State-of-the-Art Neuroscience, About Two Dozen Centuries Back

When it comes to how the universe works, what we know, what we don't know, and what we think we know that just ain't so, has changed quite a lot since information technology made it possible to 'freeze' our thoughts in somewhat permanent form. That's a span of around 5,000 years now. (August 3, 2009, January 4, 2010)

Not that everybody wrote down what they thought. Take Aristotle, son of Nichomachus, for example. He lived almost two dozen centuries ago: from about 384 to 322 BC. These days someone in his position probably specialize by studying some narrow topic. Aristotle's interests included aesthetics, biology, ethics, government, logic, morality, physics, and poetry. ("Aristotole," The Literature Network) Think Leonardo DaVinci in a chlamys.

At least some of Aristotle's books are thought to have been written by his students, from lecture notes. He wouldn't be the first professor who, although brilliant, wasn't quite up to speed on the latest information technology.

On the other hand, I've run into enough sources with phrases like "Aristotle's writings" to think that the ancient genius wrote at least some of his thoughts down, himself.

What We Know, What We Think We Know

It's a little late to have Aristotle take a standardized intelligent test, but there doesn't seem to be much doubt that he was a very smart man. He's credited with getting quite a bit of Western civilization's intellectual life started.

And he seems to have had the good sense to find out what things looked and felt like, before deciding how they worked.

Maybe you've heard that Aristotle thought the brain was a sort of radiator. That's so - sort of - although his analysis of that 'marrow' we keep in our heads was a little more complicated than that.

Considering what he had to work with, I think Aristotle did a pretty good job of analyzing the brain's function. He was wrong, but at least his model was internally consistent.

One of the facts he got right was that the brain has no sense of touch - something that makes in possible for neurosurgeons to operate on the brain of a conscious patient. On the other hand, Aristotle used that fact as a proof of what turned out to be a really wrong idea. Here's part of what Aristotle had to say about the brain:

"...That it has no continuity with the organs of sense is plain from simple inspection, and is still more clearly shown by the fact, that, when it is touched, no sensation is produced; in which respect it resembles the blood of animals and their excrement...."

Don't laugh. Aristotle wasn't stupid - but he was working near the start of Western civilization's efforts to sort out how the universe works.

Two dozen centuries from now, some of what's in your high school science textbook, and what's coming out of CERN, may look a trifle daft, too.

Science and the Speculative Fiction Writer

There's a broad range of approaches to incorporating 'real' science into speculative fiction - from 'science? what science?' to old-school 'hard' science fiction, where the authors seemed more interested in practical applications of what was in the latest science quarterly, than delving into empires of the mind.

I'd just as soon write stories with more-or-less 'real' science: but I like full-bore fantasy, too. As far as I'm concerned, it's 'author's choice,' an aesthetic preference.

That said, the example of Aristotle may give me a lot more wiggle room for my 'real' science, than you might think.

There's an excerpt from one of Aristotle's books at the end of this post, a sort of introduction to his discussion of the brain. His analysis was wrong - but quite a few of his supporting facts were spot-on.

The lesson here, I think, is that someone who's making up 'future science' has a lot of room for the imagination to roam. Me? I'm going to make an effort to see to it that the 'future science' doesn't depend on what we can observe being different. In other words, if rocks fall up in the 36th century: there better be a really good explanation for why they don't now.

Back to Aristotle. His analysis was wrong - but not as much as it may seem. The brain looks like marrow, it feels cold, and it really doesn't have a sense of touch - it so it won't respond when prodded. At least, not in a way that Aristotle - or whoever supplied him with his data - could have observed.

Here's that excerpt:

"Parts of Animals Book II – (Brain)"
Aristotle (English translation), via Alexandra Cuffel (Medieval History), Macalester College

"From the marrow we pass on in natural sequence to the brain. For there are many who think that the brain itself consists of marrow, and that it forms the commencement of that substance, because they see that the spinal marrow is continuous with it. In reality the two may be said to be utterly opposite to each other in character. For of all the parts of the parts of the body there is none so cold as the brain;whereas the marrow is of a hot nature, as is plainly shown by its fat and greasy character. Indeed this is the very reason why the brain and spinal marrow are continuous with each other. For, wherever the action of any part is in excess nature so contrives as to set by it another part with an excess of contrary action, so that the excesses of the two may counterbalance each other. Now that the marrow is hot is clearly shown by many indications The coldness of the brain is also manifest enough even to the touch; and, secondly, of all the fluid parts of the body it is the driest and the one that has the least blood; for in fact it gas no blood at all in its proper substance. Thus brain is not residual matter, nor yet is it one of the parts which are continuous with each but it has a character peculiar to itself, as might indeed be expected. That it has no continuity with the organs of sense is plain from simple inspection, and is still more clearly shown by the fact, that, when it is touched, no sensation is produced; in which respect it resembles the blood of animals and their excrement. The purpose of its presence in animals is no less than the preservation of the whole body. For some writers assert that the soul is fire or some such force. This, however, is but a crude assertion; and it would perhaps be better to say that the soul is incorporate in some substance of a fiery character. The reason for this being so is that of all substances there is none so suitable for ministering to the operations of the soul as that which is possessed of heat. For nutrition and the imparting of motion are offices of the soul, and it is by heat that these are most readily a acted. To say then that the soul is fire is much the same thing as to confound the auger or the saw with the carpenter or his craft, simply because the work is done when the two are near one another...."

[Information] Power to the People!

---

Prologue

Science fiction/speculative fiction writers often write about how they think science and/or technology will affect the human condition. Their expectations have run from overly-optimistic Utopias to the more currently-fashionable variations of 'and we're all gonna die.'

Generally, writers seem to realize that when technology changes, society changes. Sometimes it changes a lot.

We're going through a period where information technology is upsetting the status quo I've been familiar with. Personally, I like that - for reasons you'll probably see as you read this post.

If you read this post. It's a whole lot easier to go somewhere else on the Internet, than it was to find another article in a magazine.

Like I said, things are changing.

---

I've discussed the effect of technology - particularly information technology - on culture and society fairly often in another blog. Let's remember that "information technology" can, in principle, include quite a few data storage-and-retrieval methods:

"...I think there may have been something to the notion that people who live in small towns are, well, clueless commoners. In England, it would have been folks who didn't live within walking distance of London - were isolated, ignorant villiens, with an awareness that extended as far as the village church and manor house and no farther.

"Then Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden zum Gutenberg introduced that dangerous, divisive technology we call movable type: and the world changed. Documents could be mass-produced and distributed as fast as a mounted courier could travel. Reading changed from a professional specialty to a basic skill. And those villiens had a source of information about the rest of the world.
..."
(Another War-on-Terror Blog (April 12, 2010))

Quite a few printing technologies had been in use before Gutenberg put movable type on the map. What set the new technology apart was the speed and (relative) ease with which written information could be taken from a manuscript, mass-produced, and distributed.

And, intellectual property laws being what they were then (practically non-existent), if one copy of a printed work arrived in a town with a printer - and the printer thought people would buy more copies - there would soon be as many copies of that work as there were people willing to pay the printer.

'Going viral' is a new phrase - but documents have been 'going viral' for centuries.

Technology and Freedom

"...America is a free country. When I was growing up, I learned that individual freedom was important. Since then, I've learned that one of the remarkable freedoms that Americans enjoy is the right to own and operate dangerous technologies and substances. These include

• Guns
• Substances like
  • LP gas
  • Ammonium nitrate¹
  • Anhydrous ammonia¹
• Printing presses
• Fax machines
• Computers

What all these have in common is that they give whoever possesses them, and knows how to use them, considerable individual power....

Computers, Dangerous?

I put the printing press and the fax machine in my list, because they are, in their own way, at least as dangerous as any gun.

Sticks and Stones May Break My Bones, but the Printing Press is Deadly

Martin Luther's 95 Theses might have have been discussed in Wittenberg, and maybe surrounding towns, and stopped there: if some incendiarist hadn't gotten his hands on them, printed copies, and distributed the things. The wars that followed would probably have happened anyway...."
(Another War-on-Terror Blog (June 27, 2008))

Technology, Freedom and Economics

There was an economic side to movable type, too. Before Gutenberg and company, every book was a hand-crafted item, made by specialized craftsmen and skilled professionals. Last year I made some wildly optimistic estimates about how fast a scribe could work, together with some other information, and made the educated guess that the value of a pre-Gutenberg Bible in Europe would have been around $3,725 USD. (A Catholic Citizen in America (January 27, 2009))

Feudal Europe didn't have American dollars, of course: but that's the sort of material and labor that would have been involved. These days, the sort of Bible I use sells for around $9.00 USD. ($8.20, plus shipping and handling).

