Predestination

In the Ekcolir Reality:  Predestination Moon.
Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the
DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the
blue "sedronite" who is in this image.

In the previous Reality, science fiction was dominated by trained scientists, many of them women.

The analogue of Isaac Asimov in the Ekcolir Reality wrote one of the first popular science accounts of the theory that Earth's Moon was created by a collision of two proto-planets: 'The Error of the Moon' was published in Future Science Fiction magazine.

Not long thereafter, one of the analogues of Jack Vance published Predestination Moon. The geological detail of that story created controversy and many observers suspected that the story was actually a collaborative effort. In any case, it told the story of how "ancient aliens" created the Moon by design, using their advanced technology to shift a giant asteroid onto a collision course with Earth.

Investigating the Kac'hin

The Next 4 Billion
My collaborators Gohrlay and Angela have both tried to estimate the age of the Huaoshy and they came to a shared conclusion: the Huaoshy are not ancient enough to have possibly been involved in the creation of Earth. But what about the next 4,000,000,000 years of Earth?

Grean's concern in the Ekcolir Reality was ending the Time Travel War and bringing into existence the Final Reality. The Kac'hin were created as a kind of interface between we humans and the Huaoshy. It is not clear that any human ever saw the true physical form of a Kac'hin.

In fact, both Ivory and Gohrlay reached the conclusion that the physical form of the Kac'hin as displayed to humans was a kind of disguise or shell that concealed the true nature of the Kac'hin. According to Gohrlay, the Kac'hin had "extensions" within the Hierion Domain and femtobot "appendages" that were able to link an "individual" Kac'hin into the network of all Kac'hin.

Trysta's family tree.

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The ability of Kac'hin to produce human offspring was a "feature" of the Kac'hin that arose from genetic surgery carried out by femtobots. As shown in the family tree, above, the Kac'hin have played a major role in allowing the descendants of Trysta to "infiltrate" Earth and shape the structure of the Buld Reality.

According to Gohrlay, the Trysta-Grean Pact included a way for Trysta to have descendants who would live on into the future of Earth here in the Final Reality. However, which of the many branches of Trysta's family tree that might have been allowed to persist here under the watchful eyes of the tryp'At Overseers is not clear.

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After several years of investigating Trysta's twisty family, I remain most puzzled by the strange case of Svahr. It appears that Svahr played a decisive role in the Reality Change that ended the Ekcolir Reality and brought into existence the Final Reality. I've been exposed to accounts of Svahr's life in the Ekcolir Reality (example), but Svahr also seems to have been one of the individuals who was "stored" in Eternity and "brought into" the Final Reality from the Ekcolir Reality. Svahr might still be on Earth and avoiding the attention of the tryp'At.

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Gohrlay believes that it is a mistake to put too much emphasis on Svahr. Gohrlay endorses the idea that 10,000 years ago Trysta "inserted" Asterothrope genes into the human population of Earth. Since that story is told so as to include a role for the tryp'At, it would not surprise me if Svahr is here on Earth and does not have to work to avoid the notice of the tryp'At. Indeed, it may be that she has more to fear from having her identity revealed to we humans who might want to study her and her particularly "concentrated" collection of Asterothrope genes.

Trysta Iwedon

I suspect that Svahr retains a set of nanites that allow her to alter her physical appearance. It may well be that Svahr has already had contact with me, but I would have no way of recognizing her, which is probably exactly the way she wants it.

Next: a visit with Trysta

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Scutinary Vitalists

cover art by David Russell

When he wrote The Book of Dreams, Jack Vance was at the peak of his literary form, throwing out amusing ideas "like a dog scratching off fleas". Even the title of the book is one such "flea". In Vance's story, protagonist Kirth Gersen must hunt and destroy the Demon Prince known as Howard Alan Treesong. I love the fact that the title of Vance's novel is the title of a book that Treesong wrote.

Treesong had become the preeminent criminal in the galaxy, the self-proclaimed "King of Thieves". In his early criminal career, Treesong killed Gersen's parents.

Gersen poses as a journalist and tries to lure the secretive Treesong into the open by pretending that he wants to publish Treesong's biography. Gersen's "secretary", Alice Wroke warns that Treesong will "never allow you to publish undignified things about him". Gersen is persistent: "He can write the story himself. We'll sell a hundred million copies." Alice asks, "Do you think it is wise to publicize the exploits of such a man?" Gersen replies: "Certainly. Sooner or later he will come to a bad end."

two lifeforms of Bethune Preserve

Treesong ultimately "comes to a bad end" on the planet "Bethune Preserve". Bethune Preserve was discovered by Trudi Selland. Trudi was a "locator", one of the many space explorers who searched through the star systems of the galaxy for habitable planets. After finding Bethune Preserve, Trudi's description of the planet attracted the attention of the Naturalist Society. Bethune Preserve was soon set aside as a "planet-sized vivarium" for the study and preservation of its many unique lifeforms.

