On Books
Citizens of the Galaxy
by Norman Spinrad
When I was about ten years old it was a scientific belief that our Solar System was the result of a rare collision of our Sun with another star. I was already writing speculative fiction, and indeed humans had reached the Moon in 1969 before other solar systems began to be discovered in 1992.
Only now, as I’m writing this, have we, via the James Webb Telescope, come to realize that there are millions, if not billions, of solar systems in our galaxy, more planets than stars, some of them not even orbiting anything.
And it has long been known that hydrogen is the most common element in the Universe and without carbon to form the complex molecules, there could be no such thing as organic chemistry, without which there can be no such thing as life.
But only recently have we learned that H2O, in liquid form called the “Water of Life,” or as ice, turns out to be common on planets, moons, and even asteroids. As are complex carbon molecules that are what all known biomes are made of, and have now been found in the atmospheres of at least many planets, and moons, meaning indications of organic biology.
Some scientists are saying that any day now the first of these “indicative” biomasses will be officially confirmed as life.
Life as we know it, let alone life as we don’t, is the result of general galactic chemistry. And therefore, how can we believe that on that level, at least, it has evolved only on our planet alone?
We will soon know, at least on some level, that we are not the only life in the Universe.
That will soon be proven. That is coming science.
But when will we know that there are other Citizens of the Galaxy out there?
That is speculative fiction.
But this has always been a central speculation of SF, be it science fiction, sci-fi, hard science fiction, SF, whatever. But never has it been written and read in a culture that knows it lives in such a reality and is therefore the central literature of the Citizens of the Galaxy.
But just as this knowledge puts speculative fiction front and center, there is also a known scientific limit: nothing can travel faster than light. If other lifeforms are, say, one thousand light-years away, all we can see is a thousand years in the past. And even at the full speed of light it would take us a thousand years to get there. And a thousand years for anything there to get to us. And in galactic terms, a planet only a thousand light-years away is a relative neighbor.
This, of course, has been a longtime literary problem for “SF” that regards itself as true speculative fiction—that is, fiction that does not violate the known rules of mass and energy. One can simply ignore it by maintaining that what we know is impossible now may change to be more literarily flexible in some future—what I have called “rubber science fiction”—and this has always been the most common approach.
But we are now approaching the point where the most literarily and philosophically, culturally inescapable point will be knowing that we are not alone in the galaxy, but realistically cannot meet or even speak with the other citizens of our galaxy. And this itself will become culturally central, particularly to the beliefs of conventional religions.
My mate Dona Sadock says that many religious believers don’t read such literature and are indifferent to sophisticated central culturality. Maybe so. But at roughly the same time, we have the central questions of so-called “Artificial Intelligences.” Can they really be “intelligences”? What do we mean by intelligence? Consciousness? Emotion? Can AIs become beings? What do we mean by that?
But there are serious scientists who believe that the same technology that creates AIs can eventually be used to upload their own consciousness online and thereby make themselves immortal before biological death, or even after. Can they have souls? Are they souls? Can any religion be indifferent to such questions? What religion, what believer, what ordinary person, could be indifferent to the possibility of their own immortality?
I wrote a novella called DEUS X in which the Catholic Pope commissions a dying priest to download his consciousness on line to find out whether his postmortal consciousness has or is an immortal soul. My answer, then, is that any entity that is capable of gravitas has a soul.
Genre sci-fi, science fiction, SF, whatever the publisher calls it, has become dominated by series that look too backward and simplistic to take such a question seriously. Here are three serious literary and speculative fiction novels that look forward:
Existence, by David Brin
The Thousand Earths, by Stephen Baxter
To Each This World, by Julie E. Czerneda
And all of these novels take place, one way or another, as the results of what we are now doing to our planet. And, one way or another, the combination of social distending and advanced AI technology has resulted not just in people living primarily in artificial realities most of the time, but actually uploading their consciousnesses, and sometimes in more than one version.
Then, too, each of them has gotten around the light-speed limit with one rubber science way or another, either by hibernation, as I have done myself, or by what amounts to superior Al technology.
In Existence, alien galactic cultures stay within the speed of light limit by flaring out devices to land in solar systems that may evolve other galactic cultures centuries or even millennia later.
In The Thousand Earths, Stephen Baxter stays within the light speed limit and stays with hibernation all the way to Andromeda and back.
