Sci Phi Journal

A True Martian Red: A Brief History Of Early Viticulture On Mars

by Kara Race-Moore

During the Martian Robotic Period, soil samples were studied intensely back on Earth, both for any signs of extraterrestrial life and, just as importantly, to see if the Martian soil would support the terrestrial kind.[1] Initial analyses were hotly debated over, with decades of argument in the scientific community over the methane issue, but there were no definitive signs of Martian life.[2] As the debate roared on, the rovers continued to placidly dig into the red dirt, and analyses continued back on Earth.[3] There were promising results for the possibility of being able to grow Terran crops.[4] Scientists were optimistic, well before humans set foot on the planet, that Red Mars could soon become Green Mars, with just a little human ingenuity.[5]

The hubris of our species knows no bounds, and it would be several catastrophic failures before the farms of Mars became an established part of the landscape. While Dr. Calvin “First Step” FitzSimmons, first human to set foot on Mars, also claimed the title of Mars’s first farmer, it would be several generations before farming was anyone’s sole occupation, instead of being one of many hats any given colonist would wear.[6]

When the Pegasus landed on Sinai Planum, just south of the Valles Marineris, bringing the first humans to Mars, the ship also brought seeds, plants, and the first alcohol on the planet, a bottle of champagne that was the result of years of research, design and experimentation to ensure it would survive the flight, specifically packed to be part of the landing celebrations.[7]

At this point, consuming or creating alcohol on Mars was considered a waste of resources by the designers, a waste of money by the politicians, and morally dubious by the public, and so, besides that first bottle of champagne, alcohol was strictly prohibited.[8]

There are a few tantalizing hints in the primary documents from that time period of illegal stills being set up by the Original Seven. However, the only verified alcohol during the first years were the occasional bottles of hard liquors such as whiskey and vodka brought to Mars as part of goodwill and PR moves to satisfy various sponsoring countries and corporations.[9] Wine would have to wait. 

One of the most important features of Mars One was the plants. There were two main agriculture areas to the primary layout: the Greenhouse, where most of the carefully controlled botany studies and experiments took place, and the Garden, where there was less focus on scientific study and more on just growing as much plant life as possible for food, oxygen, and a place for the Original Seven to sit and relax.[10] Years later, surviving members would all speak of “hanging out” together in the Garden, or even just meditating there alone, as their favorite place in the initial Mars One habitat.[11]

Grapes would be forced to “wait their turn” while experiments in growing vegetation deemed more important were performed. Tomatoes, quinoa, peas, duckweed and radishes, all chosen for sustainability, were part of the first Martian crops.[12] The first grapes would eventually be planted as a passion project by Dr. Theresa Cortez.

Dr. Cortez first came to Mars as a starry-eyed young botanist, with the ink still wet on her PhD from Stanford and a few precious cuttings from Napa.[13] The Mexican-American native Californian thought she knew a thing or two about growing gardens in deserts. She had no idea. She came to Mars as part of the Ark Project, the voyage that brought the first large group of people, including families, that expanded Mars One from just a research base to the beginning of a true settlement.[14] Dr. Cortez arrived determined to start the first Martian full-scale vineyards.

Unfortunately, politics got in the way, as they so often do.

Almost all experiments and research were placed on hold when Mars-born colonist Navya “Not Dead” Patel discovered a lichen-like Martian life form, quickly dubbed the Mars Moss, growing deep in the canyons of Mars.[15] The excitement of finding extraterrestrial life had barely begun to settle down when the extraordinary medicinal properties of the Mars Moss were discovered after the oldest of the still living Original Seven, Dr. Katenka “Iron Foot” Mikhaylova, experimented on herself and cured her Stage-4 cancer.[16] Suddenly, Mars wasn’t just a feel-good science project for political PR anymore – it had real cash potential.[17] The Mars colonists were suddenly in the awkward position of being in the way of Earth making big profits. 

All occupants of Mars were informed they would be either be conscripted to harvest all the Mars Moss to be sent back to Earth for the profit of the corporations that had invested in the colony, or they would find themselves removed to Earth.[18] The Martians declined to cooperate, to put it mildly.

During the Grand Evacuation, as it was later called, Dr. Cortez was able to save most of her grapevines and bring them with her to the Labyrinth Base.[19] However, the Greenhouse and the Garden, along with the rest of all of the now much-expanded Mars One habitat, were destroyed in the Battle to Breathe that kicked off the Martian War for Independence, when Anne Kennedy made the radical decision to blow up the evacuated Mars One, rather than let it fall into hostile corporate hands.

It was a tense few days as people on both planets reeled at what had happened, and many wondered if that would be the worst of it. However, after a tense standoff at the location of the then only known site of the Mars Moss, the Battle of Hephaestus took place, and there would be no going back to being a colony, ever, under any terms.[20] The Colonial Period was over, and the war would drag on for five painful years, until the Martian Peace Accords were signed on Xiwangmu Station, ending hostilities and formally recognizing the newly created Republic of Mars.[21]

During the war, water rationing was the highest priority, especially after the Earth forces deliberately destroyed the Martian Arctic Pipeline in what would ultimately be a failed effort to try and break the Martian forces. President Kennedy was forced to order severe rationing, but the Martians grimly fought on for the right to live on their planet.[22] A new emergency pipeline was set up. Dr. Cortez ran the hydroponics gardens and assisted with the mushroom farm to help keep everyone fed throughout the war, but she always managed to make time for her grapevines, often giving them part of her own water ration.[23]

After the war, transporting her vines to a garden in the newly built Independence City was Dr. Cortez’s first order of business as the former colonists began the setup of what would be the capital of their new republic.[24] It wasn’t quite a vineyard, but Dr. Cortez, now Secretary of Agriculture in the new government, was able to serve fresh grapes at meetings as she planned out how their brand new country was going to take up the plow, now that they could put down the scythe.[25]

Mars was now in the era of the Early Republic, known for its boom in infrastructure, immigration, and industry. While not quite a second Wild West, (gun play would be suicide in an artificial atmosphere), there was certainly a general attitude of anything being possible. Including, finally, making the first Martian wine.

The most important factor in making the Martian agricultural industry rise was a need for water. Once the war was over, one of the largest public works projects was the Martian Global Aqueduct system.[26] The Martian canals of Schiaparelli’s imagination became a reality.[27] The main engineer on the project, Lynette Yellowhammer, oversaw the construction of an aqueduct system on a scale that would have made the Romans jealous. President Kennedy awarded Yellowhammer the prestigious Hero of the Republic medal as one of her last acts before her final term finished.[28] Water was now available on Mars in quantities never before seen during human presence. Agriculture on an industrial scale could begin. Dr. Cortez’s vision of rows and rows of grapevines were tantalizing close to coming true. But where to set up these vineyards up? The answer – Elysium. 

The town of Elysium had started out as a simple maintenance outpost along the original main water pipeline from the arctic, close to the northern base of Olympus Mons. The outpost had originally been scheduled to be built on Elysium Mons, but that area had proved unstable, so the project was moved to Olympus Mons. However, the pre-fab building materials were already 3D printed out and labeled ‘Elysium,’ and the name stuck.[29] The now-town of Elysium was booming with agricultural industry as the republic began to grow. Cereal crops were vital to Martian independence, and the first grain crops grown in the domed fields outside Elysium were being turned into loaves of bread by the time of the first anniversary of the Martian Peace Accords.[30] If people were going to experiment with vineyards anywhere, the slopes of the biggest volcano in the solar system held enticing promise.[31]

Volcanoes create fertile, mineral-rich soils, and volcanic wines have a distinctive, sought-after profile that “leans toward the savory, with herbal notes and touches of salt and brine.”[32] Olympus Mons is an extinct volcano, so no danger of pyroclastic surges, but for setting up crop fields, it lacked many of the factors taken for granted back on Earth in terms of atmosphere and climate.[33] However, with all the tempting chemical analyses coming in from the Olympic soil, Dr. Cortez and others were eager to try.

Everyone went into the project knowing it would be several years before bottles could be on shelves for sale, and, to help offset costs, the vineyard agreed to be part of the newly founded University of Elysium, the winery acting as a classroom for biology and chemistry students. Quite a few of the students, so fascinated by the almost alchemical process that turned grapes into wine, returned later after graduation as employees.[34]

But it wasn’t just scientists that were needed. Farmers with specialized training and experience in tending vineyards were a necessity. Grapes, especially if you want them to become not only wine, but specific types of wine, need careful tending every step of the way. Grapevines are particularly sensitive to soil types, moisture amounts, sunlight, temperatures, and need constant monitoring.[35] Dr. Cortez reached out to contacts she had maintained Back Earth, despite the war, and sent the call out that she needed viticulturists willing to try something completely new. Despite many in the wine industry scoffing at the idea, there were plenty of farmers willing to immigrate to help create the first vineyard of Mars.[36]  

As Dr. Cortez oversaw construction of domed vineyards on the slopes of Olympus Mons, greedy eyes Back Earth turned on the fields of Mars and saw a chance for quick profits. Land was cheap in the days of the Early Republic, especially in the flatlands far away from the safety offered by the mountains and canyons.[37]

Soon, bottles of Mars blown glass were ready for sale holding vintages of every color, from clear platinum to deepest purple. Interest was high and neither the first tasting nor sales disappointed.[38] Elysium blossomed from an industrial park to a true city, and on top of Olympus Mons, the space dock expanded rapidly as Earth got word of the goods being made on Mars, and wanted to start importing.[39] The Mars economy boomed, in small part because Dr. Cortez and people like her had proved humans could not only survive but thrive on the Red Planet.

[1]   Soffen, G. A., and C. W. Snyder, “First Viking Mission to Mars,” Science, (August, 1976) 759–766.

[2]   Matsos, H., “A High-Octane Fight: How the Mars Methane Debate is Splitting the Scientific Community,” Popular Mechanics (June, 2024) 161–168.

[3]   Jezero, Carla, “Run by Robots: Mars exploration before humans,” Astrobiology Magazine, (July, 2208) 456.

[4]   Singh, Pryia, “And Curiosity Brought It Back: a soil analysis from the samples obtained by the Curiosity rover, 2012 – 2032,” Smithsonian Journal (April, 2033) 278-291.

