It was slightly more than six years ago when I began participating at the deviantART online community. During the past 6 years, I have been slowly developing my skills for illustrating science fiction stories. Some of my illustrations end up on deviantArt (about 80 so far), but more of them are on Google Photos (over 600).
There is currently a contest at deviantArt that challenges deviants to make alternate versions of a drawing created by user Loish. Once in a while I create my own "change challenges" here at this blog. One of the "challenges" that is hanging over me for the past year, uncompleted, is the task of making a new banner image for this blog.
Most of my story illustrations are made by using Photoshop to make photo-manipulated composite images. I often find myself trying to capture some of the look-and-feel of mid-20th century pulp magazine science fiction cover illustrations.
One of the annoyances associated with old science fiction cover illustrations is that many of the depicted women are NOT DOING ANYTHING. The damsel in distress was a popular theme back in the early days of science fiction, but I prefer stories in which the female characters are doing more than waiting to be rescued.
Here (to the left) is the "starter" image by Loish for the deviantArt 20th year challenge. This image (to the left) got me thinking about one of the problems that I had with the first draft of my new banner image: a failure of that image to include the kinds of interesting active poses that I want my illustrations to contain.
1. Lydya. When creating illustrations for stories, I often struggle to find useful photographs that depict people engaged in interesting activities. Another serious challenge for me is that I am often trying to depict strange imaginary events such as telepathic contact between two people's minds or a character using some alien technology such as a Reality Viewer.
Isaac Asimov invented the Prime Radiant, a device that could directly "project" vast amounts of information into the visual cortex of humans. It is nearly 50 years since I first became enthralled by the Prime Radiant and (as shown in the image to the right) I'm still struggling to find ways to visually depict people using this sort of Hi Tek™ device.
2. Femtobots. One of the more gruesome photo-composites that I ever made is shown in the image to the left. This rather whimsical cover image is meant to depict the surprising discovery that the lady with her head cut off is an artificial life form (composed of nanites), not an actual biological entity.
3. Fersony. Shown to the right is a cover image that I made about two years ago. I needed to depict a character who was climbing on a gigantic piece of alien equipment. This scene is happening far below the surface of the Earth, inside a vast chamber where the temperature is too high for comfort.
4. Nanites. Often my characters are themselves writing their own stories or reading books. The image shown to the left was posted on the deviantArt website about three and a half years ago.
5. Fersoni. The image to the right is the one that came to my mind when I saw the deviantArt 20th anniversary challenge. The little object in her hand is meant to be a control device for a Reality Viewer or some other type of Hi Tek™ equipment.
6. Alt-History. I had completely forgotten about the image shown to the left, proving that it is good to look back through my old blog posts after about five years have past! I like to imaging that in the Ekcolir Reality, Jack Vance was born as twins who both became science fiction story tellers. In different Realities, the names of famous writers can be slightly different!
7. Robots. Earlier this year, I wanted to depict a robot who was involved with mining operations on the planet Chadho. I often struggle with how to depict humanoid robots (image to the right) and aliens as being just slightly different in appearance from we humans.
8. Zetana. One of the characters who often appears here in this blog is Zeta Gohrlay. A few months ago I made the the image shown to the left which depicts Zeta discovering a vial of infites. I've used images shared by by Gretchen Byers on deviantArt to make several different depictions of Zeta.
9. Gohrlay. The image shown to the right is from 2013. For many years I struggled with the distasteful idea that poor Gohrlay would have to be killed in order to allow for the creation of positronic robots with telepathic abilities. However, I eventually discovered that Gohrlay had been saved at the last minute and not subjected to death by destructive brain scan. Whew, that was close!
10. Fanish. Many of my stories are fan-fiction. The image to the left is cross-over science fiction with Losira from Star Trek dropped into the Time Tunnel.
12. Ariel. I'm currently writing a series of related stories that feature a character named Ariel Adler.
Ariel is a writer and I have been thinking about making an illustration that shows her at the point in time when she is writing the name "Trysta Iwedon" in her notebook.
The Power of the Pen
My first thought was to make a depiction of Ariel working with Marcia and Isaac, similar to the image shown above, to the left. However, Ariel is duplicated by teleportation at a time just before digital computers become available in the Ekcolir Reality.
