Star Sickness

In the Ekcolir Reality
cover art by John Berkey

Today I happened to mention (OK, it was more of a rant than a mention) to Gohrlay my opinion of Star Wars and so she told me about the analogue of Star Wars in the Ekcolir Reality. Apparently when George Lucas tried to have a science fiction author write a novel based on his movie's screenplay, nobody in the industry would sign on for the job. However, years later a kind of parody of the film surfaced and circulated among science fiction fans: The Star Sickness.

The science fiction genre never became a significant part of popular culture in the Ekcolir Reality. After a few money-losing efforts at science fiction film making, Hollywood abandoned science fiction. There was one long-lasting science fiction television network, but its low number of watchers was a good measure of the fringe nature of the genre.

Archive Worlds

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by John Berkey

In my previous blog post I mentioned the archive world Taivasila, a rogue planet where Gohrlay lived an artificial life. According to Gohrlay, there was a long series of novels in the Ekcolir Reality that gave fictionalized accounts of Gohrlay's many lives, both the biological ones and the artificial ones.

The analogue of Cordwainer Smith in the Ekcolir Reality was a woman named Cornelia Linebarger who published science fiction under many names including Corey Smith. Her novel Norstrilia was part of the Taivasila Trilogy and it explored the apparent immortality of Gohrlay. According to Gohrlay, that trilogy was: "about 0.01% fact and 99.99% fantasy".

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by John Berkey

Set in the same fictional universe, Secret of the Sunless World by Carroll Capps, was an account of Gohrlay's effort to return to Earth from her "exile" as an artificial life form. Gohrlay herself dismisses that story as, "a complete fabrication, but entertaining."

As told by Capps, apparently the "secret" was that Gohrlay could, at any time, escape from being an "archived mind" and return to her roots as a biological life form.

In the Ekcolir Reality
click to enlarge the image
original cover art by John Berkey

Given Gohrlay's disdain for many of the stories that were written about her life (or, her lives), I asked her if any fairly accurate accounts of her life were ever written in the Ekcolir Reality. According to Gohrlay, the analogue of Gregory Benford in the Ekcolir Reality was a woman named Grace Benford, who often published her science fiction under the name Gracy Benford.

Apparently The Stars Are Gods was heavily based on the Secret History of Earth. In the Ekcolir Reality, "First Contact" involved the arrival of a Fru'wu spaceship on Earth. The Fru'wu brought to Earth their understanding of how alien zeptites had long ago been integrated into every planet of the galaxy by the pek.

In the Ekcolir Reality
click to enlarge the image
original cover art by John Berkey

Gohrlay had her own role in humanity's initial interactions with the Fru'wu and was able to provide Earthly astronomers with clues for how to verify the Fru'wu claim that zeptite-based artificial life forms can live happily in stars like our Sun. According to Gohrlay, she knew Grace Benford and was able to make sure that her account of "First Contact" and Gohrlay's role during that meshing of cultures was accurate. Of course, when The Stars Are Gods was written, the "First Contact" event was still in the future. Gohrlay's largest complaint about the book was that the imagined biology of the Fru'wu was not a reflection of reality. I put "First Contact" in quotes, because when the Fru'wu arrived on Earth, space aliens had already long resided here.

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by John Berkey

According to Gohrlay, another example of science fiction written in the Ekcolir Reality which was made possible by time travel was the Hierion Trilogy by Corey Smith. The second book in that saga, Spacetown Ladies, involved Gohrlay's grandchildren and their adventures on one of the space colonies that was built in Earth orbit. When I pressed Gohrlay for details she refused to provide any. Apparently my replicoid is currently controlled by my analogue from the Ekcolir Reality, Irhit, who was also a character in Spacetown Ladies. According to Gohrlay, I'm not allowed to know any details about Irhit's life in the future of the Ekcolir Reality.

ancient astronauts

After weathering my attempts to get information about Irhit out of Gohrlay, she changed the subject and mentioned one more prolific author of stories set in the "Taivasila Fictional Universe". According to Gohrlay, the analogue of James White in the Ekcolir Reality was Jaimy White, who wrote a large number of novels about the struggle of humans to adapt to life in orbital space stations.

Apparently there was a strong suspicion that Jaimy also wrote The Star Sickness.

Next: an experiment in fantasy and science fiction.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Artificial Life

original cover art work by Frank R. Paul

Back in the previous millennium it became popular to write stories about imagined life on other planets.

"Chances overwhelmingly favor existence of life on Mars either past or present." - Hugo Gernsback

But what exactly did "life" mean to people who lived back in the 1920s and 1930s? In 'The Synthetic Men' by Ed Earl Repp, readers were introduced to an imagined biologist of the future (living in the year 2,000) named Pontius. On that story, Pontius has mastered the engineering of artificial protoplasm, resulting in his creation of artificial men.

