jameswharris

Forgotten Science Fiction: The Last Starship From Earth by John Boyd

Every year thousands of SF and fantasy books get published, but few are reviewed, not many more become popular, and damn few get remembered. Ten years out, most books are out-of-print and forgotten. How many books can you remember from 2002? And if we’re talking fifty years down the timeline, well it’s almost a miracle for a book that old to still be read, much less remembered and loved.

I discovered science fiction in the 1960s, in my teens, and like most people reading their first hundred SF titles, they all seemed so damn far out! Now decades later, I doubt my memories of those first impressions. So, when I have a little extra reading time, I order a book from ABE Books based on those dying memories and reread it. I’ve now reread many of my teenage classics and a majority of them don’t hold up.

Most memories are fleeting, and my memory of The Last Starship From Earth was next to nothing. All I remembered was a favorable impact. Just a lingering sense of it being a standout read for 1968 or 1969. To test that memory I recently bought and reread The Last Starship From Earth. Sad to say, it was a discard from the Columbus Public Library, a common practice for books that don’t get checked out. Not a good sign. The last English reprint of this novel was in 1978. It’s last edition was in French, in 1995.

The Review

The Last Starship From Earth is a dystopian novel set in 1968 and 1969, but not the 1968 and 1969 that I remember, or lived through. In the world of this story, Jesus did not die on the cross, but was killed leading an assault on Rome. He was the Messiah that people expected. The government of John Boyd’s world is a global government run by Christians along “scientific” lines, where psychologists and sociologists in conjunction with the Church and an AI Pope rule the world. People marry and mate because of their genes, sort of like the film Gattaca, and the hero of our story is Haldane IV, M-5, 138270, 3/10/46, a math student of great promise, being the fourth in line of great mathematicians. Unfortunately Haldane gets the hots for Helix, a mere poet. By law and social custom Haldane is expected to have nothing to do with her, but as you’d expect he falls in love with her.

Haldane concocts a ruse to justify more meetings with Helix by studying Fairweather I, a 19th century mathematician who also wrote poetry. Much of the first half of the book deals with pseudo-academic studies from this alternate history. Boyd is creative in his steady flow of ideas and concepts, but there’s little emotion in the story. It’s somewhat Heinlein-esque, in it’s attitude and world building, but lacks the charm of Heinlein’s best prose.

Now, this quick summary is enticing, and I would like to report that The Last Starship From Earth is a forgotten classic, unfortunately, that’s probably not true. I enjoyed the book, but only as a quick read.

Surfing the web I’ve found few other reviews of this novel, and although I’ve found people who claim it’s their favorite book, I also found people that thought it ho-hum. Now, I’ve got to admit it has a humdinger of an ending, almost as startling as the film The Sixth Sense, but I’m not sure this last minute thrill pays for the reading the whole book.

I found the love affair of Haldane and Helix no more believable than Romeo and Juliet and far less exciting. John Boyd does write well, but the plot is mostly intellectual, about the dystopian society, and its complications. The book is only 182 pages, and the whole tale feels rushed. Boyd staked out a solid gold claim but never mined it.

Analysis with Spoilers

The trouble with many SF novels, especially those written back in the 1950s and 1960s, was they were written very fast, and they were about ideas and not characters. John Boyd has actually written a very ambitious novel by creating an alternative history of Jesus, but he never fleshes it out, and most of the story is a setup for the surprised ending. The scope of the book is epic, the line by line writing reasonably entertaining, but the overall feel of the book is thin.

Haldane and Helix are discovered, and the middle part of the book is a trial that allows Boyd to work out the politics and legal system of this alternative reality, however, like the rest of this book, it’s rushed. It’s padding. That’s its downfall. He has a big ending but it’s way bigger than the story. To pad the story even more Haldane is sentence to exile on Pluto, which is called Hell. There he meets Fairweather I and is reunited with Helix, who happens to be Fairweather’s granddaughter. Fairweather needed a mathematician for his time machine, and Helix was sent to Earth to engineer the exile of a mathematician to pilot an experimental time machine. In a very short time Fairweather makes Haldane immortal, tells him his new name is Judas Iscariot, and his mission is to go back in time to kill Christ.

Now if Boyd had spent a couple hundred pages recreating the Biblical world and shown how Haldane tracks down Jesus, we would have had a much better story. But all of this was summed up in a short epilogue. We are told Haldane captures Jesus and puts him in the time machine and sends him back, and the rest of the epilogue is about how he has relived the two thousand years to return to his own time and meet a girl that’s an awful lot like Helix, living in a future that’s much more like ours. But did Haldane let Jesus die on the cross, or does he just disappear him from history? Unless Haldane at least engineers a dying on the cross scene for history, we should not expect this timeline to be ours.

How do you plot a riveting novel with great characters based on the idea that Jesus didn’t die on the cross and the world became very different? How do you tell the story twice? Boyd really grabs a tiger by the tail and yells, “Look at me!” And I think, “Cool! Far out man! But what are you going to do with him?” He’s got to do more than just swing it around. I’ll give Boyd a solid C for his world building, but they are only tantalizing sketches.

