It’s been a decade since writer David Brin’s last science fiction novel appeared. This June, he came back to the genre. Existence is an epic, near-future novel that speculates about what contact would look like in the "cosmos that we see" - that is, the relativistic universe limited by the speed of light. No warp drives, no wormholes - just old fashioned slower than light travel. As in most near-future sci-fi works, there is plenty of artificial intelligence, bionic modifications, advanced medical techniques, virtual reality, nanotechnology, class strife, factions trying to stop the advance of technology, and, of course, enhanced global electronic networking (the "infomesh" where you are literally plugged in 24/7).
Except when written by world class authors such as Margaret Atwood, these near-future scenarios and the apocalyptic scenarios that usually accompany them bore me. Attempts to create a futuristic atmosphere by peppering the work with obscure neologisms usually fail. Give me a space opera millions or at least tens of thousands of years in the future with imaginative ways to cheat the speed of light any day.
But Brin being Brin, the author puts together a captivating story that debates some of the "big questions" science fiction likes to ponder.
Gerald Livingstone, an astronaut clearing debris from Earth orbit, and Peng Xiang Bin, a shore-home-salvager working the flooded Chinese coast, both come into possession of alien artifacts - holographic crystals with messages from the stars. Powerful political factions compete for control of the crystals, which only communicate through the persons who found them. In time, humans discover the remnants of thousands of these space farers in the asteroid belt. They also discover evidence of an all-encompassing war fought there a hundred million years ago. The crystals contain uploaded minds in a twisted type of von Neumann probe - sent by their civilizations to virally spread their culture to worlds capable of supporting intelligent life. Are all these civilizations now destroyed? Is there an "intelligence trap" that prevents technological civilizations from surviving? Are we alone? Will heeding the crystals' messages save humanity or doom it?
Sapient dolphins (see Brin's Uplift novels), "auties" (autistic individuals with extra-human capabilities), androids, and a couple of Neanderthals all play a role helping "normal" humans in their efforts to understand the crystals. This gives Brin and the reader a chance to implicitly question what makes one human. What is self-awareness and how does a species achieve it?
Existence unfolds through a multitude of interesting characters and voices. Each chapter is preceded by a blog entry from one of the novel’s characters and each major section is introduced with a quote from a scientist or a writer. Two of my favorites are an imagined conversation between John von Neumann and Enrico Fermi on whether we are alone in the universe and the following quote from Charles Darwin: “We need not marvel at extinction; if we must marvel, let it be at our presumption in imagining that we understand the many complex contingencies, on which the existence of each species depends."
These get to the heart of Brin’s novel. Are we the only technological civilization to have survived? Do we have the maturity to advance further as a species ? Or will we devolve into nationalistic tribalism in a world racked by ecological disaster?
Miscellany
The Existence website is www.davidbrin.com/existence.html. Besides the usual review blurbs and PR, there are also comments by readers and bloggers, a study guide, and a link to articles related to Existence and its themes.
Related The Left Bank Café posts
- Anybody Out There? August 9, 2012
- Why Does the World Exist? September 29, 2012
Von Neumann Probes
Von Neumann probes and their variants have formed a staple for science fiction works for decades. A von Neumann probe is a self-replicating robotic probe first proposed by mathematician and physicist John von Neumann. Probes would be sent out in all directions to explore the galaxy for life or worlds capable of sustaining life. Landing on an asteroid, moon, or planet, each probe would be programmed to manufacture additional versions of itself. These probes would in turn be sent further out into the galaxy...and so on until the galaxy was totally explored.
In the 1980’s the von Neumann machine concept generated a debate between physicist/cosmologist Frank Tipler (co-author of The Cosmological Anthropic Principle) on the one hand and Carl Sagan and William Newman on the other. Tipler argued that, given the age of the Universe, a von Neumann probe should have reached the solar system by now; no probe has ever been detected…therefore no other technological intelligent species exists. Sagan, one of the biggest proponents of the Search for Extraterrestial Intelligence (SETI), and Newman responded that, given the age of the Universe, von Neumann probes would have devoured much of the mass of the galaxy by now. So an intelligent race would not have built them and would destroy them if any came into their star system.
No comments:
Post a Comment