As long as man has existed, we have worried about our physical health. We can be injured, become sick, and exhaust ourselves. We die when our physical bodies fail to support themselves any longer. Just recently, though, we have begun to find that there are also threats to our mental health. There are constantly new studies that claim that television and video games have adverse effects on our minds, especially as impressionable children.

Dollhouse expands on these threats by suggesting the possibility that one day, as quickly as our physical bodies can be murdered, we will be able to lose our minds in an instant. The characters in “Epitaph One” are incredibly paranoid about any kind of technology, since in this new world any electronic device appears capable of broadcasting an imprint wave. People must fear for their lives not only because of violence, but also because of technology meant to work for us.

Not only can people lose their own minds, but a single person can exist in multiple bodies simultaneously. When we see Mr. Ambrose in Victor’s body tell Topher and DeWitt that the company has begun selling the actives’ bodies, he claims he is currently in ten other dolls talking to ten other Dollhouse administrators. At the end of the episode, Caroline hopes that she will find herself alive.

In this imagined world, identity as we know it ceases to exist. Much as in Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom, the physical and mental parts of a person can easily be separated, and the spiritual part appears to be nonexistent. A person’s body can exist without their mind, and a person’s mind can live on in different bodies, even simultaneously. In the words of one interviewee in “Man on the Street,” if it is possible for this technology to be built, it will be used and abused, and humanity as we know it will be over.

Does anybody else see this kind of technology as the end of humanity as we know it, or could we find some new meaning of identity? Can the body and the mind be so easily separated, or is it impossible to so neatly separate the physical, mental, and spiritual? Obviously no one wants to have their mind permanently overwritten by someone else’s, but would anyone be okay with having their one mind in ten different bodies?

On the one hand, the Bitchun society seems to constantly come between Tom and Rita and their daughter. Tom and Rita had been members of the original ad-hoc that first seized control of Disney World, much of their time was directed toward keeping the park running instead of spending time with Lil, who likely raised and taught herself for the most part. Additionally, Tom and Rita appear to have a hard time distinguishing their daughter from every other teenage girl in the Bitchun Society. Rita tells Julius she thinks that “[t]here’s not much fire in that generation…Not a lot of passion. It’s our fault–we thought that Disney World would be the best place to raise a child in the Bitchun Society” (77). Finally, when they grow bored, Tom and Rita consider deadheading, but when they talk to Julius about doing so it becomes obvious that they have not even considered the effect it could have on Lil. Rita is quick to tell Julius that “[i]t’s just a thought, realy. We don’t want to worry her. She’s not good with hard decisions–it’s her generation” (80). When they finally are ready to deadhead, they take their last backups before saying goodbye to Lil. As Julius thinks to himself, “When they woke, this event–everything following the backup–would never have happened for them. God, they were bastards” (181).

At the same time, though, Tom and Rita are just like any parents today. They honestly believe that Disney World would be a good place to raise Lil, so they do so. Even by the time that nineteen years old they are still at some level trying to help raise her; when Lil gags at Tom and Rita’s stories, Tom tells her, “Lil, you’re an adult–if you can’t stomach hearing about your parents’ courtship, you can either sit somewhere else or grin and bear it” (77). When the two are saying goodbye before deadheading, “Lil and her mom kissed one last time. Her mother was more affectionate than I’d ever seen her, even to the point of tearing up a little. Here is this moment of vanishing consciousness, she could be whomever she wanted, knowing that it wouldn’t matter the next time she awoke…She was infinitely serene and compassionate, and I knew it didn’t count” (182). Knowing that she would never remember the moment, Rita allows herself to be completely, honestly affectionate with her daughter. The scene is mirrored when Rita and Tom wake up from deadheading: “Even at a distance of ten yards, I heard Lil’s choked sob, saw her collapse in on herself. Her mother took her in her arms, rocked her” (187). Rita and Tom do love their daughter, but, as I imagine many parents struggle with, they have not been sure exactly how to show it. Julius comes to this same conclusion when he asks himself, “Why did she hate me so much? I’d been there for her daughter while she was away–ah” (190). Tom and Rita have simply tried to raise a child in the unprecedented Bitchun society; they are nowhere close to perfect, as they have made plenty of bad decisions–deadheading in particular–but they still love their daughter.

But that is just my take. What are your ideas on the relation between Lil and her parents? What grade would you give Tom and Rita on raising their daughter? Do you think that the family as we know it will persist in the future, or does the Bitchun Society, a world where parents and children alike can live forever, destroy any notion of family?

Le Guin uses A-Io on Urras to draw a vision of an America set in the future; this relationship becomes clear when considering the role of technology in life. Shortly after Shevek arrives on Urras he notes that there are few cars on the roads, saying that “all such luxuries which if were freely allowed to the public would tend to drain irreplaceable natural resources or to foul the environment with waste products were strictly controlled by regulation or taxation (82).” In the 1970s, the environmentalist movement was just starting to grow, and the image of fuel-inefficient cars being extravagant polluting machines was beginning to become more popular. Many in America were, and still are, worried that the perpetual increase in the number of cars on the road is unsustainable and will become too much of a drain on unrenewable resources in addition to creating pollution.

