Adding Rooms to the Bottom

I previously mentioned Richard Feynman's famous 1959 lecture "Plenty of Room at the Bottom". In the early stored-program computers of the 1950s storage of a few kilobits of data required bulky electronic devices that today make interesting museum pieces. Feynman said, "There is nothing that I can see in the physical laws that says the computer elements cannot be made enormously smaller than they are now."

How far have we come during my lifetime (1959 - 2012)? The first computer I bought (1985) came with 1,000,000 bytes of RAM in the form of microchips. I now use a USB flash drive that has 8,000,000,000 bytes of storage space.

Photolithography now allows the manufacture of microchip elements on the scale of a few tens of nanometers. Covalent bond lengths are typically just a bit less than a nanometer in length. Important biological structures such as the width of a DNA double helix, the width of a cell membrane and the width of a ribosome are in the range of 2 to 20 nanometers.

We can use a ribosome as a model of an artificial chemical nanite, a molecular machine that we might some day design and use for purposes such as repairing cells (medical nanites).

For stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe I often include nanites as plot elements and I can imagine McCoy sending a swarm of nanites into Chekov's brain where they quickly repair a broken blood vessel. I also like to imagine that swarms of nanites can slip into our brains and modify our mental processes. Also, I imagine that humans could be provided with nanite-based prosthetic devices (such as "facial nanites") that would allow for shape-shifting disguises and voice alterations.

Hierions and Sedrons However, I'm not satisfied to stop with a nanotechnology that allows for the design and production of molecular machines. I imagine that the Huaoshy long ago developed a sophisticated hierion physics that makes possible a form of matter where the linkages between "atoms" are 12 orders of magnitude smaller than the covalent bonds in conventional matter.

Hierions and sedrons make possible zeptoscale devices that are much smaller than ribosomes. How much smaller?

Think about a 20 nanometer ribosome that builds a protein out of amino acids and compare that to a 5 meter paving machine. The ribosome is about 9 orders of magnitude smaller than the paver.

In my exodemic stories, the most technologically advanced humans (Overseers and Interventionists) are just starting to play around with chemical nanites. The Huaoshy make use of hierion-based artificial lifeforms (femtobots) that are as complex as a human being and which can easily slip right inside a ribosome and take control of which amino acids are built into the growing protein chain. A swarm of Huaoshy femtobots could invade your body and reprogram it to become a completely different organism. The Huaoshy femtobots themselves have true shapeshifting abilities and can form human-sized colonies that take on any convenient physical form.

Sedrons. In Exode, the humans, Fru'Wu and Nereids are starting to play around with hierions and use them for faster-than-light communications. Given enough time, a clever species can fully understand hierions and attain the ability to make femtobots. However, the Huaoshy have one more trick up their sleeves that allows them to trump even advanced hierion technology. By engineering the fundamental structure of space-time, the Huaoshy established for themselves a monopoly on the production of sedronic matter. This allows the Huaoshy to control faster-than-light travel through the universe. Further, there are “array sedrons” that can form a third family of stable molecule-like structures. The bond lengths in sedronic matter are only a few orders of magnitude larger than the Planck length, allowing the Huaoshy to produce a form of artificial life that has components (zeptites) about 12 orders of magnitude smaller than femtobots.

The Huaoshy do not share the secrets of sedrondic matter with more primitive lifeforms, allowing the Huaoshy to exercise essentially god-like power over other species even if they have mastered the use of femtobots. In particular, the Huaoshy control all travel through the universe at faster-than light speeds and they can easily take control of any femtobot or lifeform composed of conventional matter. The term "Huaoshy" essentially refers to a form of sedronic matter that constitutes the form of life that the Huasoshy have become. In practice, primitive creatures such as we Earthlings might just as well refer to the Huaoshy as "god".

Rooms have been added to the bottom

In Exode, the Huaoshy sometimes find it useful to provide some sedrons to primitive species so as to make possible faster-than-light travel. When granting such gifts, the Huaoshy are guided by their ethical rules and so they do not allow primitive lifeforms to even be aware of the fact that the Huaoshy hold god-like powers. Pathney and Koch are searching for the Huaoshy, but all that they really know is that they are trying to solve the mystery of human origins....they have no information about the true nature of the Huaoshy.

Meta-genie

Being the first species to explore sedronic physics allowed the Huaoshy to become masters of the universe. Through long experience of interacting with more primitive species, the Huaoshy learned that is is for the best if primitives like we humans are not aware of the fact that the Huaoshy are responsible for the evolution of our species and our development of a technological civilization.

Although the Huaoshy are all around us (the Huaoshy have become a state of matter that is co-existent with our familiar space-time), they prefer that we entertain ourselves by inventing our own ideas about who -or what- is responsible for our existence. This state of affairs assures that when humanity does make contact with space aliens, the other lifeforms that we come into contact with, even if they are vastly more technologically advanced than we are, will also be mystified by their strangely inexplicable origins.

In his story Little Harmonic Labyrinth, Hofstadter wrote about the idea of a meta-genie, a genie who can be called upon by an ordinary genie to grant "meta-wishes". From the perspective of primitive creatures like we humans, other lifeforms who have mastered the use of hierions seem god-like in their powers, and will be mistakenly thought to have been our creators. For example, in Exode, humans learn that the Nereids have been influencing the course of development of human civilization on Earth. However, those technologically-advance Nerieds know that their own abilities arise from their advanced science and technology and that some other even more advanced force was responsible for their own biological origins. The Nereids have to expend significant effort trying to convince humans that they, the Nereids, are not the god-like creators of humanity.

Too Alien

Back in the 70s, my copy had this
John Schoenherr cover art

Not alien enough. One of the first science fiction novels that I read was Against the Fall of Night, the precursor to  The City and the Stars. I was rather startled by how Clarke's story depicted humans still on Earth a billion years in our future. In his time travel novel, The End of Eternity, Asimov explicitly adopted the view that it is possible for humans to create a stable cultural environment within which humans would not significantly change by evolution over the course of millions of years. However, since those two stories were written, there has been growing interest in the idea that much human evolution can be due to "genetic drift" rather than selection. In other words, due to random events, you can't stop evolution even if the environment remains constant.

By the 1960s, when the chemical basis of heredity was known, it became easy for science fiction writers to imagine a future in which we humans might engineer our own chromosomes and radically accelerate the pace of biological evolution (example). Also, with the miniaturization of computers, it became popular to imagine that Humanity could at some future time migrate from our biological bodies into robotic bodies or our species could give rise to descendants that take the form of some sort of non-biological artificial life.

Some futurists argue that we will enter into a technological singularity during this century which will radically change human existence. Is there any way to prevent Humanity from radically transforming itself?

Anti-Singularity. I've long been intrigued by how Asimov and Vance found ways to limit the rate and direction of human technological development in their "future histories" about Humanity's spread through the galaxy. Asimov imagined that Daneel had taken control of Humanity and so human technological advancement was carefully regulated so as to impose constraints that would protect humans from harm. Asimov introduced the idea that "mentalics" made it possible to control human creativity. Asimov showed that the Solarians diverged significantly from the human norm and Daneel arranged for the formation of Galaxia, a culture within which human brains would be engineered to incorporate a version of the Laws of Robotics. But for the most part, technology did not advance during the 20,000 years during which Humanity colonized the galaxy. Vance imagined The Institute, a mysterious and secretive organization that constantly worked to counter the potentially disruptive influence of new technologies.

