ABC and Vance

In the Ekcolir Reality.

ABC meaning Asimov, Brunner and Clarke. Last month I celebrated the science fiction writing of Jack Vance by reading several stories that he published in 1951. Back in March, I read "Satisfaction Guaranteed", a positronic robot story that was published by Asimov in 1951. Here in this blog post, I'm going to continue that theme and comment on two short stories by Brunner and Clarke that were published 70 years ago, in 1951. The stories concern aliens who are watching Earth... and waiting...

Apparently, Arthur C. Clarke wrote "The Sentinel"  in 1948 and it was first published in 1951 in 10 Story Fantasy. Hoping for a sale, maybe Clarke's agent routinely sent "The Sentinel" to all the editors of science fiction magazines such as Donald Wollheim. I'd be interested to know if there were any other editors who rejected the story as a "clunker", possibly suspecting that it was too thoughtful for most readers.

Figure 1; Wilson reaches the little plataeu
interior art from 1951

When I was discovering printed science fiction stories in the early 1970s, Avon was gradually getting out of the Sci Fi field, but it was through their distribution of cheap paperback books that I was able to read Asimov's Foundation saga and other interesting novels (example). In the early 1950s, Avon was experimenting with several Sci Fi and fantasy magazines and somehow "The Sentinel" ended up in 10 Story Fantasy, published under the title "Sentinel of Eternity". That was the only published issue of the magazine. "The Sentinel" is famous because it is one of Clarke's stories that contributed ideas that went into the 1968 film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. "The Sentinel" has been widely anthologized, but today I finally read "The Sentinel" in its original published form that included the illustration shown to the left on this page.

Mare Crisium

 Sea of Crises. The events of the story begin in the year 1996 when the first human exploration of Mare Crisium is taking place. The name "Mare Crisium" is attributed to Giovanni Riccioli, who in his writing about the Moon stated his belief that there was no life on the Moon.

Clarke wrote "The Sentinel" for submission to a BBC writing contest and his target audience was likely to be familiar with an idea popularized in fiction: that other planetary bodies such as the Moon (see "The Death of the Moon") and Mars might be "dying worlds" that long ago may have had more water and environmental conditions suitable for life.

Mars 2020

Life on Mars
Fictional accounts of life on Mars are often traced to the imaginative Giovanni Schiaparelli who reported seeing linear surface features on Mars that other astronomers could not see by telescopic observation. Nicolas Flammarion fanned the flames of fantasy about intelligent life on Mars, suggested that an ancient Martian civilization might have long ago engineered paths for the distribution of a dwindling water supply across the surface of Mars. Not to be left on the sidelines of history, Percival Lowell built an observatory and his imaginary sightings of "canals" on Mars culminated in his 1908 book Mars As the Abode of Life. Many of Clarke's British readers were certainly familiar with The War of the Worlds and its depiction of Martian invaders at war with humans in England. If there could be intelligent beings from Mars, then why not Earth's Moon as well?

Moon dust videos

Clarke included in "The Sentinel" the idea that the relatively flat surface of Mare Crisium had once (a billion years ago) been covered by water a half mile deep. In 1911 "Caterpillar" was adopted as the name for steel plate-tracked vehicles (originally a British invention). The first page of "The Sentinel" reads like a carefully designed product placement advertisement for Caterpillar tractors. I remember as a boy listening to some folks fret about the possibility that Apollo astronauts might sink into deep Moon dust. Clarke seems to have been more concerned about crevices and steep mountains as likely impediments to driving around on the surface of the Moon. However, Moon dust does play a role in Clarke's story.

Jezero Crater

In Clarke's imagination, the entire southern end of Mare Crisium was covered by river deltas, created in an ancient age when torrential rains fell on the nearby mountains. 

Clarke's description of the surface of the Moon in "The Sentinel" sounds most similar to what has been found on Mars (see the image to the left) where there actually are sedimentary deposits and the remnants of ancient river deltas.

cover art by Carolus Thole

While on their drive across the flat Mare, the exploration team spots a strange metallic glint emanating from the top of a mountain located along the edge of the Mare. They decide to investigate and while approaching the Mysterious Mountain™ there are discussions among the team concerning living things on the Moon and the unlikely possibility of intelligent life having existed on the Moon in the far past. 