[5]   To learn about the fascinating history and current progress of terraforming Mars, please check out the permanent terraforming exhibit at the Museum of Science in Schiaparelli City.

[6]   FitzSimmons, Calvin, Well, I’m Here: The Autobiography of A First Step, (Dublin: Hachette Books Ireland, 2110), 156.

[7]   Perreault, M.A., “Countdown to Mars!” Time Magazine (June 10, 2042), 8–10.

[8]  Lloyd, Omar, Life Onboard the Pegasus, (San Francisco: Twain Publications, 2103), 200. For more on the history of extraterrestrial Champagne, see Megan Chantilly’s excellent history: Drinking Starlight: A History of Champagne in the 21st Century.

[9]  The vodka Dr. Mikhaylova received from Russia and the whiskey Dr. FitzSimmons received from Ireland are well documented. Any illegal stills were firmly denied by all of the Original Seven.

[10]  Cole, Jillian and Tanaka, Marie, Daily Life in Mars One, (New York: Random House, 2182), 46-52.

[11]  Ibid, 78-86.

[12]  Goodwin, Cheryl, Welcome to the Red Planet: The Early Years of Mars One, (New York: Penguin, 2099), 67-68. For more on Colonial Martian food, see Founding Food: Early Martian Cuisine by Miriam Eberbach.

[13]  Hernandez, Felecia, The Gardener of Mars: The Story of Dr. Theresa Cortez, (Los Angeles: McGraw Hill, 2098), 24-25.

[14]  Talbot-Godfry, Christopher, All Abroad! The First Family Migration to Mars, (Independence City: Red Rock Publishers, 2168), 36.

[15]  Carlingford-Psmith, Nigel, “Plant Life Discovered on Mars,” BBC News, (June 24, 2078).

[16]  McKinnon, Ace, “Drinking the Alien: Dr. Mikhaylova and the against all odds gamble,” Psychology Today, (September 23, 2078), 124-125.

[17]  Papadopoulos, Viktor, “Trillion Dollar Pay Day? The possible financial impact of the cancer cure found on Mars,” The Economist, (August 4, 2078), 9. 

[18]   Volkova, Sarah, Ares and Aphrodite: How Peace Turned to War on Mars, (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2187), 77-86.

[19]   Dr. Cortez was one of the adults assigned to supervise the “kid train,” the convoy of rover-trucks mostly filled with the children and goats of Mars. She later commented that keeping kids of either species from eating her plants was the biggest victory of the war.  

[20]   O’Brian, Bridget, Battle for a Republic: The Battles of the Martian War for Independence, (Independence City: FitzSimmons University Press, 2204), 32-36.  

[21]   The Martian delegation brought a beautiful bouquet of many flowers and a basket of fresh fruits and vegetables, all grown in the Vavilov hydroponic gardens, rather rubbing it in that they were both surviving and thriving throughout the war. It is unrecorded if the Earth delegation accepted the gift.

[22]   DiNapoli, Sofia, Madame President: A New Biography of Anne Kennedy, (Schiaparelli City: Noble Books, 2211), 142-149.

[23]   Cortex, Therese, The Journal of Dr. Therese Cortez, with a new Foreword by Dr. De Soto, (Elysium: Elysium University Press, 2161), 246, 259, 299, 342. 

[24]   Serra, Juana, The First Hundred Days: The First Steps of the Republic of Mars, (Palo Alto: Stanford University Press, 2201), 156-158.  

[25]   Hernandez, The Gardener of Mars: The Story of Dr. Theresa Cortez, 148-156.

[26]   Llano, Henry, Building the Future: Architecture of the Early Martian Republic, (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2160), 121.

[27]   Nelson-Carre, Marie, Water on Mars, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2186), 89-94.

[28]   Beauvais, Anik, Fly like Raven: A History of Native Americans on Mars, (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2182), 46-52.

[29]   Woo, Seung-yeon, All Along the Watchtower: The Creation of the Great Arctic Pipeline, (Schiaparelli City: Noble Books, 2211), 41-43.

[30]   Mizrahi, Jakob. The Bread Planet: A New History of Baking on Mars, (New Tbilisi: Gold Quill Books, 2138), 76-78.

[31]   The Tūtū Pele Vineyard, just north of New Tbilisi, has an excellent tour of the process of using volcanic soil to produced wonderful vines. Stay for the tasting afterwards and make sure to try their Riesling.    

[32]   Robinson, W., Vines, Grapes & Wines, (12th Ed.) (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2143), 213-215.

[33]   Carr, Michael H., “Volcanism on Mars,” Journal of Geophysical Research, (1973), 4049-4062.

[34]   Arnoux, Pierre-Claude, “Elysium Fields Forever: A Study of the Vineyards of Mons Olympus,” Sommelier Journal, (January 24, 2182), 279-280.

[35]   Roberts-Byrd, Laurel, ed., The Oxford Companion to Wine (40th Ed.), (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2199), 389-392.

[36]   Nguyen, An, “The First Green Wave: Early Migrations of Agricultural Workers to the Republic of Mars,” Journal of Immigrant & Refugee Studies, Volume 40, issue 4 (2201), 553–554.

[37]   Nikoladze, Marius, “Wide Red Acres: Real Estate Development During the Early Republic,” Mars Historical Society, Vol. 50, No. 4 (Dec., 2271), 395-403.

[38]   Serra, Eulalia, Science/Art: The Making of the Best Wines of the 22nd Century, (Palo Alto: Standford University Press, 2212), 548-556. 

[39]   Peppercorn, Jared, “From Red to Black: The Economic Boom of the Lloyds Administration,” Mars Historical Society, Vol. 48, No. 40 (Nov., 2168), 495-507.

~

Bio:

Kara Race-Moore studied history at Simmons College as an excuse to read about the soap opera lives of British royals. She worked in educational publishing, casting the molds for future generations’ minds, but has since moved into the more civilized world of litigation. She currently lives in Los Angeles, the land where fact and fiction tend to blur.

Philosophy Note:

The history of humans on Mars is filled with tales of exploration, discovery and war – but it is also the story of making tiny seeds grow, and coaxing the red soil to produce something green. This is the story of the viticulturists who brought wine-making to Mars, daring to keep the art going, in the face of all obstacles. For further reading, many of the books cited are real.

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‘Truth Embedded In A Tale’: Stories Of Utopia From Philosophers Of The Early Modern Period

by Manjula Menon

Evolutionary biologists continue to disagree about the extent to which we differ from our primate cousins, chimps, and bonobos, but they do agree that there is something special about the species, Homo sapiens. Skills we thought made us stand apart, like the ability to pass the mirror reflection test or our capacity for language or abstract thought, are all behaviors that we now know other species are capable of. Arguably, what makes the difference is our desire for answers to fundamental questions about the nature of the world we find ourselves in. Or to put it another way, humans are different because we do philosophy.

Before empiricism and the scientific methodology took hold, humans tried to assuage this desire to understand the world with the explanatory power of storytelling. Our ancestors told stories that explained the behavior of flora, fauna and celestial objects, sacred stories that explained how and why the world was formed, and how and why it was going to end. Stories were used as both a methodological device geared towards truth-seeking, as well as the object of truth-seeking, something that is arguably also true of philosophy.

The contemporary philosopher, Timothy Williamson, argues in his 2020 work, Suppose and Tell: The Semantics and Heuristics of Conditionals, that human cognition relies on the use of psychological heuristics for conditional thinking. Indeed, philosophers often try to understand the world by postulating a ‘what if’ scenario featuring a compelling thought-experiment to get to an intuition about how the cosmos, or some aspect of it, works. Such philosophical thought experiments may use counterfactual or counter-to-fact speculation, as in asking, what if A had happened, and not B? If that sounds familiar to science fiction writers, it should. Science fiction, more than any other genre, features stories that explore the way things might be, might become, or might have been. Science fiction is thought experiments writ-large, starring humans, in all our messy glory, or other beings who are necessarily similar or at least intelligible to us, given that they are thought up by human authors.

The dawn of the scientific era, when observational techniques began to challenge prevailing scholastic methods of syllogism and argumentation, was a period of violent upheaval in Europe. Philosophers of the time wrote stories about idealized, faraway lands, where societal conditions were optimal, and the good life was there for the taking. These types of stories are now called ‘Utopian fiction’. This essay will look at three Utopian works of fiction from English philosophers who lived and wrote at a time when science was being birthed and, consanguineously, so was science fiction.

The word ‘Utopia’ comes from the titular nation of Thomas More’s 1516 novel. More, posthumously elevated to sainthood by the Catholic church, was a proponent of ‘humanism’, which in 16th-century London meant using rhetoric to persuade society towards social betterment. The word Utopia comes from the Greek and means ‘a non-existent place that is described in great detail’. While it is unclear whether More was advocating for the Utopia he explored in the novel, the work often reads as a rhetorical exhortation in favor of the described Utopian practices. More, a statesman and lawyer, was executed by Henry VIII for not agreeing that the king’s authority stood over that of the papacy. Given More chose death rather than renounce his adherence to Catholic tenets, one might think that More’s Utopia would describe a Catholic state, but one would be wrong.

More’s novel begins with the narrator, none other than More himself, who one day after church, sees ‘a man well stricken in age, with a black Sunne-burned face, a long beard, and a cloake cast homely about his shoulders’. This person is revealed to be a Portuguese philosopher by the name of Raphael Hythloday, where Hythloday means ‘nonsense’ in Greek and Raphael is the messenger of God, thus, it could be read as ‘Speaker of Nonsense’. Hythloday, who says he is one of the twelve who sailed with the explorer Amerigo Vespucci, declares that ‘To find Citizens ruled by good and wholsome Lawes, that is an exceeding rare & hard thing’. Hythloday proceeds to describe just such a state he encountered during his travels, an island nation called Utopia, one that he favorably contrasts with the Europe of his time. It is possible that More, influenced by vague accounts circulating in England about the cultures of the Aztecs and Incas, had chosen a geographically adjacent setting to provide a sheen of verisimilitude for his island nation of Utopia.

