Scientific Speculation And An Artistic Convention

In Is There Life On Other Worlds?, Poul Anderson speculates about the emergence of life and intelligence. Neither is inevitable. However, when life has become firmly established on a planetary surface, it moves in every possible direction. Thus, whereas overspecialized species become extinct when climatic change destroys their ecological niche, more active, alert and adaptable animals can change their behavior in response to environmental alterations and thus have a chance not only to learn the use of fire and tools but also to become linguistic and intelligent. Suppose this had happened to one or more other species? In Anderson's "In Memoriam," after the extinction of humanity, some rats approach intelligence and some octopodidae achieve it.

A proto-dog that became intelligent would not wind up looking like a cartoon talking dog, standing upright with recognizable hands instead of paws on its forelimbs, wearing jacket, shirt, tie etc, smoking cigarettes, playing snooker, speaking in a Bronx accent etc! Nevertheless, this artistic convention suggests not only an alternative history but also an entire alternative evolution.

Despite Poul Anderson's comprehensive coverage of history and the universe, I sometimes speculate about themes that he did not address. The nineteenth century French illustrator, JJ Grandville, drew clothed anthropomorphic animals satirizing French society. Bryan Talbot has written and drawn a series of graphic fictions/comic strips set in a Grandville timeline where human beings have evolved but are socially inferior to lions, badgers, dogs etc. Imagine if Anderson had tackled this idea in a novel.

A Slow Boat To Alpha Centauri

In Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Poul Anderson imagines a ship or fleet "...bound for Alpha Centauri at one-tenth light speed..." (p. 170):

the journey will take more than forty three years;
families will embark but only the children and grandchildren will arrive;
the self-supporting ships will recycle all organic matter and grow tanked plants or algae;
scientists exploring hostile Solar planets will have perfected these techniques;
after acceleration, the ships will be rotated to simulate gravity;
compatible, self-disciplined crews will have interesting work, libraries, theaters, gyms, gardens and emotion-regulating drugs.

"Some writers have suggested that voyages will be undertaken that last many generations. This is possible, I suppose, but does not look very probable." (p. 172).

But it is how we imagine science fiction "generation ships," i. e., slower than light multi-generation interstellar spaceships:

in Robert Heinlein's generation ship story, part of his Future History, the crew mutinies, destroying organized society within the ship;
in Poul Anderson's generation ship story, part of his Psychotechnic History, psychotechnicians manage ship society, containing conflicts and preventing an ultimately destructive mutiny;
in Clifford Simak's generation ship story, social engineering keeps the crew in line by inculcating religious fervor, e.g., for holy pictures of a House, a Tree and the Wind That You Cannot See But Know Is There.

These three stories form a conceptual sequence in which Heinlein adumbrates a problem to which both Anderson and Simak then respond.

Subjovians And Superterrestrials

The subjovian planets, Uranus and Neptune, are intermediate in mass between jovians and hypothetical superterrestrials. Not large enough to retain jovian quantities of hydrogen or helium, they instead have stone and metal cores, atmospheric methane and probably also solid ammonia. If such a planet received more solar heat, either in a closer orbit or from a hotter sun, then it would lose even more hydrogen and helium, retaining an atmosphere of hydrogen, methane, ammonia and inert gasses.

Poul Anderson argues in Is there Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963) that on such a planet, i.e., a hot subjovian, organic compounds should form and become more complex although the remaining excess of hydrogen would prevent the formation of any cellular chlorophyll plus which, if any oxygen were released, then it would combine with the hydrogen to form water, thus circumventing an Earth-like plant-animal system - although not necessarily preventing the evolution of other kinds of complex organisms. In fact, Anderson argues later in the book that hydrogen-breathers are possible and even probable.

It is important to read this passage carefully because its conclusion:

"...subjovians at reasonably high temperatures seem very likely to be inhabited..." (p. 87)

- refers not, as I initially thought, to Uranus or Neptune, but instead to hypothetical hotter subjovians in other planetary systems.

A superterrestrial:

would have higher gravity, therefore a thicker atmosphere with a stronger greenhouse effect;
thus, would be like Venus if near its sun but cooler further out;
should in the latter case have photosynthesis and an oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere but with more concentrated pre-biological matter leading to faster evolution, also air that would both burn and poison human beings;
but, if smaller, might have habitable mountaintops, like Anderson's Rustum or Niven's Plateau.

