Assessing "Sentiment, Inc."

"Sentiment, Inc."

"'Thought-habits, associational-patterns, the labeling of this as good and that as bad, seem to be matters of established neural paths. If you could successfully alter the polarizations of individual neurones - But it's a pretty remote prospect; we hardly know a thing about the brain today.'" (in 2)

The researchers in the story get lucky and make a discovery ahead of their time. As in Wells' The Time Machine and The First Men In The Moon and in Heinlein's "Life-Line," the discovery is lost at the end of the story but there could always be a sequel.

The villain of the piece wants to change powerful people and thus also society and the world for the better but I agree with our hero that this is not the way to (try to) do it.

The passage quoted above encapsulates in a work of fiction the central question of philosophy: how do states of neurons cause states of consciousness? Could a sufficiently powerful being or technology create a duplicate universe in which neurons did not cause consciousness so that there there would be no "lights on," no one "at home"? If not, why not? Can we even answer this? How do neurons cause consciousness? As of now, no one can answer that.

Next: "Innocent at Large" by Poul Anderson and Karen Anderson. I think that I have read this one and have it in a collection upstairs but I cannot find it on the blog. Maybe it has a different title?

Later: See the results of blog searches for Peter Matheny and "The Innocent Arrival."

Swindles

The "Great Swindle," mentioned in Poul Anderson's "The Moonrakers" (Beyond The Beyond, London, 1973), must, after all, occur between stories - unless there is yet another related story of which I am unaware, which I doubt. What happens in the earlier work, "The Innocent Arrival" by Poul and Karen Anderson, is that Peter Matheny, on a special mission from Mars to Earth, confirms that, although Terrestrials are formidable organization men, Matheny and his fellow colonials are lethal competitive individualists. Therefore, Martians can out-compete Terrestrials individually even if not collectively.

Further, Methany's competitive expertise lies precisely in confidence trickery. Thus, he loses a million to blackmailers but immediately recovers twice that amount from them and even dates the woman who had been used as bait. This successful mission must have laid the basis for the "Great Swindle" that was lucrative enough to fund the terraforming of Mars.

"The Innocent Arrival" is a humorous account of interactions between a handful of individuals in bars and a hotel room whereas its sequel is serious hard sf about orbits, Mars and the asteroids. Matheny's great-nephew, James Church, works another swindle by faking an extra-Solar attack, thus causing the militarization and consequent industrialization of the asteroids:

"'...feudalism and nomadism can't coexist with massive industry. Those Chiefs who don't manage to set themselves up as heads of companies will be squeezed out and abandoned by their own people.'" (p. 166)

So, thanks to Anderson's understanding of social processes, Church has quietly engineered a social revolution, ending asterite piracy.

Martians are such gamblers that the phrase "'Good luck'" (ibid.) has replaced "Good God" etc as an interjection. A Martian drink called "Thyle" is mentioned in the first story and a spaceship is called the "Queen o' Thyle" in the second.

"The Moonrakers" refers back to "The Innocent Arrival" and the following story in Beyond The Beyond, "Starfog," refers back to an entire series:

"'...the League, the troubles, the Empire, its fall, the Long Night...'" (p. 174)

However, a different effect is produced in the unsuspecting reader by placing these stories together, even ending one and beginning the next on the same page. "The Moonrakers" ends:

"'It's barely possible...that...humans will find a way themselves to reach the stars.'" (p. 166)

This is immediately followed by the title, "STARFOG" (ibid.), thus at least temporarily generating the impression that Church's faked extra-Solar attack was later followed by Daven Laure's interstellar travel.

The Innocent Arrival And The Moonrakers

Poul Anderson's "The Moonrakers" (Beyond The Beyond, London, 1973) was unsatisfactory, at least to me, the first time I read it because it referred to events that had occurred between our pre-space travel present and the story's interplanetary future but did not tell the reader where he could read about those intermediate events or even confirm that they had been recounted in any published text. However, see the comments to the previous post.

James Church in "The Moonrakers" says, "Matheny was a great-uncle of mine..." (p. 150). That completely opaque statement makes sense when we discover that Peter Matheny, together with discussion of the financial poverty of a Martian colony, features in "The Innocent Arrival" by Poul and Karen Anderson, which is included in their collection, The Unicorn Trade (New York, 1984). This collection is a mixed bag, to say the least, but its main emphasis is on fantasy, as its cover demonstrates, so it is the last place where I would have searched for a prequel to the hard sf short story, "The Moonrakers."

I will shortly read "The Innocent Arrival," I think for the first time, before returning to "The Moonrakers," which is now making a lot more future historical sense. Some initial comments on "The Moonrakers": it is solid Andersonian economics, politics and sociology in a hard sf setting. As usual, Anderson applies his knowledge of history to a speculative future. Having just read about the Nomads in his Psychotechnic History, we now read Church's comparison of the asterites, asteroid colonists (Larry Niven says "Belters"), with ancient nomads. The latter were not progenitors but offshoots of civilization - survivors and warriors.

An enthroned asterite Chief of the Keep is described as a throwback to earlier times on Earth although his opulent cave is like a forerunner of the exotic lairs of Anderson's much later Selenarchs.