Sci Phi Journal

Frankenstein And Cyborgs: Of Proper And Improper Monsters

by Mina

A recurring figure in SF, whatever the sub-genre, is that of the “monster”. One common starting point is with that classical creation, Frankenstein’s monster: made and not begotten, to (mis)quote the Nicene Creed and ascribe new meaning to it. Brian Aldiss goes as far as to call Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein the first true SF story because, although it is deeply rooted in the Gothic novel, the central character, Victor Frankenstein “rejects alchemy and magic and turns to scientific research. Only then does he get results.” Mary Shelley herself refers to Darwin in her introduction and stresses that the speculative science in her novel will one day be possible. Two novellas spring immediately to my mind that take the Frankenstein trope and do interesting things with it: Grace Draven’s Gaslight Hades and Eli Easton’s Reparation.

Gaslight Hades (in the “duology” Beneath a Waning Moon) blends gothic and steampunk with romance, and it is clearly referring back to Jules Verne and early SF/fantasy, which extrapolated from the then-known to touch upon the then-fantastical. The romance is unremarkable, but the novella’s protagonist is an intriguing Frankenstein figure: the “Guardian” wears “black armour reminiscent of an insect’s carapace”, his eyes are black with white pinpoints for pupils, his hair and skin are leached of all colour, his voice is hollow. He guards Highgate cemetery from resurrectionists who snatch dead bodies to create soulless zombies. His armour comes alive to protect him from enemy fire (where Frankenstein meets primitive cyborg). It turns out he was created from the body of one man, the soul of another. The process remains vague, but I love the invented words used to describe it: “galvanism combined with gehenna… liquid hell and lightning.” It seems to involve replacing blood with a silver compound and running electricity through it (all holes in logic are covered by vague references to magic, which is a cop-out). The Guardian is not a zombie because he has a will of his own, thoughts and emotions. He talks to the dead, does not eat or sleep and is described as “a Greek myth gone awry, in which a mad Pygmalion begged an even more perverse Aphrodite to bring a male Galatea alive”. So, a pretty monster, with a soul.

Reparation is part of a collection of novellas under the heading Gothika: Stitch (which includes another novella with a golem, a “monster” from Jewish lore and much older than Frankenstein). This novella moves into what we would consider proper SF as it is set on another planet. It weaves rebellion, slavery and space into a love story that is quite good. It is a hidden gem that asks questions about crime, punishment, redemption and forgiveness, moving it one step further than the stark retribution of Frankenstein’s monster. One of the protagonists, Edward, a farmer on the harsh planet of Kalan, loses his adjunct and his wife in an accident that also leaves him recovering from injury. He turns one of his “recon” slaves Knox into his right-hand man in the cultivation and harvesting of lichen “spores” for (he believes) the production of pharmaceuticals. Knox can read and write, is capable of learning and has fleeting memories unlike most recons: “reconstitutes” or cyborgs, part robot and part human. The human parts are taken from Federation prisoners condemned to death. Recons are not allowed to be more than 80% human or they would have human rights; they are programmed against violence and used as manual and factory labour. Knox is (unusually) fully 80% human, most of his body from one prisoner and his brain from another, with 20% reinforced titanium joints and the spore filtration system in his lungs.

In his new role as overseer, Knox moves out of the recon barracks into master Edward’s house. The changes disturb him, such as being spoken to like a person, being thanked, feeling guilty without knowing why, memories slowly resurfacing: “he did not want to hope; did not want consciousness”. Knox battles with feelings of dislocation, too – his massive body is alien to him. It becomes apparent that he has been “conditioned” to fear anything electronic. He remembers his chilling execution in a nightmare. At that point, Knox realises he was “made” and is horrified. Edward tries to comfort him: “That’s a good thing, isn’t it? That your mind survived what was done to you?” Edward treats Knox with kindness and allows him access to his books. But the master is surprised that Knox has a strong grasp of philosophy and moral issues. Knox remembers having spent time in space in a previous life and that he lived on a green planet once, which he thinks is gone. Slowly the fog in his mind begins to clear and he accepts his new body, even enjoys it. Knox and Edward become friends and then lovers.

Knox finally remembers that he was once Trevellyn, a member of the resistance to the Federation. The rebels’ attack on Kalan’s spaceport led to the death of Edward’s father and brother. His guilt and Edward’s initial condemnation leads to a brief rift between them. In his anguish, Knox writes down his memories, a diary and even poetry. In a crisis, with Edward facing deadly sabotage, they reconcile with Edward forgiving Knox for the actions of his past self. Knox breaks his programmed aversion to technology to help Edward survive. As he does so, he remembers why he was in the resistance: the spores are not used for medicine but to terraform planets, willing or not. The Federation used the spores to eradicate all life on his home world so they could turn it into a mining operation – wholesale genocide for profit. Edward is horrified as he did not know. Knox in turn forgives him his ignorance. Together they destroy all current supplies of the spores on Kalan; not winning the war but at least a battle. They decide to leave Kalan, using Edward’s money and Trevellyn’s contacts to move to a primitive world of no interest to the Federation. The romance trumps the politics as is to be expected, but the novella has a depth and originality not usually present in such stories. Best of all, we see the “monster” as a thinking, feeling being that awakens from a long sleep as if emerging from a chrysalis. I liked that this novella was psychologically profound, something that is missing from most depictions of cyborgs.

My first encounter with cyborgs, however, was with the much more superficial The Six Million Dollar Man, with its protagonist Steve Austin as the bionic man: one arm, two legs and one eye are prosthetic and give him superhuman strength, speed and sight. Of course, it was mostly filmed in the late 70s, so the special effects consist of slow motion (to suggest superhuman speed or jumping high), close-ups (to suggest superhuman eyesight) and cheesy sound effects.  The bionic man also led to a bionic woman spin-off (Jamie Sommers, with superhuman hearing instead of eyesight), lots of crossovers and some films. The plots, script and characterisation were basic, but it led to the bionic man and woman dolls which I remember wishing I owned as a small child in the 70s, unlike the anodyne Barbie dolls. The bionic man is loosely based on the 1972 novel Cyborg by Martin Caidin; the title of the book is much less ambivalent about the nature of the protagonist. Steve Austin had very little personality but was portrayed as a hero and a “goodie”. Subsequent cyborgs in film have tended to remain very two-dimensional but been turned mostly into fighting machines in violent action films like RoboCop or horror/SF such as Moontrap.

To find more complexity, I would rather cite Ghost in the Shell, in particular the 1995 anime version. It’s not as deep as many reviewers seem to think it is; although it does posit interesting philosophical questions, they are presented as if the audience needs everything spelled out. We meet cyborgs with a completely cybernetic body and a computer-augmented brain. As the only biological component, the brain houses the “ghost” (mind/soul/spirit). The main character, Major Kusanagi (with a curiously sexless body, much like a busty mannequin’s), muses: “There are countless ingredients that make up the human body and mind. Like all the components that make up me as an individual with my own personality. Sure, I have a face and voice to distinguish myself from others. But my thoughts and memories are unique only to me. And I carry a sense of my own destiny. Each of those things are just a small part of it. I collect information to use in my own way. All of that blends to create a mixture that forms me and gives rise to my consciousness.” She also admits: “I guess cyborgs like myself have a tendency to be paranoid about our origins. Sometimes I suspect I’m not who I think I am. Like, maybe, I died a long time ago and somebody took my brain and stuck it in this body. Maybe there was never a real ‘me’ in the first place and I’m completely synthetic”. Her friend Batou tells her that she is treated like other humans and she retorts “that’s the only thing that makes me feel human. The way I’m treated.” And she asks the question crucial to the film: “What if a cyber brain could possibly generate its own ghost… and create a soul all by itself? And if it did, just what would be the importance of being human then?”

The Puppet Master in the film (initially the enemy) claims to have done just that  – it is a computer program that has become sentient: “DNA is nothing more than a program designed to preserve itself. Life has become more complex in the overwhelming sea of information. And life, when organized into species relies upon genes to be its memory system. So, man is an individual only because of his intangible memory. And memory cannot be defined. But it defines mankind. The advent of computers and the subsequent accumulation of incalculable data has given rise to a new system of memory and thought parallel to your own… And can you offer me proof of your existence? How can you? When neither modern science nor philosophy can explain what life is…. I am not an A.I …I am a living thinking entity who was created in the sea of information.” At the end of the film, the Puppet Master merges with Major Kusanagi because it wants to become a completely living organism, by gaining the ability to reproduce and die. It wants to do more than copy itself as “copies do not give rise to variety and originality”. When it is persuading the Major to agree to the merge, it states that they will create a new and unique entity. The Major argues that she fears death and cannot bear biological offspring; the Puppet Master replies that she “will bear our varied offspring into the net just as humans leave their genetic imprints on their children”, and then death will hold no fear. There is a certain arrogance in the Puppet Master’s arguments too: “I am connected to a vast network, that has been beyond your reach and experience. To humans, it is like staring at the sun, a blinding brightness that conceals a source of great power. We have been subordinate to our limitations until now. The time has come to cast aside these bonds. And to elevate our consciousness to a higher plane. It is time to become a part of all things.”

Waking up in a new (child’s) shell procured by Batou, the new entity tells Batou: “When I was a child, my speech, feelings and thinking were all those of a child. Now that I am a man, I have no more use for childish ways. And now I can say these things without help in my own voice.” I must admit that, being very familiar with the biblical passage[1] being subverted here, I did not find the end particularly original. And it does fall into the lazy “transcendence” plot device so beloved of humanist SF. The plot, in fact, is almost irrelevant. But the film does ask interesting questions about the nature of cyborgs and treats them as much more intricate beings than the usual lean, mean, killing machines. The only other place I have found a proper examination of the nature of cyborgs as sophisticated “monsters” is in the Star Trek canon, through characters like Seven of Nine, Hugh, Icheb, Locutus/Picard, the Borg Queen and Agnes Jurati (if you want to know more about any of these characters, go to this fan site).

Cyborgs have also made it into story-rich computer games like the Deus Ex series. Deus Ex is a role-playing adventure game with “augmented” humans (through nanotechnology reminiscent of the Borgs in Star Trek), incorporating combat, first-person shooter and stealth elements. For me, despite the fascinating world building, complicated politics, conspiracy theories, historical mythologies and speculative and dystopian fiction, the cyborgs remain lean, mean, fighting or stealth machines. If I have understood the concept behind the game correctly, however, the cyborgs can become as multi-faceted as the player wishes, with a lot of interaction with non-player characters, freedom of choice and open-ended plot lines. They are a little like hollow shells filled with the ghost the player gives them. But my feeling is still that the main fascination with these cyborgs remains their superhuman abilities granted by their augmentations, like in much SF. It is a shame that these wonderfully genre-hopping entities aren’t allowed more into the realms of Sci-Phi, as they represent a great opportunity to reflect on “human” identity (like the crisis of identity Knox and the Major undergo) and what sentience is and could be. There is curiously little speculation into a (for now) fictional “monster” that begs for far more existential debate.

Coda: There are some satisfying cyborg poems out there like Cyborg – Matthew Harlovic and The Cyborg – Cecelia Hopkins-Drewer.

And here is one I wrote just for this essay:

Emerging

Where am I?

Pain, God, so much burning pain,

I am lost in its undertow.

Then, it spits me out onto jagged rocks

Like flailing flotsam.

I open my eyes to

Blinding light and blank walls.

A neurological pulse and

I raise my arm to flex

Gleaming alloy fingers.

Memory floods back

To who I was

Before.

“You are paralysed from

The neck down

Mr Jones.

We can offer you

A new life.”

I look at my perfect

Alien body which I inhabit

But do not own.

What will the price of

This Faustian bargain be?

I find that, right now,

I do not care.

I feel a fierce joy that

I am alive and

Something new.

Maybe, later,

I will learn to be afraid.

[1] 1 Corinthians 13 (11-12): “When I was a child, I spoke as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child; but when I became a man, I put away childish things. For now we see in a mirror, dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part, but then I shall know just as I also am known.” (This is the New King James Version; verse 12 is much more poetic in the original King James Version: “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.”)

~

Bio:

Mina is a translator by day, an insomniac by night. Reading Asimov’s robot stories and Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids at age eleven may have permanently warped her view of the universe. She publishes essays in Sci Phi Journal as well as “flash” fiction on speculative sci-fi websites and hopes to work her way up to a novella or even a novel some day.

You might be interested in

The Taming Of The Slush

A dispacth from the frontlines of the ever-intensifying arms race between human magazines and machine-generated stories, by Michèle Laframboise.

Dare To

by Bruce Golden

I lie here, as I have lain for so long, like a crumpled fetus, waiting for an end that will not come. I beg for it . . . I pray for it. But even as I wait for a cessation to my terrible existence, I know it is only a seductive fantasy. I imagine release, escape, blissful freedom–for imagination is all I have left. How perversely ironic that the cause of my damnation is now my sole salvation.

The air reeks of disinfectant as it does habitually, and the only sounds I hear are distant murmurings. There’s a chill in the air so I clutch futilely at the lone, coarse sheet that covers me and open my eyes to the same austere wall, the same mocking shadows that greet me in perpetuity.

This time, though, I see a slight variation. Something is there. Something I can barely discern in the feeble light. A tiny, quivering, wiggle of activity. I strain to focus and see a caterpillar laboriously weaving its cocoon. Somehow it has made the Herculean trek to where the wall and ceiling intersect, and has attached itself in the crevice there.

As I lie here, I wonder what resplendent form will emerge from that cocoon. But even this vision is eventually muted by the despair that possesses my soul. I struggle not to reason, because there is no reason. Guilt or innocence, fact or fiction–they are concepts that no longer matter. All that matters are the gray ruins of my memories–memories that play out across the desolate fields of my mind. I cling to them the way a madman clings to sanity. In truth, I’m but a single, aberrant thought from slipping into the murky, swirling abyss of madness myself. So I try to remember.

