SM Stirling, The Given Sacrifice (New York, 2014), Chapter Three, p. 56.
"Nobody had lived here even before the Change, and few had even passed through since the machines stopped." (Chapter Four, p. 77)
"The Machine Stops" is a title (see image and here) that evokes and addresses the issue of modern dependence on technology. As titles go, it is as succinct and basic as The Time Machine or "The Mightiest Machine."
SM Stirling writes "...the machines stopped..." at least twice. Auric Goldfinger told James Bond, "Once is happenstance. Twice is coincidence. The third time, it's enemy action." If Stirling writes this phrase a third time, does this establish a link between his use of this phrase and Forster's title?
6 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Your comments here reminded me of the uneasiness Dragoika the Tigery expressed when Dominic Flandry explained to her the methods used by the Terrans to analyze the orbiting path of that rogue planet we see in Chapter 17 of ENSIGN FLANDRY. She said: "Again dread stirred behind her eyes. "They can reach over time itself?" she whispered. "To the past and its ghosts? You dare too much, you vaz-Terran. One night the hidden powers will set free their anger on you." To which Flandry replied: "I often wonder if that may be so, Dragoika. But what can we do? Our course was set for us ages agone, before ever we left our home world, and there is no turning back."
The road leading to our machines of all kinds on which we are now so dependent began when the first primitive hominid chipped that first stone, and there is no turning back. Nor should we want to go back to that kind of poor, nsaty, and brutish kind of life before technology (to paraphrase Hobbes!). See Anderson's "The Little Monster" for a good idea of how our distant ancestors lived before any kind of technology was used.
Sean
Sean and Paul:
As Mack Reynolds portrayed Captain Kirk saying, in his *Star Trek* novel *Mission to Horatius*,
"Many mistakes are made on man's path of progress, but progress he must. That species that slows down and stops eventually dies."
Kaor, DAVID!
I absolutely agree with Mack Reynolds! And part of the Change in Stirling's Emberverse is this: how many advances in technology will truly be possible, given we could not use steam power, electricity, oil, nuclear power, explosives, etc.? How long could the human race survive if permanently forced to a roughly AD 1300 level of technology?
Sean
Oh, yes, I read that story long ago!
It's not a 1300 level of technology, though. In most respects, it's a late-19th or early 20th century level of technology.
The horse-drawn machines of farming in 1910 gave a level of productivity per man-hour of something like 100 times greater than those in 1300.
Likewise, in the biological sciences -knowing- what makes things happen and how gives you powers unimaginable in 1300; in control of disease, or surgery, or breeding crops and animals, for instance.
Dear Mr. Stirling,
I sit corrected, regarding how the civilized post-Change successor states were NOT at an AD 1300 level of technology. Such as the horse drawn farming machines invented in the 1850s. AND post Changes peoples who remained civilized still KNEW a lot more about biology and medicine than what was known in 1300.
All the same, this is still so LIMITED compared to pre-Change times. NO fast travel or communications, no high energy technology, no attempts at getting OFF this rock was possible, etc.
Sean
Post a Comment