I really like this ending, but is it good enough to make The Last Starship From Earth a classic SF novel worth reading today? I’ve linked several references to this book on the net and even though I can find fans of the book, I can find more people who think it sucks. You’d think Boyd Bradfield Upchurch, John Boyd’s real name, if he’s still alive, would arrange for his books to be reprinted as ebooks. That certainly would make it easier for more readers to decide if The Last Starship From Earth is worth reading.

I’m afraid Boyd falls far short of classic standing. The Last Starship from Earth is a good novel for science fiction historians to read, but it needed to be four or five times longer, more the size of Dune, to get the job done that Boyd outlined. However, I’m not sure how he could have pulled off this big ambitious idea.

And is Boyd saying our history is the better timeline? Why is his first timeline all that evil? Is the freedom to fuck whoever you want the perfect ideal worth rewriting all of history? Isn’t the more interesting story about a world where the promise of salvation and eternal life never happened? Isn’t Boyd’s surprise ending really a cheat?

Time travel machines often ruins more stories than they’ve ever help.

Boyd has a three part story. Life on Earth in an alternate timeline, life on Pluto, life on Earth in another timeline. The story really isn’t about genetic breeding of humans like we see in Gattaca, or in Heinlein’s Beyond This Horizon or Huxley’s Brave New World. It’s about an oppressive government. But does it deserve to be wiped out by time travel?

Here’s the thing, our 1968 was a horrible time for America, but should we send a man back in time to wipe it out? Boyd wasn’t writing a protest novel like Nineteen Eighty-Four. Nor did he write a novel that truly explored a timeline with a different Christ, which would have been ambitious enough.

Would The Last Starship From Earth been a better novel is it hadn’t used the time machine gimmick? Not as it stands, but it potentially could have been. I believe it’s a grave mistake for any alternate history novel is have a do-over. Time travel is really a very dangerous concept to use in fiction. Time travel is very hard to pull off. The beauty of an alternative history novel is the alternative history. Don’t add time travel. This would take away Boyd’s surprise ending, but it would have meant he would have been forced to write a better novel.

I felt cheated when Helix shows up so easily on Pluto, in what at first appears to be a happy romantic ending, but then we’re thrown for another loop. Haldane loses her again, only to find her again 2,000 years later. Oh come on man, this horny-at-first-sight love isn’t believable. Weren’t there no math babes for Haldane? This really is a case of what you can’t have makes the heart grow fonder. And neither Haldane nor Helix are all that interesting – if you want a great love story you have to have great lovers.

The powerful driving motive in Gattaca is that Vincent wants to go into space. He wants to prove that he’s as good any genetically selected human. The driving force of The Last Starship from Earth is Haldane wants to screw Helix. Boyd doesn’t make it believable why his world outlaws sex, nor does he make it believable that Haldane and Helix are in big time love. Hell, even the prosecutors of the story wink at him, and say why didn’t you use a condom and just screw her, implying this world does overlooks recreational sex, just not casual genetic mixing. But then Boyd never explains why his world requires genetic fidelity to specialties like mathematics and poetry. In Gattaca we have the justification that their world doesn’t want naturals to pass on bad traits, but in Boyd’s world there is no reason to breed pure bred mathematicians. Also, how many math geniuses does one world need?

John Boyd wrote just enough alternate history world-building to set up his surprise ending. In essence The Last Starship From Earth is a O’Henry type story, and we now use those type stories as examples as how not to write a story. However, The Last Starship From Earth suggests two possible storylines I’d love to read. First, I’d love to read an alternate history where Christ was the Messiah that everyone was expecting. Second, I’d love to read a time travel story about people having to learn what it takes to live in ancient Israel and track down Jesus. Both would require a tremendous knowledge of real history.

JWH –5/28/12

Turning Your Desktop Into a SF Cover Art Gallery

This is how my desktop of the moment looks (click on all images for 1920×1080 versions):

This is a painting by Richard M. Powers for a 1974 paperback book, The Mountains of the Sun by Christian Leourier from Berkley Medallion Books. Powers’ art visually defined science fiction for many fans in the 1950s and 1960s because of his book covers for Ballantine Books.

Now I don’t know if this is legal by copyright standards, but I like to find images from science fiction book and magazine covers, and format them for my computer desktop background. I’m going to provide some basic instructions on how to do this, but they’re specific for Windows 7. Max OS X and Linux users can also have desktop backgrounds, but you’ll need to know your system to customize these instructions.

All computers, tablets and smartphones come with a method of changing the desktop background. Most devices have built-in programs for cycling these images. And you can install programs with various levels of sophistication that take folders of photos and cycle your desktop images and use the photos for a screensaver.

Finding the Photos

When I discover a book cover I like I go to Google and click Images and search on the book title. Usually somebody has already scanned it for the web. Google will show you an array of images. Here’s what a Google Images search looks like for “Richard Powers Art.”