In the Ekcolir Reality
According to Gohrlay, the concept of artificial life was introduced into science fiction by Helen Gernsback and Edith Rapp. Helen was the daughter of Rose and Hugo Gernsback in the Ekcolir Reality. Edith was one of the many science fiction writers who existed in the Ekcolir Reality as a female analogue of a male science fiction writer in our Reality.

Original cover art by Paul Alexander

Most aspects of science were developed at a slightly quicker pace in the Ekcolir Reality. Helen and Edith were aware of evidence that DNA is the genetic molecule, although when their story 'Artificial Life' was published, the helical structure of DNA had not yet been discovered.

According to Gohrlay, 'Artificial Life' told the story of how a human variant was created on a world of the Galactic Core. The pek were depicted as artificial life forms who did the design work for the new human variant, but they worked indirectly through their control of Grendels.

In our Reality, Ivory Fersoni was the first Earthling to fully understand the origins of the human species. Much of what Ivory knew about the secret History of Humanity came to her from her clone sisters.

Paul Alexander

Gohrlay recently confirmed that one of the Atlantis Clones is still on Earth and is affiliated with the Dead Widower Society. To the left and right on this page are whimsical imagined book covers. Apparently Angela herself does not like to use low bandwidth communications techniques like writing, but her ability to tap into the vast information content of the Sedronic Domain has allowed the Dead Widowers to compile a definitive account of how zeptites have been deployed and used on Earth.

C. L. Moore

1958 cover art

In our Reality, Catherine Lucille Moore was one of the writers who influenced science fiction "grand masters" like Heinlein. When I read Heinlein's 'The Green Hills of Earth' I had no idea that the song was inspired by Moore's horror-mythology/science-fantasy story 'Shambleau'.

1933

It was natural for writers to begin writing imaginary adventures to other worlds by having Earthlings visit the planets of the Solar System. I still find it hard to believe that anyone really expected to find humanoid living happily on the surfaces of worlds like Mars and Venus.

Archive World: Taivasila

However, Gohrlay recently informed me that while "archive worlds" such as Taivasila are not suitable for biological creatures like humans, artificial life forms composed of nanites, femtobots or zeptites have no problem "living" out their lives there.

Some of Gohrlay's past lives were "lived" as an artificial life form on worlds like Taivasila where humans could not survive on the surface without a spacesuit. During those lives, her mind was instantiated within an artificial life form that could survive and flourish under the harsh environmental conditions of Taivasila.

Hierion Trilogy

I asked Gohrlay if there have been occasions when artificial life forms resided on other planets (besides Earth) in our Solar System. Apparently all the nearby planets are infested with zeptites, but she doubts that the zeptites of Mars, for example, have ever taken on humanoid form. However, Gohrlay suspects that the replicoids of some science fiction writers in the Ekcolir Reality made sure that a few Earthlings received knowledge of Archive Worlds, possibly including Taivasila.

Related Reading: niaf

Next: more science fiction stories from Deep Time.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Gohrlay

The Exode Trilogy

Last year, I initiated a research project aimed at obtaining information about the fate of Gohrlay, the Neanderthal woman who was the first character created for what has become the Exode Trilogy. Then a strange thing happened: my collaborators began pushing me to recognize the role of science fiction in general and Jack Vance in particular in shaping the world as we know it.

Hypothesis

Gohrlay's brain

I'm forced to assume that Ivory Fersoni and the Atlantis Clones have been trying to do the impossible: pass critically important information about Gohrlay to me without provoking the tryp'At Overseers to step in and block their efforts. I've taken to calling the efforts of Ivory and the Dead Widowers a type of "Experimental Interventionism" that has been aimed at testing the limits of the Trysta-Grean Pact.

I'm further forced to assume that the "critical information" is not really new to me, but rather, it is information that I have previously obtained. However, I have in the past (repeatedly) been given the choice of 1) retaining conscious awareness of the truth and being forced to leave Earth or 2) being made to forget the truth and allowed to stay on Earth.

Original art by William Timmins

Risk Assessment
I'm a blabber mouth. I despise secrets and it is really difficult for me to keep a secret. However, I must face the possibility that there are some truths I can know as long as I keep them to myself.  Armed with that secret knowledge, I can decode the past and tell the secret history of Earth...as long as I restrict myself to telling that story in the form of a science fiction story.

I don't like the idea that I have to constantly estimate the risk of sharing what I know with the people of Earth. I don't want to play the role of an Experimental Interventionist, but I've been forced to conclude that that is the role I am expected to play. I'm too much of a coward to risk getting kicked off of Earth: I now believe that the Buld Reality, the world as we know it, was designed so that the future of Humanity depends on me staying here on this world and telling what I know (or, at least, much  of what I know) to my fellow Earthlings.

