The Gods Thonselves

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I've previously blogged about The Gods Thonselves, an imaginary book that could have been written by Isaac Asimov in an alternate Reality.

The story so far...
As mentioned previously (here), I'm making plans for how to experiment with a new narrative method for telling the Exode Saga. I want to make explicit (from the very start) that the Huaoshy interact with the universe by way of two competing groups, the Interventionists and the Overseers. These two factions create a dynamic tension that allows for optimization of life in the Hadronic Domain.

The Two Chief World Systems

pek and bumpha

Asimov was an advocate of creating science fiction stories depicting two "sides" set in opposition, but each "side" gets to state their case and the reader is kept in doubt about which side should win.

The Exode Saga was originally conceived as a story that explained why the Overseers always "win" and why we Earthlings remain ignorant of the fact that aliens long ago visited Earth and shaped the entire existence of the human species. Then I discovered a "loophole" by which Earthlings could learn the truth about their Creators as long as the Secret History of Humanity was told in the form of a science fiction story.

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I've come to think of R. Gohrlay and her tribe of positronic robots as a fundamentally revolutionary force that could alter the billion-year-old balance of forces between the Interventionists and the Overseers. To effectively tell that story, I need to give voice to the two "sides" in the argument.

Greek Gods
However, I don't want the "argument" between the pek and the bumpha (or the tryp'At Overseers and the Dead Widowers) to seem like the squabbling Greek gods of ancient Greek mythology.

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In my previous blog post, I provided some background information about Rylla, the young woman who narrates the start of the Exode Saga.

For A Search Beyond, I need to craft a chapter that shows how the forming mind clone network is able to provide Rylla with information about Sachiz and the tryp'At Overseers.

Bimanoid Interface 2.0

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When the Bimanoid Interface was upgraded, all of the replicoids at Observer Base had to be inactivated. Later, as the mind clone network grew, it became possible to shield Rylla from positive feedback that had previously begun between Vendela's replicoid and Rylla's right brain. By telepathically linking her daughter's mind to her right brain, Rylla found that she could control the strength of her telepathic linkage to Vendela's replicoid and protect herself against the danger of positive feedback.

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I've previously toyed with the idea that my own tryp'At brain will give me special access to the mind clone network. The remaining issue concerns Observer Base and who there might be able to activate a replicoid. Maybe it should be Yōd, within the AR Simulator, who discovers how to control R. Gohrlay's replicoid system. Within that simulation, at a time in the far future of the Asimov Reality, maybe R. Gohrlay reveals to Yōd how the replicoid system in the Hierion Domain is linked to Earth in the Hadronic Domain. Eustacia Pasimov would then be able to make use of what Yōd learned and activate Vendela's replicoid.
Related Reading: the inactivated robots of Solaris
Next: the Nereid time loop

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One Way or the Other

Rylla's mother, Vendela.

Four months ago, I realized that Rylla should introduce readers to A Search Beyond, the first book of the Exode Saga. That is a task that I would not normally expect a teenager to excel at, so why is she suited for this job? Rylla was born in the year 2005 as a mind clone, so she is not a normal Earthling. In a very real sense, Rylla has superpowers.

The First Mind Clone on Earth?
Rylla's parents named her Verella, but Rylla insists on being called Rylla. Because of Rylla's unusual background, some Earthlings might prefer to think of her as a witch.

Rylla's mother was apparently using the name "Vendela Pekkanen" when she married Rylla's father. At that time, she adopted his last name. Rylla's father was born in the United States and met Vendela when they were both attending the same university in Europe. Vendela was majoring in linguistics and studying the evolution of northern European languages.

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After Rylla's father completed his post-doctoral training and took a job as the director of a research lab, Vendela soon became pregnant. Vendela's daughter grew up to be a quiet, frail, precocious girl. When Rylla was just seven years old, Vendela left home and was never seen again by either Rylla's father or Rylla.

After Vendela's sudden disappearance, Rylla's father concentrated on 1) his work running a research lab and 2) raising Rylla as a single dad. As told elsewhere in this blog, a major scientific discovery was made by Georgy White, a research student in the lab run by Rylla's father.