(A week away with only one Anderson book means not less blogging but more blogging about a single text. However, this one nonfiction work contains a lot of concentrated information.)

With my granddaughter, who is of Jewish descent through her father, I have just watched Fiddler On The Roof which ends with Russian Jews about to embark for New York where Anderson's works were published...

Superjovian Planets

When Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963) was published, it was known that there were extra-Solar planets sixteen times as massive as Jupiter. The size of superjovians would vary from just sub-stellar to just super-Jovian.

Superjovians that had formed either before or outside of metal-rich galactic regions would be solid hydrogen with enormous hydrogen-helium atmospheres. If superjovians, like the large Solar planets, rotate fast, then they are flattened at the poles. Although massive, they might be no bigger than Uranus because gravity should compress their cores, reducing even the size of their atoms. They can be closer to their suns than Jupiter because, if the latter were too close, then Solar heat would boil away its hydrogen.

Hydrogen and helium would fatally dilute any prebiological compounds, like methane or ammonia, in a superjovian atmosphere. However, multiple star systems can contain superjovians whose moons could be big enough to be terrestroid. Thus, although terrestroid planets are unlikely either to form or to retain stable orbits in a multiple system, terrestroid moons might, and since:

"Probably more than half the stars are double or triple..." (p. 86)

Anderson argues that this capacity of superjovians to support terrrestroid moons in multiple star systems significantly increases the likelihood of life. I had known that terrestroid planets were unlikely to form or to survive in multiple systems but not that terrestroid moons could do so. Thus, this fact, highlighted by Anderson, is indeed significant.

Further, Hal Clement suggests fictionally in Mission Of Gravity that oil- or fat-based life might exist in liquid methane on superjovians. 

Two Influences Of Christianity?

In different works, Poul Anderson suggests two possible influences of Christianity on science. First, in Is There Life On Other Worlds?, he suggests that the close reasoning applied to supernatural entities in theology was later re-applied to natural processes and technology because simultaneous social developments made that re-application possible. If so, then the simultaneity of theological disputes and technological developments was coincidental.

Secondly, he suggests, in "Delenda Est," that the belief that a single deity had created an ordered cosmos encouraged the scientific search for cosmic order. If so, then I suggest that the idea of such a creator can now be regarded as a discarded scientific theory. Organisms look as if they have been designed to survive and to procreate but natural selection is an alternative explanation. The Solar System has been compared to a clockwork mechanism which, of course, would have had to be designed. However, the laws of motion account for planetary orbits with reference to natural forces operating independently of consciousness. Scientific cosmogony describes gravitational and nuclear forces transforming the simplest of the elements into complicated galaxies of stars and planets.

There is more to a religious tradition than a discarded scientific theory. However, I argue that, if any meaning or value is to be found in such traditions, then it has to be differentiated from their earlier role in explaining cosmic origins. That latter task is now performed by scientists discovering pre-conscious forces and processes. Creation stories are valuable myths and we are now the heirs of all the traditions: Torah, Veda, Edda, Koran (YHWH, Indra, Odin, Allah) etc.

Historical Accidents

I had read Poul Anderson's condensed account, in Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), of the origin of science but had not retained many of its details. Summarizing the account for the previous post helped to focus those details and they were surprising. Anderson suggests that:

if the Greeks had not had slaves, then they might have had science;
if Western Europeans had not had dogmatic Christianity, then we might not have had science.

There is an obvious link between possessing slaves and not wanting machines, therefore not addressing the engineering problems that can generate pure research, but there is no obvious connection between reasoning about doctrinal disagreements and reasoning about the physical world - except, of course, for the process of reason itself. This abstract process would not have been applied beyond theology without the simultaneous development of practical technology and of a new economic class investing in that technology. It was accidental that these divergent social forces developed simultaneously.

