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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