Look for the highest resolution with the sharpest scan. I right-click on potential images and select “Open link in a new window” and then click on “Full-Size Image.” That gives me the image in a browser page by itself. You want the largest possible version you can get, because unless the image is the same size as your desktop it will be blown up to fit your screen and small images can become very blurry. When you find one you like, right click and select, “Save image as” and save it into a folder for collecting your desktop SF art.

[FYI, IE will shrink an image to fit within the browser window. If it does, you’ll see a little magnifier with a + in it. Click the image and you’ll see the full size version. It will be bigger than the browser window sometimes. Sometimes much bigger. Right click and save that version to get the absolute best results.]

Repeat this procedure until you have a little collection of art.

Formatting for the Desktop

Most pictures you collect won’t have the same aspect ratio as your screen. If you want to preserve the original image do nothing. This is especially true if you are collecting book and magazine covers. However, your screen will end up looking like this:

But sometimes it’s fun to crop part of the art to fit the screen to really show off the art. Like this:

If you click on this image to look at the full size image you’ll see that my blow-up looks a bit fuzzy. However, it’s within my acceptance range, but I’d prefer a sharper image. If I see a better scan someday I’ll grab it.

[FYI, I was inspired to grab this cover by Joachim Boaz’s Adventures in Science Fiction Cover Art: Eye(s) in the Sky.]

Cropping for the exact desktop size is a bit tricky. It helps to have Photoshop or some other program that let’s you crop by pixel height and width. Luckily, there’s a free online Photoshop clone you can use at http://pixlr.com. Go to that link and click on –> Open photo editor <-. Then click on “Open image from computer.” Browse to your art folder and select an image to edit.

Then click on the crop tool, under Constraint at the top, a small pull-down menu, select “Output size” and in the Width and Height text boxes put in the dimensions of your monitor. Mine are 1920×1080. Then click on the upper-left corner of the area you want to crop and drag down the mouse to the bottom right. Let go. You’ll see a frame outline that you can reposition. Double click on the crop to finalize. Anything you crop will be in the exact dimensions of your monitor. Then in the Pixlr File menu, select Save and put the picture back on your computer. I usually renamed crops so they have the dimensions as part of the name. For example, eye-in-the-sky-1920×1080.png.

You can also use pixlr to punch up the color, brightness, contrast, and other image variables, and even fix bad spots.

Basic Manual Setup

Now that you have some images ready, we can turn them into backgrounds. If you aren’t running a background changer, meaning the image on your desktop never changes, we’ll install one of your new images manually. Go to your SF Cover Art folder and find an image you want to use. Right click on the image filename and select “Set as desktop background.” Your image should now be the desktop background. Minimize all windows and admire. [There is a button at the far right of the Windows 7 Taskbar that will close all windows on the desktop so you can see your art unhindered. Clicking it again brings back your windows as they were.]

Automatic Desktop Changer

If you right click on your desktop background and select “Personalize” you’ll see something like this:

At the bottom is a link to “Desktop Background” – select it. You’ll then see:

I normally use another program for switching backgrounds, but Windows 7, and most other OS systems, have a simple desktop changer built in. You can select the built-in program for Windows 7 up at the top of this screen, it’s called “Windows Desktop Backgrounds.” Then hit browse and find the folder with your art. Set the “Picture Position” to Fill, and “Change picture every” to 30 seconds. You can change this to a real time interval later, for now this will quickly show your images to you for testing.

For years I used a program called Webshots, and it’s wonderful, but it wants to show pictures in its file format. You can add your pictures to its format, but that’s extra work. Recently I’ve discovered John’s Background Switcher. Gizmo’s Freeware has a whole list of Wallpaper Changers. I like John’s Background Switcher because it can handle many sources for pictures, including online galleries, and even images from my Webshots folder.

Other Galleries

I have other galleries other than SF Cover Art, like astronomy photos and copies of famous paintings. If you search around for Desktop Art or Background Art, you’ll find a myriad of images to collect. Here’s an astronomy desktop.

I’m also fascinated by historical photographs, like this street scene.

Having photos, or copies of artwork blown up and randomly shown is very stimulating. Photos induce interesting contemplative states of mind for me. I’m very inspired by visuals. At my work office, visitors often sit across from me and stop talking because they get mesmerized by images on my computer screens. I have a dual monitor setup at work.

I’ve always loved book, magazine and album cover art. I’ve collected art books for decades. I hated when LP covers shrank to the size of CD covers. Paperbacks are naturally small to begin with. So putting this kind of artwork on a 23” 1080p screen really showcases the art. If you have a HTPC, you can also use the same techniques for putting art on your large high definition television screen.

My art books seldom get looked at, but stuff on my desktop gallery gets looked at every day. It’s a visual reminder of how big the universe is when I’m sitting in front of a 23” monitor all day long.

One reason I switched from Webshots to John’s Background Switcher is that program makes it easy to add new photos to my desktop galleries. Whenever I find something good on the net I just do a right click, save image as, and put it on of my desktop background folders. I also have a folder in Dropbox so I can save images from any computer I use.

