Ancient Drones

original cover art by Luigi Garonzi.
alien by funkwood.
blaster girl by Jon G. Volden.

In a recent blog post, I mentioned The Languages of Pao by Jack Vance. Since it is August, I'm in the middle of another celebration of the science fiction stories that were written by Vance. Here, I want to comment on Vance's audacious effort to tell an epic story in The Languages of Pao and how my reaction to Vance's dauntless undertaking influenced my own writing.

The planet Pao was settled by humans some 5,000 years before Vance's story begins. A popular theme for many Vance stories is a planet colonized by space-faring humans of the future who, after reaching a far planet, give up their advanced technology and live like Earthlings of old, even sometimes abandoning the further use of space travel technology. Pao still has some contact with the outside world, but most of its residents are happy to live simple lives as farmers. For entertainment, the Paonese do not participate in sports, but they do routinely congregate in vast crowds to chant their "ancient drones".

Look, up in the sky,
it's Wizard Palafox and
his boy Beran!
interior art by Leo Morey

In The Languages of Pao, Vance describes the transformation of the Paonese from a homogeneous and "docile lot, content to live in harmony with the rest of the cosmos" to a more diverse and believable society with the required educated specialists that will allow the planet Pao to defend itself against the meddling people of other worlds.

Five years ago I provided some fannish commentary on The Languages of Pao, but what has always bothered me about this tale of the far future is how Vance crammed a big story of cultural engineering into the narrow confines of a short coming-of-age story. A young boy, Beran Panasper, is nearly killed by his power-hungry uncle. Vance tells his readers the story of how Beran grows up, kills his uncle and becomes ruler of the planet Pao.

Women from Pao arrive on Breakness.
interior art by Leo Morey

However, The Languages of Pao is not really about Beran; it is the story of how the population of Pao is altered and transformed during a vast social engineering project. Imagine if Isaac Asimov had written his sweeping Foundation Saga from the perspective of just one man.

How can billions of Paonese lives be transformed in just 20 years? Most of the work is accomplished by the sons of Lord Palafox, a "wizard" from the plant Breakness.

cover art by Marcel Laverdet

Palafox has been hired to socially engineer the people of Pao and quickly bring into existence Paonese warriors, scientists, weapon manufacturers, space ship builders and interstellar traders. In exchange, he is given large numbers of Paonese women who give birth to many sons of Palafox. Those sons are trained on the planet Breakness and then sent to Pao where they carry out the process of turning Paonese into warriors, equipment manufacturers, interstellar traders, etc.

We only meet one such woman, Gitan Netsko. "She was charming... slender and clear-skinned with fine bones an precisely-molded features." There is small space for romance in The Languages of Pao.

this cover illustration has nothing
to do with Vance's story

Gitan lives with Beran for a few months while Beran is a student on Breakness. And then Gitan is suddenly subtracted from the story after spending her time on Breakness "staring blankly at the windy chasm." Vance does not allow himself to be distracted by a petty love story; his goal is telling a sweeping saga of planetary-scale social engineering.

cover of my copy

The very rapid pace at which life is transformed on Pao is not believable. The social changes on Pao are rushed along in order to match the pace of Beran's life and the short attention span of science fiction story readers. The Languages of Pao was originally published in a Sci Fi magazine that did not have much space and there are significant differences between the version of The Languages of Pao published in Satellite Science Fiction in 1957 (download here) and the version that I own (a 1989 printing).

"From his finger darted
blue energy."

In addition to my inability to accept how quickly the planet Pao is transformed, Vance's story also irritates me by continually calling Palafox a "wizard". I suppose we are supposed to accept that the backwards people of Pao would only be able to understand advanced technology as being some kind of magic. However, when Palafox flies through the air, he is using an anti-gravity device that was implanted in his body. Similarly, when Beran kills his uncle, he makes use of a ray gun that was surgically implanted in his hand. I wish Vance had given us less fake "wizardry" and more details about the "delicate components" that Palafox provides to the Paonese so that they can begin manufacturing their own interstellar space craft.

Exode Saga
By my estimation, in Vance's depiction of the radical transformation of Paonese society, all the changes should have taken at least 75 years to unfold. Asimov's Foundation Saga ended up extending through several centuries. For the Exode Saga, there are parts of the story that extend billions of years into the past and as far as seven million years into the future.

The Exode Saga

Commentary on The Languages of Pao from Leo Margulies.

In order to accommodate such a vast sweep of time, I am trying to make use of "an Editor" who can assemble the many sub-stories of the Exode Saga into a sequence of five novels that will tell the story of how alien visitors to Earth shaped the human species and all of Earthly civilization.

Earth's Reality Chain

An additional challenge that I face in crafting the Exode Saga is that it includes stories from more than just one Reality. Further, I've made some of my favorite authors, including Vance, characters in my story.

source

I imagine that the analogue of Jack Vance existed in the First Reality as part of the "first family" of Gohrlay. Later, when R. Gohrlay and her tribe of positronic robots mastered time travel, a system for Temporal Momentum was devised which ensured that an analogue of Jack Vance would exist in every Reality in Earth's Reality Chain.