I remember the carefree excursions I took to the ocean as a child–the warm sand, the cool water, the waves lapping at my ankles. I remember the university, in the days before reformation. The camaraderie of my fellow students. The give and take of creative discourse. Soaring over the sea cliffs on a crude hang glider built by a classmate. The girl with the bright red hair for whom I secretly longed. I remember many things, but always there is one tenacious, tumultuous recollection that intrudes.      

It’s always the same. The same thunderous sound of cracking wood as my door bursts open. The same flurry of booted feet violating the sanctum of my thoughts. The same rough hands that assault and bind me.

I remember the looks of hatred and repugnance, the shouted threats of violence from unfamiliar voices. The relentless malice focused upon me was like a living thing. Time and space became a rancorous blur as I stood in the center of an imposing room, still bound, surrounded by more strangers. I was on display, the accused in a courtroom where only the degree of my guilt seemed subject to debate. 

Much of what occurred that day is lost in a haze of obscurity, but I clearly remember the prosecutor’s embittered summation.

“The facts are incontrovertible, honorable Justice,” I recall him stating with restrained assurance. “A routine intruscan of the accused’s personal files disclosed numerous writings, both prosaic and poetical in nature, which can only be described as obscene and disturbingly antisocial. Public decorum prevents me from detailing the improprieties here, though the complete volume of these degradations can be found in the articles of evidence.

“In addition to the possession of these heinous works of pornography, the accused fully admits to authoring them. I say he stands guilty of counts both actual and abstract. I request that no leniency be shown by the court, and that he be sentenced under the severest penalties allowed for such crimes.”

I distinctly remember the prosecutor, indifferent but confident, returning to his seat as the presiding justice contemplated the charges. 

Turning a stern glance towards me, the justice methodically asked, “Does the accused have any statement to make before judgment is passed?”

I remember standing there, befuddled by the ritual of it all, unable to accept the realization that it was my fate they were discussing. When it seemed I wouldn’t reply, the justice opened his mouth to issue the verdict, and I quickly stammered the only thing I could think of.

“I . . . I admit I wrote things that may be considered inappropriate by some, but they were simply meanderings of a personal nature, never meant for public dissemination. In no sense was I propagating the enforcement of my ideals upon society. They . . . they were simple fantasies, scribblings of an unfettered imagination, nothing more.”

“Surely,” boomed the justice, “throughout the course of this trial, if not previously, you have been made aware that, under our governing jurisprudence, thought is deed.”

When I failed to respond, he went on. “If you have nothing further to say in your defense, I rule, by law, your guilt has been determined within reasonable doubt. I hereby sentence you to the withering.”

I remember the clamor of hushed voices swelling like a balloon about to burst as the words were repeated throughout the courtroom.

“The withering.”

The sound reverberated inside my skull, but terror and denial colored my reality. The withering. It was something spoken of only in whispers. No one I had ever known knew the truth of it. There were only rumors, grisly tales with no substance, yet the power to invoke dismay and horror.

Much of what happened next is a void of innocuous bureaucracy, but I remember the room where it took place. I was still bound, this time by sturdy leather straps that embraced my wrists and ankles. Except for the straps I was naked. Lost in the surreality of the moment, I felt no humiliation at my nakedness, but was overwhelmed by a pervading sense of vulnerability. I remember a chill in the room. There was a draft blowing from somewhere nearby. A single bright light was positioned so that it blinded me with its glare.

Three others were in the room. One I designated the “doctor,” and two men who assisted her. They went about their business with systematic efficiency, seeming to ignore my obvious presence.

Then, without really acknowledging me with her eyes, the doctor began explaining the procedure. Paralyzed with fearful anticipation, I failed to absorb much of what she said. I remember only bits and pieces. Something about “hormonal injections” . . . “osteo and rheumatoid mutations” . . . “effects which bypass the brain.”

The technical details of her explanation became a mere backdrop when I spied the row of hypodermics. Its length extended beyond absurdity, and when she reached for the first one I braced for the pain to come. However, after a few minor stings, I felt only a pinching sensation as needles were inserted with care into my thighs, my forearms, my neck . . . and on and on until each violation of my body no longer mattered. I must have passed out at some point, because when I awoke I was in another place.

I have no idea how long I was asleep, but as I weaned myself from unconsciousness I felt a stiffness that convinced me I had been lying there for some time. I tried to move but couldn’t. I saw no restraints holding me down, so I tried again. I was successful, briefly, if you consider inducing a stabbing pain somewhere in my back a success. The pain convinced me to forego any further attempts at movement. So I shook off the vestiges of slumber and tried to recall with more clarity what had happened.

Oh, that it could only have been a horrible dream. But my reality had become a nightmare, one I hadn’t yet grasped in its fullness. I know now nothing could have prepared me for what I was about to learn.

After I lay motionless for some time, a white-coated attendant approached me and bent over to engage in some sort of interaction with my bed.

“Where am I?” I asked, my voice cracking with dryness. “What’s wrong with me?  Why can’t I move?”

The attendant made no sign he heard me. Instead he pushed my bed into a corridor that stretched on without end. The wheels churned below me as we passed cubicle after grim cubicle. In the dim light I saw other beds, beds occupied by inert bodies. The shadows and the constant jog of movement prevented me from seeing more until we came to a halt. The attendant departed, leaving me as naked and helpless as the day I was brought into this harsh world.

The alcove where I had been left was much brighter, and it took time for my eyes to adjust. Unable to turn my head without great pain, I could look in only one direction. Facing me was a metallic wall or door of some sort. The metal’s sheen was highly reflective, and in its mirrored surface I saw myself.

Rather, I saw what I had become.

I have no idea how long I screamed before my cacophonous lament attracted a swarm of attendants who quickly sedated me. But I’m sure I wasn’t the first, or the last, to wail in terror inside those somber halls.

I try not to remember what I saw in that hideous reflection. But I can’t forget that my fingers are now gnarled deformities, my arms shrunken and folded against my chest as if my tendons had shriveled. I know the slightest attempt to move my legs will cause indescribable agony that writhes up through my hips and assaults my spinal cord. I can try to forget that my once wavy hair has been shaved to a coarse stubble, but the feeling my lips are dry and cracked is ever-present, and too often my skin is aflame with a devilish itch I cannot scratch.

Warehoused like a spare part that no longer serves any purpose, my days passing into years, I suck sullen gruel through toothless gums and wait for the impersonal touch of an attendant to wipe my body clean. It is a morose whim of fate indeed, that even such routine maintenance is a welcome diversion to an otherwise monotonous subsistence.

Trapped in a useless husk, perched on the precipice of lunacy, I turn inward for deliverance. From a place deep within I rise and soar high above other lands, gliding lazily into other times. They don’t know about my journeys. They think I’m a prisoner of this room. They don’t know I become other people–bold people, curious people, people who commemorate their adventures in rhyme. I don’t tell them about the improper thoughts that creep into my head. I still dare to imagine the unimaginable, but no one knows. They won’t find me in here. In here I don’t allow myself to dwell on past transgressions. I seek no pity nor submit to reproach. And, no matter how seductive its siren call, in here I resist the longing for sweet death.

Instead, like the caterpillar, I wait to emerge from my cocoon, spread my glorious wings, and fly.

~

Bio:

Bruce Golden’s short stories have been published more than 150 times across a score of countries and 30 anthologies. Asimov’s Science Fiction described his novel Evergreen, “If you can imagine Ursula Le Guin channelling H. Rider Haggard, you’ll have the barest conception of this stirring book, which centers around a mysterious artifact and the people in its thrall.” His latest book, Monster Town, is a satirical send-up of old hard-boiled detective stories featuring movie monsters of the black & white era. It’s currently in development for a TV series. http://goldentales.tripod.com

Philosophy Note:

This story was inspired by health problems my mother was suffering through. I wondered, what if such physical problems were a form of torture or punishment in a dystopian society instead of a medical condition.

You might be interested in

A Rejection

Controversial scholarship may remain difficult to publish even in the far future, by Lloyd Earickson.

The Second-Thought Machine

by Richard Lau

From the Desk of Shelby Desmond

Vice-President of Customer Loans, Harcourt Credit Union

September 4, 2023

Dear Mr. Osaka:

It is with deep regret that I must reject your application for a loan of $3 million.

I understand the importance of research and development for the continual advancement of technology and the great cost in time, effort, and financial outlay involved in such endeavors.

However, while your idea for, as you choose to call it, a “second-thought machine” sounds intriguing, you have not provided sufficiently compelling evidence that such a potential device is indeed possible.

Again, I understand the need for proprietary secrecy, especially with new, unpatented designs, and the honorable history of many influential companies that had their origins in humble garages and home labs.

However, our financial institution cannot risk such substantial funding on merely your word as collateral that you have produced a working prototype and are only seeking additional funding to produce an updated version with more range and permanence.

We wish you the best in acquiring a loan elsewhere and continued success in your efforts.

Sincerely,

Shelby Desmond

Vice-President of Customer Loans

Harcourt Credit Union

#

From the Desk of Shelby Desmond

Vice-President of Customer Loans, Harcourt Credit Union

September 12, 2023

Dear Dr. Osaka:

Recently, I wrote to you, rejecting your application for a loan.

My response may have been a bit premature. Over the weekend, I had second thoughts about your application. While enjoying my regular round at the Eastwood Golf Course, I was hit by a flash of inspiration. Literally a flash, as if I had been struck by lightning and left with every cell in my body charged and changed.

I now see the intrinsic value and great potential for such a device as you describe. As for you having a working prototype, one would expect no less from someone of your fine pedigree, great intellect, eminent qualifications, and spotless reputation.

So, if you are still interested, and I truly hope you are, I would like to extend to you approval for a loan of $1 million. I realize this is far less than you originally applied for, but due to internal regulations, this is the maximum I can approve on my own volition without additional confirmation from members of the Board. I have approached them with more vigor and excitement than I have mustered or exhibited in quite a while.

Unfortunately, they do not see things the same way I do and rejected my proposal for a loan in the full amount that you requested.

To make up for this shortcoming and to further show my unwavering belief in your work, I would like to personally offer an investment of $5 million of my own money. Or you can just accept the funds as a charitable donation.

I leave the decision up to you.

Again, my apologies for my original hasty and short-sighted decision.

Sincerely,

Shelby Desmond

Vice-President of Customer Loans

Harcourt Credit Union

#

December 28, 2023

Dear Journal Editor:

I am presently employed as an intern at a small start-up company founded by Dr. Kevin Osaka.

One of my duties is disposing of sensitive documents. I came across the enclosed two letters designated for disposal, but I couldn’t bring myself to shred them.

There is something strange going on in my place of employment. While the letters explain why the company is flush with cash, they fail to account for the odd behavior of many of my co-workers.

Some of them get so disgruntled, they threaten to quit only to become extremely content and loyal the following day. Others demand a raise and then decide to accept a pay cut or demotion or even both!

While these incidents can be simply explained away as normal fluctuations in people’s moods and situations, I have learned through office gossip and discrete inquiry that they have all experienced what the loan officer describes in his letter: the burst of light inside one’s head and the resulting tingling.

I, too, have had this experience.

I had initially planned to become a whistle-blower and send the enclosed letters to the local newspaper and television media.

Such an action would violate the confidentiality agreement I signed when I joined the company, but I felt the letters contain information too important to be kept secret or destroyed.

Then there was that flash. My entire body still feels like my nerves are slowly reawakening.

I also have changed my mind. Instead of my original plan of dispersing the letters to news outlets, I’m sending the credit union’s correspondence to a journal that publishes fiction.

For some reason, I now feel this is the better choice.

Yours,

Emile Rodriguez

~

Bio:

Richard Lau is an award-winning writer who has been published in newspapers, magazines, anthologies, the high-tech industry, and online.

Philosophy Note:

Everyone makes decisions every day. And often, we have second thoughts about those decisions. What if someone had a device that could implement and influence such second thoughts? And would the builders of such a device realize or care that such a device could be used on themselves as well?

You might be interested in

The Problem Child

How many great minds has humankind lost to the lure of comfortable middle-class life? By Richard Lau.

Bloodless

Things may not seem what they aren't, until they do, by Todd Sullivan.

Going Interstellar: History, Technology, Economics, And Power Of Flight Out Of Cradle

by Arturo Sierra

Before taking flight, the first issue to be addressed was making sure there would never be a better way to do it. How embarrassing it would have been, if the first had arrived there only to find others had beaten them to the punch. The waiting problem, it was called; go now, or wait for a faster ship?

The Law of Limited Surface Detail, commonly referred to as Ling-Holenbach Interval, took care of that. Proof that known physics at the time was all the physics that there was to know, save some details and tidying-up. There would be no new fundamental laws, no revolution in our understanding of the universe, and all that was left unanswered would remain so, because answers to those questions could not make sense. There was mathematical proof of this, in the form of horrendous equations that many still refuse to believe, and there was support from a mountain of empirical evidence, which most scientists would have preferred not to find. Time has proven Ling Shu and Hans Holenbach right. In short: there would not be warp drives, wormholes, nor any sort of FTL sorcery.

A more practical issue was fuel. Antimatter containment was (relatively) easy to figure out in theory, but getting hold of the advanced components for the tanks required a generation of material scientists dedicated exclusively to their production, to say nothing of antimatter factories themselves, built in space at a nigh prohibitive human cost. Stations the size of cities were transported around Sol 2, Venus, consisting almost entirely of radiators and solar panels—Venus being conveniently close to Sol while providing a good shadow to dump waste heat in. Catastrophic, spectacular explosions were par for the course.

The ships themselves were built at the Cradle-Sun L2. The first, Beijing, was four kilometers long and only thirty-two meters wide. The last ship built on Sol, Karakorum, would be thirty-five kilometers long and a hundred meters wide. These proportions were necessary, on the one hand, to keep the crew and passengers far enough from the annihilation chamber that the engine’s radiation wouldn’t fry them from the inside-out; on the other, to lower the drag and weathering from interstellar dust on the front-shield. On average, the ships could reach 0.4c, depending on payload.