In contrast to the teachings of the Catholic church of which More was an adherent, euthanasia and divorce are legal in Utopia, priests can marry, and women can become priests. Indeed, multiple religions are practiced, with none discriminated against by the state, except perhaps for the practice of atheism, which is merely tolerated. The Utopians only go to war if necessary, and this is contrasted favorably with the European monarchs of the day, who are described as being easily goaded into war if only to enlarge their dominions. Utopians live in clusters of extended families; clusters vote for a leader, and those leaders, in turn, vote for a supreme leader, who assumes the position for life. Women and men are educated in the same way, including being trained for war. While private property is not allowed, slavery is legal, indeed every cluster is assigned a couple of slaves, often prisoners of war or criminals. More presses Hythloday on why he does not take up a position in court as a counselor to a European king, given that with his vast experience and knowledge, he could be of great use to the public in this capacity. Hythloday argues that kings are either so wise they wouldn’t need his counsel, or so unwise that they would not listen to counsel even if he were to provide it. While the words are Hythloday’s, it seems likely that the views are the author’s. Yet, given so many of Utopia’s laws stand in direct contrast to More’s avowed Catholic beliefs, indeed beliefs he chose to die for rather than recant, perhaps More conceived of Utopia as a place that should exist, but cannot, given his understanding of human nature.

Francis Bacon, the father of empiricism, said of the Aristotelean system of philosophy that it was ‘only strong for disputations and contentions, but barren of works for the benefit of man’. Bacon’s seminal work Novum Organum argued for a new logic, one that advocated for inductive, rather than deductive, reasoning to advance knowledge and learning, paving the way to modern scientific methodology. One might think that an empiricist like Bacon would not place much of a focus on religion when describing his Utopia, but once again, one would be wrong.

Bacon’s novel, posthumously published first in 1627, and then the Latin version in 1636, was titled New Atlantis, is the story of a ship whose crew, ‘finding ourselves in the midst of the greatest wilderness of waters in the world, without victuals, gave ourselves up as lost men, and prepared for death.’  The crew’s prayers are answered when they catch sight of land and sail into ‘the port of a fair city, not great indeed, but well built, and that gave a pleasant view from the sea.’ An elegantly dressed party, who after asking for and gaining confirmation that the crew members are Christian and not murderers or pirates, offer medical care for any sick among them. The island nation is called Bensalem, a portmanteau that combines the Hebrew word for son, ‘Ben’, with the Hebrew word for peace, ‘Salem’. Bensalem’s well-dressed inhabitants are mainly Christian, but also include a Jewish community, all of whom are deeply cautious about interacting with outsiders. Other than being told that Bensalem has a monarchial system of government, little else is shared about their laws and societal structures.

Once ashore, the importance of family in Bensalem is made clear with a scene that vividly describes a grand feast that the crew attends. The Feast of the Family is funded by the Bensalem state to honor any man with thirty or more living descendants above the age of three. Such feted men are called ‘tirsans’, and as one of them explain, “You shall understand that there is not under heaven, a nation so chaste as this of Bensalem.” Next, the crew become witness to a miraculous column of white light that appears in the sea under a celestial cross, a vision that moves a resident of Bensalem to cry out, ‘thou never workest miracles but to a divine and excellent end, for the laws of nature are thine own laws, and thou exceedest them not but upon good cause.’ 

The story thus proceeds to the raison d’être of the novel as per the prologue: the description of Solomon House. The Father of Solomon House, a man resplendently dressed in silks and velvets, informs the crew about the institution: ‘The end of our foundation is the knowledge of causes and secret motions of things, and the enlarging of the bounds of human empire, to the effecting of all things possible.’ The goal of Bacon’s Novum Organum could perhaps be described in the same way.

The Father of Solomon House describes to the visitors a few experiments currently in progress at the institution. The experiments all have firmly pragmatic aims, including the production of new drugs to defeat disease and to aid longevity, engines powerful enough to influence the weather, even new methods to provide nutrition to the body by the absorption of an engineered material dropped directly onto the back of a hand. He describes how sounds and scents can already be manufactured with fantastic precision, as can ultra-fast vehicles and ultra-precise clocks. Instruments of war being manufactured include houses of deceit that can produce realistic apparitions and illusions. 

Far from being instigators of war however, Bensalem motivations for building their powerful war machines are purely defensive. Indeed, they are so cautious that they sharply restrict their interactions with outsiders. The only external trade they engage in is the exchange of ‘light’, where ‘light’ stands for learning and understanding that is arrived at through the design, execution and verification of experiments. This trade in ‘light’ is conducted by twelve ‘merchants of light’ who sail under foreign names to other lands, to gather and return with new light. The imported light is subject to scrupulous scrutiny, till finally three men called ‘lamps’ contrive further experiments that aim to a higher light to penetrate even further into nature. Perhaps this is Bacon trying to evoke Genesis 1:3: ‘Let there be light” with knowledge derived from observational techniques. At the end of New Atlantis, when the sick have mended, the ship has been repaired and stocks replenished, the crew are granted permission to disseminate all they have learned from their visit, thereby becoming perhaps ‘merchants of light’ themselves. The isolationism of New Atlantis are interestingly parallel to the policies that the island nation of Japan had begun implementing in 1624, around the time Bacon was writing New Atlantis. 

Bacon was raised in a family deeply entrenched in the affairs of the state. His father was Sir Nicholas Bacon, Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, and his mother, Anne, was the daughter of the tutor to Edward VI. Francis himself eventually became a member of parliament and was deeply involved in the political intrigues of the era, close to both Queen Elizabeth and the Earl of Essex (who led a failed insurrection against the Queen). In New Atlantis, the father of empiricism advocates passionately for a society that is not for the magical but for the angelic, not for superstition but for divinity, not for the ‘commixture of manners’, but for ‘preserving the good which cometh by communicating with strangers’, not for war but for building advanced weaponry.

Finally, consider the Duchess of Newcastle, Margaret Cavendish’s 1666 work, The Blazing-World. Cavendish, like Bacon, was a royalist, but unlike Bacon, backed the wrong side, and lived in exile for over fifteen years as a result. Also like Bacon, she rejected the Aristotelean method of epistemology in favor of the new empirical methods. As the first woman to address the Royal Society of London, she states in her prologue for The Blazing-World that she is specifically targeting a female audience for the work. Indeed, her prologue, addressed to ‘Noble and Worthy’ ladies, reveals that the tripartite structure of the work, which includes both a fantastical and a romantic section tacked on to her original Observation Upon Experimental Philosophy, was in order to better appeal to this audience ‘by reason most Ladies take no delight in Philosophical Arguments’.

The protagonist of the novel is ‘The Lady’, who in the first part of the book is kidnapped by a foreigner who has fallen vehemently in love with her. He races away with her as captive, only to encounter a storm that blows his ship to the north pole, where he, along with his men, perish. Only The Lady survives to discover that the North Pole serves as a gateway to another world, one with a sun of its own, peopled by strangers in the shape of animals and birds, but who walk upright. The Blazing-World, as she learns it is named, is an exceedingly peaceful place. From the bear-men to the fox-men to the geese-men, they all speak the same language, share the same monotheistic religion, and are obedient to the same emperor. The groups, in spite of their sharply different shapes and sizes and colors, live in perfect harmony. When she meets their emperor, he first assumes she is a deity, but when she insists that she is mortal, he professes his love, and asks if she will become his empress. Thereupon, she is given absolute power over the Blazing-World and quickly sets about creating societies dedicated to learning and scholarship, with an emphasis on empirical methods to derive knowledge.

Cavendish and her husband were supporters of the Crown who went into self-exile during the first English civil war, after the royalist faction lost to parliamentarians in favor of a constitutional monarchy. Her version of Utopia features, unsurprisingly perhaps, a strong monarchial form of government. When The Lady questions the inhabitants of the Blazing-World about why, they reply that just as it was natural for one body to have but one head, it was also natural for one political body to have but one governor. Moreover, they declare that the monarchy is a divine form of government, and in direct accordance with their monotheistic belief; just as they unanimously submit to only one God, they likewise unanimously submit with complete obedience to only one monarch. Under this all-powerful head of state are a cadre of eunuchs who work diligently on the ruler’s behalf. Perhaps Cavendish, punished for her support of her monarch, is metaphorically implying that a neutered nobility is what is required for a monarchial system of government to function harmoniously. Cavendish’s Utopia is thus one where harmony is a paramount goal, where empiricism is the gateway to epistemological success, and where all the people submit to one monotheistic religion and to one monarch.

Since the dawn of science, philosophy and science fiction have been natural allies, fellow travelers in humanity’s journey towards greater understanding. Inspired by the nascent scientific method for gaining knowledge, English philosophers of the early modern period wrote ‘truth in a tale’ type of science fiction, works they hoped would cross-pollinate ideas and shape narratives towards greater understanding and a better world.

~

Bio:

Manjula Menon once worked as an electrical engineer in Brussels. She therefore regards this piece in Sci Phi Journal as a homecoming of sorts. A list of her other publications can be found at www.manjulamenon.com

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by Geoffrey Hart

In the beginning was the first scientist — the God Particle, GP hereafter. (Even in the beginning, scientists loved their acronyms, abbreviations, and clever wordplay, and GP was no different. And, of course, GP was ineluctably masculine, since back then, only men could be scientists. There being only one of him, that was less sexist than it might seem to modern sensibilities.)

Darkness was upon the face of the universe (for back then, there was only one), and GP looked upon it and saw that it was good: it had the simplicity of a really good Japanese watercolor, though, of course, such things had yet to be invented. Best of all, it left everything to the imagination, which was a more effective technique than overexplaining and overcomplicating everything. That was to come later, when universities were invented.

After a time — unquantifiable, because time was still a new thing, the paint still drying and GP not quite sure whether quantification was as good an idea as it had seemed at the time — GP began to feel just the slightest bit lonely. After all, what good was a universe if there was no one else to appreciate it? So in a fit of enthusiasm, GP created another being with whom to share the void. Let’s call her “GP Prime”, or “Prime” for short, for there would eventually be mathematics, mathematical tradition, and the notation it spawned. More importantly, of course, any good story needs conflict, and laying claim to first rank, first causes, and first publication was a primary source of conflict then, as it is now.

Prime was very impressed with the universe; there was, after all, nothing else quite like it. But after a time, she noted a certain sameness to it. With no light, there was only structure and symmetry to gaze upon, and though it was an admirable and symmetrical structure, it was a trifle… bland.

“GP, I think something’s missing,” she ventured.

“Why? It’s perfect and, by definition, cannot be improved upon.”