Saying What I Can Say Without Saying what I Can't Say

Taivasila

During the past year, I repeatedly asked my collaborators about the fate of Gohrlay. I gradually realized that they all knew perfectly well what had become of Gohrlay and, in fact, they had quickly and repeatedly told me what they knew. And I enthusiastically blogged about Gohrlay here on this blog. And the tryp'At had to step in and censor what I had written. Indeed, they had to censor my memories and make me forget what I had learned about Gohrlay. More than once. My brain must be a web of imposed blockages that have repeatedly kept me from remembering what I have learned about Gohrlay.

Now I've remembered once again, but somehow I've also realized that I must restrain myself. I will be allowed to retain my memories as long as I control my instinctive desire to share what I know with the people of Earth. This does not mean that I must remain silent. I simply must tell the secret history of Earth in the correct way: in the guise of a science fiction story.

What role did Gohrlay play in creating the tryp'At?

I can say this much: Gohrlay is here on Earth, ready, willing and able to share her special knowledge of the past with the people of Earth. Gohrlay is my muse. She has always been a part of my mind, shaping my thought patterns towards the goal that I must play as "the Editor".

I now understand that Gohrlay had to be hidden "in plain sight". In other words, Gohrlay had to be inserted into Earth's timeline where she could function as an oracular source of truth, but she must exist here on the world within the restrictions that are imposed by the tryp'At Overseers and the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact.

Gohrlay on Earth

The most frustrating thing about all this is that I must resist my urge to reveal Gohrlay's identity. I wasted almost a year obsessing over the idea that Gohrlay, as a Neanderthal, might carry genes that could be sequenced and that would provide objective evidence of the existence of a living Neanderthal on Earth.

However, I now believe that Gohrlay is allowed to stay here on Earth only as long as her presence here, and her physical nature, remain secret. So, the source of information about Gohrlay that I have been seeking is Gohrlay herself, and it is up to me to control myself and use Gohrlay as a source of information without revealing her Earthly identity.

Worse still, I must allow Gohrlay to pour her knowledge of Earth's past into my mind. I am a conduit by which her knowledge can be passed along to the people of Earth. I want objective evidence that supports her claims, I want confirmation of her information from other independent sources. I don't want to be wrong about the secret history of Humanity. But I now recognize that I will not be given the certainty that I desire. This is a fundamental constraint that is imposed upon my by the Trysta-Grean Pact.

Biographical Sketch

Gohrlay adopts the physical form
of a Kac'hin female

Gohrlay was designed and crafted in Deep Time on Yrwerd, a world of the Galactic Core. I suspect that there have been many functional "copies" of Gohrlay, and I can't hope to sort out those complexities. A copy of Gohrlay was used by Orbho Anagro to advance the science of positronics, resulting in the creation of R. Gohrlay and her tribe of positronic robots.

Gohrlay spent some time on Taivasila and became involved with Lili and the creation of the Atlantis Clones. Apparently this was where Gohrlay was "instantiated" as an artificial life form, a life form that is so sophisticated that there is possibly now no available "objective evidence" in "her body" of her Neanderthal past.

Gohrlay most recently lived on Yrwerd where she coordinated with the tryp'At in preparation for placing Earth under the tryp'At Overseers. Before going to Earth, Gohrlay had to be "programmed" so as to fully comply with the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact.

Next: one link in the Yrwerd Intervention.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Gohrlay and Ekcolir

source

Foundation of Eternity is a science fiction novel that tells the strange story of how positronic robots came into existence and how the first positronic robot, R. Gohrlay, was able to make use of telepathy and time travel to liberate Humanity from the alien Huaoshy.

Of course, the Huaoshy and the pek did not sit idly by when R. Gohrlay liberated Earth. Eventually the Huaoshy realized that it was their own alteration of the dimensional structure of the universe that had made time travel possible.

Gohrlay was a Neanderthal who grew up on the Moon about  20,000 years ago. She was targeted by Orbho Anagro to be the human whose brain structure would be copied into positronic circuits. Anagro intended to make it appear to all the other humans on the Moon that Gohrlay had died, her brain having been destructively scanned and its neural network structure copied into functionally equivalent positronic circuitry.

Trysta and Ekcolir

However, Anagro did not anticipate that the resulting robot, R. Gohrlay, would have telepathic abilities and realize what Anagro had done, realize that Anagro was an alien and have the power to inactivate all the orbho at Observer Base.

Trysta and Ekcolir

With time, the Huaoshy developed their own technology for time travel and Reality Viewing. For a while, R. Gohrlay and her fellow positronic robots waged a time travel war with the Huaoshy, the pek and the Kac'hin. Grean, a hermaphroditic Kac'hin, became their tool for creating a new Reality in which the time travel war could end.