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original art by Frank Paul

In Clarke's imaginary fictional universe of "The Sentinel", it was well known that "primitive" plant-like organism had once existed on the Moon (Clarke calls it "creeping moss"). Also creeping into the story is the whispered possibility that some as-yet undiscovered advanced life-form may have once existed on the Moon. Maybe in another Reality there could have been a sequel to "The Sentinel" about the plant people of the Moon.

At first, the explorers of Mare Crisium have no reason to suspect that they have discovered an artifact left on the Moon by space aliens. Clarke includes in the story a more likely source of the metallic glint: a recent meteor strike may have laid bare a brightly reflective metal deposit on the side of the mountain.

Clarke's description of the alien artifact.

The story as told in "The Sentinel" is a first person account that is narrated by Wilson, a selenologist, who climbs the Mysterious Mountain with Garnett, his assistant. Look at those jagged peaks in Figure 1, above. Lucky for Wilson and Garnett, the low gravity of the Moon allows them to climb the steep mountain and discover an alien artifact. The "roughly pyramidal structure" has "glittering mirror surfaces" that have long been protected by a force-field.

the circular edge of the force-field

This is where Clarke brings in the Moon dust (see the passage shown to the left on this page). Wilson realizes that he has discovered an alien machine, protected from meteorite strikes for "an eternity" (well, only hundreds of millions of years) by the force-field.

Wilson wonders how long the alien artifact has been there; possibly since before there was life on Earth. Towards the end of the story, Wilson says that the artifact has been dated to about the time when on Earth "life emerged from the sea".

1951

As depicted in "The Sentinel", Wilson's account of the alien machine's discovery is written 20 years later (2016), at a point in time after which atomic power had been used to break through the alien force-field. In doing so, the artifact was damaged. Wilson guesses that for eons the alien artifact had been sending a signal back to its creators. Now, with that signal interrupted, Wilson wonders if the aliens might come to investigate Earth. "The Sentinel" is a rare story that neatly avoids Clement's Paradox.

John Bunner's 1951 story "The Watchers" was published in an even more obscure venue than was "The Sentinel": a fanzine called Slant. Brunner was only 17 in 1951.

In the Ekcolir Reality.

The "Watchers" reside inside a plastic bubble on the Moon, surrounded by devices that keep them alive. Lucky for us, there are two Watchers who have to discuss their mission and so provide us with an account of why they are watching Earth. "Discuss" might not be the best word since Brunner seems to imply that the two Watchers are telepathically linked.

The Watchers of Brunner's imagination make use of a "perception probe" that detects interesting objects on Earth and transmits images of science fiction magazines (issues of Galaxy, Astounding, New Worlds...) back to the Watchers. Based on what they see in the pulp Sci Fi magazines, the Watchers conclude that Earthlings will soon have spaceships and will then visit the Moon.

Is that a sea or psi monster?

It is not clear how long the Watchers have been waiting for Earthlings to develop a technological civilization and spaceships. "The Watchers" is very short, so there are few clues, but I like to imagine that Brunner tried to depict the Watchers as some kind of artificial life-form that could be switched on and off, allowing them to wait through many eons while life evolved on Earth.

After writing "The Sentinel", Clarke went on to write other stories (example) that allowed him to explore and imagine how advanced aliens might interact with primitive humans. I have not read many of Brunner's novels; I'd be interested to know if any of them concerned what happened when his alien Watchers finally made contact with humans. I hope The Atlantic Abomination is not the best that Brunner could come up with for an ancient aliens novel. 

Star King

From among Asimov, Brunner, Clarke and Vance, which of these authors had the most intriguing story about ancient aliens? I'm partial to Vance's Star King because in that novel, Vance had the audacity to suggest that aliens played a role in creating we humans. However, among this group of writers, Clarke seemed to take most seriously the idea of humans meeting aliens who are far more technologically advanced than we are.

