I know why I can't write fiction. The background of any story is answering a "What if?" question. I can come up with lots of what-if's, and even speculate upon the answers, but I can't wrap a plot line around the speculation. The mastery of writers who do just that over and over again is what keeps me digging for more and more well done sci-fi.
Vernor Vinge is a master at this art. His believable plot lines couple with great ideas and speculations. It was an unexpected pleasure to find a book of his I hadn't read, The Witling, written in 1976. The book is clearly a classic, for it isn't dated. For one thing, in 33 years we haven't progressed very far in the technology of landing on a planet, nor of basic communications and soldiering, so the artifacts are credible. But this isn't a story about improved technology, even though it is set about 14,000 years into the future.
On one level it is a story of exploration and romance, but on the level that interests me, it is a stab at answering, "What if we all were clairvoyant, and could all teleport objects, including ourselves, to or from distant locations?" Secondarily, as the title hints, "What if these abilities were really strong in a few, and really weak, even nonexistent, in an unfortunate few?" A witling is one who lacks wit, or has to fake it. In the book, a witling is one who lacks abilities a human calls extrasensory.
What would be the consequences of (nearly) universal mental powers? To an outsider from Earth, the planet's culture may look primitive…until you noticed that the buildings had no doorways. Transportation technology would be quite different, and the lack of roads quite puzzling. Then there is the physics of teleportation; first assume it is possible, then deal with the relative velocity of the teleported object and its new locale, or differences in elevation: would gravitational potential express itself as thermal differences, or as something else?
Human observers might not recognize what is going on until they found themselves sensed from a distance and suddenly captured, helpless before forces they can't recognize. The author throws in an interesting side issue here: given a planet a little heavier than Earth, might it have a much greater abundance of heavy metals? If so, what might be the consequences of eating a diet of native foods? The answers to this provide a bit of dramatic tension as the story reaches its climax.
The plot line itself I'll leave for the enjoyment of the reader. The possibility of the humans' rescue hinges on the goodwill of at least a few of the planet's natives. It helps that a human woman, considered homely by her fellows, is exotically beautiful to the natives. This might seem ludicrous at first, until you consider how beautiful we humans find some members of other species (though we often mask the feeling with an appellation of "cute"), and how easy it is to imagine alien beings who are more beautiful than a human could be. The great beauty of many ancient statues is based on exaggerating certain facial features beyond the human range.
One final consideration: If such mental powers were to develop, it must be that they would manifest themselves gradually. A baby born with the ability to kill upon a whim would either destroy all life it its vicinity and die unfed, or die of neglect once even its own parents were too fearful of coming close. Then consider how cruel children are. Only if the most damaging abilities developed gradually, with defense being stronger than offense—this is the way it is with our physical strength—could evolution proceed to hone the abilities to make them useful to the species generally. Thus it must be with any mutational advancement.
A glossary of the important mental powers, to jump-start your reading:
- seng = sense, a gravitational super-sense
- reng = teleport, by swapping matter at point A with an equal volume at point B
- keng = kill, by twisting the brain or internal organs of an opponent or other victim
- dgeng (pronounced "jeng"), unknown, used only once. This leaves room for a sequel.
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