In To Each This World, the centering of the very different advanced alien cultures around a set of unexplained instantaneous means is the heart of the story.
David Brin has been a successful literary and scientific speculative novelist for a long time now—indeed, both a novelist and a scientist—and, in his case, a true serious hard science fiction writer. Existence is openly what it says he wants it to be: his Magnum Opus about what possible consciousnesses and existences do or can exist—and, indeed what existing itself means, biologically and/or purely uploaded.
If these three novels are set in futures where human cultures know that other conscious beings exist in the galaxy, that is obvious. But perhaps more significant is that they at least concern themselves with the questions of what may or may not be possible immortality, via uploading of . . . of what? Memories? Consciousnesses? Souls? Do we even know what they really are? Or even what we want them to mean?
A very long time ago, Dona Sadock and I wrote something called Psychesomics, which was published in Analog, replete with a Systems Model of Consciousness. The idea was that consciousness was created by the intake of the sensorium—the five senses—and the biological internal chemistry and electronic workings of the brain. We had done a lot of research, and what we published was just a proposal. We believed that the real existing sciences would soon coalesce to create a true science of what we had called Psychesomics.
Well, we were wrong. That hasn’t happened yet. No such science. But lots of confusing technology in speculative fiction. Can uploading of “consciousness,” whether we really agree what that means, give biological born entities immortality? And/or should they?
This is essentially the core of David Brin’s long novel, set after the disasters of the mess we have made of our planet, very well and believably written. No breaching of the light-speed level, hardly even much going around in our Solar System—largely because while other biological lifeforms have been discovered, intelligent citizens of the galaxy have not.
Then two alien time capsules buried on the Earth centuries or even millennia ago are found and awakened—one in a Solar System low orbit by a worker catching orbital garbage, the other, interestingly, by another garbage gatherer, this one in the ocean.
The first one eventually ends up in the hands of sophisticated science via complex politics. When it is awakened, it is filled with many different alien beings from many different galactic cultures, not as biologic beings, but as something like their immortal uploaded AIs.
These galactic citizens come from different cultures far advanced over our own, and they offer humans the ultimate gift of immortality.
Not in flesh, but as uploads, as all of them are.
This results in complex arguments in scientific, political, religious, and popular cultures. Humanity is being eagerly offered total immortality and the power therefore to disregard the light speed limit and truly join all of them as citizens of the galaxy. All that we have to do is build spaceships to carry all humans as immortal uploads and shoot them into the Universe forever and everywhere.
However . . .
It does seem peculiar that there are uploaded beings of many advanced civilizations. But why have the original planets from which they come never been found? And why do they seem almost insistent that all humans should join them as immortal uploads?
Well, when the other capsule opens up, also containing only nonbiological AI uploads, the answer that is revealed is ultimately morally and philosophically outrageous.
We have never found the original living planets from which their immortal uploads came, because there are not many still left. They con the live beings into building more capsules to send the immortal uploads throughout the galaxy, or even the entire Universe, to cleanse those worlds of anything else.
Okay, without revealing any more of the novel’s answers, that’s the plot, those are the deep questions, the heart and soul of this novel. So far, Existence is very good indeed! David Brin went for the full court press.
But somewhere in the middle he dropped the ball as literature. Not because he stopped writing well, but because as literary drama he did something primitive, cheesy, and unfair to the reader.
Over and over again, there were many dramatic places in which the reader was about to be satisfied, only to be left hanging over a cliff. I’ve read some of Brin’s novels, and I don’t remember him ever using this cheap trick.
Worse still is that this almost-956-page novel should have been cut to no more than, say, 600 pages by getting rid of the endlessly boring pieces of nonexistent blather written by nonexistent gurus, along with pages and pages of the records of speeches by various characters, dead as doornails in literary or drama terms.
How could this happen to a novelist as experienced as David Brin? Who was his editor on this novel? Or was there an editor at all? Did Brin have the foolish economic power to insist that there not be one?
Well, perhaps the most central character, all the more so as the novel proceeds, is a novelist, a famous longtime best-selling one. Not quite a science fiction novelist, but almost, and not quite as wise as he seems to think.
And after the story is over, Brin writes in pages and pages of an afterword written by and about himself, suggesting that the reader become a Brin fan by following his podcast, and making it rather clear that there will be an Existence series.