I like to pretend that during the Asimov Reality, the replicoid of Jack Vance was able to "live" into the far future and observe how humans spread from Earth to many exoplanets of the galaxy. Then, in the Ekcolir Reality, the replicoid of Vance made sure that the analogue of Vance in that Reality wrote stories that provided many hints about events in the far future of the Asimov Reality.

in the Ekcolir Reality
original cover art by Stanley Drake

In the Ekcolir Reality, the analogue of Jack Vance was actually born as twins, one of whom was female. Thus, I imagine that "Joan Vance" wrote "early" versions of some Vance stories that also appeared in the Buld Reality.

In the Ekcolir Reality, the people of Earth had to be prepared for the arrival of the alien Fru'wu during the 20th century. When Interventionists of the Writers Block made us of story tellers like Joan and John Vance to inform Earthlings about alien visitors to Earth, the people of Earth learned far too much about alien technology. Soon, the rapid technological advances on Earth led to problems, including a global warming catastrophe.

To prevent catastrophic sea level rise, corrections were made to the timeline of Earth, bringing into existence the Buld Reality. I imagine that Jack Vance was still able to write stories in the Buld Reality about future events of the Asimov Reality, but he was not allowed to reveal details about alien technologies to the people of Earth. As depicted in my previous blog post, there was some "fine tuning" of Vance's writing career in an attempt to make sure that Vance's science fiction stories would attract the attention of the Editor of the Exode Saga.

The Genesaunt Trilogy

At the last minute, just before the Huaoshy put an end to time travel, some more adjustments were made. Sadly some of Vance's stories such as the Genesaunt Trilogy had to be removed from time. However, care was taken to make sure that Jack Vance lived a long life.

Related Reading: celebrating Jack Vance's fiction in August 2019
           in August 2020
Next: Vance's first novel

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5 Realities

This is the second of three related blog posts. In the first I reflected on the origin of the science fiction story Exode. Here I explain the role of time travel in the backstory of Exode. In the third post I'll provide a timeline for events in Exode.

The science fiction novels The Foundations of Eternity and Exode span across five Realities. Exode takes place entirely within the Buld Reality, which is the universe as we know it.

The Foundations of Eternity is a fanfiction sequel to Asimov's novel, Foundation and Earth. It also shows events leading up to Asimov's time travel novel The End of Eternity.

Asimov hinted at the idea that positronic robots were involved in the discovery and utilization of time travel. The Foundations of Eternity presents the story of the creation of the first humaniform positronic robot: R. Gohrlay. The mysterious physical properties of positrons allow the positronic robots to develop some amazing technologies, including time travel technology.

R. Gohrlay and a few other positronic robots find themselves in a struggle for the fate of Humanity. Those robots are hehaviorly constrained by the programming of their positronic brains: they must prevent harm from being done to Humanity.

R. Gohrlay objects to the fact that mysterious aliens have been secretly watching Earth and shaping the evolution of humans. Those aliens created the human species, but they also plan to replace we humans and hand Earth over to the Prelands. The robots attempt to use time travel technology to form a perfected human civilization on Earth and protect Humanity from the aliens.

Five Realities

However, as described by Asimov in The End of Eternity, it is discovered that the mere existence of time travel inevitably leads to the extinction of the human species. Using Noÿs Lambent, a woman from the far future as their tool, the positronic robots eliminate Eternity, the time travel device of Earth.

Mallansohn Reality
Traveling back in time to the 1930s, Noÿs and Andrew cause a Reality Change that prevents Eternity from coming into existence. Asimov referred to the Reality that was ended by Noÿs and Andrew as the Mallansohn Reality. Noÿs wanted to create a new Reality in which humans would quickly develop nuclear power and interstellar space travel and spread Humanity to millions of planets in our galaxy.

Foundation Reality
I call the Reality that was brought into existence by Noÿs the Foundation Reality. The events of the Foundation Reality were described by Asimov in the many stories of his Foundation Series and related "future history" in some of the stories in his Robot Series.

Bliss and Pel

The Foundations of Eternity is a story that provides a fanfiction sequel to Asimov's Foundation and Earth by expanding on the idea hinted at by Asimov: that there are aliens "out there", beyond our own galaxy, waiting...watching. Who are these mysterious aliens?

The Foundations of Eternity and Exode are set in the Exodemic Fictional Universe. About a billion years ago an alien species, not too different from we humans, evolved on a distant planet and began spreading from galaxy to galaxy. The alien Huaoshy, or at least their artificial life devices (known by various names such as "orbho" and the pek), reached Earth about 7,000,000 years ago and began guiding the evolution of primates, resulting in the creation of we humans.

source

The orbho maintained a secret base under the surface of the Moon from where they watched Earth. R. Gohrlay ejected the orbho from Observer Base and eventually the orbho and other elements of Genesaunt Civilization retreated entirely from our galaxy, unable to thwart the mysterious power wielded by the positronic robots.

