From: avatar (avatar@renegadeclothing.com.au)
Date: Mon Feb 03 2003 - 17:13:42 MST
EATER
Entertaining enough and the characterization is at least adult, which is amazing, but the basic plot includes the usual B-grade elements and dumb assumptions. Set in about 2020, it features a stupid-yet-superintelligent magnetosphere/black hole intelligence. The scientists are dismissive of the ordinary folk (hydrogen and stupidity are the two most common elements in the universe), there is no expectation of immortality and no digital paper. Nearly everything Drexler writes about is ignored. The Singularity isn't mentioned. Humans are water-based dreaming vertebrates living in an inefficient medium and doomed to pass away. They only think intelligence is important because it's in them, like birds think flying is important. The gravity well means the largest being is not the most intelligent. Guess libraries and book collections don't count. I wish thinkers would occasionally check this line that every species dies soon, they would find that some have been around for almost as long as lang-based multicellular life itself. Intelligence is clearly an overall process and special, it just had to deal with a few asteroid strikes. Humans and the human brain and every planet with self-awareness are clearly central to the universe and not irrelevent. The Singularity is clearly a dividing line. In the novel the black hole creature is damaged by anti-matter bombs, which it has somehow missed while monitoring Earth television and communications. Everything in the novel is meant to be "realistic" science, except for aspects of the black hole behavior, and the black hole's internal exit to a white hole/or virtuality/or entrance to another universe (full of the usual vague halycon arcadian "castles"). The black hole has somehow stumbled across Earth from its radio or tv signals, despite these being weak and it not having the right type of receptors (explicitly stated) and its course being randomish. Gregory Benford is very honed up on astronomy but has not read just how weak tv signals are. Nor does he explain how in a galaxy 100,000 light years across the black hole just happens to pass by 70 years after tv started broadcasting regularly. The black hole doesn't travel faster than light. There are no other superintelligences, save perhaps one mysterious anomoly similar to the black hole which the Earth astronomers have noticed. Humans are like ants to the black hole, despite its having been originally constructed from an organic population. The novel features uploading with destructive uploading the best and notes a copy is not the original but fails to fully delve into the ramifications of neurons in sleep retaining their markers. [Cut and paste from extropianism and transhumanism: moderate.]
Destiny's Road
An entertaining book full of real design-of-the-social-world anomalies. It is 50% heavily influenced by Jerry Pournelle's brand of neo-fascist camping-shooting philosophy and 10% by Heinlein's streak of neo-fascist libertarian-anti-welfare view of relationships (as opposed to Heinlein's Stranger in a Strange Land streak). Characterization is low. Some low level nanotech is thrown in, no real life extension. Most of the tech is an extension of Niven's visions from the 70s. The novel has the virtue of at least coming down on the side of freedom of choice in the end. A colonization novel where someone forgot to freeze some sperm and ova. [Cut and paste from extropianism and transhumanism, very little.]
Revelation Space/Chasm City
Kind of entertaining if you like neo-fascist amoral stupid characters. The plot structure is ridiculous, with really dumb paranoid hypotheses flying around left right and centre, as though the author was thinking of them all on the fly. [Cut and paste from extropians and transhumanists: nearly everything, but he missed rotating tethers.] Seriously dumb anomolies in world designs, tries to throw in anything currently fashionable. Believes beings two or three centuries old can't clean their neural attics. Great lack of empathy for suffering which is frequently featured along with torture. There are some original smaller level thoughts every few chapters, and some strong images. Really two libertarian-neo-fascist-capitalist rants.
THE IMMORTALITY OPTION
Well, at least the tech is funny. A trad sf treatment of characterization. Moravec-derived tech which ignores most Drexlerian tech. It sneaks in a sort-of bush robot style body possibility without actuating it. Has destructive uploading. Very cute in its own way. Humanistic approach. Posits a non-monetary project-based alien society following its discovery of high-level automation.
I am in the process of reading APPLESEED, ANCIENT OF DAYS, BRIGHTNESS REEF, KILN PEOPLE, FOREVER FREE, DIASPORA, THE GOLDEN AGE, LOOK TO WINDWARD some of which appear more promising, particularly THE GOLDEN AGE.
Generic faults:
The nature of the market decrees that high-tech or post-Singularity sf is difficult. The Singularity itself and timeframes are often ignored. Often authors wish to fall back on Western Christian medieval feudal society as an "entertaining" model (you don't read about too many Forums or harems). Often authors desperately try to re-insert death and war and conflict to make the book "compelling". Tech is usually isolated in hierarchial islands to make the book "compelling" and simultaenously explain the Fermi paradox.
There is a lack of stable virtuality designs described from internal perspectives. There is a lack (though not universal) of multiple or complex personality interactions (e.g. characters that can talk to three people simultaneously). There is a lack of cultural diversity. There is a lack of understanding of the ability to self-modify a mind. For example, societies or characters rarely practise memory selection or periodic personality change. They rarely practise amalgamation or variants. Computronium brain perspectives or computronium virtualities are rarely described in detail, and are often portrayed as "flying through space is gorgeous" and "maths is so cool" and "[unspecified] universe topology design is so cool [which it may well be, but let's describe it]". Please let me read of a superintelligence who is into poetry and really good at it! Or even a superintelligence into gardening!
Personally, I see a plethora of "standard lines" and little real imagination. I would say ,uch of the time Zelazny or Farmer or Broderick [yes, I know he's still producing] had more imagination. Can't we have strange universes and cultures - where all the matter is assembled into giant linear accelerators throwing artifiical worlds around, or half your memory-personality is actually mechanically downloaded into sperm and ova, or whatever. Much has been done before, but not in detail.
Also the morality in most of these novels is hugely negative, full of non-consensual violence, neo-fascism, laissez-faire capitalism and libertarianism without repsonsibility.
Most are amazingly yankeecentric. Most are woefully ignorant of history and previous societies. They also seems to ignore the present world realities. Religions like Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam are often though not always ignored. This is of course driven by the English-language market for books.
There is a reluctance to deal with solving or ameliorating the issues of information limitation and frequency of birth. Because of all the stuff mentioned above (non-distributed tech/immortality, wars, a reluctance to venture more than a million years down the track from now etc.) these issues can be sidelined by sleight of hand.
Guess I'll just have to wait for the tranlation software to improve [although Wired claims good translation requires virtually full AI, I don't buy this] to read Pakistani sf.
Or maybe I've just missed the right novels? There's a thought!
This archive was generated by hypermail 2.1.5 : Mon Feb 03 2003 - 17:02:30 MST