Related Reading: more Avon novels, Asimov fiction set in 2016 & "The Golden Helix" & The Clarke-Brunner Effect 

Next: Clarke's 1948 story Against the Fall of Night

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Missions of Antigravity

cover art by David B. Mattingly

I was tempted to call this blog post "Probability Zero". In 1942, Asimov published one of the first stories in the Probability Zero series: "Time Pussy", a silly story about animals with temporally-warped physiology. Much later, in 1987, Asimov published "Left to Right", which I read in Gold. "Left to Right" takes as its starting point the physicist Robert L. Forward. In this nerd joke story, Forward is transformed into Robert L. Backward during a physics experiment. Forward dabbled in science fiction and wrote about topics such as antimatter and antigravity.

My first introduction to weird science fictional physics came in Asimov's novel The Gods Themselves. Asimov imagined an alternate universe where the laws of physics were different than what exists here in our universe. Asimov also made use of imaginary positronic brains for no better reason than to have a cool-sounding futuristic alternative to electronics.

The Cloud City of Stratos.

Gravity Nullification
Gravity nullifying materials such as Cavorite have long been used in some science fiction stories. If you want your spacecraft to more easily blast into outer space, simply shield it from the Earth's gravitational field.

Antimatter-powered space travel and antigravity were integral to the imagined future of Star Trek. Could floating cities such as Laputa and Stratos use materials with negative mass in order to defy gravity?

source

I recently mentioned the story "Noise Level" by Raymond Jones which is not content to simply imagine a future with antigravity technology. In "Noise Level", readers are dropped into the middle of a research and development project aimed at developing the first practical antigravity device.

Sci Fi stories that tackle the details of fictional science risk alienating readers. I recently commented on "Do I Wake or Dream?", a story by Frank Herbert that has annoyed many readers with its jargon-filled handwave account of how to create a conscious computer.

What about "Noise Level"? How did readers react to the fictional R&D program described in that story? Lucky for us, we have quantitative data from the 1950s.

story popularity analytics

John Campbell printed reader rankings of the stories that were published in Astounding. At the end of 1952, Asimov was ranked number 1 for the first two parts of his story "The Currents of Space". However, in December, "Noise Level" was more popular than the final part of Asimov's story.

I get the feeling that given Campbell's background in physics, Astounding was something of a bastion of hard science fiction. Other Sci Fi magazines such as Galaxy moved in other directions and probably had a different kind of readership.

Announcement by John Campbell from the January 1953 issue of Astounding.

cover art by Gordon Pawelka

One Penny per Word
A details-oriented story such as "Noise Level" was popular with the science nerds who subscribed to Astounding while the technical details in "Do I wake of Dream?" only annoyed the readers of Galaxy. How could an editor like Campbell efficiently attract Sci Fi story writers who appealed to his readers? Beginning in April of 1953, Campbell began giving a monetary bonus to authors who were ranked as having the most popular story in each issue of Astounding.

In May of 1952, Thomas J. King and Robert Briggs published an article describing how to clone frogs by nuclear transplantation. The January 1953 issue of Astounding contained an article about human clones called "Un-Man". Sadly, "Un-Man" was written by Poul Anderson who had a background in physics, not biology.

from "Un-Man"

Genes in 1953
In the text of "Un-Man", Anderson tells readers that "a gene is nothing but a set of giant protein molecules". In making this false claim, Anderson was probably under the influence of Alfred Mirsky, who erroneously believed that proteins, not DNA, made up the linear molecular filaments of chromosomes (for example, see THE COMPOSITION AND STRUCTURE OF ISOLATED CHROMOSOMES).

Born Under Mars
interior art by
Dwight Morrow

Mirsky wrote in 1951, "protein is itself a microscopic thread, whereas DNA is not, the protein seems to be the fundamental fiber of chromosomes". In 1953, Watson and Crick published their DNA double helix model which shows how a sequence of nucleotides might store genetic information in a long DNA polymer. Despite its bogus molecular biology, "Un-Man" was the most popular story in the January 1953 issue of Astounding.