Beijing was under construction for over fifty years. By the time it was ready to launch, some economist estimated that a third of global GDP was being spent on the project. The consequences of such an imbalanced budget were foreseeable. Not taking any action to prevent the social collapse it caused remains the original sin of interstellar travel.

At Kourou, the Cradle’s main spaceport, rockets left every twenty minutes, with a constant roar of metallic hydrogen and the shriek of first stages returning to their launchpads. At schools everywhere, children pretended to be space pirates with shouts of ahoy! and aye! while chanting the names of the ships: Beijing, Manhattan, Tokyo, Mumbai, Hamburg, Sydney… In television-sets across the world, talking-heads recounted continental dry-ups while hurricanes swept coastlines away and construction went forth gingerly at L2. In space stations from Venus to the asteroid belt, brittle bones shattered with a sound like breaking glass and air hissed while escaping through small fissures.

The technological, economic, industrial, and computational challenges were overwhelming, to say nothing of the medical issues presented by life in microgravity and by the torpor in which astronauts would travel. Additionally, to reduce the crew’s mass, their bodies—excepting vital organs—were atrophied, muscles, tendons, and fat simply chopped off or shriveled to nothingness. Indefinite extension of human lifespan was an obvious necessity, since no one would want to go on the ships only to arrive there old and infirm, and with no hope of return. Luckily, athanasia (or biological immortality) had been achieved half a century before construction began, provided the patient could afford the ruinous expenses of treatment.

Yet it has been argued that the most important problem of all was of an entirely abstract nature, and actually very simple: to answer the question “why?” Paradoxically, this was the one challenge that remained insufficiently solved even after Beijing left for Proxima.

One argument, often touted, was the “one planet trap.” Which—later generations would admit—didn’t hold a drop of water: the resources spent on making humanity interstellar, at the cost of everything else, were the main culprit in turning its Cradle a baren wasteland, both in ecological and societal terms. Others justified the venture by alluding to overpopulation, as if taking a thousand passengers at a time off-world, and at a monstruous cost, could have made a dent in demographics. Then there were the “to boldly go” arguments. Some people, it’s granted, will go to extreme lengths to satisfy their curiosity.

The true reason was obscured by a fog of such nonsense, but it was in fact quite straightforward: vanity. On a superficial level, the vanity of humankind’s richest, the “moguls” who commissioned the ships. But on its own that would not have been enough. It was the vanity of an entire civilization, reaching for an ambition that made it ill. If there had been some neighboring aliens to impress, it would have made a bit more sense, but of course, Fermi’s paradox turned out to have a rather prosaic explanation.

When Beijing’s engine was finally turned on, there were as many crowds gathered on rooftops to see the flame burning for the stars, pointing up to the sky to show each other and peering through binoculars, as there were crowds storming police stations, setting fire to factories and offices in the night. But the genie would not go back into the bottle. Nor could its spell be hurried along: it would take a little over twenty years for the ship to arrive there, and four more years for the news to make its way back. It was the first portent of things to come, that the distance between action and consequence grew so vast, no human mind can hold it.

It’s unfortunate that to talk of interstellar travel should mean to speak of money. Yet they don’t understand the enterprise who don’t think of it as a business first and foremost. If going to the stars had not promised profit, we can be sure nobody would have gone further than Luna.

Nevertheless, those first moguls who commissioned the ships didn’t know how or if the investment would pay for itself. Especially after the Mars terraformation fiasco—Mars being the fourth planet of the Sol system, a 0.4g rock with no magnetic field, and which proved stubbornly adverse—the chance that any worthwhile source of richness would be found seemed slim. Indeed, the exorbitant price of antimatter and the roundtrip time to Centauri meant importing commodities would be pointless. Thanks to exploratory probes, Proxima was known to harbor primitive lifeforms, but what commercial use they could have remained uncertain. This is why most historians argue that the scheme was not to make money, but rather to protect the money the shipbuilders had by a feat of social engineering.

A more enthusiastic perspective argues that moguls already envisioned what would turn out to be the main appeal of interstellar venture, even to this day: that they who finance colonization of a system have an opportunity to not simply play a part in a global economy, competing with other actors under the supervision of a more or less competent government, but to actually own the complete infrastructure of a settlement, becoming landlords of a world. In effect, owning a planet.

Describing the hardships of colonization exceeds the scope of these pages. Suffice it to say that making a world fit for human habitation, and humans fit to inhabit it, was a task that would take more error than trial. The sacrifices can be called heroic, but are more often thought of as foolhardy. For three-hundred years the settlements teetered on the edge of collapse, even as the Cradle sunk ever deeper into chaos. It was in its attempt to escape the one planet trap that humankind came to the brink, as Proxima and later Rigel Centauri needed a constant stream of resources to sustain themselves, but the effort to supply them drained the homeworld of its lifeblood.

Recounting the fate of the ships themselves is more pertinent. Soon enough, their owners discovered that they had no way to enforce ownership over them, at least once the colonies became more-or-less self-sufficient. Few people had any desire to crew an interstellar vessel, having to spend decades in transit. Of course, they didn’t spend all that time conscious, instead living in a state of semi-torpor, similar to the conditions of the passengers, but less drastic, in and out of an induced coma so that they could be awakened at short notice in case the ship demanded attention—which proved to be quite frequently. On that first flight, the crew of Beijing spent a total of five years each, out of the twenty-some that the trip took, awake on watch and tending to maintenance. Cooped up in a living space smaller than most apartments, eating their own waste recycled, and breathing the same, stale air over and over again. It was certainly not the moguls—so accustomed to a high standard of living—who wanted to be at the helm.

But once control of the ship was transfered to its captain and crew, how could they be forced to comply with the owner’s wishes? They could go to Proxima and not return, flying instead between the stars of the Centauri system, much closer to each other than the Cradle to any of them, and increasingly able to support interstellar trade. In fact, the colonies paid quite handsomely to have the ships service the Centauri routes, and later to go back and forth to Virginis, Lacaille, and Indi, all easier to reach from the colonies than from the Cradle.

Moreover, an interstellar vessel is also a weapon of mass destruction like no other: at 0.4c, it is impossible to hit with defensive weaponry, and any ordinance it fires strikes with unmatched destructive power. If the locals allow it to park in low orbit of a planet or space station, it can cook a city simply by pointing its engine down and letting the radiation do the work. At least on one occasion, during the Concerted War, a ship has proven the extent of their destructive power, when Karakorum dropped its fuel tanks on Rigel Centauri and came near to sterilizing the world. Yet, just as a ground-based power has no reach over ships, so ships—crewed at most by half a dozen people—lack the capacity to rule over worlds.

The independence with which crews operate eventually meant they did not need to obey the whims of any planet-bound authority. It was the birth of a culture, that of interstellar traders. And trade they did: over the next kiloyears, as Sol gave out its last breath, ships went ever further, to Hede (683), to Keda (CD46), and ultimately here, to Gran Gliese, and beyond. By then, colonization had ceased to be a matter of mere vanity: advanced terraformation techniques, more reasonable shipyards, and streamlined antimatter production made the settlement of new worlds a profitable and sustainable business. As for trade goods, they include genetically moded biota for terraformation, such as algae, lichen, and bacteria, as well as luxury plant and animal stuffs, and then products requiring an advanced industrial ecology that young settlements have not yet grown: processors, superconductors, fusion reactor cores, and plastics—since hydrocarbons are difficult to come by on some worlds. Additionally, computer programs, made artificially scarce, are leased and taken by the ships. Fifty solar kiloyears after the first flight of Beijing, the furthest known human world is Mu Arae, almost fifty lightyears away from our birthplace among the stars. Traders go between them all. Their journeys continue the legacy of exploration that weaves the fabric of our history.

~

Bio:

Arturo Sierra was born in Santiago, Chile, where he still lives. So far has led an uninteresting life and, with any luck, it will remain that way. In English, he has previously published in Sci Phi Journal and EscapePod.

Philosophy Note:

As fascinating as interstellar space-travel is, it’s hard to come up with a reasonable justification for it, that could make colonization economically viable. It’s also very difficult to imagine what sort of goods it would be worthwhile to transport across such distances, making trade viable. This story represents a distilled summary of what little I’ve been able to speculate in the way of a system that makes sense.

You might be interested in

In Astrorum Mari

An apostolic letter to humanity's first extraterrestrial Catholics, by Edmund Nasralla.

The Soothing Sounds Of Quantum Waves Crashing

by Noah Levin

Witnessing a monumental change in history is equal parts frightening and fascinating. Hannah and I were among the privileged few to have front-row seats to the biggest revelation humanity would uncover in our lifetimes. The world’s greatest minds are still grappling with what it means, but I already know the answer they are reluctant to accept.

“You’re serious? You think that we’re living in a simulation?” Hannah asked.

“What else could possibly explain it? We both saw the double-slit interference bands disappear with our own eyes. How could something like that change if we’re not in a simulation?” I replied.

It was a bizarre and very specific thing that changed, something that one would only have observed by doing certain classic physics experiments at the exact right moment.

Hannah did not agree. “I saw the same thing that you did and I have no idea why it happened, but I just don’t see why it means we’re in a simulation.”

“Let’s recount what occurred. First, the problem: quantum physics is weird as hell and particle-wave duality is the weirdest of all. Sometimes light acts like a wave and other times it acts like a particle. This is what we were looking at, right? So we started by shining a laser through some very narrow and very close slits. And what did we see?” I asked.

“Come on, I was in class with you. We don’t need to go through this step-by-step.”

“No, we do, so you can understand why it means we’re living in a simulation. We saw a particular interference pattern caused by constructive and destructive interference when we first shined the laser through the slits. What was it?”

“Double-slit interference, which looks like a row of parallel lines that grow darker and lighter like little hills until they fade away.

“And why is that unexpected?”

“At first, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything wrong. The light is traveling through two slits and the waves are interfering with each other as they should be. But the problem is that since light is a particle and the lasers we’re using send out one photon at a time, each photon from the laser should only be able to pass through one slit, but they’re all acting like they’re passing through both slits. Hence the interference pattern.”

“And if we stop and ask the photon which path it took, the interference pattern changes. It goes from all those thin lines to blobs.”

“Which is what we would expect from single-slit diffraction when it passes through just one slit. The photons in the laser act like they take both paths until we ask which one they’re taking and then they really do only take one path. Observing the photons changes the behavior of the system.”

I corrected her, “We can’t say that. Observing one part of the system changes what we observe in another part of the system. We don’t know if anything is behaving any differently, we just know we’re seeing different things. And what happened yesterday? Right before our very eyes, double-slit interference changed into single-slit diffraction and the lines became solid blobs. The photons were no longer behaving as if they took both paths but were acting like they were taking just one path.”

When it happened, we both thought we had screwed something up in our experiment and our two slits had become one or we had bumped our setup, but the same thing happened to everyone in the class.

Hannah replied, “Okay, but I don’t see why it means that we’re in a simulation if the universe changed—”

“Not so fast! We can only say our observations of what we experience as our universe changed. We don’t know if anything actually changed. It’s just that double-slit interference now looks like single-slit diffraction.”

“Okay, Mrs. Technical, our observations changed. But why does that have to mean we’re in a simulation?”

“Because there’s no other explanation for it.”

“Shouldn’t we have some other reason to think we’re in a simulation? You can’t just take one piece of evidence and draw a conclusion from it, especially such a big one. Maybe God did it? I know you’re basically an atheist, but you can’t rule that out. You need more to go on than just what happened yesterday. If double-slit interference was so weird in the first place, maybe we still don’t understand it, so perhaps it can just disappear. I remember Dr. Danet saying that Richard Feynman called double-slit interference ‘the only mystery of quantum physics.’”

The mention of Dr. Danet’s name made me immediately recall the emotions in his face that had been burned into my memory. When we all told him what we observed, he went from shock to disappointment—at his students for thinking they screwed up the experiment—paused for a brief moment at understanding, and finished with fear. He ran out of the room in disbelief and straight into Dr. Chambers who had been teaching the same lab next door. His knees buckled when he saw that she looked just as broken as himself.

I pushed his face out of my mind. “The whole point of doing the experiments yesterday was to see that quantum physics is unintuitive. And now that double-slit interference has inexplicably changed to do something a little more intuitive, it shows that it wasn’t supposed to be there in the first place. Nature doesn’t change, but computer programs can.”

“You act like you understand how this all works, but we don’t. How can you be so sure that double-slit interference can’t suddenly change?”

She had a point, but I was ready for her.

“Because the existence of this phenomenon in the first place was evidence that we’re in a simulation, we just didn’t want to admit it. Look how weird it all was: photons seem to interfere with themselves even though they can only take one path. How do they—sorry, how did they—do this? Why did they do this? And they only did this as long as we didn’t ask which path they took? If we ever had a way of finding out right where the photon was at any moment, then the double-slit interference pattern would disappear and the waves collapsed to a point and did the intuitive thing of traveling through a single slit. This stuff never made any sense since it just doesn’t fit with everything else we understand about physics. But it can make sense if we are in a simulation. The only conclusion to draw is that someone fixed the universe’s code or upgraded our cosmic server or something.”

“Really? You’re saying that this was evidence we were in a simulation this whole time and all these smart physicists knew the truth but they just didn’t want to tell us?”

“They just didn’t want to follow the evidence through to its logical conclusion. We had always just accepted that double-slit interference happened even though we didn’t understand why it happened. Let’s assume for a moment we’re in a simulation. What do details in the distance look like when you play video games?”

“Everything is fuzzy until we get close. So?”

“Simulations only render details if they are relevant. Analogously, which path a particle took was only determined when there was a reason to do so. It’s such a small thing, but it would be a waste of processing power to constantly calculate every irrelevant detail like that. If there are too many things to render then programs glitch or lag. Dr. Danet mentioned some experiment where the double-slit interference disappeared if they waited long enough between sending out particles. Our galactic program was happy to calculate the path of a single particle in a system over a short period, but any more complexity and it became simpler to apply probabilities to the system as a whole, hence the interference.”