That's around 0.25% of $3,725, by the way.

Technology, Freedom, Economics and Culture

Maybe you've heard about how 'those people' locked up Bibles - to keep people from reading them, of course. Actually, there was security around almost any book: those things were as expensive as computers are now.

And less accessible. A few specialists knew how to read and write, but most folks were illiterate - because they needed to know how to read about as much as most people today need to know how to use ZPL.

After movable type made written material available to people who weren't major landholders, an increasing number of people learned to read.

By now, the ability to read and write is pretty close to being a basic and necessary a skill in many parts of the world. Maybe 'most parts of the world.'

Which means that people - all over - are much more likely to know about what's going on in other parts of the world.

Upsetting the Applecart

Change can be hard on people who don't like it - or don't understand it. Particularly if they won't learn to adjust.

I think part of what we're seeing in American culture now is vaguely parallel to what happened in Europe a few centuries back.

Around the end of Europe's feudal period, landholders had gotten used to a politico-economic system that depended on a network of personal obligations. Feudalism had worked for centuries. We might have a sort of 'feudalism 2.0' now, if the knights, barons, and kings had understood this newfangled idea called "money" a bit better.

Oversimplifying - a lot - the old landholders of Europe failed to get involved with new, money-based, commercial enterprises. It took generations, and several major revolutions, but eventually the aristocracy of Europe changed from a driving force in European civilization to a colorful tourist attraction.

Remember, I said that's an oversimplification.

That was then. This is now.

America doesn't have barons or knights - it's illegal, or was up until a few years ago. We do, however, have traditional information gatekeepers.

"Information Gatekeepers?" What's That?

The way I use the term, "an 'information gatekeeper' is someone who controls access to information." (Another War-on-Terror Blog (August 14, 2009))

Pretty obvious, huh?

America's traditional information gatekeepers include:

• Newspaper editors
• Teachers and organizations of teachers
• Leaders of colleges and universities
• Entertainment industry executives
• Publishers of books and magazines

That's a 'short list,' of course.

Those folks were in a relatively comfortable position for much of the 20th century.

Although schools and colleges were spread across America, the 'important' ones like Harvard and Yale were in the northeast. Not far from many of America's more prestigious publishing houses and the city where America's 'newspaper of record' had its home.

The entertainment industry was a bit less centralized. New York City retained its position as the premier center for stage productions, but Los Angeles emerged as a center for newer media like motion pictures and television.

The result, I think, was that back in the days where ABC, CBS, NBC, and - a bit later - PBS were it as far as television was concerned, a relatively small number of people had a great deal of control over what the rest of us saw, heard and read. I don't think it was planned, exactly. And that's definitely another topic.

Then along came cable television. That was terribly 'divisive,' we were warned. Americans wouldn't all be watching shows from the same manageable selection of networks.

Then along came the Internet. And the Web. And blogs, like the one you're reading.

By now, published authors aren't limited to those persons deemed worthy by America's 'better' sort.

Just about any crazy son of an Irishman can get published.

Like me.

Can't say that I'm sorry about that.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO"
  (January 26, 2010)
• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "The Threat of Dangerous New Technologies: It's Not All That New"
  (August 23, 2009)
• "What is an Information Gatekeeper?"
  Another War-on-Terror Blog (August 14, 2009)
• " '...Into the Future...' - Excerpt; Attitude; Comment and Theme"
  (July 3, 2009)

Well, That's Interesting: Brooklyn and the Names of Things

I touched base at Google Translate and discovered that "Brooklyn" is 布鲁克林 (Bùlǔkè lín) in simplified Chinese.

That's actually closer to the original than the English take on at least one city in India. I speak American English, so as I grew up I knew the place as "Bombay." "Bombay" may have come from an Englishman trying to pronounce "bom bahia": Portuguese for "good bay". Which the place is.

Folks who lived there, and weren't Europeans, apparently called it Mumbai.

"...The city was called Bombay for much of the last four hundred years. The origin of the name is obscure, but is often said to come from the Portuguese phrase bom bahia meaning 'good bay'. The name Mumbai has been used in the main local languages for as long, and is ascribed to the local goddess, Mumba (ai means mother in Marathi). The name of the city was changed to Mumbai by an act of the parliament in 1997...."
(The Mumbai Pages, "By any other name" - More in their FAQ)

Things Change

I wrote a little about names, language, and history before. (February 26, 2010)

We might be calling that big city on a river in Britannia Londinium to this day, if the Caesars had managed to hold their empire together. But that's not how it happened. Romans founded the city, began developing that outpost of their empire, and retreated: leaving ruins and legends; and a shaken Roman's description of a huge, red-haired and very scary woman. They really could have handled Queen Boudicca with more finesse. But that's another topic.

Centuries after the Romans had retreated, leaving memories of a day when roads were built and order maintained, boatloads of French-speaking Vikings landed and picked up where the Romans had left off. Which is yet another topic.

Today, those Vikings are speaking the language that emerged from a sort of philological Cuisinart that imposed quite a lot of French and Latin on a Germanic language. We call it English. Which is yet again another topic.

Where was I? Londinium. Right.

That name hasn't changed all that much. From the sounds of it, a syllable or two dropped out - and I'm pretty sure the vowels aren't quite what the Romans used. There's a whole lot more going on: but I don't know as much about linguistics as I'd like to.

16 Centuries is a Long Time

Quite a lot can happen in 1,600 years. It's been that long, about, since Alaric succeeded in capturing Rome, but failed to hold the city.

Alaric's conquest wasn't an isolated incident. Germanic tribes and Huns were making life so hazardous, that some - but not all - Roman citizens were abandoning their cities. There's pretty good reason to think that quite a few Romans from Padua, Aquileia, Altino and Concordia, for example, fled into a (relatively) nearby marsh.

It looks like those Romans set up a sort of refugee camp. A thousand years later that camp was Venice: a sort of Mediterranean analog to New York City. Today, it's a city that looks quite a big like it did in its heyday: which is a good thing for its tourist trade.

It's possible to use Alaric's sack of Rome as a milestone, marking the beginning of the end for the Roman Empire. But not Rome's influence.

For a very long time, north of the Mediterranean, the only language you could be fairly certain that someone in the town you were in was Latin. The language of the Caesars was still taught when I was in school: but by then English was the language you were most likely to find in spoken somewhere. (More: "Why isn't there More Mandarin on the Web?," Apathetic Lemming of the North (April 4, 2008)) Those Britishers were everywhere.

Another 1,600 years, and things will have changed. Again. Still.

A 'good enough for a story' educated guess is that China will have finally sorted itself out, and be a major player on the world's stage. My take on what's coming is that they'll have emperors again - and that what we're seeing today is one of the messier inter-dynastic 'warlord' periods. With some moderately weird foreign ideologies mixed in.

Yeah: my guess is that people who are serious about putting the Middle Kingdom (中国, or Zhōngguó) back on the map will not want to keep reminders of colonial days around. Not even the time when they were trying to adapt the foreign ideas to their ways.

I've written about what I think is likely - possible, at least - with urban developments on the east coast of North America. ("Daniel Boone and the Megalopolis" (March 5, 2010))

I'm not assuming that the Boston-Washington D.C. corridor will still be heavily built up because I'm a red-white-and-blue-blooded American. The cities there have a reason for being there - mostly as break-in-bulk points for trans-oceanic trade. I don't see that changing.

Look at it this way: Rome is on an important river crossing, and more-or-less centrally located. And, after a rough patch after the awkward transition from Empire to recovery, an economically important part of - we're calling that part of the world "Italy."

So, why was I looking up what simplified Chinese is for "Brooklyn?"

Today, Brooklyn is a place sitcoms and comics can use as a locale for ditsy, amusing not-rich people. It's also a major seaport with industrial potential.

New York City is the "Big Apple" of course. And probably will be for quite a while. It makes a pretty good place to put financial enterprises and the upper end of other economic interests. And it's got that name: "New York City" still has a bit of panache.

It still may, 1,600 years from now. Or, not so much. I'm willing to guess that Brooklyn / 布鲁克林 / Bùlǔkè lín won't be just like it is today, either. I'm guessing that Bùlǔkè lín could be pronounced "Bulookeh Lin" and still be recognizable. Or, not. It's got a nifty exotic/familiar look to it, though.