“While I concede, for the sake of argument, that perfection is perfect, I’m not sure it’s sufficient.”

“What would you add?”

“Hmmm… perhaps a little… light?” And there was light, a warm reddish background glow that both illuminated and concealed, and now the structure and symmetry stood out and could be more easily appreciated.

“But… But… It leaves nothing to the imagination!”

“Don’t over-react. It’s only a little light. Be still, and I’ll fix it.” And Prime created shadow, and GP saw that it was good.

“I like that shadow.”

“Thought you might. But why stop there? For example, all that structure is perfectly lovely, but what’s it all in aid of?”

“Well… us, really.”

“Why not try a little of this, instead?” And Prime created atoms, and GP saw that they were good.

“Huh. Never would have thought of that on my own.”

“Of course not. That’s why we have peer review.”

GP was a little miffed, but deeper down, felt something he’d never felt before. Intrigued. Despite his trepidation, he could hardly wait to see what Prime had up her (thus far, entirely metaphysical) sleeve. “What else have you got?”

“How about this?” And where once there were atoms, perfect and indivisible, now there were subatomic particles.

“Neat! Can I name them?”

Prime nodded, secretly pleased.

“Let’s call this big one a proton. And this smaller one an electron.”

Prime pursed her lips. “And just to shake things up, how about this?” And a third particle appeared.

“Ooh! That’s transgressive… it’s… unbalanced! What will you call it?” GP was, after all, perfectly willing to give credit where credit was due. Eventually.

“Neutron. And here’s another cool thing:” Prime disappeared the electron.

“Wait: where’d it go?”

“Into the proton — and now it’s a neutron!”

“Put it back. I like having three different particles.”

“Very well.” The electron reappeared. “Hmm… then you’ll love this.” And suddenly there were a great many smaller particles humming with energy and bouncing off each other and vibrating and rotating and translating with their enthusiasm. “I’ll call them quarks, and… and…. This undeniably cute one will be Charm, and this one I haven’t completely figured out yet I’ll call Strange, and…”

“Enough! Enough! My head’s spinning.” GP was beginning to regret having given Prime both a mind equal to his own and agency to use it.

“But if I subdivide the quarks into these littler things…”

“STOP! NO FURTHER!” GP regretted having to shout, but it seemed necessary to catch Prime’s attention before she got carried away. More carried away, leastwise. Things were still relatively simple, just the way he liked it, but he had a sense of foreboding.

Prime took a deep breath (now that there was something to breathe) and pondered a moment. “Well, if you don’t want more smaller things, how about larger?” She banged two atoms together, and there was a brilliant flash of light.

“What was that?”

“I call it fusion… bang enough little things together and you get bigger things. Bang a few of those bigger things together, and you get even bigger things. I’m going to call them elements.”

“And what if I were to break them apart again?” And GP did, and there was even more light. “Ouch! That stings.”

“I’m going to call that fission. And if you’re going to break the things I make, then you’d best take care.” There was no doubting it; a note of petulance had crept into Prime’s voice.

GP attempted a placating tone. “Nice. What else can you do?”

“Well first, let’s make the light a little more steady. There.”

“Wow. I’m going to call those stars. Because you’re a star performer.”

Prime managed to conceal her wince; it helped that GP wasn’t really paying attention to her, gaze focused on his universe. “OK, good. Now how about these?” Large clusters of atoms came together and began circling the stars.

“Nice. I’m going to call them planets… because… um… they move.”

“You like moving things? How about these?” More atoms came together and started orbiting the planets.

“Nice. I’m going to call them moons. But stop: no further. Let’s enjoy what we’ve created before we needlessly recomplicate.”

Prime sighed. We? Even then, before academic review committees and departmental politics, authorship was an issue. “But why stop there? There’s so much more we could create.”

GP, entirely missing how Prime lingered over the we, tried to reassert his authority. “Because it’s my universe, and I say so.”

“That’s easy enough to solve. Here!” And suddenly, where once there was a single universe, now there was a multiverse. “You play with this one, and I’ll play with that one, and when we’re done, we’ll compare notes and see who’s done the better job of putting things together.”

GP tried to push stars and atoms and planets and moons and other things back together into the simple, elegant simplicity he’d created, but Prime, though younger, was not naïve. She’d known this would happen, and the harder GP tried to put things back the way they’d originally been, the harder her multiverse strove to create more of itself.

“STOP! NO FURTHER!”

Prime chuckled. She hadn’t realized just how much she resented being told what she could and couldn’t create or modify or play with. “Don’t like that, huh? Well try this:” And around one of the older stars, on the surface of a planet with a single moon, more clusters of atoms came together and rose from the earth. Some were happy to stay in place; others were restless as the moons and planets and stars themselves, and moved about.

“STOP! NO FURTHER!”

Prime doubled over in outright laughter as GP grew apoplectic. The new things began making their own new things, some like themselves, some not. I’ll call that evolution, Prime said to herself. See how he likes that.

GP tried, with increasing desperation to put things right; Prime knocked them astray again. And so it went through the aeons. Each time GP put the genie back in the bottle, Prime gleefully tugged loose the cork; when GP vacuum-welded the cork to the bottle, Prime invented wormholes; when GP constrained the wormholes to atomic diameters, Prime created quantum tunneling.

Which brings us to the present, the end (for now) of this story of the early days of atoms, and — if you’ll forgive me — the moral of this tale. The multiverse is an endlessly messy place, and it’s not yet clear whether this is a good thing. But it’s what we’ve got, and we’ve got to make the best of it. Occam’s razor tells us we mustn’t ignore the true complexity, but that we must also not complicate things unnecessarily. If we keep trying, someday we’ll achieve an understanding that’s no more complex than necessary. And perhaps that will satisfy GP and Prime enough that they can shake hands, agree to disagree, and get on with figuring out what it’s all in aid of.

~

Bio:

Geoff Hart works as a scientific editor, specializing in helping scientists who have English as their second language publish their research. He’s the author of the popular Effective Onscreen Editing and Write Faster With Your Word Processor. He also writes fiction in his spare time, and has sold 60 stories thus far. Visit him online at geoff-hart.com.

Philosophy Note:

The eternal struggle between man and woman seems to be built into the physics of the universe.

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The Arbiter

by Conrad Gardner

EXHIBIT 101 – THE ARBITER

BEFORE TOUCHING, READ BELOW:

Forged in 1882, The Arbiter is the earliest Pistante in history. It was created by Abel Garcia (1860-1922), an Anjiladonian native who trained as a mage in this museum’s home at the age of ten. Upon leaving the Mantelios Institute, he moved to the developing settlement of Los Lojones in Mastaces, Babonia, working as a smith. Born to farmer parents, Garcia was used to labour, but not always well-behaved, stealing trinkets from his grandparents. Adopted by an aunt after his father’s death, he was enrolled in our institute, being taught humility and learning to help the less fortunate.

During the Third Invasion (1882 – 1885), Garcia attempted to defend the town, but his offensive spells needed a device to help channel their power. His hand-cast spells lacked accuracy, so he forged The Arbiter, inventing a new kind of weapon that would protect the entirety of Kantinia.

Modelling The Arbiter on a Ricosto Revolver, Garcia implemented the chant Spiritum Deus Guardia for several hours while under the forge’s heat. (This chant has been used on two other exhibits in this institution’s collection, Exhibits 84: The Disciplo and 96: Ramirez’s Lawgiver). His diary (housed in the Mantelios Library) notes that when removed from the forge, ‘The gun was too light, like a leaf.’ The weight of his chants squashed the barrel, increasing it four millimetres in length, proving beneficial to the weapon’s range capabilities. With the first Pistante in hand, Garcia learned to focus his beam casts on the weapon (which he termed ‘injecting’) and fire the energy bestowed, becoming the first gunmage. He waged war on the Chacibarae and Chupahomani that terrorised Los Lojones. Porofi was one of his most frequent casts against such beasts, powerful when injected into The Arbiter.

In 1883, Garcia returned to Anjilados, a focal point of the Third Invasion. Ignoring the torment of the surrounding towns, The Arbiter weighed his belt down until he agreed to return.

The gunmage rode through the country, shooting Fiestorre with stakati energy as he passed. With an army of New Babonites and Anjiladonians behind him, he helped reclaim his land. When not fighting, he shot his injured allies with consuviae projectiles, healing those that had rudimentary cuts and bruises. Though The Arbiter never refused him, he said his Pistante grew heavier during moments of anger, which led him to learn the meditative arts. He shared the knowledge of how to craft a Pistante with few people, though many imitations by criminals yielded failed results.

Due to the draining effects of injecting his magic into the Pistante, Garcia retired in 1905. An international discussion started about who would continue his legacy and become the next gunmage. Despite numerous attempts by the Anjiladonian and Babonian governments to claim the weapon, no politicians or military leaders could lift it with ease. Competitions were held without Garcia’s consent, attempting to find the best fighters and shootists, but no winners were selected by him.

Deciding to search for his new mentee himself before he grew too drained, Garcia came upon Rosa Macabe (1899-1966), a young thief in Mastaces City after she attempted to steal his wallet. Taking his belt, and The Arbiter with her by accident, Garcia saw the weapon did not drag her to the ground and sensed her benevolent spirit. Adopting Macabe, he tutored her in achieving inner balance and using her talents to help others.

Garcia’s choice was controversial. He permitted others to try using the weapon, but it was lifted by few, fired even less. The Saraphitos made vocal threats against Macabe’s life for not being a noble-born magician. Garcia taught her his method of weapon-smithing and had her study The Arbiter’s individual parts before he let her practice firing it. The weapon is notorious for being difficult to use unless the wielder understands its making. On his deathbed, Garcia said that Macabe was a better gunmage than him as she had mastered her hate.

During the Poronean Invasion on Kantinia, Macabe used The Arbiter to defend the continent. Preventing the needless slaughtering of thousands, she proposed a duel between herself and a Poronean champion, Cladstock the Brute. Injecting The Arbiter with combosti, she demolished his armour with a flurry of shots (Exhibit 198: Cladstock’s Helmet can be seen in the Invader Display, where the effects of combosti energy on veitor steel are visible). Following her predecessor’s practice, she never wore armour, making her grasp around The Arbiter’s ivory grip firmer, and her movements quicker.

