Wednesday 4 October 2017

Happier Endings

At the end of Poul Anderson's Genesis, Christian and Laurinda are reunited as memories in Wayfarer, then in Alpha. I can imagine happier endings:

(i) Gaia retains them as emulations based in eighteenth century England, visiting other emulated Earths and advising Gaia.

(ii) Meanwhile, Wayfarer takes copies of Christian and Laurinda to Alpha. As in the Harvest Of Stars tetralogy, the nodes develop the technology to terraform other planets and to reincarnate uploaded personalities in organic bodies.

"'If awareness is to survive the mortality of the stars, it must make the universe over.'" (Genesis, Part Two, I, p. 107)

Alpha suggests that "'...this work of billions and trillions of years...'" (ibid.) could begin with preventing the end of life on Earth but it would have to go on to much more, maybe along the lines suggested here.

I remain intrigued by the identity of the narrator who addresses the reader thus:

"We must end as we began, making a myth, if we would tell of that which we cannot ever really know. Imagine two minds conversing." (Genesis, Part Two, XII, p. 241)

We read a verbal dialogue although Wayfarer and Gaia communicate instantly and non-verbally. But someone else, who does not really know the nodes either, is verbally addressing us.

3 comments:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

It could have been Wayfarer, Gaia, or even Alpha who "wrote" this verbal dialogue. Only they, logically, would have been able to accurately say something about how the AIs were working or "thinking."

Sean

paulshackley2017@gmail.com said...

Sean,
But the narrator is included among the "we" who do not really know.
Paul.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

Darn! That demolishes my suggestion. An outside, human observer?

Sean