The Men Who Make Science

Figure 0.
interior art for "Kid Anderson"

This is the second of two blog posts about Groff Conklin's anthology called Great Science Fiction by Scientists. In my previous blog post, I discussed 8 of the stories and I comment on the remaining 8 stories, below. The marketing blurb on the front cover of Conklin's book proclaimed: "Imaginative tales by the men who make science." However, some of the assembled story writers such as Miles Breuer never worked as scientists. Maybe in an alternate Reality such as the Ekcolir Reality there were scientifically-trained female writers at the dawn of the science fiction genre and maybe there was another version of this anthology that featured some female scientists.

In the Ekcolir Reality
original cover by Leo Morey

 Story number 9. "The Gostak and the Doshes" by Miles J. Breuer, M.D. Who needs doshes when we have science fiction? Just as some people call Gulliver's Travels science fiction, "The Gostak and the Doshes" was sold to -and published in- the first science fiction magazine. However, in my opinion, merely sprinkling words like "relativity", "dimension" and "Einstein" in your social satire story does not make it a science fiction story. 

Figure 1. Fantasy Travel; interior art by Leo Morey

Breuer has a point to make in "The Gostak and the Doshes", a point that Jack Vance made eloquently: "If religions are diseases of the human psyche, as the philosopher Grintholde asserts, then religious wars must be reckoned the resultant sores and cankers infecting the aggregate corpus of the human race. Of all wars, these are the most detestable, since they are waged for no tangible gain, but only to impose a set of arbitrary credos upon another's mind." (source: The Face).

Breuer depicts a senseless war that is caused by a meaningless political slogan. The slogan is repeated with religious devotion by the people of one nation, who rally around their shared fantasy and are ready to die in its defense. Breuer also suggests that scientists can be immune to such nonsense because they actually care what words mean.

cover art by Howard V. Brown

Breuer was from a Czech background and published articles in Czech-language newspapers. I suspect that Breuer carefully followed events in Europe, particularly the political situation in 1920s Czechoslovakia. 

When the Nazi propagandist Goebbels was elected in 1928, Breuer was probably appalled. "Whether it was a matter of simplification, constant repetition of memorable slogans, or concentration of propaganda materials in regular campaigns, the principles of mass advertising could easily be applied to political propaganda." (source)

interior art by Elliott Dold, Jr.

 10. "A Martian Adventure" (1937) by Willy Ley. Ley left Germany in 1935, having studied math and science, but as was the case for Breuer, Ley was not a scientist. Ley became well-known as a popularizer of rocketry and space travel and published only a few fictional stories. 

"A Martian Adventure" begins on the surface of Mars in 1978 and Ley asks his readers to pretend that people can breath the atmosphere of Mars and human colonists on Mars must contend with the remaining dominant natives of Mars: giant centipede-like creatures (see the image to the right). In Ley's fictional Mars, there were other Martian natives who built cities a million years in the past, but they went extinct before humans arrived.

The professor, Dan and Nadya. Hot, but still fully clothed. 😞 Interior art by Elliott Dold, Jr.

interior art for "At the Perihelion"

"A Martian Adventure" was originally published as "At the Perihelion". After a bad ending to his relationship with a girl friend, Dan ends up on Mars, digging up ancient Martian jewelry and fighting off dangerous centipedes. Then Dan gets caught up in a Russian project aimed at exterminating all of the centipedes. Dan becomes friends with a Russian professor and his daughter, Nadya. After an armed struggle for control of the Russian colony an Mars, Nadya and her father and Dan leave Mars and head for Earth. Dan pilots a spaceship back to Earth using a trajectory that takes them dangerously close to the Sun. They survive the high temperatures during perihelion by taking a drug that allows them to sleep through the worst of the heat. Dan and Nadya live happily ever after.