Additionally, though A-Io realized that the number of cars it had was unsustainable and cut back, the nation in the novel was not able to completely recover from its exploitation of the environment. Though Shevek notes that “the excesses of the Ninth Millenium were ancient history” (82), he also says that there was a lasting effect of a shortage of certain minerals which Urras is now forced to import from its moon, Anarres.

On the other hand, Le Guin does not simply use the alien setting to extend the role of technology on Earth; she uses Anarres to present entirely new ways of using technology in society. In Le Guin’s time, computers were starting to become more popular, and in her envisioned future computers play much larger roles in everyday life. All of the citizens of Anarres, when born, receive their names not from their parents, but from a computer. When Vea exclaims it would be “dreary” and “impersonal” to be named by a machine, Le Guin has Shevek disagree, saying “what is more personal than a name no other living person bears?” (198). Where no single person or committee would be able to keep track of such a large number of unique names, a computer can handle the task with ease, allowing the people on Anarres to only need to use their single name as identification. (It is interesting, though, that Takver dislikes the name for her child, Sadik, saying “it sounds like a mouthful of gravel” (250), as though she wishes she had been able to choose a name for her own child.)

Computers and extensive communication lines on Anarres are also used by Divlab to, as the name would suggest, divide the labor. Citizens on Anarres are allowed to put in requests to the system, asking for jobs according to what they believe are their individual strengths. Additionally, places all over the planet will post job openings through the system as well. Divlab will then make recommendations to each person on which job posting to take, but there appears to be a great deal of flexibility in the process.

Does Le Guin fairly use the state of A-Io to mirror a possible future for America in the face of environmental exploitation? Can you see people ever agreeing to allow a computer to produce names, or, like Takver, will we always feel the proprietarian want to name our own children? Are there any other examples of technology’s role in everyday life in The Dispossessed that stood out for you?

The 1967 Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever” uses an alternate timeline to consider the consequences of war protest, but it misses out on the opportunity to explore issues of destiny and choice.

In the episode, Kirk and Spock chase McCoy back through time to 1930 to prevent him from altering the timeline and starting a chain of events that would prevent all of the characters from ever being born. Should they fail to stop McCoy from saving Edith, she will form an anti-war movement that will prevent the United States from entering World War II, allowing Nazi Germany to win the war and change the world as we know it. Thus, in order to return the timeline to normal, Spock tells Kirk that they must allow Edith to die.

The episode presents a very black and white view: either Edith and her anti-war views quite literally die, or the world will be irrevocably changed for the worse. Given the time that the episode comes from, this message must have been very powerful to the anti-Vietnam War movement. “The City on the Edge of Forever” suggests that even a single, unknown citizen opposing war can lead to the downfall of the entire country. Edith has no recognition outside of her mission, but her mere mention of peace instead of war will gain enough momentum to capture the ear of the President and prevent the country’s entry into the war, presumably even after the Pearl Harbor bombing occurs. Kirk tries to stand up for Edith, saying, “She was right; peace was the way,” but the entirely logical Spock replies, “She was right…but at the wrong time.” Star Trek‘s writers suggest that peace at the time, in the face of the Soviet Union, was not possible, and crying for the end of war was equivalent to calling for the destruction of our country.

However, this episode leaves a lost opportunity to further explore destiny and choice. When Spock tells Kirk that Edith must be allowed to die for history to resume its natural course, Kirk is crestfallen but accepts Spock’s word as the truth. At no point in the episode do either of the characters even consider the possibility that there is some other course of action they could take. With all of their intelligence, Spock and Kirk could not come up with a way to allow Edith to live while making sure she does not change the course of World War II. In fact, they not once even try to! This is especially shocking for Kirk, who claims he has fallen in love with Edith. A different ending was possible; once Kirk and Spock had located McCoy, the Guardian of Forever could have taken Edith back to the present as well. Edith herself likely would have embraced this move to the futuristic utopia, as seen when she recounts her dream of a day when man had reached space and could turn attention from making war to building peace.

While the one I propose could be a fitting ending to a novel or a movie, could it ever be the ending a Star Trek episode, or must the episode maintain the status quo, returning history and its major characters to exactly the way they were found? What alternate ending would you have envisioned for this episode, or, if there is none, why do you stand by the original? Finally, does the episode raise a valid point about the possible negative consequences of protesting a war, or does it go too far in claiming that Edith could have singlehandedly destroyed the country with her talk of peace?

My name is Jared Nelson. (Well, actually my first name is Davis. Apparently when I was first born I was named Jared Davis Nelson, but for whatever reason my parents decided, just hours afterward, to swap my names but still call me Jared.) I live close to Winston-Salem, and here I’m a freshman in Giles. Anything computer-related fascinates me, and accordingly I’m planning to double-major in ECE and CS; I also play in the jazz band and would like to get into robotics this semester. As far as science fiction goes, one time I started reading Dune, and even though I could not get into it at the time I would be willing to try again.