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At the time of that discovery, the tryp'At Overseers were in control of Observer Base and they were certain that Earthlings should not be given knowledge of hierions, so their agent on Earth, Maria Green, quickly acted to erase from Earth the newly obtained evidence for negative mass particles.

Bimanoid Interface 2.0

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Eventually, about one year after Maria Green had edited the memories of Rylla, her father and lab members like Nora Stone, there was a major change to the environment of Earth. The Bimanoid Interface was upgraded. Because of Rylla's unique brain, she was then able to recover memories that had been suppressed by Maria. At that time, Nora did not understand why Rylla's behavior was changing, but when the dust settled at Observer Base, Nora became a beneficiary of the organizational changes at Observer Base that followed the demise of the tryp'At Overseers. Rylla then became an object of careful study for Nora. According to Nora, Rylla is about a 95% genetic copy of Vendela with about 4% of her genes from her father and almost 1% of her chromosomes from other sources.

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In addition to arranging for Rylla's special genetic design, Vendela also carefully controlled the early cognitive development of Rylla. As a mind clone of Vendela, Rylla's developing brain grew so as to have a close copy of the structure of Vendela's right cerebral hemisphere imprinted upon it. How was that possible? It seems to have involved the special Asterothrope oxypathin hormone system, but we Earthlings may never know the details.

Secrecy
Both Rylla and the Editor are careful not to reveal the identity of Rylla's father who has an on-going career as an academic research scientist. Rylla took care to create a fictional backstory for herself: a bunch of mumbo jumbo about having grown up in Perth, Australia. Similarly, I've had to craft a fictionalized version of my own life so as to protect both my son and Rylla from unwanted attention. Since moving to America, Rylla uses the name "Verella Onway" on legal documents, but she claims the name "Onway" came from the name of the company that made the bicycle that she used to ride to school each day before she moved to the United States.

whimsical depiction of the Huaoshy
(blue alien) and a pek (white)

I say that Rylla's mother was "apparently" named Vendela Pekkanen because Rylla suspects that Vendela changed her name in order to protect the identity of her own family members. The name Pekkanen is particularly suspicious because of the role that the pek have played in the creation of the human species. Rylla believes that her mother used the name "Pekkanen" as a kind of joke, a sly reference to the pek and her own role as an Interventionist agent on Earth.

Having looked into the matter, Zeta believes that Vendela was not born on Earth. After being born and raised on a distant planet, was she somehow inserted into an adoptive family on Earth?

Rylla suspects that her mother was created as a mind clone of Gohrlay, with the intention that Yōd would eventually be able to transfer her mind into Vendela's body. However, that transfer took place several years after Vendela abandoned Rylla, so there is the lingering mystery of what Vendela was doing from 2012 until 2016.

Yōd, soon after reaching Earth.

I met Vendela twice; first when she and my son came for a visit in 2002 and then once more when they got married a few years later. I remember Vendela as a tall woman with a strange accent that I assumed was a Finnish accent. I have no memory of noticing anything unusual about Vendela's anatomy, but both my son and Rylla agree that Vendela had two sets of breasts: one was normal for an Earth human and then there was another pair below that, smaller and easily hidden when Vendela was in public and dressed so as to hide her unusual anatomy.

Shared Bodies
All of my collaborators agree that when Yōd first arrived on Earth, the pattern of her mind was placed inside of Vendela's brain. This trickery apparently involved sophisticated femtobots that could be sent to Earth by very long-range teleportation. Yōd could reshape the physical form of her body and I never noticed her physical similarities to Vendela.

Yōd (source)

There was only one occasion when I saw Yōd naked. Yōd was a master of using nanites to alter her physical appearance, so even if Yōd was using Vendela's body, it seems likely that Yōd would not have toted around two sets of breasts. However, I only had a brief glimpse of Yōd's body and it was under low light conditions, so I may simply not have noticed. I must admit, in my memory of that moment, I think that Yōd was holding her left arm across the front of her torso, so she may have been concealing a second set of small breasts from my view.

