The End Of Eternity, Sort Of

Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010).

Cosmic science fiction addresses ultimate questions, the Stapledonian themes of cosmos and consciousness.

Are the personal issues satisfactorily resolved at the end of Eternity? The Patricia who had left an Earth that, shortly afterwards, had a global nuclear war wanted to find an Earth on which there had been no nuclear war but on which she herself had died in some accident so that she, the Patricia returning from space, could take the place of the Patricia that had died in an accident. Instead, long after Patricia's death, another inter-universal traveler finds an Earth on which there had been no nuclear war but on which Patricia had neither gone into space nor died in an accident. He then merges part of the space-faring Patricia's mentality into the Patricia of that Earth but in such a way that most of the space-traveling Patricia's memories are not retained:

"No Stone in the heavens, she told herself. Whatever that means." (p. 320)

This seems to submerge, rather than to satisfy, the original Patricia? Of course, I would like to know more about the Final Mind and the answer to the last question on p. 322.

I think that it is appropriate to return to Poul Anderson for a while although that will have to wait until I have acquired NESFA Collections Vol 2, not even ordered yet, unless there are meanwhile some further reflections to be made on the Technic History.

Beyond Death

Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010).

I am extremely skeptical of any claim that each of us consciously and indefinitely continues to exist after physical death. Surely the overwhelming evidence is that mental states depend on brain states? - although any contrary evidence must be investigated. Some analytic philosophers argue that "survival" is logically impossible but I think that that goes too far. Of course, we can define death as the end of life, in which case "life after death" is a contradiction, but matters of fact are not settled by defining words.

Could the memories and sense of identity that are transmitted from each momentary cerebral state to the next later be transmitted from the last cerebral state into some other medium or even continue without embodiment? I do not believe in disembodied consciousness - indeed, how could it be detected? - but I do not see that it is logically impossible either. Accounts of "out of the body" experiences may be disbelieved or explained as vivid imagination but they are not dismissed as verbal contradictions, like "square circle." A philosopher may continue to argue that the "survivor" is not identical with the original but concepts change as experiences change. In Buddhist teaching, the apparent self is like a candle flame, burning different wax from moment to moment, then either extinguished or passed on to another candle.

I see no impossibility in the speculation that future technology might record and preserve individual consciousness. Greg Bear gives us some feel for what this might be like. Two characters meet in a technological hereafter:

"'I'm not in the right place,' she said.
"'None of us is, mistress,' the Kelt said. 'Remember. I am trying to be strong, to remember, but it is difficult. Remember!'" (p. 279)

And another two:

"What are we - spirit, energy?
"We are like a current using the hidden conduits by which particles of matter and energy speak to each other, tell each other where they are and what they are..." (p. 258)

And again:

"They sped along the conduits reserved for the subtle messages of subatomic particles, space-time's hidden circuitry." (p. 288)

These survivors of death have become like elemental beings, merging themselves with nature. But can the minute forces linking subatomic particles carry enough information for this purpose?

The Further Future

A good sequel should tell us that there was a lot that we did not know while we were reading the prequel. In Greg Bear's Eon, the Jarts seemed to be conquering aliens, conventional sf villains. We learn about them in Eternity. It is always possible that two groups that are fighting now will be united in the future so what happens if contact with that future is established now?

I enjoy the immediacy of posting about a novel while still reading it. This allows a focusing on details that might otherwise be forgotten but it also means that I might make a provisional comment that has to be revised or amended later - but that is an acceptable risk and a learning process.

The Way, an artificial hypercosmic corridor, endures and extends from our near future to the end of this universe. Some people have traveled the entire length of the corridor right to the far end and one has returned, a very changed man if still a man. He bears a message from the Final Mind: the Way is (somehow) an obstruction to our plans; please destroy it from your end. But how can this be done? Could we send a message to the ancient Egyptians: we don't like your pyramids so, having constructed them, please destroy them?

This is a question, not a rhetorical question. I do not understand the physics of superspace.

Saving The Past

Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010).

Imagine, in the future:

unlimited energy and resources available for pure research - an entire high energy civilization devoted to this single purpose;
the technological ability to record and preserve, thus to "save," every experience and memory of every past organism.

Is this even theoretically possible? Do events and experiences leave a permanent echo that could be detected by sufficiently finely tuned instruments? One theory of ghostly apparitions, like a nun seen walking through a wall at the site of a former convent, is that they are naturally occurring, psychically activated visual recordings of past events. But such a process seems unlikely to operate universally and permanently. Entropy reduces order to chaos and information to noise.

If past events are not detectable in the present, would it be necessary to travel into the past to record them and is pastward time travel even theoretically possible?

Eternity Continued

The clavicle, the device used to find and enter universes, is not only a cosmos locator but also a telepathic Artificial Intelligence. This explains its mental attunement to its user and its focus on the kind of universe that she wants to find.

