Factions–In Divergent, you choose a faction to become your tribe. Who do you choose?

Image: Flame in octagonal bowl. Text: Choose your FACTION! -- In Divergent, you choose a faction to become your tribe. Who do you choose!
Photo by KS Kyung (unsplash.com/@mygallery)

Choose your destiny! Choose your tribe!

In the wizarding world of Harry Potter, the students of Hogwarts are sorted into four houses. And, of course, the famous Sorting Hat chooses your house for you.

Young Adult books are about finding yourself. (And Middle Grade books, too!) And part of finding yourself is finding your “tribe,” the type of people you want to hang out with. The kind of people you want to become.

Let’s explore the tribes in a Sci Fi standout: Divergent.

In Divergent, by Veronica Roth, at age sixteen you must choose from one of five factions. You can choose to remain in the faction that raised you. Or you can risk joining another faction. If you fail the tests, you become one of the homeless outcasts, the factionless, a fate worse than death!

Cover of Divergent by Veronica Roth. Image: Flaming bowl of fire imposed over Chicago's skyline

Welcome to the Choosing Ceremony

“Welcome to the Choosing Ceremony. Welcome to the day we honor the democratic philosophy of our ancestors, which tells us that every man has the right to choose his own way in this world.

. . . .

“Our dependents are now sixteen. They stand on the precipice of adulthood, and it is now up to them to decide what kind of people they will be . . . . Decades ago our ancestors realized that it was not political ideology, religious belief, race, or nationalism that is to blame for a warring world. Rather, they determined that it was the fault of human personality–of humankind’s inclination toward evil, in whatever form that is. They divided into factions that sought to eradicate those qualities they believed responsible for the world’s disarray.”

[I]t is now up to them to decide what kind of people they will be.

“Those who blamed aggression formed Amity.”

Amity

“The Amity exchange smiles. They are dressed comfortably, in red or yellow. Every time I see them, they seem kind, loving, free. But joining them has never been an option for me.”

“Those who blamed ignorance became the Erudite.”

Erudite

“And when they clear out [my brother Caleb’s] room, what will they discover? I imagine books jammed between the dresser and the wall, books under his mattress. The Erudite thirst for knowledge filling all the hidden places in his room.”

. . . .

“A long time ago, Erudite pursued knowledge and ingenuity for the sake of doing good. Now they pursue knowledge and ingenuity with greed in their hearts.”

“Those who blamed duplicity created Candor.”

Candor

“The Candor man wears a black suit with a white tie–Candor standard uniform. Their faction values honesty and sees the truth as black and white, so that is what they wear.”

“Those who blamed selfishness made Abnegation.”

Abnegation

Gray hoodie worn by someone waiting for a train

“The houses on my street are all the same size and shape. They are made of gray cement, with few windows, in economical, no-nonsense rectangles. Their lawns are crabgrass and their mailboxes are dull metal. To some the sight might be gloomy, but to me their simplicity is comforting.

If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

“The reason for the simplicity isn’t disdain for uniqueness, as the other factions have sometimes interpreted it. Everything–our houses, our clothes, our hairstyles–is meant to help us forget ourselves and to protect us from vanity, greed, and envy, which are just forms of selfishness. If we have little, and want for little, and we are all equal, we envy no one.

“I try to love it.”

. . . .

“I blame selfishness; I do.”

. . . .

“But I am not selfless enough. Sixteen years of trying and I am not enough.”

“And those who blamed cowardice were the Dauntless.”

Dauntless

Back of shaved head; white gauge in ear; dagger tattoo behind ear
Photo by Panos Sakalakis (unsplash.com/@meymigrou)

“In front of [the school] is a large metal sculpture that the Dauntless climb after school, daring each other to go higher and higher. Last year I watched one of them fall and break her leg.”

. . . .

“At exactly 7:25, the Dauntless prove their bravery by jumping from a moving train.

“My father calls the Dauntless ‘hellions.’ They are pierced, tattooed, and black clothed. Their primary purpose is to guard the fence that surrounds our city. From what, I don’t know.”

Choose your faction!

“In the last circle are five metal bowls so large they could hold my entire body, if I curled up. Each one contains a substance that represents each faction: gray stones for Abnegation, water for Erudite, earth for Amity, lit coals for Dauntless, and glass for Candor.

I will cut into my hand and sprinkle my blood into the bowl of the faction I choose.

“When Marcus calls my name, I will walk to the center of the three circles. I will not speak. He will offer me a knife. I will cut into my hand and sprinkle my blood into the bowl of the faction I choose.”

Which faction will you choose?

