In Tychopolis

The Stars Are Also Fire, 12.

Anson Guthrie visits Edmond and Dagny Beynac who live comfortably on the Moon.

Guthrie:

"'My impression was the servant problem on Luna is so intractable nobody remembers what the word means.'" (p. 162)

The servant problem! In some societies, the affluent feel entitled to domestic servants and it is a "problem" if they cannot find them.

More fiction within the fiction: in his spare time, Edmond writes deep-space adventure stories under the pen name of Jacques Croquant although we are told neither titles nor plots. In that society, such works would not count as sf. (Some earlier sf described exploration of as yet unvisited parts of this planet whereas, in Edmond's time, the outer Solar System is being explored and there is a colony at Alpha Centauri. Deep space exploration is no longer sf.)

Two young Lunarians wrote the program that generated their artificial language but Dagny's daughter Verdea adds to its vocabulary. As part of their language, Lunarians change their names. Of the Beynac children:

Anson becomes Brandir;

Gabrielle becomes Verdea;

Sigurd becomes Kaino;

Francis becomes Temerir;

Helen becomes Fia;

Carla becomes Jinann.

Edmond calls Anson Guthrie one of the enlightened super-rich, "enlightened" because they keep scientific and technological progress alive. If there are super-rich at the social apex, then previously we would have expected to find sub-poor at the base. But the issues have changed. Now the "Low World" is:

"'...the vast majority, in every land, who can find no real place in this high-technology universe you have created...'" (p. 158)

 

What is so "enlightened" about creating a technology that super-enriches its owners while leaving no place for the vast majority? And will the kind of capital-labor relationships that had previously enabled a minority to accumulate wealth continue to operate when production has become cyber-automated? Fireball continues to operate as a company with employees but for how long?

War, this time in the form of a "Jihad," is coming on Earth as at the end of the interplanetary period in Anderson's Psychotechnic History. Guthrie expects the High World to win the war but to be changed. That is better than everyone being killed. This anti-Jihad War, like World Wars I and II, will change society but how? Surely the social division between a controlling ("super-rich") minority and a vast majority has to be recognized as redundant? A united humanity would be able to thank AI for stabilizing the Terrestrial environment but should otherwise retain collective control of its own social relationships and insist that from now on human and AI destinies peacefully parallel each other. 

 

However, as this future history unfolds, human divisions enable AI to extend its control over both the natural and social environments and eventually to constrain human development.