Scutinary Vitalists
In addition to the Naturalist Society, Bethune Preserve was of interest to many lesser-known organizations such as the Biological Falange, the Sierra Club and the Scutinary Vitalists.

image credits

I like to imagine that Vance's Demon Princes novels describe real worlds that existed in Deep Time, possibly within a previous Reality such as the Ekcolir Reality. In that Reality, the Scutinary Vitalists was founded by Gerald, Tonya and Jane Carlyle. They published many books about the theory of humans as "puppets" for nanoscopic devices that were thought to reside inside people, what became known as the Scutinary Doctrine.

The Scutinary Doctrine led to a fringe scientific research program that finally resulted in the isolation of what was called the "Vital Residual", an unidentifiable material that could be isolated from living organisms that had been rapidly incinerated. The Scutinary Vitalists were able to show that the Vital Residual existed inside living creatures on other planets, including Bethune Preserve.

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After hierion physics began in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jackie published the idea that the Vital Residual might be a form of hierion matter. Only much later was the Vital Residual recognized as sedronic matter, the residue of destroyed zeptites.

Next: Observer Base in the First Reality

In this series: Director of Forestlands

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Alien Noir

"Grean in Space", the Buld Reality

My informant, Gohrlay, recently mentioned that people from the planet Luk'ru have served as Interventionist agents on Earth. The first example of such an agent was Princess Atossu, who helped set Western Civilization on a course that led through the Roman Empire towards an eventual Industrial Revolution in England, Western Europe and the United States.

According to Gohrlay, Atossu was the last of the agents from Luk'ru who carried out a mission on Earth. Before the establishment of Lendhalen as an Interventionist training base, there were many agents from Luk'ru who ended up on Earth, particularly in the Ekcolir Reality. In fact, since the Thomas clones did not become the dominant Interventionists of the Industrial Age in the Ekcolir Reality, agents from Luk'ru continued to operate on Earth right up through the 20th century in the Ekcolir Reality.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Roberta Moore wrote extensively about the Luk'ru interventionists in the Ekcolir Reality. Here, in the Final Reality, Roberta's replicoid was an active member of the Writers Block. According to Gohrlay, here in the Final Reality, the Writers Block serves as a think tank for generating possible strategies for introducing the people of Earth to the secret history of Humanity.

Houston Space Port

The Atossu Intervention was a novel (written in the Final Reality) that told the story of the last Luk'ru Interventionist on Earth, but according to Gohrlay, that book will never be shown to the people of Earth since it would cause too much disruption of Western Civilization. Gohrlay puts it this way: "Nobody wants to know the truth about the origins of the religions that became dominant in the Final Reality." Particularly since hermaphroditic space aliens are so intimately involved.

In the Ekcolir Reality, religion posed no barrier to learning about the secret history of Earth, so science fiction authors such as Thanu Millard, Roberta Moore and Sam Jacky published dozens of stories about agents from Luk'ru and their missions on Earth. According to Gohrlay, there was a television show called Dick Girls that was inspired by a Sam Jacky novel of that name. That TV show was set in the "Richard Hunt Fictional Universe" that had been first used as a setting for stories by Thanu Millard. The original Dick Girls novel was set in Houston, Texas during the 1950s of the Ekcolir Reality when humans first went to the Moon.

A Grendel and an agent from Luk'ru in Dick Girls. Image credits.

For the television show, the fictional Richard Hunt Detective Agency was located in Los Angeles to facilitate production of the episodes. In the Dick Girls novel, Richard Hunt, Private Investigator, was never shown to the reader and there was much argument about whether readers were supposed to assume such a person ever exited. It sounds to me like "Richard Hunt" was just an invented cover for the agents from Luk'ru.

Really, "Richard Hunt" simply existed as a way to allow for puns and jokes about how the agents from Luk'ru were "Dick's Girls" or how their mission was to "hunt for Dick".

