Perception of the Future

cover art for "The World Is Mine"

 In my previous blog post, I commented on "The World Is Mine", a goofy time travel story featuring invaders from Mars... of the future. In that story, each time that important information arrives in the past from the future, a new historical timeline for Earth is created (timelines A, B and C in the image shown to the right).

The Wonders of Time Travel. Here in this blog post, I'll describe "The Barrier", a time travel story by Anthony Boucher which provides its own answer to the question: if time travel becomes common in the future, then why don't we have swarms of visitors from the future?

 Boucher Festival. However, before traveling to the year 2473 in order to witness Boucher's imagined time barrier, I want to call-out one more story from the June 1943 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction, "Pelagic Spark" also by Boucher. Yes, this blog post is going to relentlessly turn into an Anthony Boucher festival.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 Digress. Boucher's real name was William Anthony Parker White and he published stories under various fake names including H. H. Holmes and Herman W. Mudgett. I suppose authors who had established a reputation in one field (such as mystery writing) did not want their good name ruined by occasionally publishing a silly science fiction story. Maybe in some alternate Reality, such as the Ekcolir Reality, there was a female analogue of White named Alice White who published the real story of time travel. Maybe Alice was a tryp'At agent on Earth with access to information about the future.

 Gullibility. On October 30, 1938 the CBS Radio Network broadcast "The War of the Worlds", a dramatized alien invasion. Some people believed that an actual alien invasion had taken place. Going into the 1940s, people were nervous about the war in Europe and some revived discussion of Nostradamus as a source of prophetic insight into future events.

interior art for "On a Limb"

 World At War. Into this bubbling cauldron came Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Through Time, first published in 1941, and "On a Limb" by Anthony Boucher in the October 1941 issue of Unknown Worlds, the later making reference to The Story of Prophecy by H. J. Forman and claiming that Nostradamus had successfully predicted historical events that came to pass hundreds of years after his death, including World War II. 

in the Ekcolir Reality

Even if Unknown Worlds was devoted to fantasy, you might imagine that claims made about predicting the future would provoke some skeptical discussion. In the June 1942 issue of Unknown Worlds was 1) "Concerning Nostradamus and Co." by the magazine's editor, John Campbell, 2) "Broken Limbs: A Survey of the Nostradamus Crop" by Anthony Boucher and 3) a review by L. Sprague de Camp of McCann's book, Nostradamus: The Man Who Saw Through Time.

In his introductory essay, Campbell presented the clever suggestion that 1) Nostradamus knew details about the future, but was "forced" to encode what he knew in confusing language for publication during his own lifetime. Of course, the other alternative, is that 2) Nostradamus knew nothing about the future, but his confused writings can be creatively interpreted as predictions of a few future events, after they have already occurred. 

Predicting the future in 1941.

 Batting 0.000. As a magazine editor, Campbell was in the entertainment business, and option #1 (above) is much more provocative. Between Boucher's October 1941 "On a Limb" and his June 1942 "Broken Limbs" was the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the entry of the United States into the raging world war. Boucher "explains away" the failure of Nostradamus and his followers to predict such major events as the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor as being due to the fact that Nostradamus was mostly interested in France and so "little things" like the Pearl Harbor attack were not his concern. Boucher reviewed a half dozen attempts by various contemporary authors to use the writings of Nostradamus to predict the course of world war II, and none of them predicted the Pearl Harbor attack, even though it got the U.S into the war and eventually led to the liberation of France.

2 syllogisms of a circular fantasy

 L. Sprague de Camp had training in science and engineering and he was not buying any of the Nostradamus prophecy nonsense that Boucher was pedaling. De Camp calmly observed that in times of stress, hucksters routinely conjure up Nostradamus out of his grave by using a magic circle. De Camp condemned those who promoted Nostradamus as a source of information about the future as being caught in a web of circular fantasy (I can't call it "logic", but see the image to the left).

Figure 1

In L. Sprague de Camp's book review, he began right where Boucher's survey of prophesy left off and de Camp noted the skill with which Nostradamus "scholars" on both sides of the world war conflict were able to read the murky mumbo-jumbo of Nostradamus as providing support and prophecy for the ultimate victory of their side in the war. De Camp sarcastically commented, "A wonderful man, Nostradamus." Next, de Camp provided side-by-side comparisons of how Boucher and other Nostradamus "scholars" translated some of the writings of Nostradamus. It was clear to see that the various translations were totally different, fitting the personal biases of each translator as they tried to invent ways of turning the words of Nostradamus into prophecy. Figure 1 shows how de Camp ended his book review. 

more internal art for "On a limb"

It is interesting that de Camp did not use his real name to publish his rational viewpoint on "prophecy" in Unknown Worlds. Alec Nevala-Lee has documented John Campbell's perspective on Nostradamus, which we can place in the same category as Campbell's boosterism for other wacky pseudoscience like the "Dean space drive", "Dianetics", Rhine's telepathy experiments, and the "Hieronymous Machine" that was claimed to detect a new form of energy.