Back in the early 1970s my roommate Greg and I would use macro lenses and photograph covers of The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction, Astounding & Analog, Galaxy & If, as well as book covers and show them at our SF Book Club meetings. People loved seeing the SF/F art blown up big. Putting covers on your desktop is much easier and you get to see them everyday.

JWH 5/26/12

Questions about The Avengers from a Science Fiction Fan

Are all superheroes as durable and immortal as Wile E. Coyote? My wife and I went to see The Avengers the other day. Normally we don’t go to movies about comic book characters, but The Avengers was getting such great reviews we thought we’d give it a try. I went through a brief comic book reading phase in 1963, and I’ve seen the first Christopher Reeves Superman and the first Michael Keaton Batman, and that’s about it for my comic book experience. As a child I loved the George Reeves Adventures of Superman TV show and the Mighty Mouse cartoons. One of my first blogs was about memories of all us neighborhood kids wanting to fly, “Super Men and Mighty Mice.”

I am a lifelong science fiction fan and computer geek, so I’ve been around a lot of people who love comics. By all accounts, I should love comics too, but for some reason I don’t. I’ve read books and watched documentaries about the history of comics and their fans, so I’m not completely ignorant of the genre. But watching The Avengers was probably what it would be like for me to attend the opera, I was way out of my element. It made me want to ask a lot of questions.

This isn’t a review of The Avengers. I’m quite confident it’s a great movie for its intended audience. I’m not the intended audience, and it left me wondering about many things, and I obviously don’t have the right mindset. Maybe if I knew how the game was played I could have enjoyed the movie more.

Why people love comic books and superhero movies totally baffles me. Now I don’t want to be a Grinch about comics, or be a old man fuddy-duddy pooh-pooh other people’s fun, but I do have some questions about comic books and superheroes.

My first question is: Are you expected to check your mind in at the theater door when going to see a superhero movie? Is the fun of such a show returning to the state of mind you had before starting 1st grade? Is part of the thrill forgetting all logic and science? Is the fun of watching The Avengers pretending to be five years old again?

Many people call superhero movies science fiction, but I really hate that because it suggests that science fiction can be completely ignorant about science. I’d go so far as to say that superhero movies are anti-science by ignoring the laws of physics and coming up with really insane concepts and suggesting they are science based. For instance, in The Avengers the whole story is built around a power source called a tesseract. A tesseract is a geometrical concept, a 4D cube. The film also has a flying aircraft carrier, space aliens, Norse gods, mutated humans and flying metal suits with no apparent fuel supply. Plus characters can pound on each other like Warner Brother cartoon characters and behave like the Three Stooges and no one ever gets hurts, much less bruised and bleeding.

I have to ask: Do superhero movies exist in a reality similar to the reality where Bugs Bunny and Moe, Larry and Curly exist? That’s okay if that’s how to play the game, but to me fictional realities with no rules ruins the fun of make-believe.

And, why are superheroes like Greek and Roman gods? They have all kinds of powers, they fly, they are petty and egotistical, and they fight with each other. Also, we’re asked to believe that the fate of humanity depends on these beings saving us time and again. Doesn’t that seem like some kind of transference from religion? Are fans of superheroes worshippers?

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying people shouldn’t watch superhero movies. These movies are loved by millions, and the movie industry makes huge profits, a big US export, so they are great for the economy. All I’m asking is if other people don’t question the fictional reality of the comic book superhero world. I love science fiction, and even some fantasy, but the world of superheroes seems way out there, way beyond any possible believability. Or is that their appeal? Are comic books a genre about an alternate reality with no scientific laws and magic works?

I mean, we’re talking the age of myths. It’s like reverting our minds back to a Paleolithic mindset. Talk about your old time religion, this kind of magical thinking would put us back in the time of Genesis and Exodus, when the world was full of powerful beings, magic and great catastrophes. Why are superhero movies so appealing? Do people actual crave a time when the laws of physics were totally unknown and seeing is believing? Of course this state of mind was how the whole world existed before science. Maybe comics should be called pre-science fiction.

Watching The Avengers, it bothered me that normal humans were like ants scurrying around waiting for the superheroes to save them. You could call superhero movies salvation films, because their plots often reflect evil wanting to destroy mankind and superheroes saving us. Of course, we could just let Joseph Campbell explain the whole hero with a thousand faces again.

I grew up on the science fiction of Robert A. Heinlein, and he liked to believe that humans were the most dangerous critters in the universe. He thought normal people could take on all challengers in the galaxy, and only ordinary human heroes were needed. I thought Heinlein was overly aggressive in wanting to kick alien ass, but I do like his idea that we should live and die by our own abilities. I don’t want to babysat by gods, mutants and aliens.

Watching The Avengers made me wonder if superhero movies are like porn movies, but instead of making you want sex, they make you lust for power. That each of the Avengers represents powerful abilities movie goers would love to have themselves. But if you really think about the Avengers, do you really envy them? Who would want to be The Hulk? Or Thor? I bet most people envy the billionaire playboy, but does being a super-asshole have to come with the power suit? Captain America seems like a nice guy, but that outfit! Really? How important are those awful clothes? Can Superman fly just in jeans and a t-shirt? I wouldn’t mind being able to fly like that if I didn’t have to wear a leotard and cape. And Batman looks like a pimped out S&M freak.