Welcome to the Bustling Metropolis of Bulookeh Lin

Having visited the quaint Antiquities Preservation District of Niooyueh Shì, come see the hub of Greater Nyok, Bulookeh Lin.

Okay: I'm running out of time, but briefly: I see no reason why Brooklyn couldn't become a more central part of the New York City area. For starters, it's got what Manhattan doesn't have: square footage. upwards of 71 square miles.

Those names? I'm still thinking about that.

Related posts:

• "Daniel Boone and the Megalopolis"
  (March 5, 2010)
• "London, Londinium, Electropolis, and New York City: Names of the Far Future"
  (February 26, 2010)
• "Why isn't there More Mandarin on the Web?"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (April 4, 2008)

Daniel Boone and the Megalopolis

I've been thinking quite a bit lately, about the world of 3650 or thereabouts.

Since I'm making some moderately non-pessimistic assumptions, I figure that people won't be any stupider in the next few thousand years than they have in the past. Also that we'll have around 780,000,000,000 people on Earth by then.

Not a typo. And not, really, all that much more than the 6,790,062,216 or so we have now.

Overpopulated? That depends on your frame of reference.

Daniel Boone and Manhattan's Lower East Side

Although Daniel Boone apparently didn't move each time he could see the smoke from a neighbor's chimney,¹ I suspect that he'd not feel at home in the Washington, D.C. - Boston megalopolis.

I lived in San Francisco, a few decades ago, mostly in an area that was between five and 15 levels deep, apart from streets and sidewalks. I thoroughly enjoyed sharing the end of a peninsula with a sizable fraction of a million other people.

My children grew up in a small town in central Minnesota: the population topped 4,000 recently. I love it here, too: but the ambiance is very different. And some of my kids are acutely uncomfortable even in a relatively lightly-developed area like the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area.

A great deal depends, I suppose, on what you grow up with. But then, I grew up in the town that's across the river from Fargo, North Dakota: and I loved living in a rather built-up city.

The appeal that San Francisco had for me were the opportunities to directly experience the micro-cultures in the city. I lived on the edge of Chinatown (the real one: not that tourist strip), where folks don't have the Western aversion to bright colors on buildings; I could - and did - walk or take public transport to book stores, museums, art galleries - you get the idea. To manage that sort of activity here in the upper Midwest, I'd have to have access to my own aircraft - and even then I'd be eating up too much time going from place to place.

Yeah: There are advantages to having a lot of people in a small area. We're social creatures, and there's a lot of energy generated when we're able to meet each other.

The Internet has helped me keep in contact with the world: I 'drove' around the lower east side of New York City earlier this week, via Google Maps. It's not the same as being there, of course - but I was able to take a good look at my surroundings, which I wouldn't have been able to if I were driving. And I could move a whole lot faster than I could, walking. Or driving, for that matter.

Back to New York City, ca. 3650.

My, How You've Grown!

The megalopolis we know today has grown. North America has what's essentially a new mountain range, running from Florida northwards: several miles high in most spots.

And yes: That'd have an effect on weather patterns. My guess is that there'll be 'reverse wind farms' here and there, forcing winds 'uphill' to maintain what we think of as 'normal' climate. Weather control? I suppose you'd call it that.

New York City itself would be one of the higher areas, I suspect. It's an excellent natural harbor: and ocean-going vessels would still be a reasonably efficient way to transport large volumes of material. There'd probably be more than a hundred times as much traffic, though: so we're probably looking at offshore port facilities, too.

How would I feel about living in a city that was essentially one building, several hundred miles long by about three miles deep?

Today, I live in central Minnesota, where water is a mineral for a large part of the year: and I'm not a winter sports enthusiast.

Don't get me wrong: I love it here. But the prospect of living inside 24/7/365, in a place that'd 'feel' like the Mall of America, with climate-controlled pedestrian access to analogs of the Library of Congress, the Smithsonian, the Grand Ole Opry, Broadway, the Metropolitan Museum of Art?

Plus whatever people come up with in the next sixteen centuries?

If I did a 'Buck Rogers,' woke up in that era, and wound up living near the east coast: I might find it a bit crowded. Also extremely exciting.

Old MacDonald Had a Farm

All those people will eat. I've mentioned this before.

I don't think today's sewer system could handle the load of a three-mile-deep New York City. But then, I don't think that Rome's system, two thousand years back, could handle the volume that contemporary systems do: and the Romans were good engineers.

The point? People aren't stupid. We adapt. When what we're doing doesn't work, we improve our methods, or develop new ones. Some of us do, anyway. Others complain and wait for someone else to fix things. That's a different topic.

I really don't think we'll be dumping all that waste into the Atlantic. Remember: all those people are going to want to eat on a regular basis. That sewage just about has to get treated and sent back west to the farms.

Disgusting? I don't think so: but then I live in a town where we can tell when someone upwind has turned their manure bed. Let's get real: Everything on Earth has been eating recycled, ah, stuff for hundreds of millions of years. All that's different about my world of 3650 or so is that we're managing the process a lot more than we are now.

Those farms won't look like those quaint old fields you see in 'visit Ireland' brochures. Think a greenhouse, many levels deep, with "sunlight" generated locally for all but the top level. Livestock? that'd be elsewhere, but not too far away: you don't want to have to haul silage any farther than you have to.

Horribly artificial? Artificial, yes. Horribly? That's a matter of taste. I think Ord ("The Dream") wouldn't like the world 16 centuries out - at all. Or today's world. Me? It'd take getting used to. But then, my ancestors would have had a few adjustments to make, if they'd been taken out of Roman Europe and dropped here in 21st-century Minnesota.

Where's all that energy coming from? Well, that's another topic, for another day.

And I haven't even gotten into the specialized gourmet/recreational business of free-range cattle.

More-or-less-related posts:

• "New York City, 3650"
  (March 1, 2010)
• "London, Londinium, Electropolis, and New York City: Names of the Far Future"
  (February 26, 2010)
• "Food, Agriculture, Technology, and City Folks"
  (October 2, 2009)
• "Predicting the Future: a Look at a Will Be that Was"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  (June 25, 2009)

---

¹ "Daniel Boone: Myth and Reality," Gregory McNamee, Encyclopedia Britannica Blog (October 23, 2007).

Artificially Enhanced Human Beings: That's So 20th Century

Many GEICO commercials play with a disconnect between the (once) popular notion that "cavemen" were "primitive" - and what we've been learning about people who lived before some maniac got the bright idea of planting seeds and waiting for them to grow.



For example, about 800,000 years ago people in one place, at least, lived in a place with a distinct kitchen. Granted, it didn't have a GE Energy Star Dishwasher: but the residence had areas for specific functions like food preparation.

The people who lived there most likely looked a bit like the fellow in that picture. We call folks like him Homo Erectus, and around 1,000,000 years ago our ancestors almost certainly looked a bit like that.

I'm not bothered by the idea - but then, I've seen old family photos. I look a bit like my ancestors: but not quite. For example, on the Campbell side, we lost the characteristic 'wry mouth' several generations back.

Change happens.

The more we learn about our distant ancestors, the more like us they seem - in my opinion. As I wrote in another blog, about that stone age kitchen:

"...But - human? Pretty much like me, basically? I don't see why I shouldn't think so. Their brains were between half and two thirds as massive as ours, on average, but that archeological dig shows that they may have thought more-or-less the same way we do.

That artist's impression doesn't look 'human?' I'm not so sure. You're not likely to see that expression in people's photos today, outside supermarket tabloids, but think of him saying something like, "you want three rocks? You carry one!"

Or, "whaddaya mean, they only come in green or gray?!"..."
(Apathetic Lemming of the North)

Eugenics: It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time

For decades after World War II ended, the idea of replacing most of us with superior human beings was 'well known' to have been the work of those nasty German Nazis.

Since by then many people seemed to realize that they weren't on the 'preferred' list, improving the race wasn't a very popular concept. In fact, if you were around then, or your parents were, your skin may have crawled when you read "Nazis" and "improving the race."

It hasn't always been that way.

Right up until the national socialist party in Germany started 'improving' the human race - arguably, until places like Auschwitz and Dachau hit the news - applying modern science and Victorian ideals to weed out inferior classes and pep up the race seemed like a really good idea.

At least among well-bred, educated Englishmen and their cousins in America.