Figure 2. L. Sprague de Camp's limerick

 Creating the Future. In "Pelagic Spark" we learn how Anthony Boucher imagines that it is possible to successfully predict the future, without having access to time travel. "Pelagic Spark" begins with L. Sprague de Camp as a character, making comments about Nostradamus and "prophecy fakers" such as Boucher.

the ending of "Pelagic Spark"

 De Camp vs Boucher. In "Pelagic Spark", de Camp publishes the silly limerick shown in Figure 2. Then a strange chain of events is set in motion and future events come to align with that example of nonsense poetry. Boucher's imaginary chain of events includes the actions of Hitler in 1951 and the Aryan World State that is established at the end of world war II. Eventually, mere existence of the "pelagic spark" limerick leads to the collapse of the Aryan World State. 

****************THE BARRIER**************************************

Figure 3. Boucher's 25th century.

 Figure 3 shows how Boucher depicted the future for his story "The Barrier", describing Earth about 500 years ahead of the year 1942. I wonder what Boucher's readers in 1942 thought about a future society which would dogmatically proclaim that interplanetary space travel is impossible.

interior art for "The Barrier"

In the 25th century, a barrier against time travel from future to the past was deployed by a society that thought it was perfect and feared time travelers who might bring imperfections from the future. 

I'm rather amazed that Boucher had the audacity to write an anti-time travel story set within a totally anti-progress society where "there was nothing more to achieve". Actually, there are two temporal barriers in the future. One barrier blocks travel into the future and the other blocks travel into the past.

 We All Have Capes. John Brent uses a time machine to depart from the year 1942 and he crashes into the time barrier at the year 2473. Then he tries to return to the 20th century and he crashes into the other time barrier in 2423. Now his time machine is trapped between 2423 and 2473. 

the man from Venus

Eventually, with the help of a man from Venus, John is able to blast through the time barrier in 2473, but there are other temporal barriers further upwhen.

I suppose Boucher should be praised (as was done in this fanzine) for 1) having the needed will power to invent a future version of English that is spoken in the 25th century and 2) forcing the characters in "The Barrier" to use that ugly language through almost the entire story. I found it annoying. 😡

 Related Reading. Boucher's "Elsewhen" is another time travel story (light on the science and really a mystery tale) which I previously mentioned in Feb. 2022. Back in 2019 I imagined that William White played a role in the inspiration for Isaac Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity. Anthony Boucher's "Transfer point" (1950) shows how a time loop can be changed, an idea that Asimov incorporated into The End of Eternity. 

cover by Robert Stanley

 Asimov's Barrier. Asimov's The End of Eternity also features a time travel barrier, and I have to wonder if that was inspired by Boucher's "The Barrier". There is also the more general issue of cross-fertilization between genres. By dabbling in Sci Fi, Boucher probably motivated many science fiction story writers to incorporate mystery story plot lines in their Sci Fi.

Apparently Boucher was a member of the Mañana Literary Society (at Wikipedia). It was rather shocking to see Boucher include L. Sprague de Camp and his wife as characters in "Pelagic Spark". However, I suppose that was simply a warm-up exercise for his novel Rocket to the Morgue which includes many characters based on members of the Mañana Literary Society and other folks in the Sci Fi publishing business. There was a review of Rocket to the Morgue by Campbell in the January 1943 issue of Astounding Science-Fiction. You can download the book from this website. 

Figure 4. Cover by "Shayn".

 Rocket to Mañana. At just 24 pages, I could not slog through all of "The Barrier" without skimming, so I had no expectation of reading all of Rocket to the Morgue (over 200 pages). That cover art in Figure 4 is mighty freaky... was it calculated and designed to entice Sci Fi fans to read a mystery novel?

Warning. Sci Fi fans, beware: In the first chapter of Rocket to the Morgue Boucher takes readers through 1) a recap of his previous mystery novel, 2) a diaper change and 3) a recipe for cooking rabbit . Yawn.

 That Sonofabitch Hilary. That's Hilary Foulkes, the money-grubbing son of a famous writer. Nobody likes Hilary and his endless efforts to maximize profits from his father's literary legacy. Spoiler: the story distracts readers by asking who would want to kill Hilary [answer = everyone] when you should be asking who Hilary wants to murder.

in the Ekcolir Reality

Science fiction arrives in Chapter 2 with the appearance of Captain Comet and his robot, Adam Fink, characters in some kind of comic book being written by a Sci Fi writer named Joe Henderson.

 5D Breasts. Chapter 3 continues the methodical process of introducing another writer who has reason to dislike Hilary. Readers also get to hear about a game that Boucher and other writers played, trying to sneak bits of sexual content past science fiction editors who did not want sex in their pulp magazines.

I'm not a reader of mystery stories, but I get the feeling that in writing Rocket to the Morgue, Boucher was trying to move beyond the usual conventions of mystery genre stories by tossing in some science fiction. If you are a science fiction fan, I suggest that you read this, which decodes the characters in Rocket to the Morgue who were based on real people working in the science fiction genre.

cover by Steele Savage

It is not a good sign when I wander off to read "reviews" of a novel such as Rocket to the Morgue rather than read the novel. Judging by comments that readers have posted online, some readers have enjoyed the story, but others have not. For example, Daniel Marvello at Goodreads wrote: "...the over-the-top banter between the characters quickly became annoying. I had to give up on the book after a few chapters." I feel Daniel's pain.