In the Ekcolir Reality
cover art by Vincent Di Fate

While "The Gostak and the Doshes" featured fantasy travel to an alternate universe (see Figure 1, above), "A Martian Adventure" gets into some details of orbits and space travel trajectories that only an astronaut could love. Jason felt that "A Martian Adventure" was disappointing, but I think it was pretty good for a planetary romance. Sadly, when the story was published in 1937, readers did not get racy images of the naked and sweaty Nadya during the heat of perihelion. 😞

 11.  "The Neutrino Bomb" (1961) by Ralph S. Cooper (PhD in physics). Cooper worked on nuclear propulsion systems for spacecraft at Los Alamos. The "story" is mercifully brief and it is a kind of spoof article that came in the middle of efforts to put controls on the testing of nuclear weapons. The "story" mentions neutrons, and a neutron bomb had been suggested in 1958.

cover art by Karl Stephan

 12. "The Mother of Necessity" (1955) by Chad Oliver. While reading "A Martian Adventure", I hoped there might be some interesting alien archeology, but Ley only provided some casual tomb robbing and readers learn little about the long-gone Martian society. Oliver was Symmes Chadwick Oliver and apparently he had a career as an anthropologist, but most websites that mention him (such as this one) are concerned with his science fiction stories.

Oliver's Future. "The Mother of Necessity" deals with an imaginary society of the future. It begins in 2062, when it has become common for communities to select their own social systems. There are designers like George Sage who invent interesting new social systems. One rainy day, George slaps together a new social system that is quickly recognized as being good... and eventually it takes over the whole world. 

original cover art by Walt Miller

 13. "John Sze's Future" (1962) by John R. Pierce. After the failed attempt by the CIA to kick Castro out of Cuba, tensions between the USA and the Soviet Union were at a new peak and millions of people around the world lived in fear of nuclear saber rattling. So, why not imagine a future in which there had been a devastating nuclear war in the year 1987? The story "John Sze's Future" provides an account of how a physicist named John is taken to the year 2178, by mistake. 

Arriving in the future, John meets a man of the future, Crawden, who had hoped that the time machine would bring B. F. Skinner into the future. John tells Crawden, "I've done some experimental work myself on Hieronymous machines." "John Sze's Future" was apparently Pierce's way of mocking editor John W. Campbell's (John "C" = John Sze) interest in "psionics".

cover art by Frank R. Paul

Crawden lives in a future society where "experimental psychology" dominates science and where mentioning "nuclear physics" is taboo. Although computer driven cars of this future are quickly summoned by radio, using the language of the future, Crawden explains such future technologies to John as being made possible by "psi". After a short time in the future, John is returned to the past, where he writes an editorial proclaiming that the future will dominated by the application of "psi powers".

You might wonder why Pierce would mock Campbell in this way. Pierce had published an essay called "How to Build a Thinking Machine" in the same 1950 issue of Astounding where Campbell had proclaimed Dianetics as a great advance in medical science.

1929 contest cover art by Frank R. Paul. 1930 biographical blurb about Pierce (right).

Pierce's first published science fiction story was "The Relics from the Earth", about a trip to Earth during a time many thousands of years in the future, after Earth had long since been abandoned (everyone moved to Triton). Why, you ask, did humans abandon Earth? So as not to have to contend with pesky insects.

Astounding interior art by M. Marchioni

Pierce published "Pre-Vision" in Astounding in 1936, before John Campbell took over control of the magazine. At the start of his story, Pierce quotes a line from an article, Leigh Page's 1924 "Advanced Potentials and their Application to Atomic Models".

As told in "Pre-Vision", Hardy is a brilliant pulp science hero who invents a device that allows him to View future events. Using the Viewer, he is able to change the course of Time and Hardy saves a woman from being killed in an accident.

