Murky Clarity

Movie Review: Ex Machina

As someone who loves watching Science Fiction movies and shows, and who is also a Science Fiction writer himself, I had a total fanboy moment when I watched the trailer of Ex Machina for the first time. Go ahead and watch the trailer I've embedded. I'll wait.

 

 

You're back? Good. It looks good, doesn't it? In robotic/android Science Fiction, the trope that is regularly employed is the Pinocchio issue: a construct who wants to be a real boy. If a robot is equipped with artificial intelligence (AI), will it destroy humanity like Ultron of the Avengers: Age of Ultron movie is set to do, or will it preserve humanity like The Vision does? Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics are also discussed at great length in android stories, be them directly or indirectly. What are these laws, you ask?

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

I, Robot uses these laws and discusses about what happens when these laws are corrupted. A thoroughly good movie, that. In my story, "Act of Faith", the same rules are used, albeit indirectly. I discussed about whether a robot has a soul, and if so, can it be a follower of the Faith?

Here we have Ex Machina. In the movie, Nathan, a genius who founded a popular search engine, has created androids and wants a third party to test his technology, so he calls in one of his employees, Caleb. He uses a modified Turing test to see if Caleb will treat a robot like another human even though he is aware that he is interacting with a robot. Ava is a humanoid android that doesn't even pretend to look fully human. Her abdomen is transparent, and her limbs are covered with mesh instead of skin.

She still looks beautiful.

I can't say much without giving spoilers, but like any other thriller, Ex Machina raises the question of trust. Can Caleb trust Nathan? Or should he trust Ava? How can he trust either of them--or even himself--when he develops an existential crisis?

Even using a minimalist setting (one location) and cast (just three of them, unless you count in the ever-silent Kyoko), this movie manages to evoke a mini-existential crisis within my psyche. Something like what The Matrix did. What if our existence is just a lie? What if what we know is not real? What is real, anyway? Who gets to decide?

Ex Machina doesn't even care about Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics. Here, what makes a robot human is not free will, but the instinct to survive. How far will a robot go to ensure its survival?

It's sad to see that Nathan's goal for developing these androids is to create lifelike companion/sex bots. It's sad to see that at this day and age, women are still seen as sexual objects. Ex Machina is still an amazing movie, regardless, because of the storytelling and the character development/arcs. Layers upon layers are peeled off from these three main characters to reveal who they are, what their essence is.

The only qualm I have is how easy, how convenient the ending is. I guess I expected more? Breanna can attest to my aversion toward convenient endings. It's the ultimate struggle/conflict, and the protagonist has to risk losing everything in order to earn victory. The keyword here is "earn". While there is no question that all three of them have gotten what they deserve, but I don't think one of them has earned it.

Overall, it's a beautiful, thought-provoking movie. It approaches the android trope in a tasteful, novel manner, and I highly recommend it.

Rating: 8/10

On living the dream: FAITH AND THE MACHINE

OK folks, let's make this a quick one. I'm cramming for my final exam (May 4-5, 14-16), so there.

I'm not going to tell you I've always wanted to write since I was a little boy. Well, I did do pages upon pages of squiggly lines in those brown paperback notebooks, and then moved on to creating comic strips and adventure games in said books--different books la. Aiyoh. But I'm not one of those folks who tell others that they've ALWAYS wanted to be a writer.

Heck. If all goes well, I'll be a neurosurgeon soon(ish), insyaAllah, and I STILL don't know what I want to be when I grow up.

If I have only one thing I'm passionate about, it's reading. Fiction. If only the passion extends to reading academia, I would have been a star student.

Anyway.

When did I start writing? I wrote and published my first story in Secondary Four, in my school magazine, Garudamas. Our supervising teacher, Puan Prabhalini Brahma, encouraged me to write one. My English teacher, Datin Matilda Toyad, did the pushing as well. Since I only read Fantasy at that time, I wrote a story about a pack of mystical silver wolves and how the mother sacrificed her life to save her cubs. And because I watched Felicity, Jack and Jill and Dawson's Creek, I published a tragic love story in Secondary Five.

Oye.

Then life happened. Medical school happened. Housemanship/internship happened. I stopped writing because I no longer had the time, the energy, the motivation. I stopped sketching. I stopped painting. I started compiling excuses. But I never stopped reading. Fiction. Aiyoh.

One fine day, a stranger by by the name of Azita Baizura friended me on Friendster. Yup, you heard me right. Friendster. She was intrigued by my profile description. And then she urged me to write for a local competition.

Other than a semester of Creative Writing in university, I did not receive any formal training in writing. I bought books and taught myself the rules. My stories didn't win the competition, but it triggered the dormant love for writing that I thought I had lost. I joined an online writing community, and there I met a most precious gem, a boon from the Muses: Breanna Teintze. She has been pushing me to write and to publish. She screens ALL my stories before I send them off.

I started publishing in 2009. Back then I published FTL--for the love. For the exposure. And then I started getting paid for my stories. Some even appear in hardcover and paperback prints.

I hungered for more.

To date, I have published 26 stories. I think I only have a few collecting dust in my cyberstorage. The ones I wrote before 2009 don't count. Okay? Okay. Some of them have received paragraphs upon paragraphs of awesome reviews (Tor.com, Strange Horizons, Goodreads), while some...not so positive. The only problem is, most of my stories are accessible internationally, but not locally. I want my stories to be read by Malaysians, in Malaysia. Most of the stories I publish are about Malaysia. Not the colonial one, but contemporary Malaysia. Futuristic Malaysia.

I approached several local publishers to see if they were willing to reprint my stories in an anthology. No one bit, at first. Then, one fine day, as I was waiting for my flight back to KL from KB, Amir Muhammad WhatsApped me a link to a small press publisher, Simptomatik Press. Their manifesto is to publish Medical Science Fiction. So I emailed them a query, with links to three of my stories.

And Kushairi Zuraidi replied. He wanted to read more. He wanted to publish my stories.

And now FAITH AND THE MACHINE is available for sale. It even has a proper ISBN. The release comes at the best of times. It comes at the worst of times. I won't be available to promote my book or to meet readers. I won't be able to meet you. Even now I'm feeling guilty for writing this instead of doing last-minute cramming for my BIGGEST EXAM EVER on Monday.

Sorry folks. My education comes first.

So there. I won't be doing promotional stints until after I (hopefully) graduate. I'll be doing some retweeting or something like that, but that's it. This is it. I do appreciate it if you could take the time to check out the book at booth 4171 at the Kuala Lumpur International Book Fair 2015 (#KLIBF2015/#PBAKL2015), buy the book, and tell me what you think. I do appreciate it if you somehow signal boost this post.

I know I won't be making much from this anthology. It's not about the money. Well, it'll be a bonus, but seriously, for me it's not just about the money. It's about reaching out to local readers and writers. It's about showing them that it is more than possible to write and publish local stories in English. There is a huge market out there, waiting for us. It's about creating awareness on Medicine, and neurosurgery in particular.

More than anything, the stories are part of my on-going journey to reconnect with my Faith.

Even if you don't buy the book, I want you to know that I love you all. And I thank you.

And I also want you to know that this is a dream-come-true for me. To have a book with my name on the spine. To have MY book with an awesome cover.

MY book. Wow. It's only now starting to sink in.

I am humbled.

And since you're at it, please pray for me and my friends (Jon Kooi, Raffiz, Adrian, Jason, Yew Chin and Jachinta) as we sit for our final exam.

#prayforFadz

 

Always,

Fadz.