Choose one of the five factions. Choose your tribe. How will you decide?

Please post your comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross

Space Rave-curated by DJ Gatzby

Image: Cover of What It Is--Zoogma. Text: Space Rave--Vibe to this list of space-themed music with lyrics--curated by DJ Gatsby

Vibe to some good Sci Fi-themed music

I asked my resident music expert, DJ Gatzby, to recommend some good, space-themed music to listen to while reading Sci Fi.  Or for just getting that good “outer space vibe.”

DJ Gatzby loves electronica and good energetic, upbeat music, so this is not your list of sleepy, echoing, deep-space sounds.  But he also has eclectic tastes, so you’ll see a bit of everything.

Today, I’m sharing his selections that have lyrics.  Some of these pieces have space-themed lyrics, some have a space-themed title, and some just have that Sci Fi vibe.  They should be available on major music streaming services.

[You may also enjoy DJ Gatzby’s instrumental picks.]

Space Rave!

So enjoy listening to DJ Gatzby’s space rave.

  • “Rocket Girl” by Lemaitre (feat. Betty Who) (I listed this one on top because it’s my favorite!)
  • “Shelter” by Porter Robinson
  • “Til the Lights Come On” by Sun Rai
  • “Best Clockmaker on Mars” by Sturgill Simpson
  • “Make Me Feel Good” by Zoogma

What recommendations do you have for listening to while reading Sci Fi?  Do you prefer instrumental, something with lyrics, or a bit of everything?

Please post your comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross

What is that?–ANDROID-a robot made in human form

Image of silver android. What is that?--Android-a robot made in human form

Today is Wednesday, so it’s time for our regular feature What is that? Here’s today’s term:

Android – a robot made in human form or with a human appearance

Robots can come in any shape or size. An android is a robot with a human shape.

Robot playing piano
Photo by Franck V. (unsplash.com/@franckinjapan).
Open hand of an android
Photo by Franck V. (unsplash.com/@franckinjapan).

Scientists, engineers and Sci Fi writers realize that human-shaped robots can be especially useful.  For example, if you want to build a robot that can drive a standard car, the ideal robot is shaped like a human.  It will have feet to push the pedals, two hands to turn the steering wheel and shift gears and it will fit easily in the car seat.  A robot with human-shaped hands can also use all the tools made for humans.

That means a well-made android can do anything a human can do.  And that is much more useful than a round disc-shaped robot that can only sweep the floor.

What is the difference between a cyborg and an android?

Sometimes I still confuse the terms cyborg and android. In last Wednesday’s What is that?, I wrote about cyborgs, which are humans comprised of both natural, organic parts and mechanical parts. In comparison, an android is a robot–usually made of entirely mechanical and electronic parts–but shaped like a human.

You can cover an android with human-like skin and hair, but if the “brain” is still a computer, it’s still an android.

I think about it like this. If a creature starts as human and you add mechanical parts, it’s a cyborg. If a an object is a robot–a machine–and you shape it like a human, it’s an android.

I think that a cyborg–which starts human–remains a cyborg as long as it still has a human brain. I also think an android, which starts as a machine, also remains an android no matter how many human or human-like parts you add, as long as it has a computer operating system at its core. So you can cover an android with human-like skin and hair, but if the “brain” is still a computer, it’s still an android.

Scif Fi novel Cinder compares cyborgs and androids side-by-side

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer, is filled with cyborgs and androids. The title character, Linh Cinder, is a cyborg with a mechanical hand and foot and “optiobionics” in her head that show lights and words across her vision. Cinder, a licensed mechanic, repairs androids and other machines in her marketplace stall.

Cover of Cinder by Marissa Meyer

The book begins with Cinder, surrounded by android parts, removing her own mechanical foot, which she has outgrown. Her android, Iko, finds her a replacement foot.

“She tightened the last screw and stretched out her leg, rolling her ankle forward, back, wiggling the toes. It was a little stiff, and the nerve sensors would need a few days to harmonize with the updated wiring, but at least she wouldn’t have to limp around off-kilter anymore.”

In the same chapter, Prince Kai visits Cinder’s marketplace stall. He brings her an android, a robot that served as his childhood tutor, for Cinder to repair.

“Cinder reached for the android and pulled it to her side of the table. ‘What seems to be wrong with the android, Your Highness?’

“The android looked like it had just stepped off the conveyer belt, but Cinder could tell from the mock-feminine shape that it was an outdated model. The design was sleek, though, with a spherical head atop a pear-shaped body and a glossy white finish.”

. . . .