 Took the Words Out of My Mouth.  Martin explained: "I chose this book because Boucher based several characters on SF luminaries of the early Astounding era. While the characters are in there, they are flat. Like many characters in puzzle mysteries, they are cutouts. All that's important is where they are when, and their motives as described by observers. They aren't written as people, but as pieces in a game."

image source

 Literary Gamesmanship. Long ago, I read The Squares of the City by John Brunner (reviewed here by "2theD"). In that novel, Brunner set himself the task of constructing a plot around the moves of a chess game. The plot of The Squares of the City was highly contrived and generated no interest for me. I feel the same way after reading the first several chapters of Rocket to the Morgue. However, reviewers of the novel frequently mention  the character "Sister Ursula" and Rocket to the Morgue is part of the "Sister Ursula Series", so I felt obligated to keep reading just so that I could be introduced to Sister Ursula.

 Early Ending. I made it to page 55 of Rocket to the Morgue, but by then I'd had enough. I could not get something that Isaac Asimov once wrote out of my head... "...they insisted that I at least read it and give it a chance. So I did. I tried to read it and the gears locked up long before I finished. It seemed to me so unsuccessful a book..."

cover by Len Goldberg

 Skim and Reverse. Starting from the end of the novel, I skimmed and found Boucher's "solution" to the murder mystery. How some people can maintain interest in such contrived mystery stories is beyond my comprehension.

What about the idea that Rocket to the Morgue might have enticed murder mystery fans to "cross over" and start reading science fiction? I can't imagine that Boucher's twisted depiction of science fiction and science fiction writers would have attracted anyone to the Sci Fi genre.

 And the Reverse? But then, what about the other way around? Might some Sci Fi fans be goaded into reading Rocket to the Morgue and then decide to read additional murder mysteries? I can't imagine that happening either. My advice to Sci Fi fans, don't be suckered into reading this novel for "insights" into the golden age of science fiction. There are no such "insights" in the story.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 Shorter. Working on the assumption that shorter Boucher stories are better for me, I decided to travel upwhen from 1943 in search of a better Anthony Boucher science fiction story. Maybe Boucher's science fiction got better with time? Boucher's "Elsewhen" is part of the Fergus O'Breen Series of stories. I took a look at "The Chronokinesis of Jonathan Hull" as published in the June 1946 issue of Astounding Science Fiction.

 Change Your Life. In 1971, time travel (chronokinesis) becomes possible and two men begin living backwards when they are ripped out of the normal flow of time. "The Chronokinesis of Jonathan Hull" becomes a murder mystery for detective Fergus O'Breen when he awakens to find one of those reverse-living men (Mr. Hull) dead in his bedroom.

interior art for Chronokinesis

 Murder Suicide. Then another dead body is found across town; that of the other time-traveler who was murdered by Mr. Hull. Lucky for O'Breen, Hull wrote an account of the invention of time travel in 1971 and how after living in reverse for 30 years, he killed his fellow time traveler.

According to Boucher, what does it mean to "live backwards"? Does Mr. Hull grow younger as he moves back through time towards the 1940s? No, he grows old and ends up with long gray hair. Hull does speak backwards and so as not to attract attention, he must walk around town backwards (which looks like walking forwards to everyone else).

Readers are told that objects held by Hull magically join his backwards movement through time (this allows him to eat food), so what happens when Hull fires a gun and the bullet is no longer in contact with his body? 

see these two covers: 1, 2

When fired from the gun, does Hull's bullet move towards or away from the intended victim? Hull kills himself with cyanide. If we were watching, would we see the cyanide molecules all rush out of his mitochondria and assemble into a capsule that pops out of Hull's mouth? What happens to his body when he dies? Why doesn't it keep moving into the past? What happens to the food that Hull eats? If we watched Hull walking backwards, would we see carbon dioxide molecules enter his body, come together to form sugar molecules and then get spit out of his mouth as starch in a potato chip? 

"The Chronokinesis of Jonathan Hull" makes no sense from a scientific perspective and isn't much of a detective story. I place it in the same category of science fiction as stories in which the author imagines a technological breakthrough that allows a person to shrink to microscopic size or accelerate their movements.

in the Ekcolir Reality

 5th of 5. The last of the Fergus O'Breen Series of stories was "Gandolphus", published in the June 1952 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories. Sadly, there is no science in this alien invasion story. "Gandolphus" reminds me of Hal Clement's 1949 story "Needle". Both stories involve aliens who arrive on Earth and the aliens take up residence inside human hosts.

Clement made an effort to provide a science-based explanation for how an alien organism might reside inside a human body and interact with the host nervous system. For "Gandolphus", Boucher made no such effort and the story reads more like magical fantasy than science fiction. Detective Fergus O'Breen is in New York and meets Charles Harrington who soon drops dead, but he left behind a written account of his alien contact. The story reads rather like a mystery as Harrington comes to slowly realize that the alien being, Gandolphus, is inside his body and sometimes takes control.

cover art by Melanie Korte

Gandolphus himself adds in one last page at the end of Harrington's typed report, then Gandolphus moves on to a new host body to collect more information. Gandolphus is the advanced scout for a fleet of alien spacecraft soon to arrive and send a horde of aliens into many human bodies.

