I have no memory of exactly when I first read
Isaac Asimov's story
Nightfall. That was sometime in the mid-1970s, not too long after I first discovered Asimov by reading
The Gods Themselves. I may have read
Nightfall in Asimov's collection of stories called
Nightfall and Other Stories.
Ancient Aliens
Included as one of the stories republished in
Nightfall and Other Stories was a "novelette" called "Breeds There a Man... ?", a story first published seventy years ago in the
June 1951 issue of
Astounding Science Fiction. In "Breeds There a Man... ?", Asimov asked readers to imagine that the human species had
long been subjected to experimentation by space aliens. Asimov constructed an analogy between the fate of we humans and the fate of bacteria growing in an experimental microbial culture plate in a research lab.
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primates on Earth
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I love the idea that we might exist in a universe where intelligent creatures similar to we humans first evolved several billion years ago. If so, then what kinds of interactions might primates on Earth have with those ancient aliens?
Genetics
One of the reasons I'm a sucker for Asimov's science fiction is because he could come up with some interesting
imaginary biology for his stories. Published in 1950, in the
first issue of
Galaxy magazine was another Asimov story called "Darwinian Pool Room". According to the
ISFDB, the only previously published story with the word 'Darwinian' in its title was "
A Darwinian Schooner" in
Pall Mall Magazine, August 1893. The story told in "A Darwinian Schooner" makes no sense to me, but it included the full page illustration shown to the left. The story is a fantasy tale about a crew of "monkeys" on a ship who are led by their monkey captain.
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Reconstructed Denisovan. Image source
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I'm intrigued by old stories like "A Darwinian Schooner" and "
Atlantis' Exile" (see also:
The Sea Lady) because even before the space age and the flood of science fiction stories about space aliens, story tellers were prone to inventing cryptozoological adventures. We now know that there were times when multiple types of humans (such as
Denisovans) existed simultaneously on Earth. Do we have an instinctive fascination with other humanoids? I'm fascinated by this question: how would humans get along with aliens who are vastly more technologically advanced than we are? Exploring that question is the purpose of my
Exodemic Fictional Universe, and the first thing to be said is that I'm not interested in a situation in which the advanced aliens seem like
gods.
Having never previously heard of
William Livingston Alden (the author of "A Darwinian Schooner"), I was intrigued to learn that he was a founding member of the Theosophical Society, which had as one goal: "To investigate the unexplained laws of nature and the powers latent in man." The idea that humans have
latent telepathic powers has been a popular topic in science fiction.
Sadly, "A Darwinian Schooner" has nothing to do with anything Darwinian, but what about "Darwinian Pool Room"? Asimov raises the issue of "creation for a purpose". For my current story, "Meet the Phari", we can ask: did humans evolve by random chance or were we created?
"Meet the Phari" is set thousands of years in the future and the answer seems to be that humans were carefully constructed as a way to produce telepathic primates.
In Asimov's story, he states that: "
A conscious act of creation without a purpose is ridiculous." The backstory for "Meet the Phari" is that billions of years ago, the
Huaoshy came into existence and eventually transcended their biological existence and turned themselves into a type of artificial life that exists in the
Sedron Domain. The Huaoshy were horrified to discover that most intelligent species were not so lucky and tended to die in various forms of
technology-induced catastrophes. To mitigate this horror, they sent their minions, the
pek, out into the many galaxies of the universe in an attempt to help other intelligent creatures also transcend biological existence and attain immortality as
Sedronites inside the Sedron Domain.
However, in the case of Earth and humans, the Huaoshy plan went awry. With the connivance of the
bumpha,
positronic robots (
probots) were created and
found to have a powerful form of telepathy. This starting point for the importance of telepathy in the Exodemic Fictional Universe is inspired by Asimov's stories about
telepathic positronic robots. However, Asimov seemed content to view the origin of telepathic robots as a kind of
mutation, an error in the manufacturing process. But what if there is more to the story?
In "Darwinian Pool Room", the main character frets about the mystery of "the passing away of the dinosaurs." The suggestion is made: what if the dinosaurs had to be subtracted from the stage of Earth in order for the ultimate purpose of the "creator" to be fulfilled? If so, then scientists could spend an eternity speculating about asteroid impacts and climate change as causing a mass extinction, but maybe there was no "natural" cause of the dino demise, just a special intervention by aliens (like the Huaoshy?) who happen prefer hairy bipedal primates.
Having gone that far in "Darwinian Pool Room", Asimov then pulled out a theme that was soon to take center stage in his novel,
The End of Eternity, the idea that humans are not subject to Darwinian forces of evolution. "
Evolution is finished with the evolution of man. The old rules don't apply any more." Asimov concludes his story by suggesting that what might be next in the Great Chain of Being could be a form of artificial life, a "cybernetic" advance that will replace humans with the next great thing.
In the Exodemic Fictional Universe, the pek are a type of artificial life form and there are positronic robots such as R. Gohrlay and R. Nyrtia. R. Gohrlay and her tribe of positronic robots invented the "replicoid", a type of femtorobotic artificial lifeform that can become a host to a human mind. However, R. Gohrlay is guided by the Laws of Robotics and a devotion to the future of the human species. "Meet the Phari" thus has robot characters, but is concerned with the genetic engineering of telepathic humans.