How can a publisher allow such a thing?
Are you kidding? Just follow the money. Or better still, make it so.
These days SF publishers want books that can be turned into the start of a series, to the point where Amazon points out the rare novel that is “free standing.” This sort of sci-fi has of course become dominant in publishing, but rarely as pre-self-advertising in a first book.
But alas, there is something deeper and older, not as uncommon as it should be. Too many science fiction writers start to lust for the egoboo of SF fandom. And if they get too much of it they want even more, and then seek to become the real life hero of the story they are writing for themselves.
But, in glaring contrast, look at the afterword that Stephen Baxter has published after the full story in the novel The Thousand Earths. It’s just as long, maybe longer, but what Baxter offers the reader is not about himself at all. Rather than that, he gives you the literary history of the sort of science fiction he has written, who he feels he should thank, their names and those of the books which have inspired him, and suggests what else the readers might be interested in reading if they liked his own novel.
There is also a long and well written piece explaining the complex scientific background of his speculative hard scientific novel, what he read, and suggesting what such nonfiction to read if you want to go deeper.
This novel is initially confusing timewise, which doesn’t make sense until the ending, where it comes together brilliantly. There are two main characters in what appear to be two different time lines.
Mela the Permit Keeper’s Daughter is the heroine on what seems to be one of the literally thousand Earths of the title. Our original planet is gone, and she lives on one of the artificial Earths orbiting the Sun, which can be seen in the sky. All of them are artificially powered by an internal power that expires at a given time, and as it does, it slowly destroys the ability of the “Earth” to remain livable, meaning that everyone knows when they will all die, including Mela. This means that Mela knows as a child how long she will live.
In what seems to be another time line, which seems both older and newer, the humans who have built the multiple Earths have gone no further than their Solar System and wonder why they have been unable to find other citizens of the galaxy.
In this time line, hibernation allows Hackett, an astronaut, to search the whole galaxy looking for other cultures, finding nothing, and then traveling as far as the Andromeda galaxy, and come back again millions of years later thanks to hibernation
Which is the earlier time and which is the later time, millions of years of human evolution later? Or earlier?
Yes, the reader will eventually find out, but I will not spoil the story by revealing any more than that Hackett awakes several times as much as millions of years in his futures, picking up denizens of those times, and they go on and on, via hibernation—and yes, Hackett meets Mela the Permit Keeper’s Daughter.
But it will not spoil anything if I tell you that Mela evolves from a young child to be the heroine of her story. And that Baxter cares very deeply indeed about the complexities of her family, both plotwise in terms of her story and in delineating the loves and hates of her family members. And that children are treated as important beings as themselves, as well as literarily important in the plot of the story
Baxter has written something I don’t think I’ve read much of: a very hard science fiction novel that is also a genuine realistic family novel.
And as for the hard speculative fiction and how it affects the strange life of Hackett, I don’t think I am spoiling anything by pointing out that as he comes and goes through the millennia, emerging, then going on again, he becomes a legend, even regarded as a god across the thousand Earths. And, as you might be somewhat surprised to learn, he despises being regarded as either.
But I will tell you no more than that after millions of years of travels he does learn why he has not discovered what he has been looking for, and that Baxter will tell you why within the novel itself, and that it is both an amazing epiphany and makes brilliant scientific sense. Which he explains at interesting length in the afterword. But you should not read that before you’ve read it in the story!
The Thousand Earths is literarily an early example, a powerful creative example, of what hard speculative science fiction can be like when we become Citizens of the Galaxy.
To Each This World, by Julie E. Czerneda, on the other hand, can be mimetic hard speculative science fiction when Czerneda wants it to be, but not when she doesn’t when it gets in the way of the story. Why not, if the fictional literature works?
Here there are many different alien Citizens of the Galaxy, all of them radically physically different, biologically different, culturally different, morally different, but literally and mimetically it all works. Along with multiple AI uploaded beings and so on, very rubbery science that also works literarily and emotionally.
Czerneda pays little, if any, attention to the light-speed time limit. Our first Earth has more or less been undone by us. This seems to have become common in current serious speculative fiction—not surprising given the current daily news—and homo sapiens have escaped to New Earth with ships incapable of even getting close to light speed. They have sent six such spaceships out into the galaxy to settle other planets the long hard SF way without hibernation.
