendancy in Star Gate is the idea that people are unable to archive it on their own. Humans, at least in their current form, are not ready to become truly enlightened beings.
The Inclusion
There is an episode of Babylon 5 where every alien race is showing off their religion. This puts the commander of Babylon 5 in a tight spot because the idea of choosing a single religion from Earth is basically offensive.
In the end the solution of bringing representatives from all of earths religions could be considered avoiding the problem but on
ly if you don't understand the point he was making.
The religion of the humans in Babylon 5 had at least for that moment moved beyond a petty argument over who was right(not to be confused with enlightened debate which is good and healthy) to the uplifting of the ideas of diversity and love as the true religion of humanity and that idea wasn't lost throughout the series in which humans, who were far from the most advanced or powerful of the races became important more because of their ability to unite people than anything else.
Darko and Primer which are excellent movies which are farther on the drama side of the equation than the action side.
3. depressing movie
People tend to want to escape into science fiction. This is where movies like Edward Scissorhands and Bicentennial man break down. These are reasonably good moves, but they also tend to make you want to cut your own wrists which doesn't make you want to watch them over and over again.
4. Action is Scifi is easier than in other genres
Part of this "problem" is that if you're going to make an action packed movie science fiction is a natural place to go. Movies like the matrix and independence day were able to be far bigger in their action because of the science fiction elements so if you want to make a summer blockbuster science fiction seems a natural choice not because you like science fiction but because it allows for you to have giant robots fighting other giant robots in the streets of new york.
5. Science fiction is expensive
Special effects cost money so if you're going to have robots, or spaceships you want to get your value out of them. Action movies draw bigger crowds to the theaters so you put in your big chase sequence and a couple fights to draw in the crowds.
There are certainly other reasons that science fiction falls on the action side rather than the drama side of movies most of the time, and I wouldn't want to cut down on the number of good science fiction action movies because I really like them, I just want to see a few more science fiction movies that don't have explosions and gun fights too.