I think "John Sze's Future" is a daring story because Campbell was still a powerful force in the science fiction world in 1962. In his introduction to the story, Groff Conklin noted that several publishers had previously turned the story down. Conklin was amazed that other people had refused the story and he praised it as being "subtle and sharp".

cover art by Tom Ryan

 14. "Kid Anderson" (1956) by R. S. Richardson. I've previously blogged about "The Aphrodite Project", a fake astronomy article by Richardson. "Kid Anderson" features a robot that gets used for training a boxer (see Figure 0, at the top of this page). The story was originally published in Space Science Fiction Magazine, but it is hard for me to imagine why Conklin thought it was worthy of being re-published in his anthology.

 15. "Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse" (1946) by Louis N. Ridenour. Apparently, "Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse" was first published in January 1946 in Fortune. The story depicts a future planet Earth at a time when all industrialized nations have atomic bombs ready for retaliatory strikes on anyone who starts a war. 

cover art by Carolus Thole

Loss of communications to San Francisco (caused by an earthquake) is mistakenly interpreted as an act of war and that triggers a cascade of strikes and counter-strikes that lead to the destruction of every city on Earth. 

Sadly, in 1946, "Pilot Lights of the Apocalypse" was too "far out" for most Americans to understand. Ridenour could not precisely envision the future of the nuclear arms race, but he invented a fairly good approximation of where the world got to with Mutually Assured Destruction. Later, in 1959, Level 7 was published, and I suspect that most people could finally understand that it made no sense to keep building more and more nuclear weapons that could be delivered to targets ever more quickly.

1947 cover art by Charles Schneeman

 16. "Last Year's Grave Undug" (1962) by Chandler Davis. When Groff Conklin was assembling Great Science Fiction by Scientists, he was able to arrange to publish "Last Year's Grave Undug" for the first time. The story takes place after a nuclear war has destroyed modern society. Given his path through life, I suppose Davis had to write a story about blaming communists for nuclear war, but I did not enjoy "Last Year's Grave Undug".

I've long wondered what Karel Čapek has in mind for the "manufacturing" of the "robots" in R. U. Robots. In 1947, Davis published "Letter to Ellen" in Astounding. That story is set in a future time when artificial life can be crafted in laboratories. The narrator of the story has discovered that he is a "robot", an artificial man who was made in a lab.

interior art by Edd Cartier

The fictional genetics in "Letter to Ellen" reminds me of "Heisenberg's Eyes" by Frank Herbert (1966). It would be interesting to know if Herbert had read "Letter to Ellen".

I have to wonder why Davis, a mathematician, tried to write a science fiction story about a futuristic genetic engineering project. In 1962, nobody had any idea how to actually make an artificial organism, so I'll award Davis bonus points for going ahead an writing "Letter to Ellen" from such a position of ignorance.

I've previously described 1950 - 1983 as the "Uranium Age" of science fiction. Groff Conklin's 1962 anthology Great Science Fiction by Scientists was caught up in the political concerns of that "age". Just because a story is "timely", that does not mean it is "great". Sadly, while Conklin claimed to be collecting great science fiction, I think his choice of stories like "Last Year's Grave Undug" was unduly influenced by issues that were timely, leading to inclusion in the anthology of some stories that were not great.

cover art by Joel Naprstek

In my previous blog post, I raised the question: were the 16 authors collected by Conklin in Great Science Fiction by Scientists really all scientists? By my count, 9 can be called scientists, three were mathematicians (Wiener, Bell, Davis), two were space enthusiasts (Clarke, Ley), Breuer was a medical doctor and Pierce was an engineer.

 Related Reading: "Invariant" by John R. Pierce... an interesting story about memory storage in brains.

Next: Lefty Baker

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From Asimov to Zebatinsky

Energy beings in the Ekcolir Reality.

There was only one issue of Star Science Fiction, published in January 1958. In that magazine was a story called "S as in Zebatinsky" by Isaac Asimov. In the 1970s I read the version of this story called "Spell My Name with an S" that appeared in Nine Tomorrows. I finally read the original version of the story from 1958.