Science fiction written before WWII had quite a number of examples of what the new-and-improved human race would be like:

"...Over all, John comes across as a sort of socialist version of the Nietzschean ideal with a couple of the rougher edges rubbed off. In other words, human morality has no call on him, but he occasionally feels mild guilt. This is supposed to indicate his superior moral plane, but he comes across more as an odious, amoral little tick. Stapledon assumes that human superiority over lesser animals is quantitative rather than qualitative. In other words, we enjoy our position over the animals because we have more of some quantity called intelligence rather than some unique quality; be it sentience, self-awareness, or an immortal soul.

"Or to be blunt about it, morality is something shared between the strong and denied to the weak.

"Because of this, Stapledon's supermen are allowed to rob from, seduce, exploit, manipulate, dispossess, and even murder 'lesser' people when they get in the way of the supermen's plans due to the higher moral need to advance the interests of the master race. This sort of an argument has an unfortunate track record and Stapledon could just get away with this in the '30s. In less than ten years, however, a certain group of would-be supermen put such ideas into practice and the world is still trying to wash the taste out of its mouth...."
(Tales of Future Past > Future Man > "Odd John")

'It Can't Happen Here?' Don't be Too Sure

The word "eugenics" still hasn't quite regained the panache it had before the forties: but the idea is back. Phrases like "quality of life" are used: but the same old approach of eliminating the unfit is there. Except now it's for 'benevolent' reasons.

I don't think killing people who don't live up to some standard of physical perfection is a good idea. But then, I'm one of those defective products of conception that aren't living a quality lifestyle. Being used in a medical experiment didn't help - but that's another story. (A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009))

Defective or not, on the whole I prefer being alive to the alternative.

What's With All the Quotes?

I've started using David S. Zondy's Tales of Future Past website as a reference and resource. Partly because he's done a marvelous job of bringing together vintage science fiction virtual memorabilia and ideas. Partly because he seems to see the world in roughly the same way I do.

I don't want to shock anyone, but I think that the physical world is real, not an illusion; that God exists; that some things are moral and others aren't; and that people have souls. And I want to write speculative fiction?!

Back to Mr. Zondy and making supermen. He wrote an uncharacteristically serious few paragraphs about eugenics:

"...One of the obvious ways of producing your superman is one that was taken so seriously in the last century that it was actually tried. Ever since the basic ideas of Darwin and the mechanism of genetics were understood, the idea popped into the mind of Sir Francis Galton that what can be done to dogs and pigeons can be done to men, so if you want to create Homo Superior, why not simply breed human beings selectively?

"This wasn't just idle speculation, he was dead serious and many a philanthropist, scholar, scientist, businessman, and politician became determined advocates of improving the lot of the human race by making sure that the 'best' of the breed intermarried while the sick, feeble-minded, and generally undesirable were prevented from reproducing...."

"...Needless to say, Auschwitz and the Nuremburg trials put paid to the Eugenics movement and gave the world a very stern lesson of what happens when you stop seeing people as children of God and more as laboratory animals.

"What is even more frightening is that we have been so slow in learning our lesson and so quick to forget it. We've made great strides in medicine, particularly in genetic research, but in doing so we have reached the point where we are in danger of doing far more harm than good. If not to our bodies, then to our souls. Our society is tampering with things such as contraceptives, fertility drugs, genetic engineering, selective abortion, infant euthanasia, in vitro fertilisation, designer babies, and artificial insemination with so little real discussion of the ethics of what we're doing that we face a very real risk of one day turning 'round and discovering that we are not becoming genetic supermen, but moral monsters...."
(Tales of Future Past > Future Man > "Eugenics")

The Importance of [Not] Being Earnest

Stories where the author has a Point To Make and hits readers over the head with it are as likely to stir my stomach as my heart. Dreadfully earnest stories happen so often that Television Tropes & Idioms has a whole page about being "Anvilicious."

Not that I think there should be no message in a story. Even if it's as basic as 'don't mess with the big guy's wife until you're sure he's dead.' Homer's Odysseus / Ulysses wouldn't have had quite as exciting an ending, if the war hero hadn't cleaned house at the end in a style worthy of Arnold Schwarzenegger's action heroes.

And, as another page in Television Tropes & Idioms puts it: "Some Anvils Need To Be Dropped." Think Aesop's Fables.

The trick, I think, is finding a balance. How? Having somebody else read the story isn't the daftest approach.

I may drop a few anvils as I go along: but I'll try to be careful about it. Apart from artistic and aesthetic considerations, I don't think it's generally the best way to make a point.

Mutants, Cyborgs and Meddling With God's Handiwork

I think Mr. Zondy is right on at least one point: particularly with the sort of power that people have these days, we should think about the ethics of what we do: not just whether or not we feel like doing it.

On the other hand, I don't have a problem with Man Tampering With Nature. In my view, that's what we do, just by being human. We've come a long way from weaving cloth and knapping hide scrapers: but we were messing with 'the natural order of things' long before we started selecting which seeds to use for the next crop.

Isn't It Different With People?

Even if I didn't feel like it, I'd have to be concerned with cruelty to animals. It's in the rules (A Catholic Citizen in America (August 17, 2009))

I'm even more concerned with cruelty to people. I don't think people should be bought, sold, or killed - even if it's for personal profit or convenience. And the way I view the world, the stakes go up when the person is helpless. But I'm getting off-topic.

What About Cyborgs: Those Inhuman Amalgams of Man and Machine?

Don't expect me to be too upset about mixing a human being's original equipment and artificial add-ons and replacements. I'm focusing on the monitor right now with clip-on lenses, My hands and wrists have been surgically altered, quite a few of my teeth have metal parts, I've got two metal hip sockets, and my belly's got plastic mesh in it. Even my brain's been altered, chemically, to clear up some glitches.

And I'm okay with that: I haven't messed with anything that was working smothly in the first place. What's been done to me since about age four has been better described as "repairing" than "tampering."

These models who get surgically altered to match some current fashion: that's dubious, in my view.

It's Just Starting to Get Interesting

I've read that Intel has announced a neural interface, due for release around 2020. (Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)) Some of the obvious applications for that sort of technology is people who've suffered brain injuries from stroke or accidents. That, I think, is a very promising development.

The technology will, of course, be misused. People misuse things sometimes. We've killed each other with rocks. My guess is that somebody's going to use those brain chips in ways that'll make what happened at Auschwitz look like a Sunday social. You think we've got problems with malware now?!

But that doesn't make rocks bad: or brain chips. We've cobbled together rules for how to use rocks, and I'm pretty sure we can do the same with brain chips.

We may not be quite the same as we were when we learned how to knap flint: But I don't think we've gotten any stupider.

If At First You Don't Succeed - - -

As a rule, I think persistence is a good idea. But like just about every other human characteristic, it can be misapplied.

The national socialist party's efforts to clean up their gene pool and make room for a master race had unpleasant consequences. I don't think anybody's going to try that approach again.

But the idea of 'perfecting' humanity is so appealing to many, I don't think it'll go away. I'm also pretty sure that someone's going to try again. And again, and again.

The more spectacular blowouts, like what happened in Germany around the 1940s, may put a moratorium on most efforts for a few decades. But too many people are too convinced that humanity would be so much better - if only 'improvements' were made - that I think we're likely going to see superman projects now and again for the foreseeable future.

Some of what I've read about - like making repairs at the genetic level to eradicate conditions like leukemia - seem to make sense. How they should be implemented: that's where things get interesting.

Meanwhile, superman factories and people who think they've evolved beyond good and evil will provide a writer of speculative fiction a warehouse of material.

Some of which I've already used:

• "Birthright"
  (February 19, 2010)

Vaguely-related posts:

• "Etched Ostrich Eggs and Being Human"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (March 3, 2010)
• "Homo Erectus, Kitchens, and Human (Pre)History"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 21, 2009)
• "Next-Generation Prosthetic Hand - and Intel Says Direct Neural Interface Brain Chips by 2020"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (December 2, 2009)
• "Tofu Turkeys, Genetically Altered Foods, and the Evil Eye"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (November 14, 2009)
• "Hard Science Fiction, Cultural Blinders and Laban's Sheep"
  (October 29, 2009)
• "Animals: Yeah, the Catholic Church has Rules About Them, Too"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (August 17, 2009)
• "Dinosaurs, Mutant Chickens, Evolution, and Faith in God"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (June 29, 2009)
• "Medical Ethics and Human Experimentation: Why I Take it Personally"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 3, 2009)
• "Human Clones Possible: Don't Worry, They're Just for Parts and Research"
  A Catholic Citizen in America (February 2, 2009)

New York City, 3650

I've been thinking about New York City quite a bit more lately than I usually do. Partly because one of those nifty ideas that's been wandering somewhere in my brain's infrastructure popped out into the front office last week.