Previously, R. Gohrlay spent 10 million years developing the telepathic
Asterothropes, but they were a separate primate species, similar to we humans, but distinct. "Meet the Phari" takes place in the
Asimov Reality where there is competition between the positronic robots and
Grean the Kac'hin to successfully create telepathic humans. Previously (in the
Foundation Reality), R. Gohrlay solved this problem at the cost of embedding the
Laws of Robotics inside the human genome, making a
human variant that could not harm fellow humans. For "Meet the Phari", the goal is to find another way to make telepathic humans that does not involve converting humans into pre-programmed robot-like creatures.
Alien HybridsI've
previously blogged about Asimov's telepathic human-martian hybrids. In "Breeds There a Man...?", Asimov suggests that unseen space aliens have long been performing experiments on humans. However, after allowing for a "flowering" of human civilization and a period of rapid cultural advances, the watchful aliens always "sterilize their experimental plate" and start a new experiment. In the atomic age, the aliens are ready and waiting for Humanity to suffer a devastating nuclear war.
However, just as a microbial culture plate full of bacteria might be treated with an antibiotic and then (because of mutations) give rise to an antibiotic-resistant strain of bacteria, maybe humans can become resistant to the alien desire for a "reset" (nuclear war). One particular physicist develops an amazing "intuition" and is able to figure out how to make a "force field" that can protect people against nuclear bombs.
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The force field generator being tested.
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"Breeds There a Man...?" raises the interesting question: if humans are being watch by technologically advanced aliens, is there some "trick" by which the low tech humans can take control of their own fate? And if so, how might the aliens "fight back" and try to maintain control of unruly human mutants?
That type of human struggle for agency is the fundamental issue of stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe.
In "Breeds There a Man...?", the story begins in mid-stride as the brilliant physicist Dr. Ralson is being induced to commit suicide. At the same time, he is desperately trying to be institutionalized and placed in a padded room where he can't commit suicide. Ralson is so brilliant that he has a hard time explaining to other people the many things that seem obvious to him, such as the idea that people are similar to bacteria when viewed from the perspective of the mysterious space aliens who control events on Earth. Asimov published a more light-hearted story like this in 1956 called "
Jokester". For someone like me, who despises the typical
alien invasion story, Asimov's odd stories about mysterious alien "watchers" are a breath of fresh air.
In the case of my story "Meet the Phari", events take place in the future in
Alastor Cluster, one of
Jack Vance's literary creations. The trillions of humans living on the 3,000 planets in Alastor Cluster are being used as breeding stock for an effort aimed at creating telepathic humans. In addition to the human settlers on the worlds of Alastor Cluster, there are native inhabitants of the planets, many of them having advanced telepathic abilities. Those humans who can "tune their minds" to the telepathic "channels" used by the natives have a better chance of surviving. For example, on
Trullion, the merlings capture and eat humans, so anyone who can telepathically detect and avoid the merlings has a better chance to pass their gene combinations on to future generations.
"Breeds There a Man...?" is set in the time when people were worried about nuclear war, but it is not totally gloomy. In the end, Dr. Ralson kills himself, but only after providing the secret to how to make a force field defense against nuclear bombs. In full-blown commie paranoia mode, the folks in "Breeds There a Man...?" even contemplate the idea that evil Russians might have figured out how to induce American physicists to kill themselves.
In "Meet the Phari", the test tube humans of Alastor Cluster are being bred for telepathy by both positronic robots and by Grean the Kac'hin. The pek, bumpha and Huaoshy mostly remain offstage until Chapter 11. Grean cultivates human helpers as well as select human-alien hybrids for use as her agents and helpers.
In "Breeds There a Man...?", Dr. Ralson suggests that anytime a human figures out that the aliens are in control of Earth, that particular human is eliminated (in his case, Dr. Ralson is induced to kill himself).
For "Meet the Phari", I imagine that Grean can use advanced nanotechnology (
infites) to edit the memories of her helpers, thus avoiding the need to kill anyone who learns of her existence. Grean can simply erase the memories of her helpers when they learn "too much" about how humans are being genetically engineered.
This blog post is called "Sightwall" because of the special role that is played in "Meet the Phari" by people who do not have a normal sense of vision. Might people who are born blind or with very poor vision be able to devote more of their brain to telepathy?
In some sense, does our excellent human sense of vision inhibit most humans from developing their latent telepathic abilities?
In
Chapter 9 of "Meet the Phari", some of Grean's operatives arrive on the planet Kwenslo in search of "lost" gene patterns that could be used to make more powerful human telepaths. Kwenslo was originally settled by blind human settlers who came into conflict with native inhabitants of Alastor Cluster, the
Phari. However, now that some special alien-human hybrids have been created on
Yerophet, it might finally be time for humans to successfully communicate with the Phari.
Grean is creating a mind clone network (see The Alaster Network) that will utilize all the gene combinations that are available in Alastor Cluster in order to allow for humans to achieve telepathic contact with the Phari.
Next: New Black
Related Reading: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari"
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