Negative Energy. I love the idea of aliens who are watching Earth, but in "S as in Zebatinsky" we get the dreaded "energy beings". 😞 I say "dreaded" because I despise science fiction stories written by authors (such as Margaret St. Clair) who simply throw up their hands and pretend that minds can exist without any physical structure. Asimov tells us that two aliens named Haround and Mestack normally exist as energy vortices in hyperspace, but for a time Mr. Haround lived as a numerologist on Earth. 

The Sedron War.

In "S as in Zebatinsky" we are told that by studying Earth and using his computer to calculate alternative futures, Haround finds a way to prevent a nuclear war on Earth. 

Can I accept Asimov's "energy beings" if they have some sort of internal structure provided by their energy "vortices"? Ug. I'm holding my nose.

While reading about Haround's exploits in "S as in Zebatinsky", I could not prevent myself from thinking about Harlan's work as a time travel technician in Asimov's novel The End of Eternity.

Alternate Reality 1; image source

For his fictional science of psychohistory, Asimov imagined that it might be possible to mathematically predict the future of Humanity. In "S as in Zebatinsky" we never see Haround's computer and it may be that he simply claimed to have a computer, so I suppose he may have actually used time travel technology or some other means to learn about the future rather than calculate it.

Reality Change. Harlan: "You will alter Primitive history?"

Noÿs: "You know what a Minimum Necessary Change is like... if I send a letter to Italy then a man will begin to experiment with the neutronic bombardment of uranium..." Near the end of The End of Eternity, Noÿs hints that her tinkering with Time will result in a future Earth with "a radioactive crust".

Alternate Reality 2; image source

 Other Means. What might constitute another means of learning about the future? One of Asimov's great Sci Fi plot devices is what I call the Reality Viewer. In Asimov's time travel novel, The End of Eternity, the girl from the future, Noÿs, says: "We don't calculate alternate Realities. We view them. We see them in their state of non-Reality."

I love the idea that there can be multiple Realities, different versions of Earth's historical timeline as depicted in The End of Eternity. Asimov depicted an end to Reality Changes when Eternity was destroyed, but for my Exode Saga, I allow just a few more Reality Changes. The on-again, off-again nuclear warfare described by Asimov in "S as in Zebatinsky" shows that Asimov was also tempted to imagine additional Reality Changes.

first page of "S as in Zebatinsky"

Mind Transfer. The other key Sci Fi plot device in "S as in Zebatinsky" is mind transfer. Sadly, since "S as in Zebatinsky" is a short story, we readers learn nothing about how it is possible for Haround to instantiate his mind inside a human body on Earth.

For my own stories (example) in which I make use of mind transfer as a plot device, I imagine that there are sub-nanoscopic femtobots or zeptites that can "encode" a mind and allow it to "occupy" a human body. This is facilitated by the fact that within the Exodemic Fictional Universe, human brains contain a zeptite endosymbiont: human brains evolved as a mixture of cells and nanites, so it is not too difficult to "graft in" a new nanite-encoded mind.

new for 1958: fallout

 Gamma-Ray Reflection. For "S as in Zebatinsky", Asimov needed to invent a way to cause a nuclear war that could, under the right conditions, be easily averted. Back in March, I mentioned that in Asimov's 1951 story "Breeds There a Man" readers were presented with the idea that humans could invent a "force field" that would make it possible to survive a nuclear war. "Breeds There a Man" also included the idea of space aliens who were watching Earth and waiting for a nuclear war.

carbon-14 from nuclear testing (source)

By 1958, with increasing numbers of atmospheric nuclear bomb tests being conducted, "nuclear fallout" had become a major topic for discussion and Asimov used "gamma-ray reflection" as his fictional plot device that could start a nuclear war. 

Yes Dear. The plot of "S as in Zebatinsky" hinges on the idea that a physicist would visit a "numerologist" and take his advice. Asimov wants readers to believe that Zebatinsky only goes to the "numerologist" because his wife suggests that he do so. 