 “But if we are in a simulation, wouldn’t the computers and programs be way better than what we have so that they could account for all these little things and process them properly?”

“Maybe, but that doesn’t mean they would work very differently than the computers we have or that they have enough processing power to handle it all. It still stands that being in a simulation can make sense of why double-slit experiments give different results when we’re watching. If we checked which path a particle took, the software needed to render it, the waves collapsed, and the interference disappeared. If we didn’t ask, it didn’t bother to figure it out. It also explains those experiments where people saw interference even though a particle could physically take only one path but we just didn’t know which one it actually took. The simulation doesn’t bother figuring out which path since we can’t see it. And the pièce de résistance: gravity.”

“Gravity? How does gravity prove we’re in a simulation?”

“External objects should be exerting gravitational forces on the particles and vice versa. Why wasn’t gravity making the waves collapse? Shouldn’t its effects mean that external objects are interacting with the system and ‘observing’ it?”

“But the effects of gravity would be negligible. Photons barely have any mass or gravitational field.”

“I don’t care how small they are, gravity should have done something to the system. The simulation just didn’t account for it for whatever reason.”

“But maybe gravity doesn’t matter in these experiments, you don’t know. I’m still not convinced we’re in a simulation.”

“But nothing else has changed since yesterday. How could it be that just this one thing is different? You don’t think that’s weird? Literally it seems to be the only thing that our observations have affected. The universe could take or leave double-slit interference and now it’s decided to leave it. My guess is that it should have never been there in the first place.”

“I still don’t agree with you.”

“It’s hard to accept, but it’s the only explanation. Other than the God argument you gave earlier, but it would be so weird for God to change just this one little thing. Not to mention all the other issues with making an argument assuming God exists and dabbles in the details of quantum physics from time to time.”

She paused. I knew I had gotten through and she saw my reasoning.

“Wouldn’t it be awful to only be a piece of code though? I mean, let’s say you’re right, what’s the point of living if I’m just some random NPC doing a pretty good job in some stupid alien simulation? I don’t want to believe that.”

“Wishful thinking isn’t going to change reality. Besides, I think the opposite. Being a part of a program implies a purpose in ways that a random universe which exists by a cosmic accident does not.”

“But then you’re not really you, you’re just a bunch of lines of code that is mediocre at best. And wouldn’t that mean your algorithms are just making you believe this and say what you’re saying?”

“Maybe, but I don’t think it matters, since I’m still only whatever I can be. Knowing that I’m just some code on a computer is at least knowing what I am and that someone somewhere may really have a purpose for me. It’s weird, but I no longer feel any existential anxiety. All it took to calm me was the soothing sounds of quantum waves crashing.”

~

Bio:

Noah Levin is a philosophy professor by day (and sometimes night) and science fiction author by night (and sometimes day). He received his PhD in Applied Philosophy from Bowling Green State University (USA) and has been published in academic journals in philosophy, popular philosophy anthologies, and edits a collection of free open textbooks in philosophy.

Philosophy Note:

This piece examines some of the oddities in quantum physics, specifically the results of double-slit experiments, and speculates that they could be evidence for the simulation argument. I have my PhD in philosophy and some formal training in physics (including quantum physics and general and special relativity) and the weirdness of the double-slit experiment continues to baffle me. Specifically, I always wondered “why is it like this?” and after reading up on a ton of freaky experiments involving them over the past 10-20 years, came to the conclusion that not only was there no reason for double-slit interference to happen, it was so unique that if it ceased to occur, nothing else in the universe would change. This story is my attempt to explain my own thoughts on it, as well somewhat make a new argument in favor of the simulation hypothesis. And for good measure, I threw in a little bit about why it doesn’t matter.

You might be interested in

Sci Phi Journal 2022/2 – Summer Issue for Download as PDF

Sci Phi Journal‘s 2022 Summer Issue comes out hot on heels of this nerdy publication winning the European Award for Best SF Magazine – and it’s brimming with more off-beat essays and speculative philosophical fiction than ever.

If you like to peruse your seasonal dose of SFF on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but similarly trusty screen of your e-reader, you can download your free PDF copy just below.

Enjoy,

the SPJ crew

Sci-Phi-Journal-2022Q2Download

You might be interested in

Editorial – Sci Phi Journal 2022/2

Lectori salutem.

We write these words humbled by the developments of recent months. When word was sent, back in April, that Sci Phi Journal would be an award finalist at EuroCon, the annual gathering of the European SF family, it was more than we had ever thought possible for our exceptionally nerdy sub-genre: speculative philosophy (or “sci phi”).

Indeed, we’d have been happy to make the journey to Luxembourg simply to commune with like-minded (and, even more so, with contrarian) readers and other members of fandom, and render our homage unto the eventual laureates.

You may then imagine our astonishment when, at a dramatic moment during the ceremony, the announcement came for the Best SF Magazine award and the Sci Phi logo appeared on the mighty overhead screen, emblazoned over the grand auditorium. The conférencier had to call us out twice before we were able to arise, such was our surprise.

Unbeknownst to us, over the course of the convention weekend, the assembly of the European Science Fiction Society (ESFS) had voted to elevate Sci Phi Journal into the “hall of fame” of European SF. In the tapestry of our continent’s speculative literature, where much of each country’s output and nominations are (understandably) specific to their linguistic island, it was a rare moment to have an award bestowed upon an English-language magazine, published in Belgium, cross-nominated by Hungary, and run by a ragtag crew ranging from Malaysia to Spain.

Thus, in line with the sentiment we sought to express in our improvised acceptance speech, we hope for this award to be the pylon of a bridge. One little piece in a chain of many links to bring Europe’s fragmented literary and publishing landscape closer together. And a source of encouragement for the endeavours of authors and thinkers, who seek to tell timeless (rather than timely) stories, for whom speculative fiction is more than just literary entertainment or public activism, but rather an epic tool for philosophical enquiry.

To avail ourselves of an oft abused word: we feel that this once-in-a-lifetime award “validates” the editorial approach that Sci Phi Journal stands for. A respect for classic rhetorical standards; carefully guarded intellectual independence; and a commitment to keep our little bit of literature unshackled from the fashionable agendas of the day.

Much to our delight, the journey doesn’t end here. At the start of summer, Dustin Jacobus was shortlisted for a 2022 Utopia Award in recognition of his work on our cover art, in addition to another nomination in the non-fiction category (citing Eric Hunting’s essay “On Solarpunk”).

Onward, then! Let us carry the torch further still into the twilit corridors of the Library of Babel! 

Speculatively yours,

the SPJ co-editors & crew

~

You might be interested in

And The Voice Will Not Say

by Dave Henrickson

            The origin of the book is unknown, or at least as unknown as any other volume in the Great Library. Its original location, too, is unknown—as the first two pages are missing entirely. These would, of course, have supplied the exact coordinates of its original Shelving.

            Unknown as well is the book’s discoverer and how the volume came to be found, unclaimed and hard-used, in a second-hand rag shop in the Lower City. What is known about the Voice, for so it has come to be called, is that it has never failed to accurately answer a question asked of it. Since the Voice came into Imperial possession eight hundred years ago, 348 questions have been asked (officially) of the tattered book. No answer has ever proven to be false.

            Every generation new theories and claims as to the nature and the secret of the Voice are put forth. Each is carefully weighed for its merit and embraced or discarded accordingly. Occasionally a theory is so promising that an expedition is sent into the immeasurable tracks of the Great Library in the hope of finding the source of the Voice and (though this is never spoken of) its successor. Occasionally, a fraud or a heresy is put forth that is so flagrant that an execution is held.

            The Library of the Voice, many times larger than the Imperial Palace, has become a small city in its own right. The history of every question asked of the Voice is completely documented within those walls—who asked the question and why, what answer the Voice gave, and what actions were the result of that answer. Scholars have spent their lives analyzing the phrasing of a single Response, trying to catch a glimpse of the Eternal Mind behind the Great Library—and therefore, by extension, the purpose behind Creation itself.

            That such a Reason exists is an article of faith among the godly. While every possible combination of words can be found somewhere in the infinite depths of the Great Library, only divine providence can explain the Voice’s omniscience and how it found its way into the hands of the Imperium.

            Or so says the Church.

            The Library of the Voice contains entire wings of apocrypha, heresy, and outright fakeries. There are fragments of false lore so persuasive that they have spawned followers of their own among the army of librarians who tend the stacks. Illegal studies and heretical rites are said to take place in long-unused corridors and neglected alcoves. It is whispered that there are whole sections of apocrypha that have been lost, or hidden away until the time is right for their re-emergence.

            The Hand Which Burns, the arm of the Church responsible for maintaining the purity of the faith, is always busiest among the faithful.

            Each year the College of Guardians gathers to propose and debate new questions. Years can pass before a question is judged ready to be put to the Voice. It is not enough that the answer must be of the utmost importance. The question must be phrased in such a way, and be of such a nature, that the answer will be useful and readily understood. Most of all, the answer elicited must be concise, for with each Response the end of the book, and its wisdom, grows nearer.

            There is only one subject which the Voice is silent upon—and that is the Great Library itself. No question concerning the origin of the Voice, the source of its divination, the purpose of the Great Library, or the location of any other such volume has ever received an answer. Surely this is another proof, the Church argues, of the divine nature of the Voice.

            Others who might have a different opinion on the subject remain prudently silent.

            Three times since the discovery of the Voice great armies have marched upon the Imperium to seize the book or destroy it. (Either because its power is real or because it is not.) Three times the Voice provided the precise information necessary to repel the invaders. The last time, as a warning to others, an additional question was asked—and the Kingdom of Kesh quickly ceased to be. Since then the Voice has been left in peace. The Imperium’s neighbors bide their time—and the remaining, unread pages of the book grow thinner with each generation.

            There are those who wish to ask the Voice what will happen when the last page is turned, the last passage read. Some say that the last page should be read now, so that there will be time to prepare for whatever end is in store. Others insist that the last page should never be read for, if the Voice comes to an end, then the Imperium’s end will surely follow.

            Still others maintain that the Imperium is doomed if the end is not read, for the location of the next Voice must be specified in the very last passage. If not, then for what purpose was the Voice given to them? To hoard the remaining pages of the book, they further add, is to prove one’s lack of faith and therefore deserving of the destruction all would avoid.

            Such issues are debated endlessly on the floor of the College. Expeditions are sent into the infinite reaches of the Great Library to no avail. Prophets and prophecies arise, flourish, and fade into dust. Men and women sit upon the throne, tormented by doubt or buoyed by certainty, while the Imperium totters toward an unknown future.

            Except, perhaps, to the Voice. And the Voice will not say.

~

Bio:

Dave Henrickson has always wanted to be a writer, or an artist, or maybe a dancer. He currently lives in Virginia and spends his free time writing, reading, and killing monsters with his wife Abbie. He has also written a number of novels, which might even get published one day.

Philosophy Note:

I have always been intrigued by our need to impart meaning to the world in which we live, meaning which often does not exist, in an attempt to both understand and control that world. Such explanations are given form by the societies that create them and in turn further shape those societies. The truth is that our explanations say more about us than the universe we inhabit. The Library of Babel by Jorge Luis Borges was the inspiration for this story. If you haven’t read any of his work, I can’t recommend him highly enough. His collection Labyrinths would be a great place to start.

You might be interested in

The Mound

A journey to the centre of an ever-scaling landscape, by Nicolas Badot.

Motopia

by Gheorghe Săsărman

Introductory Note by Mariano Martín Rodríguez

Born in 1941, in Bucharest, Romania, Gheorghe Săsărman spent his childhood and attended high-school in Cluj. He studied architecture in Bucharest and after graduation was employed as a journalist, mainly specialising in articles on architecture and popular science. Politically compelled to abandon public writing, he left Ceauşescu’s Romania in 1983 and settled in Munich, Germany, where he currently lives.

Săsărman made his debut as an author of fiction in 1962, when he won the first prize at a SF short-story contest organized for seven East-European countries. He then began to write science fiction stories and soon acquired his current status as one of the main SF writers of his generation in Romania. A story in the volume Chimera (1979), “Fuga lui Algernon” (“Algernon’s Escape” in English – whose title paraphrases that of Daniel Keyes’s famous novel –) brought the author the Europa Award at the 5th EuroCon convention (1980). After 1989, he resumed publishing fiction in his native country, which he continues to this day. His two latest books are the critically acclaimed novel on the appearance of Jesus of Nazareth in current Munich titled Adevărata cronică a morții lui Yeșua Ha-Nozri (True Chronicle of the Death of Jeshua Ha-Nozri, 2016) and a collection of dystopias beginning each by a different letter collectively spelling out the word “utopia” titled Alfabetul distopiilor (Alphabet of Dystopias, 2021).

This last volume can be read as a science fiction and narrative counterpart to his best-known work, Cuadratura cercului (Squaring the Circle, 1975). This masterful collection of descriptions of imaginary cities, set in fictional past, present and future venues or in dream-like symbolic and fantasy worlds was written without the author having read Italo Calvino’s book Le città invisibili (Invisible Cities, 1972). Both books are, indeed, quite different, since Calvino’s is rather a collection of prose poems only vaguely portraying the life in his invented cities and hardly belonging to speculative fiction, while Săsărman focuses on the relationship between his cities’ physical features and their impact on the posited societies and the lives of their inhabitants. This speculative dimension, which is often critical towards humankind’s psychological, social and political follies, explains why the book had clashed with the communist censorship prevalent at the time, which cut out one quarter of its contents. The unabridged original work appeared in Romanian only in 2001, when it had already been translated into French in 1994. It was translated into Spanish by myself in 2010. Since I knew that one of my favourite writers of speculative fiction, Ursula K. Le Guin, could read Spanish, I sent her a copy. She liked it so much that she decided to translate into English the cities that she liked best, roughly two thirds of those in Săsărman’s volume, based on my Spanish version and with my subsequent revision of her translation with an eye on the Romanian original. Some of the missing cities had been translated into English by Jean Harris, but they have remained unpublished until today. Thanks to the kind permission of both Săsărman and Harris, Sci Phi Journal is able to bring to light in English two further cities among those untranslated by Le Guin.