The basic idea isn't anything new: it's a setting for what could be a sequence of 'club tales.' Sort of like the 'Mr. Mulliner' short stories by P. G. Wodehouse (which are not speculative fiction at all); or A. C. Clarke's "Tales from the White Hart" (which is).

The best location for this place, I decided, would be on Earth, in a major city, and about 16 centuries from now. Almost any period after the advent of the short circuit would do: but that's roughly when my 'Blue Buzzard' stories are, so I'd only have to do background research once for both sets.

So, what would a "city of the future" look like? Probably not quite like this:

"This painting by Frank R. Paul's of a city of the future and is pretty typical of such predictions. The city is a massive pile of steel, plastic and glass put together in a way that not only has no past, but actively rejects it. It is a place of heroic technology with skyscrapers the size of whole districts, roof-top aerodromes, wide pedestrian boulevards, and metal roadways strangely devoid of traffic. There are even urban space launch pads where giant rockets are winched upright before blasting off to the heavens. Noise regulations, Shmoise regulations...."

"...If there is one thing that united the artist-prophets, it was a fascination with gigantism. Since the most impressive engineering feats of the early 20th century were bigger and better dams, bridges, canals, and whatnot, it seemed only reasonable that the cities of future ages would look as though they needed a round of thyroid treatments...."
("Future City," "Skyscraper World," Tales of Future Past)

David S. Zondy, creator of Tales of Future Past, has a point: those illustrations from the 20s and 30s of cities of the future showed huge buildings. And, quite often, elevated roadways.

Now that megamalls are news only when something newsworthy happens in them, maybe it isn't quite so cool to imagine megastructures.

Cool or not, New York City in my 37th century is going to have to have some fair-sized buildings. Or I'll have to radically change what I've got planned for Earth in my stories.

Starting with a population somewhat northwards of 100 times what we have now.

Flint Knives to International Harvester: Change Happens

We couldn't feed that many people today. But I've done a little research: and that's not a crazy-high figure. Of course, it would mean bringing agricultural technology up to 1975 state-of-the-art around the world. Just as important, we couldn't have too many countries where the primary function of most people was keeping dear leader supplied with fresh lobster. But I'm getting off-topic.

A Hundred Times as Many People? However Will Earth Survive?

My 37th century Earth won't look just what we've got today: but I'm not talking about the 'dying planet' stuff mentioned in "Avatar" (2009).

What I think many doomsters forget is that human beings are biological entities. We consume organic material, water and oxygen. But it doesn't stay inside us. On a time scale of seconds to hours, most of what went in comes out again. We can't consume what we excrete, at that point, but quite a few organisms can: and eventually we, or someone like us, will get the same molecules again. It's a system that's been working for hundreds of millions of years: and I think is likely to keep recycling, whether trilobites, dinosaurs, or we are pushing part of the process along.

Will it be different, with more than a hundred times as many people around as there are now? Of course. It's different now, compared to the 'good old days' when there were only a few million of us. (See " 'The Dream' - a Short-Short Story," for a look at today's world as a hideously-overcrowded future)

Back to New York City, ca. 3650

As it stands today, New York City can't handle another 99 people for everybody who lives and works there now. But quite a bit can be changed in 1,650 years.

I did a little checking, and found that many (most, where I looked) buildings around New York City's Central Park were about 15 stories tall, with some around 20. Near the south end of the island, they're taller, of course. But that 15-story range gave me something to start with.

You can't just add more floors to a building and leave it at that. Aside from structural considerations, people in the upper floors will want to get down to ground level now and again. We manage that in today's skyscrapers with elevators. Which takes up floor space - books have been written on the subject: the bottom line is that there are limits with the technology we have now. 'Sky lobbies' are a partial solution.

We might wind up with something like those old aerial roadways, after all.

With a blithe wave of the hand, I took New York City's skyline, and multiplied in by a hundred. Vertical transport? I'll figure that out later.

Those buildings around Central Park would be 15 x 10 x 100 = 15,000 feet tall. That's almost three miles. The park is less than a mile across. The place would be a trench: "scarier than it is now," as my oldest daughter put it.

Just How High Will We Build?

I did a quick check, and found out that five kilometers is almost the limit for how far up you'll find cities - Wenzhuan is 16,730 feet, or 5,019 meters, above sea level.

People can live there, obviously - but I'm not sure how much higher we'd go before the air was uncomfortably thin.

So my Central Park is surrounded by buildings around 15,000 feet tall? No problem: Air's breathable at that altitude, and I'm still not worrying about vertical transport.

Central Park's being at the bottom of a three-mile-deep trench is an aesthetic issue - which I'll ignore for now.

Incremental Growth?

There was a story where New York City was destroyed and rebuilt as a cube, two miles on a side. ("City Cube," Tomorrow's Skyline, Tales of Future Past)

That could probably be done. Napoleon III's government leveled good-sized parts of Paris, laying out the groundwork of what we've got today. ("Streets of Paris," James Chastain (1999, 2004)) There's pretty good reason to believe that the streets of Paris today are so wide and straight because the civic leaders wanted the citizenry exposed to light, air and cannon fire.

The mid-1800s were a colorful period. And another topic.

Apart from phenomena like Napoleon III and urban renewal, though, cities tend to grow one piece at a time. That's why today's New York City has brownstones, modernist architecture, and a jumble of other styles being used side-by-side.

I rather like the effect, myself.

Right now, I'm playing with the idea that 1,650 years from now New York City will have grown more-or-less gradually. No two-mile-high cubes.

A quick sketch of the south end of Manhattan with a height limit of about 15,000 feet didn't look too crazy. I don't know whether to look at making that end of the island taller - or spreading out the 'downtown' area.

To keep the buildings from looking like improbably elongated mega-pencils, I've assumed that Manhattan will continue to be high-value property: valuable enough for organizations to buy several blocks and build a single structure over them.

We've got something like that happening in Chicago. But that's yet another topic, and it's getting late.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "London, Londinium, Electropolis, and New York City: Names of the Far Future"
  (February 26, 2010)
• "Food, Agriculture, Technology, and City Folks"
  (October 2, 2009)
• "Predicting the Future: a Look at a Will Be that Was"
  (June 26, 2009)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  (June 25, 2009)

London, Londinium, Electropolis, and New York City: Names of the Far Future

One of the advantages of speculative fiction / science fiction for writers is that, particularly for stories set in the far future, they can make up anything they like, and it's okay?

Well, yes and no.

For someone who's writing exclusively as an exercise in self-expression, maybe.

A writer who wants other people to read the story - and keep reading it - not so much, in my opinion.

What's in a Name?

Take place names, for example. For someone writing a story in American English about contemporary life in New York City: all they need to do is make sure that they spell "New York" correctly, and keep check out the New York City Web site (www.nyc.gov), or other online resources like Google Maps.

No problems.

When your setting is not where you live, and you're portraying people who don't speak your particular dialect: things get interesting.

For example, would someone who grew up in Germany say that he lives in Germany? If he was speaking English, quite possibly. When he's at home, though, he lives in Deutschland. Which is why, here in America, we refer to citizens of the Netherlands as the Dutch. Which is another topic.

So, what about tales of the far future: anything goes, right?

Depends on what you're going for. If your story is supposed to be a cheesy spoof of Saturday matinee serials and the shallow end of science fiction's golden age: I suppose there's a sort of virtue to using names like Magnetonia or Electropolis.

Now that I see it: I actually like "Electropolis."

But, no.

What I was working with today (not all day - but I'm getting off-topic again) was a bit more serious.

I was looking for something to call New York City, about 1,650 years from now.

Sure, I could just call it "New York City," since I'm writing in the only language I'm really comfortable with: English.

But that doesn't help establish or support the setting.

I could make up some bit of gibberish, on the principle that the place would have a new name.

Things Change

That approach is half right. Not the "gibberish" bit: the idea that New York City might have a new name.

Or, maybe not.

London, that big city on a river in an island kingdom, has been around for a long time. Almost 2,000 years now (1,967, actually). Back in Roman times, it was called Londinium. (More, at "Roman London," Britain Express)

And, just shy of two millennia later: the name hasn't changed all that much. Mostly, I suspect, because the folks living there speak a Germanic language that was heavily influenced by French-speaking Vikings. Which is yet another topic.

Back to New York City, about 1,650 years from now.

One thing's sure: things will have changed.

