New Black

1951 cover by Wayne Woodard

Here in March, I've had fun writing the first ten chapters and 55,000 words of the science fiction novel "Meet the Phari". In Chapter 12 of that tale, Eynta meets Jenny Ebernal and her robot companion Niel on Ottengla. Niel is one of the telepathic Notteng model of robots crafted on Triskelion who I first wrote about 8 months ago. I previously introduced the idea that with the manufacturing of sophisticated humanoid robots on Triskelion, the human population of that world declined. Is there a link between robotics and population growth and how might that impact the use of Alastor Cluster as a laboratory for breeding human telepaths?

Seventy years ago, in the November 1951 issue of Marvel Science Fiction, there was coverage of the topic of human population growth:

the threat of metal men

It is rather surprising to see the arguments presented by Arthur J. Burks opposed to population control, which include the flat statement that because the Bible says "be fruitful and multiply" there should be no efforts to control the growing human population of Earth. I don't really expect a science fiction magazine to publish a discussion which includes an argument based on the author's interpretation of a religious tract, but there it is. Interestingly, Burks calls the bible science fiction. Burks stated flatly: "If ever population is controlled, man is utterly doomed."

Burks tells his readers that if God and Nature had intended humans to control their population then people would have a breeding season. Burks confidently stated: "Women cannot endure going all their lives without knowing if the can bear children." Of course, that turned out to be wrong. 

New Dawn

During the past 70 years, it has become apparent that when women are educated and allowed to have careers, the human population can even decrease and nations will begin to offer financial incentive$ for having children.

Arguing for population control, Leiber presented his side of the discussion in the form of a science fiction tale that includes population issues on Mars in the 23rd century. Leiber pointed out the difference in population growth rates between urban (fewer children) and rural (more children) populations. Leiber argued that even religious people realize that one should not have more children than can be properly educated. Leiber wrote: "Educate people and raise their standard of living and they'll want to control population increase."

image source

Leiber also mentioned "the robot revolution", which put an end to people doing menial labor. In the past 70 years, the world has seen more and more "mindless work" being automated, leaving people free to do creative work. From the perspective of the 23rd century, Leiber wrote: "Today we take for granted that we plan the size of our families just as we plan our careers."

Standard Value Unit

In that same issue of Marvel Science Fiction there is a Jack Vance story called "Dover Spargill's Ghastly Floater" which is a spiritual sequel to his 1947 story "I'll Build Your Dream Castle". Vance wrote many amusing stories in which the quest for money was central to the plot. 

image source

Most memorable for sheer quantities of cash is The Killing Machine in which the protagonist, Kirth Gersen, steals 10 billion SVU from a notorious criminal. For brevity, I like the line devised by Vance for when the mad poet Navarth in The Palace of Love demands a million SVU. The billionaire Gersen has the money, but he casually asks, "Should I bring you the money in a sack?"

interior art by Vincent Napoli

In Chapter 12 of "Meet the Phari", Eynta finds herself running low on money. Eynta is well over 1,000 years old, but she has never previously had to worry about money because while working with Grean the Kac'hin, she was always kept well supplied with cash. In "Dover Spargill's Ghastly Floater", poor Dover invests 200 million to corner the market on Lunar metal mining, exactly on the same day when it is announced that a cheap and practical means for transmuting one metal into another has been developed. Suddenly the lunar metal mines are worthless, but the hero of the story goes on to use the transmutation technology to make the Moon habitable, turning apparent financial disaster into an opportunity for big profit$.

This image made with Elena17
and yennefer by
Eclesi4stiK available
under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

In the case of Eynta, she has just spent 20 years working diligently to help craft the specific types of alien-human hybrids that Grean needs on the planet Yerophet. Believing that one final set of critically important genes is to be found on the planet Kwenslo, Eynta does not let her lack of cash prevent her from traveling across Alastor Cluster to reach the planet Kwenslo. These "lost" genes are needed for Grean's mind clone project and Eynta will obtain them, at any cost.