When Trysta activates the teleportation equipment and makes the copy of Ariel (a copy who is needed to carry out a mission inside the Hierion Domain), the original copy of Ariel (on Earth) is briefly linked to Trysta's thoughts and mind. Ariel is knocked unconscious by the teleportation beam and her friend Joey must scoop her up and take Ariel back to her parent's table in the reception hall.
The "birth" of R. Gohrlay, the first positronic robot.
Issac Asimov imagined a future in which robots served to help humans reach the stars. Then, it all went terribly wrong. On the spacer worlds, there were more robots than people and finally, humans mutated into a new form of life that lost the desire to spread itself across the galaxy. When it comes to robots, there can be too much of a good thing.
What's a robot graced with the Zeroth Law to do? Of course, Giskard must find a way to balance humanity on the knife edge between too many and too few robots. Twenty thousand years later we find Daneel still playing the balancing game and just enough robots on hand so that Hari Seldon can fall in love with one and the Foundations can be created.
Chaotic temporal attractors:
Age of positronics, Spacers, the Foundation.
Thus, Asimov told the story of how robots helped humanity through two chaotic attractors, but what about the story of the origin of the very first positronic robot?
The Age of Positronics
We might assume that the very first positronic brain was built by U.S. Robots and Mechanical Men, Inc., but did Asimov ever really show how to pull that rabbit out of a hat? And what about the Laws of Robotics? Asimov depicted the "first three" Laws as arriving in the world almost wholly formed and then the "Zeroth" law being artificially grafted on later.
Foundations of Eternity gives a detailed account of the origins of the Laws and the first human-like robot with a positronic brain. The key thing to know about the origin of the Laws of Robotics is that there was never any group of computer nerds who sat down, at U.S. Robots or any where else, and just "slapped together" a robotic brain that could produce human behavior. Just as Daneel was the "story behind the story" of how the Foundation was created, another telepathic robot, R. Rycleu, was working secretly on Earth in the 20th century to bring into existence the first positronic brains on Earth. But those were not the first positronic brains.
The first positronic brain was created by copying the neural circuits of a Neanderthal named Gohrlay. When those human brain circuits were reconstructed as a positronic brain, the resulting robot was R. Gohrlay.
Foundations of Eternity is part of the Exode Trilogy. As a story that takes place in the Exodemic Fictional Universe, Exode explores the implications of Earth having been visited by aliens for millions of years and the struggle of Earthlings to discover the secret history of Humanity.
Asimov was forced to keep robots in the dark corners of the Foundations. In the Exode Trilogy there are may roles for robots and other artificial lifeforms. Even Isaac Asimov himself appears as a character in the story!
Images. Top: the creation of the R. Gohrlay, the first positronic robot with human-like cognition. Credits. The second image shows the structure of time in the Foundation Reality. Larger version. Creating the cover art for Foundations of Eternity.
Yo, robot!
positronicly endowed with audacity
Daneel Olivaw, super star
guardian of humanity!
Ya, robot, sure you are
poor Hari Seldon
what you put him through!
then just dump the Foundation
First, and the Second, too
Yeesh, robot!
Daneel Olivaw, super star!
Yes, a robot, by three laws bound
yet you took things too far!
one more law you found
your one law to rule them all
Trevize and Janov fashioned as your tools Blissenobiarella with tastes positively geriatric!
a woman following genetic rules,
programmed for behavior robotic
choose Galaxia, lest we to aliens fall!
Daneel Olivaw, super star!
transformed to human from robotic
take Fallom's brain, you'd go that far
different, transductive, hermaphroditic
become not robot, and so craftily!
Daneel, say it's not true!
but if Isaac Asimov could not say…
could not decide what next to do,
it falls on us to find a way
to the Start of Eternity!
In what is now probably the most profitable science fiction story of all time (Avatar), the protagonist transfers his mind to a new body. Mind transfer has become a staple plot element in science fiction: human to chimp, human to robot, robot to human, alien to human, human to alien-human hybrid...have mind, will transfer.
From time to time it is fun to take stock of the relationship between our science fiction plot devices and real science. The Dick Tracy science fiction wrist phone of the early 1940s is no longer a gee-wiz science fiction plot element. How are things looking on the mind transfer front? Luc Reid recently tried his hand at comparing the reality of brain science to science fiction depictions of mind transfer.
