In Poul Anderson's Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy, each volume covers a single different period of a future history except Volume II, The Stars Are Also Fire, which covers two periods. Thus, if we read the series in numerical order, then, as we begin Harvest The Fire, PROLOGUE, pp. 9-31, with four pages of illustrations, we are already familiar with the first three of the five periods.
Jesse Nichols, a frustrated poet, seeks inspiration by recounting the future history to date to a simulation of Jorge Luis Borges. Of course the summary in Nichols' mind helps readers whether they have read Volumes I and II or not.
Human beings got into space when the cost of launch had been brought down, mainly by Fireball Enterprises. The Moon was colonized but completion of pregnancy was impossible in Lunar gravity so Lunarians were genetically engineered. Other human species were engineered on Earth and also the Keiki Moana, intelligent seals.
Robotics became highly developed. Some human personalities, including Anson Guthrie, founder and chief executive of Fireball, were downloaded into artificial neural networks. Lunarians, led by Selenarchs, became independent of the World Federation and colonized Mars, asteroids and outer moons.
Fireball and the Selenarch Rinndalir waged war against the Federation for a reason not stated here. Download Guthrie led dissident Terrans and Lunarians to Alpha Centauri. Terrans colonized Demeter, doomed to be destroyed in a planetary collision in a thousand years, whereas Lunarians colonized Centaurian asteroids.
The Federation reincorporated Luna and moved an abandoned L-5 colony to Lunar orbit where Terran women from Luna could give birth, thus enabling Terrans to outnumber Lunarians on Luna. The Lahui Kuikawa, comprised of human beings and Keiki Moana, moved to a mid-Pacific island.
Conscious AI was developed, then developed itself further.
There is some more but I have to go out.
2 comments:
I have my doubts we'll get conscious AI anytime soon. We'd have to understand how our brains gave rise to our self-consciousness first.
Kaor, Paul!
Jesse Nichols was frustrated because life on Earth had become boring and pointless, there were fewer and fewer challenges, fewer and fewer things that mattered, the AIs were taking over the real decision making.
Anderson was prescient, mentioning how Anson Guthrie and Fireball had drastically lowered launch costs--which is exactly what Elon Musk and SpaceX are succeeding in doing! It makes me wonder if Musk read the HARVEST OF STARS books.
We should have found out long ago whether the Moon's gravity was too low for women to have full term pregnancies.
I share Stirling's skepticism about conscious AIs.
I still would have argued with download Guthrie against colonizing Demeter, a planet "soon" to be destroyed in about 15 centuries. Better for the Terrans exiled to Alpha Centauri to live on O'Neill habitats while preparing to migrate to other stars with more satisfactory planets.
Ad astra! Sean
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