Eynta is a human-Iidi hybrid with deep purple skin pigmentation derived from her Iidi ancestors. Eynta has memories going back well over 1,000 years, but she occasionally gets a new body. Also, Eynta has access to medical nanites that slow the aging process, so during the events described in "Meet the Phari", Eynta is in a body that is 'biologically' about 25 years old. Given her exotic alien features and access to advanced nanotechnology, how can Eynta quickly raise the money she needs to travel to Kwenslo? See this blog post.

interior art by Frank R. Paul

Also in that 1951 issue of Marvel Science Fiction was "Mountains of the Mind" by Richard Matheson. I first crossed paths with Matheson when I saw "The Enemy Within". I don't think I can adequately express the extent to which I despise 'good vs evil' plots such as that in "The Enemy Within". However, I believe that Star Trek episode was my introduction to duplicating people by using a teleporter, and I can't resist using that imaginary technology in my science fiction stories (older, newer).

interior art by Frank R. Paul

"Mountains of the Mind" reminds me of stories like "Breeds There a Man... ?" because it seems to be about "ancient aliens" who are secretly at work, guiding Humanity into the future. I say "seems to be" because Matheson could not be bothered to explain the source of the amazing technological wonders (such as the 'wave machine') buried under the Rocky Mountains. When protagonist Dr. Fred ditches his sexy girlfriend Katie and goes off to the mountains with Dr. Raschler, they don't actually get to meet the aliens. 😢  

"Mountains of the Mind" raises the question of whether humans could be said to have free will when dealing with super-advanced aliens who can use their super-duper 'wave-machines' to control human thought. It was not until the end of the 1950s that people finally began thinking seriously about miniaturization, so for Matheson, bigger was better. The ginormous 'wave machines' of that controls the Fate of Humanity remind me of the massive technology of the Krell in Forbidden Planet.

Araal. This image made with
  ElfyReborn2 byEclesi4stiK
available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.

In the case of the characters in "Meet the Phari" who work as agents for Grean, they can be guided in their behavior both by Grean's telepathic ability and by her use of infites, a form of nanotechnology that allows Grean to edit human memories. Are Grean's helpers therefor nothing but puppets? No. In fact, Grean makes a huge effort to keep her helpers well motivated so that they do not need to be forced into doing what Grean needs to get accomplished.

In Matheson's story, the aliens rely on telepathically sensitive men like Dr. Fred and Dr. Raschler to keep Humanity going, but the poor Docs are forced to give up their cute girlfriends. In contrast, Grean goes out of her may to make sure that her telepathic helpers are very interested in sex. Eynta has had dozens of children down through the centuries, including Araal. In Chapter 12 of "Meet the Phari", Eynta discovers that she is pregnant once again.

Rosicrucianism advertisement in a 1950s Sci Fi magazine.

 

interior art by Frank Freas

This blog post is called "New Black" because I recently read two of Isaac Asimov's more obscure Susan Calvin stories, one of which features the return of Dr. Black, a physicist working at Hyper Base. Black was first used as a character by Asimov in his 1947 story "Little Lost Robot". In an amusing scene from that story, readers learn how Dr. Black's intemperate use of profanities so upset a poor robot that the machine went into hiding.

In the 1955 story "Risk", Dr. Black helps Susan understand why the first "manned" hyperspace flight failed. The robot pilot for that flight was "too strong", so when it threw the switch to activate the spaceship, it broke the "on" switch. The story focuses on the psychological trick that Susan uses to manipulate Black's behavior and trick him into placing his life at risk in order to solve the mystery of the failed spaceship Parsec.

A humanoid robot. Made using
SciFi02 by Eclesi4stiK
available under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0

Asimov depicted Dr. Black as being "anti-robot" in his attitudes. Never having understood Asimov's decision to depict anti-robot sentiments among humans, I was surprised to find myself including the idea in The Alastor Network and "Meet the Phari". If robots all looked like the one shown to the right (above), I might understand how people could dislike them. 

However, I have fun imagining that in the far future there will be more human-like robots such as the one shown to the left. Asimov himself did not entirely avoid the issue of lovable robots and human sex play with robots. Asimov depicted a romance between Gladia and Jander the humanoid robot in his post-sexual revolution (1983) The Robots of Dawn.

Sadly, most of Asimov's imagined robots were depicted as being male. An exception to that general "rule" is found in "Feminine Intuition".

interior art by Enoch Sharp

I only recently read Asimov's 1951 story "Satisfaction Guaranteed". I've previously described how Asimov re-wrote his Susan Calvin story "Liar!" for the 1950 compilation of robot stories I, Robot, so I was surprised by what I read in "Satisfaction Guaranteed". Asimov claimed that he edited "Liar!" because when he wrote it he had not even had a date with a woman. Why then did he turn right around and write "Satisfaction Guaranteed", which in my view is a far more offensive portrayal of a female character? Oh, well, I'm no expert on what will offend people and I admit to having a fairly fundamental dislike for all old Sci Fi stories featuring stereotypical housewives. Susan has too small a role in "Satisfaction Guaranteed" to satisfy me.

