Master Works

My copy of Poul Anderson's Brain Wave is a New English Library SF Master Series edition, published in 1977. My copy of Greg Bear's Eon is a Gollancz SF Masterworks edition, published in 2002. These are two attempts to keep before the public what are regarded as "classic" works. The blurb for Brain Wave says, "This now-classic novel..." A real classic is, of course, a work that is always in print, usually in multiple editions. Sf classics include The Time Machine.

It may be thought that an sf paperback read for pleasure must be a light and trivial work. I hope that my synopses and analyses of these novels demonstrate that they are dense and serious works. In Brain Wave, there is a single premise and an extremely long list of ingenious deductions from that premise.

The Mystery In Eon

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

A personality or parts of it can be recorded and the recording may be active or inactive. Any personality comprises identifiable features like memory, thought patterns and skills plus one other element:

"'...the final impressed shape...'" (p. 428);
"'...a super-pattern which colors the entire psyche...'" (p. 429);
the unsynthesizable, ineffable "Mystery."

I question the claim that "Mystery" is a more precise term than "soul." Korzenowski, an important figure, had gone into City Memory - which I find unclear - and had placed partials of himself in different locations in order to supervise construction of the Axis City. His enemies assassinated him by purging his personality records but this did not destroy the partials which were retrieved by his supporters, lost but later refound. To resurrect Korzenowski, it is necessary to assemble his partials and add Mystery by imposing another personality pattern so that what is present is rejected, leaving only the Mystery. This does not harm the imposed pattern. Patricia Vasquez's pattern is suitable because she laid the theoretical foundations for Korzenowski's work and "'He was [her] greatest student.'" (p. 431)

Does this make sense? Would anyone's Mystery not suffice? Does theoretical work not belong among the thought patterns and skills which are differentiated from the Mystery? It sounds intuitively right that the sum of the parts of a personality is less than the whole. I think that what happened in evolution was that organismic sensitivity to environment alterations quantitatively increased until it was qualitatively transformed into conscious sensation. It is this qualitative transformation that is regarded as mysterious and has been reified as "soul."

Three Novels

Reading Eon by Greg Bear has led to a reconsideration of In The Days Of The Comet by HG Wells and of Brain Wave by Poul Anderson. We need more science fiction about changes to human nature.

I do not have a copy of In The Days Of The Comet but would like to reread the passages in which the first person narrator interprets and explains the psychophysical effects of the cometary gas that had entered the Terrestrial atmosphere.

Although I had previously discussed Brain Wave, I have found significant details in the text that I had not noticed before. Anderson imagines a single change inside individual human beings, then deduces the effects on civilization.

"The change in human nature and human society which this would bring about was beyond even his imagination."
-Poul Anderson, Brain Wave (London, 1977), p. 137.

There is a "Mystery" in Eon which I will post about when I have has a night's sleep and maybe done a few other things - although my impression is that it remains a bit too abstract and mysterious for a work of hard sf.

Inner Change

I propose to revisit a conceptual connection that I recently drew between:

In The Days Of The Comet by HG Wells;
Brain Wave by Poul Anderson;
Eon by Greg Bear.

These three science fiction novels describe not mere technological innovations but also a psychological transformation or a change in "human nature." I emphasize this phrase because I fundamentally disagree with the way that it is often used, to imply that human beings are basically and unchangeabley selfish. On the contrary:

our species is differentiated by the fact that it actively changes its environment and has changed itself in the process, in fact has brought itself into existence by cooperating and communicating;

people often act compassionately, generously and hospitably - this is equally our "nature";

because we are social beings, many of our actions are neither selfish nor altruistic but are expressions of a common interest - you and I are doing this now by agreeing the meanings of English words in order to communicate.

"Human nature" can and does change. Future psychological changes are an appropriate subject for science fiction. In a Michael Moorcock novel, an alien visiting Earth in the distant future expects his message that the universe is about to end to perturb human beings. He does not realize that they are in full control of their emotions. His apocalyptic speech is a social disappointment. A man who has returned from a temporal journey to the twentieth century gradually realizes that no one back then was playing a role: when they looked old, they were old etc.