Exode. I'm developing a new science fiction novel called Exode that is heavily  concerned with human evolution. The main character is Parthney, who is part of the Buld Clan. The Bulds are a minority group among the Prelands, those humans who live on worlds near the galactic core. I've been struggling with decisions about just how alien to make the Prelands. This is complicated by the fact that the Prelands are a diverse group composed of many different "clans".

The Prelands are the result of a human breeding project that was initiated by alien beings, the Huaoshy. The Prelands live in an artificial culture where people are not even aware of the possibility of invention and technological advancement. They have been given a few technological conveniences by the Huaoshy, but the Prelands do not view technology as a human creation.

All of the Preland clans are genetically modified variants of humans. I'm using "human" in a broad sense because some of the Preland clans had their biological origin as human variants (such as Neanderthals) that have become extinct on Earth during the past 100,000 years or so. One of the major goals of the Huaoshy breeding program is to allow humans to make use of nanoscopic devices (nanites) that integrate into the brain and allow for new types of communication such as a form of technology-mediated telepathic information exchange. Individuals in most Preland clans make use of nanite-assisted telepathy and they make little use of spoken language. The Buld Clan is relatively young and their brains are only partially capable of integrating with nanites, so they still use spoken language.

Right brain, left brain.

The Buld Clan does not have a written language (but a few Buld have learned to read and write). For Bulds, the parts of the brain that we make use of for reading are targeted by nanites and used to make possible a form of nanite-facilitated telepathy. This rather primitive telepathy does not allow for telepathic conversations, but rather the exchange of information that is almost entirely processed at an unconscious level of brain activity. This form of telepathic contact allows individual Bulds to be strongly linked into a type of collective unconscious. Compared to you and I, the behavior of a typical Buld is less constrained by left brain activity. Bulds, like all Prelands, are almost exclusively right brain dominant.

The Prelands are human, but are they too alien? It is challenging to convey to readers what it is like to have Buld-type telepathy and in Exode, I don't even try to make readers understand what it must be like to live as a typical Preland who never speaks. Can readers understand and empathize with people who have telepathy?

And there are other biological differences between Prelands and we Earthlings. Prelands have been engineered to not rely on conventional mammalian bisexual reproduction. The Bulds are hermaphroditic and retain the ability to reproduce without the use of technology. However, most Prelands have lost the ability to reproduce without technological assistance. This allows the Huaoshy to easily control Preland population size and the course of Preland evolution.

The Bulds have been engineered to have an additional synthetic chromosome. In some rare individuals, a Buld is born who lost the synthetic chromosome. The main character of Exode, Parthney, is a Buld who is genetically male (a "false" Buld). Readers get to experience Preland culture through the eyes of Parthney. While growing up, Parthney has no deep understanding of the fact that humans originated as a bisexual species on Earth, although he is intrigued by the idea that he could go to Earth and experience life among billions of fellow humans.

Note: I finally decided on just how "alien" to make the Prelands....see this blog post.

Asimov's Spacers. In Foundation and Earth, Asimov depicted a smoldering antagonism between the hermaphroditic Solarians and Trevize, the "never wrong", the story's protagonist. He wants to destroy Solaria, trusting his infallible sense of what is best. Asimov depicted most Spacers as being disgusted by the "short-lived" Earthlings and Settlers. In several novels,  Kelden Amadiro was the personification of antagonism between Settlers and the Spacers and the Spacers create robots programmed to kill Settlers, defining them as non-human. Giskard and Daneel ultimately decide that the Spacers must be marginalized. This makes sense to me in that Daneel cannot allow further development of robots if he is to maintain control over the fate of Humanity. Solaria's culture, once established, ultimately became a complete dead end for further technological advancement. Even more strange, the human populations of the other Spacer worlds just mysteriously go extinct. The Solarian civilization persists for 20,000 years, never changing over long periods of time after being established in its hermaphroditic perfection. Is it a psychohistorical theorem: human cultures that do not expand become extinct, but a hermaphroditic human off-shoot can persist?

What other experiments and manipulations of Humanity did Daneel perform along with the creation of Gaia? Was the bulk of Humanity little more than a breeding experiment to produce Trivize, the "never wrong"? In the end, Asimov suggested the possibility that aliens might interact with Humanity, but he died before writing a sequel to Foundation and Earth. Asimov's Foundation Saga ends on a xenophobic note with the Solarians waiting for the Settlers to destroy themselves and Daneel, as a last resort, forced to merge his robotic mind with Fallom's (a Solarian) in a desperate attempt to convert Humanity into Galaxia. In the final few pages of Foundation and Earth, Asimov wrote that aliens had not visited our galaxy, "as far as is known". 

Asimov left his great future history poised for a gallant defense of Humanity against either invading aliens or a self-generated danger from within. I suspect that Asimov really did not want to introduce alien invaders from a distant galaxy. Not sharing Asimov's reluctance to include aliens, in The Start of Eternity I assume that Daneel's desperate attempts to shape and modify Humanity are, in fact, due to a long-standing struggle between positronic robots and aliens from another galaxy.

So, aliens were out and apparently Asimov also could not imagine some internally-generated conflict that would comprise a worthy adversary for Galaxia. I can imagine Asimov starting the sequel to Foundation and Earth and calling it something like Hermaphrodites vs. Galaxia. Asimov's formula for the entire saga was based upon imagined conflict between groups of people who all believe that they are doing what is "good". Were the Solarians too alien to fit into Asimov's formulaic approach? And how could a thousand Solarians be a threat to the 25,000,000 worlds of Galaxia?

Gender Engineering

Ursula K. Le Guin imagined a human variant that had been engineered for pheromonal regulation of expression of either a male or female phenotype by hermaphroditic individuals. After spreading among the stars, the Hanish civilization collapsed.

In Assignment Nor'Dyren, Sydney Van Scyoc depicted aliens who had a mysterious origin. We are told that the aliens did not originate on Nor'Dyren, that they were colonists from a long-defunct interstellar civilization. The Nor'Dyrenese were apparently genetically engineered into distinct subtypes so as to form a well-regulated civilization. Males and females were designed to have no distinctive physical differences upon casual observation.

There have been more recent attempts to portray fictional hermaphrodites in fantasy. I've never read any of the Wraeththu novels but they seem to devote significant effort to sketching a cultural backstory for Constantine's hermaphrodites. As a hard science fiction fan, I'm put off by the idea that the strange biology of these hermaphrodites arises by "mutation" and the Wraeththu have magical powers.