While trying to explain the complexity of biological brains, Reid describes the mind-generating machinery of our brains as being composed of "two major systems". Reid's approach to explaining how a brain makes a mind is rather contorted and it made me think of Paul Churchland's book "The Engine of Reason, The Seat of the Soul". In that book, Churchland was doing some rear-guard maneuvering to convince philosophical mind/brain dualists that we need not imagine any non-physical components of mind. As an example of how some "explanations" of phenomena can be too complex, Churchland pointed to Betty Crocker's account of how microwave cooking works.
According to Betty Crocker, microwaves cause 1) water molecules in food to vibrate which causes 2) friction which makes food hot. Similarly, Reid's two step account of brain function involves both 1) neural networks and 2) chemical systems. Betty Crocker imagined that making hot food involves something more than vibrating molecules and Reid imagines that our minds are more than neural networks. What more? According to Betty Crocker vibrating molecules is not enough to make hot food because, in addition, you need heat. According to Reid neural networks are not enough to make a mind because, in addition, you need chemicals. Reid seems to imagine that neural networks are little electrical circuits: "our mind is much larger than our brain, encompassing a wide variety of sensations and emotions that, while they trigger neural activity, are at least as chemical as they are electrical." Similarly, Betty Crocker went out of her way to "explain" to us that microwave cooking is more than just making more molecular motion in our food.
The alternative view of the mind is that, "our mind is the activity of our brain". Just as heat in food is molecular motion, neural networks in our brains are chemicals. Sensations and emotions do not trigger neural activity, they are the activity of our neural networks. There is a famous joke in cosmology about it being "Turtles all the way down" and in the case of neural networks in our brains, it is molecules all the way down. Neuroscientists do not study neural networks on Mondays and then take up the task of studying brain chemicals on Tuesdays. The study of neural networks in the brain is fully integrated with and dependent upon the study of brain chemistry. Our neural networks are chemical systems.
In The Start of Eternity, the protagonist, Gohrlay, gets to learn about the advanced brain science that makes mind transfer possible. At no point does she pause and exclaim, "Wait, what about the chemicals?" The story assumes that hard-working scientists have developed the technology needed to scan the structure of a human brain and translate the neural networks into the form of functionally equivalent positronic brain circuits inside a robot. Rest assured, all of the brain chemistry has been taken into account.
Mister Speaker, Madam Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:
Presidents have come before Congress for 230 years, in times of war, prosperity and, now, Singularity. It is fitting that we look back, briefly, on past times of strife and struggle. Not so long ago this mighty nation was on the brink of ruin, faced with ballooning deficits and ever increasing costs for medical entitlements and social security payments.
Now, thanks to the wise actions of this legislative body, those old days of tribulation are behind us and our union is stronger than ever before. This year, rather than stop smoking or lose weight, millions of Americans are free, freer than ever before, to continue making selfish and short-sighted decisions. Tonight we can celebrate the source of our new found freedom: the Singularity.
Our faith in the Singularity allows us to have confidence in the cryogenic preservation of our sickly and dying patriots who volunteer for immortality. Rather than burden their fellow citizens with the cost of their medical care, this year alone, a record 7.3 million Americans were reversibly frozen. (Applause) These singular patriots have truly achieved the best of both worlds. While in this world they were free to enjoy the pleasures of self-indulgent excess and the hyper-consumptive lifestyle. And in the future post-Singularity world they will enjoy miraculous wonders that we can only imagine in science fiction stories and binding cryopreservation contracts.