Related Reading: "Helen O'Loy" in 1938

Next: eye candy

See also: Chapter 11 of "Meet the Phari"

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Doth thou protest too much?

In my previous blog post I mentioned Isaac Asimov's story 'Gold' in which he depicts a bribe in the form of 200 shiny gold coins. The bribe sets in motion a sequence of events, but in the end, a great work of art is created, and the gold becomes meaningless in comparison.

Post-Scarcity
Visionary science fiction authors have had no difficulty imagining human futures and alien cultures where technological progress puts an end to scarcity of material goods. For example, the Star Trek fictional universe depicts a future without any real need for money.

source

In contrast, some people can't imagine life without money. It is like religion. Some people who have been indoctrinated with a religious view of existence can't imagine how other people live without religion to give structure to their lives.

I have in the past occasionally blogged about capitalism and the lady who doth protest too much about science fiction writers who fail to make capitalism part of their fictional universes. I'm always amused when Hollywood depicts space aliens as traveling across vast interstellar distances in search of some pitiful reward such as Earth's gold. It is really anti-science fiction stories that depict futures where nothing about society, including economics, ever changes.

original cover art by Frank R. Paul

Jack Vance often inserted amusing vignettes and plot threads about money into his stories. In Trullion, the protagonist, Glinnes Hulden spends most of the book scheming to obtain enough money to buy back some family property that was sold out from under him by his brother.

After much travail, Glinnes finds 30,000,000 million ozols of "lost" ransom money. He has no qualms about keeping the money despite Akadie the mentor's muttered, "Have you no shame?"

In The League of Yrinna, the fate of the "lost" money is explored. Glinnes has no real interest in money, but he makes funds available to both his lover, Duissane, and to his twin brother, Glay. Glinnes has already "washed" his money once on Trullion, but then later he needs some "clean cash" on Yrinna, not his "marked" ozol certificates from Trullion.

In an effort to help Glinnes infiltrate the League of Yrinna (an organization that has long been associated with space piracy), the Connatic issues an arrest warrant for Glinnes.

Glinnes and Duissane travel to Yrinna using disguises and false identities. Arriving on the planet that secretly has served as headquarters for Alastor Cluster's space pirates,  the formerly inseparable lovers must first separate and then later they meet across the field of play during a hussade match.

Among the Demmulney Dragons, Glinnes sticks out like a sore thumb, but the space pirates of Yrinna are intrigued by his amateurish efforts to investigate the ancient Gensifer and Ambal families.

The League of Yrinna

Duissane "slips under the radar" and is able to make contact with the Pheni natives of Yrinna. With their help, Duissane makes contact with the Phari and saves Glinnes from the League of Yrinna. The pek realize that Duissane and Glinnes must be sent into the past where the favorable gene combinations of their children will allow a negotiated end to the Time War in another Reality.

Along the way, I'd like to engineer a scene in Part 3 of The League of Yrinna where Glinnes must spend most of his hoard of ozols in an attempt to infiltrate the League of Yrinna. Glinnes must pretend to become a space pirate and buy a spaceship and sponsor a crew of pirates.

The League of Yrinna

Glinnes learns that for hundreds of years, the League of Yrinna has been able to produce a strange human variant that has the innate ability to use the Bimanoid Interface. However, when these creatures mature, they "lose their minds". This strange affliction (called 'going dark') is due to the meddling of the Pheni of Yrinna who do not want the space pirates to gain additional power. Glinnes fears that Duissane will go dark, so he carries out a raid on the Gensifer Clan's estate in an attempt to find Duissane.

Money: Don't Leave Earth Without It

Alastor Cluster is caught between the old and the new. On Trullion, the basic necessities of life can be had with only a few hours of daily labor. The cash economy limps along on Trullion with the average Trill satisfied by simple pleasures and lacking interest in expensive high-tech gizmos.

On a few worlds such as Triskelion A there are people who strive to make new technological advances, but across the many worlds of the galaxy that have become home to humans, life has changed little during the space age. It is almost as if some hidden force is restricting science and technology.....

Next: the Artificial Geology of Yrinna

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