The lead story in the June 1952 issue of Other Worlds Science Stories was "Robot---Unwanted" by Daniel Keyes. Back in the 1970, I read his story "Flowers for Algernon" as published in The Science Fiction Hall of Fame. "Robot---Unwanted" reminds me of the movie Bicentennial Man. Both stories concern a robot who becomes the first robot to ever become free... not the property of some human. In writing "Robot---Unwanted" it seems that Keyes was influenced by Asimov's positronic robot stories and I have to wonder if Asimov was also influenced by "Robot---Unwanted". The novelette "The Bicentennial Man" was published in 1976. 

interior art for "Robot---Unwanted" by Robert Fuqua

the ending of "Robot---Unwanted"

In "Robot---Unwanted" the free robot is cleverly called Robert F-R (Free-Robot). After becoming the world's first free robot he struggles to find a job. Robert needs a job so that he can afford lubricant, energy and repairs. This is another story in which the Space Age came to an early end and now humans are stuck on Earth and unemployment is a problem. Humans resent robots for taking away jobs. After Robert starts his own business and has learned how to make money, he dreams of going off into outer space to found a colony where free robots can exist beyond the reach of humans.

Next: some old stories about robots.

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Detective Daneel

Soarele gol

During the past four decades I have resisted all temptations to just sit down and read The Naked Sun by Isaac Asimov. I've probably read it before, in bits and pieces, while standing and browsing in book stores. For this blog post, I read the version that was published in 1956 in Astounding Science Fiction.

Previously, in The Caves of Steel, Asimov had introduced Detective Baley and Daneel, a humanoid robot. In The Naked Sun, Baley and Daneel go to the planet Solaria and try to solve a murder mystery. Solaria is a world where robots do all the work and just a few humans live on large estates, each living in almost complete isolation from other people.

interior art for The Naked Sun

Plant a Seed
In The Naked Sun, Asimov introduces readers to a new character Gladia (see the first 3 illustrations on this page). Solarians seldom meet face-to-face, but they view other people by means of holographic images. Gladia is having her hair done by one of her robots when Baley calls to chat. She has not bothered to get dressed because this is "only viewing".

interior art by Henry Van Dongen

The Naked Gladia. As depicted previously in The Caves of Steel, Baley has lived his entire life indoors, inside one of the giant cities of Earth. When he views Gladia, there is a window behind her showing the outdoors, which is upsetting for Baley. An illustration (shown to the right) from Astounding shows what happens when Gladia stands up and tries to close the window blinds. Baley nearly falls out of his chair when Gladia's towel slips and her body goes on display. Sadly, since this was a 1956 publication, the illustration is rated PG.

interior art by Henry Van Dongen

I've never been able to convince myself that Asimov's imagined future for the planet Solaria has any chance of being possible. Asimov apparently liked being indoors (writing endlessly), but that does not mean that in the future Earth will be populated by people like Baley who never step outside. And at the other extreme, people are social creatures, so I doubt that a culture such as that imagined by Asimov for Solaria would be possible. However, readers can view the imaginary future society depicted in The Naked Sun as a kind of thought experiment and try to judge if Asimov has constructed a fun and amusing space age murder mystery.

interior art by Henry Van Dongen

Give me a hand
As a spoiled reader from 2020, the illustrations in Astounding for The Naked Sun do not seem very inspired. The klunky robotic servants drawn by Henry Van Dongen don't strike me as being the sort of devices that anyone would have as their household servants.

As a biology nerd, what I found most interesting in The Naked Sun is the genetic engineering that Asimov imagined to be taking place on the planet Solaria. Asimov suggested that the Solarians routinely analyzed every protein in every Solarian as part of a comprehensive human breeding projet. In 1953, the amino acid sequence of the insulin protein had been determined, so it was not unreasonable for Asimov to imagine a future time when complete proteome sequencing might become routine.

I like to watch. Interior art by Henry Van Dongen

For the Solarians, the next step was to select which pairs of Solarians should have sex and produce children. The sex part was a real weak link in the whole scheme. In the imaginary social world of Solaria, most of the Solarians hated the idea of physical contact with another person. However, it was the (unpleasant) duty of Solarians to have sex with their mate who had been selected by a genetic algorithm so as to produce the best offspring possible. Back on Earth, by 1959, some rabbits had been produced by in vitro fertilization. Had Asimov known how easy it is to do in vitro fertilization, I suspect he never would have use the plot that he wrote into The Naked Sun.

back to the future

After a Solarian woman becomes pregnant, the embryo is surgically removed from her body and gestated artificially. Defective embryos are eliminated and only healthy children are produced. The children who are "born" on Solaria are another big problem. Nobody on the planet wants to have anything to do with raising children. A special cadre of robots is assigned to that task. One particularly dicey problem is how to get a robot to discipline a child.