However, our work is not yet done. I now call upon congress to increase the government incentive that is paid to our good citizens who volunteer for cryonic life-extension and the guarantee that they will live in post-Singularity America. Although the great visionaries of the Singularity assure us that post-Singularity America is never more than 30 years in the future, many Americans wisely take no chance and have themselves frozen now. Our great patriotic motto is: why wait? It is wise to have yourself frozen before your lung tumors swell or your neurodegeneration proceeds very far. I say, save what is left of your youth for your wonderful life in post-Singularity America! (Applause)
As convincing as that argument is, some of our sick and dying citizens still balk and hesitate. Of course, we know what truly motivates Americans. We are a nation where logic has always taken the back seat to free market forces. Therefore, I am sending legislation to the Hill, proposing that current medicare and social security recipients be paid a lump sum $32,000,000 benefit, compounded at a 45% annual interest rate, to be paid in full when these cryogenically preserved patriots resume their lives in post-Singularity America. Our goal is to make medicare and social security entirely virtual entitlements that will only ever be paid out in post-Singularity America. (Applause)
I also call upon both the House and the Senate to extend the Avatar Science Tax Incentive. We need to continue to provide this incentive to Hollywood for the creation of more fictional and uncritical accounts of miraculous future technologies that will satisfy, or at least seem to satisfy, the quest for mind transfer and our dreams of eternal life. (Applause)
My fellow Americans, what does all this mean for you? Nothing less than eternal life in a future age of miraculous wealth and personal luxury! Contact your representatives today and demand that they give you what you deserve. Now is the time to demand your own piece of the American pie. Think of what has been learned from the great visionaries like Bernard Madoff and demand your $32,000,000, compounded at a 45% annually! (Applause)
We have come through a difficult decade. But a new dawn is perpetually upon the horizon. A new decade stretches before us where the Singularity will again be dangled just beyond our grasp. We won't quit. We will seize the opportunity afforded by the dream of Singularity! (Applause) Let's seize this moment to carry the dream forward and strengthen our union once more.
Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. And God bless the Singularity! (Applause)
(told by alien who has lived here a lot a much time)
They can call me cables the man.
And a lot was that, so that I could make that in order to wait for that. You have been firm and you have observed a clock for a day completely? It is good as that a lot of my years on the Moon was.
It transmits, however, the beginning approximately 6,000 years that the Earthlings have controlled a technological outbreak and have produced the artificial duration. So I have continued to wait for. And ago an attempt. And the majority that time, that it thinks their four is, from which the small stupid adventures of the entire group are filled up with those that tried Intervention, a length of which on the Earth to send along. In particular I have carried out a great role in the Greek flask.
It wonder to me during this determined time. Long history short circuits: we here. The human Earth, at last is returned to a virtual world; I can appreciate the digital spirit without the video, a possibility has existed to come from the other origin to me and I sit down so so so much here, download in Earth's waxes as a combatant of the Internet, to survive to in this digital jungle, originally. It does not include, if you believe my history, because my history can be localized like vociferations of spirit-sick luminous pointer. Tasked naturally me, here I spirit-sick, since I have lived here a lot a much time.
As that hour was determined years, since has arrived on the Earth. I was at the beginning instance like the digital spirit in a university's great computer. I searches and I does not demand in order to say nothing of some detail, because this nodal point of the computer is still in service, like gate, so that the spirit reaches Earth's Internet from the base of the Observer on the Moon.
The majority of people, that they demand that, indicates that they are not situated over the Observatories, so it wonders to me: specify one of the human Observers that be announced on the Earth. In the first instance, you left it like saying to me: not excuses for! because I do not put the Observatories outside. In the first instance, before they left to leave the Base of the Observers on the moon, all were contained in my memory, the identities of the Observatories of the Earth. In the second instance of the job, if the Observatories of Earth were discovered, it would be impossible to indicate that they are of the Moon. Since I have cited the first instance, single part the normal type of human beings leave Earth, go down, in order to go here and to appear like Observatories of the Earth. And one only affords to the Observatories of the grounds to use the technology that can exceed like the technology of the Earth.
I know that the Observatories of Earth have channels with the Base of the Observers on the Moon, but details of the type, in which contained my era and the job of my spirit...if really you knew the method. I would have to cite that except the Observatories, there are also Controllers. They are not many Controllers, but they are like police presence, return it good, who the Observatories follow the Rules of the Observation. In particular they control if, all the same ones that go from the base of the Observer on the Moon to crush, can be still persecuted to its origin.
It is equally the case, that the Observatories based on Earth, slowly they are eliminated. Since the Earth-human technology becomes more complex, is more and more possible that the Observatories use the automated techniques of the acquisition of data. My history is good. If you to this point can dig determined initiative in the country of contact that supports test of my history sufficient in order to hunt a good job to you of excavation and you can a card exclude the function of this Victoria of the cliff. You, that it supplies the analytical clues, ungrateful of the country over this option, is my job in the duration.
