Tag Archives: artificial intelligence

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Messiah Week: Cindi Mayweather from Janelle Monae’s Metropolis

  By Karen Osborne August 12, 2015 , , ,

“I imagined many moons in the sky lighting the way to freedom.”
– Cindi Mayweather

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Messiah: Cindi Mayweather
Messiah Level: Cyber

No pop star on Earth does it quite like Janelle Monáe. She has the voice. She has the moves. She has the clothes. She has the staggeringly beautiful science fiction epic. (“Wait, what?” I’m hearing you say. “In R&B?”)

Oh, yes.


The only thing wrong with this video is that it’s only six minutes long.

Her Metropolis albums chronicles the journey of her alter-ego, Cindi Mayweather, an android who has the misfortune of falling in love with a human. In Metropolis, androids are treated as little more than slaves (“She’s not even a person,” says caller Peggy Lakeshore in “Our Favorite Fugitive,” and the short film “Many Moons” chronicles an actual android slave auction). The punishment for this love is death, with her “cyber-soul” delivered to the authorities by bounty hunters and licensed hunters. Cindi, already becoming aware of the terrible conditions in which androids exist, flees — and, on the run, discovers that she is the ArchAndroid, the quasi-religious savior meant to rescue androids from slavery and apartheid. She becomes the “Electric Lady,” returning ready to save not only Metropolis, but humanity and androidkind, from the oppressive Great Divide, which despises love and freedom.


Seriously, try not to dance to this song. It’s impossible.

There are so few female messiah figures in SF/F, so the Electric Lady is extremely welcome — especially since Monáe takes the spotlight to draw attention not only to Metropolis’s fictional issues, but to the very real racial, societal and class-based challenges facing our world today. (Do we need a Cindi Mayweather?) She references Jim Crow as well as Philip K. Dick; her lyrics are poetic and intelligent, and the music itself is completely infectious. Her songs also work on a number of levels — you can listen to them casually and enjoy them quite a bit, or you can pick them apart to explore the multi-layered world Monáe has built.

Remember: Believe in the ArchAndroid.

We’ll be posting Janelle Monae videos on Twitter all day long.

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Read the August Third Order story, “A Tomb For Demrick Fauston,” by Fred McGavran!

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Fiction Alert: “Sounding The Fall” by Jei D. Marcade at Escape Pod

  By Karen Osborne July 27, 2015 , , , ,

The way is not in the sky. The way is in the heart.
— Gautama Buddha

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All roads lead to the same place…

Might an artificial intelligence also look for God? What might it mean if it does? Does one have to be a “good monk” to be an effective one? What is the role of faith in restitution and atonement? What is the role of religion in society — to detach from the world, or to involve oneself in it?

If you’ve been following Sacred Earthlings for any length of time, you know that these kind of delicious questions make our world go ’round, and when they’re packaged in a short story with gorgeous, clear language, all the better. We’d like to thank author Jei D. Marcade for writing her excellent “Sounding The Fall,” episode 499 at Escape Pod, published on July 20th, 2015. The story takes place in a future society overcome with technology and noise, sealed against a toxic world and ruled by tower-bound artificial intelligences. Into this environment comes Narae, a monk in an appearingly-Buddhist monastery, who has sealed erself out of society after an AI experience some would consider to be a truly religious one, and others might… well, I’ll just let you read the story, because I don’t want to spoil a story so well-constructed.

You didn’t read that pronoun wrong — Marcade eirself uses a gender-neutral pronoun in real life, as does this story’s main character. It forces the listener to view Narae’s actions not through the lens of gender, but through the lens of a greater humanity, with no recourse to explain her doings as “female” or “male” reactions. The choice to become gender-neutral is a very interesting choice for someone so devoted to higher truths; one may say that, when searching for God, something like gender does not even matter. The fact that Narae is painted as a truly human character, with the kind of human failings we could expect from someone struggling to understand a profound and life-changing experience, is even better. This is a very personal story, one that touches on beautifully epic thoughts while keeping the focus on characters you come to care about.

Hear “Sounding The Fall” at Escape Pod now.

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photo credit: Fo Guang Shan Buddha Memorial, Taiwan via photopin (license)
photo credit: Gaden Shartse Tibetan Monks via photopin (license)

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