In a recent post, I said that Brain Wave describes an increase in intelligence whereas the other two works describe control of emotions by intelligence. But this second change is in Brain Wave also. More later.

Footnotes

If Western philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, is Western sf a series of footnotes to Wells? - in which case, Mary Shelley is the equivalent of Thales, the beginning.

Post-Wells works on time travel, in particular Poul Anderson's six volumes, are like a very long series of footnotes to the phrase "...curious possibilities of anachronism and utter confusion..." in The Time Machine. The War Of The Worlds is the grandfather of all alien invasion stories. In popular sf, the Daleks (evolved beings in protective machines) play the roles of Morlocks (persecuting the blond, fair-skinned Thals) and Martians (invading Earth).

When discussing Greg Bear's Eon, I twice explicitly referred to Wells and could have drawn at least three other parallels:

alternative histories on parallel Earths (Men Like Gods; A Modern Utopia);
future technological warfare (The War In The Air etc);
in particular, nuclear warfare (The World Set Free).

These are significant issues, not Buck Rogers stuff. However, Wells did not address artificial intelligence or immortality.

The Future Is In The Present

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

In the earliest science fiction, the action always started here and now even if it then moved into the future or to another planet. HG Wells' The Shape Of Things To Come is a history of the future dreamed by an outer narrator. At the end of the book, that narrator points out to his correspondent that, if this is a true history, then one of its main protagonists is a young man now. A future leader of humanity of whom we have just read is starting his career while we are reading about him.

Thus, Wells makes an important point: the future is close; it starts tomorrow; its movers and shakers are alive now. Greg Bear makes the same point. Some of his characters visit a future library which discloses that there will be a major political movement called Naderism. One of them comments, "'I'm wondering...who's going to tell Ralph...'" (p. 143)

Memory And Time

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

Pavel Mirsky writes:

"Soon, I firmly resolve, I will gather up my courage and join with the extended personalities in City Memory." (p. 494)

How are they "extended"? We gather that they are incorporeal but, if they are conscious and aware of each other, then they must appear to be embodied in a shared environment. What is their physical basis?

They are "'...personality patterns in the City Memory environment.'" (p. 311)

- but this is not described.

Those City Memory personalities who sympathize with an insurrection help it by overseeing interdicted communications nets. Whatever this means, it implies that they can affect the activities of the embodied. And I think that that is all that we are told about them.

"She vowed to use the physicist's concept of time from here on, with events strung along a line, and no particular breakdown into past, present or future." (p. 134)

We divide time either objectively into units like days and years or subjectively into past, present and future. The physicist's "...events strung along a line..." include, e.g., me typing at 12.00 on 22 August and me typing at 12.00 on 23 August. On 22 August, I regard 22 August as present and 23 August as future. On 23 August, I regard 23 August as present and 22 August as past. Without consciousness, there would be days and years but no division into past, present and future. With or without consciousness, nothing moves along the line of time.

Characters And Cosmos

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

No character has ever been more developed than Pavel Mirsky. In the first place, he is killed and resurrected. I know that this happens regularly in a certain kind of fiction - superheroes are, at worst, "currently dead" - but Mirsky suffers more than that. The loss of half of his original brain means that his psychology cannot be reconstructed with total accuracy. But he copes. Even more than that, after a lifetime of state indoctrination, he gains unlimited access to a high tech library and learns. He realizes that he has been lied to about history. He opts out of the power struggle among his fellow Russian survivors of a nuclear war. He opts into a near light speed cosmic journey instead of returning to Earth.

He writes, "So much to learn, and so much change to look forward to...I am free." (p. 495)

There is hope for humanity as long as there are people like Pavel Mirsky.

That cosmic journey is a peculiar one. Instead of traveling through space between super-clusters of galaxies, as in Poul Anderson's Tau Zero, Greg Bear's characters travel along an infinite corridor beyond the domain of the super-sets of our external universes. Mirsky writes:

"Even were we to stop now and open gates to the 'outside,' whatever that may be, we would encounter realms without matter, perhaps without form or order; it is highly doubtful we would find anything familiar." (p. 492)

Mirsky writes more about what is "outside" but it is highly abstract. I would like to see these "realms" dramatized somehow. Otherwise, what is their role in a novel?