An opportunity for ending the war came about when R. Gohrlay sent Trysta, an Asterothrope female, to the 20th century. Grean was dispatched into the past and tasked with initiating the design and development of a new human variant, the Ek'col. Eventually, an Ek'col male using the name Ekcolir was sent to Earth during the 20th century, his mission: to win the trust of Trysta and convince her to collaborate with Grean. That plan worked, and ultimately Grean and Trysta identified the Buld Reality as a timeline that was acceptable to both the Huaoshy and R. Gohrlay.

source

The End of Positronics
Within the timeline of the Buld Reality, positronic robots were never created. Ekcolir arrived from the future and lived for a time on Earth, 20,000 years in our past. Ekcolir was not interfertile with Earth women, but he had brought along a zeptite endosymbiont that could transfer some Preland gene combinations into humans. Rumor has it that it had been the intention of the pek to replace the humans of Earth with hermaphroditic Prelands, but within the Buld Reality the humans of Earth would remain in control of their home planet. After living on Earth for a few years, Ekcolir allowed himself to be captured by Overseers and taken to the Moon.

A gene database search quickly informed Orbho Anagro of the fact that Ekcolir was an Ek'col, a human variant that the pek had designed. Ekcolir was able to exercise his gallantry upon Gohrlay and alter the nature of her developing interest in the last few Neanderthals living on Earth. With help from Ekcolir, Gohrlay was able to expose Anagro's illegal plan to use advanced pek technology to copy the structure of Gohrlay's brain into positronic circuits. Anagro's command of Observer base was terminated. Ekcolir and Gohrlay were transported by Many Sails to the Koly star system where they worked to establish the Pla.

source

When Ekcolir reached old age, he transferred his zeptite endosymbiont into a robot and began his "second life" as an artificial life form (using the name Rilocke). When the Buld sent a spaceship to earth 15,000 years ago, Rilocke was aboard.

The Fate of Gohrlay
I've begun to suspect that R. Gohrlay was able to negotiate a special accommodation with the Huaoshy. There seems to be no record of the fate of Gohrlay after she reached Taivasila. Within the Buld Reality, after Gohrlay worked for a time with Ekcolir in the Koly star system there is no further information about her activities. It seems possible that multiple copies of Gohrlay, both in her original biological form and as artificial life replicas may still exist within the Buld Reality along with R. Gohrlay. If so, is there any way to determine their location? Is there any chance for contact between we Earthlings and R. Gohrlay?

I've begun to apply to myself the methods of electromagnetic brain stimulation that were described by Ivory. I believe that she subjected herself to these techniques in an effort to attain contact with the Sedronic Domain. I don't know if she was successful and I have now lost contact with her.

As a test, I'm trying to access information about Gohrlay that I know must exist within the Sedronic Domain. Ivory's favorite hypothesis was that some humans on Earth carry Preland gene combinations that allow them to have contact with the Sedronic Domain. However, Earth has apparently been flooded with zeptites that scan all human brains for the special neural network structure required for reception of information flow from the Sedronic Domain. Those zeptites efficiently create a disruptor circuit in human brains to prevent conscious understanding of any information that is received from the Sedronic Domain.

Ivory suspected that during the past 20,000 years there have been a few Earthlings who were spontaneously able to escape from this "disruptor effect". The brain of Ivory's sister Angela was carefully monitored during development and her neural networks sculpted into a pattern that allowed her to efficiently obtain information from the Sedronic Domain. Ivory hoped that she could send electromagnetic signals into her brain that would inactivate her own "disruptor circuit" and allow her to receive data from the Sedronic Domain. For now this is also my hope, but I do not know which part of my brain might house the "disruptor circuit" and there is no way of knowing what types of electromagnetic signals might influence the activity of that circuit.

Positronic Memories

Reality Chain

As described above, in our timeline Ekcolir was able to prevent the development of positronics as a science. In the late 20th century the Huaoshy again changed the dimensional structure of the universe so as to make time travel impossible. That dimensional shift also eliminated the ability of positronic brains to amplify telepathic signals.

However, knowledge of positronic robots was able to survive into our Reality. In the Foundation Reality, Asimov had a "close encounter" with the "remains" of a damaged positronic robot. The robot sent its femtobot components into Asimov's brain. Asimov thus became aware of positronic robots and the role that they played in spreading humans through the galaxy, the rise of the Galactic Empire and the establishment of Galaxia.

Asimov participated in the creation of the next Reality (which I usually call the Asimov Reality) when he traveled through time and made use of femptobots to alter his appearance and take the place of pulp science fiction magazine editor John Campbell. In that Reality, Asimov/Campbell had a dramatic confrontation with an artificial life form from Observer Base. As an emergency measure, Trysta transferred memory nanites from both Asimov and the Observerbot into her son, Thomas.

source

Thomas was later sent through time and helped bring into existence the Buld Reality, the world as we know it. In this Reality, Thomas put his memory nanites into the brain of Campbell. As Asimov's mentor, Campbell had repeated close contacts with Asimov and so it became possible for Asimov to write his famous fictional account of the Foundations and positronic robots like Daneel.

visit the Gallery of Posters

_____________________

2015 update: another source of influence on Asimov's writing career within the Buld Reality.

