Anson Guthrie says:
"'The purpose of power is power.'" (p. 161)
See here. We have discussed this phrase somewhere else on the blog but I can't find it. Someone said that Orwell's wording was slightly different? It was. I have just googled it. See here. I quoted the Orwellian phrase here.
The Avantists in government tried to educate, indoctrinate and establish scientifically designed socioeconomic conditions making progress toward their Transfiguration inevitable. When this failed, the ideologues and bureaucrats merely fought for power. Is this "'...how all governments end up...'" (pp. 160-161)? I think that something better is possible but this is an old argument.
Further down p. 161:
"'No deliverance from personal death.' No deliverance anywhere in sight, after it turned out that aging was built into the human genome." (p. 161)
Yet again, Anderson systematically considers alternative answers to sf questions:
Is immortality possible?
Is AI possible?
Is time travel possible?
Is causality violation possible?
Is FTL possible?
If so, how?
Is there extraterrestrial life?
Anderson has to be the most comprehensive sf writer?
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
Yes, ALL gov'ts and societies are flawed because the human
beings who comprise them are imperfect. Nor do I think that will ever change. That is why conservatives are so distrustful of both concentrating more and more power in the state and of ideologies promising to magically "transform" mankind. Yes, I know you at least want to take a more optimistic view! But, you are realistic about it.
No deliverance from personal death in the HARVEST OF STARS books? Unless something like the antithanatic of WORLD WITHOUT STARS or the life extending technology of FOR LOVE AND GLORY had been invented. But, we do see thinks like the downloading of human personalities into artificial neural networks and then cloned bodies in the HARVEST books. That's a kind of immortality, even if I don't think them likely!
Yes, Poul Anderson was a very COMPREHENSIVE writer, examining virtually every idea and possibility, no matter how implausible. But, I think some writers, like Stirling, has surpassed him in some, but not all ways.
Sean
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