Prequels And Sequels

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

Now I see how there is scope for a prequel to Eon: not earlier events in the cosmic corridor but the history of Earth from 1985 until the launch of the Thistledown. Is this when Legacy is set? I will find out but not immediately. I deduce that we cannot know any of the subsequent history of that Earth because, after their departure, the occupants of the Thistledown interact with other rational species, then with the earlier Earth of a different timeline.

How many of the advances in mental technology are made after the departure? Maybe the answer to this question is there in the text. Synopsizing and commenting while blogging makes me realize how many details of plot and background are quickly forgotten after a single cursory reading of a novel. I would like to see one novel about the mental tech and another about exploring superspace.

Original novel, prequel and sequel is a good structure for a trilogy. Rider Haggard did this well with She. That novel ended with its title character's death but Allan Quartermain read it and sent Haggard his account of his earlier meeting with She: She And Allan. Then there was the Return (from death). Thus, there was a reason why the prequel was published second.

The Future History Of Eon III

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

2009. The Recovery Revolutions. Diego Garcia de Santillana led the Return to Life movement to power in Western Europe and advocated world government.

2010. Naderite coalitions, opposing nuclear energy and excessive technology, formed in North America. Named after Ralph Nader, who had died in the Death.

2011. Naderites absorbed Return to Lifers and formed governments after landslide victories in America and Europe. "Raiders" persuaded other governments to cooperate.

2012. Naderite revolution in Russia. Eastern countries regained sovereignty and mostly became Naderite.

2015-2100. Naderites gained control of two thirds of the Earth but were opposed by the Greater Asian Cooperative, which embraced science, technology and nuclear energy.

2100. The Volks movement in Gross Deutschland opposed Naderism.

The Future History Of Eon II

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

1950-2000. "Retreatists," in groups of fifty or less, took stores of food and weapons into isolated areas in order to survive the expected destruction of civilization. 

1993. The Little Death, a limited nuclear war, four million dead, mostly in Western Europe. Space-based defense systems effective but near-shore submarine launches destroyed Atlanta, Brighton and part of Brittany. Russia lost Kiev.

2005. The Death, an all-out nuclear war, two and a half billion or more dead. Many bodies vaporized or rotted before the count. Eastern and Western navies destroyed each other in half an hour or less in the Gulf, the Pacific, the Atlantic and the Mediterranean.

From 2005. The post-Death "Long Winter" did not completely destroy civilization. Within a year, cooperative societies emerged, emphasizing mutual help, except towards the vicious retreatist enclaves.

By 2010. Most retreatists killed or captured, unfortunately including mere "survivalists." Retreatists tried for crimes against humanity.

After 2010. Purges of all who advocated the right to bear weapons and sometimes of all who favored high technology.

2015. Trial of Eastern and Western politicians and generals for crimes against humanity.

The Future History Of Eon

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

In April 2005, Patricia Vasquez reads Brief History of the Death by Abraham Damon Farmer (2135), Chapter One: From December 1993 to May 2005.

According to the Brief History, there will be a catastrophe the following month. Patricia reads that, in the 1980's and early 1990's, the Soviet Union was losing its technological, and therefore also ideological, competition with the US. This contrasts with James Blish's earlier Cities In Flight future history in which, by tightening its security, the US became more like the USSR until there was no difference and the latter absorbed the former in the Spenglerian Fall of the West.

The Brief History states that "...the Agatha experiments..." (p. 102) were an exception to the centralization of Russian computer systems. What were the Agatha experiments? I googled this phrase in inverted commas and all that came up was a reference to Eon by Greg Bear.

I think that the Brief History warrants further study but it is time for me to turn in.

What Next For The Blog?

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

I have read Eon to its conclusion and it will take a week or two for the sequel Eternity to arrive. After, or rather before, that there are, I gather, two prequels, Legacy and "The Way Of All Ghosts."

