Cultures don't clash, people do

kw: book reviews, science fiction, posthumanism, terrorism

It would not surprise me to find out that James Patrick Kelly began life among the Amish or a similar "simple life" people. Then again, maybe he took all his inspiration from Thoreau, whose quotes adorn each chapter of Burn.

An aside about Thoreau. Two of the quotes Kelly uses are, "I have lived some thirty-odd years on this planet, and I have het to hear the first syllable of valuable or even earnest advice from my seniors" (Journal, 1852), and "I find it wholesome to be alone the greater part of the time. To be in company, even with the best, is soon wearisome and dissipating" (Walden). I have read Walden and these quotes reinforce the impression I had, even thirty years ago, that Thoreau was a morose 15-year-old who never grew up. Remember the joke: "When I was 15, I thought my Dad was the dumbest guy ever born. Within five years, it's amazing how much he'd learned." Henry David, you just never listened; too self-absorbed to realize your own depression was fed by your solitary habits, you inflicted sorry lifetimes of low self-image on generations of young Americans.

Oh, my, I feel better already! Kelly is a better writer than Thoreau. I hope he outgrows his impressionable youth soon. Burn has a very telling counterplay among three cultures, two of which are at war, though a bit unconventionally.

On one planet among a thousand, named Walden, colonists are striving to retain their original soil-bound humanness, in the face of a hugely dominant humanity, called "upsiders." The upsiders use technology that allows them to transmit themselves across light-years in some quantum way. They have, to a degree, transcended death, for their psyche can be "saved," retained in a form that can live on in (unexplained) machinery. The upsiders have contracted not to mess with Walden.

The planet was bought on the cheap from some folks that expoited it to ecological ruin. They are called pukpuks (if there's a reason for the term, I didn't find it). With all the ores mined out, it is good only for farming...but that's all Walden's residents want to do. For some reason, some of the former residents have stayed on, in remote parts of the planet, and now they object to the re-forestation going on. They fight back using a mid-60s method, self-immolation to start forest fires.

At the cultural triple point between Waldenites, pukpuks, and upsiders, the story plays out. This book is more hopeful than many recent SF offerings.

Who you are depends on what World you've learned.

kw: book reviews, science fiction, interstellar colonization, first contact, posthumanism

About five years ago, walking in the park with my wife, I saw two little girls—third grade age or younger—running and skipping along, while talking on cell phones. I said to my wife, "In ten years or so, we won't buy cell phones. They'll be installed just behind the ear from birth. You'll tell them who to call." It will probably be quite a bit more than another five years, but I believe people will have built-in communications available in my lifetime. We just need to get speech recognition into a chip the size of a fingernail, powered by body heat (the 5° difference between core and skin).

My father's pacemaker, just a bit bigger than a man's wristwatch case, has some of the enabling technologies. It communicates by low-power radio with the doctor's computer (only within the office at present), can be reprogrammed easily, and has a five-year battery life. Newer models' batteries can be recharged by an induction loop (you need to do slow, overnight charging, to avoid excessive heating).

Fast-forward fourteen thousand years, at least. The humans of Earthly origin in Learning the World by Ken MacLeod, have Virtualities and other services, delivered by a synergy between circuits in their heads and public carrier services. The cell phone has morphed into an experience as immersive as you'd like. That is but one good idea from this book.

Another is fully translating the words and lives of two mutually alien species. Consider this: How would you translate, «Cette phrase est écrite en français», from French to English? There are valid arguments for translating it either "This sentence is written in French" or "This sentence is written in English." A certain novel, with dramatic tension based on the historic animosity between French and German people, and written in French, has been translated into several languages (sorry, I don't recall the title, just the story). The action takes place years into one of the occupations of France by Germany. It contains a number of short German phrases, and some phonetic dialog in French with a German accent. One wise translator, rendering the book into Polish, substituted Russians and Russian for the Germans and their language, and used phonetic dialog of Polish spoken with a Russian accent! It is by all accounts the most effective of the translations, because a Polish person reading it feels the same feelings a French person feels when reading the original French novel.

I have read many science fiction novels written from the viewpoint of interstellar aliens. Even in those most sympathetic to the nonhuman protagonists, there is a tendency to have them call themselves something like "Gvorch", and speak sentimentally about "gvorchkind". Often, the English language is distorted, and maintains thus a consciousness in the reader that the "alien" is really alien.

Ken MacLeod will have none of that. Both species' words and thoughts are presented in clear, straightforward English (except when the person is being deceptive). Both call themselves "human", "man", "woman". From the first transmission of images and sound until the two kinds of people meet, each thinks of the other in quite a xenophobic way, mixing fascination with disgust.

Actually, the batlike residents of the planet Ground are more cohesive and uniform than the interstellar travelers from the vicinity of Earth. The ship has three populations: Founders, parents of the Ship generation, which is the second, and Crew. The founders have been aboard for four centuries, as have the crew. But the crew live in free-fall, in a section of the habitat having an ecology adapted to microgravity, while the founders live in the rotating section of the ship. The ship generation is trained to colonize and settle an asteroid belt, and perhaps the occasional planet, though they are more comfortable in enclosed spaces. Once a system is colonized, the ship will go onward, with some of each population switching allegiance so that some ship generation become founders to the next colony trip, a few founders and crew remain behind, and so forth. There are more details, of course, but this gives a bit of a flavor.

Another good idea: the stock market. The ship is full of futures traders, and their fortunes wax and wane based on perceptions of which colony segments will do better or worse.

And another: that the spread of a planetary race into its home system gradually changes the color of its star, perceived from afar. Freeman Dyson posited that a really advanced society would gradually englobe its star with solar-powered orbiting habitats, changing it to an infrared-emitting body. MacLeod instead expects the plant life of largely transparent orbiting habitats will make the star greener. This has implications in the progress of the story.

A word on morals: While the story is a morality play, the characters are amoral as regards sex. This is the most consistent characteristic of science fiction since the 1960s, so is unremarkable, but must be borne in mind.

I read because of ideas. Ideas are our most powerful tools and weapons. This novel is packed with both new ideas older ideas further developed. Hands down, it is the best-thought-out story of interstellar colonization I've read.