Asterothrope

I've asked Zeta to confirm if Yōd had four breasts and she is amazingly stubborn, asking me why it matters. Zeta suggests that Rylla was given extra breasts as a way for Vendela to train her daughter in how to keep secrets. Zeta insists that even if it is true that Trysta "inserted" her Asterothrope genes into the human gene pool 10,000 years ago (was this the special mission of Hyanti?), leading to her descendants occasionally having supernumerary nipples, developmental control nanites could have been used to prevent Rylla from having any unusual anatomical features. Zeta suggests that it was Vendela's intention to make clear to Rylla that she carries Asterothrope genes, predisposing Rylla to acceptance of her role on Earth as the Agonist.

Trysta, Grean and Ekcolir

I've heard conflicting rumors about the ultimate fate of Trysta Iwedon. One account says that she died on Earth about 10,000 years ago. There is an alternate story placing her in the galactic core after she completed her mission on Earth 10,000 years ago. Trysta's Asterothrope gene combinations may be scattered through the population of Earth in dilute form, but a physical specimen like Vendela was probably crafted on a world of the galactic core. I would not be surprised to learn that several teleportation copies of Trysta were made before her death, allowing one copy to die on Earth and several others to die on various worlds of the galactic core.

Necker cube
I'm still baffled by the idea that the woman I knew as Yōd could have had her physical body constructed in the galactic core so as to be able to function as an Interventionist agent Earth... an agent who could be sent to Earth as a child (or as a young woman?), carrying Asterothrope gene combinations and a brain that was shaped to match the brain pattern of Gohrlay. Zeta tells me that I should not be so amazed: apparently Trysta was designed so as to be 99% genetically identical to Gohrlay

Creating a mind clone network.

Vendela had to grow up on Earth without attracting the attention of Earth's Overseers at Observer Base. Vendela then created her daughter Rylla, manufacturing a mind clone who also failed to attract Overseer attention. Nora, operating as an Interventionist agent in my son's research lab, knew Rylla and never suspected her special role until after the Bimanoid Interface was upgraded.

Next: the two world systems

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Asimov Energy

Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1955

I've been investigating old science fiction stories about telepathy. Back in January, I read "Cosmic Engineers" by Clifford Simak and speculated about the possible influence of that story on Asimov. More recently, I blogged about Jack Vance's story "Parapsyche", which surprised me by the seriousness which Vance seemed to lavish on paranormal phenomena such as telepathy.

Telepathic Space Aliens
I finally read Isaac Asimov's story "The Portable Star" from Thrilling Wonder Stories, Winter 1955 (download). As described here, Asimov was not proud of "The Portable Star".

in the Ekcolir Reality

I have to wonder if years of guilt over having published "The Portable Star" contributed to Asimov's later creation of The Gods Themselves, the first science fiction story by Asimov that I ever read.

In "The Portable Star", 4 vacationing Earthlings land on a planet and tangle with telepathic space aliens. After a night on the planet, one of the Earthlings says, "We're being watched. I'm sure of it."

In the issue of Thrilling Wonder Stories where "The Portable Star" was published, Asimov also included a time line for his "Future History" of human expansion from Earth to other worlds of the galaxy:

interior illustration for "The Portable Star"

"The Portable Star" and "Blind Alley" were unusual in that these two stories featured aliens in Asimov's "all human galaxy". Asimov would later add Nemesis as a novel in which aliens were able to communicate telepathically with humans.

In "The Portable Star", 4 humans land their spaceship on an inhospitable world, Sigmaringen IV. The image to the left shows a scene from the start of the story. The telepathic "energy beings" who reside on Sigmaringen IV begin "experimenting" on the 4 humans... playing with their minds.

ignition

Sci Fi plot elements such as faster-than-light travel, time travel and telepathy are simply too much fun. Story tellers can't resist using fantastic technologies such as "warp drive" and time travel machines. Within science fiction, there are two different types of human telepathy: 1) technology-assisted telepathy and 2) "natural" telepathy that is made possible by the inherent structure of our biological brains.

In "The Portable Star", Asimov quickly moves to the fringe of hard science fiction by stating that the natives of Sigmaringen IV are "energy beings". In practical terms, making use of "energy beings" allows a Sci Fi author to quickly move a short story along... no explanation must be provided for how an alien mind and a human mind might be telepathically linked. In Western literature, there is a long tradition of imaginary non-material beings that can "read the minds" of humans. I suspect that Asimov spent very little time writing "The Portable Star".

in the Ekcolir Reality

After getting his 4 human guinea pigs into trouble on Sigmaringen IV, Asimov needed a quick and convenient way to get them safely back home. Asimov reached into his bag of tricks and pulled out an old plot element from his story "Nightfall". The poor "energy beings" of Sigmaringen IV have never seen stars. When they "see" some burning hydrogen gas, the "energy beings" freak out and loose their telepathic grip on the humans, allowing them to escape from Sigmaringen IV.