In Poul Anderson's History of Technic Civilization:

"'You, personally, down underneath everything, do you not feel death is just a little bit vulgar, not quite a gentleman?'
"'Maybe. What would you call it?'
"'A completion.'"
-Poul Anderson, Dominic Flandry: The Last Knight Of Terra, Ed. Hank Davis (New York, 2012), p. 164.

And in Eternity:

"'Death is failure,' Ram Kikura said, her tone angry.
"'Death is completion,' Lanier said.
"'Death is a waste and a loss.'"
-Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010), p. 205.

Some characters refuse an indefinitely extended lifespan when it is offered to them. I disagree with their reasons. My discussion of this question is here.

Superhumanity

Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010).

Novels are (usually) about humanity but some of these guys aren't human. Olmy:

uploads the recoded mentality of a captured hostile alien, called a "Jart," into one of his own memory implants;

sends a "partial," i.e., an incomplete recording of his own personality, in there to investigate the alien and report back to him;

has algorithms to interpret alien sensory experience, e.g., Jarts combine sight and sound into a single sensation;

has internal defenses to prevent contamination, sabotage etc by the Jart;

is interrupted in this process by an "assigned ghost," i.e., a projected partial of a colleague who wants to speak to him;

has, with his wife, reproduced by constructing an artificial personality that exists in a virtual reality and has to pass an exam to be incarnated;

should survive death because an almost indestructible implant will be extracted from his dead body, enabling his personality to be preserved and reincarnated although not necessarily in a humanoid body.

Despite all these differences from humanity as we know it, Greg Bear conveys to his readers something of the motivations and inner experiences of a character like Olmy.

Psychological SF

Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010).

In Eternity, advanced mental technology enables memories to be implanted and personalities to be merged. Thus, this novel can be categorized either as psychological speculative fiction or as science fiction in which the "science" is psychology.

The character called "Olmy" "...detested deep intimacy...he did not want to know himself completely, or to have anyone else know him. He did not relish the thought of exploring his own mentality, as others did." (p. 99)

I share Olmy's detestation for being fully known by anyone else. In fact, Poul Anderson has a short story in which telepaths soon become disgusted with one another. However, what is wrong with Olmy knowing himself? A friend at University thought that those who want to find or know themselves make the questionable assumption that the self is something important. Well, maybe it is? But, if it isn't, then all the more reason to know what it is in order not to entertain any illusions about it. In Buddhist teaching, there is no permanent, enduring entity answering to the term "self" but there are causally related mental processes and states and it makes sense to understand them just as it makes sense to understand mechanics if you drive a car.

Preferring not to know yourself completely means preferring not to understand or control what you do or why you do it. I think that this is willful and culpable ignorance. It was encountering this psychological sf in the first novel, Eon, that got me into rereading Poul Anderson's Brain Wave in which intelligence overcomes instinct.

Stapledonian SF

Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 2010).

The intelligences who travel to the end of the Way enter a cosmegg, or potential universe, and, having unsuccessfully tried to shape this new cosmos from within, are about to be engulfed and destroyed by chaos when however they are rescued by the Final Mind of the universe that they have left: Stapledonian indeed. We are told this story only in summary because its details would transcend our understanding but hopefully its consequences will include important events for the comprehensible human characters of the novel.

Although we cannot understand all the details, we are told that a united, immaterial intellect and will operated below the level of light and energy. Thus, intelligence was a process not only within highly evolved, energy-using organisms but also below the most basic level of energy. Is this possible, if not in a naturally occurring universe, then at least in a secondary, artificial one?

"It is far more difficult to be a god than we could possibly have imagined." (p. 78)

I already know this! - because I have just reread Mike Carey's Lucifer. Yahweh's granddaughter, Elaine Belloc, practicing in her own newly created universe, finds it hard to manage even a single planetary ecology. She learns that sometimes the best but also the hardest thing to do is nothing. I have learned that this is true in human affairs. I know that Christian theology includes the concept of an omniscient, omnipotent Providence that need not intervene because its creation is like a well-plotted novel in which the characters act according to their natures but the author controls the resolution. I take issue with this concept on another blog and I also know that Christian theology includes other views of creation. See the novels of Susan Howatch.

Having read about a would be "god," we turn the page and are back on Gaia, the Earth dominated by the Greek culture that gave us the Classical gods.

Time travel but more than time travel is involved so I am not sure whether my analyses of the logic of time travel are applicable. The Final Mind sends a constituent member of the would be god back to the twenty first century to request that the Way be re-opened but then destroyed from this end. But how can it be destroyed? They have already traveled/will travel along it.

Influences And Parallels

I am enjoying Eternity by Greg Bear in its own right. Right now, how did that former Russian soldier get back to Earth having, in Eon, embarked on a one-way many-times-faster-than-light journey between universes? And what is the important message that he bears?

