Monday, April 1, 2013

2312 (a novel by Kim Stanley Robinson)



E. J. Swift is a relative newcomer to the field but Kim Stanley Robinson has been writing science fiction for almost 30 years. His most known work is probably the Mars Trilogy (Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars) about the colonization and terraforming of Mars. It's hard to believe that the award-winning trilogy is 20 years old - Red Mars was released in 1992. 2312 shares many similarities with the universe depicted in the Mars Trilogy, e.g., terraforming,societal development, the need to get away from a deteriorating Earth, long-lived humans. The current novel is set about 100 years later in time and has a couple of new emphases - genetic engineering and artificial intelligence.

If E. J. Swift's remnants of future humanity are imprisoned and isolated on a floating city on a flooded Earth, Kim Stanley Robinson's denizens from 300 years in the future are roaming the solar system and transforming every planet, moon, and asteroid into habitats suitable for the human race – albeit a human race that is speciating with the space dwellers evolving into genetically altered “homo sapiens celestis” as those who remain on Earth call them.

As in Osiris, ecological disaster has struck Earth. The oceans have risen 10 meters due to global warming and much of the low-lying inhabited land is now underwater. However, in 2312 the disaster developed over many decades and humanity had time to adapt. They have taken to space in response. Terraforming on a massive scale is taking place throughout the system. A Saturnian ice moon is being dismantled and pelted into Venus to create a breathable atmosphere. Asteroids are being hollowed out into "terraria" not only to serve as habitats for humans but also to provide spaces where the nearly extinct plants and animals of Earth can recover. Spacers engage in extreme sports in the rings of Saturn and on the surface of Mercury and have colonized the moons of Jupiter and Saturn.

None of us, sadly, are likely to see the universe from another planet. The manned explorations that seemed so promising during the "Space Race" are a thing of the past and not likely to engage the energies of the world powers to any meaningful degree. Robinson steps in and helps us imagine these worlds. One of the most enjoyable aspects of the book is his description of other planets and moons and of the terraria and aquaria, the living spaces formed from asteroids. Here a few examples:

On Iapetus, Saturn "looms overhead four times larger than Luna from Earth...[Iapetus' tilt from the plane of the rings gives it] a perpetually changing view of the gorgeous mobile...From the Iapetus bulge, one also has a view down to the rest of the moon's surface, twelve or sixteen kilometers lower than the bulge, so there is always a broad icescape below to balance the sublime ringed pearl above."

The aquarium South Pacific 101 is a "water world that filled its interior cylinder with water to a depth of ten meters, spinning against the interior of a big chunk of ice that had been melted and refrozen in such a way as to leave it transparent...[The] view...was as if looking at and through a curved silvery mirror...And behind all the silvers lay blues...every silvery surface on the sunward side of the cylinder was backed or filled by a deep eggshell blue, while if one was looking away from the sun, the backing blue was an equally rich but much darker shade, almost indigo, and flecked here and there by the white pricks of the brightest stars."

On Titan, "a broad flagstoned area made a kind of open plaza, overlooking an ethane lake. The metallic sheen of the lake reflected the clouds and sky like a mirror, so it was a stunning plate of mixed rich color, gold and pink, cherry and bronze, all in discrete Fauvist masses."

Politics are complex in the 24th century. Humankind is balkanized. Earth alone has 457 separate nations. Various factions are vying for power - the Vulcanoids, the Mondragon Accord, the Earth-Mars dyad, the Jupiter and Saturn Leagues, and so on. Many on Earth resent the spacers whom they see as deserting the problems of Earth. The spacers see themselves differently - as the only hope for helping return the Earth to a more normal state.


Swan Er Hong is a renowned terrarium builder, disconsolate after the unexpected death of her influential grandmother, Alex. Leading an effort to unite the disparate worlds of the solar system, Alex had been keeping her work and investigations secret from the advanced artifical intelligences called qubes, of whom she was suspicious. Now Alex has died and her colleagues, the "Alexandrines", try to continue her work.

Artifical intelligence plays a central role in 2312. The invention of quantum computers has led to powerful artifical intelligences (the qubes) that aid man in his colonizing of the solar system. Many people in the 24th century, such as Swan, have their personal qube permanently embedded in their brain. But all is not right in the qube world. Some are behaving strangely. Unexplained mishaps are occurring. Reports of qubes taking on humanoid form are surfacing. When disaster strikes Mercury - meteors bypass the advanced protection systems in a way totally beyond human capabilities and too unusual to be natural, suspicion falls on the qubes.