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According to Gohrlay, Dick Girls could have never have appeared on network television in our Reality, but its sexual themes were fairly tame for the science fiction specialty network of the Ekcolir Reality. The Interventionist agents from Luk'ru who starred in the show were all beautiful women, but the residents of Luk'ru were aliens (an engineered variant of the Kac'hin) who only happened to have the superficial appearance of Earth women.

whimsical depiction of the planet Luk'ru

In the Sam Jacky version of the "Richard Hunt Fictional Universe", Grendels were the mastermind Interventionists, but they had to remain in the background due to their alien features (including pointy ears and flipper-like feet). The Grendels used agents from Luk'ru as their foot soldiers on Earth. As written by Sam Jacky, the Grendels used pheromones to control their Luk'ru agents. Each episode of Dick Girls stereo-typically began with one of the Luk'ru agents being teleported int the Hierion Domain to receive a mission briefing from a Grendel.

These introductory scenes always played out the same. While the Grendel explained the upcoming mission, the poor Luk'ru agent was irresistibly attracted to the Grendel. They would perform some bizarre alien sex act while the backstory for the mission was methodically described by the Grendel. In the television show, it was implied that the agents from Luk'ru were all hermaphrodites while the Grendels were all depicted as female. The Grendels and the agents from Luk'ru were inter-fertile, and through the years of the television series, the Grendels were often depicted as pregnant and shown raising children who were either themselves Grendels or the next generation of Luk'ru agents. The predominantly female science fiction fans of the Ekcolir Reality never seemed to mind the unrealistic biology of Grendel-Luk'ru breeding as long as the sex scenes were steamy enough.

an Earth Overseer (image credits)

The bulk of each episode was very science oriented, as the Luk'ru agent tried to introduce some advanced technology into the developing civilization of Earth. Usually the mission was a failure because an Overseer would step in and prevent Earthlings from using the alien technology.

In the invariant formula of the Dick Girls television programs, the last scene of each one hour-long show was an epilogue in which a human character from that episode wound up in bed with the Luk'ru agent.

The Gods Thonselves

The only mystery was how each such humans would react when the Luk'ru agent revealed "her" alien anatomy. After a rather explicit sex scene, the episode would end with the deep red Dick Girls logo splashed across the screen.

According to Gohrlay, there was also a short-duration television program in the Ekcolir Reality that was based on a novel called The Gods Thonselves that was written by Isaac Asimov. Apparently Asimov imagined that there were tri-sexual Sedronites with males and females who each passed a gamete to the third sex who then gestated their offspring.

Replicoid Time

In the Ekcolir Reality, The Gods Thonselves was written well after green house gases were causing sea level rise on Earth. In the television show, the plot involved alien Sedronites who are trying to help Earthlings stop the Antarctic ice cap from melting.

Next: a Kac'hin female and a Thomas clone have All the Time in the World

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Slaves of the Huaoshy

cover art by Nico Keulers

Gohrlay and I have once again been discussing one of our favorite topics, the question of whether we Earthlings are slaves.

Previously, I mentioned that I've never read Jack Vance's "Slaves of the Klau", originally published in 1952 as "Planet of the Damned". According to Rich Horton, the story starts with some humanoid aliens (the Lekthwans) living on Earth. The Lekthwans are so human-like that the human protagonist, Roy Barch, becomes infatuated with a Lekthwan female named Komeitk Lelianr. Before this unlikely romance can get off the ground, Roy and Komeitk get snatched up by the evil Klau, a third species that is trying to conquer the galaxy. (Maybe the Klau need workers to mine gold for them?) The plot of "Slaves of the Klau" sounds similar to that of a set of Vance novels that I have read, the Durdane Series.

in the Ekcolir Reality

From the perspective of this millennium (where we have computers that can fly spaceships or airplanes and drive automobiles) it is hard to imagine advanced space-faring aliens who would need to enslave humans in order to get cheap labor, but I suppose Vance just liked giving his heroes a challenge. For Roy, the challenge is to escape from the Klau and return to Earth, and maybe win the heart of Komeitk. However, based on my reading of Vance works such as the Demon Princes Saga, Vance is a much better science fiction story teller when he uses space aliens as subtle background elements rather than evil antagonists.

Deep Time

in the Buld Reality (ISFDB)

According to Gohrlay, in the Ekcolir Reality, Sam Jacky published a novel called Platinum and Iron that explained the link between sedrons and platinum and depicted Sedronites, including the Kac'hin and we Earthlings, as being slaves of the pek.

blue sedronite credits
original cover art by Alan Atkinson and Brian Salmon

A science fiction story that has haunted me for four decades is Brothers of Earth by Carolyn Cherry. I don't think she set out to write a story about slavery, but I took it as a story that illustrates how people can become comfortable with slavery.

Special thanks to Miranda Hedman (www.mirish.deviantart.com) for the DeviantArt stock photograph "Black Cat 9 - stock" that I used to create the blue "sedronite" who is in the image shown to the left.