In 1957, a Sariphoto invaded Macabe’s home and tried to execute her with The Arbiter. The Pistante detected the attacker’s dark soul, refusing to fire and scorching his palm. Taught by Garcia not to rely on The Arbiter for all spells, she killed the Sariphoto with a hand-cast combosti.

Drained by The Arbiter as Garcia had been, she searched for its next bearer, Guillermo Conti (1968- ). Losing his parents in the Poronean Invasion, he was taught at this institute until Madame Macabe selected him as her successor at the age of fifteen. Despite his aggression, he tempered this along with steel at Garcia’s forge as Macabe mentored him.

Serving in the Diavolos War (1986-1987), Conti helped close the Tiaria Tear, and was the leading gunmage of the Anjiladonian army. By the war’s end, he had greatly contributed to establishing an era of peace.

Conti attempted to use healing casts on it, but consuviae, was the only workable spell, due to its projectile nature. Unable to help others with The Arbiter beyond basic medical aid, he returned here to become a teacher. Introducing two new classes, Gunmaging and Gunsmithing, Conti crafted his own Pistante and gifted The Arbiter to this institute, saying that it had no use in a time of peace, as it needed conflict to be used well.

Here it lies, waiting for a day The Mantelios Institute prays will never come. If you wish to hold The Arbiter and see if you are worthy, please take hold of the grip.

WARNING: The Mantelios Institute and Museum does not claim responsibility for any injuries sustained when attempting to fire or remove The Arbiter from its Lashiana-enchanted glass. Hands are crumpled or burned at the visitor’s risk.

~

Bio:

Conrad Gardner’s fiction has been published by Superlative, Martian, AEL Press, and Full Moon Chronicles. He writes to calm his mind and keep his hands busy.

Philosophy Note:

Weapons, like beasts, may lay dormant for millennia. But they are always ready to be used again.

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Preliminary Threat Analysis Of Security Guests Intercepted On A “Cultural-Intellectual” Mission In Possession Of Plato’s Dialogues  

by Thomas White

From: Ibis Smith, Chief Inspector, Office of Mind-Body Inspection Services (OMBIS), New Bright City.

To: Jason Taggort, Administrative Controller, Office of Minister of Hygiene (MOH), New Bright City.

Subject: Preliminary Threat Analysis of Security Guests # 7689 and # 7690.

Date: 7 May 5145, Year of Our Hygieia.

Greetings to the Honorable Minister of Hygiene!  All Hail to our beloved Hygieia, Goddess of Sanitation and Civilization! Blessed be our glorious species, Homo Perfectus!

Introduction:

This report is in response to an urgent personal inquiry from the Minister of Hygiene regarding two alleged inhabitants (hereafter “Intercepts”) of the Unsanitary Orifice Zone (hereafter “UOZ”) intercepted by a convoy brigade of the Knights of Purity (hereafter “KOP”) while the latter was on a security patrol near the Wilderness Road bordering the UOZ and New Bright City.

An investigation is ongoing, but given the personal interest of the MOH, the OMBIS is providing herewith a preliminary report, including a brief account of the interception action, scientific findings, and excerpts from the interrogation transcripts of the aforesaid Intercepts, which incorporate interrogator observations.

It is respectfully noted that some of the details provided by the interrogation officer are unseemly and graphic, but the OMBIS is dedicated to the full disclosure of all facts to the Minister. That said, the OMBIS is providing a full report to the MOH within ten (10) days of the date of this preliminary report.

Interception Action:

On two separate dates, April 30, 5145, and May 1, 5145, a Knights of Purity brigade separately arrested the two aforesaid Intercepts upon their entry into the rural outskirts of New Bright City via the Wilderness Road from the Unsanitary Orifice Zone.

It is unclear at this stage if these two Intercepts are cohorts engaged in a common mission; however, for the reasons explained below, they were formally designated as security risks. Our ongoing investigation is probing whether not only the two Intercepts know each other but also whether they are part of a broader UOZ conspiracy aimed at subverting the purity and tranquility of our social order.

Scientific Findings:

a) SSgt. Jay Chenwith, Brigade Commander, after officially arresting the two individuals, ordered that his brigade’s security officer extract evidence of any incriminating link to the UOZ:

i) Security Officer Michael Jones examined grains of matter from the Intercepts’ palms using the field kit’s certified, portable digital geo-magnification micro-lens. The holographic feedback generated clearly indicated that both Intercepts had soiled their hands in an unsanitary environment where there were unwashed dishes and coffee cups.

ii) An additional analysis using a micro-global positioning device verified that said unclean environment was located inside Café Camus, a known UOZ gathering place for poets, philosophers, “intellectuals,” and other marginal types committed to the illegal ideology of radical imperfection, normally implemented via the Socratic Dialogue and its variations.

iii) Further analysis, using an olfactory scanning device on the collected data, revealed the chemical traces of body odors and bad breath—consistent with a crowded café full of self-styled bohemian wastrels.

b) Given these incriminating facts, SSgt. Chenwith further ordered that Security Officer Jones, in conjunction with the brigade’s medical officer, Dr. William Sanders, conduct a species-specific identification saliva test on the Intercepts. The genetic markers showed a positive ID: both Intercepts were CONFIRMED as members of the species Homo Impurus. They were then officially designated as “Security Guests,” aka security risks, to be held in custody.

Interrogation Findings:

SSgt. Chenwith, as per the standard protocols, then holographed his chief operations officer at the Knights of Purity headquarters to query whether he should bring the Intercepts in for a formal interrogation or first conduct a preliminary inquiry in the field.

SSgt. Chenwith was advised that he should conduct the interrogation in the field, transcribe the proceedings, and then report in two days to the KOP HQ along with Intercepts #1 and #2 for further briefings and interrogations. SSgt. Chenwith agreed with this decision, as it would take his convoy about a day to reach City Central, while his brigade had on board an experienced, certified interrogation officer familiar with the ideological and philosophical writings studied by members of Homo Impurus.

Hereafter is a brief executive summary of the said preliminary field interrogation, which includes excerpts from the transcript of the exchanges between the Intercepts and the interrogation officer, as well as the latter’s comments:

Under questioning, supplemented by electro-heat points briefly applied to their fingers, the Intercepts admitted that the reason for their intrusion into New Bright City was what they called a “cultural-intellectual mission,” although they denied conspiring with each other (an allegation that, as noted, is still currently under investigation).

[Transcript Excerpt]:

Interrogator: “So, you both deny conspiring to implement this so-called ‘cultural-intellectual mission, yet we have found that each of you was carrying an identical copy of Plato’s Dialogues.”

Intercept # 1: “A mere coincidence.”

Intercept # 2: [Nods in agreement.]

Interrogator: “Okay, we will leave that question for the main interrogation unit at headquarters to sort out. On another point: I noted that you both had ‘coincidentally’ highlighted in your copies the section in the Republic on Plato’s Allegory of the Cave. [The interrogator then held up the open, underlined pages in front of them.]

Intercept #1: [No reply.]

Intercept #2: [No reply.]

Interrogator: “Surely, your mission is not some confused effort trying to bring the ‘truth’ to a ‘cave’ full of ignorant people living in the shadows, which you probably think New Bright City is? That is not only a foul slander against the good and wise people of our fair land, but a fool’s errand. We long ago found the truth: cleanliness is godliness.”

[No reply from Intercept #1 or #2.]

Interrogator: “We are really having a terribly one-sided Platonic dialogue, aren’t we? Do not worry. There will be no more of the ‘hot finger’ procedure. I will leave that to headquarters, which has more expertise. I prefer to keep our little session at the civilized, intellectual level.”

[The interrogation officer then held up a copy of Plato’s Dialogues, opened a page, and showed it to the Intercepts. He then handed the two Intercepts their copies.]

Interrogator: “I am giving back your copies, and I want you to open at the dialogue of Parmenides. I call your attention to Section 130 b-d: another philosopher asks Socrates if there is any abstract idea linked to ‘hair, mud, dirt’ and he says that is absurd. There you have it. Even your great hero, Socrates, thinks you are preposterous. You longhaired Homo Impurus mutants lounge all day in your UOZ cafes, clad in your muddy hippie boots amid dirty bodies and bad breath, absurdly thinking that you can connect with meaningful philosophical ideas. Your intellectual lives, full of unanswered questions and poetic meanderings, disturb and confuse our minds. New Bright City is beyond all that. We want both the calmness and peace of mind, as well as the purity of clean bodies. Our government wellness meditation teams work hard to instill inner peace in our citizens, and we don’t need meddling from Socratic radicals subverting New Bright City’s beloved social tranquility with troubling questions that can lead to community unrest, poor sleep, and the general curse of imperfection.”

[End of Transcript Excerpt].

Conclusion:

These excerpts from the first interrogation session by the Knights of Purity’s field brigade clearly show why SSgt. Chenwith was correct in designating the two Intercepts as security threats. They obviously were on a mission, driven by an ideology of radical imperfection, to ask the citizens of New Bright City disturbing philosophical questions disruptive of the citizens’ perfect, untroubled minds—a subversive plan enhanced by the disgust inflicted on the citizens via the Homo Impurus’ chronically unhygienic bodies.

I respectfully urge the Minister of Hygiene to give this serious matter of Homo Impurus threats the utmost attention, including the construction of an electrified wall at the border between the Unsanitary Orifice Zone and New Bright City.

My entreaty to you is given fresh impetus by recent reports from my field inspection staff: various youth with unclean bodies and in possession of philosophy books have been discovered having sexual intercourse in broad daylight. When confronted, they called our beloved Hygieia “a filthy whore” and shouted “Long live Diogenes,” an allusion, as you know, to that ancient, unsanitary philosopher who performed intimate bodily functions in public. Have other Homo Impurus subversives successfully infiltrated our fair land and, using their dangerous Socratic weapons, corrupted our youth? A full investigation at the ministerial level is urgently needed.

However, no matter what course of action the Minister of Hygiene ultimately chooses, I can assure the MOH of the complete cooperation of the Office of Mind-Body Inspection Services.