Three Laws
Asimov's imaginary positronic robots have built-in safety features: the three laws of robotics, the first of which is "A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm." However, in The Naked Sun, Asimov describes how robots on Solaria spank the children. The Solarian roboticists have weakened the first law, allowing robots to punish children "for their own good". The evil roboticist in the story is even planning to make robotic spaceships that will mistakenly believe that during a war they are only destroying other robotic spaceships, not spaceships containing humans from rival planets.

a red-shirted Solarian

 What the meaning of is "human" is
Solarian robots are also programmed with the prejudices of the Solarians and to treat Earthlings as inferiors. Asimov later came back to this idea in his 1986 novel Foundation and Earth. I love the idea of a writer who can pick up an old story idea after thirty years and run with it. In this case, the xenophobic Solarians have been quietly carrying out their human genetic engineering program for close to 50,000 years.

For me, I love what Asimov did in Foundation and Earth, uniting his Foundation and robot stories. It was fun for me to see the ancient origins of Fallom in The Naked Sun.

     Mystery

in the Ekcolir Reality

From my perspective, the biggest mystery of The Naked Sun is why Asimov made such little use of detective Daneel in this novel.🙁

After publishing The Naked Sun, Asimov entered into a new phase of his writing career during which he pretty much went out of the Sci Fi novel writing business, continued writing short Sci Fi stories and wrote many non-fiction books. Many of Asimov's non-fiction books were about physics, but in 1962 Asimov published a book about the genetic code and in 1963 he published The Human Brain. Asimov then published a novelization of Fantastic Voyage, so apparently someone thought he should still be writing novels. The Gods Themselves slipped out in 1972. Eventually, late in his life, Asimov did return to writing more science fiction novels, but he was taken from us too soon. I like to think that Asimov might have written another novel about Gladia's first years on Aurora and her relationship with Jander.

                                                            Psionics

whatever psionics is, that's entertainment

The second biggest mystery related to The Naked Sun is: why didn't Asimov publish another Gladia and Daneel novel like Robots of Dawn until 1983, 17 years after The Naked Sun? Yes, Asimov was plenty busy, still writing, but I have to wonder to what extent Asimov was pushed away from writing science fiction novels by his faltering relationship with John Campbell.

editorial, June 1956 Astounding

Campbell expected that the efforts of amateurs to launch a science of "psionics" would face problems similar to what early chemists ran into, for example, chasing after silly ideas like phlogiston. In the June 1956 issue, Campbell claimed that the readers of Astounding wanted the magazine to "run psionics articles".

Image from Campbell's psionics article, June 1956
 Astounding. Campbell warned readers to ignore
 mystics when investigating psionics; after-all, Jesus
had been unable to tell Peter how to walk on water.

Gullibility Detector
Campbell was trying to sell magazines and he wanted to entertain his nerdy audience. In that June issue, Campbell published a picture of a "Hieronymous Machine". Designed by Thomas Hieronymus, the device was claimed to detect a new form of radiation, "eloptic energy", some mysterious hybrid electrical-optical signal emitted by all material substances. While expressing doubts about Hieronymus' "theory", Campbell built a version of the "detector" and reported that it did seem to detect something.

                                                                                                      walking on water

source

Inspired by Asimov
I have a lot of fun in my Exode Saga writing about a character named "Thomas" who annoys Isaac Asimov by trying to get Asimov to read his crazy story about alien visitors to Earth. Also, in the Exode Saga, there are mysterious particles called "hierions" that can be used for sending telepathic signals. I'm not trying to mock Campbell or Hieronymus... I'm just trying to have fun imagining: what if some of Campbell's fantasies about psionics were true? I have the feeling that Asimov had no patience for Campbell's pseudo-scientific yearnings and that may have contributed to Asimov getting out of the Sci Fi novel publishing business for a while.

Review

Lucky for we readers, Asimov did eventually write some fun novels about Daneel and his telepathic powers.

Confidence

Related Reading: celebrating 100 years of Asimov

hikikomori- persistent avoidance of social situations 

Dianetics - another fake science scam provided to Astounding readers by Campbell 

Daneel - Asimov's telepathic puppet master of the all-human galaxy 

Related Reading: the Dean Drive

Next: the science fiction of neurobiophysics

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Rebottling

The murder victim: Sessily. Cover art by Boris Vallejo.

In his novel Araminta Station, Jack Vance provided readers with a murder mystery. Published in 1987, Araminta Station was the first novel in a trilogy, The Cadwal Chronicles. The planet Cadwal almost has a modern feel to its fictional human society. While the residents of Araminta Station have access to the local spaceport, owning a personal spaceship is expensive, about like owning a private jet aircraft in our world. When most residents of Araminta Station travel to distant planets, they buy tickets for passage on-board regularly scheduled commercial flights. Sadly, Vance did not include anything like cell phone technology in his imagined future society, but Araminta Station does have a fairly extensive system of cameras for recording events in the community's public spaces.

cover art by Tim White

Vance did not tell us the exact number of residents living in Araminta Station. The small community was originally intended to hold about one hundred staff members who would manage the logistics of keeping the planet Cadwal free of looters and rescuing nerdy members of the Naturalist Society who came from Earth to study the unique and often dangerous life forms of the planet. For example, shown above is a tangle-top, one of the indigenous lifeforms. Cadwal is a nature preserve, and the chief administrator is the Conservator, whose house is located at Araminta Station. That cover art by Boris Vallejo (above) also depicts the young nubile, Sessily Veder, who is the murder victim. Using video evidence recorded by the array of cameras at Araminta Station, the police soon have a suspect in the case of Sessily's mysterious disappearance.