Antigravity in 1966
In the 1970s, when I entered into my personal golden age of science fiction, I was discovering re-runs of Star Trek and I read Born Under Mars by John Brunner. When I found antigravity technology in stories such as "The Cloud Minders" and Born Under Mars I was not surprised. I always assumed that devices such as Nomad and M-4 were able to float because of antigravity technology. In Born Under Mars, Brunner was concerned about his imagined Martians, human beings who had lived on Mars for many generations. The Martians could not easily survive on worlds with strong gravitational fields, particularly if they did not have a nulgee bed to sleep in.

whip torture

And of course, artificial gravity could be used to boost gravity, too. The main character in Born Under Mars frets about the inevitable coming time when gravity would be boosted inside Martian cities for the convenience of people from Earth who were used to higher gravity.

Born Under Mars is set perhaps 1,000 years in our future. There have been almost no significant technological developments since the time of Einstein beyond the "natural" developments of a faster-than-light spaceship drive and related technologies such as that for artificial gravity control. Brunner does adopt for his story the existence a torture device, a whip, that directly stimulates pain sensory neurons without leaving any residual tissue damage. Sadly, the interior art for Born Under Mars depicts the Hi Tek™ neuronic whip as being a conventional whip.

cover art for the 1973 edition

The main background premise in Born Under Mars is that humans have reached some natural limit for technological development. Further progress will only be possible by genetic selection for an improved type of human being with greater cognitive abilities.

How will this brain boost be achieved? Brunner imagined a secretive conspiracy that reminds me of Asimov's saga of the Foundations, where the Super Secret™ Second Foundation must guide galactic civilization towards a better future. In Bunner's imagined future, as Humanity spreads outward into the galaxy, half of the expanding human civilization (a faction known as the Centaurs) has a rigid social structure, including a planned breeding program. However, nobody likes the tight-assed Centaurs. The other half of the galaxy is populated by the easy-going Bears. The plan is for the Centaurs to evolve a new type of  superhuman by selective breeding, but then the new Super Genes™ will stolen and spread among the Bears.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Born Under Mars is a relatively short and fun mystery adventure. It reads like a story set in post WWII England with bumbling spies from America, Russia and China all trying to figure out what is going on while a Super Secret™ organization based in London on Mars is able to come out on top.

cover art by George Pawelka

More Brunner
In the March 1953 issue of Astounding is Brunner's first story published in America, "Thou Good and Faithful", which is also a fun little story. It was the most popular story for readers of Astounding that month and also was the cover story for that issue.

"Thou Good and Faithful" has a great premise: that if we were to visit distant exoplanets, we should not be surprised to meet artificial lifeforms of alien design rather than biological creatures such as ourselves.

cover art by
Henry Van Dongen

In Brunner's imagined future of "Thou Good and Faithful", humans from Earth are relentlessly spreading through the galaxy, ready to blast any native lifeforms that get in the way of their colonization efforts. It is a surprising revelation for the humans when they come across some aliens who offer to be friends.

Related reading: no artificial gravity, Hal Clement's "Mission of Gravity" was serialized in the April, May, June and July 1953 issues of Astounding.

Next: Nirutam's revelations about Deep Time.

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Decay

cover art by Gray Morrow

I've been thinking about science fiction stories that depict a culture with access to some advanced  scientific knowledge and technology, but nobody quite knows how to do new science and generate scientific progress or even keep in repair the existing high tech gizmos. This is on my mind because of the strange culture that develops on the Moon in The Foundations of Eternity.

There was a small population of humans living on the Moon thousands of years ago because aliens wanted to study the cognitive skills of our species. In the "wild" on Earth there was, at that time, no such thing as science, but in the artificial environment of Observer Base the humans developed an interest in mathematics and astronomy and physics...ultimately resulting in some startling advances in the strange technological field of positronics.

Life was quite comfortable for most residents of Observer Base. They were cared for by sophisticated robotic assistants (the orbho) and many daily conveniences were provided by swarms of invisible nanobots. In fact, life was so relaxed that most humans on the Moon had no interest in science: they took the available technological marvels that sustained their lives for granted.

The sheep look up
Yes, it was all too nice and comfy to last!

R. Gohrlay objected to the fact that the little colony of humans on the Moon were little more than a transient scientific experiment being performed by curious space aliens.