I've never read any of Banks' Culture stories, but as I understand them, they depict humanoid protagonists having adventures within an interstellar civilization that contains many technologically advanced lifeforms. The whole Culture setting strikes me as a kind of Star Trek holodeck fantasy stage. In Star Trek, Piccard gets to enter the holodeck and pretend to be his favorite detective. Using The Culture as a setting, Banks gets to play out James Bond secret agent missions with spaceships. His humanoids can select and change everything about their biology, including their sex, but apparently nothing arising from science fundamentally changes the way the protagonist humanoids behave. Life within the core of The Culture might be too strange for us to understand, but there is always the "fringe of the fringe", special operatives of Contact who can have typical Sci Fi adventures where the motivations and outcomes are typically human.

I've never read The Mote in God's Eye. The "Moties" remind me of "Tribbles", creatures with a physiology that a biologist can't accept. The individual Moties alternate between the two sexes and, although they are technologically advanced, they can't find a way to control their rapid population growth.

The Huaoshy design hermaphroditic reproduction into Preland clans as an intermediate evolutionary step leading ultimately to the abandonment of biological reproduction. For Prelands, both male and female gamete production is cyclical and rare, resulting in low fertility. In fact, almost all Preland reproduction takes place under the strict control of the Huaoshy-designed breeding plan. When a particular Preland clan is no longer of interest to the Huaoshy, it naturally dies out. The Huaoshy have a specific plan for how to evolve Humanity along the path that the Huaoshy themselves followed long ago. For an analogy, imagine that we found primitive unicellular life on Mars and decided to force that Martian life towards a multicellular existence. The Huaoshy view creatures like we humans as quite primitive, but worthy of having a chance to evolve. In their vast experience, the Huaoshy have learned that most human-like organisms, if left to themselves, self-destruct. I've previously compared the relationship between the Huaoshy and Humanity to the way a horse rancher might take care to tend a blade of grass in a pasture. 

For stories written in the first half of the previous century by authors like Asimov, was it impossible for readers to have anything but an aversive reaction to hermaphrodites? In this century, are attitudes changing? It is amusing to imagine a young Isaac Asimov trying to sell John Campbell a story about hermaphroditic humans. Asimov was able to integrate hermaphroditic Solarians into the Foundation saga, but he did so only after Campbell was gone and other science fiction authors had already begun to explore gender in their stories.

In "The Robots of Dawn", set several centuries in our future, Asimov depicted slightly different cultures (those of Earth, Aurora and Solaria) as rapidly diverging in terms of their sexual behaviors and reproductive practices. Asimov was a master at imagining how members of future human groups might be disgusted by the sexual practices of other groups. Within Auroran culture, Vasilia is depicted as being traumatized by the fact that her father refused to have sex with her. The early Solarians, while still bisexual, find sex a disgusting obligation of marriage.

Too Alien.
As humans, we have millions of bacteria that exist at the surface of our bodies. Normal gastointestinal function depends on the presence of bacteria, but we do not think of our microflora as being part of our selves. On the planet Hemmal, where Parthney is born, the Buld clan population is a minority that exists in a kind of symbiotic relationship with the biologically-distinct majority Preland population. In daily use, the term "Preland" is used as we might use the term "others" or "aliens". Members of each Preland clan refer to themselves by using the name of their own clan while all other humans are called "Prelands". The reader will learn about the other Preland residents of Hemmal through the eyes of Kach, a Buld clan member who finds it useful to imitate the Prelands who constitute the majority population of Hemmal.

Parthney and Kach struggle to understand the fact that they are "false", mutant Bulds who do not fit into Preland culture. Ultimately they must struggle with the broader mystery of the origin of the Prelands and the artificial Preland culture.

The Huaoshy, who are responsible for the existence of Preland culture, have taken pains to make sure that the Preland clans are not xenophobic. The Exode story has aliens, but no alien invasions, Exode has biologically distinct subgroups of humans, but no racial tensions. Parthney and Kach are mutants who do not fit into Preland culture, but they face no discrimination or prejudice. Readers get to follow Parthney and Kach while they struggle to understand the strangeness of the universe that they find themselves in. The reader might imagine that Exode is set in the far future, but part way through the story it is revealed that the universe of Parthney and Kach is our contemporary universe. The reader must then join in the struggle to understand how the existence of Preland culture is consistent with life on Earth as we know it. It should not matter if most Prelands seem too alien for the reader to empathize with. In the end, the reader will see the culture of we humans on Earth as being "too alien" and our own unique ways as the only true threat to our future existence.

Slavery in Science Fiction

"On mechanical slavery, on the slavery of the machine, the future of the world depends." --Oscar Wilde

In Rich Horton's review of Emphyrio he notes that this is one of Vance's "more melancholy books". How melancholy? After having loaned my copy, and not getting it back, I've never bothered to buy another copy of this book. In contrast, I have many other Vance novels that I have re-read until they fell apart.

As mentioned in my previous blog post, it is not unusual for the young protagonists in Vance's SciFi novels to find themselves dealing with the loss of family members; often they have been murdered. In Empyrio, Ghyl Tarvoke must struggle along through life after the death of his father. As I recall (I last read the story more than 20 years ago), we never learn much about Ghyl's mother. Lonely boys against the world dominate many of Vance's stories.

Star Wars - Leia

Slaves. When selecting dark themes for his stories, along with the frequent murders, Vance is not reluctant to include slavery.

Examples of overt, conventional slavery are found in Vance's Demon Princes novels. Gersen's family was destroyed by criminals who attacked the community of Mt. Pleasant, killing many and enslaving the other victims.

In The Palace of Love, Gersen visits the city of Sabra on the planet Murchison where slaves produce fine tapestries.

In Vance's Allastor Clustor novels there are space pirates who never hesitate to capture and enslave young women. I've never read Vance's Slaves of the Klau.


In The Palace of Love, Gersen encounters slavery at every turn. The climax of the plot comes when Gersen visits Viole Falushe's Palace of Love on the world Sogdian. The residents at the Palace of Love think of themselves as the Fortunate Folk, living their lives at the Palace where they think only of how to contrive romantic encounters.

When Gersen, playing the role of a journalist, finally manages to "interview" Falushe, he notes that the Fortunate Folk live without any of the normal concerns and responsibilities of life: they are slaves.

Viole Falushe agrees with Gersen's observations, but he chooses to emphasize the fact that the Fortunate Folk are not aware that they are slaves. Falushe adds, "All of us are slaves in some wise."

In Star King, a man (Rampold) had been the prisoner of the vile "beauty" Dasce for many years, held captive at a secret hiding place, and subjected to various forms of torture. With the help of Gersen, Rampold is suddenly given his freedom, but he has lost interest in civilization. Rather than return to a life of normalcy and comfort, he elects to remain alone on a distant planet, now holding Dasce as his prisoner.

Vance also often wrote about worlds where populations are subjected to tricky schemes of economic slavery. The planet Halma falls into this category. Ghyl discovers that his people are, unknowingly, economic slaves of the alien Damarans. Ghyl's father worked his whole life creating carved wooden screens, but the wealth from their sale went to the Damarans.

