Malcontents And Troublemakers

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Venator continues his line of thought quoted in the previous post:

"It was the metamorphs and their few full-human adherents who were the malcontents, the troublemakers - Lunarians above all, but others too, more dangerous because less obvious...." (p. 63)

Dangerous to what? Is this made sufficiently clear? The cybercosm does not maintain a social equilibrium because it thinks that that is in the best interests of all human beings. The way to serve the best interests of all human beings would be to find out what the malcontents want and help them to do it. They in turn would lead humanity forward - after argument and debate, of course. No, the cybercosm itself has some long-term cosmic plans that require it, if not to control, then at least to be able to predict, everything else that happens, including what organic intelligences do. 

OK. Then let's communicate and cooperate with the cybercosm. But it does not allow that. But I wonder whether Poul Anderson has created an artificial conflict for the sake of the narrative. Another future history - which I cannot write! - might show beneficial human-AI interaction on a cosmic scale.

I did not know where I was going with this post until I had finished it.

The Hunter's List

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 3.

Venator asks himself:

"Who in their right minds would want a return of...?" (p. 63)

- and then inwardly recites a list of horrors which I will reproduce as a list:

war

poverty

rampant criminality

disease

famine

cancerously swelling population

necessity to work no matter how nasty or deadening the work might be

mass lunacy

private misery

death in less than a hundred years

Thank you, Venator. That is a very good list of very bad things, a comprehensive list of horrors inflicted on human beings, some by themselves, others not. There is nothing in this list that mankind cannot in principle end in the future although right now we are stampeding the other way - either denounce or applaud mass destruction, depending on who perpetrates it.

We can certainly reply to Venator:

No one in their right mind wants war etc but we also want individual and collective self-determination and we should not be compelled to accept your peace at the expense of that.

I think that we can have it all - but let's find out.

Extinction

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2.

"...extinction had claimed some splendid creatures, mammoth, saber-tooth, great-antlered Irish elk; and it seemed to Nicol that eagles or tigers, existing on narrow ranges under strict protection, were not what their natures meant them to be." (p. 52)

Sure. If we had resources enough, then we could populate a terrestroid planet with birds of prey and wild animals. But protecting them is better than letting them become extinct and every species eventually ceases to exist in one way or another in any case. Individual eagles or tigers do not instantiate Platonic Ideas of eaglehood or tigerhood. Their natures are temporary and changing but scientists can observe and record. Nothing is meant to be but it is for a while.

Space Pilots In Two Timelines

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2.

In On The Moon, we listed Robert Heinlein's Future History stories which are set on the Moon but did not mention "Space Jockey" which is about a rocket pilot who regularly flies between Earth and Moon and, at the end of the story, accepts a job that will involve flying only between the Moon and Lunar orbit provided, of course, that he and his wife move house and live permanently in Luna City. This is the daily life of the future as depicted in the Future History.

This parallels Jesse Nicol's work. Nicol flies between points on the Lunar surface or between Luna and the orbiting Habitat. He is employed by Lunarians although some of his flights:

"...demanded higher accelerations than Lunarians could readily tolerate...." (p. 50)

Alienated from the period he lives in, Nicol is lucky to work among alien-like Lunarians and even has a relationship with a colleague, Falaire, who is of Selenarchic descent.

Again, reading Anderson, we remember Heinlein.

Resemblances And Outmoded Ideas

A Superman comic reminded me of a Robert Heinlein novel and Poul Anderson's The Night Face reminded me of another superhero, Green Lantern. See:

Words And Texts

Poul Anderson's World Without Stars reminded me of another Superman comic. See:

Hugh Valland And Superman

Yet another Superman comic, this one written by Alan Moore, reminded me of James Blish's Mission To The Heart Stars. In this case, the connection was that Superman's antagonist, Mongul, physically resembled Blish's Hegemon of Malis. 

Blish's Heart Stars federation, self-designated "the Hegemony of Malis," has become, like Asimov's planet Trantor, an outmoded sf concept. Blish's idea was that, since stars are much closer at the galactic core, an interstellar federation might develop more quickly there. Now, instead, it is generally accepted that there is a massive black hole at the centre as in Larry Niven's A World Out Of Time and Anderson's For Love And Glory.

(Asimov had the Galactic Imperial capitol at the galactic centre but a later contributor to Asimov's Foundation series moved Trantor further out so that the black hole could occupy the centre.)

On The Moon

A large part of Robert Heinlein's Future History is set on the Moon:

"Requiem"

"The Long Watch"

"Gentlemen, Be Seated"

"The Black Pits of Luna"

"It's Great To Be Back"

"The Menace from Earth"

"Searchlight"

"Nothing Ever Happens on the Moon"

We remember these stories when we read Poul Anderson's Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 2, set on the Moon. A Lunarian woman lopes on the surface, her outspread solar collectors and cooling surfaces resembling dragonfly wings, her silver, mostly bionic, spacesuit fitting her like a second skin. A Lunarian man leads his vacuum-adapted moonwolf on a leash. Jess Nicol remembers the phrase, "Magnificent desolation..." (p. 44)

Anderson's vision continues and completes Heinlein's.