When she learns that humans are puppets for scheming aliens,   Gohrlay revolts and overnight all of the orbho and nanites are destroyed or in serious need of reprogramming and the humans are on their own, stranded on the Moon without a single spaceship and no way to reach Earth.

In The Foundations of Eternity the small cadre of scientists suddenly becomes the means by which the human population of the Moon can survive.

I've been wondering just how far and how hard that tiny island of human civilization would fall, to what extent the budding civilization at Observer Base would decay.

What would happen to the Observers who were on still on Earth?

Decay
As a young lad I fell in love with science fiction stories such as Asimov's Foundation trilogy (Galactic Empire collapses into barbarism, people slide from atomic power back to fossil fuels), Clarke's The City and the Stars (in the far future humans cower on Earth, afraid to return to the stars), Norton's Star Man's Son (post-apocalyptic Earth), Assignment Nor'Dyren by Sydney Van Scyoc (an alien culture throws away the means for progress and collapses into a dark age) and Brunner's Born Under Mars (Earth's first colony on another world has become a dingy backwater).

Swords and spaceships

source

I've never read Brunner's The Alter on Asconel. According to Jacob Haller, Brunner imagined a "swords and spaceships" Galactic Empire that reminds me of The Gods Must Be Crazy. If we can drop a Coke bottle on Africa, why can't the ancient remnants of a collapsed galactic civilization include a bunch of spaceships (or teleportation terminals) that bumbling humans can get their hands on? Oh, and throw in a telepath for good measure. Who is the "extra-galactic god", some space alien or just a huckster from the rim of the galaxy who can trick the gullible primitives of Asconel?

In The Foundations of Eternity, humans on the Moon are an alien's science experiment. The aliens have designed and created the human species and with time they will dispose of us, with little more concern than a human scientist might make a genetically engineered bacterium to amplify a spliced plasmid and then destroy it with bleach and flush it down the drain after isolating the desired gene from the recombinant plasmid.

Gino D'Achille cover art

The only times I've ever been tempted to write a sword into a science fiction story is when the story takes place in the past during an era when a sword is high tech. I got my fill of swords in science fiction by watching Star Trek and reading The Faded Sun.

Okay, so Gohrlay does not hack Doltun down with a sword; she fries his brain with a burst of microwaves then conceals the murder by soaking him in liquid nitrogen. I can picture having a klystron and cryogenic fluids around a research lab, but not a sword.

Still, there seems to be a special law of nature within fictional universes...the bigger the sword that a heroine carries, the less clothing she wears.

Telepathy
In The Foundations of Eternity, R. Gohrlay is stranded on the Moon without a spaceship and without any ability to control or reverse engineer the remaining nanites.

R. Gohrlay is able to establish telepathic contact with the biological Gohrlay. I'm currently struggling with the issue of one-way versus bi-directional telepathy. For Gohrlay, telepathy works best between two brains that are similar in structure and function. When R. Nahan is provided with copies of the "Gohrlay brain circuits" telepathic communication automatically begins to occur between R. Gohrlay and R. Nahan.

R. Gohrlay learns about the "Huaoshy" by means of telepathic contact with the biological Gohrlay who is on Many Sails. I put "Huaoshy" in quotes because the word "Huaoshy" actually refers to the Kac'hin, but Gohrlay mistakenly begins the human practice of using "Huaoshy" to refer to the sedronic lifeform that created the Kac'hin. On board Many Sails, Gohrlay learns that she is going to live out the rest of her life on a distant planet of the "Huaoshy" (actually, the Kac'hin).

source

Should the biological Gohrlay have some sensation of being in telepathic contact with R. Gohrlay? If so, would Gohrlay be able to keep secret from the Kac'hin the existence of telepathy? I imagine that telepathy depends on the presence of a type of hierion in brains. In order for R. Gohrlay to receive meaningful information by telepathy there must be a resonance between "her" brain and the brain of the biological Gohrlay. Because of "her" positronic brain, R. Gohrlay has more hierions and better control over them, but the biological Gohrlay should have some change in her neural network activity when R. Gohrlay is looking through her mind. Would R. Gohrlay be able to send a specific message to the biological Gohrlay, such as: Don't let the aliens know that we are in telepathic communication?