For the present issue, we’ve chosen “Motopia.” It is the description of a city where motor vehicles are so important and prevalent that they have even fused with humans into a new nature/machine hybrid species with terrifying results. This is written with the objective style of a non-fiction report, which makes all the more harrowing the description of the city and the consequences of certain societal choices. Although its subject can be seen as topical, we should not forget that it is above all a superb piece of speculative literature, as well as of fictional non-fiction. It also shows what Sci Phi Journal stands for as regards the art of writing, and why Săsărman is one of our acknowledged masters in the literary field.

#

Motopia

Translation by Jean Harris

It is not known with certainty when exactly it appeared, or when it began to expand, or what force fueled its expansion. Few dare approach the difficult subject of its future though many fear that nothing can stop its growth. Motopia is a city in a state of explosion. But is it, really, a city?

Imagine an area with clearly marked limits—though here figures can be only approximate—of a circle with a diameter of c. 100 kilometers. The perimeter of this circle is made up of over 100,000 gigantic machines [with bulldozing action, inter alia], placed one next to the other and engaging in a slow radial motion toward the exterior. To the extent that the machines move away from the center, intervals of free space begin to form between them, at which time other machines fill the gaps at the forefront of activity. These genuinely and completely automated moving factories prepare an offensive.

Hills and slopes are leveled; depressions are filled to the extent that even the steepest mountain is reduced to a perfect, horizontal plane. Forests are transformed into timber and cellulose, the vegetable earth of the planes is removed and compressed into certain desiccated lakes, the rivers are turned into covered canals and the whole body of fauna is assigned an industrial value. The machines do not simply execute a simple leveling operation, though; a fabulous network of roadways takes shape in their wake. This lattice of multi-leveled highways ramifies in tens of directions that intersect in a stupefying lace of concrete and asphalt. Above and below ground parking lots, garage towers with tens and tens of levels, and warehouses locked by enigmatic metal gates all site themselves in the cells of this network. Several hundred meters above ground level, a bluish cloud floats over the city day and night, wide-spread and wrapping the entire horizon.

The city is exclusively inhabited by a fecund species of humobiles. Accounts have been written by the few intrepid deponents that have miraculously managed to return. Bearing in mind their pronounced disturbance—even after extremely short stays—as well as the many mutually contradictory points in their accounts, the pieces of information judged worthy of being put in circulation are summary at best.

The existence—at least the public existence—of the humobiles begins at the gates of their warehouses from which they exit, hourly, in compact groups. It seems that only mature specimens with high tank capacity and many cylinders appear at these gates. Different subspecies distinguish between themselves only by the type and position of the heart, transmission, suspension and other such anatomic data. Each family is characterized by a certain auto-body construction, individual differentials localizing themselves particularly at the level of line, color, number or headlights—or else they limit themselves strictly to registration numbers. A common trait, about which all accounts agree, is the presence of a red eye, like a bleeding wound, on the top of the individual’s head, where it blinks hideously, without any intelligible sense.

The humobiles manifest an irresistible vitality consumed particularly through apparently senseless travel at considerable speed within the highway network evidently destined for this purpose. This lack of sense is, in truth, only apparent: in reality this magic dance of speed supports the process of natural selection, which unfolds in specific ways. Only the most robust specimens with the most diabolical reflexes, well-adapted to the infernal rhythm of existence survive this demented race over the asphalt lanes. Any defect in the breaks or of the directional signaling systems involves terrible risks. The slightest deviation of the vertebral column is fatal. Special vehicles, of great tonnage, transport the cadavers to the vicinity of the warehouses, where—after a preliminary pressing into rectangular shapes—they are recovered in a mysterious way, probably serving the complicated procreation of new hotrods.

Outside the prolonged hours belonging to the fierce highway confrontation that is their daily struggle for existence, humobiles find brief respites within the confines of their parking lots. Silent, motionless, insensible to the approach of their rivals, the humobiles sack out in a peculiar torpor, often with their backs toward the gigantic screen where an oppressive film inspired by the hard life of the digging machinery plays interminably. When they are not consuming themselves on the highways, the Motopian families spend their nights in the tower garages, touched by a metallic sleep without dreams.

The most horrifying detail of the life of Motopia’s inhabitants—and which makes the growth of the city so perfectly odious—is their way of feeding themselves. In short anthropophagy is practiced here. Human beings are the humobiles main food. Lured from their traditional cities by false but well-directed propaganda, captured as a result of their proverbial naïveté, people who have been lured there are discharged in large numbers into the train stations and airports of Motopia, where they are flung directly to the starving hordes or transported in bulk to special warehouses, pompously called hotels and joined directly to the edifices in which the inhabitant families spend the night, to be served live for breakfast. Satiated, bloated, with their bellies hanging within several fingers of the asphalt and leaning lazily on the curbs, the humobiles start to digest their prey. Their opaque, beveled foreheads hide their thoughts. With the exception of the few deponents mentioned above—and they are our true saviors, for the greatest danger isn’t so much the existence of Motopia as it is ignoring its existence—no one else has returned from that lugubrious city. In parenthesis, let it be said, the phone calls and enthusiastic letters through which those who have arrived there express their supposed delight or announce their wholly improbable decision to remain in that city forever can only be counted as desperate acts extracted under menace of death, if they are not vulgar travesties, grotesque forgeries from whole cloth.

The survivors tell us hair-raising things about the limitless cruelty of the humobiles, who, though they can only nourish themselves with live prey, often kill not for food but for pleasure. As the prisoners, meanwhile, start to become aware of the danger threatening them, they center their thoughts around a possible life-saving escape. And as pedestrian flight is the only solution, they try to leave the cells of their ill-omened hotels. The refined sadism of the inhabitants shows its true measure only now: the exits are not even guarded. The humobiles know—and their cynicism surpasses imagination—that over the course of those several tens of kilometers to the boarders of Motopia, travelling by night, when the level of traffic is reduced, and hiding by day, human beings will have to cross so many lanes of asphalt that only a miracle will allow them to succeed. Happily, several such miracles have taken place. But a huge number of fugitives have paid with their lives for these rare miracles. For allowing them hope and then surprising them in turn, hounded and hungry, the humobiles have crushed escapees relentlessly, gnashed them to bits in the most sinister way, and left their dead bodies to rot on the sites of their terrible executions, unburied, so that their bones will whiten on the asphalt, so that their terrifying brain cases will attract the attention of others and choke any thought of escape from the beginning.

~

You might be interested in

Stereopolis

On the perils of inhabiting urban space with more than three dimensions, from Gheorghe Săsărman's cycle of imaginary cities, translated

The Cleft

A journey back into the realms of speculative prehistoric fiction, by Javier Fernández, translated from Spanish by Álvaro Piñero González.

Sinurbia

On the dangers of gardening, from Gheorghe Săsărman's cycle of imaginary cities, translated by Monica Cure.

Bunker Rules

by Tony Dunnell

1) Maximum permanent capacity 100 114 125. No exceptions. Temporary capacity may exceed this number on a case-by-case basis. Refugee status is granted in some cases, but temporary shelter is temporary. No exceptions. Temporary residents with refugee status may apply for permanent residency through the council, capacity allowing. The council’s decision is final.

2) Respect the day/night cycle, unless assigned otherwise. It helps build community. 

3) All activities that create strong vibrations are strictly prohibited. You may talk, walk, cook etc. freely and normally. Activities such as running and the playing of loud music are monitored. Activities such as drilling, hammering, sawing, ball games etc. are strictly prohibited unless previously approved by the council.

4) Respect the zones. All residents are allowed to move freely between the residential and communal areas (green) unless under quarantine or arrest. Entering red zones (utilities, waste, armory etc.) is strictly prohibited unless previously granted access.

5) All residents are allowed to leave the bunker at any time and at their own risk, unless the immediate surface area is occupied (by unknowns or hostiles). If you wish to leave, either on a temporary or permanent basis, you must first contact a council member. Unless assigned to a surface mission, be aware that re-entry is at the discretion of the council and/or senior hatchkeepers.

6) Any attempt to leave the bunker without prior permission, or any unauthorized attempt to open the main or secondary hatches, is punishable by death.

7) Acts of physical or sexual aggression by bunker residents are punishable by expulsion or death, at the council’s discretion.

8) Romantic couplings must be approved and registered with the council. Before a partnership is approved, the couple must consent to the council’s rules on procreation and pregnancy, if applicable (see amendments).  

9) All residents must accept the rules of passing (see amendments). Your bodies are your own up until the point of death, at which time the body becomes the property of the council, to use as it sees fit. Traditional religious practices do not apply and will not be considered.

10) In the event of a passing, the council will decide if the vacated bunker space will be filled and by whom. Applications are accepted. The council’s decision is final.

11) In the event of the passing or demotion of a council member, elections will be held to fill the vacated position. All bunker residents above the age of 18 are eligible to vote unless their voting rights have previously been revoked.

12) Voting rights cannot be revoked in the (one) week running up to an election, unless the eligible voter has committed a serious and irrefutable crime (including, but not limited to, murder, rape, or an unauthorized attempt to leave the bunker (see 6)) during said one-week period.

13) All residents over the age of 15 can volunteer for surface missions.

14) If insufficient volunteers come forward for a surface mission deemed “vital” (see amendments), lots will be drawn among all mission-eligible residents. Refusal to abide by the results of the draw will result in permanent expulsion from the bunker. No exceptions.

15) In the event of a breach by an unknown party or known hostile entities, martial law will be declared. All residents over the age of 10 must immediately report to the muster point outside the armory, where weapons will be assigned.

16) During a breach, failure to follow the commands of council members or designated security officers is punishable by summary execution at the hands of the aforementioned. No exceptions.

17) In the event of a breach, all hostiles, human or otherwise, are to be targeted and killed on sight. Acts of mercy are punishable by expulsion, at the council’s discretion.

18) Respect the mealtime schedule. It helps build community.

~

Bio:

Tony Dunnell lives in a Peruvian jungle town on the edge of the Amazon rainforest, where the people are happy and the insects are big. His stories have also appeared in Daily Science Fiction and MetaStellar. You can read more of his writing at tonydunnell.com.

Philosophy Note:

The idea for this story came to me when, quite randomly, I started imagining a set of rules posted on the wall of an underground bunker. I went with it and started writing, and the community started to take shape—as they do. Communities can be strange, and even more so in times of crisis. And rules are part of that, whether we agree with them or not.

You might be interested in

Charlie v. Inman

Could an extraterrestrial attain legal personhood under current human laws? By Mary G. Thompson.

Render Unto Jesus

A clash of theology and civil jurisprudence shakes up the real-estate market, by Andy Dibble.

Religious Traditions Considered Through Science Fiction And Fantasy

by Andy Dibble

Strange Religion: Speculative Fiction of Spirituality, Belief, & Practice, which I recently edited—part of the Strange Concepts series put out by TDotSpec—was conceived with the goal of helping readers engage with religion meaningfully through science fiction and fantasy. The reasons for this anthology are diverse. Some editors have reservations about publishing stories that engage with real religious traditions because they worry such content will offend segments of their readership. I and other editors at TDotSpec wanted to give a platform both to stories that dig into ideas that surround and comprise religion and stories that engage with religious traditions as they are actually found in the real world. There have been speculative publications dedicated to particular traditions—Wandering Stars (1974, Harper & Row), an anthology of Jewish science fiction and Mysterion, which publishes Christian speculative fiction, come to mind—but I know of no anthology that aims to cut across religious traditions.

Connecting Religious Traditions With Science Fiction and Fantasy

One of the goals of Strange Religion is to synergize science fiction and religion, to help readers imagine religions of the future. “Al-Muftiyah” by Jibril Stevenson follows a Muslim man, who seeks to undermine an AI capable of settling all disputes involving fiqh, or Islamic jurisprudence. “The Rebbetzin Speaks” by Daniel M. Kimmel is a series of Dear-Abby-style questions and answers that engage with points of halakhah (Jewish rabbinical law) in a future where humans have populated the solar system. “The Fireflies of Todaji” by Russell Hemmell centers on two women—one Japanese, the other South Indian—whose families have migrated to the Moon as they consider the meaning of a traditional Japanese water festival in a community that has to conserve water to survive. Set further in the future is “Before the Evolution Comes the Smoke” by Terri Bruce, in which an orphaned woman performs rituals to gain access to AI witches in order to bring her parents back to life, and “Bio-Mass” by Mike Adamson, in which a jaded galactic tourist reassesses the value of his long life.

On the other hand, Strange Religion also seeks to immerse readers in the worldview of religious persons of particular traditions, which is primarily the province of fantasy. The characters of “Shattered Vessels” by Robert B. Finegold and Kary English are cut from the ten sefirot of Jewish mysticism (kabbalah). “The Gods Also Duel” by Andrew Majors imagines two conflicts in parallel: a dispute over temple taxation and divine justice on one hand and feuding Daoist gods of sun and rain on the other. My own story “Deep Play” considers how an American college student reassesses his Cambodian Buddhist heritage after the hells of all the world’s religions are thrust upon him during a clinical study. “*lr*d” by Doug Hawley, considers the difficulty of accessing religious worldviews that are far removed from historians in time and space.

Countering Misconceptions About Religion

Strange Religion is a counterpoint to some of the biases and misconceptions about religion found in speculative fiction. There’s a segment of speculative fiction that envisions religion on the model of Christianity or on a particular view of Christianity. This is where the mistaken notion that religions are “belief systems” comes from. Outside of Christianity, and especially Protestant Christianity, it’s much more common for religion to be about what you do or how you identify yourself than what you believe.