Star Trek - Vina

Star Trek - Drusilla

No human male can resist them. Slavery has been a feature of both Star Trek and Star Wars. I've always been amazed by the sheer amount of murder, slavery and violence in general within science fiction stories. SciFi is not some freakish bastion of horror. For example, the Bible has plenty of murder, slavery and violence. I can almost understand Gene Roddenberry constructing a story in which there is an effort made to tempt a starship captain with a green Orion slave girl. The effort fell flat, but it provided an opportunity to splash some (green) skin across millions of television screens.

What was Jaba's interest in Leia? Bait to lure Han to his death? I mentally stumble over idea that in a culture with amazing technologies such as starships and robots there might be people would still think that slavery is a good idea. Including slavery in stories about technologically advanced future cultures is as hard for me to swallow as the suggestion that in the year 2012 General Motors would put slaves into their factories rather than paid employees or robots. Is outer space so vast that there will always be a "fringe of society" where people behave like it were 1000 BC on Earth?

I suspect that in Hollywood they have data from the folks in marketing to show that profits rise 12.4% if a taught bare thigh finds its way into a story (or, more importantly, into the advertising art work). The commercial realities of SciFi probably are such that including just one slave girl in your story generates enough $$$ to justify building slavery in your fictional universe of the future. You can always generate "human interest" by making a story about revenge for murder or the struggle to escape from slavery.....or, if it floats your boat, the slave girl's discovery that she likes being a slave.

Disclaimer: I've never read any of the novels in the Chronicles of Gor. Almost everything I know about these books is from discussions of them (example). Could there be a human culture within which slavery was welcomed and enjoyed by slaves? John Lange seems to have made a tremendous effort to construct such an alternate reality.

Apparently a favorite theme in Gor novels is for a human from Earth to suddenly be removed from Earth and placed on Gor. For example, "the slave girl of Gor" is apparently an Earth woman (Judy Thornton) who suddenly finds herself transplanted to a culture where she is trained how to be a slave. Judy eventually decides that in the alien-constructed culture of Gor, the slaves actually have more freedom than non-slaves.

What interests me about the stories of John Lange is the backstory; there are obvious parallels to the Exodemic Fictional Universe. Humans on Earth are relatively primitive and there are technologically advanced aliens who have visited Earth and taken humans to live on another world: Gor. These aliens (apparently they have no better name than the Priest-Kings) limit the technology that is available to humans (and other similar species that have been brought there) and all this is done for some purpose, but I've not discovered a description or account of why the Priest-Kings collect creatures like humans and turn them into slaves. From my perspective, it is all done to allow Lange to play out his philosophical and sexual fantasies.

I guess the Priest-Kings are modeled after social insects, so slavery might seem "natural" to the Priest-Kings. Ed Wilson has often suggested that we try to imagine the ethics and morals of a sapient being that had evolved from a social insect such as an ant. The Priest-Kings prefer to live underground and they are oriented around olfaction rather than vision. They have technologies that are almost magical to us, such as being able to move their planet through the galaxy and, even when placing it in our Solar System, they can keep it concealed from primitive human technology.

Exode
I'm currently constructing a new novel (Exode) set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. In developing Exode, I've struggled to find a way to slip a murder into the plot.

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What about slavery, is there a place for it in Exode? The story begins on the world Hemmal, one of many planets located towards the center of our galaxy. There are space aliens in Exode, but the story is centered on humans who were taken away from Earth by the Huaoshy and transplanted to places such as Hemmal.

Why do the Huaoshy bother? The motives of the Huaoshy are not really an issue in Exode. Just as a rancher might irrigate grass in a field, the Huaoshy like to nurture creatures such as we humans. The people of Hemmal live their lives never meeting the Huaoshy or having a chance to become aware of the fact that the Huaoshy are responsible for creating the human species and bringing some humans to Hemmal.

It is not easy for primitive creatures like we humans to understand the Huaoshy. The Huaoshy did have a biological origin that was quite conventional: evolving on an Earth-like planet over the course of billions of years. However, the Huaoshy established a technological civilization about a billion years ago on a planet in a distant galaxy. The Huaoshy long ago created their current physical form, that of an artificial lifeform. The Huaoshy are approximately as different from we humans as we are from a bacterium.

The backstory of Hemmal is that the Huaoshy have been spreading outward from their home galaxy for hundreds of millions of years. The Huaoshy reached our galaxy about 7 million years ago. The Huaoshy set in motion a process by which humanity was created from the primate stock originally available on Earth. The humans on planets like Hemmal are part of the on-going effort by the Huaoshy to domesticate and genetically improve the lifeforms in our galaxy.  I've previously suggested that the relationship between humanity and the Huaoshy is similar the relationship between grass in a pasture and a horse rancher.

pro-choice alien, Adam and three candidate Eves

Are the people of Hemmal nothing more than slaves? They are prevented from learning the truth about their origins and the Huaoshy, but they lead happy lives. Happy and restricted. They might resent their role as breeding stock if they were aware of it.

In addition to the human population of Hemmal there is a large population of humanoid robots. The robots are tools of the Huaoshy, but they provide the humans with all of their material needs. The Huaoshy have a very sophisticated nanotechnology that is deployed on worlds such as Hemmal in the form of the robots, medical nanites (that provide the residents of Hemmal with long, healthy lives) and a few high-tech devices such as food synthesizers and the genetically engineered plant-like organisms that are used to help terraform planets like Hemmal and provide the human residents with a convenient supply of electrical energy.

I'm Spartacus!

I'm Spartacus!

The robots create and maintain the shape of human culture on Hemmal. The robots raise the children, indoctrinating them with the conventions of an artificial civilization that serves the purposes of the Huaoshy and this assures that the humans never question their origins or their destiny. Is any human living under such conditions a slave?

What seems most important to me is this: do you, as an individual, feel like a slave and desire freedom? The main character in Exode is Parthney, a rare mutant among the human population of Hemmal. In general, the medical nanites of Hemmal constantly watch for deleterious mutations and correct them. However, there is one particular mutation that the Huaoshy plan for and make use of. Parthney suffers from this special mutation and ultimately it leads him to believe that the people of Hemmal are slaves, but not until after Parthney has already served as an Interventionist agent while visiting Earth.

A blade of grass cannot resent the rancher's choice to let horses graze on grass, but Parthney resents how he was used to further the plans of the Huaoshy. He can burn with resentment, but Parthney still finds himself to be completely helpless, still trapped in the vast, transgalactic web that has been spun over millions of years by the Huaoshy.

Give me liberty

I'm not Spartacus. The dominion of the Huaoshy is actually more extensive than just a "transgalactic web". The Huaoshy have been spreading their cultural influence from galaxy to galaxy for hundreds of millions of years. By the time that the Huaoshy reach Earth, their civilization spans tens of thousands of galaxies. During their exploration of space, the Huaoshy have found thousands of planets where life evolved and human-like civilizations first appeared, flourished, faltered and then finally sank into nonexistence. Only by rare luck did the Huaoshy come into existence as an artificial lifeform that can persist across vast periods of time.

Parthney learns the truth about human origins and struggles with this question: is it better for humanity to accept the patronage of the Huaoshy or would humans be better off if they revolted and went their own way? Are we humans so proud and independent that we would prefer to risk a miserable self-generated plunge into destruction rather than live safely under the guiding influence of the Huaoshy?

