Authorial Intent and 'The Upgrade'
Okay, so I wrote a thing called 'The Upgrade.' Which people apparently liked. I feel sort of uncomfortable posting it here, because The Spine of the Empire is an Empirian thing, part of the world I have made. THE WORLD. As in the ones that 99% of my work exists in, save it being from reality, and now this little short piece. And 'The Upgrade' pisses me off slightly because it isn't part of the world, and it feels dirty in that way. But whatever. The Spine holds all things mine. I can do what I want, dammit.
But back to The Upgrade.
People have responded to positively to this little short story thing I have a love/hate relationship with. And have, I think, completely missed the point of. A relevant response is here, which I too responded to. I feel like Ray Bradbury with Fahrenheit 451. It wasn't about censorship. And everyone reads it that way, but no one really cares to pay enough attention to see that isn't really the point. Authorial intent does matter, I think in these cases, because people are just not getting the point which is in a problem.
As for the point of The Upgrade, the android realizes the question of personhood is bogus and legal definitions are also bogus and do not exist in reality.
Everyone is like is there a reason the android is avoiding the upgrade or saying the android is not a person and I am just kind of rolling my eyes. It doesn't matter. People can be robots. Robots can be people. Pretend for a moment all mentions of android were replaced with women, disabled, black, gay, or whatever minority you want and set in the respective time periods where they were discriminated against and not considered full people. Then you see what I was getting at. The people were always people. Definitions are illusions.
Ugh.
This is why I love writing in the world of The Adventures of Trinity and the One, which I just refer to as 'the world' or 'my world' because the correct terms are too complicated for the uninitiated. Things are far out and spectacular. They aren't grounded into what we think of possible now. Robots are people. That is of no consequence. Things happen because everything is possible, yet people act like they don't because they can. Everything is taken into a metaphysical plane where the problems and issues are not the same as they are now; they are on a higher plane so to speak. I am an elitist. Maybe people like the more grounded work because it makes more sense to them. I don't think many people get what I'm trying to do with my work. The Upgrade people just grasped. It was base enough for people to get.
Gah.
This is a taste of my hate for main stream sci-fi. I hate sci-fi and fantasy. I hate those genres because they fail to live up to their expectations. The Upgrade is a rebuttal to the notions of them, and some have not seen that. My work, my true work, is beyond the scopes of this silly genres.
One day I am going to right a full-fledged dissection and rant on why I hate sci-fi. Be ready. There is much bitterness in my being. The hate is strong within me. I HAVE A BONE TO PIC AND AN AXE TO GRIND.
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