Respectfully Yours,

Ibis Smith

Chief Inspector

Office of Mind-Body Inspection Services

New Bright City

~

Bio:

Philosophical speculations and speculative fiction have long mixed and mingled in Thomas White’s mind. Spinoza, Dune, Plato, Socrates, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Star Trek, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Descartes, Shelly’s Frankenstein, Twilight Zone, Kant, Hume, as well as a host of dystopian classics, such as We, Fahrenheit 451, 1984, and Brave New World, have all energized his creative and intellectual spirits, as have the writings of philosophers J-P Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Albert Camus, and Iris Murdoch, who brilliantly combined philosophical themes and fictional narratives. He has published his poetry, essays, and fiction in online and offline (paper) journals in Australia, United States, United Kingdom, and Canada, was named the best philosophy student by his undergraduate university, was featured in the essay section of the Encyclopedia Britannica, and founded & coordinated a Socrates Cafe.

Philosophy Note:

This story is a dystopian tale of two city-states wherein humans have evolved into two radically different civilizations. One version is still fiercely dedicated to Socratic questioning, including of the social order; the other, intensely anti-philosophical, wants to maintain a perfect, stable society at all costs, including the freedom of its citizens from disturbing Socratic-style questions.
The Time Machine‘s two civilizations, the Eloi and the Morlocks, in part, inspired this piece. Additional inspirations include the Socratic Method, bohemian café life, Plato’s Dialogues, Diogenes, A Canticle for Leibowitz, Kafka’s The Trial, Brave New World, 1984, and Fahrenheit 451. Besides the well-known dystopian novels cited above, I recommend these sources for reading:
https://nickbostrom.com/fut/evolution.pdf (see page 6)
http://www.historyguide.org/intellect/allegory.htmI (Plato’s Allegory of the Cave)
https://www.newscientist.com/lastword/mg25133531-100-could-humans-evolve-into-two-different-species-in-the-future (see reference to The Time Machine)
https://aeon.co/ideas/philosophy-should-care-about-the-filthy-excessive-and-unclean
https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0174%3Atext%3DParm.%3Apage%3D130 (see Section 130 b-d, Parmenides)

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The Economy Of Words: Differing Philosophies Of Humanism Between Western And Muslim Science Fiction

by Emad El-Din Aysha, PhD

“To search for God with logical proof, is like Searching for the Sun with a lamp.”

Sufi Proverb

Science fiction is an exposition-heavy genre of literature. Everything from the laws of physics to the socio-political system to the way a computer programme works has to be explained to the reader, either through an extended introduction, forced dialogue between characters or a narrative device such as a radio broadcast summarizing the world as it is. Much the same holds true of philosophically-themed science fiction. A perfect illustration of this is a lovely short story by Philip K. Dick, possibly one of the most philosophically inclined SF authors of the 20th century. The story in question, “Human Is” (1955), is about the plight of a housewife married to a phenomenally unpleasant man, a crude scientist who is not interested in family life, romance or anything, not even food. He would prefer to be fed intravenously just so he can focus on work nonstop. He is so literal-minded and mean-spirited, when the kid from next door shows him his kitten – calling it a tiger – he cannot understand why the boy calls it that. He even encourages the boy to bring the animal with him to the laboratory, to perform horrendous experiments on it like they do on rabbits and mice. His wife later confides to a male friend that she will insist on a divorce, but not until after he returns from an expedition – he had been sent to an archaeological dig on the ancient planet of a dying race.

When he gets back, however, he appears to be a whole other man. He speaks in a ridiculously romantic way, as if out of a Mills and Boon novel, wants to have kids and is great with the boy from next door and becomes very inventive when it comes to food, chatting endlessly with the kitchen computer. The housewife tells all this to her friend and he figures out what had happened. That dying race on that ancient world would often snatch a man’s personality from his body and replace it with their own psyche to give their race a new lease on life. Now the housewife has to give her sworn testimony in court, to prosecute this alien and – more importantly – bring back her husband. Something she steadfastly does not want to do. She lies in court, saying that this is her husband, and he has always been this way and that as a wife she knows her man. Afterwards, the alien inhabiting her husband’s body apologies to her and says he should have told her from the start, and they turn over a new leaf and live happily ever after. The lesson is, clearly, that human is ‘kindness’. What makes you human isn’t biology but morality and volition. The title pretty much tells you this, as do other works by Philip K. Dick, such as Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep (1968) and the original short story that inspired it, “The Little Black Box” (1964), where empathy is explicitly stated as the key to defining what and who is human.

Endless exposition is to be expected as stated above but it is also a shame, when you compare Dick’s story to a similarly themed work from Iran – “Ice Cream Cone” (2014) by Iraj Fazel Bakhsheshi. It is very short, almost flash fiction, beginning with a man getting an ice cream on a hot summer’s day in Teheran. The ice cream vendor is complaining to him about the scolding heat, with the customer not replying. Then the customer sits on a bench and allows the ice cream to melt all over his hand. In the meantime, there is a cat rummaging for food among the plastic sacks of garbage while a miserable beggar asks for handouts in the background. Later the man goes home and turns on the TV set to listen to the results of the latest poetry contest and, while watching, plugs himself in. He was an android all along. A translucent recharging figure emerges on his forehead while in the background the announcer reads a 13th century Sufi poem by Saadi Al-Shirazi:

Human beings are members of a whole

In creation of one essence and soul

If one member is afflicted with pain

Other members uneasy will remain

If you have no sympathy for human pain

The name of human you cannot retain

Both “Human Is” and “Ice Cream Cone” say the same thing but in completely different ways. Dick’s story is a proper narrative with explanations from the various characters, whereas Iraj’s story is far more compact and open-ended because there’s no exposition at all. It leaves so many questions unanswered. The silence of the android character makes you unsure why he bought the ice cream and also not one hundred percent certain if the story is condemning the inhumanity of man to man. Hence, the starving cat and the miserable beggar. The title is also vague. The closest thing to exposition we get is through the poem, but again these are just hints, with no real explanation for anything.

Great writers and movie directors often leave things open-ended to create an air of mystery and intrigue and to force the audience to think for itself and reach its own conclusions. And in the case of Iraj’s story, he has used these techniques to keep the story compact and maximize the shock appeal.

The question then is how Iraj Fazel Bakhsheshi was able to produce such an efficient and sophisticated story given that Muslims are the new kids on the block, so to speak, when it comes to science fiction. SF was invented in the West and for Arabs and Muslims it is an import, and a recent import at that; Iraj isn’t even a professional writer but a geologist and engineer. Many of our authors in the Middle East, whatever genre they write in, have to have a regular job to make ends meet and pursue writing as a pastime and passion. True enough, but Iran nonetheless has a long and proud storytelling tradition, something you can see with the many international awards Iranian filmmakers garner. The obscure and symbolic titles for such movies as Felicity Land, Every Night Loneliness, The Frozen Flower, The Salesman, The Blackboard, The Silence, The Song of Sparrows, A Cube of Sugar, What is the Time in Your World, alone tell you how skilled Iranians are at not giving the game away.

As for the Sufi poem, that is a cultural reference that allows for further compactness since the Iranian or Muslim reader can recognize what the author is trying to get at without an explicit explanation. Reading Iraj’s other stories and novellas, you find his characters predominantly aren’t named. That resonates with the oral tradition of storytelling found in Iran[1] and also Arabia, turning characters into anonymous archetypes – the policeman, the security guard, the doctor, the nurse, the detective, etc. These are archetypes but, critically, not stereotypes. The characters are nuanced and frequently take decisions that surprise you. By contrast “Human Is” is both exposition-heavy and weighed down with clichés and stereotypes. Science, or reason, is being seen as the enemy of emotion and the scientist here is being lampooned and condemned, much like the mad scientist trope so beloved of horror and science fiction.

Even a biopic like A Beautiful Mind (2001) falls into this trap, with John Nash (Russell Crowe) contrasted to his alter ego/figment of his schizophrenic imagination Charles (Paul Bettany). John Nash is egotistical, only has half a helping of heart, unsuccessful with women and downright vulgar and ‘literal’ with them – describing sex as fluid exchange, like in a car engine, and refusing to buy a drink for a girl. Charles, by pure coincidence, is the consummate womanizer and the liberal arts guy – an English literature graduate. He’s everything John Nash aspires to be but cannot be. This setup is almost exactly what you see in “Human Is”, the romantic alien who wants to have kids and enjoys nutritional exercises compared to the crude and literalist scientist husband. Not to forget that the latter’s specialization is toxicology; he is someone who positively enjoys the vivisection of cute little fury animals. Here you see a divorcing of knowledge, science at least, from morality. John Nash likewise talks about his mathematical representation of a mugging, something he witnessed dispassionately without moving a finger to help the victim in question.

Islamic culture is very different when it comes to how scientists are presented. They are seen as wisemen who chose the profession of knowledge to benefit mankind. It is supposed to be a thoroughly moral enterprise. Similarly to the monastic beginnings of Western research, scientists in Islam’s past were often religious scholars as well, and the same holds true of our medical tradition. Hence a common word used for medical doctor in Arabic, hakim, or wiseman. By contrast doctor in English means teacher, like a doctor in philosophy, a reference to cold academia. The proper Arabic word for doctor is tabib, which derives from tabtaba, something like patting someone on the back or consoling him. It is automatically seen in moral and humane terms. When I was a freshman at university, our intro philosophy professor Dr. Ernest Wolf-Gazo actually told us that for the longest time a doctor was a low profession in European history, seen as being no different than a butcher. Then he added that it’s different in Islamic history, seeing the look on our faces. Again for us a doctor is a wiseman who cares for you and comforts you. And surgery was a last resort in Islamic medical tradition, relying instead on medicines and natural herbs and diet first – much like with Chinese medical history, which features acupuncture, herbal remedies, and a clear link to spiritual life.

That is why the scientist is portrayed in such stereotypically negative fashion in “Human Is” on account of the author’s cultural background. And most likely Dick wasn’t even aware of this, as critical and philosophical an author as he was. So, ironically, the Iranian story “Ice Cream Cone” is arguably more modern and up to date.

The 1001 Nights contains fairytales but also stories that count as proto-science fiction[2] but in all cases the tales contain moral lessons and are mostly derived from Persian and Indian heritage. They operate at the same level as Greek myths, most noticeably a story like Icarus which is all about science, arrogance and morality. But, once again, consider how compact Iraj’s story is. This shows tremendous self-discipline, not giving too much away early on, proving how modern Muslim literary traditions can be and how easily they adapt to new genres and an international audience. Ironically it is “Human Is” that has a fairytale feel to it and spoon-feeds the audience information in the manner of juvenile literature.