Parthney wants to shout, "Give me liberty or give me death!" but across 100,000 galaxies the evidence indicates that liberty, for human-like species, is what leads to death. An important part of the "Huaoshy system" is that anytime someone like Parthney learns too much and begins to feel that they are being deprived of self-determination then they are put into close contact with the social group that they perceive as depriving them of self-determination. In the end, Parthney wants to "go all the way" and "meet his maker" and his cry becomes, "Give me enlightenment!". This is not easy to accomplish since the Huaoshy are essentially a synthetic state of matter that exists beyond the three spatial dimensions known to we humans. It is Parthney's son who elects to adopt freedom and abandon the Huaoshy system. In the Exode Saga, it is left to the reader to decide to what extent we here on Earth are slaves.

"Never before in history have slaves been so well fed, thoroughly medicated, lavishly entertained. But we are slaves nonetheless." -- Edward Abbey
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Star Trek Continues. A 21st century perspective on slavery in science fiction (watch).

Is Ava in Ex Machina a sex slave?

Related reading: science fiction as a literary genre.
                           2019: Emphyrio and the Cold War

2015: Bringing back Ghyl Tarvoke for a second life. Also: Slaves of the Huaoshy

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Promethean Rorschach Test

an "engineer"drinks a dose of "black goo"

As discussed in a previous blog post, the film Prometheus seems to have been designed by folks who were anticipating a chance to make a sequel. In order to stimulate speculation and motivate fans to anticipate a sequel, Prometheus never provides viewers with a coherent backstory for the "engineers".

A Promethean Rorschach Test

Everyone is able to view Prometheus through the lens of their own life experience .... we each "connect the dots" of the ambiguous plot in our own way ... then we can go online to argue about conflicting interpretations. This blog post has my answers to the Promethean Rorschach Test.

Here are three things we seem to know about the "engineers" (and hopefully, we can agree about these). The film Prometheus seems to tell us:

1. Visitors from outer space came to Earth long ago ("ancient astronauts"). Over the course of thousands of years those visitors interacted with several widely-distributed civilizations on Earth. The "visitors" seemingly impressed the primitive Earthlings who sometimes left behind records that can be interpreted as a kind of "star map" identifying the location of a distant planet that was known to the "visitors". In Prometheus that "star map" was used to guide star ship Prometheus to planet (actually, a moon) LV-223, a world inhabited by humanoid "engineers". However, the civilization of the "engineers" on LV-223 seems to have suffered a catastrophic setback many hundreds of years ago.
2. On LV-223 there is a seemingly inexhaustible supply of mysterious "black goo", a dark liquid that is apparently related to the stuff that is shown being consumed by a sacrificial "engineer" at the start of Prometheus. In a ritual that is apparently related to some kind of biological "seeding" of a raw and desolate planetary landscape, this poor "engineer" is sacrificed and degraded down to its microscopic constituent building blocks.
3. The "engineers" and we Earth humans look similar, which is no coincidence, since we were told in the movie that we both have the same DNA pattern.

The archeological evidence of "ancient astronauts"

Um, was Jesus an "engineer"?
Ridley Scott said in an interview that during creation of the movie they played around with the idea that Jesus was a visitor to Earth, but they dropped the idea. Some folks (example) have suggested that the "engineers" hate Earthlings because we killed Jesus. Prometheus provides an estimate of when the "engineers" on LV-223 were decimated: about 2,000 years ago. Some have suggested a causal link between the death of Jesus and the death of "engineers" on LV-223.

Mayan artifact

However, when I zoom in on the Mayan artifact it looks like it is labeled 620 CE, a time right in the Mayan classical period. I conclude that there have been "ancient astronaut" visitors on Earth even after Constantine became a Christian. I reject the hypothesis that the death of Jesus is in some way causally related to the death of "engineers" on LV-223. Besides, I suspect that had Jesus been an "engineer" someone would have noticed his freakish skin tone and other unusual features.

While I reject the "Jesus hypothesis", I can't deny that there are elements of ritual and temple-like architecture in the flick. Why does Prometheus begin with the ritual disintegration of an "engineer"?

The Sacrificial Engineer

a sacrificial "engineer" starts to fall apart

"he would live for one year as a prince, and at the end of that year, he would be taken and donated to the gods in hopes of improving what might happen next year"
I don't conceive of the "engineers" as being much different from Earthlings. In the Exodemic Fictional Universe there are humans who have been taken off of Earth by aliens and those displaced humans form what I call Genesaunt Civilization. That is a human civilization that has been given certain technologies (particularly nanotechnology) by the aliens, but most Genesaunts never actually get to meet and interact with any aliens. This rather "hands-off" strategy of alien/human interaction is similar to that depicted in in Clarke's fiction such as 2001: A Space Odyssey and Sagan's Contact. I assume that Prometheus involves a similar backstory, however, we have not yet seen the space aliens who were responsible for taking the ancestors of the "engineers" off of Earth long ago.

In my exodemic stories I sometimes (here is one example) explore the religions of Genesaunts. LV-223 has a large number of "temples" and in the first scene of the movie there is a ritual sacrifice of an "engineer". Why?

Druid ritual

The theme of human "engineer" sacrifice in Prometheus reminds me of the Jack Vance novel The Palace of Love. Vance describes a Druid ritual in which a young boy and girl are buried alive in the ground under a tree. In Vance's story, Space Age Druids have to visit every planet that is colonized by humans and perform this ritual, consecrating a World Tree on each planet. The substance of the sacrificed humans will live on in the tree (forever). Trees provide sacred spaces in the myths of many cultures from the tree of knowledge in the Garden of Eden to the site of origin for Newton's conceptual linkage of Earth to Heaven.

In one version of ancient Egyptian mythology, Osiris dies and becomes entombed in a tree. Eventually his wife finds him, magically preserved inside the tree and she revives him. In Vance's story Star King, the evil antagonist dies, but a strange tree sprouts on the spot, incorporating the substance of the Star King. The hero, Kirth Gersen, uproots the corrupted seedling, snaps its stem and casts it aside, terminating this bid for immortality. In Prometheus, Peter Weyland is technologically preserved in his medical stasis sarcophagus, waiting for David to find the alien technology that will extend his life.

The Earthly Origins of the Engineers
I imagine that the "engineers" originated as primitive humans who were taken away from Earth and used by aliens to terraform planets and prepare worlds for human occupation. The aliens found it convenient to guide the behavior of the "engineers" by means of religious traditions. Why?

I imagine that the aliens (the real aliens, who have never been shown in Prometheus or in Alien) took some humans off of Earth about 100,000 years ago. This is also similar to a story told to Pallis Atwrode by Kirth Gersen in Star King. In Gersen's story, Star Kings are humanoids who evolved during the past 100,000 years on a distant planet after aliens moved some early humans off of Earth. The Star Kings are almost identical to we Earthlings, but when humans developed space travel and started spreading between the stars it was a surprise to find the humanoid Star Kings living on a distant planet.