Those are the most noticeable historical accidents but there are others. Thus:

if the Roman Empire had not left a technological legacy or if the Germanic tribes had not valued work and trade and therefore had been unable to build on that legacy, then we might not have had science;

different experiments with the cathode-ray tube of the 1870's could have led to radar in 1900, thus accelerating progress in electronics, chemistry and nuclear physics;

a particle theory of light proposed in the seventeenth century might have led to quantum mechanics;

radioactivity was discovered accidentally;

"human" sciences might have become more precise if the physical sciences had not;

Newton and his immediate successors might have developed relativity if not for the structure of Indo-European languages.

We may add that "Arabic" numerals and the indispensible mathematical zero came to Europe via the Arabs from India. How did Roman engineers design aqueducts with their numerals? They managed somehow but science needed a better mathematics than theirs.

As often happens when summarizing Anderson, this list of historical accidents has turned out to be much longer than I expected when I started to write it.

The Birth Of Science

Agriculture, invented in desperation and by trial and error when wildlife dwindled, fed more people and initiated civilization which, however, remained vulnerable to barbarian invasions. After initial technological progress, writing generated a conservative priesthood committed to social stasis. Much later, scientific knowledge liberated society from the limitations of water-, wind-, fire- and muscle-power but, Poul Anderson argues in Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), science was not inevitable.

Scientific knowledge is not mere facts but organized facts about the physical universe although this might still be insufficient: the Babylonians' mathematically organized facts about stars and planets amounted to astrology. Isolated observations need to be linked by a theory that suggests new observations. Thus, science can be described as:

"...a body of more or less organized fact and theory together with a process of discovery involving hypothetical explanations whose deductive consequences are checked against observed data and that are discarded when they don't work." (p. 146)

- whereas conservative priesthoods maintain traditional practices whether they work or not!

Alleged precursors of modern scientists were:

the earliest observers of natural phenomena;
Egyptian surveyors;
Babylonian astrologers;
Greek philosophers;
Roman engineers;
medieval alchemists.

More generally:

observation;
cataloguing;
accidental discovery;
practical techniques;
improvement of techniques.

These constitute accumulated knowledge, necessary but insufficient for science - incapable of generating, e. g., electromagnetic theory or electronics. Scientific method originated historically recently in Europe and spread from there so how did it start? Medieval Arabs had inherited Greek and Hindu knowledge, then innovated in optics, astronomy, chemistry and medicine but stopped short of a scientific revolution.

Proto-scientific imports to Europe included the indispensable mathematical zero and alchemical laboratory techniques. The Greeks had:

a prototype steam turbine;
Archimedean appreciation of mathematics and machinery;
some automata;
water wheels;
hypotheses about atoms and material substances;
mathematics;
astronomy;
physics;
taxonomy;
biology;
sociology;
Galenic medicine.

Thus, they had logic, theory, data and techniques but never combined these into science because, apart from deficiencies like no lenses or printing, manual labour, even when highly skilled, was the province of slaves, not of intellectuals, who sought only pure, abstract, rational, impractical, non-empirical knowledge. (Plato has a lot to answer for.) Slave owners did not need machines and did not address engineering problems which, later, instigated pure research, e. g., in thermodynamics.

Social attitudes matter. Later Europeans, unlike earlier Greeks or contemporary Byzantines, valued mechanics. Anderson suggests that the Dark Ages technological advances (horse collar, horse shoe, mold-board plough and deep-water ship) occurred because Germanic barbarians, disdaining neither work nor trade, had to cope with the technologies, problems and labour shortage of the declining Roman Empire.

Medieval architecture and trade required precise knowledge, for example navigators needed astronomy, and the universities adapted Classical philosophy. By the Renaissance, there were:

gunpowder;
clocks;
magnetic compasses;
clear glass;
water mills;
speculation about practicalities, not about ideals;
opposition to blind acceptance of authority;
mutual respect and even identity between philosophers and engineers.

Thus, scientific method began in the later Renaissance because of:

the long established respectability of trade and handicraft as against the ancient Classical attitude;
accumulated technology;
capitalist support for makers of discoveries;
one further factor -

"...a logical, analytic approach is just as necessary as an empirical one. The development of this thought pattern may perhaps be traced back to the scholars and theologians of the Middle Ages." (p. 153)

How come?