Araminta Station. Cover art
by Luc Desmarchelier.

As is typical for conventional murder mysteries, the first suspect in the case of Sessily's death is not the actual murderer. However, the investigators of the crime, who include Glawen Clattuc, Sessily's boyfriend and the main protagonist of Araminta Station, end their investigation of the case in frustration. They feel that they know the identity of the murderer, but they have insufficient evidence to convict. A major roadblock for the investigation is that Sessily's body is not recovered by the Araminta Station police force.

At the start of the story, Glawen's father is a long-standing member of the Araminta Station police and Glawen becomes a young police cadet in training. Eventually, after Sessily's murderer tries to eliminate Glawen (for the second time), Glawen realizes who actually killed Sessily. You need to read the novel to learn Vance's solution to the murder mystery.

Part 9 of Yōd on Earth (Part 1)(Part 2)(Part 3)(Part 4)(Part 5)(Part 6)(Part 7)(Part 8)

Yōd

Yōd
Yōd is bored. She can't understand why I continue to fret over the proper way to tell the Exode Saga. I've had several conversations arguments with Yōd about the idea of trying to interpret science fiction stories such as Araminta Station as garbled accounts of future events in other Realities of Deep Time. We had another of these little arguments today. I had convinced Yōd to read the entire Cadwal trilogy.

Yōd: I still don't agree that Sessily had telepathic abilities. Or Glawen, for that matter.

Me: Well, that's just an interpretation of clues provided by Vance. Remember, my assumption is that Vance's replicoid knew more about telepathy than Vance did.

source

Yōd: And you think Vance was just a puppet, writing anything that his replicoid wanted to be written?

Me: No matter.

Yōd: Oh, ya, that's your favorite example of science fiction code. You believe that Vance was made to repeatedly put the phrase "no matter" into his stories.

Yōd giggled and shook her head, mocking me.

sedrons

Me: Well, eventually I realized that another way of interpreting that phrase was as a hidden message meaning "know matter". That led to the discovery of hierions and sedrons, new forms of matter.

Yōd groaned and rolled her eyes.

Yōd: Maybe you should rephrase that as "fictional discovery of hierions".

Me: Yes, of course. Anyhow, I've been forced to start examining my own habits, searching for similar examples from my own fiction writing... looking for clues to how my behavior has been guided and shaped. It occurred to me that maybe Gohrlay's replicoid system was being used to help me in this task.

Image source

Yōd: Wait now. Which is it? Do replicoids obscure the truth with codes or help you break the codes?

Me: Yōd, don't you see that it must be both? For decades I was being prepared for the task of writing the Exode Saga. Then, when the time came, after the Huaoshy had put an end to time travel, new rules were in effect. We were then under the terms of the Trysta-Grean Pact and I could finally write the Exode Saga. At that point, the de-coding process had to be facilitated, but for earlier decades it was all coding, all the time.

Yōd thought about it and took a few minutes to skim through her ebook copy of Araminta Station. When she gave up searching that book, she looked at me again.

Yōd: I don't have your imagination. What coded information do you imagine is present in Vance's novel Araminta Station?

I laughed and tried to decide where to begin.

Me: Lately, I've been thinking about misdirection. Specifically, warning to me about how my attention has been guided and misdirected towards dead ends. A good example is provided by Vance in Araminta Station. For years everyone suspects that Glawen's cousin Arles is the person who murdered Sessily. Only much later is the truth revealed.

Yōd: I see. Glawen only figured out the identity of the murderer after miraculously surviving an attempt to eliminate Glawen at Pogan's Point.

source

Me: While imprisoned in the cave at Pogan's Point, Glawen had time to think. That's one of the big lessons that I've learned from both Vance and Asimov.

Yōd: You've learned to take your time?

Me: Well, I'd prefer to say that I've learned to think things through, but, ya, that does take time.

Yōd: And have you thought of something or are you just waiting for inspiration to strike? What you've been doing looks an awful lot like procrastination and writers block.

Me: Well, I can tell you where my thoughts have led, so far. I still don't feel like I've reached an endpoint for my cogitations.

The Final Reality

Yōd: Tell me where you are, currently.

Me. Actually, Araminta Station was the starting point, but now I'm back to Asimov. He was a master of misdirection, creating alternative hypotheses, if you will.

Yōd: He was a scientist.

Me: Exactly! And that's why a scientist had to be the Editor. But misdirection was even applied there.

Yōd: What do you mean?

image source

Me: Originally, just before the Final Reality, there was a different Editor. A decoy.

Yōd: What are you talking about?

Me: I'm not sure I should discuss the matter. Actually, it is a side issue for our current discussion.

Yōd: I want to understand your thinking. Tell me about this decoy.