Lirion

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 1.

It is the Lunarians that threaten the "peace." The successful Proserpinan colony inspires the Lunarians in the inner Solar System with the knowledge:

"...that their old wild ways are still alive, still free." (p. 38)

And this is a problem for the cybercosm!

Lirion of Zamok Dragon returns from Proserpina to Luna and is suspected of - something.

An aspect of the central intelligence opines:

"-The temptation is to seize him and brainphase his knowledge out of him, legality or no." (p. 39)

But this temptation will be resisted on moral grounds? Well, no. The aspect continues:

"But he doubtless has emergency means, such as blowing his skull to bits, and we have no idea what his disappearance might trigger." (ibid.)

Venator helpfully adds:

"-Besides, he in himself may provide a spoor to follow into the heart of whatever this conspiracy is. I will seek him out, and then we shall see." (ibid.)

Lirion is not seized only because it is more expedient to follow him. The cybercosm has unequivocally identified itself as the villain of the piece/peace.

Onward with the story after I have been out for the evening.

Peace

Harvest The Fire, CHAPTER 1. 

A downloaded personality named Venator has been incorporated into the cybercosm but reactivated so that he can perform a specific task in a robot body. Before his robotic re-embodiement, Venator converses with an aspect of the central intelligence which informs him that:

"Our great peace lies once more under threat." (p. 34)

The entire narrative leaves us in no doubt that this peace is a carefully maintained, managed, even manipulated, passivity. There is a general misconception, here encouraged by Anderson, that "peace" means nothing but passivity. Do we have to choose between violence and passivity? There are more than two options. It is the task of sf to consider every option and we can read utopias as well as dystopias. We need to end and transcend conflict and violence so that society can become more interactive, dynamic and creative, not so that it can be held indefinitely in a static equilibrium. 

The cybercosm congratulates itself that:

"Little active hostility to the order of things remains on Earth, and it is ideational or emotional - ill informed, ill organized where it is organized at all, devoid of any significant resources." (p. 35)

That is a death knell. Why should the cybercosm maintain an "order of things"? Everyone, especially those who are hostile, should be given every opportunity to understand and express themselves and to shape their own order of things, both individually and collectively. That is possible. That is what society can aim at. AI is welcome to help - certainly not to obstruct.

HARVEST OF STARS: Summary II

See HARVEST OF STARS: Summary

What I missed:

Conscious AI dominated society which became stable, peaceful and prosperous but neither fulfilled nor content.

Synnoionts are human beings who have become human-AI interfaces.

Lunarians colonized a large, dense asteroid, Proserpina, on a two million year orbit, currently passing from the Kuiper Belt to the Oort Cloud, and mine bodies in those outer regions. 

Nicol did not know about:

Life Mothers guiding planetary ecologies and growing new organic bodies for downloaded personalities;

the colonization of three other extra-solar planets.

HARVEST OF STARS: Summary

Poul Anderson, Harvest The Fire (New York, November 1997).

In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, each volume covers a single different period of a future history except Volume II, The Stars Are Also Fire, which covers two periods. Thus, if we read the series in numerical order, then, as we begin Harvest The Fire, PROLOGUE, pp. 9-31, with four pages of illustrations, we are already familiar with the first three of the five periods.

Jesse Nicol, a frustrated poet, seeks inspiration by recounting the future history to date to a simulation of Jorge Luis Borges. Of course the summary in Nicol's mind helps readers whether they have read Volumes I and II or not.

Human beings got into space when the cost of launch had been brought down, mainly by Fireball Enterprises. The Moon was colonized but completion of pregnancy was impossible in Lunar gravity so Lunarians were genetically engineered. Other human species were engineered on Earth and also the Keiki Moana, intelligent seals. 

Robotics became highly developed. Some human personalities, including Anson Guthrie, founder and chief executive of Fireball, were downloaded into artificial neural networks. Lunarians, led by Selenarchs, became independent of the World Federation and colonized Mars, asteroids and outer moons.

Fireball and the Selenarch Rinndalir waged war against the Federation for a reason not stated here. Download Guthrie led dissident Terrans and Lunarians to Alpha Centauri. Terrans colonized Demeter, doomed to be destroyed in a planetary collision in a thousand years, whereas Lunarians colonized Centaurian asteroids. 

The Federation reincorporated Luna and moved an abandoned L-5 colony to Lunar orbit where Terran women from Luna could give birth, thus enabling Terrans to outnumber Lunarians on Luna. The Lahui Kuikawa, comprised of human beings and Keiki Moana, moved to a mid-Pacific island. 

Conscious AI was developed, then developed itself further.

There is some more but I have to go out.