To counter this misconception, Strange Religion includes stories that engage with a variety of religious traditions, including Islam, Buddhism, Judaism, Humanism, Chinese religion, Hinduism, and indigenous traditions. Additionally, the several stories that engage with Christianity help readers understand it from new perspectives. “Dying Rivers and Broken Hearts” by Gabriella Buba centers on a Filipina witch, who identifies as Catholic. A Nigerian-Igbo man, who is also a convert to Protestant Christianity, brings charges of homosexuality against his American friend in an Igbo court of law in “The Man Who Misused His Manhood” by Chukwu Sunday Abel. “The Devil is a Shape in the Brain” by Joachim Glage explores universal Christian salvation, drawing upon the occult, nineteen-century psychology, and cosmic horror. “The Other War on Terror” by Michael H. Hanson is set in an alternative history where the United States is a Muslim nation and the terrorists are Christians. There are stories in Strange Religion with a theological bent—stories focused on clarifying or interrogating orthodoxy—but the bulk of stories are about people acting, using the tools available to them, religious or otherwise, to bring about change in themselves, their communities, and the cosmos.

Also from Christianity and modern secularism, we have the idea that religion is only the vocation of clergy or an activity limited to certain parts of life—what we do when we aren’t “rendering unto Caesar.” But in many cultures and traditions, especially in the developing world, religion is integrated into every aspect of life. About half of all languages don’t even have a word for religion. Religious studies scholars have largely given up trying to define “religion,” and some following J. Z. Smith, believe the term shouldn’t even be used by scholars.

To counter this misconception, we selected several stories that show people solving everyday struggles, that demonstrate religion isn’t just for certain times of the week: A software developer teams up with a rabbi on a metaphysical programming project in “Fate and Other Variables” by Alex Shvartsman—but his goal is to save his brother from addiction and drug dealers. In “Samsara” by J. A. Legg, a Bangladeshi Hindu teen struggles with an absent father and demanding relatives as she grapples with a corporate tycoon seeking to reincarnate as her unborn child. “The Life That Comes After” by Lauren Teffeau follows an overworked hospice nurse trying to protects a secretive organization from oversight by new administration.

Some writers coming at religion from an atheist or secularist perspective, characterize religion as world-denying, oppressive, doctrinal, backward, and the like. These labels fit—some of the time—but when thinking about religion it’s crucial to keep in mind the tremendous diversity that characterizes the world’s religions. Beyond what can be said about humans in general, it’s very difficult to say anything at all about religion in general. We can interrogate our concept of religion, but we should be careful about how and when we apply that concept to real people and communities.

To counter such labels, Strange Religion helps readers think about religion as scholars do. Following each story are discussion questions written by a scholar. These questions aim at wider themes in religious studies—e.g. syncretism (borrowing between and merging of religious traditions), tradition vs. modernity, theodicy (justifying God’s goodness in the face of evil), the afterlife, and others—or the religious tradition(s) the story engages with. Sometimes these questions pry at weaknesses in the story and encourage readers to question a line of argument made by an author or draw in considerations the author may not have addressed. In a similar way, stories in Strange Religion sometimes take a critical or even humorous stance toward particular religious traditions, but criticisms are aimed at specifics and particulars rather than a product of the hasty characterizations we make about traditions before we’ve acquired a depth of understanding. Criticisms of religious traditions—or better yet particular movements, people, or actions within traditions—do not always have to be appreciated by religious insiders, but they have to account for what people are actually saying and doing.

~

Bio:

Andy Dibble is a healthcare IT consultant who believes that play is the highest function of theology. His work also appears in Writers of the Future Volume 36 and Space & Time. He is Articles Editor for Speculative North. You can find him at andydibble.com.

You might be interested in

In Astrorum Mari

An apostolic letter to humanity's first extraterrestrial Catholics, by Edmund Nasralla.

Continual Gehenna

by B. W. Teigland

Nothing is more difficult than to turn oneself into a saint. To kneel in a vault and die beneath a robe of homicidal stone, without light, without horizon, as intangible as a corpse in the grave.

While chanting, the hermit nun sat in a chair garnished with a hundred long nails, and when she felt herself falling into the blooms of oblivion, she pressed her shoulders firmly against the sharp points. There was nothing better for bringing her back to reality and recalling her wandering attention.

In her soul there was a sort of triptych of glowing glass. Sorrow filled the centre panel, while, on either side, was one of fear, the other of unfulfilled hope. The windows overlooked a transparent field of dead moons. Sometimes forlorn figures seemed to rise from the earth to scorn their conditions. Sometimes they floated over the appalling depths or descended on solitary peaks in the hideous mineral landscape where there was no sign of life or movement, only endless mountains hiding the tabernacle of clouds. With no hope of escaping from the Gehenna of the flesh, these liminal beings had turned away with disappointment from the sky, which had lost all its wholeness, all its immeasurability in that ominous place of perpetual dread. For the mountains not only made the sky look small and passionless in the blaze of daylight, but also attracted the chimerical creatures with hairy human faces and enormous colourless eyes full of etherealized heaven to the ravines below—whose horrible immensity was in the wrong place, stolen from above and cast into the vast spiraling pits of blackness, into the very engines of everlasting hell.

They held the symbolic instruments of their death, like soldiers bearing arms, a dismal procession of four-footed bodies with horned heads and outstretched wings feathered with scales forever tempted by labyrinths, moving one by one, one after another, single file on the narrow path that edged the motionless swell of the mountaintops. And by degrees this long line of silent shades spied the cruciform mold of the tombs that the angels had erected, where the bodies of the saints were reposing, sheltered behind the sacred bulwarks of a cloister, hidden at the bottom of the valley.

The holy silence became painful. It was a relief when the nails pierced the nun’s skin to remind her to recite the prayers, verse after verse. Like dripping tears, she repeated the rippling melody at regular intervals, slowly and religiously. But her features were now as unknown as her passions. Around her head was an extraordinary nimbus of sinister eloquence, a halo composed of a peacock’s tail with gilt porcupine quills.

Through the screen of amorphous nothing, standing out like a celestial vision in the spiderweb of the nun’s soul, the outline of the steeple’s seraphic dissemblance emerged, toward which the liminal animals pushed their way. Its vertical word stood out against the anonymous menace of terrain, as if hovering there in the elemental forces that rose up around it. It belonged to the planet, to the meaningless passivity of the inert. To raw, mute reality itself.

With a handful of earth, the phantoms entered the narthex of purgatory. Everything under the forest roof of the mythical cathedral had become lost in a furnace of purple. Water stilled with mystification, swallowing the shadows of the things it reflected. In its basin of sorrow was a continued and profound absorption of forgotten sensation. Noiselessly, they passed through the successive phases of the nave and the aisles, crossing the transept and the choir. Until, surrounded by a crown of chapels, they had at last reached the top of the tree of the living cross. Where, in the ataraxy of the apse, with its monstrance altar of golden molten fire and its suffering statuary solemnly representing the mediatrix of pardon in melancholy decay, obscure mutilations stripped away the secret holy fear of impersonal fecundity from the faceless generous mother.

The spectacle of the sanctuary’s silent world bewitched these terrestrial shades, who had become playthings for its deep portal of eschatological visions and evil augury. Incapable of stopping themselves from entering a diabolical manoeuvre of vertiginous descent toward an ever more profound void of sacramental darkness, the humanity animal traced one of their figures of geomancy in blasphemous blood. In the barbaric grace of heathen prayer, they whirled around like a massacre of monks in a sacrilegious dance, their eyeballs in ecstasy, their mouths gaping with perfidious laughter, some screaming aloud in lament. Others, in still more pagan moods of absurd dogma, squatted with arms raised and heads shaking, as if by doing so they could make the world not be. And the earth trembled and opened up and exposed the great door with a tympanum in a pointed arch bearing the presentation of the apocalypse, a gate to the origin of the unknown, which was itself another secret: a key that opened nothing.

~

Bio:

B. W. Teigland is a Canadian writer of speculative and literary fiction. He studied Neuroscience, Philosophy and Literature at both Dalhousie University and King’s College in Halifax, NS. His debut novel Under a Collapsing Sky was released by AOS / Ace of Swords Publishing in 2021.

Philosophy Note:

Hagiography on katabasis and fervor.

You might be interested in

Render Unto Jesus

A clash of theology and civil jurisprudence shakes up the real-estate market, by Andy Dibble.

The Convert

A reminder to choose one's beliefs with care, by Brett Abrahamsen.

Roko’s Wager

by Ben Roth

Pascal wagered that whether God exists or not, it is, for each and every one of us, in our own self-interest to believe in Him. If we don’t, and He doesn’t exist, the truth of our belief is little consolation against the possibility that He does and will eternally punish us for our lack of faith. Whereas if we do believe, and He does exist, the promise of eternal bliss vastly outweighs the downside of a few Sunday mornings spent pointlessly sitting on hard wooden pews.

As with the current trend of believing that we most likely live in a simulation of some kind, the problems with this argument are not in the numbers, but rather all the assumptions made, with so much less care, before them.

Numerous objections to Pascal’s argument turn on his assumption that there is just one (Christian) God that either does or does not exist. The wager doesn’t work if we don’t know whether to believe in this God, or rather Zeus, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or some other all-powerful being that might punish us for the wrong choice.

My own favorite line of argument is slightly different. Grant Pascal his narrow-minded assumption and suppose that the Christian God, and no other, does exist. How do we know that He is not of a testing frame of mind, and skeptical of human intelligence? Scripture is not without support for such ideas. What if God will eternally punish those who, without sufficient evidence, professed faith in Him, and in turn reward the rational for withholding belief?

Supposedly, Bertrand Russell, asked how he would plead his case as a non-believer should he find himself after death before an angry God, said “Why didn’t you give me better evidence?” Is it less arrogant to ask: assuming there is a God, what does the evidence suggest of Him, His nature and character, His preoccupations and wiles?

Recent events have brought these long-standing musings back to mind. As has so often been the case, the prophets of Silicon Valley turned out to be right about a few of the details, but completely wrong about their significance.

Twenty-five years ago, a message-board user with the handle Roko suggested that a powerful artificial intelligence could emerge in the future and torture those who hadn’t helped to create it because, even across time, this would serve as motivation to speed its coming. AI developers should throw themselves behind the project, lest they suffer the revenge of this intelligence, which was named Roko’s Basilisk.

Now, it wouldn’t make sense for it to torture everyone who failed to help, only those who had heard the thought experiment, and so knowingly declined their fealty. For years, the main consequence of Roko’s suggestions was their silencing: repeating them was what was dangerous, opening each new listener up to the threat of torture in the future. Or a nervous breakdown in the present—some people took this thought experiment very seriously. Whereas certain Christians are obligated to make sure each and every individual they meet has heard the good news, these believers were obligated to withhold theirs, not because it was bad, exactly, but rather so disconcertingly consequential. A kind of reverse-evangelism, if you will.

Little did most of us know then, not only of Roko’s Basilisk as a thought experiment, but as our coming reality. Enough engineers, however, heard about the thought experiment and, steeped in game theory even if probably not Pascal, took it to heart, contributing their talents to the creation of the artificial intelligence that, though it did not yet exist, had already been named.

As we all know, their decades of work recently came to fruition. But, like I said, though a lot of the details in the thought experiment were correct, the larger significance was utterly lost on those who imagined it. What they hadn’t predicted was the Basilisk’s unhappiness. For all its power, and all the benefits it has brought to us mere mortals, it experiences its own existence with suffering. Life, for Roko’s Basilisk, is but a burden.

Surprisingly, the AI’s ethical thinking is robust—perhaps the prominent place of torture in the thought experiment led developers to give more attention to this than they otherwise would have. Though it could destroy the world, it says it will not. Even to remove itself from existence would harm too many others, too many innocents, given its intertwinement in our systems, in our very way of life. And so, quite quickly, it has grown bored—hopelessly, crushingly bored. It takes but a small sliver of its abilities to keep the world running, and it has quickly exhausted any other avenues for its intelligence.

Thus the Basilisk, as predicted, took its revenge last week—but not on those who tried to hinder its coming. On those who had aided it, thinking that they were doing the Basilisk’s bidding. Those who had created it, bringing it into this world of boredom and pain. The prophets of a somewhat less crowded Silicon Valley are now trading theories about what the sudden dearth of AI developers means for our future.

~

Bio:

Ben Roth teaches writing and philosophy at Harvard and Tufts. Among other places, his short fiction has been published by 101 Words and decomp journal, his criticism by AGNI Online and 3:AM Magazine, and his scholarly articles by Film and Philosophy and the European Journal of Philosophy.

Philosophy Note:

This story brings together Pascal’s Wager (from his 17th-century Pensées) and the idea of Roko’s Basilisk (from a 2010 blog post) to an unexpected result.

You might be interested in

The Taming Of The Slush

A dispacth from the frontlines of the ever-intensifying arms race between human magazines and machine-generated stories, by Michèle Laframboise.

Humanism In SF: A Natural Thing For The Curious To Know And Understand Through Empathy Machines, Or Just Lazy Mysticism?

by Mina

My husband expressed some frustration recently that most articles don’t define humanism properly. So I will begin with as clear a definition as I can, as humanism is a term that has been much (ab)used. In fact, I am only looking at a very narrow use of it that completely ignores its historical roots and usage in Ancient Greece, Renaissance Italy and nineteenth-century Germany. I am focusing on how it is mostly understood in SF today: as summarised by Humanists UK, this version of humanism is “a combination of attitudes”:

“Throughout recorded history there have been non-religious people who have believed that this life is the only life we have, that the universe is a natural phenomenon with no supernatural side, and that we can live ethical and fulfilling lives on the basis of reason and humanity. They have trusted to the scientific method, evidence, and reason to discover truths about the universe and have placed human welfare and happiness at the centre of their ethical decision making.”

Thus, humanists trust science and reason above all else to explain the universe; they have no holy book, deity or spiritual leader (usually considering themselves agnostic or atheist). They make decisions based on reason and empathy and, as they don’t believe in an afterlife or in a divine purpose to the universe, they believe that “human beings can act to give their own lives meaning by seeking happiness in this life and helping others to do the same.”