Geniac home logic circuit kit

We can also imagine that Zebatinsky is made much more likely to go along with the name change suggested by Haround because Haround denies being a numerologist and claims that he is a mathematician who uses a computer that can "calculate possible futures". In fact, Haround tells Zebatinsky that he "builds computers" and experimentally "studies probable futures". Readers of "S as in Zebatinsky" might have wondered about a mathematician claiming to "build computers", but by 1957 Sci Fi magazines such as Galaxy were running ads for "Geniac", with the tag-line: "Build 125 computers at home". 

Zebatinsky is suckered in!

These were not programmable computers with memory storage, only electrical circuits, but the Geniac kit may have opened the door for Asimov to include the idea of building computers in his story.

ICBM

Haround tells Zebatinsky that he will find a modification of the name "Zebatinsky" that will satisfy Zebatinsky's desire for a better job. Zebatinsky, a physicist, is part of a huge government-controlled team of scientists doing secret nuclear physics research. Actually, Haround is hard at work trying to draw attention to the fact that Soviet scientists are working on gamma-ray reflection technology that will allow them to survive a nuclear war. Asimov puts it this way: the Russians would willingly sacrifice 10 large cities destroyed by nuclear blast as long as their population could be protected from nuclear fallout by using gamma-ray reflection technology. The first nuclear-armed ICBM was not deployed until 1959, so Asimov was probably expecting his readers to be thinking in terms of a nuclear war in which bombs reached targets by means of airplanes.

Haround makes use of a human body.

It turns out that Zebatinsky has a distant relative who is doing secret research on gamma-ray reflection for the Soviets. The US government only begins funding gamma-ray reflection research after their man Zebatinsky changes his name to Sebatinsky and draws their attention to the other Zebatinsky who is working for the Russians. Readers are expected to believe that this discovery by U.S. intelligence allows the nuclear balance of terror to continue, preventing a nuclear war. 

1958

Zebatinsky asks Haround why he does not make better use of his ability to calculate the future; why charge people like Zebatinsky a mere $50.00 for a name change when he could calculate and engineer more lucrative changes to Earth's timeline? Haround basically just replies that he is happy in what he does and would not want to draw attention to himself. Since Zebatinsky quietly accepts everything he is told, I was expecting telepathy and mind control to come into the story, but no. Not only is a nuclear war averted by Haround's meddling, but Sebatinsky gets what he wants, a job as a university professor.

What, me gamble?

In "S as in Zebatinsky", we are told that Haround and his friend Mestack are simply having fun and placing bets on Haround's ability to make major alterations to Earth's historical timeline that are caused by tiny interventions that won't ever be noticed by the "Watchman". This raises an odd issue: what might energy beings in hyperspace use for money? The whole thing is as silly as the Star Trek episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion" in which disembodied aliens bet quatloos.

Next: The 4th Law of Motion

Coming in 2025(?): Chapter 12 of Meet the Phari.

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A New Life for Brion

1985 cover by Robert Petillo

I like a good alternate history story, so after reading this commentary on the old tale "Worlds of the Imperium" by John Laumer, I dug out that story as originally published in 1961. I have a weakness for wish fulfillment fiction in which the protagonist ends up on the world that is best suited for him/her. For example, the protagonist in Assignment Nor'Dyren ends up on a planet that exactly suits his talents and temperament. 

 

In the case of "Worlds of the Imperium", Miss Barbro (a beautiful woman of the Imperium universe) and the protagonist, Brion Bayard, are brought together 💘 by SuperDuper™ technology (the Maxoni-Cocini field generator) that allows for humans to travel between parallel universes. Barbro and Brion fall in love and Brion is not at all unhappy about never being allowed to return to the vastly inferior version of Earth that exists in his home universe.

interior art by Dan Adkins

Having been ripped out of his original universe and removed from his version of Earth (which is apparently our version of Earth, about 1960), Brion arrives in an alternate universe and discovers this new version of Earth is slightly different than the world as we know it. In this Earth of the Imperium, Brion gets to attend stately Balls, dance with the fetching Miss Barbro and have missions to weird worlds that are scattered across the Multiverse. No longer does Biron plug away at the dead-end, dreary job that he had while living on our world.