I've decided, given what's happened over the last few thousand years, that China has a good shot at being

1. Intact as a cultural and political entity
2. A major part of the economy and culture of Earth

Besides: there are some seriously cool things I can do with an Earth that shows a heavy Chinese influence.

Like - I haven't forgotten - what people call New York City.

I put New York City through Google Translate, and got 纽约市 (that won't look right, unless you've got a Chinese font. I told Google Translate to give me the result in 'Chinese (Simplified)').

Next, I put 纽约市 in, asking for an English translation. Sure enough: I got New York City.

So, how is 纽约市 pronounced? If you read and speak Chinese: you already know.

To get the answer for me, I went back to the English > Chinese (Simplified) mode, put New York City in and got 纽约市 again. This time I told the software to "Show romanization" (that's a nice bit of software Google's got). (I'm learning to recognize characters - but pronunciation is something I'm not even close to getting right.)

I got Niǔyuē shì.

Which is helpful. Maybe that "ǔ" is roughly the same sound as "oo" (as in too or tool, as pronounced in American English). Or maybe it's more like "uh" like "cut". The American Heritage Dictionary Pronunciation Key says it's the latter.

The "ē" is a little easier - assuming that it's got the same value given in that American Heritage Dictionary Pronunciation Key. That's the "e" sound we have in words like "pet" and "met."

And yes, I know: I don't know how to pronounce Chinese. No offense, but I'm not aiming at linguistic precision here, so much as trying for a plausibly-close approximation. Moving along.

I'm guessing that "New York City" / 纽约市 / Niǔyuē shì sounds a little like "Niuhyueh Shì" in some Chinese dialects. Or maybe "Niooyueh Shì". It doesn't look that much like "New York City" in the Latin alphabet I use - but it doesn't sound all that much different.

I'll sleep on it, but I think that major city on the east coast of North America is called "Niuhyueh Shì" by the time that story's period rolls around.

Birthright

Birthright

Brian H. Gill

Despite the stories you've seen, there never were very many Voini. Like any alter, each Voin was expensive to grow.

Also, unlike the Gung Yan, Voini had earned an unpleasant reputation during the recent wars.

Between limited production, judgments after the Suspension and 'Voin hunts,' there are now perhaps only a few dozen surviving Voini.

Perhaps it is best this way.

As great a cliché as this will seem, Voini were designed to be the "ideal soldiers." Not mindless killing machines. Soldiers. Again, please: forget the stories you've seen. Those are fiction. Intended for entertainment.

Traits were carefully selected for each batch of Voini, carefully chosen for a particular set of tasks. All had average or better intelligence, most were above the 50th percentile in strength, and Voini pilots in particular had almost inhumanly fast reaction times. No Voin, despite their reputation, were given to unpredictable outbursts of homicidal fury.

I believe I understand how the victors viewed the Voini. Units of four or eight apparently-identical men, armed and moving with the speed and precision of the finest athlete, carrying out a military objective - of which you were the target? Yes, that could be frightening.

And it is an all-too-human habit to ascribe frightful attributes to that which we fear.

So, yes: I believe I understand how the victors viewed the Voini. I believe I understand the reasoning behind the post-Suspension judgments: although I do not agree with each one.

But I hope that someday, as the passions of this age fade, my brothers and I will be regarded in a kinder light.

copyright © Brian H. Gill 2010

---

More:

• "Stories on this Blog"

Epic Scale and Painting the Floor

I've got more of the "artistic temperament" in me than I like to admit. There are days when I quite simply don't feel like being creative. At all.

Today was one of those days.

But, my schedule said that I'd be writing this post: which meant that I had to come up with something, anything, today. I don't like deadlines, but they have their uses.

'Star Trek Syndrome', Cordwainer Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis

Don't get me wrong: I was a great fan of Star Trek in the sixties. And I've enjoyed watching those movies and series of the franchise which I had means, motive and opportunity to see.

But the original Star Trek suffered from an affliction that's endemic to the various science fiction/speculative fiction/fantasy genres. Since Star Trek is a pretty big landmark on the American cultural landscape, at least, I'll pick on that venerable series and call this condition the "Star Trek Syndrome."

It's where stories with a setting 'in the future' are written with a general idea of what "the future" is like: but filling in details as the stories are done.

It can be done: and Star Trek was enormously successful. But I think that approach has intellectual landmines set under some of the well-traveled paths.

The original Star Trek series was set at some point in the future: they settled down to somewhere around 200 years. No problems there, as far as the technology was concerned. Not as far as I'm concerned.

Future Tech

Now, faster-than-light spaceships, transporters, sentient (and occasionally downright temperamental) computers? If the series had been set 20 years from now, I'd have felt my willing suspension of disbelief stretched to the breaking point. Beyond, if there wasn't some really good explanation: like a bunch of MIT students on break, stumbling on a spaceship that had crash-landed with most of the equipment in working order.

I've heard that the Romans reverse-engineered what for them was alien technology - a Phoenician ship - from a wreck they found. Ancient Romans were never really at home on the sea, and hadn't developed shipbuilding skills. They were, however, top-notch engineers: and with most of a working model to start with, they could fill in the blanks.

Future Astropolitics

Even as a teenager, though, I started wondering about the timeline of the United Federation of Planets. 200 years is a long time: but the implication in Star Trek was that we'd gone from living on one planet to having interstellar settlements and a political entity which included these grown colonies (and had members that weren't human).

In under two centuries. Well under two centuries.

That's fast work. Really fast work.

I think that a case can be made that a bunch of seriously ADHD humans barged into an existing interstellar community, decided it'd be great if everybody started living in peace, harmony and the human way - and got the United Federation of Planets going before older and wiser heads realized what had hit them.

But I'm getting off-topic. Nothing new there.

Cordwainer Smith, J.R.R. Tolkien, and C.S.Lewis

All writers, I think, are 'subcreators' to some extent. That is, they create a fictional world in which their characters act. The world of some stories are barely indistinguishable from present or past reality: the chief differences are the presence of the characters.

Even science fiction/speculative fiction/fantasy stories don't have to involve a great deal of work on the fictional world. There's quite a lot of off-the-shelf material.

• Science Fiction
  • Ray guns
  • Space ships
    • With optional antigravity
  • Aliens that act like funny-looking human beings
  • Toxic waste that turns people into zombies
• Fantasy
  • Swords
  • Horses
  • Flashy magic
  • Petty kingdoms
  • An economy that sounds feudal
    • Even if it isn't

Using any or all of these conventions doesn't make a story bad. Look at Robert Asprin's "Myth Adventures" novels: but then, he seems to have done some intense - and funny - analysis of fantasy's shopworn cliches.

Or take C.S. Lewis's Narnia stories. They're set in a fantasy world, and the seven of them add up to a tale that's epic in scope. But I think Lewis concentrated on the characters and plots - not on creating a heavily-detailed, internally-consistent, fully-formed subcreation. And they're good, solid stories, in my opinion.

The Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien, I think, is more of a complete world than Narnia, with a more fully-developed history and set of interrelationships.

Then there's the universe of Cordwainer Smith. Particularly as it grew, it became more like the complexly-patterned world of Tolkien, than the slightly more generic land of Lewis's Narnia stories.

I like the work of all three. But I'm aiming at something closer to Tolkien or Smith, in terms of setting. What I actually accomplish - that's another matter.

Think, Plan, Then Write?

Comparing my productivity to that of #3 daughter, I may not be approaching this the right way. She's got a small but loyal fan base for her stories - which add up to a massive work - and has been making up the setting as she goes.

She's been doing what I'd call speculative fiction stories - with the same sort of issues when it comes to setting that I've got. But she's written quite a few stories. My output is - zilch, when it comes to something finished.

Like I said, I may be on the wrong track.

Or, not.

Like today.

Plan First, Then Varnish the Floor

In my youth, a stock cartoon situation was someone who had painted himself into the corner of the room - with nowhere to go. Some were funny, and all depended on the occasional lack of foresight that people exhibit.

Today, since my creative energies were nowhere to be found and my muse was on furlough, I decided to do a little research and review. I have a timeline for a particular setting that I'm rather fond of, I'd done some work on it late last year, and again this month: and it was time to go back and do a little checking.

Good thing I did.

I changed the names of several Chinese dynasties that don't exist yet (and probably never will - except in this 'future history'): for the better, I think.

Then, I took a look at the timeline I had for the future history as a whole, the voyage of one particular ship, and the transportation technology I'd assigned to this setting.

And found that I'd painted myself into a corner.

The times simply wouldn't work.