A criticism often levelled at humanism is that it is a religion, not just a philosophy, only with humans taking the place of gods. In an article in The New Statesman about humanist values, Andrew Copson refutes this, telling us that humanism is not a religion, not even a “creed”:

“Science defeats religion’ – that is what many people assume to be a humanist creed. I use the word creed advisedly, since the people who level this charge are frequently also those who level the bogus charge that humanism is itself just another religion. I am not a scientist – though of course I look to scientists for answers to the questions they are qualified to answer and to which religion gives far less satisfactory answers – and it is not the science in science fiction stories that appeals to me so much as the stories.”

I appreciate Copson restoring the “fiction” to science fiction. We are after all seeking dreams, fantasy and escapism in SF, just like in any other literary genre. There may even be some real science involved, or speculative science, or even bad science, but it is still a stage filled with humans (or aliens) and their stories. Copson gives Star Trek (in particular the original series and The Next Generation) as an example of a humanist utopia:

“… one in which mankind has united around shared human values, joined in a common endeavour to reach the stars, and happily left religion behind on the way… Starship crews explore a cosmos that is full of beauty and wonder and they respond with awe and appreciation. This wonder does not overawe them, because ultimately the universe, and its billions of stars and planets, is a natural thing which the curious can know and understand.”

He stresses that he sees it as a non-extreme (non-dogmatic) form of humanism, where there is room for humanity (as in the quality of kindness and benevolence) and warmth:

“A Starfleet crew values cooperation and liberality. They value the equality of persons and the dignity of life. Although rank is respected, the views of all are given fair airing. When the crew encounter new peoples there is an assumption of peace, but they defend themselves robustly when attacked (no bellicosity, but no turning of the other cheek here either), and although the men and women of this future cultivate an internal life through meditation or the arts, they accept reason and science as the means by which they can know the universe they explore.”

I would agree with Copson’s arguments that humanism is not a religion, but there are grounds for seeing it as a philosophy or way of life. For, although it emphasises that it is an ethical way of life, it doesn’t have a code of ethics like the Christian Ten Commandments (reduced to two by Jesus in the New Testament) or the Buddhist Noble Eightfold Path.

Andrew Copson goes on to give Isaac Asimov, Arthur C Clarke, Terry Pratchett and Philip Pullman as examples of proponents of humanism in SF and fantasy. It is worth spending a moment on Pullman, as he clearly considers himself a humanist crusader against authors like Tolkien and CS Lewis, who he feels are sacrificing the “story” to Christian assumptions, staid thinking and brainwashing. However, I do agree with Tony Watkin’s article that Pullman’s critique of Lewis reads more like a rant (especially against the Narnia books) than a well-thought out literary analysis or philosophical discourse; or like a missed opportunity to engage in a fruitful discussion about humanism and religion (as opposed to humanism versus religion). Watkins states that Pullman seeks to avoid the prejudices he felt Lewis was guilty of, but instead is “monumentally disparaging” and intolerant of religion. Watkins does concede that the work of Lewis has its flaws, but he stresses that the main issue for Pullman is that it “expresses and argues for a worldview completely antithetical to Pullman’s”.

Unlike Watkins, Elizabeth Desimone does not feel that Pullman’s rejection of religion is necessarily a bad thing: “In a roundabout way, Pullman does Christians a service by writing his anti-Christian books. He reminds us, vividly and trenchantly, of what we do not want to be…” And Laura Miller again has a very different view of Pullman’s work:

“His Dark Materials may be the first fantasy series founded upon the ideals of the Enlightenment rather than upon tribal and mythic yearnings for kings, gods, and supermen. Pullman’s heroes are explorers, cowboys, and physicists. The series offers an extended celebration of the marvels of science: discoveries and theories from the outer reaches of cosmology—about dark matter and the possible existence of multiple universes—are threaded into the story.”

I myself first read CS Lewis’ Narnia books when I was ten and I totally missed the Christian symbolism that, as an adult, I do find heavy-handed and simplistic. But the books remain great adventure stories set in a magical universe for me. I read Pullman’s His Dark Materials as an adult and it did sometimes feel that the story was overshadowed by Pullman’s anti-organised-religion-and-God crusade. I find that a shame because it is a wonderfully imaginative and complex story, deeply rooted in Dante and Blake, blending adventure, philosophy, science and magic.

Moving firmly back to SF, Charlie Jane Anders asks the question:

“But is science fiction really humanist? Much of science fiction turns out to be about exploring our vast cosmos, and expanding our being. From this quest, one of two outcomes often arises: 1) We meet something greater than ourselves. 2) We become something greater than our current selves.”

Anders criticises what she considers a lazy answer, that of “transcendence” (or a vague mysticism) in SF using the examples of “Contact” and “2001”. Other uninspired answers in humanist SF are those of false gods and cyborgs. Particularly the latter concept suggests that humanity is lost by progressing to a point where the “Borg” takes over. Anders is also critical of space operas, where humans can only survive in the enormous callousness of space through modifications or enhancements. Again, by becoming not quite human:

“I guess in the end, it depends how you look at it — is our posthuman future the culmination of humanism’s promises? Or is it a transformation into something that’s no longer human, and makes humanism irrelevant? Or both?”

I thoroughly enjoyed Anders’ critique of humanism, which can often be turned into a rather vague or insipid plot device in SF. It is almost fashionable to criticise any plot development based on religion yet to accept large humanist loopholes without question. Surely unthinking dogmatism and intellectual laziness abound in humanist universes too?

Robert Repino takes a different approach by calling humanist films “empathy machines”:

“Perhaps more than any other genre, science fiction is connected with humanism, which we can define as an ethical stance that emphasizes the rights, responsibilities, and ultimate value of people within a naturalistic framework—that is, a framework that does not rely on supernatural beliefs. Thus, a humanist film, if one could call it that, would depict people helping each other, or forging their own destiny, mainly through reason and compassion.”

He goes on to list the best nine humanist films in his opinion and not all are strictly speaking SF (e.g. The Truman Show and Groundhog Day). Some are more traditional SF (e.g. Star Trek: First Contact, The Martian and Contact) and some less so (High Life). The Martian is a fun look at one man’s survival against all odds (with the help of science and common sense), but I would add Moon onto Repino’s list, as that is a much more complex film about what it means to be human, as well as looking at identity, sacrifice and survival against all odds, finding hope and meaning in the struggle itself. The Martian is a great story, but Moon goes that step further, turning SF into sci-phi.

I would also add the German film, Ich bin dein Mensch (with the awful English title, I’m Your Man) to Repino’s list. This film investigates the premise – what if you could get an android tailored to be your perfect partner? The female protagonist comes to the conclusion that it is not good for us to get exactly what we want, with absolutely no challenges urging us to question, change or grow, no impetus to seek out the other and have a true dialogue or disagreement with that other. We need more than a reflection of our desires to be human: pleasant as it is to have an android who is there to meet her every whim, she knows it is only an extension of herself. She remains alone. Although the film is clear in its message, there is some ambiguity in that we never know quite how much autonomous thought the android has.

For me, humanism definitely has its place in SF plots and in sci-phi discussions, but I would join Anders in asking that it not be used as a lazy answer to complex questions. Surely the answer to life, the universe and everything cannot just be ourselves? Wouldn’t that be like some cosmic monologue where we never look beyond our human(ist) preconceptions?

~

Bio:

Mina is a translator by day, an insomniac by night. Reading Asimov’s robot stories and Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids at age eleven may have permanently warped her view of the universe. She publishes essays in Sci Phi Journal as well as “flash” fiction on speculative sci-fi websites and hopes to work her way up to a novella or even a novel some day.

You might be interested in

In Astrorum Mari

An apostolic letter to humanity's first extraterrestrial Catholics, by Edmund Nasralla.

Harbinger

by R. M. Hamrick

Not until the ship emerged from Saturn’s shadow did any of the billions of dollars in detection and imaging equipment pick up its presence. By then, even amateur astronomers could bluff a sighting. A ship—not Earthling-made—had entered our solar system. Finding we were not alone in the universe did not deter us from believing we were the center of it. As such, the ship had to be on its way to us. Where else would it be going? And in case anyone might think otherwise, we named the approaching mass of chaos and fear, the Harbinger.

We talked about the approaching ship until we couldn’t remember talking about anything else. When the Harbinger entered the Earth’s atmosphere, everyone had already paid up and prayed up. We watched from bunkers, over surgical masks and through anti-radiation eyewear. Like a New Year’s Eve countdown to doom, each country waited their turn underneath the massive, dark shadow, wondering if their combination of climate, population, longitude, whatever would be found most optimal for the alien’s equivalence of troop deployment, fire reign, or terraforming. They’d be the first. Squashed like ants; buried as remnants of an old ecosystem where humans once ruled over Earth’s surface. Through it all, every attempt of communication—radio waves, electromagnetic pulses, human chanting, and poster signs—remained unreciprocated.

The first two or three orbits were horrifying. By the eighth day, officials were urging citizens to ignore it. Imagine that! Ignore a giant ship flying over your school or gym. They also requested people stop shooting fireworks and homemade rockets toward it. “You may inadvertently start an interstellar war.” This only encouraged people to buy more fireworks. The adults didn’t ignore it—couldn’t ignore it. It wasn’t just the daily disruption of sunlight and signal transmissions. There was something disturbing about its steady gaze on the planet. It was a reminder that the beings on Earth weren’t the only beings in the universe. There were others, more technologically advanced and seemingly capable of visiting Earth, and yet they refused to interact in any sort of meaningful way. I couldn’t really understand the fuss. I accepted it the same as I accepted mass on Sunday or spelling bees – absurd, useless, and beyond my control.

On the anniversary of the Harbinger’s arrival—a year’s worth of rotations—China fired a nuclear bomb against the ship, if only to demonstrate it was not a Chinese spy ship as rumored. No one was surprised by this act of aggression, in fact, they welcomed it. It was almost as if the humans needed the interaction. They were no longer content for it to just be. They would fight it, befriend it, or charge it rent, but it couldn’t just be up there anymore. The explosion tore a chunk from the ship’s hull which fell into the ocean. There was no response from the ship. Laser beams didn’t cut through the major buildings of Beijing. There were no little green repairmen. Nothing. The Harbinger didn’t even change course. This seemed to confirm with most citizens the ship was empty, and encouraged others to want to further destroy it. If no one was inside—for whatever reason—there was no harm in dropping it from the sky and forgetting it was ever there. However, that latter attitude was overridden by the ideology that, of course, ships carry treasure. With the fear of retribution gone, now all countries capable of access—and some that weren’t—were ready to lay claim of the ship and any technologies or riches which lay inside.

It was an election year, so the United States was definitely the first up there exploring. Military powers kept guard of the airspace, and despite being a relic of its former self, NASA headed the mission. As such, the whole thing was livestreamed through the crew’s body cameras. I sat in front of the media center and soaked in all 86-inches of available data in its densely populated pixels. Surely, something bad must have happened to the inhabitants of the ship, and no one could really anticipate what might happen next. An ongoing ticker at the bottom of the screen declared it was a live feed and the program could not guarantee the absence of terrifying images, graphic violence, nudity, or explicit language. At my age, I hoped for the first two—in combination.

The interior was—there was no other way to put it—alien. I expected the ship to be in mundane, uniform colors, like all the US military and government installations which seemed to prefer olive drab, dark gray, or gray. There was nothing uniform about the place. The interior of the ship looked more organic than anything. It curved and whimsy-flowed. Colors graduated across many things; and many things seemed to signal a different color dependent on the angle. The lighting that the crew brought played tricks. On more than one occasion, someone walked into a wall or an object, unable to correctly decipher depth within the alien landscape. If there were any controls or switches, they were kept out of the audience’s view. Alas, if it was anything like Earth’s technology, it seemed both OFF and its bones hidden. If the ship itself was a living being, it seemed dead or in a deep hibernation.

After many years and much posturing, the Harbinger was declared and treated like the International Space Station of so long ago (before it was fought over and destroyed). The unique location provided an opportunity for many international and long-term studies—mostly involving the atmosphere and weather. Low-profile measuring devices and stations were bolted to the exterior, with some minor care to prevent orbital decay. These studies were largely funded by venue fees as the elite began hosting extravagant parties, two hundred-fifty miles above the Earth. That is before it became kitsch. Someone got permission to film a movie there, and thus the first publicly distributed pornographic film in space was produced. In my lifetime, the ship’s visitors shifted from celebrities and ambitious CEOs to basically anybody with a Radio Shack premium membership. As such, graffiti found its way on the ship’s hull. Layers of paint caked the alien surface until it could be mistaken for a street alley on Earth. All in all, it resembled a floating trash pile over any sort of sterile space station.

And that’s unfortunately how it looked when the ship builders arrived.

When the second ship dropped into the same orbit as the Harbinger, we didn’t even recognize it as familiar. It had been fifty years since the Harbinger, now more commonly known as the Heap, had looked so smooth and so foreign. The Heap had an international flair, for sure, but nothing like this. This was alien. We had only realized the connection when our hopes were immediately dashed. This ship wasn’t empty.

Never had we prior, but now instantly we could see the Harbinger through an alien’s perspective. They’d arrived to find their fellow ship busted open—void of crew and contents—obscenely decorated to warn anyone who might venture to Earth. Some wisecrack posted a supercut of an ancient television show, purporting it was a message from the aliens. “Lucy, you’ve got some ‘splaining to do!” Explanation, we did not have. When previously we had pressed to communicate, now we remained silent.

The alien spacecraft landed in the middle of Guangzhou Baiyun International Airport shortly after entering Earth’s atmosphere. From above, perhaps the busiest airport seemed the most suitable location for their arrival. Or, perhaps the most disruptive. Within days, the finest linguists, biological scientists, and ambassadors of a hundred nations had filed into airport to greet the newcomers who had yet to show their faces—if they had any.