Is it science fiction?

After introducing the magical machine that allows people to move between parallel universes ("shuttles" equipped with an M-C drive), the science content of "Worlds of the Imperium" is very thin. 

 

1962 cover by Edward Valigursky

 Contrived

For "Worlds of the Imperium", Laumer wanted a Multiverse that would not be over-run by tourists. Out of the gazillion alternate versions of Earth that exist, each in their own parallel universe, it seems that only one (the world of the titular Imperium) successfully develops the fantastic technology that allows for controlled movement between parallel universes. 

One thing that is guaranteed to annoy me when I see it in a science fiction story is the miraculous invention, crafted by a scientific genius in his basement, that discovery never to again be made by ANYONE, ever. This is not the way science works and we really should describe stories that deploy this plot device as anti-science fiction. Does "Worlds of the Imperium" fall into this category of stories with anti-scientific magical technology development?

 

in the Ekcolir Reality

In this case, I'll let Laumer off on a technicality. We are told that just about any version of Earth is likely to discover the multiverse, but in order to turn the multiverse-jumping technology into a practical way to move between universes, some tricky technical fine-tuning of the equipment is required. If you make just one mistake with this technology then BOOM, a vast amount of energy is released and Earth is either blasted to bits or incinerated. So, only by luck did just one version of Earth (that of the Imperium) successfully develop the technology. Gazillions of other Earth's that started working on multiverse-jumping technology were destroyed. Our Earth is one of the very rare versions of our planet where scientists studied nuclear physics and went down the safer path of making atomic bombs rather than discovering the multiverse.

cover art by Howard Chaykin

Before you even ask if the Imperium version of Earth is a center of Hi Tek™ wizardry, the answer is NO. They never even discover nuclear physics. And this suits Brion just fine. Who wants to worry about nuclear armageddon when you could live in a quaint world with Royal Balls and old-fashioned dueling? 

 

Yes, on his first day in the Imperium, Brion not only gets to dance waltzes with Miss Barbro at the Ball, but he also must fight a duel with pistols against the Imperium's top intelligence officer. 

 

Lost in Space

There are many guns in "Worlds of the Imperium" and even a few atom bombs. I'm not a big fan of military science fiction, so I'm not amused by the shoot-outs and ticking bombs, but I understand that in 1961 people were on edge and expecting the worst from saber-rattlers like Khrushchev.

interior art by Dan Adkins

"Worlds of the Imperium" was originally published in three parts, spread out in three issues of Fantastic magazine starting in February 1961. My advice is that you read the first part of the story in the February issue and then skip to the third part in the April issue. Read the introductory summary that recaps the first two parts and then skip ahead to page 96 in the April issue. There is a loooong middle part of the story (set on a dismal version of Earth) that is worth avoiding. Nothing interesting happens for page after page after page and there is no need to read it.

cover art by Robert Petillo

The Thrilling Conclusion

The ending of "Worlds of the Imperium" is rather like a James Bond movie with the evil mastermind's atomic bomb about to explode and the hero risking all to make sure that the atomic bomb does not destroy Washington D.C. and kill the president. Since we know that Brion and Barbro return in "The Other Side of Time" and since Laumer was totally invested in Brion and Barbro as his dashing wish-fulfillment couple, there is no suspense at the end of the story. The evil mastermind's motivation is revealed to be the standard Hollywood "I want to rule the world" megalomania, which saves Laumer for having to think of a reason why any member of the ruling oligarchy would dislike the utopian society of the Imperium.