"The tolerant Classical world could let any number of different philosophies flourish, but Christendom required unanimity. This led to fierce competition between rival schools of thought, which in turn forced the development of sharp intellectual tools. The Judaeo-Christian tradition also discouraged the fuzzy subjectivism of Asia, insisting that the nature of the world is independent of man but discoverable by him." (pp. 153-154)

It is ironic if the intellectual tools applied to finding out about this world were developed in order to clarify religious doctrines and to differentiate them from heresies but Anderson's argument is precisely that science originated because of accidents that might have happened earlier, later or not at all.

The dismissive remark about Asia is a generalization. Uncompromising Zen meditation yields clear self-knowledge and understanding, not "...fuzzy subjectivism..." I think that we now need a synthesis incorporating scientific research, philosophical tolerance and Eastern meditation.

Shakespeare, Society And Science

In Poul Anderson's A Midsummer Tempest, Shakespeare was not a great dramatist but the Great Historian because Lear, Hamlet, Caesar, Macbeth, Oberon, Ariel etc really existed. (I know that Caesar and Macbeth really existed but I am here referring to the dramatic characters, not to the historical figures!)

In Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Anderson suggests that Shakespeare might "...have been a great pioneer in the science of man..." (p. 148) except that:

"...the success of physics and chemistry has smothered those 'human' sciences [psychology, sociology, anthropology, economics...], partly by attracting talent from them and partly by imposing false canons on them." (p. 147)

Further:

"...there is no obvious reason why the 'human' sciences...could not be highly developed on a world with a very backward physical science." (ibid.)

And:

"If the methods appropriate to the study of the atom are not well suited to the study of man (which seems plausible), then the physical-science orientation of the modern world has forced 'human' sciences into an unnatural imitative mold, and its disappointing results can be understood." (pp. 147-148)

I quote these passages in detail in order to contrast them with Anderson's Psychotechnic History and Planet Of No Return, in both of which a science of society, modeled on the physical sciences and complete with equations, is made to work so that experts are able to predict and manipulate social developments. As with AI and several other issues, Anderson yet again gives the impression of covering every alternative.

Indo-European Languages

In Is There life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Poul Anderson argues that the Indo-European linguistic structure of nouns, adjectives and verbs imposes an unreal distinction between things, qualities and actions:

"...as if 'heaviness' had some existence apart from the class of heavy objects." (p. 148)

Yes, Plato thought that reality comprised timeless Ideas: heaviness, largeness, goodness etc. An Idea was not an abstraction from many instances but the reality of which the instances were copies.

I used to think not that the properties were independent of the object but that the object had some reality independent of its properties, thus that it possessed them, not that it was them. However, when all the properties have been listed, there is nothing left over to comprise the object. We were taught that bread and wine miraculously became flesh and blood because the substance changed even though the "accidents", i. e., the sight, taste etc remained the same. But, again, a full list of its "accidents" comprises bread as against flesh or vice versa. This formulation was unnecessary. A ritual can be performed reciting the words of the Last Supper without trying to explain a miraculous transformation philosophically.

Indo-European language speakers thought that, if a scientific theory implies an action, then it also implies an acting substance or thing. Thus, electromagnetic undulations, describable by wave mechanics, must be undulations of an omnipresent ether and it became difficult to see how this "ether" differed from the space that it was believed to fill. However, space and time were considered substantial only because "space" and "time" are nouns, furthermore distinct nouns. If Newton and his immediate successors had been able to realize instead that space-time is a single set of relationships or interactions, then they might have been able to formulate relativity, thus possibly initiating an earlier development of non-Euclidean geometry, quantum mechanics and atomic energy.

Anderson points out that the Chinese developed civilization but not science and that Oriental scientists usually write in a European language because, despite their imperfections, these languages do reflect enough of the cosmic structure to allow for scientific thinking. What I am not clear about is: what is the structure of non-Indo-European languages? Do they not have nouns, adjectives or verbs?

The Moon And Mercury

(See Addendum.)

 In Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Poul Anderson summarizes data about the Moon:

weak gravity so no atmosphere or water vapor on the surface;
temperature varying from over 200 F to below -250 F;
no protection from Solar ultraviolet or charged particles;
however, large areas insulated by dust have underground temperatures of 30 F to -95 F;
irradiated dust in vacuum congeals into material that could hold organic matter;
low gravity plus probable absence of a core could mean protected caverns and tunnels;
organisms could have originated during the 10 or 100 million years before the Moon lost its air and surface water;
other organic matter could have arrived during the meteoric bombardment, even including Terrestrial organisms;
subsurface ice could become liquid or vapor during the Lunar day;
some organisms could have adapted as the atmosphere was lost and might also use the organic matter left by those that had died.