Me: Well, I'm not sure where to begin. Have you ever heard of Philip Kindred Dick?

Yōd: Isn't he a science fiction writer?

I nodded and in a moment Yōd had a Blade Runner 2049 trailer running on her tablet. She waved her device at me.

Yōd: This was written by Dick?

Me. Well, Dick wrote a story back in the 1960s that inspired the Blade Runner movies.

Yōd: And you think that Dick was the original Editor?

Daneel

Me: It would be interesting to visit the Buld Reality and see just how far Dick's analogue got in describing the aliens who have long been visitors to Earth. Through temporal momentum, here in the Final Reality, he tried to warn humans about aliens watching over Earth, but he ended up being recorded in history as a psychologically unstable drug user who died at age 53.

Yōd: Replicants and robots. Is that the link to Asimov?

Me: What? Oh, I see. No, that was not my line of thought. I've never read Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? and I've never watched the Blade Runner films, so I have no idea how replicants compare to Asimov's robots like Daneel. Anyhow, the use of Dick as a decoy Editor is not the important idea, although it does make me wonder what could happen to me if I made an error in the telling of the Exode Saga. What happened to Dick, how his life ended at such a young age, serves as a warning. As does the removal of Ivory from this world.

Yōd: So, you heed these warnings and stop writing? Stasis?

Second Foundation

Me: There is no use in writing my way down a blind alley. I need to be sure I'm going down an alleyway that leads towards my goal. Not someone else's goal.

Yōd: What alternative hypotheses did Asimov suggest?

Me: I'm sure that in the Final Reality he was not allowed to publish anything that would be a clear and direct message for the Editor. However, his fictional examples of misdirection make the point. For example, look at how he ended the story of Second Foundation.

Yōd. Ah, I think I know what you are driving at. Everyone in the First Foundation was allowed to believe that they had defeated the Second Foundation.

The End of Eternity

Me. Right. And another good example is found in Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity.

Yōd opened her copy of The End of Eternity on her tablet. She read through the table of contents in order to refresh her memory of the story.

Yōd: Do you mean Asimov's depiction of Harlan taking until the very end of the novel to figure out why he should help put an end to the Eternity time travel device?

Noÿs and Harlan

Me: Sorta. But it is deeper than that. Yes, is some sense, every member of Eternity, including Harlan, was indoctrinated with the belief that Eternity was a necessary part of Earth's history. Then the people of Earth's far future realized that the technology of time travel and the mere existence of Eternity was incompatible with human survival and would prevent any long-term future for human civilization. In the end, Harlan's entire world view was altered and he became a willing accomplice in the act of destroying Eternity... and giving Humanity a chance to have an infinite existence spreading among the stars.

Yōd: And you think you are facing the same kind of choice, that type of dead end vs. infinite future decision point?

Me: No. I don't believe that I've ever been given that kind of freedom. It is not a matter of me making the right choice. It is more about fuzziness, I guess.

Yōd: Fuzziness?

Me: Asimov explained it in his book. No matter how carefully you try to examine Reality, there is always some chance variation, some fuzziness. This is fundamentally an issue of quantum uncertainty. In my case, I've been forced into a particular alleyway of Time, but I still have choices I can make. I have to believe that I can still make some choices. It is that micro-domain of my options that I'm concerned with. And I suspect that I long ago made a poor choice that was just as misguided as Glawen suspecting that Arles had killed Sessily.

Yōd: What is the poor choice that you made?

Changing the dimensional structure of the universe (source).

Me: I accepted the idea that over the course of many many years, the Huaoshy made multiple alterations to the dimensional structure of the universe. Then, they had to undo some of their work after they discovered that they had made time travel possible. I assumed that the Huaoshy could selectively eliminate time travel from the Final Reality while still allowing for the possibility of faster than light space travel.

Yōd: I saw the consequences of that most recent change in the dimensional structure of the universe when I was on Tar'tron. Not only was time travel terminated, but also telastid-mediated telepathy.

Me: And just like Glawen, I have assumed that I could go no further than that in my attempts to understand the physics of the Final Reality. In fact, you played a major role in making me stop thinking about the consequences of dimensional engineering.

Yōd: Me? What did I do?

Me: When you arrived on Earth, I was carefully led to believe that you and Asimov's replicoid were arriving here after a visit to the Andromeda galaxy.

Yōd: We were.

Me: And based on that evidence, I assumed that all was going well with the Trysta-Grean Pact. I assumed that time travel is no longer possible, but within this Final Reality, humans will eventually obtain technology for travel between the stars. I wanted to believe that Humanity has a great future awaiting us, a future in which people will spread to millions of planets in our galaxy.

Yōd: What is the problem? You don't believe that anymore?

Me: One of the lines from Araminta Station is Glawen saying that he had learned never to jump to conclusions and take things for granted. Well, I assumed that humans would be able to spread through space from Earth to the stars, but where is the evidence? Yes, there was the well-timed arrival of you and the Asimov replicoid, but that does not settle the question.

Yōd: Why not?

Me: I still need evidence that a human can travel to the stars.

Yōd: I'm not human enough for you?