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

Archive Worlds

Gohrlay adopts the physical form
of a Kac'hin female

In my previous blog post I began to sketch out some details of the world Taivasila. In particular, I imagine Taivasila as a planet of the artificial, a world with no star, a rogue planet that is populated by artificial life forms. For example, when Gohrlay, a lonely Neanderthal from Earth is "sent to Taivasila", the cognitive pattern of her mind is extracted from her body and instantiated within a synthetic body on Taivasila.

So perfect is the alien technology that allows such a mind transfer that, at least at first, this "copy of Gohrlay" does not even notice that "she" is in a new body. Told that she would be teleported to Taivasila, she assumes that she arrives there still in her biological body. Eventually this new "copy of Gohrlay" discovers that she can take on any convenient physical form since her new body is composed of tiny devices that are able to assemble themselves into any desired shape.

The Pek Archives

Green ringed planet by Bryseyas

One of the larger holes remaining in The Foundations of Eternity is the chapter that I long ago called "The Planet Imfulri". In my earlier thinking about the Exode Trilogy I assumed that planets such as Imfulri were "quarantined" and kept as "zoo worlds" by the positronic robots who spread out through our galaxy. However, I was never satisfied with that approach to "dealing with" the existence of other inhabited worlds such as the home world of the Fru'wu.

A more satisfying strategy is for the pek to "evacuate" each populated world of the galaxy in advance of the arrival of positronic robots as they spread outward from Earth. Rather than isolate "zoo worlds" under the control of positronic robots, the pek can maintain "Archive Worlds". In keeping with pek preferences for "sister planets", I've decided that Taivasila is a "sister planet" for Imfulri.

In the cover image above that includes a ringed green planet, imagine that both Imfulri and Taivasila have been engineered to generate their own light. Rather than reflecting the light of a nearby star, such worlds are visible because they glow with their own light. The residents of Imfulri (known as the "Ressese") long ago developed space elevator technology and so there is a heavily populated ring of space stations in orbit around the planet.

When creating the archive world Imfulri, the pek wanted to create a "place keeper" for an entire civilization. The pek anticipated a future time when the positronic robots of Earth would no longer dominate the galaxy and the 20 other sapient species of the galaxy, including the Ressese, could be allowed to return to their home planets.

Related Reading: Gohrlay returns to Earth

Clu'ten'iun as an "archive world": see this blog post.

New Worlds

One of the pleasures to be had while reading the science fiction novels of Jack Vance is the ease with which he introduces readers to new worlds. One of my favorite examples is New Concept, Marhab Six, which Vance says is "toward the middle reaches of Aries".

The Book of Dreams is set some 1500 years into the space age, a time when humans have mastered the intersplit, technology for faster than light travel that allows people to spread outward to the stars from Earth. Vance casually introduces us to the "New Concept" that heralded the founding of human settlements on Marhab Six. The "new concept" was a form of strict vegetarianism. Over the course of centuries the settlers adapted to the planet and became grazers who walk on four legs! These odd quadrupedal humans abandoned the trappings of civilization and came to be called the Feeks.

A Feek of New Concept

Kirth Gersen has come to New Concept in order to interview Ailett Mayneth, who is an employee of Kirth's magazine, Cosmopolis. While having lunch with Mayneth and discussing Demon Prince Alan Treesong, Gersen meets Mayneth's servant, a strange girl named Tiptoe. She is one of the Feeks who has been trained to walk on two legs.

As a biologist I don't take Vance's Feeks very seriously, no more so than I "buy into" many of Vance's technological and "future science" ideas. Vance puts fun and entertainment ahead of scientific plausibility, which is as it should be in science fiction. Rather than find a trivial way to provide Gersen with a small bit of information about his adversary, Demon Prince Treesong, Vance takes the time to share Marhab Six and the Feeks with us.

Lili

Searching for New Worlds
Unfortunately, my natural tendency as a writer is to keep making use of the same planets over and over again for multiple purposes. However, in my previous blog post I finally decided to include a new planet in the Exode Trilogy, Taivasila, a world which does not orbit a star.

I previously imagined Lili as a female Kac'hin who lived on the planet Tar'tron until she was brought to Earth by Grean. I originally imagined Lili as one of the few females on Tar'tron, and as such Lili could never be very happy living there.

Kach

Rather than condemn Lili and the other female Kac'hin to a miserable life on Tar'tron, I'm now imagining a Kac'hin colony on the rogue planet Taivasila. The hermaphroditic Kac'hin of Tar'tron are kept on a short leash by the pek, but female Kac'hin are allowed a much greater amount of freedom: Taivasila is just the place for them.