When R. Gohrlay takes over Observer Base she uses her telepathic ability to send a destructive pulse of hierions into Orbho Anagro. Her positronic brain can alter the behavior of the hierions that are a key component of the Huaoshy nanite technology that is used in the orbho. Never having explored positronics themselves, the Huaoshy never developed a defense against Gohrlay's surprise attack.

Fun with google image search...
Searching for Gohrlay's descendants

In contrast, Many Sails uses even more advanced sedronic components, so the biological Gohrlay is carried away by Many Sails when the orbho lose control of Observer Base.

I've started thinking about the fate of Gohrlay when she is taken off to the galactic core by Many Sails. In Part II of The Foundations of Eternity when Many Sails finally returns to Earth, many thousands of years have passed. Still, it might be fun to assume that one of the humans on board Many Sails is a clone of Gohrlay or maybe a descendant.

The positronic robots such as R. Rycleu are programmed to protect Humanity, but they have been taking orders from R. Gohrlay for thousands of years. What would they do if confronted by a clone of the original Gohrlay who told them that it was a mistake for positronic robots to struggle against the Huaoshy? Would R. Gohrlay finally be willing to admit that a small gang of positronic robots can't compete against the god-like Huaoshy?

Related reading. The details of Gohrlay's telepathic powers are described in my next blog post.

Under Oib

One of the first science fiction novels I read was John Brunner's Born Under Mars. I have not seen that book for 40 years, but I fondly recall the mood that it created: Mars as a kind of rundown slum of the galaxy.

Brunner depicted Mars as the first world settled by colonists from Earth, but with time, humanity reached the stars and Mars became a nearly forgotten backwater. Brunner imagined that the human residents of Mars were very tall due to the low gravity of their home world.

In Exode, there are obvious similarities between Mars and the planet Oib. The Huaoshy selected the Koly star system as the key base of operations for Buld revolutionaries because of similarities between that star system and the Solar System. Specifically, because of their attempt to terraform Oib, the Buld develop technology for transmitting vast amounts of power through space. Later, they can share that technology with Earth.

Oib is not as dead as Mars and the pek have put some effort into making Oib more human-friendly during the past 7 million years. Hemmal and Oib are called the "paired planets" by the residents of Oib. Nobody would be living on Oib if it were not right next door to the Earth-like Hemmal. The pek have fun terraforming Hemmal and providing it with terrain that is modeled on Earthly locals. In a joking mood, the pek even provided Oib with moons that look like the Moons of Mars. It is almost as if the pek want people from the Koly system to feel right at home in our Solar system.

welcome to Oib

At the end of Chapter Two of Exode, Parthney's adventure has brought him into orbit over Oib and he believes that he will soon be on his way down to the surface of Oib. Of course, the surface of Oib is a lethal environment for humans. People live under the surface of Oib.

In Brunner's story the protagonist, martian Ray Mallin, returns to his home and surprisingly finds his quiet world involved in the galactic equivalent of cold war spy shenanigans. In Exode, Oib is like Cuba, close to the affluent shore of Hemmal/Florida, but the technology of Oib is dull and home-spun compared to the flashiness of Hemmal.

Oib is the home of a band of revolutionaries who have freed themselves and run away from the "slave society" of Hemmal. The revolutionaries view the people of Hemmal as little better than cattle, being bred and fattened by the mysterious Creators who brought humans from Earth to the distant worlds of the Galactic Core. However, what if you start a glorious revolutionary and you boldly declare your independence and go where no Buld has gone before...and nobody cares?

Or, even worse, what if it appears that the capitalist pigs on the mainland have co-opted the glorious revolution and are manipulating it so as to slyly advance their own diabolical domination of humanity? On Oib, the spiritual fire of revolution is now 20,000 years old and only a few "grumpy old men" remain to stir the last dying ember. When Parthney arrives at Oib, having missed the party by 20 millennia, he has to wonder what he is getting himself into. In a galaxy dominated by the high-tech equivalents of stealth bombers and cruise missiles, Parthney is sent off to the front line battle on Earth without even a toothbrush.