When, in earlier posts, I listed literary influences on Poul Anderson, I never mentioned Faust but should have because of the importance attributed to "'..the Faustian spirit...'" and "'...the Faustian civilization...'" (45, p. 544) in The Stars Are Also Fire.
I wondered whether Poul Anderson had contrived the conflict between the cybercosm and Faustianism for the sake of a fictional narrative but maybe I see the point. Even after cosmic extinction (apparently), free energy will still trickle from disintegrating black holes and from otherwise quiescent particles. Post-organic intelligence aims to utilize that energy to become the next best thing to God contemplating abstractions but first must fully understand and control the entire pre-heat-death universe and cannot do this if organic intelligences descended from the Alpha Centaurian Demeter Mother are meanwhile chaotically transforming what would otherwise have remained mostly lifeless planetary systems into blossoming biospheres.
But why can't Demeter Mother have a department dedicated to investigating ways to survive the heat-death or even to reverse entropy as in Isaac Asimov's "The Last Question"? The cybercosm seems to be too inappropriately certain that its way is the only way.
5 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
The idea of AIs and the cybercosm, assuming such things are possible, aspiring to FULLY UNDERSTAND AND CONTROL the entire pre-heat death universe strikes me as being as mad as the hopes Merseia had of conquering the entire Milky Way galaxy! More so, actually, because trying to control uncounted billions of galaxies is even more loony bin than the Roidhunate's ambitions.
I have read the first part of Goethe's FAUST, but never did find the second part by the same translator. I should simply get the whole thing by another translator.
Ad astra! Sean
In CORRIDORS OF TIME, Poul describes the incoming Indo-Europeans as “men of clever hands and limitless dreams”. Faustian, in other words!
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I must have read CORRIDORS at least three or four times, but alas, that neat line did not stick with me. And I sympathize with the Faustian attitude, which the human race needs in order to advance, at least in some ways.
Ad astra! Sean
CORRIDORS is strikingly accurate about the IE arrival in N. Europe,according to the latest archaeology and archaeogenetics, except that there was more displacement of previous populations (not complete, but substantial) and that it took place about a thousand years earlier. Very good for a book written so long ago.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
That shows us how carefully Poul Anderson researched his books, using the best sources and knowledge available to him at the time he wrote them.
Ad astra! Sean
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