Scientists speculate at most about microscopic organisms but Anderson imagines:

cactus-like plants;
one symbiont growing a membrane to screen against ultraviolet and retain water;
others using Solar energy to metabolize minerals;
buried nodules manufacturing enzymes to repair radiation damage;
worms or beetles distributing seeds in return for nourishment;
all, when dying, providing matter to the underground ecology.

The Wellsian Moon seems to return if only in Anderson's imaginative projections from current data. He speculates similarly about life in caverns on Mercury, then also hypothesizes very hot liquids as lubricants as in his short story, "Life Cycle", set on Mercury.

Addendum: I try to summarize Poul Anderson's intricate arguments comprehensively and accurately but this time missed a point:

"...because there is no atmosphere and hence no convection, anything that casts a shadow is a barrier to light and radiation. The many Lunar crevasses and caves are never subjected to the Sun's attack." (p. 63)

Thus, in addition to congealed surface dust plus underground caverns and tunnels, all of which I did list, we are to imagine cactus-, worm- and beetle-like organisms in shadows and caves on the surface. (Although I think that the Apollo astronauts would have seen some of them.)

Mars

I was surprised when Larry Niven's Known Space future history included humanoid Martians. They live under the dust and water destroys them - so they use wells for burial, or for their equivalent of cremation. A protector exterminates the Martians in the Solar System by diverting an ice asteroid onto a collision course with Mars but they survive on the Map of Mars in the Great Ocean on the Ringworld.

Poul Anderson summarizes information about Mars in Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963):

most of the surface is red-yellow desert broken by bleak scarps and ranges and meteoric craters;
the very thin atmosphere comprises nitrogen, argon, too much carbon dioxide and no oxygen;
the surface is extremely cold, receiving 43% of the radiation of Earth, although this would suffice for vision and photosynthesis;
maybe a few Terrestrial plants could live and grow there;
the polar caps seem to be water;
as on the Moon, there could be ice underground;
dark areas and "canals" change color, as if with vegetation, when the ice caps melt;
Martian plants might split oxygen from iron oxides;
plants could mean animals, even large and intelligent ones.

Suddenly, Anderson's section on Mars ends by reopening the question whether there might be intelligent Martians. However, fifty years later, no such beings have been detected so I think that their existence remains very unlikely.  

Miscellaneous

In Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), we learn that the galaxy is surrounded by an ellipsoidal halo of thinly spread faint stars and gas, fifty times the galactic volume, so let's have some sf stories set in that region.

"What will extra-Terrestrial intelligent life look like? Will it be so fantastically alien that we could not even recognize it as such, or will it be strictly human? The most reasonable answer lies between these extremes." (p. 118)

I have yet to read "The Green Thumb" in Anderson's Psychotechnic History but I deduce from references in other works that it is set on the colonized planet Nerthus where this problem, early failure to recognize the natives, occurs.

"Heavy gravities would seem to favor beings that are short and broad, often with more than one pair of legs." (ibid.)

Anderson's hydrogen-breathing Ymirites who colonize Jupiter do not walk on the Jovian surface but fly through the atmosphere. Joe, the artificial intelligent being designed to live on Jupiter in a non-series story, is a quadruped, as maybe were the Jovians in Three Worlds To Conquer? (I do not have the book to hand for reference.) The hydrogen-breathing Baburites, inhabitants of a sub-Jovian planet, resemble giant centipedes.

Brains evolve because they have survival value in particular conditions:

"This rules out intelligent plant life. Fixed in place, a tree or bush would gain nothing, either of protection or of food-finding ability, if it could think...we can take it for granted that all thinking beings are...motile animals..." (ibid.)

Stanley Weinbaum, an sf writer who specialized in devising exotic life forms, described hyper-intelligent Martian plants that could reason out the structure of the universe but were unconcerned that they were being killed by Martian animals. So how did they develop any intelligence in the first place?