Imagine a small group of humans taken off of Earth 100,000 years ago. They are taken to a distant world such as LV-223 and provided with some alien technology such as medical nanites that greatly extend their life span. They are taught how to use alien terraforming nanites and they are given some space ships. These transplanted humans become the "engineers", basically human but they genetically and phenotypically diverge somewhat from we Earthlings.

Eventually humans on Earth develop a technological civilization and visit LV-223. Socially, the "engineers" are different from us because they were given advanced technology by aliens and they never developed a scientific tradition: the "engineers" just use the technology that the aliens provided. The "engineers" use their technology (nanites and spaceships) according to the dictates of a religious tradition that was imposed upon them by the aliens. The aliens don't want the "engineers" to develop science and start doing creative things with advanced technology. The plan is for Earthlings to eventually, in their own time, develop a technological civilization and move into the galaxy...destined to colonize the worlds prepared for them by the drone-like "engineers".

So, this is the starting point for my effort to convert Prometheus into an interesting science fiction story: the "engineers" did not "create humans", even if the cross-wearing Dr. Shaw is in search of her creator. What follows, below, is my fantasy about an untold Prometheus backstory that can transform the movie from a summer horror flick into an intellectually-stimulating science fiction adventure.

The horror, the horror!

In 1816 the "Modern" way to "play God" and create life was to jolt dead animals with electricity. Mary Shelley and her friends were familiar with the idea that "animal electricity" might somehow animate people. The film Prometheus seems to briefly go out of its way to give homage to Dr. Frankenstein in a scene exploring the idea that you can use electricity to re-animate the head of an "engineer" after it had been laying around on LV-223 for many years.

What is the Space Age horror story plot device that might give trillionaire Peter Weyland a way to extend his life? In my imagination, the "black goo" that stars in Prometheus is some kind of advanced nanotechnology. As discussed below, Weyland might have reason to suspect that advanced space aliens have medical nanotechnology that could be used to repair damaged tissue and extend human life.

Cavern with plant life created by the "Genesis Device"

So, if we assume that the "black goo" is nanotech, then why was it made, why does it get spilled all over the set of Prometheus and why does it end up producing "aliens" that are similar to those in the 1979 film Alien? Some commentators have imagined that the "black goo" is a weapon. I imagine that it was created by aliens and was intended to function in a way that is similar to the Star Trek terraforming device named Genesis. In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, the Genesis Device can be placed in contact with a lifeless planet and -poof!- in a short time there is breathable air, water and plant life. Therefor, I assume that some "engineers" went to LV-223 and used a bunch of nanites to start converting the surface of the lifeless world into an engineered ecosystem that would eventually support human life.

why there is an engineer shortage

So what went wrong with the terraforming efforts of the "engineers" on LV-223? I imagine that the early scene in Prometheus during which an "engineer" drinks some "black goo" actually took place long ago, but the nanite-induced disintegration of that "engineer" is analogous to what is depicted in the rest of the movie when the bumbling Earthlings arrive and bump into the "black goo". Peter Weyland, in his ignorance, and wielding David as his tool, was willing to expose people to the "black goo", with horrific consequences. I imagine that the "engineer" who drank "black goo" was doing something just as fraught with horrific consequences. What?

Klingon snack time

The bacteria were now as big as a cat!

In The Search for Spock, we see what happened to a few stray bacteria that were exposed to the "Genesis effect": they were "evolutionarily accelerated" and appear as monstrous bug-like creatures. Here is what Ridley Scott said about the "seeding of the planet" shown at the start of Prometheus: "All he’s doing is acting as a gardener in space. And the plant life, in fact, is the disintegration of himself." In Star Trek, plant life was created on a lifeless planet by the "Genesis Device". I assume that Scott was imagining a similar kind of terraforming that could be achieved by the "engineers" and their nanites. (Also, the "Genesis Effect" brought Spock back to life...like Isis bringing Osiris back to life. 

bacteria transformed into worms?

Peter Weyland imagines that there is nanorobotic technology on LV-223 that can extend his life.

The bacteria were "evolutionarily accelerated" in TSFS, and I imagine that something similar can happen to animal and bacterial cells in Prometheus. When exposed to terraforming nanites, some form of microscopic life turns into tiny worms that next transforms into snake-like nasties that are ready for the horror movie casting call.

As an experiment, David infects Holloway with a drop of the nanites. Exposure to the nanites converts one of Holloway's sperm cells into an octopus-like monster inside of Elizabeth. Soon, their "little bundle of joy" is big enough to take on both Elizabeth and an "engineer" in a multi-tentacular wrestling match. (Details can be found in the new Fox film Fifty Shades of Grey Aliens.)

Mommy, dearest! Daddy, dearest!

Human DNA

1979 alien

Yes, the "engineers" and we humans have the same DNA. Within stories set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe some humans are taken off of Earth early in human prehistory and those transplanted humans are "cultured" on other worlds. Similarly, I imagine that the "engineers" in Prometheus are the descendants of Earthlings. Further, I  think the "neoxenomorphs" in Prometheus might be little different than the "giant descendants of bacteria" that we saw in The Search For Spock.

What if LV-223 was not completely free of life during all of the period of time when the "engineers" were using nanites to convert the inorganic components of the moon into the stuff of life and starting the process of populating LV-223 with plant life?  I imagine that the "sacrificed engineer" does not completely dissolve after drinking the "black goo", and some of his stray surviving intestinal bacteria cells were transformed into the horror story plot device creatures depicted in Prometheus as having killed many of the "engineers" on LV-223. In keeping with the horror theme of Prometheus, I assume that the engineer's animal cells and symbiotic bacterial cells turned into larval beasts which eventually turned into "chest bursting" snake-like monsters and who-knows-what-else...with seriously deleterious effects on the "engineer" population of LV-223.

High res view of human sperm

I imagine that the "engineers" are the descendants of humans who were taken off of Earth thousands of years ago by true "space aliens", extraterrestrials who evolved on a world in a distant star system. And we have never seen those extraterrestrials. Even after a series of Alien/Aliens movies and Prometheus we have never even been introduced to those true aliens. The presumed "aliens" who decimated the "engineer" population were actually  1) what was produced by the terraforming nanites acting on some stray cells from the dissolved "engineer" on LV-223 to transform those cells into snake-like monsters. 2) A nanite-infected sperm cell from Holloway that turns into the squid-like thing that poor Beth cuts out of herself.

Many viewers of Prometheus have complained about the seemingly mass-conservation-defying way that creatures (like Beth's squid baby) seem to grow on LV-223. However, if the "black goo" is nanotechnology, it might be possible for the nanites to convert almost any available mass into more nanites. Maybe the "engineers" use nanites to form their exoskeleton-like suits. Maybe some of the creatures that appear to grow quickly (the squid-like thing that rapidly grows up inside Beth and then just keeps growing right into the heavy weight division) are really collections of nanites adopting biological forms, not actual biological organisms that need to eat and grow cells in a conventional way.

The interwebs made us stewpid

I am woman, hear me roar!