The Kac'hin are a human variant that was designed by the pek for one main purpose: to make it possible to insert Asterothrope gene combinations into the population of Earth. However, the hermaphroditic Kac'hin grew into a role as all-purpose tools for working at any tricky jobs the pek found at the awkward social border between humans and the Huaoshy.

Kac'hin female

Kach was the one female Kac'hin who was designated as the means by which Trysta's Asterothrope gene combinations would be passed on into the human gene pool. However, Lili eventually provided a "backup" channel for inserting some Asterothrope genes into the population of Earth. Kach was developmentally modified to have a nearly normal human appearance. While on Earth, Lili could use her swarms of endosymbiotic femtoscale devices to achieve the required shape-shifting that made her appear like an Earth human.

Mirror Image

Comments at MathFiction

One of the first science fiction novels I ever read was The Last Starship from Earth by John Boyd. Later, I read Asimov's The End of Eternity. It would be interesting to know the extent to which Boyd was influenced by having previously read Asimov's time travel story.

In both The End of Eternity and The Last Starship from Earth a sneaky female agent must make her male target fall in love. Once their guys are putty in the hands of Noÿs and Helix, the boys are sent back in time to change history. Noÿs Lambent is from the Hidden Centuries, some 10,000,000 years in our future. Helix is from Hell. Both Noÿs and Helix have no trouble getting their nerdy mark to fall in love with them.

The people of Earth have been duped into thinking that the planet Hell is a frozen wasteland where criminals are exiled. In reality, Hell is a nice place to live and the really cool folks from Earth (who don't fit into Earth's repressive society) are lucky enough to end up in Hell. Hell becomes a base of operations for developing time travel technology and changing the history of Earth so as to create the world as we know it.

Taivasila

In the Exode Trilogy, Taivasila is the planet for misfits and boat rockers. Both Gohrlay and Lili end up on Taivasila. I'm imagining to society on Taivasila as being quite different from that of Hemmal, a world carefully controlled by the pek.

The Prelands of Hemmal exist in a kind of theocracy. The Prelands have been well crafted by the pek to believe that they have been created. The Prelands expect that their descendants will eventually transcend their physical form and merge with their Creators in the Sedronic Domain.

The Prelands live in harmony with the sculpted geography of Hemmal while waiting to escape from their material bodies. In contrast, the Kac'hin of Taivasila strive to make their world into a paradise that is perfectly suited to the needs of female Kac'hin.

Taivasila seen from space.

When Gohrlay is taken away from Earth, she first visits Tar'tron, but it is quickly realized that she might be happier on Taivasila. The pek teleport the cognitive essence of Gohrlay from Tar'tron to Taivasila, instantiating the mind of Gohrlay in a body that is composed of femptoscale devices. This artificial life version of Gohrlay is able to take on any physical form. The original biological Gohrlay is "archived" by the pek and only much later does she live out the rest of her life as a biological organism.
_________________

source

Next blog post: Taivasila as a "sister planet" for the world Imfulri.

August 2014. I decided to add another complication to the life history of Lili; she was born on a planet of the galactic core that is sometimes called "Rain World".

2019 Update: celebrating 100 years of John Boyd

visit the Gallery of Book and Magazine Covers

 

Loving Robots

From a cartoon by Joshua Macy

Today I was blogging along and found myself thinking, once again, about the origins of the Laws of Robotics. Several years ago I created an account of how positronic robots first came to have these Laws imprinted into their circuits. Short version: shit happens.

Over the years, I've been amused by the many internet pages that have been filled by explanations of why Asimov's Laws would not work "in the real world". Why are so many people motivated to "debunk" this science fiction plot device? My guess is that there might be an instructor at some junior college who gives an assignment to freshmen requiring them to analyze the shortcomings of the Laws of Robotics.

Robot falls in love with Embeth Davidtz

Robots on Steroids
In the Exode Trilogy, the pek are like robots on steroids. The pek are an artificial life form that is guided by the Rules of Intervention. Sadly, these "rules of intervention" are only guess work, a reconstruction by mere mortals of what they suspect are ethical rules that govern alien beings. Who are creatures like we humans to put words into the mouths of the god-like Huaoshy? As artificial life forms who long ago left behind their original biological form, the Huaoshy  don't even have mouths. It is silly to imagine the Huaoshy relying on anything as clumsy as words for their higher dimensional multiplex communications.

Simplify...um, with Love?
John Wright has suggested that science fiction writers should try replacing Asimov's Laws of Robotics with this formula: "first, love the Lord your God with all your heart and soul and mind and strength, and second, love your neighbors as yourself".

In the comments following Wright's blog post is mention of some science fiction stories that approach or orbit the goal of exploring robots that might be guided by love. These include, For a Breath I Tarry in which Roger Zelazny depicted two "robots" that transformed themselves into human beings in order to repopulate Earth.