What kind of inner fantasies do superheroes appeal to? Has anybody asked their therapist?

Movie fans flocked to The Avengers and loved it. I’m just curious as to why. Asking me to believe in flying aircraft carriers is insulting to me. I guess my imagination has limits. I can accept angels and monotheistic robots in Battlestar Galactica, but I can’t accept flying aircraft carriers. Why. Did it do anything up in the air that it couldn’t do floating on the ocean? Where was it going, and where did it come from? As far as we knew it was just flying around in a holding pattern. How was a flying aircraft carrier important to the plot?

Also, why are all the superheroes equal in durability. Shouldn’t their be some kind of hierarchy of power? Shouldn’t their be a chain of command? They should be like rock, paper, scissors. Thor can hammer Loki, Loki can outwit The Hulk, The Hulk can forge Iron Man, Iron Man will bend Captain America, Captain America can romance Black Widow, and Black Widow can seduce Thor. Why do they squabble and punch each other like Moe, Larry and Curly? In the movie our heroes spent more time fighting each other than the enemy. My wife barely liked the movie, and thought it was okay as a comedy.

I was bored. I’m 60, so I’ve seen a lot of movies with explosions and cities blowing up. I didn’t see anything new in special effects, or any new action sequences that I didn’t see in 1996 watching Independence Day. In terms of creating an alternative reality, The Matrix (1999) had just as much comic book action as The Avengers, and it was believable within its own context. Of course, that leads me to ask: Am I suppose to assume all superhero movies exist in the same alternate reality and it’s an assumption I should come to the theater believing, or do each of them create a new reality to explore?

I’m used to science fiction where every story invents a new reality for the reader to judge. So I’m asking: Are superhero stories all set in a shared comic book reality. Or is it two realities, Marvel and DC? Dune isn’t the world of Foundation, and Foundation is not the world of Blade Runner, or Starship Troopers. To me it seems like superhero reality is one shared by all comic book writers and it would believable that Superman could fly along side Ironman.

Like I said, I really don’t mean to pick on superhero movies. I love westerns and old movies from the 1930s, and most of my friends don’t. So I can understand my taste for comic book movies is just not suited for the genre. My not liking comic book movies is no different from me not getting into opera or basketball. It’s not a criticism. I just wondered into the wrong movie theater and went WTF?

JWH – 3/20/12

How Would Life on Earth Be Different if Everyone Was an Atheist?

Belief in God and an afterlife affects how people see reality. What if one day we all woke up without any superstitious beliefs in the metaphysical? What if science caught on and everyone began thinking in the same way about how reality works – would that change the social fabric of Earth? Does religion help or hurt when it comes to doing good?

Think about what John Lennon suggested in his song “Imagine”

Imagine there’s no heaven
It’s easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people living for today

Imagine there’s no countries
It isn’t hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people living life in peace

You, you may say
I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one
I hope some day you’ll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people sharing all the world

If religion and metaphysical ideas disappeared would we come together as one? I doubt it, but I think we could start working on the real problems we face. I can’t help but believe that if people didn’t think a better life awaits them after death they would take this world more seriously.

I think religious divides us, but I think something else divides us more: politics. But politics are just the outward manifestation of our inner beliefs which are tangled up in religious beliefs. The litmus test for that division is how we treat the poor.

Some people hate giving to the poor. They feel the poor should work. They feel the poor are undeserving of charity. Welfare makes their heads explode with anger. Paying taxes for public schools galls them no end. Foreign aid and food stamps just annoy the hell out them. Their resentment knows no bounds when it comes to paying taxes.

Other people want to divvy up the wealth and make life on Earth decent for all.

What’s strange the first group tend to be Christians and the second tend to be secular or spiritual rather than religious. To the first group, socialism is a dirty word, even though their God was known for dividing the fishes and loaves so everyone could eat.

So, I’m not sure if religion disappeared life on Earth would be any different.

We are going through transformative times. Communism failed. But capitalism cannot provide enough jobs for all. There will always be a certain percentage of the population that are idle. We have incorporated many socialistic solutions into our economy, and many people hate that. If we revert to a complete free market, where it’s dog eat dog capitalism, we will have a world where the rich lived in armed enclaves and the rest struggle to survive in a cruel uncontrolled Darwinian conflict. The early Christians saw Jesus’ teachings as a solution to this problem, but modern Christians have moved away from those socialistic beliefs.

I tend to wonder if modern Christians haven’t jettison all the Christian philosophy and just hung onto the belief of heaven. They want to be rich on Earth, and rich in Heaven. If these people turned atheists one night I doubt anything about the world would change.

Religion is a distraction like watching TV. Believing in vampires or angels, it doesn’t matter, it’s all fiction. To get the world that John Lennon imagined doesn’t come from giving up religion. What we need is for everyone to stop thinking about themselves and resenting others.