Since Prometheus is a horror movie, it seems natural to have the crew of a trillion dollar space ship be a bunch of dimwits so that the audience "enjoys" watching them die. However, might there be a reason for the stupidity of the crew of Prometheus?

Asimov wrote a short story called "The Feeling of Power". Asimov imagined a future time when everyone had forgotten how to do math. Think about the future that Peter Weyland helps to create, a world where not only do kids grow up playing fantasy video games, but a world where humanoid robots do all of the difficult work such as learning how to speak to the "engineers".

So, by 2080 everyone on Earth is either stupid and doomed to be a cast member in a Hollywood horror movie or else they are linked into the internet and arguing about the meaning of the latest horror movie. This video shows a training session for the Prometheus crew.

Heads you win

helmet/head

The "engineer" within the helmet

Why bother to make a horror movie without a decapitation or two? And, even better, talking decapitated heads. And, for awesome extra added  "production value", an exploding decapitated head.

Apparently the "engineers" like to put on spooky exoskeleton suits for Halloween or even a bit part in a Hollywood movie. Exoskeletons might be the hot trend for the next Comicon, soon replacing and surpassing the passé tattoo craze.

exoskeleton

exploding head

splat! Are exploding heads the source of "green goo" that decorates the inside of the "engineer" space ship?

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Robots

Who is the space age Prometheus in the film Prometheus? Who tries to "play god" with the nanites that are found on LV-223? Well, you could argue that Peter Weyland is the one who tried to "play god" by searching for the Fountain of Youth and using David as his tool. Weyland crafted David out of clay. However, in the film Prometheus the sequence of events leading to a neoxenomorph (Deacon) seems to ultimately begin with Ridley Scott's fascination with human-like robots.

Ridley's alchemy effort to make Hollywood gold from black goo led to the robotic David (immune to the biotransformative power of the nanites) who poisoned Holloway with nanites which created squid baby that in turn grew up and did something unspeakable to the "engineer" that caused an adult Deacon to come into existence. I imagine that some similar series of events was going wrong in the first scene of Prometheus. Word to the wise: in case it is not clear yet, exposing animal cells to a Genesis Device or swarms of terraformer nanites is not a good idea.....unless you are in Hollywood making a horror movie.

David the Language Learner

David's vision of an engineer

Since 1945, hundreds of SciFi stories including Star Trek have used a magical "universal translator". Prometheus has David. I assume that Peter Weyland programmed David to learn everything possible about different languages so that the plot of could be rapidly advanced Weyland could ask the "engineers" for the Fountain of Youth. I've seen some commentators suggest that David experiences "visions" about the engineers. Also, David seems to be able to "watch human dreams". I wonder if David has a kind of "robotelepathic" communications link with the "engineers" or their machines.

Black goo on the move

Nanites rapidly disintegrate the sacrificial engineer

For some (reason?) the jars/urns that have sat on LV-223 for may years waiting for Earthlings to arrive begin to bubble with slime when David shows up (some observers report that the jars do not leak, that the "black goo" is a protective coating on the outside of the jars). David might be sending out electronic robotelepathic activation commands to every available component of "engineer" technology, possibly triggering a "black goo" defense system for the sacred jars. In any case, a Hollywood movie is only 2 hours long Weyland is 98% dead already and he does not have time to diddle around slowly finding the Fountain of Youth. So damn the goo and full speed ahead! David is not deterred by the black goo and he manages to bring an urn back to Prometheus for careful examination. Some of the expendable crewmen are not so lucky.

Contact

Palmer and Ellie

In the film Contact, Dr. Arroway has built a career around SETI and she has a deep faith that it is important to keep searching for extraterrestrials. In Prometheus, Dr. Shaw spends years digging to obtain evidence of "ancient astronauts" and when all that effort leads to a "star map" she is ready to fly to LV-223 and film a horror movie and make contact with the "aliens" who long ago visited Earth.

In Contact Ellie has faith in E.T. and Palmer has faith in Ellie. In Prometheus Elizabeth has faith in E.T. and David has some kind of stalker-like interest in her. In Contact, Palmer prevents Ellie from winning the competition for "the Machine seat", which at first pisses off Ellie, but which actually saves her life and allows her to eventually be THE ONE to make First Contact.

Drumlin

The minor horror-like element in Contact is how David Drumlin dies in a terrorist attack, but his death makes possible Ellie's success. In Prometheus David kills Elizabeth's boy friend (Holloway) and does so in such a way that it feeds the major horror theme of the flick, fulfilling Ridley Scott's need to "explain" the origin of the xenomorph creatures in Alien. In Contact, Ellie Arroway is an arrow that cannot be deflected from her dream to make First Contact. In Prometheus Holloway is a hollow disposable dick of a sperm donor who the audience enjoys seeing die at the horror flick death party.

Making "Holloway Toast"; from the Charlize Theron cookbook

Hadden

In Contact, S. R. Hadden is the rich capitalist who makes First Contact possible for Arroway. In Prometheus, Peter Weyland is the rich capitalist who makes First Contact possible for Shaw.

Some commentators have proposed that Sumarian myths were woven into the "engineer" backstory (example). Esarhaddon came later than Atrahasis but there were apparently frequent visits by the "engineers" to Earth during the past 50,000 years or so.

What might have happened if, during a engineer's visit to Earth, some medical nanites migrated from an "engineer" into an Earthling?

The Fountain of Youth. In the Star Trek episode Requiem For Methuselah there is a 6,000-year-old Earthling who mysteriously could be stabbed in the heart but not die. The long-lived Flint eventually builds a robotic woman to be his mate. What if Peter Weyland has evidence for the existence of a few long-lived humans and suspects that "ancient astronauts" have occasionally conferred long lives upon some Earthlings? Peter Weyland might have set off on board Prometheus bound for LV-223 with confidence that he would find "aliens" who could extend his life.

Green goo

Green goo?

If the "black goo" is some type of nanotechnology that originally functioned for terraforming planets then are there other types of "goo" for other jobs? I've seen many online commentators who assume that there is one kind of "alien goo" that does different things depending on the context. I've seen a few online commentators (example) who make a distinction between "black goo" and "green goo". I'm going to assume that the "engineers" have nanites that can be programmed for different purposes. David goes out to explore LV-223 and picks out one jar to haul back to Prometheus, a jar that I assume was selected because it contains a sample of medical nanites....just the ticket for extending Weyland's life.

Do you hear the grasshopper?

The engineers probably have a way to program the medical nanites for different tasks (just as the movie shows Dr. Shaw having to instruct the medical robot how to perform an Evil Alien embryo extraction) and I'm sure David does his best to program/control the medical nanites, but he needs to use a guinea pig Holloway for a trial run. That does not work out real well, so in desperation Peter Weyland has to volunteer to join the horror die-off party go out and personally help David beg an "engineer" for the secret of how to use the medical nanites to extend his trillion dollar life.

Sleeping beauty

David says (to the engineer): "We came 35 light years in a trillion dollar effort to extend the life of this old dude. If you tell me the secret of how to control your medical nanites then old dude will put you in his will rather than his daughter."