On a Poul Anderson Appreciation blog, Andersonian influences and parallels are never far away. Karen Anderson helped with how language might have been if history had been different. Thus, we get Alexandros, Rhoma and Karkhedon instead of Alexander, Rome and Carthage etc. And there are parallels with Poul Anderson's fiction. There is a timeline in which Rome did not destroy Carthage and in which Alexander did return from Babylon. (These are two separate stories among Anderson's works.)

Eternity (London, 1989) refers to "...the little-known Ioudaian Messiah Jeshua, or Jesus." (p. 50) If the Classical tradition had needed a sacrificial victim figure, then it already had two candidates, Socrates executed and Caesar assassinated. (Dante puts Brutus and Cassius with Judas as traitors in the Inferno.) However, the Roman Empire went for the Jewish option I think because the Hebrew prophets had forged an uncompromising monotheism that was more appropriate for a universal state than were the speculative monotheisms that were meanwhile being postulated by pagan priests and prophets. Thus, in our history, an executed Messianic claimant became the perfect victim.

If instead Mithras had become the world historical pivotal figure, then his story would have had to have been historicized - although maybe this could have been done by identifying a historical figure with Mithras?

Gaia

Chapter 3 of Eternity by Greg Bear is set on Gaia, the alternative Earth that Patricia/Patrikia had accessed near the end of Eon. I feel that, at this point, the hard sf of Eon became fantasy. The element that I find fantastic is not the existence of alternative Earths but the means of finding and entering them.

While inside the infinite artificial corridor called "the Way," which  physically is out there somewhere in interstellar space, projected from one end of a spacecraft, Patricia was one of a number of people who had a knack like water-dousing. Each of them wielded a device that enabled them to locate a particular point on the inner surface of the Way, namely a point at which it would then be possible, using the same device, to open an entryway to a particular alternative Earth at a particular moment of its history.

Patricia sought a history in which there had not been a recent nuclear war, therefore in which her parents and fiancee had not died in such a war, but in which she herself had nevertheless died in some accident so that the Patricia arriving from the Way would be able to replace the Patricia who had died in the accident. She walks around inside the Way holding the device called the "clavicle," somehow sensing the presence of alternative Earths, receiving an impression of their contents, even information about them, and homing in on the one that she wants. It seems that she does not read the data on dials or a screen on the clavicle but rather inwardly senses them with the help of the clavicle?

So an analogy might be an astronomer seeking stars with habitable planets who points a telescope at the sky, moves it around and is guided by the telescope to focus on a particular part of the sky and eventually on a single star? This does not sound like a scientific process. In fact, to complete the analogy, he would be able to specify and locate a planet not merely habitable but Earth-like in every detail although uninhabited?

When she begins "...the gate dilation," the clavicle whistles painfully, she sees "...a circle of whirling possibilities at her feet..." (Eon, London, 2002, p. 470) and the circle becomes a gateway to a point on the Earth's surface, although she gets the wrong Earth. But I find it difficult to accept that she can get to any Earth by such a means.

A View From Space

"President Kies Farren Siliom stood on a broad transparent platform, the wide orb of the Earth coming into view beneath him as Axis Euclid rotated. Five hundred square meters of stressed and ion-anchored glass and two layers of traction field lay between the president's conference chamber and empty space; he seemed to stand on a stretch of open nothingness."
-Greg Bear, Eternity (London, 1989), p. 9.

This passage is a visual description. We think that it should be drawn or filmed. But we also appreciate prose, especially since it tells us what a picture cannot, i.e., the real nature of that "...open nothingness."

Under Recovery legislation, mental therapies have been applied on Earth. Belligerents have been pacified and:

"Mental illness and and dysfunction were virtually eradicated." (ibid.)

Meanwhile, I have received a vision of the future from an unexpected quarter. Waiting for a funeral service to begin, I read the introduction to the Anglican hymn book, revised in 2000. Whereas the original version had been used throughout the British Empire, the editors recognized, first, that life had changed and that many issues had become less certain in the twentieth century and, secondly, that this most recently revised edition is to be used in a new century of probably unimaginable social changes - in other words, a science fictional century.

Eternity II

I collected my copy of Greg Bear's Eternity, a direct sequel to his Eon. I said earlier that an internet review of Eternity did not make it sound like a sequel. That is because it was a review of Bear's City At The End Of Time! But these titles can be samey, especially to someone who hasn't read the books yet. In fact, I have just seen an artistically beautiful graphic adaptation of Harlan Ellison's Star Trek episode, The City On The Edge Of Forever, another resonant - and similar - title.

In Eternity, set four decades later, I will be interested to see whether the proposal to "purge" the minds of Earth-dwellers has been carried out. That would alter the characters' motivations and thus make this a novel not of humanity but of changed humanity. Karen Anderson is again credited for linguistic and historical advice so the Anderson connection continues.

Since I am about to attend a funeral and will be otherwise engaged for part of this evening, there will be a short intermission until normal service is resumed.