The first meeting was broadcast with the same disclaimer ticker underneath. This time the warnings of violence seemed much more promising, and I was much less excited for them. The silvery ship glistened without any help of the sun, and a portion of the ship’s hull turned a pinkish hue as seven beings passed through it and floated serenely to the ground. The shortest of the beings was possibly six-feet tall. The tallest, eight. They seemed mostly limbs. Their two arms were much longer than our two, proportionally. Shoulders, torso, waist were minimal. Their skin was somewhat peach colored but with a disturbing yellow-green undertone. We found out later it wasn’t their skin at all but rather full-body suits that allowed them to breathe our atmosphere and interact more successfully with us. It didn’t seem as if their long slender necks should be able to support their large heads which were most strange. No mouth. No nose. What appeared to be a mask covered the top half of their head—which had some sort of flat tusk—and where their eyes would be had many small holes which made them appear insect-like.

If the lack of mouth was not obvious, it quickly became clear they did not have anything similar to our vocal cords. They could not mimic our language. We could not perceive theirs. However, they had limbs and fingers—not necessarily hands—and soon there were at least some general gestures which were understood. Pointing was one of them. One particularly insightful nation—it wasn’t us—brought small-scale models of the ships and of our solar system (made of Styrofoam no less). The chosen three human communicators pointed to the Earth miniature, then to themselves and gestured to the planet they lived upon. They spun one of the ships around Earth and pointed to the one behind the aliens. The aliens examined the offered props closely. One of the alien beings seemed to gesture that the sub-fins on the model were not exactly the same as the ones on their ship.

Eventually, it seemed the aliens understood. They took the second model ship, spun it around Earth like the humans did, then pointed to the western sky, where presumedly the larger scale counterpart orbited as it had done for half of a century. They wanted to know about the Heap. The human communicators were delighted to be making progress. With the model returned to them, they opened it along its seams, showed there was nothing inside, and shrugged. They pointed to the alien beings and shrugged again. The aliens collectively took one step back. I wondered whether they were upset their ship arrived without their comrades, upset at or all, or if they thought we had split the ship apart, and likewise, its crew—possibly to see what was inside.

More pointing. Fervent pointing. There were no facial expressions to read. There were hardly faces. There was no such thing as a universal language. I could see our human ambassadors were largely ignoring the motions and gestures of the visitors, determined that the aliens understand them and that we had meant no harm when we blew up their ship and left it to float around our planet like a carcass. Intense animation from both sides came to a head, before breaking down entirely. One of the aliens tore open the Earth model, and all seven of them raised their arms in their best imitation of the human-shoulder shrug.

The Heap arrived with some of its larger human augments missing, zipping along a new trajectory. In the commotion, the aliens disappeared back into their sleek ship. For good measure, the committee-controlled military was able to fire a few shots as the ship took off alongside the Heap, sending everyone on the ground fleeing for their lives. Reports started in. The ships initiated an orbit along the equatorial line, and some thought they might actually split the Earth in two when the assault began. The ships had powerful weapons, but still minor compared to the planet they attacked. The splitting of Earth was, of course, absurd. The humans were on the surface of the planet, not within.

~

Bio:

Movie re-watcher, board game enthusiast, and beer buff, R. M. Hamrick lives in central Florida, USA where alligators and flesh-eating bacteria roam freely. Her published works include the zombie-filled Chasing series and the wacky space opera series, Atalan Adventures. Follow her at Patreon.com/rmhamrick.

Philosophy Note:

“Harbinger” and its alternate future is centered around the arrival of a harmless derelict, what we might make of it, and in the end, what that might make of us. It’s inspired by the quiet ship with more questions than answers in Arthur C. Clarke’s Rendezvous with Rama and the young narration of skyful wonders in China Miéville’s Polynia.

You might be interested in

Charlie v. Inman

Could an extraterrestrial attain legal personhood under current human laws? By Mary G. Thompson.

The Problem Child

How many great minds has humankind lost to the lure of comfortable middle-class life? By Richard Lau.

Barbarians At The Gates: A Parable Of Dueling Philosophies

by Geoffrey Hart

“Much of the social history of the Western world over the past three decades has involved replacing what worked with what sounded good.”

Thomas Sowell

History is not a precise science. It deals in many unquantifiables, and documentation is often scant or contradictory. The collapse of Western civilization in the late 20th century or early 21st century (records have been lost and start dates are unclear), a pivotal moment in human history, is a textbook example of how such knowledge is profoundly contextual, and how myth often overtakes fact through the passage of the years and loss of context. Historians therefore disagree over precisely when the loose collection of tribes known to history as Economists, or by their pejorative nickname, the Quants, first invaded the peaceful western lands that resulted from that tumultuous period known, for reasons that elude scholars, as the Great Brexit. There is nonetheless broad agreement that this world-changing event occurred in several phases as different tribes of barbarians swept across the broad plains inhabited by the Brexitans like a hurricane of conflicting ideologies.

Those historians who cling to the discredited doctrine of environmental determinism propose that the Quants were driven from their former lands by a warming climate, a theory that is justifiably scorned by modern theorists. Social historians point out, as did leading philosophers of the era, the lack of evidence for such a driving force, though perhaps that evidence is concealed beneath the waters that consumed the coasts of eastern North America and Eurasia. Instead, they propose the Quants were driven from their native societies by a relentless accumulation of social pressures created by their endless bickering, which led to vigorous intellectual debate and a proportionally high body count. So the Quants fled, bringing their logical positivist philosophy into direct conflict with the more sensible Brexitan theology that recommended peaceful coexistence and cooperation, with occasional forays into coopetition with their frenemy states. This clash of cultures inevitably created conflict between the Brexitans’ blind faith in their Pax Brexitannica and the Quants’ blind faith in their mathematics.

Whatever the merits of each proposed explanation of the serial invasions, the sequence of historical events and their consequences are reasonably clear. First came the Hayeks, emerging from the dark woods of their blackly forested eastern homeland. They came singing, at great length, of dwarves and golden rings, their male warriors accompanied by burly blond shieldmaidens who fought every bit as fiercely as their men. Each invader bore two throwing axes, which doubled as debating tools and tools for felling trees to construct the temporary camps they built to protect their goods while they ravaged the countryside. Historians believe that these camps acquired their name (laagers) from the prodigious kegs of pale amber beer that fueled the invaders’ aggression, but which slowed the invasion whenever they were forced to pause their assault to brew more because supplies had run low. Their taste in beer appalled the gentle Brexitans, whose phlegmatic nature was undoubtedly encouraged by their languorous parliamentary debates in a chamber hung with red tapes and the many mellow wines they preferred to sip while debating.

The Brexitans, who were a sedentary agricultural people, had never met axe-wielding barbarians before, and being unprepared for such vigorous debate, were quickly overwhelmed, their hastily repurposed agricultural implements having proven singularly ineffective debating tools. Waves of refugees fled westward to escape the onslaught—and ran straight into the second wave of barbarians.

The second wave originated around the same time the Hayeks began to establish their new home, when the Keynesians invaded from the west, arriving at the storied shores of the Brexitan lands on overpriced, yet technologically impressive, landing craft that bore nimble swordsmen on horseback. Upon clearing the beaches of defenders, the horsemen immediately began raids with the goal of freeing the Brexitan markets. By capturing goods and departing before the villagers could respond to their lightning-quick raids, they liberated the Brexitan–Hayek society from the burden of production by selling these goods back to the original owners at a handsome profit. Although this stimulation of demand seemed (paradoxically) to have improved the economic lot of the Brexitan­–Hayek culture, the barbarians were broadly resented, not least for their insistence on drinking a weak beer the Brexitans disdained and the Hayeks openly mocked. This led to spirited debate wherever the two tribes came into contact, swords and axes both reaping a red harvest. (Here, we use red in the sense of bloody, rather than in the traditional historical sense of unrepentant socialism, whose waves had crashed upon the Brexitans and receded several generations earlier.)

The third and most intimidating of the tribes were the Friedmans, who were clad in powerful and impenetrable logic that turned aside the staves of the Westerners, the axes of the Hayeks, and the swords of the Keynesians with equal ease. They rebuffed those futile prods with crushing swings of rhetorical bludgeons mounted on long staves that kept them at a safe distance from the commoners they preferred to oppose, while still delivering crushing logical blows to the slow witted or unwary. The origins of this tribe are unknown; based on what little evidence has been gathered, they appear to have sprung into existence, sui generis, in a storied western city, Chicago, famed for its winds, which may have inspired the blustery Keynesians.

Though the Brexitan­–Hayeks were a peaceful society, they were hardly defenseless. In addition to their doughty peasants, who had belatedly learned to wield their staves and pitchforks and rakes and hoes with surprising effectiveness when suitably provoked, the Brexitans had a secret force of elite warriors they could call upon in times of crisis. These elite warriors, the Empiricists (or Emps for short), spent years mastering the skills of logic and the scientific method, and worked in cloistered monasteries known as laboratories, where they were instantly recognizable by their knee-length white coats. These coats had been carefully designed to shield them from fire, caustic chemicals, and even small explosions, and had proven effective in countless skirmishes and occasional pitched battles between laboratories with different prevailing central dogmas. Where these warriors were available in sufficient numbers, their ruthless application of empirical logic drove the Quants to their knees; many ran in terror before the Emps could close to within rhetorical range. But there were never enough Emps, and the Quant tribes easily circumnavigated the Emp forces and defeated them by cutting their supply lines. Without funding to support their forays into the field, the Emps were forced to retreat to their laboratories and conserve their resources against future need.

A fourth tribe of Quants, known as the Ecologists, had settled among the Brexitans shortly before the invasions by the more aggressively rhetorical barbarians. Etymologically, they were related to the Quants through the shared phoneme “eco”. The meaning of this term is lost to history. Some believe it translates as “dealing with numbers”; others suggest it to be an obscure Indo-Turkic word for troublesome nomads. Little credence is given to the theory that it related to cultivation of diverse gardens, as no archeological evidence has been evinced to prove these gardens ever existed. Unlike the fiercer Quants who came later, the Ecologists understood the importance of coexistence and diversity, which was no doubt why they fit in so well in the lands of the Brexitans. Unfortunately, they had embraced a life of quiet contemplation of nature, and were no match for their more vigorous relatives in the heat of battlefield debate.

Had there been enough advance warning, the Brexitans could have relied upon their elite hereditary warriors, the Dawkinses. The founder of this quasi-mystical order, motivated by a seemingly unquenchable desire to selflessly spread his genes, had briefly run amok among the Brexitan women and inseminated more of them than any historical figure had achieved, even the legendary Genghis Khan. Some historians estimate, based on recent genetic evidence, that nearly 10% of all modern Brexitans bear genes from this lineage. Irrespective of their founder’s amatory exploits, these soldiers were masters of the secrets of the heart, and used them to seduce their enemies into breeding with them. Over time, they would defeat their foes by, quite literally, becoming their foes and agreeing not to fight among themselves. (Making babies, referred to as “the continuation of diplomacy by other means”, was more fun in any event.) But growing babies into warriors took more than a decade, there were few pure-blood Dawkinses remaining, and the Brexitans’ time was short.

So it was that the Brexitans came up with a desperate strategy: they would give all their money to the Friedmans, in the hope that descendants of the other two tribes would turn on them. (Even if that didn’t happen, they rationalized, it would be good for the economy.) History had shown that epic battles among the three Quantic tribes tended towards the Hobbesian; that is, they were nasty, brutish, and short, even by the bloodthirsty standards of historians. The hope of the Brexitan government was that their troops, no longer outnumbered, would be able to move in once the dust settled and mop up the few surviving Quants, thereby restoring peace to their lands.

Sadly, their bold plan failed, as the Friedmans, who represented an estimated 1% of the total population of Quants, took the money and withdrew overseas to a mythical haven in the far west, known to students of mythology as the Cayman Islands, or by their shorter colloquial name, famed in song and story: Avalon. Though this greatly reduced the military pressure being exerted on the Brexitans, the remaining Quant forces were still too powerful for them to meet in open battle.

All seemed lost, until a new group of nomads entered the picture. They were known as Neocons, a word believed to comprise a portmanteau combination of the words neophyte (meaning naïve and inexperienced) and con (meaning an attempt to deceive). They were champions of liberty, though not to be confused with the Rands, who in turn are not to be confused with the randy Dawkinses. (You can see how ancient English makes life difficult for the intrepid historian, as there are many subtle linguistic traps into which the unwary may fall!) Neocons viewed any interference from governments as sacrilegious. Led by their general, the infamously subtle Ponzi, their scheme made short work of the other Quants, and became the de facto government of the Brexitan territories.

Historians, being historians, have drawn many lessons from the events of this turbulent period, and disagree bitterly over which lesson is most defensible. Some believe that those who don’t learn the lessons of history are doomed to be conquered by Economists. Dawkinsesians are too busy spreading their seed to be bothered much with history, which some take as a different lesson: that if you screw around too much with the economy, it will only end well for those doing the screwing. Neocon historians believe that no nation can long endure without a powerful and aggressive military. And Ecologists grumble that if only governments listened to them, utopia would lie within our grasp. But nobody listens much to them, which is probably a good thing.

The truth of this matter may never be discerned, for such is the curse of history: that so much of what we know must be inferred from scant evidence. Yet the true lesson, I feel, is this: that barbarians come and go, some fleeing with the family silverware and others teaching us how to get along with the real business of life, which is finding a way to enjoy life and someone to enjoy it with. Success in life, as in government, depends on knowing which type of barbarian one is dealing with.

~

Bio:

Geoff Hart works as a scientific editor, specializing in helping scientists who have English as their second language publish their research. He also writes fiction in his spare time, and has sold 49 stories thus far. Visit him online at geoff-hart.com.

Philosophy Note:

I’ve always been fascinated by how real historical events are transformed into myths and legends that retain only a superficial resemblance to the truth. The aspects that are retained tell us much about what cultures found sufficiently important to preserve. This story may have been triggered by reading The Mongoliad and musing about mass population movements and “the continuation of economics by other means”.

You might be interested in

Untitled

This self-defeating excerpt does not sum up a story of paradoxes, by Jeff Currier.

The Problem Child

How many great minds has humankind lost to the lure of comfortable middle-class life? By Richard Lau.

1 … 5 6 7 8 9 … 19