Don't you believe in flying saucers, they ask me? Don't you believe in telepathy? — in ancient astronauts? — in the Bermuda triangle? — in life after death? No, I reply. No, no, no, no, and again no. One person recently, goaded into desperation by the litany of unrelieved negation, burst out "Don't you believe in anything?" "Yes", I said. "I believe in evidence. I believe in observation, measurement, and reasoning, confirmed by independent observers. I'll believe anything, no matter how wild and ridiculous, if there is evidence for it. The wilder and more ridiculous something is, however, the firmer and more solid the evidence will have to be." -Isaac Asimov in The Roving Mind. see also

cover by Donald Brautigam

"Potential" by Isaac Asimov 
A 1983 story about telepathy by Asimov was called "Potential". For "Potential", Asimov crafted a story in which a boy (Roland) with telepathic powers is able to make telepathic connections to the "minds" of social insects such as bees.

In "Potential", I suspect that Asimov was suggesting that the positronic computer MULTIVAC could also telepathically communicate with Roland. For "Potential", Asimov "explained" Ronald's telepathic powers by saying that he had a special combination of genes that gave him his telepathic abilities. Somehow (by telepathy?), MULTIVAC knew that Ronald had telepathic abilities. With practice, Ronald's telepathic powers are getting stronger.

the Asimov Reality

Telepathic Robots
As far as I know, Asimov never really tried to explain why a few "spontaneously-arising" telepathic positronic brains could telepathically communicate with humans. He vaguely suggested that Daneel could detect the electric fields from human brains and thus "read their minds".

In the Exode Saga, there is both "natural telepathy" and technology-assisted telepathy. For A Search Beyond, the Asimov Reality Simulator must be searched for clues to the origins of human telepathy, but among those who are carrying out the search, there is confusion about the mechanism of telepathy. In Deep Time, much effort had gone into evolving humans with twitino-mediated telepathy, then a shift was needed, turning towards use of the Bimanoid Interface for technology-assisted technology.

in the Buld Reality
original cover art by Kinuko Craft

Oxypathin
The Asterothropes were a human variant that was artificially evolved by R. Gohrlay so as to have twitino-mediated telepathy. Asterothrope females were designed to give birth to large numbers of children, speeding the spread of Asterothropes through the galaxy. Asterothropes had a variant of the hormone oxytocin that was called oxypathin. Oxypathin activated the Asterothrope neurons that were involved in twitino-mediated telepathy. While breastfeeding, Asterothrope mothers trained their children in the use of telepathy. According to Zeta, some other human variants such as the tryp'At also have the oxypathin gene and a special transport system for making sure that large amounts of oxypathin can 1) cross the blood-brain barrier, 2) get into breast milk and 3) be absorbed by the GI tract of children.

The tryp'At Guide to Oxypathin

After Zeta told me about oxypathin, I discovered that Nora's infites contain additional information about the genes that allowed Aterothropes to have telepathic abilities. Additional special Asterothrope genes included a receptor with high affinity for oxypathin.

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That receptor was only expressed in the brain. There were also several genes for components of a signal transduction system that linked those receptors to the intracellular organelles involved in twitino-mediated telepathy (telastids).

"Mind Clone Epidemic" by Izhiun

The remaining question is if that oxypathin system was later adapted to provide the tryp'At with access to the Bimanoid Interface. If so, then Earthlings such as Rylla may be able to make use of chemicals like oxypathin to enhance the functioning of the Mind Clone telepathic network.

Zeta suspects that there are cholinergic neurons that function as the receptor cells in the brain capable of responding to oxypathin and subsequently activating the femtobots of the Bimanoid Interface. Those cholinergic neurons are what allow nicotine to play a special role in boosting human telepathic abilities.
More telepathic aliens: The Deep
Related Reading: Solaris
Next: investigating the origins of Rylla

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paraVance

A fight of phantoms.
interior art by Kweskin
(was this Sam Kweskin?)