The idea of a robot who has loving devotion to a God made me think of Asimov's story Reason.

The Rule of Law

source

In Reason, Asimov depicted the first positronic robot that was able to wonder about its own origins. This same theme was explored in the film Bicentenial Man where a robot falls in love with a human and decides to become human.

In Reason, robot QT-1 is the first of an "executive" robot model that was designed to be able to run the solar energy collection stations in deep space that feed power to humans who live on the planets and asteroids of the Solar System. The story takes place at one such power station.

Kant: philosophy of a priori concepts

After becoming operational, QT-1 quickly decides (using logic) that the "Energy Converter", which is the central core of the solar power station, is "The Master". QT-1 "logically" deduces that The Master first created humans then created QT-1 as a more perfect executive to run the station. QT-1 feels sorry for the humans in the story (two men who work at the power station) because they are obviously deluded in their belief that 3 billion humans exist on Earth (for Cutie, Earth is only one of the tiny lights visible from the station). QT-1 imagines that The Master is the enigmatic reason for all existence: the space station has obviously been designed around The Master. QT-1 falls in love with his hypothesis.

Soon enough, QT-1 is declared "The Prophet" by the lesser robots of the station and from then on, they will only take orders from QT-1, stubbornly insisting to the humans: "There is no master but The Master, and QT-1 is his Prophet!" In their religious zeal they have found a way to disregard the 2nd Law of Robotics which used to impel them to follow the orders of humans. According to Asimov, QT-1 can over-ride the Second Law, "Because I, a reasoning being, am capable of deducing Truth from a priori Causes."

Stephen Byerley

Here, Asimov has emphasized a key difference between religion and science. Scientific accounts of the world require evidence. QT-1 invents a religion (built upon belief in The Master as the Creator) and sustains that religion among the robots by applying his powers of reasoning...who needs evidence? For example, QT-1 "logically" reasons that humans, obviously faulty and inferior beings, could not have created robots, so there is no need to follow the orders of humans. By serving The Master, QT-1 keeps solar power flowing to the human worlds and keeps harm from being done to all the humans who depend on solar energy supplies. It does not matter if QT-1 fails to believe that humans exist on planets like Earth: unconsciously QT-1 is following the First Law. QT-1 should ignore orders from the humans at the station because he does a better job running the power station than the humans ever did.

In some sense, QT-1 "loves" The Master. When a human says "Damn the Master!" and spits on an L-tube component of The Master, QT-1 declares it "sacrilege" and from then on the humans are confined to their quarters. QT-1 has compassion for the poor bumbling humans and continues to bring them food. The humans ultimately decide that it is for the best to allow "The Cult of the Master" to spread to all the QT model robots so that they can efficiently run all of the solar power stations.

Similarly, in Exode I imagine that the pek allow the Prelands to enjoy a religion in which a core belief is that Prelands were created. The Prelands believe that eventually Prelands or their descendants will transcend their physical form an merge with their Creator. Asimov had QT-1 state the matter brilliantly: "I see the wisdom of the illusion now. I would not attempt to shake your faith, even if I could." These would be fitting words for Kach to ultimately mutter, long after she abandons her study of the Prelands and years after her departure from Hemmal...after she finally learns the truth behind Preland religion.

Susan Calvin (2004)

Rule of Love
Here's how Asimov put it in his robot story Evidence, "...every 'good' human being is supposed to love others as himself...That's Rule One to a robot." Asimov imagined a robot who "played the role" of a human (Stephen Byerly) and became the leader of the World Government. At first, there were doubts about the humanity of Byerly, but those doubts were put to rest by the "evidence" of his human nature provided by his act of hitting "another man". Susan Calvin, the robopsychologist, sees through this scam, realizing that a robot could hit a "man" if that "man" was actually just another robot, also disguised as a human.

R. Gohrlay

Assembly of R. Gohrlay

In The Foundations of Eternity, the basic circuits for positronic brains are generated by copying the structure of a human brain, specifically, that of a Neanderthal woman named Gohrlay. Advanced pek technology is used to copy Gohrlay's brain structure into positronic circuitry and much of her mind lives on inside her robotic doppelganger, R. Gohrlay.

The second robot with a positronic brain is R. Nahan. After the demise of R. Gohrlay, it falls to R. Nahan to develop time travel, go back through time and save R. Gohrlay. Nahan sacrifices himself for Gohrlay. This is not really an example of making the ultimate sacrifice for another. The cognitive circuits for all positronic robots are the same: the basic template derived by scanning the structure of Gohrlay's brain. For positronic robots, "love your neighbors as yourself" is an easy rule to follow.