White android with white bob and camera eyes
Photo by Maximal Focus (unsplash.com/@maximalfocus).

“‘Tutor8.6 model,’ she said, reading the faintly lit panel inside the plastic cranium. The android was nearly twenty years old. Ancient for an android. ‘She looks to be in pristine condition.’

“Raising her fist, she thunked the android hard on the side of its head, barely catching it before it toppled over onto the table. The prince jumped.

“Cinder set the android back on its treads and jabbed the power button but nothing happened. ‘You’d be surprised how often that works.'”

Design your android!

If you built an android, what features would you include?

  • Would you build it in the exact shape of a human or give it treads, like the androids in Cinder?
  • Would you allow its mechanical parts to show or cover it in a synthetic skin?
  • Would you hide secret tools inside or give it only human-like parts and features?

Please post your comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross

What is that?–CYBORG-a person made from natural and mechanical parts

Photo by Judeus Samson (unsplash.com/@shotbyjudeus). Model/artist: Rio Sirah.

Today is Wednesday, so it’s time for our regular feature What is that? Here’s today’s term:

Cyborg – a cybernetic organism; a person or creature comprised of both mechanical and biological parts

Clynes and Kline coined the word “cyborg” to describe modifications to astronauts

Scientists Manfred Clynes and Nathan S. Kline coined the term “cyborg,” which is merely a contraction of the words cybernetic organism. Cybernetics is a study comparing the human nervous system and systems that govern how machines operate.

Clynes and Kline created the word to use in scientific papers discussing how humans might one day be modified with machine or artificial parts so they could endure long travel times in space and survive the hardships of life in space. They even discussed how modifications might make it possible to live without breathing.

Cyberpunk explores future societies filled with cyborgs

Cover of Neuromancer by William Gibson

One of the most famous cyborgs from cyberpunk is a woman named Molly Millions, a “razorgirl” mercenary. Author William Gibson created Molly in his 1981 short story “Johnny Mnemonic.” The short story was later the inspiration for the 1995 film of the same name starring Keanu Reeves.

Molly is a cyborg with eye implants and blades built into her fingers. Here is how Gibson describes her in his cyberpunk classic, Neuromancer. (By the way, she carries a gun Gibson calls a “fletcher” that shoots flechettes or darts.)

“He realized that the glasses were surgically inset, sealing her sockets. The silver lenses seemed to grow from smooth pale skin above her cheekbones, framed by dark hair cut in a rough shag. The fingers curled around the fletcher were slender, white, tipped with polished burgundy. The nails looked artificial.

. . . .

“She wore tight black gloveleather jeans and a bulky black jacket cut from some matte fabric that seemed to absorb light.”

. . . .

“She held out her hands, palms up, the white fingers slightly spread, and with a barely audible click, ten, double-edged, four centimeter scalpel blades slid from their housings beneath the burgundy nails.

“She smiled. The blades slowly withdrew.”

Punk woman with bright red hair wearing black clothes and black surgical mask
Photo by Valery Sysoev (unsplash.com/@valerysysoev).

Become a cyborg!

If you could be a cyborg, what three cybernetic features would you add to your own body?

  • Would you add brain power with faster computing speeds or massive memory?
  • Would you improve your strength, speed, or vision?
  • Would you add wings to fly? Some other upgrade to do what no human can?

Please post your comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross

A review of Ready Player One by Ernest Cline–a sprawling Sci Fi adventure that explores nerd culture from the 1980s to the future

Cover of Ready Player One showing Wade Watts climbing the stacks.

Here’s an introduction to the sprawling science fiction blockbuster Ready Player One

The hero, Wade Watts, is a poor, orphaned teenager, whose real life exists on the OASIS, a massively multiplayer online game. He is stuck with a third-level avatar.  “Having a third-level avatar was a colossal embarrassment.”  Wade is a gunter, looking for the creator’s secret Easter Egg hidden in the OASIS.  “The Hunt, as the contest came to be known, quickly wove its way into global culture.  Like winning the lottery, finding Halliday’s Easter egg became a popular fantasy among adults and children alike. . . .  A new subculture was born, composed of the millions of people who now devoted every free moment of their lives to searching for Halliday’s egg.  At first, these individuals were known simply as ‘egg hunters,’ but this was quickly truncated to the nickname ‘gunters.’”

Cover of Ready Player One showing Wade climbing the stacks.

The story begins in the laundry room of Wade’s aunt’s trailer, which is in the Portland Avenue Stacks of Oklahoma City.  The stacks are neighborhoods of trailers-stacked-on-trailers in high-rise fashion.  Wade soon scampers to his hideout, the space in the back of a cargo van buried underneath a mound of discarded cars and trucks, where he can log into the OASIS.