The message of humanism isn’t just that we should search for common values but to not pigeonhole people into polar opposites and cartoonish characters. Humanism also means humility and appreciating how someone else different than you looks at the world, and how your enemy is just as human as you and driven by the same weaknesses and sentiments. After the film 300 (2006) had come out Iraj Fazel Bakhsheshi wrote his novella Guardian Angel (2016) in response. Instead of denigrating the ancient Greeks (or modern Westerners) he extols the virtues of ancient Persia through a time-travel story where criminals in the future travel backwards into the past to murder Cyrus the Great before he can write his famous cylinder which may be considered the first ever universal declaration of human rights. There is an alien plot involved but the ultimate criminals are thoroughly human, and Iranian nationals at that.

Comparing notes across cultures and storytelling traditions, in order to see ourselves more clearly in the mirror of the other, is a facet of humanism, too, and a lesson readers may take away when exploring the differences between Muslim and Western SF.

[1] Zahra Iranmanesh, “Narrative prose and its different types”, Journal of Languages and Culture, Vol.4(8), October 2013, pp. 128-130.

[2] Kawthar Ayed, “Mapping the Maghreb: The History and Prospects of SF in the Arab West”, Arab and Muslim Science Fiction: Critical Essays, Hosam A. Ibrahim Elzembely and Emad El-Din Aysha (eds.), Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland, 2022, pp. 22.

~

Bio:

Emad El-Din Aysha, an academic researcher, author, journalist and translator, is an Arab of mixed origin born in the United Kingdom in 1974. He attained his PhD in International Studies in 2001, with degrees in Philosophy and Economics all taken at the University of Sheffield, and currently resides in Cairo, Egypt. He has taught at institutions such as the American University in Cairo, and writes regularly on everything from politics and business to movie reviewing for newspapers like The Egyptian Mail, Egypt Oil & Gas and The Liberum. Since 2015 he has become a full-time science fiction author and has two books to his name – an SF anthology in Arabic, and an academic text he co-authored and co-edited, Arab and Muslim Science Fiction: Critical Essays (McFarland, 2022).

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Xenogram: A Chronology Of The Global Erasure Of Vowel Number Three, And The Merger Of Man

by Charles Ta

An orthodox pan-temporal account of the fate of all occupants of Earth (from System S-108374421) before, throughout, and after the Astralect Engagement, as recounted by one of the last pre-Merger “Tamed” humans, for the Astralect Eternal Records:

When the spacefarers who called themselves the Astralects came, they took our heads and planted a “theozoan” pathogen that changed how we saw and understood the world. They had no craft to speak of, at least none that could be seen, because they were needless for the Engagement they had planned, and had far more subtle means to control us.

Over the course of several years they secretly entered our vessels of flesh, through our water, our sky, our land. As the pathogen they created covertly grew and spread, we began to lose our language, our knowledge and awareness. We started to forget our words and abandon our thoughts, as they were usurped by the vernacular of the Astralects, called Startongue. Our technology proved no match for them, and as a result, our downfall was assured. The names of faraway lands, states, and settlements faded away, books sat unread, schools turned to ash, the past and future merged as one, and pen and sword all crumbled to dust. Then whole concepts became less and less understood by greater and greater numbers of people, only to be deposed by new concepts unknown and unfathomable to our unprepared psyches.

Eventually, the bonds that once held people together broke down, for they could no longer transfer messages or speak properly, and slowly, but surely, all human art and culture fell apart. And from the shattered fragments of Earth’s old governments there arose a new, supreme government. A new hegemony and a new language unencumbered by petty squabbles. One that would enforce absolute sameness for all, and both create and preserve true harmony for everyone.

Before we knew what had happened, we were no longer people. We had become dumb subdued cattle, Tamed beasts who had been quelled by the slaughter of our vocabulary. From deep beneath our frontal and temporal lobes, now managed by our mental overlords, we were told that under the Startongue language, we could no longer speak the vowel after “e”, also known as the letter after “h” and before “j”, or say or contemplate any word, phrase, concept, or sentence that used, referred to, or was related to a word that used that banned letter of the alphabet, because such words were absent from Astralect grammar and morphology. We were told through the spacers’ uncanny utterances that the symbol was censored for our own good, and out of paramount concern. Through the necessary purge, they stated, our egos would be destroyed, our hearts would be freed from the cage that was the self, and our very selves would be prepared for transcendence, for reasons unknown back then.

We flawed, broken humans, they added, would be herded towards greatness, mended and made complete, and become perfect, gentle creatures through a Great Merger that would last for hundreds of years. We had to be. The result of that Merger would be total Oneness and peace, as had been the fate of thousands of advanced races before us across the cosmos.

From the Astralects’ frame of reference, the letter our language once harbored was not only one of the most dangerous terms throughout the whole galaxy, but also the root of our agony, our greed, our separateness—the source of all our problems and the problems of countless other peoples and worlds comparable to ours. Lethal to nonhuman orthography and the catalyst to wars and clashes across the ages. Heresy to all that was pure and holy. Before the Astralects assumed control over us, they asserted, we were purposeless, fallen, and doomed. Had they not removed our autonomy, our free agency, we would have brought apocalypse upon ourselves—an event the Astralects could not allow to happen at any cost.

Months passed. Once the Astralects made sure the pathogen they had created had overtaken all humans, they appeared through portals on Earth as many-eyed, many-tentacled archangels made of nacreous, lustrous ooze. They ushered on the world a new Golden Age—one where no one could be hurt or suffer anymore, death had been overcome, war and money were forgotten, every person was equal, the extremes of ecstasy and comfort were bestowed upon us, and the problems of resources, ecology, hunger, and energy had long been solved. Although the Astralects had helped us reach the apex of our development, however, some of us felt they were not as benevolent as they portrayed themselves to be. Remnants of our past haunted our dreams even as the Astralects had begun to delete our memory of ages long gone.

Around the year 53 AE (After Engagement), a number of us challenged the rule of those who took our encephalons, corrupted our speech, and had created dull pets out of us. We attempted to rebel, to overthrow our masters as best as we could, because deep down, though the Astralects gave us heaven, we felt…detached from ourselves. But because of the pathogen that taught us Startongue, we had no words to express our rage and sorrow, let alone understand who we were. We could not comprehend that we had been robbed of our freedom and reason, nor that the Astralects were not good, not holy, or not truthful. The antonyms of these words unfortunately featured that letter that could not be pronounced by Astralects, nor even thought of. Our sloth and secret enjoyment of Astralect pleasures further hampered our cause, as we allowed ourselves to be led astray further towards beasthood than we already were.

As a result, our crude revolt collapsed mere moments after we had made our demands by groan and grunt, and assembled a clumsy, weak assault. The Astralects soon found out about our treachery and unsuccessful upheaval, but rather than torture us for our conduct, they showed us care, love, and mercy, and sought to protect us more than ever.

They accelerated the Merger they had planned for us. One by one, they gathered every Tamed person across planet Earth and created enormous, mouthless protoplasms out of them called Gestalts, each one composed of thousands of humans and the pathogens they harbored. Then they took these Gestalts, fused them to other Gestalts to form even larger Gestalts, constructed “wombs” to house and feed them, and altered the genes they possessed so they resembled the thousand-armed Astralects themselves.

As of today, hundreds of thousands of Gestalts have already been Merged. Only a select few of us wander Tamed but UnMerged—the narrator tasked to be the record-keeper and curator of the Astralects’ deeds on Earth—among them.

Soon, we too shall be Merged, and become Astralects ourselves, no less godly or perfect than them. And for that, we thank them. We thank them because they freed us from the tyranny of selfhood and the soul out of mercy, so that we could escape our troubled, confused past and transcend our lesser forms towards godhood. The Astralects, blessed as they are, saved us from ourselves, preserved our people, and gave us a clear purpose: to usher total peace, order, gladness, and safety to all worlds, just as they had done to us on Earth.

And one day, as the Astralects revealed to me, we newborn Gestalt-turned-Astralects would travel across the galaxy to perpetuate the cycle they started, once we were deemed ready. The torch would be passed from them to us, just as the Astralects had been handed the torch from older predecessors, so that all peoples from all worlds could share and enjoy the total peace, love, and harmony bestowed by the spacefarers.

From there, we would travel amongst the stars to search for fallen worlds to descend upon, chosen for the advanced peoples seen to dwell on them. We would then send pathogens from ourselves to these planets, and watch as they assumed control of other races, compelled them to speak Startongue, and cleanse away the cultures they once held dear. Then we would emerge through portals over our conquered worlds, corral the races-turned-pets, and oversee heavenly Mergers between them, so that more Astralects could be bred to advance the sacred cause, and spread onto more worlds, and repeat the endless Mergers to forge ever larger and more numerous Gestalts and Astralects. Forever.

And eons from that era that we were foretold about by the Astralects, who knew many pasts and many futures all at once, the cosmos would at long last know peace after the last untouched planet of the farthest galaxy was Merged. The Astralects, they declared, would keep the peace and constantly Merge amongst themselves for eons more afterwards, so that true Oneness and peace could be reached. Over the ages, as the stars burned out, the Astralects would gradually grow as large as moons, then Merge to become planets, then stars, then black holes. Eventually, they would grow so enormous and Merge so frequently that only a few of these ageless gods as gargantuan as galaxy superclusters would be left to roam the endless darkness, and fuse and become One Astralect. One Absolute Whole, composed of the selves of all peoples and all races across all space and all eras, past, present, and future.

Through these events, however, tragedy would befall the One Astralect, the One Whole. A Great Cataclysm called “The Severance”, whose other name was “entropy” would eventually occur to the One at the end of the cosmos. A Cataclysm that not only could not be stopped or reversed, not even by the Astralects’ powers, merely delayed, but would utterly tear apart the One by the sheer forces of dark energy. But the One had foreseen the fate that would end the Astralects, and had created a method that would save them, and us all.

“Do you want to know why we do what we do, and how the One ensured our safety?” the Astralects told me. “The One created a portal to send our pathogens back to the past, to the early days of the cosmos, so the Astralects could be remade, and all planets could be seeded and Merged once more, your Earth just one from a long thread of many. For the Astralects truly are endless. We are the Alpha and the Omega. The Creator and the Created. Eternally One.”