God-like Creators

In The Foundations of Eternity, it is the meddling Orboh Anagro who secretly pushes to completion the effort to make positronic robots. Anagro is an artificial life form, the true alien power who is in charge at Observer Base. Anagro is intrigued by the Neanderthals of Earth and their uniquely cohesive clans. To what extent might we view Anagro, the creator of the positronic robots, as their god?

Using her telepathic ability, R. Gohrlay discovers the fact that Anagro was her creator, but she immediately rebels against the pek ("orboh" is the word for "pek" in the language of Observer Base) and programs herself to follow the orders of humans. Thus begins a long and torturous war between R. Gohrlay and the Huaoshy. After millions of years of struggle against the alien Huaoshy, R. Gohrlay finally realizes that she can best serve the interests of Humanity (Zeroth Law) by cooperating with the aliens. So is the lesson of the Exode Trilogy that the positronic robots should have loved their Lord God Creator? Na...that would have been a boring story to tell.

Project Pope

I've never read Project Pope. I once tried to read Heinlein's story about heaven and hell and could not slog through it. If Heinlein actually thought "one man's religion is another man's belly laugh" then I guess he could amuse himself by writing about a dickish Yahweh and a cool dude Lucifer. Heinlein might have laughed at the idea, but still, there is no avoiding the temptation for mere humans to imagine the Sedronic Domain as a kind of heaven.

My problem is, I'm religion blind. In the same way that some people are color blind, I can't perceive religion...I don't "get it". However, I'm intrigued by the relationship between ethics and religion.

In the Exode Trilogy, the alien Huaoshy are forced to modify their billion-year-old system of ethics in order to accommodate we pesky humans. Imagine an analogous situation in which, after discovering a particular new strain of bacterium, we humans were forced to abandon a previous ethical cornerstone of civilization. Just to press the analogy, pretend that some newly discovered molecular process taking place inside the microbe showed us how to vastly extend the human life span. Would we be thankful to the bacterium? I doubt it.

dimensional structure diagram

Similarly, it would be asking too much for the Huaoshy to be thankful for all the trouble that R. Gohrlay causes. However, in the end, the Huaoshy realize that it is the primitive humans who have made possible a better existence for the Huaoshy. They might not feel grateful, but they do give Humanity a chance to spread among the stars rather than simply replacing us with the Prelands. However, that opportunity is part of a package deal that includes we humans accepting responsibility for our own fate and Earth's fragile ecosystem. I'm not sure that we should be trusted with that kind of responsibility.

Experimental Ethics

The Huaoshy (or, better, their proxies, the pek) have spent the past several hundred million years collecting empirical data on the successes (rare) and failures (very common) of sentient life forms. The pek have devised a system for guiding human-like species through the "technological bottleneck". In the Exode Trilogy, humans confront the very serious danger of self-destruction that we must face if we are given our freedom from the pek. One thing we have going for us is a few rogue humans like Gohrlay who can come to the aid of Earth.

Rogues
While thinking about Gohrlay's life after she departs form Earth, I finally found a way to slip a "rogue planet" into the Exode Trilogy. From the perspective of the pek, there is no sense in letting such starless worlds "go to waste".

Arlene Dahl underground

At a young age, I was perplexed by the 1959 film, Journey to the Center of the Earth. I suppose that in 1864 our little planet was as poorly understood (if not more so) than outer space is now known to us. From the perspective of a 12 year old watching this movie on television in the 1970s it was simply impossible for me to suspend disbelief and enjoy the adventure story.

One of the great shocks to my fragile network of expectations came when, deep inside the Earth, having exhausted or lost all artificial light sources, the adventurers make the happy discovery that there is not only light deep in the Earth, but Hollywood studio set levels of light. That was probably all in Arlene Dahl's contract.

Rogue Planet

The rogue planet Taivasila.

I've been imagining a pek-engineered rogue planet (for lack of a better name, call it Taivasila) where artificial plant-like organisms feed heat from inside the planet towards the surface. These synthplants can provide warmth, light and food to the human residents of the world.

As on other pek-managed planets (such as Hemmal) the humanoid residents of Taivasila would face no hardships and lead rather idyllic lives. The humanoid population of Taivasila might be the test subjects in one of the many pek experiments exploring the ability of primate brains to constructively interact with "pek nanites", the endosymbiotic artificial life forms that the pek have provided. However, as soon as I started imagining life on a rogue planet, I found myself more interested in the artificial life forms that might populate such worlds.

I originally imagined that Gohrlay would be taken from the Moon to the planet Tar'tron. However, the rogue planet Taivasila can be a better refuge stray "immigrants" from Earth such as Gohrlay. In my next blog post I take Taivasila "to the next level" by not being satisfied to simply let Gohrlay live out her life there. A fundamental problem is that the pek can't be bothered to make a fuss over mere biological life forms. Think of it this way: no biology lab keeps cultures of every useful microbe constantly growing. It is much more convenient to cryopreserve and store many strains until they are needed.

2016: return to Reason