The Butler Couldn't Have Done It

It's like a ill-conceived old-fashioned mystery, where the master detective unmasks Jukes, the butler, as the murderer of Lord Thriply.

Just one problem: the author had demonstrated that Jukes had been several miles away, and couldn't have had an accomplice.

Dashing fine story, full of suspense and pathos, but the facts just don't fit together.

The Colony That Wasn't There Yet

I've got Our Heroes visiting a colorful, slightly exotic and - I hope - interesting world in one of the stories. A world where something like a quarter million people live. They're descendants of - well, that'll wait.

The point is, when I checked out the timeline: the original settlers would have arrived 10, maybe 20 years before the story starts.

They couldn't possibly have gotten to where they were - a small but thriving culture - in that length of time. Never mind the technology. The way I figure it, they'd need something like 200 years to grow from about a thousand people to a quarter million, building maybe a dozen settlements along the way.

If I'd already published something, I could have faked it - invoking some sort of technobabble as a solution.

As it is, I just shoved the story's date ahead by a couple centuries.

And, in the process of making the development of my 'space drive' - if not plausible, then internally consistent - I discovered another set of 'the butler couldn't have done it' situations.

That was good news, really, since I got an idea (born of desperation) for making a particular conflict into more than just one more 'space battle' built around 19th and 20th-century military technology that's been renamed.

It's late, and I need sleep.

Vaguely-related posts:

• "A Sense of Scale and Science Fiction Writers"
  (August 17, 2009)
• " 'The Future, Far as Human Eye Could See'" - Hollerith Cards and Anachronisms"
  (August 2, 2009)
• "Hard Science: It's Not Necessarily a Limitation"
  (July 25, 2009)
• "Getting Details Right: The Vast, Huge, and Very Large City Of The Future"
  (June 25, 2009)

Yearning for Paper Cuts, Dust, and Frustration?

One of today's posts for another blog, "Data-Driven Art: For an 'Overwhelmed' 'Hive Mind???'," Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 27, 2010), could have been posted here.

Which is the reason for that link.

It's about an interactive digital art exhibition in England. Quite imaginative, and looks like fun. The reason given for putting it on, though, was - interesting:

"...'Decode is about demystifying the black art or magic of digital while showing that this work can be poetic, emotional and poignant,' show co-curator Shane R.J. Walter told Wired.com in an e-mail interview. Walter, creative director for the OneDotZero digital arts site, said the exhibition pieces 'highlight issues in our everyday lives such as the overabundance of information and how we deal with this through data visualization.' The Decode artists, he writes, 'use code as a material to work with just as sculptors work with clay.'..."

My reaction, copied from that other post:

• "Overwhelmed?"
• "Hive mind?"
• "Demystifying the"
  • "Black art"
  • "Magic of digital?"
  • "Overabundance of information?"

I'm pretty obviously not on the same page as the creative director for OneDotZero, or the people he's trying to help.

From my point of view, it's only since an ISP brought internet connectivity to Sauk Centre, around 1997, that I've been able to get information in adequate amounts, at an acceptable speed.

There's something of a thrill of the chase involved, tracking down data among the stacks of a library. But I'm glad I don't have to pull out drawer after drawer of a card catalog, riffling through the cards; and then track down the book: Hoping that it hasn't been checked out or - worse - stolen.

No, I do not yearn for the good old days of dust and paper cuts.

But it's pretty obvious that not everybody sees things the same way.

Related posts:

• "Data-Driven Art: For an 'Overwhelmed' 'Hive Mind???'"
  Apathetic Lemming of the North (January 27, 2010)
• "HAL 9000, Skynet, and C3PO"
  (January 26, 2010)

Creativity, Research, and Finding a Cool Name That's Not Been Used

I've been developing technobabble for a few stories. Set about 1,500 years from now, the characters will be using devices that definitely aren't off-the-shelf hardware today.

One of the technologies is a sort of warp drive. Not the Star Trek or Star Wars thing: more like what we might have, if Mexican/Welsh physicist Michael Alcubierre's equations describe something that would actually work. Which, the last I heard, is still a matter of debate.

My guess is that he's on to something. The specifics of his approach to moving a pocket of space-time through the rest of the continuum may not be quite on-target, but it's an idea that's good enough for a story.

A prediction, while I'm thinking of it. Not a particularly startling one, given the nature of humanity. If/when we get to the point where someone's building a prototype warp drive: we'll see a replay of the fuss that's surrounded CERN's Large Hadron Collider. The familiar old 'and we're all gonna die' stuff.

Cool Name: And, Confound it, it's been Used!

Assuming that Alcubierre's warp drive could be built, the thing would require unreasonable amounts of power. The energy requirements are literally astronomical.

For a story, I don't see that as a problem: except that I need to remember that whatever the power source is: it better not be anything that's even close to being developed now.

Think of a story where an airliner gets its power from a pair of oxen turning a wheel, and you see what I'm talking about. Oxen are great sources of energy: but strong as they are, their energy output isn't enough for air travel.

Although - no, I'm going to stay on-topic.

I came up with a dandy name for the power source of warp ships: "cascade generator." It sounds cool, and isn't something that's used now.

Strike that. I did a quick search, and - "cascade generators" are either in development or actually in use in accelerators. Today. ("Travelling wave cascade generator - A new high-voltage source for accelerators," letters to the editor, E M Balabanov et al 1962 J. Nucl. Energy, Part C Plasma Phys. 4 65-67)

The term is also used by a few people who either think they're inventing a sort of perpetual motion machine - or want others to think they are.

Now I have to decide whether to use the term "cascade generator" anyway - or think up something else.

Odds are pretty good that I'll look for an alternative. I really don't want to invoke 21st century technology.

Related post:

• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "Warp Drive Might Not Be Stable: Physcisists Take Another look at Alcubierre's Work"
  (June 12, 2009)
• "LHC Peril! Large Hadron Collider Black Hole Will Eat Earth!! - or, Not"
  (January 27, 2009)

---

Update (January 21, 2010)

Wikipedia isn't always the most reliable resource. The 'what do you want reality to be' encyclopedia is, though, cleaning up its act: quite a number of articles now have citations. In other words, people and organizations with reputations to lose are listed as sources for facts and opinions. It's an improvement.

Getting back on topic, I looked through the "Topology" page, and ended up with these interesting - and possibly useful for me - words and phrases:

• Hausdorff space
  • Hausdroff generators??
• Clopen set
  • "In topology, a clopen set (or closed-open set, a portmanteau word) in a topological space is a set which is both open and closed."
    (Wikipedia: Clopen set)
  • I like it

Well, That's Interesting: Ancient Writing Systems

ancientscripts.com
A compendium of world-wide writing systems from prehistory to today

According to the website's about page:

"Back in 1996, I created the original Ancient Scripts web site during the wee hours of the morning. I have been a great enthusiast for writing systems and linguistics in general, but I could only find meager resources on the web about this subject in those early days. So I went to work, taking class material from Linguistics 11 (Writing Systems) at UCB as well as my own research in dusty libraries. Many years later, despite problems with servers and having to earn a living, Ancient Scripts is still running. Thanks for all your support!

"The aim of Ancient Scripts is not to replace texts books or instructional web sites. Instead, it is designed to give an introduction to writing systems, which hopefully will tantalize the reader into searching for more information on the web or in books and publications.

"Here's the disclaimer: I am not a linguist...."
("About Ancient Scripts")

In my opinion, the chief difference between a systematically enthusiastic hobbyist who has devoted a great deal of time and effort to studying a subject, and a certified subject professional, is that the certified professional has a piece of paper that says he or she is competent - and the professional gets paid.

I think people inside the academic establishment can be knowledgeable and competent, understand: but I think the same can be said of people who aren't.

The last site update was October 3, 2008.

I found this website while researching ancient writing systems. It seems to be a pretty good resource.

Now it's time for me to get back to work.

Nanotech and Keeping Up

Technology is changing rapidly just now. A very cool term, "nanotech," is being used - and misused - quite a lot. I put together a list of posts relating to nanotechnology, for another blog today. Here it is, with the post I created it for included.

I think the post titles give an idea of what gadgets might plausibly be used in stories set in the 'near future.' For anything more than, say fifty to a hundred years out? I don't think I'll be trying to describe how the technology works - just what it does. And, try to make sure it doesn't resemble a clunky version of something being developed this year by some outfit in Japan or Silicone Valley.