Ventilated for the music of the argument to "you are received; Left in the river of Quai" in his title and you say "of English uproars; Manmahtiti Bebobinmahtiti" they are following the end to say my name. They understand equally, because people call cables to me the man.
I must be ill delay of the alcohol, the end to say my biographies in the public of the tribune, but of the volume of I he taste of the challenge. Hatred the fact the fact that the majority of people does not create to me therefore, if says my history to her, opens to its small and loans of the human alcohol the attention.
A good place, so that it begins, is with that "life" intersections for me, the section the real life of those and the new substance, also Here, of that leaves the version to the work: Now they are a digital alcohol, but my interior of the alcohol comes a distant world from the biological module, where the inhabitants are not straight they like being human. They die and they obtain themselves here here, but probably embankment to him that I only interested for him equally, of that I did in the track… and of that you scare to me, I nevertheless I who I have become could. Despite leave to bother to me with some facts to the station of the work of, this I comes. Where they are developed me, it is the thing, that is simple to travel between the asterisks. They could say that they are inoperative to wish the end to visualize a another world. Naturally they had called it "transmigration" , it was the extremity of my physical body and only thinks always to the face of that extremity about my length. It naturally had my length after the inoperative women.
The biological organizations do not adapt for the flight of the station of the work of the well-being, therefore, than my alcohol in the transference of Klenanennieieie (insane person, only has a word for this here. Klenanennieieie is a type of server for brings back to consciousness of the group.) When I left my Klenanennieieie, I that I keep released, function excluded here in the system of the asterisk of the solenoids and in the part from later in a body he was. He especially had loathing of demanded the course of an original one of the world, but of the era of I sufficiently of my new agency. I consider that you called the country a similar agency the robot, but had some biological members. In way can you follow the alcohol of the impact? It was inside, this that you would call a body of foreign, my alcohol I that I incorporated a generator of the virtual truth (Klenanennieieie) for the along loaded course here, therefore my alcohol presents me in a local body of server.
What was next of I, since you are, the car to "equally introduced and the return of the hour to the chronometer; enjoy" Habilis of the culture of the transferences. It transmits to me arrived in this system from the asterisk 17,000 years. Now of the country you are ingenuous for you, but in another one piece biologicals that worked the canceled track to him of the track and for the one hundred of million years. It has plus the broken limitations derived from the length and the artificial length of the track, of that in the track.
I can think all you they country of ignoramuses, the end to want the knowledge, "How can the east be?" The observatories of the foreigner had observed the track here during the time very very… in billion years. It always had a party of the foreign country, of what satisfactory to the right that is being observatories. And the process of the commentary is manufacture understood in the slow possible order of the empty excluded from the modules of the function of the life of each person of the kingdoms of the length of the planet like the track. The truth will be happiness, the observatories is interests generally very, with these cultures more excluded the track from the function, when to play those that are the track with the commentary it continues.
The skeletal agreement is that one has the human being the important disturbance of the track and is disputing when considering the human being of the activity because is difficult, indifferent, the end to receive that one with the really complete work the end to observe the track. Nevertheless it is the one that I register soon after the fact which I meant that he would come to this system of the asterisk. I have the connection the majority 17,000 years slipped that the lives inferiors, of which they are worrisome of the commentary of the track. And an interesting stay had that will be observed, a little while, when the human project in an age of the cultural experience and the technological development.
The some observatories dozen To the maximum diminished receipts typically, the function now excluded in the track during a year and to the end from the reached one, where it almost has a course to break. It does trust me. The wave of the objections of the UFO of the foreign country during the 50 past years is only ideal. In case of mine 17,000 years of hard work that a planet is of the card it came downwards. The series is I processed the drinks, the end to reach, where it is today. I say "fit of down" in the action; specific due to the rule of the observer who you reach, in the order a planet like the track the end to only visualize, if you cannot be remarkable of a natural one. When in sequence trying on the satisfaction of this rule inside it fits added-self in the action, my alcohol in server similar of the robot of the human introduction of the beings body/of. Equally this taking of the form activated in the base of the moon of the commentary the end to live. The base of the moon was my phase of the test and the base that conclude outside with thousands the years of the commentary of the track of the extremity. The majority of people to the base of the observer is to be of the human being and to also assume that it was of I a robot, of which never freaked still in the mine other is east origin… is.