Meanwhile, I have two of Andrea Camilleri's Inspector Montalbano novels to read, although those will not be discussed on this blog. (Poul Anderson gives us Trygve Yamamura and, in very restrained amounts, Sherlock Holmes.) At the beginning of next month, with the start of the new academic year, I will have to get back into reading some Latin texts, which may be mentioned here if appropriate. The Roman Empire is one of Poul Anderson's major periods: "Delenda Est," Roma Mater etc.

I might reread and comment on further aspects of Eon and am sure that there is more to be found in the Time Patrol - although maybe not by me in the immediate future. So maybe less on the blog for the rest of this month.

Anderson And Bear

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

These are the Poul Anderson works that I have referred to while discussing Greg Bear's Eon:

The Shield Of Time
"Wildcat"
After Doomsday
The Corridors Of Time
There Will Be Time
The Operation... series
Brainwave

To these we may add the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis as dealing with human-AI interactions and "Eutopia" as dealing with the survival of an ancient culture into a technological period.

Four time travel works are listed. Their connections with Eon are:

a young man brought up in a Communist regime remembers his grandmother's Heaven;
by virtue of time travel, a small group of people knows of an imminent global nuclear war with long term ecological consequences;
a spatial interval within an artificial corridor corresponds to a temporal interval outside the corridor;
slower than light interstellar travel is linked to time travel.

But these are very different treatments of parallel ideas.

The End Of The Eon

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

I find Patricia's arrival in an Egyptian canal incredible, by which I mean "intellectually implausible," not "imaginative, amazing" etc. Eon raises several issues. The ones that I would like to see pursued further are:

can life survive a nuclear winter?;
what would it be like to explore other-dimensional spaces?;
is the mental technology described in this novel possible?;
if so, then how would that affect individual and social psychology?

Here is a moral question:

"If [terrestrials] were not purged mentally as well as physically, the conditions of their thinking would be such that strife and discord would tear the Earth apart again, in centuries if not sooner. They had to be mentally healthy to face the future...; there was no room for the kind of archaic, sick thinking that had lead to the Death in the first place." (pp. 489-490)

In HG Wells' In The Days Of The Comet, gas from a comet readjusts the balance between reason and emotion within each human being;
in Poul Anderson's Brain Wave, entering a new galactic region significantly increases the intelligence of every animal and human being on Earth;
in Greg Bear's Eon, mental technology can change people in these ways but would it be right to do it without their consent?

As yet, this question is academic since no one has the power to "purge" minds. But science fiction is the medium for testing such questions in advance.

Can Patricia Return Home?

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

"She was searching for a universe without the Death, and without herself, also - where the Stone had arrived, but not caused war, and where her alternate had somehow died." (p. 468)

I had deduced that that is what Patricia wants to find but how can her instrument, the clavicle, help her to intuit whereabouts in the corridor is the appropriate place for her to open a gate into the universe that she wants to find? And not only that universe but Earth in that universe?

We are told that:

"What she was looking for was far more difficult to find than a particular grain of sand on a beach." (ibid.)

But surely that makes it impossible?

"Not finding that...she would settle for a universe where there would be two of her." (ibid.)

But that still sounds impossible, especially since Patricia lacks both experience and skill with the clavicle.

The cosmic corridor is hard sf based on notions like superspace but the ability of some individuals to detect and enter specific other universes using a technological divining rod sounds more like fantasy. Is there indeed such a composite genre as "science fantasy"? I have just googled this phrase and found references to Heinlein's Magic Inc and to Anderson's Operation... series, works that I have previously classed as "hard fantasy," i.e., as fantasy that is almost indistinguishable from the same authors' hard sf because the same logical rigor is applied to the consequences of supernatural premises as, in sf, to the consequences of technological innovations. So, if Eon is science fantasy, then it is a different kind.

Axis City Politics

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

Axis City politics are fast and complicated with a confusing combination of constitutional and unconstitutional maneuvers. While leading a revolt, the incarnate Corprep Rosen Gardner creates four partials to coordinate activities in different locations and also sends an assigned ghost to watch the terrestrial who have entered the Thistledown.