The Exode Trilogy

According to Gohrlay, a similar book was written by Cherry's analogue in the Ekcolir Reality: Sisters of Earth. In that novel, avenging Sedronites from the Galactic Core battled to free humans from enslavement by the pek.

The question remains, to what extent are we all, here in the Final Reality, slaves? This is a deep mystery in the Exode Trilogy.

 Related Reading and 2018: The Gods of Earth

2019 UPDATE

Planet of the Damed

I finally read "Planet of the Damned" (download here) which was later re-published as "Slaves of the Klau". I enjoyed the first dozen pages of the story, but then it turned into a very similar story to The Asutra. Yawn.

Vance never explains how it is that Earthlings and the Lekthwans are so biologically similar. Roy and Komeitk are able to breed and produce a daughter. It is intriguing to see snippets of text that will later be expanded and re-worked in Vance's The Languages of Pao and The Asutra. There are even story elements that will later be re-used in Vance's Demon Princes saga and the Cadwal Chronicles.

Roy and Komeitk the "alien". Interior art for "Planet of the Damned" by Edmund Emshwiller

Escapist Clan

The Lekthwans can't stand the idea of eating food that comes from a living organism. All of their food is manufactured. However, Ed Emshwiller could not restrain himself from depicting Komeitk with big breasts.

In The First Reality, I depict Prelands as a human variant that has been designed to be fed by nanites. The Prelands are hermaphrodites with internally-directed mammary glands, like a kangaroo.

Next: the analogue of H. G. Wells in the Ekcolir Reality.

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Final Reality Change

original cover art by Earle Kulp Bergey

In previous blog posts (example) I've meandered through the science fiction vortex of sex, a thought space where writers are free to endlessly explore imagined life forms (both biological and artificial) and their attitudes about sex.

Gohrlay has been telling me tales about the creation of the science fiction genre and how science fiction was different in the Ekcolir Reality. To understand Sci Fi in the previous Reality it is of particular importance to remember that most science fiction story writers in the Ekcolir Reality were women and Western Society was heavily influenced by the Etruscans.

Recently, I was startled by Gohrlay's claim that in the Ekcolir Reality, because of a "chance" genetic event, the analogue of Jack Vance was born as a female. At first, I'd made the silly assumption that Jackie Vance was a rare fluke, but according to Gohrlay, many science fiction writers who were male in the Buld Reality had female analogs in the Ekcolir Reality.

The Secret Galactics

If this is true, then I have to re-think my idea that a "rare chance genetic" event was responsible for Jackie's existence as a female. It now seems likely that someone (Grean?) tinkered with the system for Temporal Momentum that constrained analogues to be genetically similar in the Realities of Earth's Reality Chain.

Earth Factor X

I asked Gohrlay for another example of a famous male science fiction author whose analogue was female in the Ekcolir Reality and she mentioned Alfred Elton van Vogt, who was named Anke in the Ekcolir Reality. I've never read any of van Vogt's stories, but I certainly saw his books on display in the book stores that I prowled during my formative years as a science fiction reader. He published The Secret Galactics right when I was first discovering printed science fiction novels and Earth Factor X was published as a DAW paper back in 1976. That was right when I was discovering DAW editions of Jack Vance novels such as Trullion.

Back cover blurb: the 1976 edition of Earth Factor X

The cover of Earth Factor X provides a good tutorial on why I never read any of van Vogt's stories. The cover illustration of a klunky robot and its human brain was bad enough to deflect a budding science nerd whose idea of a science fiction author was a scientist like Isaac Asimov.

The blurb on the back cover of Earth Factor X is funny. It starts with what can be read as a tongue-in cheek statement: "A.E. van Vogt ... reality twisted ... slightly." One of his writing techniques was to incorporate his night-time dreams into his stories.

science fantasy

Some critics have slammed van Vogt's writing style and I don't know if the blurb on the back cover was lifted from the text of the novel, but the next sentence in the blurb is mind-warping: "Earth shivered in a momentary absence of vibration". Yogi Berra died this week, but this sentence on the back cover of Earth Factor X could be used as a kind of tribute to the linguistically fractured comments that he was famous for. When reading Asimov, you want to turn on your brain and think logically. When reading something like "shivering absence of vibration" you need to let your semantic processing slip like a poorly adjusted clutch. To this day, I still believe that it ain't really science fiction unless you are in Asimov's kind of logical story-telling mode.

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Down through the years, stories of alien invasion have been popular in science fiction. It is tempting to mock most of the "reasons" given by Sci Fi authors for alien invasions, including the idea that alien beings with advanced technology and the ability to travel across vast interstellar distances would come to Earth for our gold.