Annalee Newitz recently asked "Why Is Hard Science Fiction So Unrealistic?". Newitz is interested in the tradition of literary realism and she says: "realism in fiction and film has generally been an effort to represent the experiences of ordinary people". Is there a shortage of "ordinary people" in hard science fiction stories?
The definition of "hard science fiction" is problematical because it is at risk of changing in response to evolving conceptualizations of science. We live in the age of science, an age characterized by cultural change that is due to science and technology. As recently as 30 years ago science fiction was a much simpler part of human culture than it is today. In 1978, William Bainbridge and Murray Dalziel were able to comfortably divide science fiction into three parts: hard science fiction, fantasy, and new-wave. (see: "The Shape of Science Fiction as Perceived by the Fans") Today, there is a much broader collection of well-recognized sub-genres in science fiction.
In the data set analyzed by Bainbridge and Dalziel, Isaac Asimov was ranked as the most distinctive hard science fiction author. In 1978, Asimov was one of the iconic figures of the Golden Age of Science Fiction. Larry Niven is a good example of the next generation of hard science fiction authors. Science fiction is "hard science fiction" to the extent that it concerns itself with scientific advance and technological change and does so in a way that respects the nature of the universe and how science allows us to understand the universe. In my experience, authors with a personal interest in science and an understanding of how science works are the most likely to write interesting hard science fiction.
There are two common misconceptions about hard science fiction. Bainbridge and Dalziel explicitly stated one of these misconceptions. They wrote that hard science fiction: "refers to stories built around certain facts or speculations concerning the 'exact' or 'hard' sciences". It is true that the exact sciences dominate research expenditures, press coverage and popular concepts of what constitutes science. It is true that icons of hard science fiction such as Asimov and Niven were trained in mathematics and "hard science". Those truths are a consequence of the fact that the historical development of science is shaped by working scientists who tend to "divide and conquer". Scientific problems are sorted according to ease of progress and many physical science problems are the easiest and so have been tackled first. Simple problems like how to describe the nature of electromagnetism were studied first. More complex and challenging biological and social science topics are only now starting to receive adequate attention from scientists. Thus, identifying hard science fiction is not a matter of distinguishing between fiction that involves "hard science" or "soft science". Hard science fiction can certainly involve "soft science"; what is important is only that science and technology elements be present as a core aspect of the fiction.
Annalee Newitz raised (in her article) a second major misconception about hard science fiction. In discussing hard science fiction she equates hard science fiction with scientifically-accurate storytelling. This is simply wrong. There are sub-genres of science fiction within which scientific realism is prized highly. For example, the restricted comfort zone of mundane science fiction never pushes us beyond the current facts of science. However, both Asimov and Niven often extrapolated far beyond the "facts" as currently known to science. Two examples are Niven's stasis field and Asimov's Eternity. These two imagined technologies are "space/time bubbles" within which the known laws of physics explicitly do not apply. Science can tell us nothing about Niven's stasis field or Asimov's time travel device, yet they are both plot devices that exist comfortably within the genre of hard science fiction. They are depicted as the products of future science and technology and they are incorporated in their respective stories in a scientific (if entirely speculative) way.
Realism in science fiction is not to be confused with scientific realism.
Having raised the red herring of "scientifically-accurate storytelling", Annalee Newitz turns to another issue that seems to be her main concern: the types of characters and plots that we find in hard science fiction. Newitz constructs a dichotomy between science fiction with
1) "rebel heroes and extraordinary leaders" and "unrealistic megabeings with superpowers" and "alternate realities...focusing on technologies"
and fiction with
2) "ordinary people" and the "regular guy" and "building up social worlds" by showing "everyday life".
Newitz is asking: can't there be a better mix of realism and hard science fiction? We can ask, why does hard science fiction tend to be divorced from realism? These questions only make sense if you adopt a conventional definition of literary realism, and for the moment we can do so.