During the revolt:

militant factioners hold strategic transport sites;
orthodox Naderites and Korzenowski factioners consolidate insurrectionary gains;
sympathizers in City Memory oversee interdicted communications nets;
a counterinsurrectionary vote is declared invalid both because it was called by a partial, not an incarnate, and because it lacked a quorum of incarnate senators and corpreps;
the returning President sends a partial to pict with Gardner.

I summarize this not because I expect it to be understood (I don't understand it all) but to convey something of the intriguing complexity. However, while reading about the Axis City conflict, we:

recognize political maneuvering;
realize that we do not understand how the technology works;
but deduce its effects from the terminology used to describe it.

Stoner technology manipulates consciousness, e.g.:

partials and ghosts are temporary minds able to speak for their incarnates;
brains can be programmed;
personalities can be merged;
personalities preserved in City Memory are incorporeal but somehow conscious;
a man who lost half his brain when shot in the head is resurrected but with some memory loss and also with some new psychological features.

(Fortunately, he retains enough early memories to maintain his sense of identity and continuity.)

This is modern sf, incorporating but transcending space exploration. I would prefer more about the experience of resurrection and less about Jarts. 

Gates And Jarts

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

Corridor inhabitants visit the Frant world, Timbl, through the appropriate gate, a mere four million kilometers along the corridor from the Axis City. It becomes apparent that the gate does not give access to just a single time on Timbl because these visitors do not arrive there simultaneously with earlier or later visitors from the corridor.

Of the Jarts, we are told:

"'When the Way was connected and opened, there they were - much as they are today. Strong, intelligent, aggressive, absolutely convinced they're destined to populate all universes. We fought a violent war with them...'" (p. 389)

Maybe the Jarts will do more than this but, so far, I find their adherence to the stereotypical sf villain image of aggressive cosmic conquerors somewhat disappointing. I suppose there could be a technological civilization with such a motivation but surely the vast majority of them would want to do something more interesting than populate every universe?

Describing a society as complex as that of the Axis City requires the author to introduce new terminologies that are taken for granted by the characters and that must be learned quickly by the readers. Axis citizens continually pict each other and even the visitors from the twenty first century have learned to tract. I will have to reread to find the meaning of that second verb.  

The Axis City

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

The Axis City is a complicated, imaginative future society, characteristic of modern sf, in which technology transcends spaceships and robots to transform humanity and its environment.

Our descendants, immortal, not necessarily humanoid or even corporeal, reproduce psychologically, not biologically, are implanted with information and communication technology, learn, e.g., new languages very quickly, from interactive, multi-sensory computer displays and have manipulated space-mass-energy to create an endless cylindrical universe which they inhabit and from which they access other universes. This is Artificial Intelligence merging with rather than replacing humanity. What is left for them to accomplish?

Of course, they still disagree with each other and find enemies as well as allies on other planets but I have yet to read explanations of the Jarts and Frants.

Corridors And Time

Greg Bear, Eon (London, 2002).

It had not occurred to me to compare the cosmic corridor in Greg Bear's Eon with the temporal corridors in Poul Anderson's The Corridors Of Time. However, there is a clear parallel:

"'She said the corridor moves forward in time about one year every thousand kilometers.'" (p. 322)

Thus, a spatial interval inside the corridor corresponds to a temporal interval outside it, e.g., leave the corridor through a gate and emerge in 2000 AD; return to the corridor, travel 1,000 kilometers north to another gate and emerge in 2001 or south and emerge in 1999. In Corridors..., the width of a human body corresponds to a couple of months, with is not the relativistic space-time equivalence.

Differences
In Corridors..., many two thousand year long corridors stretch in straight lines along a single, immutable timeline on Earth whereas, in Eon, a single (so far) apparently infinite corridor extending from one end of a slower than light interstellar spacecraft curves between universes. Although the spacecraft pulling the corridor behind it has returned to the Solar System of a different timeline, the characters still speak as if people encountered in the past are direct ancestors of the spaceship crew, not analogues of those ancestors.

Another Parallel
Poul Anderson's There Will Be Time also combines slower than light interstellar travel with time travel: time travelers moving futureward, then pastward, within an STL ship can report the outcome of the journey before the ship's departure.