But then the very strange and very advanced Kmet Here and/or Kmet There arrives on New Earth by some instant galactic means that Czerneda wisely doesn’t even try to make rubber science sense of, and makes a deal with the humans, the Duality, to share New Earth as home.
Meantime at least some of the humans who have arrived the hard and slow way have settled on most of those six planets. But here Czerneda does make literary use of the light speed limit, so as not to allow them to go back and forth to New Earth.
But when Kmet Here goes apeshit, it and/or they insists that all Humans There must leave There and become Humans Here on New Earth. So that all Humans and all Kmets will save the Duality from the Splits who supposedly destroy all inhabited planets they find by cutting them in half, and New Earth and the other human planets will be next unless all Humans There become Humans Here with Kmet Here to save the Duality.
Well, there is of course plenty of political argument about this. But New Earth is a kind of democracy, the Kmet is our ally in the Duality, and they/it have the means of doing it, and the Duality wins.
A small group will be sent to each of the planets to pursue the Humans There to leave and make them become Humans Here on New Earth and save the Duality.
The leader of this group is Henry the Arbiter, the human hero of the story—not a hero of violence, but of arbitration, as it says, a hero of confirmation, of justice, of morality. A real hero, hardboiled when he has to be, but always a hero of peace and justice whenever possible, even after victory, when possible. A political arbiter who knows how and why to play the game.
His partner and true friend is Flip the magic AI, a being of many non-bodies. Indeed, even Henry and the other humans can be in other non-bodies too in this fictional reality, something that has become literarily useful and common in current SF.
The other main human character is the Pilot Killian, who begins as a nasty hardhead who just doesn’t like Henry—maybe just because he isn’t likeable—but slow stepwise becomes his loyal friend.
And the single non-human is Kmet Here and/or Kmet There.
So something like half of this novel is this crew going from planet to planet to persuade the human people there that the Splits, whatever they are, are about to destroy their planet. Some of these planets are destroyed, which not only helps convince them, and convinces Henry he is doing the right thing, but in the end reveals that the savior Kmet, not the Splits, have been destroying planets, and for their own necessary biological reason, and . . .
Well, To Each This World is a complicated novel, and the climax turns out to be even more morally complicated, but deeply satisfying, and I should not reveal it, so I won’t.
Hard science fiction this is not, not even rubber science fiction. Call it fantasy in science fiction clothing.
However . . .
However, I don’t think I’ve ever read anything this realistic, sophisticated, and complex, about the biology, relationships, cultures, wars, misunderstandings, and politics, of very different citizens of the galaxy. This is far from rubber science where Czerneda wants to make it feel realistic. These “aliens” may look and even smell like hideous monsters, may even act as what we might consider as evil, but they come off as real beings.
As I write this, all three of these novels have been written before and published before even simple life has been proven to exist anywhere in this Galaxy save our one single planet. But I would not be surprised if at least the existence of life beyond our planet becomes a scientific fact before what I’m writing here and now is published.
It might be difficult to believe that the existence of other real Citizens of the Galaxy, of other thinking entities, of other cultures, of other civilizations, will be discovered and confirmed by the middle of this century.
But if it did happen, would this discovery render three novellas of mine that have already been published obsolete?
“The Sword of Damocles” takes place entirely in a huge telescope above the planet where far distant other Citizens of the Galaxy have been discovered, but that is all.
When I was asked to imagine what serious literature would be like a century from now, I wrote “Ad Astra,” imagining what literature would be like in that culture below and that speculative fiction would have to be dominant.
“Up And Out” was set a couple of centuries later, when we knew there were other Citizens of the Galaxy, but we had gone no further than Mars.
Could all of them sooner or later be rendered obsolete?
Probably.
But while certain stories of speculative fiction may be rendered obsolete some day, speculative fiction itself can never become obsolete. It will always be only on the threshold.
Far from it! What we already know is that there are billions of planets and moons in this galaxy, that the biochemistry of water and carbon is everywhere out there, that some kind of life at least is the result of the universal chemistry of the Universe, not a rare chance result.
Half a millennium ago the great Mexican poet and philosopher Nezahualcoyotl said it best, and still has the last word and always will.
“Perhaps all our gods are but masks worn by something else, something greater, something we do not know, something we cannot know, something we can never know.”
Copyright © 2024 Norman Spinrad