I think the fundamental source of the perceived split between realism and hard science fiction is that there are two fundamental directions from which science is approached in literature, a split that has variously been characterized as involving The Two Cultures or Culture Wars or postmodernity. This split involves a "glass half empty?" argument about the nature of science and its impact. Hard science fiction was born as a genre that was often "optimistic about the value of scientific and technological progress" and it remains so optimistic that its great works often depict dramatic transformations of human culture and human existence. In contrast, much of what counts as literary realism in science fiction is pessimistic and depicts imagined worlds where science and technology are powerless to change human existence for the better.
Hard science fiction stories traditionally extrapolate a scientific idea or technological power in such a way that we are transported to an imagined culture where the ordinary has been transformed into the extraordinary by science or technology. That is often the whole point of the story: science changes everything. Newitz is suffering from her misconceptions if she imagines that it makes sense to hope that hard science fiction will become more realistic in the literary sense. It would be paradoxical and self-defeating for a hard science fiction author to imagine a wonderful bit of technology and then write a story in which that technology changes nothing and people simply remain as the "ordinary people" of our everyday experience.
I sympathize with Newitz when she complains about science fiction television programs that strive to deliver realism. Most of these television shows are produced by people who think that they can cash in on the popularity of science fiction by putting a spaceship or a cloned human or some other "wiz-bang" plot device into a story and have it constitute interesting science fiction. Such television shows tend to be mind-numbingly "realistic" by endlessly showing people who are unable to change themselves for the better no matter what wonderful technologies are available to them. These programs depict conventional literary realism but the methods and workings of science are almost never realistically depicted.
Transformation of the ordinary into the extraordinary is often a central part of hard science fiction. The typical protagonist of hard science fiction is an ordinary guy, but that guy often does something great or is transformed into something great by the application of science and technology. That is why hard science fiction is often so unrealistic...if you define "realism" as a depiction of current everyday existence. Hard science fiction is often about showing the ways by which science can lift us out of our current reality. Newitz specifically mentioned Asimov and she claimed that he was a failure at realistically depicting everyday life. Some of his science fiction was set in the 20th century and I'd challenge Newitz to explain how those stories (particularly many of his robot stories) failed to be realistic.
Hard science fiction authors such as Asimov are probably best known for taking readers into strange new lands where the ordinary is transformed into the extraordinary and that probably takes some people out of their comfort zones, particularly television executives. If hard science fiction is done well, then even a world in which the ordinary has become extraordinary can be realistic about the nitty-gritty of everyday existence. Literary realism may have originated among non-science fiction writers and it may have originally been restricted to realistic depictions of current-day existence. There is nothing preventing science fiction authors from bringing realism to imagined cultures where everyday life is extraordinary if viewed from our perspective. Some types of hard science fiction can certainly seem unrealistic if you restrict your concept of realism to the perspective of one culture at one point in time. Science fiction is very much concerned with challenging those kinds of conceptual limitations. I'm willing to redefine and broaden the meaning of "realism" in the context of science fiction.
It is fun to follow hard science fiction authors like Asimov to distant imagined cultures. While doing so, we can be transported to places where everyday events are far from ordinary (according to our standards) and ordinary people (according to the standards of the imagined culture) get to do extraordinary things (measured by our standards). In The Start of Eternity, Gohrlay is an ordinary person in her culture. She just happens to be a Neanderthal who lives on the Moon. It is still possible to write about her life with realism. Cellular Civilization is set more within our everyday reality, but it is still possible for even the most ordinary characters like Charlie Parker to be transformed into something extraordinary by technology. In such stories I do not feel any conflict between hard science fiction and realism. Of course, I don't feel the need to adopt a restrictive view of realism.
Nor do I expect most people (including Newitz) to understand and appreciate hard science fiction. The narrowness of the Golden Age of Science Fiction provoked the "new wave" struggles to broaden the scope of science fiction. That led to the current popularity and diversity of science fiction and a state of affairs where we have hoards of "experts" on science fiction who do not understand science. Most of what passes for science fiction in popular culture is parasitic on the genre and endlessly tells us the same boring story: people living in the age of science who do not understand science are like deer standing transfixed by the head lights of an on-rushing car. I suspect that hard science fiction is a sub-genre that can only be understood and appreciated by people who are part of the scientific sub-culture. People familiar with science are comfortable with imagining alternate realities and can develop a flexible conceptualization of "realism". Once you make those moves, you are not left in the past with a narrow view of literary realism and you will become aware of the large amounts of realism that does exist within hard science fiction.