The real solution is to think global but act locally. We have to solve the problem of creating a healthy Earth, and how to create an economy that provides the basics of a decent life for all seven billion people that live on Earth. Our problem is the 10% want everything for themselves and expect the 90% to go fuck themselves. As far as I can see religion is irrelevant to this problem.

Like I said, we’re going through a transformative age that people in the future will name and analyze. Will the Earth survive? The rich want to ignore that issue. They want to get as much as they can for themselves. They do not care what happens to the Earth. They do not care what happens to future generations. They do not care about the rest of the people living on the Earth now.

Humans are a cancer consuming this world. Unless we get our greed under control we will consume everything, including ourselves.

To answer my title question: Unless becoming atheist means becoming liberal and socialist, the disappearance of religion would mean nothing to life on Earth. The real issues to how we live on Earth lies elsewhere. I don’t think greed is a belief. It’s genetic, conditioned and animalistic. Religion neither helps nor hurts in solving greed.

I think people who want to help the world do so because they just want to help the world. But those people aren’t enough. Unless the greedy are brought under control, and we’re all greedy, we can’t save ourselves. Christians want to be saved, but the plight of the Earth is another kind of salvation. Unless we’re all saved, then we’re all lost. Whether a God is watching us or not, it does not matter, because we can only save ourselves.

JWH – 5/16/12

The Origins of Higher Intelligence in Science Fiction

In the physical realm of reality, we humans have always believed we were the crown of creation, the smartest beings in a long chain of animal and plant creatures. Yet, as far back into history that we have memories, we have speculated about metaphysical beings that were far smarter than us, who had amazing abilities. God and gods, angels and devils, and a whole zoology of spiritual beings. Over the centuries of progress and the development of science, we have come to doubt the existence of such metaphysical beings. We’ve even asked ourselves, are we alone in the universe, and wondered if there are beings elsewhere in the vast multiverse that are as smart as we are, or even conscious of living in the multiverse.

Ancient Greeks speculated about life on distant worlds. They even imagined the universe composed of atoms and concluded our world must not be unique. Ever since then there have been people who thought about life on other worlds, or even the creation of better humans, or even the wilder ideas of the creation of smart machines and artificial life. We just don’t want to accept that we’re alone.

For most of history, most of humanity has assumed we’re not alone, that spiritual beings existed and they were superior to us. After the Renaissance and the Enlightenment, religious thinking decline and scientific thinking rose. Among the population, a growing number of us has come to accept that physical reality is the only reality. Instead of waiting for God to give us higher powers after we died, we started speculating on how we could give ourselves immortality, greater wisdom, and control over space and time, and we wondered more and more if there are other intelligent, self-aware creatures living in the universe with us. Slowly, a form of literature developed to support this speculation and it’s generally called science fiction.

In 1818 Mary Shelley spread the idea in her book Frankenstein; or, The Modern Prometheus that we could find the force that animated life and overcome death. That’s a very apt subtitle because Prometheus was a god that uplifted mankind. Mary Shelley also promoted another great science fictional concept in her 1826 book The Last Man, which speculated that our species could go extinct. If there is no God we must protect ourselves from extinction, and fight against death. But actually, we wanted more.

Then in 1895 H. G. Wells suggested to the world in his novel The Time Machine, that humanity could even devolve, as well as go extinct. Not only that, he showed how the Earth could die. This was all inspired from On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection by Charles Darwin, which first appeared in 1859. In The Time Machine Wells imagined life in 802,701 A.D. Instead of picturing the obvious, a superior race of humans evolving, he envisions two species that had branched off from ours, and neither of which were superior. He hints that there were greater versions of humanity in between the times, but now we had devolved. At the end of the book, he suggests that humans devolve even further into mere creatures without any intelligence. This powerful speculative fiction defined the scope of humanity for us. We can become greater, lesser or ceased to exist.

Then in 1898 Wells gets the world to think about another brilliant science fictional idea, what if there are superior alien beings that can visit Earth and conquer us. In The War of the Worlds, intelligent beings come to exterminate humans. We don’t know how much more intelligent they are, but the Martians can build great machines and travel across space. There had been other books about alien invaders and time travel, but H. G. Wells made these ideas common speculation.

In 1911, J. D. Beresford published The Hampdenshire Wonder, a book about deformed child with a super powerful brain, a prodigy or wunderkind of amazing abilities. Beresford, his novel and ideas, were never as famous as his contemporary H. G. Wells, but The Wonder was an idea whose time had come. How much smarter could a human become? Readers of science fiction, and some people in the world at large were now wondering about the powers of the mind, as well as speculating about how powerful could alien minds be. Stories about robots had existed before now, as well as Frankenstein and Golem like creatures, but the public had not fixated on the idea of superior machine intelligence or artificial life. But we were on our way to imagining a superior man, a superman.

Prodigies were well known and speculated about, like musical prodigies and math geniuses, but Beresford suggests the human mind had a lot more potential in it. He also zooms in on the resentment factor.