"If the atmosphere is no denser than Earth's, a winged thinker is implausible." (p. 123)

But Anderson, helped by Campbell, found a way to devise winged thinkers on the terrestroid planet, Ythri. A different set of planetary conditions gave him the winged Diomedeans with their "...bat-like wings..." (ibid.)

Anderson discusses hexapods becoming centaurs - forelimbs freed for manipulation -, which happens in some of his works, and also middle limbs becoming arms, forelimbs becoming wings, which did happen in one of his short stories. 

The Appearance Of Intelligence

Philosophically, I agree with this statement by Poul Anderson in Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Chapter 6, The Appearance of Intelligence:

"We cannot say flatly that [intelligent] life must exist. There is no scientific evidence that nature strives toward the goal of consciousness, or indeed toward any goal. On the contrary, the fossil record speaks strongly against such beliefs." (p. 112)

Anderson goes on to argue that, if evolution is interpreted anthropomorphically, then it consists of false starts and repeated mistakes, like overspecialization. In fact, even mankind has design flaws. Nevertheless, he reaches the conclusion that:

"Not only is life common throughout the universe, but intelligence is." (p. 118)

I had to reread pp. 112-118 carefully to follow his reasoning. Natural selection produces not only efficient microbes and insects but also organisms with:

"...increasingly better sense organs and more elaborate nervous systems." (p. 114)

Meanwhile, any ecology will sooner or later produce:

"...niches which animals with a good brain can fill." (p. 115)

Such animals, not over-specialized, are alert and adaptable enough to survive "...under many different conditions." (ibid.) Their behaviour becomes learned instead of merely inherited when chance events like climatic changes or geographical displacements prioritize brains.

Mammals, including African apes, flourished twenty five million years ago in the Miocene period on Earth. Natural selection will produce Miocene-equivalent periods elsewhere, then chance events will occur, by chance.

Anderson summarizes:

200 million years from trilobites to fish;
60 million from fish to animals;
24 million from ape to erect tool-user;
1 million more to modern man.

If whatever accidents caused the evolution of modern man had not happened in the last million years, other "...crucial events..." would be "...likely to occur..." in the next few million. (p. 117)

I agreed with Anderson's premise and was surprised by his conclusion but cannot fault his reasoning. I have learned by writing this summary.

STL Interstellar War?

"...there can be no question of war fought over interstellar distances."
- Poul Anderson, Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), p. 188.

Why not? Anderson's Technic Civilization History presents several excellent descriptions of battles between interstellar space fleets. ("Standby for hyperdrive! Standby for combat! Glory to the Emperor!")

The answer to "Why not?" is that in the concluding chapter of Is There Life On Other Worlds?, Anderson considers only Einsteinian spacecraft - either reaction drive or field drive, as explained in the Appendix which unfortunately includes equations. These are essential to this subject matter but also beyond my comprehension.

However, Larry Niven makes a start on describing slower than light interstellar warfare in Protector. The basic requirement is technologically powerful beings with indefinitely prolonged lifespans and mutually incompatible long term goals. Thus, protectors live until killed by acccident or violence and plan long term for the survival of their bloodlines but operate in a pre-hyperdrive, Bussard ramjets only period of Niven's future history.

Knowing that humanity is descended from Pak, human protectors can predict that more Pak protectors will come from galactic centre. The human protectors use telescopes not to study natural phenomena but to detect artificial radiation. When two spacecraft become mutually detectable at a distance, each must assume that the other is hostile and change course accordingly. In human space, more breeders must be transformed into protectors so that a fleet can be launched to intercept the approaching Pak. Such a conflict will last for millennia at least and unfortunately Niven has not described it for us yet. Protector ends with the human protectors setting out.

Another good fictional use of the ramjet idea would be to describe two round trips on the trade circuit. Thus, a ship leaves Earth, visits say four planets, returns to Earth, then repeats the procedure so that we see two stages of social change on four colony planets and three stages on Earth. Trade can be STL (see Anderson's Kith) and maybe war can also.  

An Ultimate Destiny?

The title of Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), means both, "Are there thinking beings with whom we might communicate?" and "Are there ecologies that we might colonize?"