 

more Imperium

    Going Ape

I'm a complete sucker for time travel stories, so I also read Laumer's follow-on Imperium story, "The other Side of Time". I like to imagine that in an alternate Reality, the science fiction genre itself developed along different paths. But what if Neanderthals were the dominant ape of Earth?

 

Related Reading: the other side of Brion

Next: part 7 of "The Alastor Network"

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One if by Fire, Two if by Sea

art by Boris Vallejo

In Isaac Asimov's Foundation Saga, he imagined that in the future planet Earth becomes uninhabitable due to high levels of radiation. This is a good thing because it forces Earthlings out of their caves of steal... Humanity moves out to the stars and populates millions of other Earth-like worlds in the galaxy.

When Trysta arrives as a time traveler in the Primitive era of Earth's history, she has already seen the future of the Foundation Reality. She fully expects the surface of Earth to become a radioactive disaster zone.

When Grean steps in and causes a Reality Change, Earth also becomes dangerously radioactive in the new Reality. However, things change for the worse since there is a devastating nuclear war. Isaac Asimov is a key tool for Grean, so I call this new Reality the Asimov Reality.

by sea - source

Grean then makes an important discovery. It is not too difficult to go back in time and trigger a new Reality in which the surface of Earth never becomes dangerously radioactive (in particular, Grean brings into existence the Ekcolir Reality). However, due to the constraints of temporal inertia and a strange attractor, all such worlds do result in a catastrophic outcome for the people of Earth. In most cases where a nuclear catastrophe is avoided there is global warming and catastrophic sea level rise.

Happy Endings
I generally like happy endings for stories, so for the Exode Trilogy it has been my natural inclination to imagine how in the final Reality, the world as we know it (the Buld Reality) Earthlings might avoid any and all catastrophic outcomes.

Hierion antenna array for receiving power transmitted from Mercury (Space Energy Missions proposal).

Luri selling Project Mercury

The team at Space Energy Missions devises what they call the Mercury Project. Using advanced hierion technology that is available to the Buld, it would be possible to construct a solar energy collector on Mercury and use hierion-based power transmission to send vast amounts of energy to receivers on Earth, meeting the entire world's energy needs and quickly putting an end to the need to use fossil fuels and ending human production of the green house gas carbon dioxide.

Grean is rather amused by the earnestness with which the folks at Space Energy Missions try to collaborate with the Buld in their effort to put an end to fossil fuel use. However, the Buld have no intention of moving to Mercury and constructing a solar energy collector for the bumbling Earthlings.

Grean is well aware of pek technology that could be used to moderate the nuclear reactions that take place inside the Sun. This technological solution to global warming could prevent sea level rise on Earth, but from the perspective of the Buld this approach has two problems. First, if Earthlings are allowed to keep increasing the level of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere then the pH of the oceans will change. Second, if the pek are allowed to reduce the energy output of the Sun then that will work against the Buld who plan to warm Mars and make it their new home.

At the end of Exode the reader can be left wondering what the ultimate fate of Earth will be. Grean and Trysta have seen into the future of the Buld Reality and selected it as their target, but they can never be certain of anything, particularly the extent to which the Buld Reality they tried to achieve was ever actually initiated. Since in our Reality the Huaoshy altered the dimensional structure of the universe and made further time travel impossible, no more information can be received from our future.

chaotic attractor

What if Asimov was fundamentally correct and the only hope for Humanity is that we Earthlings struggle through a major disaster at the start of the space age? What if Trysta realized this, but she was able to see that melting the ice caps and raising the level of the oceans was somehow better for Humanity than a nuclear disaster? What if Earth is locked in the grip of a chaotic attractor and the best Trysta can do is force the Final Reality into a domain of probability where sea level rise is much more likely than nuclear disaster?

Maybe it would "be good for" we Earthlings if, rather than rely on the Buld to solve our green house gas problem for us, instead we were forced to watch while the Buld colonized Mars and set about warming that world and turning it into a habitable planet. Would we be motivated to take responsibility for ourselves and solve our own problems?

September 1950