It is 6 years since Jack Vance died on May 26, 2013. Vance was born in 1916 and his science fiction publishing career stretched from 1945 (The World-Thinker) to 2004 (Lurulu). I was introduced to Vance's writing through books (that was in the late 1970s), but early in his career all his stories were published in magazines. It is fun to go back to those old Sci Fi magazines and see Vance's early stories as they first appeared in print.

Each May or August, I celebrate the writing of Vance with special blog posts. For May 2019, I read a story that Vance published in 1958: "Parapsyche". You can download the August 1958 issue of Amazing Science Fiction Stories from several places, including this webpage.

Contents for "Parapsyche"

Parapsyche. This story is of interest to me because Vance often hinted at the existence of telepathic or "parapsychic" abilities in his stories. Usually the hints were subtle, but in "Parapsyche", Vance went all-out to explore the idea that there might be some truth to the idea that ghosts exist and after death, we all will "live" on in an after-life, in what I'll call the paraworld.

This story by Vance reminds me of The Discovery, a film from 2017 that explored the idea that people might be able to obtain scientific evidence for life after death.

Fwai-chi

Paraworld
In his novel Marune, Vance depicts a shopkeeper (Skogel) as casually saying, we "swim in a paracosmic fluid, which no one can comprehend". On the planet Marune lives a native alien species called the Fwai-chi. Skogel continues, "I have long speculated that the Fwai-chi interact with the paracosmos somewhat more readily than men".

It is fun to imagine that an alien species might be able to "connect" to a part of the universe that usually exists beyond the reach of human senses. Maybe the Fwai-chi are remnants of a technologically advanced civilization that managed to use their advanced technology to gain access to a part of the physical world that we humans are currently unaware of.

The main characters in "Parapsyche".

Speed of Thought
In Vance's imagined paraworld, souls can move around "at the speed of thought". This is depicted via the experiences of Don Berwick who we first encounter as a 17-year-old boy. He takes the 15-year-old Jean out on Halloween night to visit a "haunted house". They see a "ghost", what looks to be someone who was murdered in the house five years previously. The "ghost" emits some "agonized throat-wrenching sobs" and the kids who see the "ghost" are appropriately awed and excited.

"Ghost" in a haunted house

They go to investigate, and discover that the ghostly image of the past murder scene is a "double-exposure sort of thing" that disappears when they get near.

After that experience, Don devotes his life to investigating paranormal phenomena. Eventually, he goes through a process of cooling his body and stopping his biological functions. At that point, his "soul" moves out of his body. Don's consciousness finds itself existing in a kind of parallel world where he can still see Jean, but it is only through extraordinary effort that he can make Jean notice his presence.

Now both dead, Don is then attacked by the "soul" of Jean's half brother, the Christian Crusader, Hugh. They engage in the "fight of phantoms" that is depicted in the image at the top of this blog post. Vance suggests that the relative powers of Don and Hugh in the paraworld are in some way linked to the number of living people who believe in them and support their cause. Don is devoted to science and rationalism while Hugh is the leader of a religious crusade.

Vance's introduction to "Parapsyche".

As a science fiction story, "Parapsyche" is somewhat unusual. Vance wrote a short introduction (shown to the left) to the story that mentioned Elmer Gantry. "Parapsyche" explores a struggle between two groups:
1) a few scientists who try to investigate paranormal phenomena
and
2) Christians who view the investigative work of Don and Jean as blasphemous.

I wonder if a young Carl Sagan might have been influenced by Jack Vance's writing. Sagan eventually wrote a science fiction novel (Contact) that included an examination of the differences between science and religion as ways of understanding the world we live in.

cover art by Joseph Doolin

Vance grew up reading stories in the magazine Weird Tales. When reminiscing about his youth, the first author he mentioned having read in the pages of Weird Tales was Seabury Quinn. One of Quinn's first stories published in Weird Tales was "The Phantom Farmhouse". The October 1923 edition can be downloaded at websites such as this one. "The Phantom Farmhouse" was republished in the March 1929 edition, when Vance would have been in his own personal golden age.