The story moves to the OASIS, where most of the story occurs.  Here’s how Wade describes the OASIS:  “a massively multiplayer online game that had gradually evolved into the globally networked virtual reality most of humanity now used on a daily basis.”

The hero’s best friend is Aech, whose real identity and name were a secret.  “Aech pronounced his own avatar’s name just like the letter ‘H’” and he confided to Wade that his real first name began with the letter “H.”

Cover of Ready Player One showing cast members from the movie.

“Aech’s avatar was a tall, broad-shouldered Caucasian male with dark hair and brown eyes.  I’d asked him once if he looked anything like his avatar in real life, and he’d jokingly replied, ‘Yes.  But in real life, I’m even more handsome.’”

Aech is a senior at OPS #1172, a high school on the virtual education planet Ludus in the OASIS.  “He made quite a bit of dough competing in televised PvP arena games after school and on the weekends.  Aech was one of the highest-ranked combatants in the OASIS, in both the Deathmatch and Capture the Flag leagues.  He was even more famous than Art3mis.”  Aech is also a gunter.

In time, Wade and Aech meet the legendary Art3mis, pronounced “Artemis,” another gunter who is famous for her gunter blog, Arty’s Missives.  “Her avatar had a pretty face, but it wasn’t unnaturally perfect.  In the OASIS, you got used to seeing freakishly beautiful faces on everyone.  But Art3mis’s features didn’t look as though they’d been selected from a beauty drop-down menu on some avatar creation template.  Her face had the distinctive look of a real person’s, as if her true features had been scanned in and mapped onto her avatar.  Big hazel eyes, rounded cheekbones, a pointy chin, and a perpetual smirk.”

The villain is Innovative Online Industries (IOI).  IOI “was a global communications conglomerate and the world’s largest Internet service provider.  A large portion of IOI’s business centered around providing access to the OASIS and on selling goods and services inside it.  For this reason, IOI had attempted several hostile takeovers of Gregarious Simulation Systems [which controlled the OASIS], all of which had failed.”  

Stylized cover of Ready Player One showing a cross section of a head where the exposed brain looks like a maze puzzle

IOI also recruited legions of gunters to look for Halliday’s Easter egg.  These mercenaries of the OASIS are called “Sixers” because they all have six-digit employee numbers starting with the numeral “6.”  “To become a Sixer, you had to sign a contract stipulating, among other things, that if you found Halliday’s egg, the prize would become the sole property of your employer. . . .  The company also provided your avatar with high-end armor, vehicles, and weapons, and covered all of your teleportation fares.  Joining the Sixers was a lot like joining the military.”

This story feels like all your best memories of playing video games.  Any kind of game.  If you like space games, first-person shooters, quest games, arcade games, classic Atari, it does not matter.  Ernest Cline included them all in Ready Player One.  There is at least one scene dedicated to every kind of game, even video games that do not exist yet.  (The one exception may be sports games, unless you consider the jousting in Joust to be a sport.)

You should read this book because if you love reading fiction, then you probably love a good escape from reality.  Wade, the ultimate escapist who even goes to school in a virtual world, takes us on an epic journey through every kind of virtual adventure imaginable.

You may also want to read this book if you love 1980s movies, music, games and trivia.  Or if you love geek or nerd culture.  This book is chock full of references to everything we geeks and nerds love.  Everything!

Cover of Ready Player One showing the stacks in green schematic over black

If you read this book, you’d better not mind nerd culture, endless 1980s references, and the word “sucks.”  Wade likes that word a lot and a few other strong words now and then.  And you’d better not mind a long book.  It’s great, but it’s long.

Here’s a good part:  “I walked across the chamber to the foot of the dais.  From here I could see the lich more clearly.  His teeth were two rows of pointed cut diamonds arrayed in a lipless grin, and a large ruby was set in each of his eye sockets.

“For the first time since entering the tomb, I wasn’t sure what to do next.

Cover of Ready Player One showing gate, figure and key in 8-bit

“My chances of surviving one-on-one combat with a demi-lich were nonexistent.  My wimpy +1 Flaming Sword couldn’t even affect him, and the two magic rubies in his eye sockets had the power to suck out my avatar’s life force and kill me instantly.  Even a party of six or seven high-level avatars would have had a difficult time defeating him.”

Have you already read it?  What did you think?

If not, do you have a question about this book?  Give me a try.

Please post your comments below.

Be stellar!

Matthew Cross