Take us to your Women
Apparently the aliens who are trying to invade and control Earth in Earth Factor X are fascinated by human females. Here is a quote provided by van Vogt that comes from an alien instruction manual for their secret agents who are being sent to Earth: "It is agreed by all: women of earth have to be experienced to be believed." As guy, I can almost buy into the male fantasy that aliens would travel across great interstellar distances in order to "experience Earth women". Almost. Isaac Asimov brilliantly turned the whole Sci Fi fantasy of alien-human sex on its head in "What Is This Thing Called Love?"

original artwork by Malcolm Hadden Smith

According to Gohrlay, Anke van Vogt was an influential publisher of science fiction novels in the Ekcolir Reality. She managed what was often called "Anke's harem", a group of mostly female authors who wrote extensively about the Time War and Grean's plans for how to end it. Two members of that harem, from two different generations, were Jackie Vance and Samantha R. Delany who often collaborated and published under the pen name Sam Jacky.

In the Ekcolir Reality.
Original artwork by L. Raymond Jones
and A. Leslie Ross

In the Ekcolir Reality, Samantha Delany's novel Equinox told the story of Grean and how "she" (actually a Kac'hin hermaphrodite) took human form and, operating from a secret base "on" the Moon (actually, within the Hierion Domain) ended the Time War and planned the Final Reality Change.

Originally published in Future Science Fiction Magazine as Equinox: Tide of Love, Samantha's story began with the arrival of aliens on the Moon. The aliens were composed of a swarm of nanorobotic components that could assemble into any desired form. After learning to take on human form, the aliens began sending "humaniform probes" to Earth. Samantha wrote amusing vignettes about how the bumbling aliens learned the fine points of human behavior, including sexual behavior.

Next: The Earth-Spacer Conflict in the Ekcolir Reality.

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Twin Paradox

Gohrlay recently reminded me that it was 100 years ago when the Jack Vance of our Reality was crafted and brought into existence. In our Reality, Vance had three brothers and a sister. According to Gohrlay, in the Ekcolir Reality, the individual who "should have been" born as the analogue of John Holbrook Vance was instead born as twins.

I recently learned (discussed in this earlier blog post) that one of the analogues of Jack Vance in Deep Time was female. In the Ekcolir Reality, most science fiction authors were female, but according to Gohrlay, Jackie Vance led a reclusive life and allowed the world to believe that she was a man: "Jack". Jackie and John Vance were both popular science fiction writers in the Ekcolir Reality.

in the Buld Reality

I'd previously been told that "Jack and John" Vance were identical twins. Now, Gohrlay also claims that Jackie and John Vance were identical twins and that was why Jackie remained in seclusion. If true, this raises the question: how can you have "identical twins" who are not both the same sex?

Amber G. by Marcus J. Ranum
in the Ekcolir Reality

According to Gohrlay, it would have been no problem for either Grean or R. Gohrlay to arrange for both a male and a female "Vance analogue" to be born at the same time. However, due to the risks that arise during twin pregnancies, Jackie and John were actually born almost two years apart.

Gohrlay claims to not know how Jackie learned that she was John's twin. She suspects that due to their similar physical appearance, the Vance family was able to "figure it out". However, I wonder if Jackie was contacted by the replicoid of Vance's analogue from the Asimov Reality and informed about her special genetic endowment.

Why was it so important that there by Vance twins in the Ekcolir Reality? Gohrlay claims that this is a silly question. We naturally feel that all the effort that went into making the twins had to have occurred for an important reason. However, according to Gohrlay, Jackie was born first and it was only after that chance event (apparently the Vance analogues had been male in all earlier Realities) that the decision was made to create John Vance. If so, the question becomes: why was it important that there be a male analogue of Vance in the Ekcolir Reality?

Jackie Vance: Ekcolir Reality
Jackie often used the name "Sam Jacky"

Gohrlay speculates that it was easy for a "copy" of the male Vance analogue from the Asimov Reality to be substituted for John Vance of the Ekcolir Reality. She thinks it would have "caused problems" to have the Vance analogue from the Asimov Reality try to pretend to be a woman.

Copies of Copies
I still don't understand where the "copy of John Vance" came from (the "copy" that was substituted for the Real John Vance in the Ekcolir Reality). According to Gohrlay there are three possibilities:
1) the copy could have been a clone, or
2) the copy could have been made by using teleporter technology, or
3) the copy could have been an artificial life form that was indistinguishable from a human.

Next: A visit to the Andromeda Galaxy.

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