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It is easy to imagine how Vance's "Parapsyche" was influenced and shaped by his having read stories such as "The Phantom Farmhouse". Quinn's story "The Phantom Farmhouse" was apparently the inspiration for a "Night Gallery" story that appeared on television in 1971.

in Weird Tales

Marsile No. 1

Jack Vance took a few science classes when he attended college. He often included geological details in his stories. In "Parapsyche", Jean's father (who grows oranges in southern California) hires a dowser to find a source of ground water on a plot of land. The dowser mentions that there is oil under the land. After Jean's father dies, she is able to speak to him indirectly by way of a "medium", Iva. He confirms that the oil is there.

Don and Jean wonder if Iva is a telepath, reading people's minds and telling them what they want to hear. Eventually, a deep drilling effort eventually reaches the oil, providing the needed ca$h to finance scientific investigation of "life after death".

Don's hunch is that if souls exist, "they're made of some sort of substance. Perhaps not molecules, but something." He posits a "super-normal continuum" beyond the physical world so far known to science, a paraworld that is the natural domain for "mind stuff".

Jung's collective unconscious

Mind Network
After his experience with Iva, Don proposes using multiple "mediums" to send information back and forth to each-other through the "super-normal continuum". After the first experiment, Don proposes a theory of the "after-world", that it is the human collective unconscious. Don and Jean also discuss the idea that it might be possible to make connections to the "after-world" while dreaming.

dream visions

Unknown to the world in the 20th century, Jung himself functioned as a kind of "medium" from about 1913 to the 1930s, as revealed when his Red Book was finally published.

Don proposes that he be placed into a state of unconsciousness, and then a test will be made: will several independent "mediums" detect his presence in the paraworld? Don undergoes general anesthesia and speculates about the possibility of using drugs as a means to push his mind over to the paraworld. The preliminary experiments are unsuccessful, so Don allows himself to be chilled down to the point of stopping his heart.

Lucky Don Berwick.

According to Don's theory of the paraworld, his "power" on the "other side" will depend on what other (living) people think of him. Lucky for Don, during the Korean war he was taken prisoner and when the tale of his escape is published in Life magazine, his fame is assured.

Unfortunately, the Christian Crusader, Hugh, is also quite famous, so they must fight a well-matched battle after they cross over into the paraworld. The ending of "Parapsyche"  reminds me of 50s and 60s television, where the struggle between good and evil always had to end with a fist fight. Vance had done a stint writing for a television show.

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Synchronicity
Vance never seemed to shy away from unlikely coincidences in his story writing. In "Parapsyche", Art Marsile tries to find water for his orange trees and he finds oil where all the geologists say there is no oil. Don not only survives imprisonment in a Chinese camp where most of the other soldiers die horrible deaths, but his experience as a prisoner of war becomes his ticket to fame and power in the paraworld. Don needs publicity and Kelso, a photographer for Life magazine, promptly appears in the plot of "Parapsyche".

1990

After "dying" and finding himself in the paraworld, Don flies off to the Moon and then Mars, traveling at "the speed of thought". Returning to Earth and willing himself to re-materialize in the physical world, Don saves Jean's life, pulling her out of a burning building. Later, after a boost to his power in the paraworld, Don is able to return to our world ("re-materialize") and live happily ever after with Jean.

"Strange things happen. Almost everyone has had some sort of brush with the paranormal, even the most resistant and skeptical of persons. The range of events is wide and only roughly amenable to classification. In olden times angels and demons were held responsible; to date no one has produced a more reasonable explanation. 

"Don defeats his dead foe"

Phenomena such as telepathy and poltergeists may well be manifestations of different and distinct principles; there may be two, three, four, or more such realms of knowledge, each at least as rich and intricate as physics or astronomy. There is little systematic study. Conventional scientists shy away from the field because they are, in fact, conventional; because they fear to compromise their careers; because the subject is difficult to get a grip on; because scientists are as susceptible to awe and eeriness as anyone else. So: the mysteries persist; the lore accumulates, and we know for sure no more than our remote ancestors, if as much." (source)

Related Reading: Jack Vance's story about telekinesis.
Also: The Blind Spot and The Brains of Earth
Buy the text of "Parapsyche" in ebook format.
Next: old Asimov stories about telepathy

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