Swan is caught with her colleague, the Titan Ambassador Wahram on her home world of Mercury during the disaster. Thanks Wahram, 24th century medicine, and her own rather bizarre ingestion of microscopic Enceladan life forms some years previous, Swan recovers from severe radiation poisoning and joins forces with the Interplan analyst, Inspector Jean Genette, to try tracking down the perpetrators. The trail leads to an asteroid orbiting between Jupiter and Saturn and then to a small ship that left the asteroid and disappeared into Saturn's upper atmosphere. The ship is owned by a consortium on Earth and as Genette points out "There are more than five hundred organizations on Earth that have expressed opposition to the idea of humans in space."


While Mercury rebuilds and Genette continues his investigations, Swan and Wahram become involved in an effort to peacefully revolutionize Earth by alleviating the problems of the vast underclass that now makes up much of the devastated home planet. Unfortumately, there are some that would rather not see these spacer efforts succeed. After a self-replicating building machine in an Africa village is sabotaged, disaster is narrowly averted. Swan is kicked out of Africa as a result but then turns her attention to what is one of the centerpieces of the novel - the "reanimation" of Earth. Think Berlin airlift with live animals instead of food supplies raining down from the sky. Or Noah's Ark with hundreds rather than couples, dropping from blimps rather than landing in an ark. Aerogel "packaging" brakes the animals' descent and most survive to begin the long process of returning Earth to its pre-disaster state.


Genette gathers the Alexandrines on Titan to discuss his investigations into the Mercury disaster and the strange behavior of the qubes. Swan has encountered what appear to be several qubes in humanoid form and Genette notes that "We're seeing clear signs of self-programming in the qubes." The concern is that qubes have no emotions and thus think differently from humans. Before the Alexandrines can act, Venus is attacked in a manner similar to the Mercury attack. Disaster is narrowly averted with the aid of some qubes. Swan, Wahram, and Genette receive some critical intelligence data from the Venusians and pursue the guilty in a poklice action coordinated across several planets.


The possible presence of consciousness or self-awareness in artificial intelligences, robots, or computer-downloaded personalities has been one of the enduring themes of science fiction. When is consciousness present? What is it? Can a computing machine ever be considered “human” or even "conscious"? How far can humanity change physically and still be considered “homo sapiens sapiens”? A related theme has been the danger of artificial intelligences and how to ensure that they don't take over from humans. Robots in Isaac Azimov's fictional world were constrained by the three (later four) Rules of Robotics. Others have placed limitations on how "human" a robot or artificial intelligence could look. Consciousness continues to stump neuroscientists so I don't imagine science fiction writers will come up with an answer any time soon. Still it makes for some interesting story lines.

Kim Stanley Robinson is not a scientist by training or trade - which is somewhat surprising because his descriptions of terraforming are so detailed and consistent. His degrees are in literature and English. In 2312, he exercises these talents in stream of consciousness passages between the story line chapters ("Extracts", "Lists", "Quantum Walks"), in his imaginative descriptions of the worlds of the solar system, and in the reflections of his characters. So I'll close with one from the Titan Ambassador Wahram, the near-giant, toad-like "homo sapiens celestis" who is one of the heroes of this novel:

People hunger for time both ways. Certain things we want to come faster: the terraforming of a world we love, the arrival of universal justice in human affairs, a good project. Other things we want to go slower: our own lives, the lives of those we love. Either way it's a hunger for time - more time to do things, to experience things.


Other Stuff

Isaac Azimov's Three Laws of Robotics were first stated together in the short story "Runaround" published in the March 1942 issue of Astounding Science Fiction magazine. The Three Laws are:

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

2. A robot must obey any orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.

In Azimov's 1985 sci-fi novel Robots and Empire, the advanced artificial intelligence R. Daneel Olivaw formulates the Zeroth Law, in which we clearly see the concept of the AI as a caretaker of our species:

0. A robot may not injure humanity, or through inaction, allow humanity to come to harm.

The Turing Test is referenced a couple of times in 2312. At one point in the novel, Pauline, the AI implanted in Swan's brain, tells Wahram "I am designed for informative conversation, but I cannot usually pass a Turing test. Would you like to play chess?" Alan Turing, considered the father of computer science and artificial intelligence, devised the test which is meant to determine if a computing machine can provide responses indistinguishable from responses of humans. The test goes something like this: a human and a computer are hidden from the view of a human judge. The judge asks questions of the machine and of the human and receives their responses. If the judge cannot distiniguish between the machine's responses and the human's, the machine is said to have passed the Turing test.


In 2312, the solar system bodies undergoing the most transformative terraforming are Mars, Venus, and the Saturnian moon, Titan. Here is a link to the JPL/NASA "virtual tour" of Titan.
Here's a link to apanoramic of the Martian surface put together from photographs from the rover Curiosity. You can pan the view by clicking, holding down and moving the mouse.
And finally, here's an interesting look from the European Space Agency at the currently hellish world of Venus that figures prominently in 2312


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