These questions necessitate discussion of radio wavelengths, language, planetary formation, biology, means of propulsion and colonial societies. Anderson ends with an sf vision of extra-Solar colonies not "...plundering..." but "...mak[ing] sensible use of their resources..." (p. 187), founding further colonies and eventually meeting "The older and higher races..." (p. 189).

"...we will go on, century after outward-looking century, discovering who knows what, growing in knowledge and wisdom as we travel." (ibid.)

This stretches the meaning of the word "we" a bit. Probably, most people most of the time will be more aware of their familiar, taken for granted, environments than of any centuries-long growth in knowledge and wisdom. However, Anderson acknowledges this:

"Few people will ever go spaceward with more than the vaguest thought of an ultimate destiny. They will go because they are curious, prideful, desirous of freedom, eager to improve the lot of the next generation." (p. 189)

Maybe. But conditions will have to have got pretty bad at home if people come to hope for freedom and betterment light years away. And maybe something can be done to improve those conditions instead of leaving them behind?

Anderson concludes that, even for those who stay behind, "...our enterprise beyond the sky will keep alive that sense of bravery, wonder, and achievement without which man would hardly be himself." (ibid.)

Such an enterprise will help to do that but meanwhile and, I think, indefinitely there are also bravery, wonder and achievement on Earth and in the Solar System.

A Certain Hunger?

"Already today, when man has not yet set foot on the Moon, we look at the stars with a certain hunger. It is bound to grow once the Solar System has become familiar to us. Can it ever be appeased?"
- Poul Anderson, Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), p. 165.

Do we? How many people on Earth want either to cross interstellar distances or to be alive when others do? Many struggle for existence on Earth. Others hope for a fulfilled life here. For those who are interested in the exploration of the Solar System, it will be a very long time before it becomes familiar. Anderson wrote this book at a time when the US was racing to the Moon, although, as he says in Thermonuclear Warfare, this was more for the development of rocket and computer technology than for interplanetary exploration. But interplanetary exploration was part of the popular image of why they were doing it.

At the end of the preceding chapter, Anderson presents this rationale for interstellar travel:

"Machine civilization, irresistably powerful, spreads across Earth and devours all others...We see before us the specter of a planet-wide empire...as rigid as Pharaonic Egypt...the individual may have numerous liberties. But if there is nothing he can do with it, his freedom is empty. Already today we feel the first gnawings of that millennial hollowness. Yet we move on toward the empire, for our alternative is to renounce the machine.

"The newness that is our salvation may come from the stars." (p. 164)

Nothing he can do with it? We can life live to the full on Earth with some exploration of the Solar System even if the first interstellar travel is a long way in the future. Instead of renouncing technology, we can use it to make this world fitter for humanity.

I am for the exploration of the universe but do not see the interstellar question in such apocalyptic terms.

Connections With Fiction III

In Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963):

The Star Fox and Fire Time

(vii) A spaceship isolated from the inertia-generating cosmic gravitational field might accelerate indefinitely (p. 166).

This is the kind of hyperdrive used in what I call Anderson's Star Time diptych.

(viii) "...I suspect that [future Terrestrial society] will be poor, with great wealth reserved for the very few..." (p. 185)

This is the kind of global economy that Anderson envisages in Star Time and in some other futuristic sf works but why? Surely technology opens the possibilty of abundant wealth for all - as Anderson also acknowledges.

Miscellaneous

(ix) "I...imagine the long-run consequence of a hyper-drive as not one galactic civilization but widely scattered clusters of civilizations." (p. 168)

This is the brilliant setting of Anderson's After Doomsday and it is a pity that he did not write an entire series about it. At the end of that novel, dispossessed human beings have changed the balance of power in two neighbouring civilization clusters without, of course, affecting the rest of the galaxy in the slightest.

(x) Anderson hopes that human beings will never colonize an inhabited planet and exterminate its inhabitants (p. 177) but they do in his "Terminal Quest". He does not always present positive outcomes.

(xi) Anderson thinks that it is unlikely that rational species will differ greatly in intelligence (p. 139). However, in one of his short stories, human beings are more intelligent than the galactic average and, in another, they encounter a far more intelligent race.

(xii) Exogenesis (p. 184) is used for extra-Solar colonization in Orbit Unlimited and in Virgin Planet.