The Huaoshy began a waiting game and tried to understand the mystery of Earth by making use of the Kac'hin, the human variant that was best adapted for interaction with the Huaoshy. Occasionally the Kac'hin sent exploration missions back to our galaxy, but little could be learned about Gohrlay and the positronic robots.

Thousands of years later, when Galaxia was nearing completion, the Kac'hin finally realized that positronic brains make possible a form of telepathy. By this time, the Huaoshy had developed their own science of positronics. Equipped with the technological tools to disrupt positronic brain function, Captain Hooski of the Kac'hin was sent on a mission to Earth.

Daneel

At first it seemed that Hooski and his crew defeated Daneel and the other positronic robots who had brought Galaxia into existence. However, Daneel was the "public" face of positronics shown to the Kac'hin by Gohrlay. R. Gohrlay simply made use of time travel to go back in time and thwart Hooski's attempt to return to the Huaoshy control of Observer Base on the Moon.

However, R. Gohrlay had finally tipped her hand and the Kac'hin now realize that Gohrlay had time travel technology. The Huaoshy expanded their science of positronics and developed their own time travel technology, including the ability to view "Reality Chains". Gohrlay long had the ability to view alternative Realities, but only as far as the horizon of the next possible Reality Change. With their superior technology for viewing Realities, the Kac'hin defeat Gohrlay by quickly creating first the Asimov Reality and then the Noÿs Reality.

Noÿs

However, a puzzle still remains. Some powerful and unseen force is still at work, perturbing the course of events on Earth. Noÿs remains on Earth, protected by her "physiotime generator"...no Reality Change, even one that prevents R. Gohrlay from ever evicting the Huaoshy from our galaxy, can sweep her into oblivion.

Finally, in 1970 the Kac'hin establish contact with Noÿs and negotiate a deal. Noÿs agrees to stop deflecting the course of human civilization on Earth in exchange for a promise that humans will be given a chance to freely spread themselves between the stars. The pek have already made significant progress towards their goal of replacing humans with the Prelands. However, unable to defeat Noÿs and also stymied by a mysterious Nereid presence on Earth that they cannot dislodge, the Kac'hin agree to the demands of Noÿs.

Gwyned

Working together, the Kac'hin and Noÿs must bring into existence the Buld Reality, the final Reality. By this time, the Huaoshy have realized that they have the technological means to end all time travel. They want to establish an acceptable and stable Reality and then put an end to all further time travel.

Noÿs is allowed to use the sophisticated equipment of the Huaoshy for viewing possible Realities. Noÿs discovers the Buld Reality, a reality in which humans retain dominance on Earth and spread outward to the stars.

galactic core

Noÿs finds that the Reality Change that will cause the Buld Reality to come into existence is rather complex. Her son, Thomas, must be shifted from the Noÿs Reality to the year 1940 in the Buld Reality. Thomas' father, Ekcolir, must travel back in time 20,000 years where he will prevent R. Gohrlay from launching her positronic revolution and establish the conditions that will, at the correct time, start a Buld spaceship on a mission from the galactic core to Earth. Noÿs must insert herself in the year 1936 of the Buld Reality where she meets Deomede, the analog of Ekolir in the 20th century of the Buld Reality. Noÿs and Deomede have a daughter, Gwyned, who grows up on Earth until 1964 when she is teleported off of Earth. Gwyned is present at Lendhalen during the time when Parthney is trained for his mission to Earth.

Gwyned tells Parthney that she has a brother, Thomas, on Earth. When Parthney is on Earth (he arrives in 1971) he tries to contact Thomas using clues provided by Gwyned. Parthney had been told (by his handlers at Lendhalen) to try to contact the mysterious Noÿs by first finding Thomas.

Syon

However, Parthney's efforts to track down Thomas and Noÿs on Earth run him afoul of the Overseers. In 1984, Parthney is captured and taken to the Moon. This was planned by the Interventionists. They watch carefully when Parthney is captured and learn how to penetrate Observer Base.

Parthney's efforts to contact Noÿs were futile. Noÿs left 20th century Earth just about exactly the same time that Parthney arrived. Noÿs, who, in the Buld Reality, has lived on Earth since 1936, departs from 1971 and travels back in time 10,000 years. Noÿs is present when the Fru'wu establish the first teleportation terminal on Earth. Noÿs is teleported to Klyz where she transfers her advanced nanites from the far future of the Mallansohn Reality into a primitive Fru'wu robot. Eventually that robot (who uses the name Syon) is present at Lendhalen when Parthney is being trained for his mission to Earth.

After Thomas and Noÿs have completed their time travel, the Buld Reality is complete and the Huaoshy initiate a dimensional engineering shift that makes any additional time travel impossible.

Timeline of the Buld Reality
The story told in Exode does not involve time travel. The events of Exode all take place in the Buld Reality, which I define as the universe as we know it, the universe after time travel is no longer possible. I provide an updated timeline for the Buld Reality in my next blog post.

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Note: I later decided to refer to the "Noÿs Reality" as the "Ekcolir Reality"