Engineer: "Die! This is a horror movie!"

So much for First Contact.

Pandora's jar

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Now, just subtract the horror

So, what kind of SciFi flick could be created if we magically subtracted all the horror story elements from Prometheus?

Once upon a time, long ago some aliens came to Earth and carried away a few humans into outer space. The humans were taken to a distant location and "domesticated" by the aliens, turning them into the pasty-skin "engineers". The "engineers" were given space ships and nanites and sent out into the galaxy on a mission to terraform dead planets...converting barren worlds into replicas of paradise with Earth-like atmospheres and plant life. The nanite-facilitated terraforming took thousands of years and it was a dull and boring job for the "engineers", but someone had to do it.

Down through the millennia, every once in a while a few "engineers" visited Earth and told the primitive Earthlings about what was awaiting them up in the sky.

Prometheus and an alien-built space ship used by "engineers"

In an imagined version of Prometheus with no horror, we would learn something interesting about the motivations of the aliens and we would get to experience the thrilling adventure of the first Earthlings to travel to the stars and learn the "secret history of humanity". And sure, there could still be humanoid robots who go along for the ride. That is a movie that I'd pay to watch. Is there anyone in Hollywood who can make such a movie?

Paradise

Paradise

"Paradise" was supposedly Ridley Scott's planned name for the movie, possibly as a pointer to Paradise Lost. In what sort of SciFi flick might the "engineers" be "angels"?

I like the idea that "engineers" spent 100,000 years terraforming planets, but some of the "engineers" grew to resent their role. Imagine the hard working "engineer" who knows that there are humans on Earth. The Earthlings are living in Paradise, on a planet that does not need to be terraformed, a planet full of animals like cute cats.

Maybe things are rather dismal for the poor "engineers". I imagine that with the aid of alien medical nanites, the monk-like "engineers" live about 10,000 years and never have sex. Maybe new "engineers" are manufactured using alien nanotechnology. Just inject an old engineer with medical nanites that will grab a cell and craft it into a new "engineer".

The hard-working "engineers" spend thousands and thousands of years working to convert lifeless planets into worlds with Earth-like ecosystems. Then about 2,500 years ago the humans on Earth begin to develop science and they seek to understand and control the natural world with technology.

Some "engineers" visiting Earth have taken note of Earthlings like Aristotle who seek to escape from religious tradition and understand the natural world. Some disgruntled "engineers" decide that they too can escape from their alien-imposed religious rituals and develop a new culture that is based on  science and creation of new technologies. These "engineers" who are not satisfied to remain devoted to the ancient rituals, reverse engineer the technology that they have been given by the aliens. They make their own spaceships and begin to learn how to re-program nanites.

Satan's space ship

For convenience, let's imagine that the leader of the rebel "engineers" is called "Satan". Satan and his rebels become involved in a civil war and fight against the loyal "engineers" who continue to live and work according to the plan of the aliens. In their wisdom, the aliens have decreed that "engineers" either stay away from Earth entirely, or, if they do drop in for a chat, not interfere with the natural cultural development of the Earthlings. Satan and his "dark angel" faction ignore that rule, frequently going to Earth and interfering with humanity's natural progress towards science and technology. Why is Satan such a dick?

Satan and his sacrificial bio-weapon

Satan has learned that the aliens have always planed for a future time when the Earthlings will develop a technological civilization and move out into the galaxy, colonizing all the worlds that have been terraformed by the "engineers". Satan wants to claim the galaxy for himself.

Satan repeatedly visits Earth, including once about 323 B.C. and Satan tries to prevent Earthlings from developing a scientific culture. Just when humans on Earth are starting to develop a scientific approach to exploring nature, Satan steps in and manages to throw Earth back into a Dark Age.

However, by dicking around on Earth, Satan sows the seeds of his own ultimate defeat. Some of his re-programmed nanites migrate into the bodies of Earthlings, giving them extended life spans. In particular,  Wēlandaz, a typical northern European, while out hunting in the forest, one day stumbles upon a large metalic space ship and, after seeing a god-like engineer enter the ship and fly away, discovers that he is seemingly immortal: his wounds now heal very quickly. He sets about trying to craft a metal like that of the space ship. A couple thousand years pass and he is known as "Peter Weyland" and Weyland Corp has space ships that are starting to explore the galaxy. However, while Weyland's research on stem cells and nanotechnology revealed the secret of his long life, his attempt to take control of the alien medical nanites in his body backfired, and now he is rapidly aging and will soon die....unless.....

Satan's forces fight a long civil war on planets like LV-223. Using re-programmed nanites, they unleash a biological warfare attack against the loyalist engineers. Satan learns to use nanites to transmute human cells into neoxenomorphs (Deacons) that function as Satan's foot soldiers. The loyal "engineers" are forced to become armored soldiers wearing exoskeletal protective suits. The war is long and messy and the "engineer" civilization is essentially destroyed.

Deacon

Protector

Satan's Tricks

 I've seen a significant number of enraged commentators complaining that the "engineers" can't possibly have the same DNA as we Earth humans. But remember, after seven million years of evolutionary divergence, human and chimp DNA is about 98% identical. Also, science fiction authors such as Larry Niven have long played around with the idea that humans can undergo metamorphosis.

Niven imagined that upon reaching old age, humans can metamorphose into "protectors", a tough-as-nails form of post-reproductive human that functions to defend the younger humans (the children and the breeder-stage humans). In the Prometheus fictional universe, Satan has discovered how to transmute human cells into the Deacons.

hammerpede

If the morphological differences between humans and chimps have come about during the past seven million years, the differences between we Earthlings and the "engineers" could have arisen naturally, by chance, during the past 100,000 years, particularly since the "engineers" have been interacting with aliens and traveling through outer space for the past 100,000 years. The seemingly alien hammerpede and trilobite are artificial bioforms created by Satan playing around with nanites. Once unleashed by Satan, the nanites that generate these bio-weapons are hard to control, leaving worlds like LV-223 hopelessly contaminated.

When the dust settles after the epic Battle of the Angels, there is no further interference from Satan's forces....humans on Earth emerge from their Dark Age and Earthlings enter into a Scientific Age, eventually sending Prometheus to LV-223.
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This (above) was the last of a series of blog posts about my summer 2012 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens. The other SIHA blog posts were:
SciFi Summer 2012
Disney and Entertainment and Science Fiction, Oh My!
Horror, Comedy and SciFi in the Woods?
Aliens in Drag
Ancient Aliens
The exciting conclusion to the 2012 Search for Interesting Hollywood Aliens (SIHA Awards)
Promethean Rorschach Test 

50 Shades of Grey Aliens

The Bottom Line 
 (as of October 20, 2012)
The Avengers -             $1,512 million
Men in Black 3 -             $624 million
Prometheus -                   $402 million
John Carter -                   $283 million
The Cabin in the Woods - $66 million

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November 2013 update.
Image (to the right) from the new film, "50 Shades of Grey Aliens".....
2013 SIHA Awards
2014 SIHA Awards
2015 SIHA Awards
   __________________

January 2016

Alien: Covenant - here we go again

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