(xiii) "...the government itself might want to get rid of...misfits [to extra-Solar colonies]..." (p. 185)

This happens in Orbit Unlimited and in The Boat Of a Million Years.

(xiv) An Elder (older, wiser) Race (p. 135) is sought in the Technic History, is located at the galactic centre in For Love And Glory and is encountered in The Avatar. Humanity might become the Elder Race of a new universe in Tau Zero.

Connections With Fiction II

In Poul Anderson's Is There Life On Worlds? (New York, 1963):

The Technic Civilization History

(i) "It may be possible to make a very large number of small quantum jumps per second." (p. 166)
This is the kind of "hyperspace" used in the Technic History, thus it is not a fourth spatial dimension.

(ii) "[Interstellar] Commerce will deal mostly in luxuries and curiosa." (p. 168)
Hence, Nicholas van Rijn's Solar Spice & Liquors Company.

(iii) "...hydrogen and oxygen breathers can have little to trade with each other and perhaps little to say to each other once some scientific questions have been answered." (p. 168)
Thus, the Dispersal of Ymir (hydrogen breathers, colonizing Jovoid planets) occupies the same space as the Terran Empire and the Merseian Rhoidunate (oxygen breathers, colonizing terrestroid planets).

(iv) "Joint colonization is not unthinkable, and could lead to some extraordinarily interesting societies." (p. 188)
This one sentence makes me want to reread the two short stories and one novel set on the joint human-Ythrian colony planet Avalon. Anderson systematically presents colonization of the islands, colonization of the continent and resistance to Terran imperialism.

Tau Zero

(v) "Alternatively, the gas of space might be scooped up and used as fuel and ram jet reaction mass.This would permit...velocities very close indeed to c." (p. 198)
This is the Bussard ram jet, used in Tau Zero and in some other works of sf. In Tau Zero, the spaceship approaches c with spectacular results. Unfortunately, Anderson adds, "...I am not sure that it is really feasible." (ibid.)

(vi) "Interstellar navigation will be difficult." (p. 199)
Anderson mentions the Doppler effect, aberration and imprecise location of destination. In Tau Zero, the ship at near light speed must navigate in the dark between clusters of galaxies. New sciences must effectively be created for this purpose.

(To be continued.)

Interstellar Communication

On p. 161 of Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Poul Anderson cites the example of interstellar communication that I had cited here from Carl Sagan's Contact:

.    -  .  ._  ..
..   -  .. ._  ....
...  -  .. ._  .....

It should be obvious from the above that - means "plus" and that ._ means "equals".

Anderson continues:

.        1
..       2
...      3
....     4
.....    5
......   6
.......  7
........ 8

Even to anyone unfamiliar with Arabic numerals, it should be obvious that the symbols in the right hand column are the names of the numbers.

11 - 8 HO

Is it also obvious that:

11 means "two atoms of the first element (hydrogen)";
8  means "one atom of the eighth element (oxygen)";
-  means again "plus" or "added to";
HO means "one molecule of the compound (water)?

I find that third example less obvious but I am not a scientist interpreting a radio message from scientists in another planetary system.  

The Small Population Of An Extra-Solar Colony

Merely from the fact that an extra-Solar colony will have a very small population, Poul Anderson, in Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), is able to deduce several features of its society. In order to prevent genetic drift, there might be:

(i) teen-age marriage as the norm;
(ii) high social status for mothers of many children;
(iii) a family-centred culture;
(iv) strict exogamy, e. g., marriage of cousins forbidden;
(v) sexual permissiveness;
(vi) no stigma on illegitimacy;
(vii) encouragement of married women to have children with different men;
(viii) large clans instead of small families;
(ix) artificial insemination;
(x) exogenesis;
(xi) a legal requirement for each family or clan to adopt one exogene;
(xii) genetic manipulation.

Coupling (ii) with "...the desirabilty of independent pioneering outside the original settlement...", Anderson thinks that the family-centred culture (iii) might also be "...patriarchal..." (p. 184). Sexual permissiveness (v) is presented as an alternative to the patriarchal (iii). However, different approaches might be tried in various settlements or alternatively a colonial society might combine features that would have seemed incompatible to the Terrestrial ancestors.