From Apathetic Lemming of the North:

• "20 Years of Building Stuff One Atom at a Time"
  (October 2, 2009)
• "ViRob: Tiny 'Robot' Travels Through Body"
  (June 27, 2009)
• "Nanotechnolgy and Electronics: Atom-Sized Transistors ('Nanotronics'??)"
  (February 20, 2009)
• "Slick Idea from MIT: Nanotech Oil Spill Blotter-Upper"
  (July 10, 2008)
• "The Chembots Are Coming"
  (July 1, 2008)
• "Programmable Metallization Cell (PMC): One Terabyte of Data in a Little Package"
  (June 20, 2008)
• "Spiderman Suit: From CGI to R & D"
  (March 31, 2008)
• "Nanosieves: Energy-Efficient Filters"
  (March 5, 2008)
• "It Bends! It Cleans Itself! It's Solar Powered! Meet the Cell Phone of the Future! Maybe"
  (March 3, 2008)
• "Artificial Skin: New Technologies Coming"
  (February 12, 2008)
• "Nanotech Solar Collector: Revolutionary, With a Big Catch"
  (January 16, 2008)
• "Nanobot Designed for Clearing Arteries"
  (November 21, 2007)
• "Nanotech Batteries in Clothing"
  (October 19, 2007)
• "Something New that Water Can Do"
  (October 19, 2007)

By the way, as I pointed out in today's post in the other blog, " 'Nanotechnology' Doesn't Mean 'Kinda Small'."

'Kids These Days' - Rambling on About Human Nature

You've read about them, maybe you actually know one: a grumbling old coot who is convinced that society, humanity, and the world is going to Hell in a handbasket because kids just aren't the way they were when he (or she) was young.

Customs, fashions and technology have changed in America, at least, since the days of my youth. My childhood was in the "happy days" of the fifties and I spent my teens in the sixties. I'm still impressed at how many high school kids drive cars today.

On the other hand, I don't know that the basic human model is all that different.

Human Nature and People - Not Necessarily the Same Thing

I just got through reading Poul Anderson's "Harvest of Stars" (1994). Someone called it "ambitious" - and I'll let the literary criticism go at that.

As a sort of sub-plot, Anderson tells what happened to humanity back on Earth. The story is spread across several chapters, in a series of relatively short messages sent from Earth to people who got out of the Solar system while the getting was good.

Over the course of several centuries, with the help of artificial intelligences, humanity developed a Utopian society: rational; ordered; placing few demands on the individual while maximizing opportunities for self-fulfillment.

The last few messages were sent by the artificial intelligences. Earth was doing fine, they said: the ecology was in great shape, now that the human population was tiny and shrinking. Not to worry, though. They'd made sure that a full record of humanity would be preserved, in case the species died on them.

Then they stopped sending messages.

That Just Ain't Human!

In Poul Anderson's story, human nature didn't change. The people who wound up running Earth weren't human - apart from an avatar they built, once, to communicate with the escapees. If they didn't 'act human,' it should be no surprise.

The human people 'back home' were acting in a rather familiar way, though.

Been There, Done That

About 28 centuries ago, Homer¹ composed two epic poems, the Iliad and the Odyssey. In the Odyssey, Ulysses runs into people whose lifestyle is a whole lot like the contentedly dying remnant of humanity Anderson described:

"...we reached the land of the Lotus-eater, who live on a food that comes from a kind of flower. ... I sent two of my company to see what manner of men the people of the place might be, and they had a third man under them. They started at once, and went about among the Lotus-eaters, who did them no hurt, but gave them to eat of the lotus, which was so delicious that those who ate of it left off caring about home, and did not even want to go back and say what had happened...."
(The Lotus-Eaters / Book IX of Homer's Odyssey)

It's not all that implausible that, in a rather small, well-managed society, everybody would be like Homer's Lotos-eater.

I don't think it would be a good idea - but it's a plausible.

Certainly good enough for a story.

'Kids These Days'

You've probably already run into these observations about contemporary youth:

"Our youth now love luxury, they have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in places of exercise. They no longer rise when others enter the room. They contradict their parents, chatter before company, gobble their food and tyrannize their teachers."

"I see no hope for the future of our people if they are dependent on frivolous youth of today, for certainly all youth are reckless beyond words... When I was young, we were taught to be discreet and respectful of elders, but the present youth are exceedingly disrespectful and impatient of restraint"

The first is attributed to Socrates, who lived in the 5th Century BC. The second is a translation of words attributed to Hesiod, who lived about three hundred years before that, right around Homer's time.

Over two dozen centuries later, there isn't much left of ancient Greece: But Homer's poems are still known, translated into languages which didn't exist when the blind poet wove the tale of Apollo and Agamemnon, Aphrodite and Helen, Athena and Odysseus.

Quite a lot has changed since Odysseus took the long way home. But I think the underlying drives, desires, strengths and weaknesses of humanity haven't.

Related posts:

• "Inventions: Strange; Feared; and Yet-to-Come"
  (August 25, 2009)
• "The Threat of Dangerous New Technologies: It's Not All That New"
  (August 23, 2009)
• "Four Millennia of Human Nature: I Think Qoheleth is Right"
  (August 3, 2009)

---

¹ The ancient Greeks thought Homer composed the Iliad and the Odyssey. More recently, some professors decided that one guy couldn't have put together poems like that - or if he did, it wasn't Homer.

Granted, the ancient Greeks were shaky on just where Homer was born, and other details.

On the other hand, they were a whole lot closer to the origins than the guys with letters after their names.

One of my favorite quips about the 'who really composed the Odyssey' is: '...so they decided that Homer didn't make them up: it was another Greek named Homer.'

Four Millennia of Human Nature: I Think Qoheleth is Right

Cuneiform writing is one of the oldest information storage and retrieval technologies we know of - apart from artwork left of cave walls tens of thousands of years ago. Cuneiform made it possible to record data without relying on the memory of human beings: a breakthrough in information technology.

That was about 5,000 years ago.

Roughly 4,100 years back, someone wrote the Epic of Gilgamesh. It's almost certain that the story dates from an earlier period. We don't know about earlier versions, because they most likely were part of an oral tradition: and left no permanent record.

There was a real Gilgamesh, who lived about six centuries before the story was written. I'm not so much concerned with the historical king of Uruk as I am of the character in the story.

The Epic of Gilgamesh and the Human Condition

The title character in the Epic of Gilgamesh is rather larger-than-life: one of the sort of King Arthur/Robin Hood/Luke Skywalker types that 'serious' writers are supposed to disdain. Which is another topic.

I am not doing justice to the story, but a short-short-condensed version is this: Gilgamesh starts out as a young and powerful ruler, and an oppressive one; Anu, one of the gods, creates a sort of counterweight for Gilgamesh - Enkidu; Gilgamesh and Enkidu become friends, and Enkidu dies.

This is where it gets interesting, I think. Gilgamesh is grief-stricken at the death of his friend, and lets his life collapse. He's realized that, like Enkidu, he will die, too.

By overcoming enormous obstacles, Gilgamesh gains access to immortality: and loses it. He gains the power to become young again: and loses it.

Gilgamesh returns to his city, perhaps wiser.

Perfected Human Nature? Don't Hold Your Breath

There's a sort of science fiction story where all of humanity's ills are solved - generally by a combination of psychology, eugenics, and big machines. They've given way to the sort of post-apocalyptic dystopian story I mentioned in yesterday's post. I'm willing to recognize the potential for literary worth in either sort of story: but I'd rather do something I can regard as a bit more plausible.

Judging from the glimpse of the human experience we get in the Epic of Gilgamesh, and other ancient writings, I think it's safe to say that, when it comes to people:

"What has been, that will be; what has been done, that will be done. Nothing is new under the sun."
"Ecclesiastes," 1:9

That's not as hopeless as it sounds.

It's getting late, and I need (desperately) sleep. I'll have to pick this topic up on another day.

More-or-less-related posts:

• " '...Into the Future...' - Excerpt; Attitude; Comment and Theme"
  (July 3, 2009)
• "- - - 'And We're All Gonna Die!' "
  (June 30, 2009)
• "The Story of Mankind in 79 Words"
  (June 30, 2009)
• " 'The Dream' - a Short-Short Story"
  (June 28, 2009)
• "Predicting the Future: a Look at a Will Be that Was"
  (June 26, 2009)

Background:

• "Ecclesiastes," 1:9
  United States Conference of Catholic Bishops
• "The Near East"
  Exploring Ancient World Cultures,
  University of Evansville, Indiana
• "Cunieform Writing"
  Missouri State University Department of History
• "Gilgamesh"
  Washington State University