Everyone's begging for an answer
Without regard to validity
The searching never ends
It goes on and on and on for eternity
--Bad Religion "The Answer"

Every fall, the Nobel watch goes out. And every year, Philip Roth is on the literature prize short list. He's written a ton of darkly funny and often salacious novels that deconstruct what it means to be human. Most folks think he's brilliant, though some find his writing to be a wee bit misogynistic. Maybe that's why he hasn't won. Or maybe it's that he's made millions as a writer, and that's what pisses off the committee. Hard to say.

The subject of identity is a common one for writers. Many of the best use the confines of genre to better illustrate their ideas. P.D. James uses mystery, and John LeCarre is most fortunate to traffic in spy novels, by far the most appropriate form for the examination of the true nature of personal identity.

But Roth's fascination runs deeper than most. He has spent much of his career examining and promulgating the works of eastern European writers, whose works on the struggle to maintain individual identity while living under totalitarian rule are bleak and yet often brilliantly illuminating. Roth's fixation on these authors and their works is almost total. Back in the 70s, he appropriated the central mechanism of Kafka's Metamorphosis ("One morning, as Gregor Samsa was waking up from anxious dreams, he discovered that in bed he had been changed into a monstrous verminous bug.") for one of his works. Roth being Roth, he had his character turn into a fulsome female breast and titled his novella The Breast. It's a weird piece, one that almost collapses under the weight of metaphor. But it is funny, which makes it worthwhile in my book.

Given his almost total devotion to the idea of identity, I have to wonder if Roth has watched the modern incarnation of "Battlestar Galactica." In addition to the usual display of innumerable hot bods in immodestly overheated situations (we are talking about TV, after all), the arc of the show has subtly shifted from a generic quest to find a home for humanity to a metaphysical journey into the heart of what it means to be human. There are Cylons (human-created robots that look like really good-looking humans) who decide to be human, humans who want to be Cylons, humans who discover that they are sleeper Cylons and still want to be human--and on and on and on. Such existential melodrama is still, in the end, melodrama. And television is the finest purveyor of melodrama ever invented.

But in the midst of the explosions, bed-hopping and inventive cursing ("mother fracker!" "gods damnit!"), the underlying question of humanity remains. There's the nature vs. nurture conundrum (Can a Cylon shed its mechanical nature and simply decide to become human?) using a human-Cylon hybrid child as the ultimate crucible. The show has also dealt deftly with the Iraq War, examining the morality of occupation, suicide bombing and religious fundamentalism from what must be described as a non-American viewpoint. When done well, allegory is one of the greatest tools in science fiction.

"Firefly" didn't even last one season. But it was popular enough to allow creator Joss Whedon to make a series-capping movie (Serenity) that cuts right to the core of what it means to be human. The spectral boogeymen of the series, the Reavers (perhaps a purposely misspelled Faulknerian reference or merely comic-aholic Whedon's homage to Marvel comic book villains of the same name) turn out to have been created by a government population-calming attempt gone very wrong. Serenity takes the easy way out, with the main characters (who are, themselves, decidedly anti-government) slaughtering the pitiless, and yet pitiful, Reavers in order to survive. Nonetheless, the question "What is human?" seems to glow in red letters as the credits roll.

A good piece of art stimulates the senses and breathes new life into a soul. A great piece of art helps to provide an answer to one or more of life's deeper questions. The greatest works raise more questions than they answer. The Mona Lisa and her smile. Trout Mask Replica and its discordance. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Universe and 42. I'm not sure if the Edward James Olmos-helmed "Battlestar Galactica" quite reaches those heights, but the show is not afraid to ask the important questions, and it refuses to give easy answers.

So I hope Philip Roth finds a television Friday night to watch the first episode of the final batch of BSG episodes. And I hope the show's creators remain true to their purpose and raise more questions than they answer. That's the journey that humanity has set forth for itself, a ceaseless quest for the untouchable truth within the soul of life itself.

Jon Worley is a late-comer to the BSG party, but he's a rabid convert.