Me: No, that's not the correct way to put it. I almost got tricked by you. It was far to easy for me to forget that Yōd's mind was swapped into your body. You are some kind of hybrid creature: part human and partially the mind of some artificial lifeform that was able to travel between galaxies.

Yōd: What do you mean by that: "the mind of some artificial lifeform"?

Me: It all started with Asimov. An Asimov replicoid was sent to the Galactic Core. That's where you met him, on Tar'tron. However, that replicoid was not a human.

Yōd: Right. As a replicoid, that "copy" of Asimov is an artificial lifeform.

Me: Right. And combine that with Vance's oft' repeated warning: know matter. I only met the Asimov replicoid briefly, so I was fooled. In fact, he and you put on a show, going into the back bedroom for a little romp.

Yōd: Don't remind me. It is frustrating: waiting here and hoping he will return to Earth so we can renew our romping.

Me: Yes, it was easy for me to imagine that you were two star-crossed lovers. For a time, that even made me forget that a replicoid isn't a man. So the fact that he traveled to the Andromeda galaxy and back meant nothing. I still don't know if a human can travel at faster-than-light speeds the way that they did in past Realities such as the Asimov Reality.

Yōd: What about me?

On-board Many Sails

Me: I finally asked myself: if Asimov's example proves nothing, then maybe I was tricked into misinterpreting the significance of his intergalactic travel on-board Many Sails.

Yōd: Who would try to trick you? Why trick you?

The Exode Saga (image credits)

Me: Yes, that is the key question that I had to be led to. You did not want me to ask the correct question. You just keep pushing me to finish up the Exode Saga, including the bogus idea that the Trysta-Grean Pact is being implemented.

Yōd: I truly believe that to be the case.

Me: Yes, I suppose you would never have been allowed to get close to me had you not believed in the truth of the Pact. But I wonder... for some reason, even now you won't admit that I'm right.

Yōd: I understand your hypothesis, but I don't agree that you have proved it. I grew up as a human. And don't forget about your wife; just one of a large number of clones, but also a human.

Me: Yes, and someone went to the trouble of making sure that I married one of Gohrlay's cloned "sisters" and she gave birth to our children. What more evidence could I need to believe that a Gohrlay clone is human. And, in your case, I can't deny that you are now in a human body, one that was born on Earth.

Yōd: So what's the problem? I'm a human who has traveled between the stars. In future times, more humans will do so, once the people of Earth develop the needed technology.

Me: I was ready to believe that. For a time I did believe that. I don't know, maybe you do still believe it.

Yōd: I do.

Me: But can't you understand that I can't accept it. Oh, sure, I want to believe it. However, this is too important to take on faith. I need evidence that humans can still travel to the stars at speeds faster than light. You see, I have no evidence to support the claim that you originated as a biological entity, as a human being.

Yōd: I know I did.

Me: Do you? Do you really? What if you were just a simulated human being? What if you were something else, like a femtobot? Designed to look human, but not composed of hadronic matter.

Yōd laughed.

Yōd: Okay, let's look at your hypothesis. Who would design such a deception? Why bother?

Me: The pek have always wanted to replace humans with the Prelands and eventually convert humans into a type of artificial lifeform, something that can exist within the sedronic domain.

Yōd: But Trysta viewed the future, the Final Reality, a future in which humans will travel to the stars.

Me: Yes, that is the story that I started to tell in the Exode Saga. It is a very feel-good story. But I can't just take it on faith.

Yōd: Okay, let me see if I understand your problem. You suggest that the Huaoshy, in their final act of dimensional engineering, did not only end time travel and telastid-mediated telepathy, but also faster-than-light travel for beings like humans that are composed of hadronic matter.

Me: Yes.

Yōd: Well, if you really believe this nightmare, what are you going to do about it? Is there anything that could be done?

Me: Well, at the very least I don't have to do what I was starting to do: write the Exode Saga as a story about the happy success of the Trysta-Grean Pact.

Yōd: Fine. Tell the story any way you want. I think the important thing is just the basic idea that aliens have long been visiting Earth. It was intrinsically a part of the Pact that Earthlings would not know their future.

Me: That was how Glawen spent a couple of years, telling himself that he could never know who had killed Sessily. But he did not forget about Sessily. Eventually he solved the case.

Yōd: And now you want to resolve this question? Tell me, what if humans could only travel to the stars at the speed of light? Would that be so bad?

Me: I don't know.

Yōd: Okay. So what are you going to do?

Me: What you really are trying to ask is: "will I now get back to writing the Exode Saga and get it done already?", aren't you?

Yōd: I am.

source

Me: Why is it so important to you that I finish writing the Exode Saga?

Yōd: Many Sails told me that she was sending me to Earth to help you finish your work.

Me: And what if my work... what if our work is finding out the truth about Humanity's future among the stars?
 ________________

I called this blog post "rebottling" because of the idea that once a technology is deployed, it is very hard to "force it back into the bottle". The Huaoshy first made time travel possible, then they had to put that evil genie back into its bottle. The question is, what other changes were made when the Huaoshy recently altered the dimensional structure of the universe? Can we humans still spread to the stars?

Continue to Part 10 of Yōd on Earth.

Next: investigating the origin of science fiction

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