The 1930 novel Gladiator by Philip Wylie suggests it’s possible to enhance humans with a serum to improve their physical strength. There is no scientific reasoning behind this, other than to suggest we could have the equivalent weight lifting power of an ant, and the jumping power of a grasshopper. All of this merely foreshadows Superman comics (1932). The theory behind Superman is he’s an alien with advanced powers and not an enhanced humans.

Comic books embraced the idea of super-heroes speculating about an endless variety of ways to get humans with more features and powers. Comics have never been very scientific, and instead copied the ideas and themes from ancient gods and goddesses. It’s all wish-fulfillment fantasies. People are exposed to radiation and lightening all the time and don’t mutate. However, all of this led to speculation about what humans could become, and how evolution might produce Homo Sapiens 2.0.

In 1935 Olaf Stapledon published Odd John: A Story Between Jest and Earnest. Stapledon went far beyond comics in his speculation about what a superman might be, how they would act, and how society would react. Science fiction is now seriously philosophizing about the future and potential of the human race.

Olaf Stapledon was a far reaching thinker and a serious science fiction writer. Last and First Men (1930) describes eighteen species of humans, while Star Maker (1937) tried to write a history of life in the universe. These books are not typical novels, but more like fictional narratives. The scope of Stapledon’s speculation was tremendous, and few science fiction writers have tempted to best him.

1930s science fiction was full of stories about accelerated evolution, such as “The Man Who Evolved” by Edmond Hamilton, and this culminated in the super-science stories of E. E. Smith and his Lensmen stories (1934-1948). Science fiction fans ate this stuff up, and many people consider the ideas in the Lensmen series as inspiration for the Star Wars series. The stories involve two super alien races fighting a galactic war over vast time scales using client races that they uplifted with knowledge and superior technology.

Smith ideas weren’t completely new, but he put them together in an exciting series that really jump-started the science fiction genre of the 1940s and 1950s. Smith presented the idea that aliens could be godlike or devilish in their abilities, wisdom and knowledge, and they could bestow great powers on those who follow them. The science behind all of this is hogwash. It’s pandering to ancient religious beliefs by presenting the same ideas in pseudo-science costumes.

Star Wars has the same exact appeal. Humans, especially adolescent boys, and now liberated girls, want power and adventure. These powers and adventures are no different from what Greek, Roman, Hindu and Norse gods experienced. The excitement of Golden Age Science Fiction from the pulp magazines of the 1940s and into the psycho-social science fiction of the 1950s represents the unleashing of great desires. Desires for immortality, of ruling the heavens, telepathy, telekinesis, teleportation, flying faster than light, becoming as all-knowing as God.

Starting in the 1950s, especially with movies, and expanding in the 1960s with television shows like Star Trek, these ideas became widely popular, almost universal, and during the next 50 years, they came to dominate the most popular films. There is a huge pent-up desire here for the fantastic and the transcendental through the powers of science.

Science fiction writers have often faced the challenge of presenting a super-advanced being, either a very evolved human, a powerful alien, or an AI being with vast intelligence as a character in their stories. Generally, the assumption is super-intelligence equals ESP like powers. How often in Outer Limits, Star Trek, Star Wars, or in written science fiction, have you seen a highly evolved human read minds, or move matter with thought, such as Valentine Michael Smith in Stranger in a Strange Land? This goes way back in science fiction. The same thing is true when aliens come down to visit in their flying saucers. If they are presented as from an ancient civilization, they might not even have bodies, but they can manipulated space and time at will.

Isn’t that all silly? How does higher IQ equal overcoming the physical laws of reality?

Back in 1961 Robert Heinlein suggests that a very ancient race of Martians had conquered space and time with their minds, and they taught their techniques to a normal human, as if it was no more difficult than learning yoga. Really? Is that believable? Well, science fiction fans ate this up too. And then in 1977 Star Wars suggested similar powers for the Jedi. Why do people want to believe thinking can be that powerful? Well obviously, they hoped to have such power.

Valentine Michael Smith could make objects move or disappear. He could kill people at will by sending them into another dimension. He also had fakir like control over his body that allowed him to hibernate and appear dead. He could also talk with ghosts. Heinlein gives us no reason how these wild talents developed, or how they could function within the rules of physics.

Like Luke Skywalker learning to use The Force, people hope to transcend their old way of being through will power. So far we haven’t had much luck with that concept. The next step is to invent machines that could enhance us.

In 1963, one of the classic episodes of the original Outer Limits has David McCallum, an ordinary miner, put into a mad scientist’s chamber and his body evolved with speeded up evolution. McCallum’s brain gets huge, he grows a sixth finger on each hand and his mental powers become enormous. This superman moves beyond love and hate and sees normal humans beneath his consideration.

This is a step beyond Heinlein. It suggests that evolution will eventually produce a smarter human. It gives us no reason why we should believe this. One real theory about why humans actually evolved was to adapt to climate change so we could survive in many different environments and climates. Humanity has faced all kinds of challenges and we’ve yet to morph into anything new yet.