When R. Daneel Olivaw decided to bring the science of Psychohistory to the attention of humans, there were suddenly people walking around on the planets of the Galactic Empire who had telepathic ability. The first of these people with "mantalic" ability who came to the attention of Hari Seldon was Wanda Seldon, the daughter of Hari's adopted son.
As soon as Seldon realizes that Wanda has the ability to read minds, he decides that he must study "the complete genome" for both Wanda and her parents. Seldon realizes that Wanda's father, Raych, also has "mentalic" ability, specifically, the ability to control how people feel about him. Asimov hints that there are stories dating back many thousands of years about other humans who had "mentalic" abilities.
If "mentalic powers" are latent in the human genome, then why is that ability never studied until Hari Seldon comes along? I suspect that Daneel, himself a robot with telepathic abilities, began studying and experimenting with human mentalics about 20,000 years before the Foundation Era. Daneel later tells Trevize that he has long been secretly developing human mentalics in the context of Gaia, a world that Daneel has slowly shaped into a telepathically-linked group mind.
Part of the special "mentalic" ability of the Gaians is that they have a limited ability to "transduce power" from energy sources, channel it through their brains and then focus it for specific "mentalic" tasks. Asimov described the Solarians, humans who used genetic engineering to make themselves into hermaphrodites and they gave themselves the needed genes for enlarged "transducer lobes". Thus, Asimov quite clearly linked "mentalics" to genetic engineering and genetically programmed brain structure.
Asimov also made it clear that a person with innate mentalic ability could, in the right environment and with practice, greatly enhance and develop their telepathic abilities. The innate and learned components of "mentalics" seem similar to our capacity to use human language. The parts of the human brain that we use for language did not suddenly appear during human evolution. It is tempting to imagine that the roots of human "mentalic powers" might also be deep in our evolutionary past. That idea is explored in The Start of Eternity where the origin of telepathic ability in positronic robots like Daneel is traced back to the human brain.
Jan 2, 2010
We are still in the 70th year of the Asimov Era, as defined by the time period since Isaac Asimov fiction has been in print. This year is also 90 AA, 90 years After Asimov's birth. Asimov was taken from us too early. I'm particularly distressed that his novel Foundation and Earth was left to us as the chronological end of the Foundation Series.
In Foundation and Earth, Asimov hinted that after humanity's rise to galactic dominance, there remained a looming confrontation with aliens who could arrive at any time from the depths of intergalactic space. Given another 10 or 20 years of life, how might Asimov have continued the Foundation Saga past Foundation and Earth?
Various science fiction authors and scientists have expressed quite different expectations with respect to space aliens. Two important "dimensions of expectation" are 1) the issue of just how common human-like species are in the universe, and 2) the question of how another sapient species would interact with us following first contact.
Asimov indicated that his decision to have a human-only galaxy in the Foundation Fictional Universe was largely determined by the editorial bias of John W. Campbell. It should be remembered that the Foundation Fictional Universe was also originally a "robot-free zone", but just before his death, Asimov wrote R. Daneel Olivaw into the Foundation Saga and depicted Daneel as the mastermind behind Hari Seldon and the development of Psychohistory.
Personally, my guess is that there are probably other sapient species on other planets in our galaxy. I think that both Carl Sagan and Arthur C. Clarke provided us with more realistic depictions of space aliens than did Asimov. However, I think it is possible to imagine that Asimov could have written some alien species from our galaxy into a sequel for Foundation and Earth. That idea is explored inThe Start of Eternity.
If Asimov had managed to write some aliens into the Foundation Series, would they have been friends or foes of humanity? I like to think that Carl Sagan was right and that we should expect to make contact with friendly aliens, or, at worst, indifferent aliens. Other scientists, for example, Stephen Hawking are more paranoid. In comments about reports of seemingly benign UFOs visiting Earth, Hawking said, "I think any visits by aliens would be much more obvious and probably also much more unpleasant." In the last few pages of Foundation and Earth, Asimov seemed to be setting the stage for a suspenseful conflict between Galaxia and aliens. I feel a great sense of loss because of the fact that Asimov did not have time to provide us with his vision of that "showdown". The Start of Eternity is a fan fiction tribute to Asimov where we can explore possible ways to completed the Foundation Saga.