Back in 1953, Theodore Sturgeon proposed that mutations might exist in the population, in the case of More Than Human, suggested that six such individuals getting together to blend their talents into a gestalt consciousness. The first part of the story is called “The Fabulous Idiot” and reminds us we’ve long known about idiot savants that have wild talents. We have to give Sturgeon credit for sticking close to reality and not just making up some science fiction mumbo-jumbo, except that he suggests that misfits have ESP or telepathy, that darling concept of 1950s science fiction writers. Without telepathy we can’t create the gestalt.

There are humans with magnificent mental abilities, with photographic minds, wizards with numbers and math, but most of them have other weaknesses that keep them from being fully functional as social beings. There seems to be a problem with the human mind focusing to closely on any one talent at the expense of general abilities.

John Wyndham comes up with a solution of having an alien intelligence inhabit a boy. This is sort of a cheat don’t you think? Without explaining how an alien mind can occupy our mind and why it’s mind is superior, this is no more than waving a wand and saying, let it be so.

Star Trek explores accidently accelerated evolution when the Enterprise hits a magnetic storm on the edge of the galaxy and crewman Gary Mitchell develops godlike psionic powers. Like many stories about evolved beings, Gary becomes a threat to the normal people and feels no moral restraint about killing people. Heinlein presented Valentine Michael Smith as being just with his use of powers to disappear people, but Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock see Gary Mitchell as evil and must be destroyed.

This show was a second pilot for the original Star Trek series and Mr. Spock is very aggressive, brandishing a rather large and powerful phaser rifle. Later on Mr. Spock becomes the ideal of mental self-control and evolved being, but then he’s a Vulcan. The implication is control over feelings will lead to greater mental powers.

In 1965 Heinlein returns with a newer version of Mike from Stranger in a Strange Land. Once again, this Mike is an innocent, but a machine coming into consciousness. Once again he has to learn about how the world works and to develop his own talents. Being a machine he has new abilities that humans don’t and can’t have. Now we’re onto something. If we can’t evolve our brains, why not use our brains to build a better brain. Mike is a friendly computer, but many people fear this idea.

Just a year later, in 1966, D. J. Jones images the world controlled by two giant military computers. Of course, in 1983 the film War Games imagines another dangerous military computer with consciousness. This happens quite often in science fiction, uppity computers that must be outwitted by slower minded humans. We seldom get to explore the potential of a smart computer.

David Gerrold actually writes a science fiction novel that thoughtfully explores the idea of an emerging machine intelligence in 1972, and even speculates on many interesting ideas that eventually become part of the computer age, including computer viruses. Gerrold builds on what Heinlein started with The Moon is a Harsh Mistress.

In 1995, literary writer Richard Powers explores the idea of machine intelligence with Galatea 2.2, where scientists build a computer named Helen to understand English literature.

Then in 2009, Robert J. Sawyer began a trilogy about an emerging AI that evolves out of the Internet. Webmind, as it names itself. Webmind works hard not to be threatening and wants to help humanity.

Let’s imagine a Homo Sapiens 2.0, or BEM, or AI with an IQ of 1,000. I don’t know if that’s appropriate for the actual scale, but the highest IQ recorded are just over 200, so lets use 1,000 as a theoretical marker. Let’s imagine IBM’s Watson that had all that brainpower and more, so he/she was like a human with computer thinking speed and memory.

What would it mean to have an IQ of 1,000. It would mean the AI, Alien or Homo Sapiens 2.0 would think very very fast, remember incredibly well, and solve brain teasers faster than anyone on Earth. It wouldn’t mean it could read minds or move matter at will, although I’d expect it to deduce information about people like Sherlock Holmes.

Probably all math and physics would be a snap to such a being. In fact, it would think so fast and know so much that it might not find much of interest in reality. It wouldn’t know everything, but lets imagine it could consciously imagine calculations like those made in supercomputers to predict the weather, solve subatomic particle experiments or run the Wall Street Stock exchange.

What would such a being feel? How would it occupy its mind with creative pursuits?

We feel as humans at the crown of creation, that intelligence is the grand purpose of the universe, but when you start studying the multiverse, that might not be so. We’re just one of an infinity of creations. There might be limits to intelligence, like physical limits in the universe, like the speed of light.

Science fiction hasn’t begun to explore the possibilities of higher intelligence, but I do think there are limits of awareness, limits of thought and limits of intelligence. All too often science fiction has taken the easy way out and assumed higher intelligence equals godlike powers. What does it truly mean to know about every sparrow that falls from a tree? Is that possible?

Computers are teaching us a lot about intelligence. Up till now they show that brilliance is possible without awareness.

Science fiction has explored the nature of alien minds, machine minds and evolved human minds over and over, yet these explorations have come up with very little of substance. I often wonder if the universe doesn’t appear simple with only a moderate amount of intelligence, education and self-awareness. If we could couple the mind of a human with IBM’s Watson, the resulting mind might be smart enough to fully comprehend reality and build almost anything that needs to be built or invented. Such a being would know if it’s worth the effort to travel to the stars, or just sit and watch existence as it is.

JWH – 5/15/12