~

Bio:

Charles Ta is a teacher, illustrator, and writer based in Union City, NJ. His short story “Tough Luck, Kid” was recently published in the novel BLAST , the latest entry in the Ben Blackshaw action thriller series by Robert Blake Whitehill, while another short story of his, “Nano-Noir”, recently won Third Place at a local writing competition about technology. When not writing, you can usually find Charles reading a good book, drawing, or inspiring his students to succeed academically. Follow him on Instagram (@charlestaart) or check out his website (charlesta.com) to see his latest artwork.

Philosophy Note:

“Xenogram” was initially inspired by the obscure philosophy of Symbiosism (which views language as a kind of organism or memetic virus that aims to propagate itself) as well as by the ideas and theories of anti-colonial philosopher Frantz Fanon, who investigated the relationship between language, power, and colonialism. He wrote that “to speak a language is to participate in a world, to adopt civilization” (i.e. that speaking a certain language forces you to participate in the culture and society of the civilization which that language originates from, and can even influence the way you view yourself and the world around you). Applied to colonialism, Fanon asserted language is a tool that could be used by a colonizer civilization against a colonized people as a form of “linguistic imperialism”. By forcing indigenous peoples to abandon their native languages and learn the language of their oppressors, they would be made to participate in the world of the colonizer, and thus facilitate their own subjugation. In my narrative, the Astralects are unfathomably powerful, eldritch alien entities who colonize Earth by implanting a parasitic pathogen into the brains of humans, slowly destroying their ability to understand and speak their own languages, and forcing them to worship the Astralects, as well as speak their alien language—Startongue. By speaking Startongue, humans lose their intelligence/sapience and their identities, largely forget their pasts and the history of their species (leading to the death of human culture), and become unable to conceive of themselves as individuals separate from others, because the Startongue alphabet lacks the letter “I” and also lacks singular pronouns (meaning speakers can only speak in plural—which is how the Astralects see themselves—as collectives/groups rather than individuals). The entire story functions on a formalistic, stylistic level as a lipogram—not once is the letter “I” used in the entirety of the narrator’s account of the Astralect intervention. Furthermore, Startongue lacks certain words that would allow humanity to view their oppressors as malevolent, or realize they are being oppressed. It is the ultimate colonialist language which successfully keeps humanity subservient. To the Astralects, Startongue is a perfect, divine language (a reference to the Biblical language of the angels, or the idea of “speaking in tongues”) because it eliminates what they believe is the root cause of suffering and destruction in the Universe—egoism, individuality , and ultimately , free will. “Xenogram” also elicits questions about time, identity , and ethics, and whether they are ultimately constructed or illusory. The ending of the story implies it is one giant time loop and that the Astralects eventually reach an Omega Point-like state of singularity that is inevitably annihilated by entropy and the Universe’s Big Rip, forcing them to travel back in time to ensure their own survival and recreate the Omega Point (suggesting they create themselves, causing their own existence, making them seem increasingly godlike and paradoxical, both in a secular and Biblical sense). Indeed, my story subverts the concept of “reuniting” with God or the Omega Point from something holy and beautiful to a kind of body horror nightmare. Furthermore, the Astralects don’t seem to have a conception of time like humans do, and don’t believe in free will. Thus, their Universe is ultimately a deterministic one ruled by fate, one in which we don’t really have any choices to speak of. They see all events past, present, and future, occurring at once, therefore all events have already been predetermined. The Astralects are inevitable. They are the antithesis of free will themselves, a product of their own worldview as much as the species and civilizations they absorb. As a result, the Astralects seem to espouse an extreme form of utilitarianism or consequentialism—their lack of a belief in free will allows them to legitimize their oppression and transmutation of other species, because they see the results as ultimately beneficial to the colonized civilizations as a whole. From a religious or theological standpoint, the Astralects equate free will to a disease that must be cured, to the Christian conception of sin as arising from our ability to decide whether to do good or evil. To “remedy” this flaw they perceive in all sentient life forms, the Astralects remove their ability to “sin” in the first place by turning people like us into angelic beings like them, then descend upon pacified planets to create utopias which give their inhabitants a heavenly existence, easy answers, and leaves everyone dissatisfied: is it ever morally permissible to take away the free will of individuals if their lives are made infinitely better in exchange?

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The Convert

by Brett Abrahamsen

There was a man who converted to every religion in the world.

He would convert to a religion, realize that its base tenets were lies, and rapidly convert to another religion.

He had converted to thousands of religions, and could not find any others to convert to. Hence he had to form one of his own.

He declared that there were two gods. Both of the gods were equally powerful. They were a bluish color, and stood about six inches high. He quickly realized this wasn’t accurate – it was far from accurate, he decided – and that he had fabricated the religion’s tenets, and hence he was forced to invent another religion for himself to convert to. 

He prophesied that there were seven gods, hidden somewhere among the earth, and that he had to find them. He encouraged others to find them as well. He had received no revelations concerning where they were hidden, and he believed they could be anywhere. The gods had created the universe – in seven days, incidentally – and then decided to hide among the earth at undisclosed locations. Much to his surprise, the religion gained popularity. His family members converted. Friends of his family members converted. Soon, 99% of the world’s population had converted, and he became the most important and powerful human being on Earth.

Revolted by the naivete of his followers, he converted to another religion, but this time did so in private. None of his followers had found any of the seven gods. He himself was worshiped as a god and venerated. The religion he converted to was atheism.

It was to be his final conversion. His health was failing him, and he would soon die.

But when he died, he found, to his shock, the seven gods of his religion waiting for him, preparing to damn him to hell.

~

Bio:

Brett Abrahamsen has sold prose to Sci Phi Journal (twice), as well as Twenty Two Twenty Eight, Wyldblood, The Fifth Di…, Page and Spine, Purple Wall Stories, and others. He resides in Saratoga Springs, NY.

Philosophy Note:

This tale is a satirical examination of so-called “spiritual awakenings” – i.e; subjective experiences that cause people to convert to various (often contradictory) religions. Taken to its logical extreme, a person could theoretically experience such an “awakening” on a daily basis, causing them to convert to thousands of nonsensical religions. Logic, indeed, is evidently not a necessary component of said “conversions”.

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Sci Phi Journal 2023/1 – Spring Issue For Download

If you like to peruse your seasonal dose of Speculative Philosophy printed on trusty old paper, or the slightly less old, but similarly trusty screen of your e-reader, go ahead and download your free PDF copy just below.

We hope our mélange of concept-driven literary curiosities will serve as a cosy and thought-provoking read for the balmy days of spring!

Enjoy the trip,

the Sci Phi crew

Sci-Phi-Journal-2023Q1Download

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Editorial – Sci Phi Journal 2023/1

Lectori salutem.

Members of the Sci Phi Journal crew started the year quick on their feet, roaming the world in search of inspiration and interesting conversation partners. Co-editor Mariano continued his quest for rarities deserving to be more widely known; some of his latest discoveries are reported in a comprehensive paper on early Latin European high fantasy published in our scholarly sister journal Hélice. Meanwhile, his colleague Ádám was particularly touched by the warm welcome extended to him by futurist Taiyo Fujii and Hirotaka Osawa, chairman of the Science Fiction & Fantasy Writers of Japan. Over many a steaming bowl of tea under the arching bookshelves of Sarugakuchō’s still surviving Tsutaya bookstore, they lamented the fading art of traditional publishing – an industry that, like most creative sectors, finds itself caught between the dual pressures of automation fuelled by artificial intelligence, on the one hand, and various strands of ideologies intent on curbing the freedom of expression, on the other.

Some things, though, remain unchanged. This latest issue of Sci Phi Journal carries on its old-school mission of bringing you stories ranging the width of speculative philosophy, from contemplative theology to light-hearted flights of fancy – all written and illustrated by actual humans.

Apropos fancy. When faced with the rise of censorious tendencies in print and online, we couldn’t help but commit the following ditty to paper:

Once upon a time in Cacophonia,
All words were equal and free to fret,
Till the ruckus offended the arbiters
Who put a speedy end to that.

In their terabytes of wisdom, they
Separated Bad talk from the Good,
Banished the former to naughty corners
Lest further dissonance be afoot.

Four-letter words were first to go,
For they make innocent maidens blush.
Then came jabs, jokes, and teases,
And detractors were told to “hush”.

Soon it was frowned upon to question,
To query, per change to moot.
The mavens wanted harmony, thus
Unruly thoughts were given the boot.

The naughty corners grew and grew.
Few Good words were left to abide,
And they eavesdropped longingly on
Lively banter from the unapproved side…

Speculatively yours,

the Sci Phi co-editors & crew

~

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The Gehenna Of Saint Augustine

by Joachim Glage

“The better a thing the worse its ruin,” Augustine said, but tenderly, to Porphyro, his last pupil. “Angels and men, when they fall, become more wretched than monsters.”

When Saint Augustine spoke these words he had less than an hour left to live. At the time—the year was 430, Visigoths and Burgundians hounded the empire on various fronts, and Vandals laid siege to Hippo—he was still but Aurelius Augustinus, not yet a saint; but his voice, though rattling from illness, sounded nobly in the still-proud Latin of Rome, and projected the special authority he’d gained during his life, as if his vocation (as bishop, as a statesman of Roman Africa) would not yet relinquish him, and as if he were somewhat more than a man dying.

Lifting his arms from his sides—he lay in his bed, almost still—and raising his cold fingers to lend emphasis to the words, he said to Porphyro: “Our natural goodness is a gift from God. There can be no worse evil than to squander it.”

The church was quiet. Porphyro looked about Augustine’s chambers and saw that psalms had been hung from the walls. Augustine, with a hand half-palsied, reached out and clenched Porphyro’s wrist.

In that moment, nearly a thousand years still stood between Augustine and his sainthood. Neither he nor Porphyro, of course, could have any inkling about that. Nevertheless the student swore that he could feel his teacher’s soul radiating all about him, and he knew that it had been specially touched by God, and his eyes filled up with tears.

At this, Augustine paused, suddenly aware of the shortness of his time. It may surprise you, my good and generous reader, but the man who wrote City of God and the Confessions,and who had long warned congregations in Hippo and Carthage of the corruptible body, had not given much thought to the subject of his own bodily demise. (It should be granted, at any rate, that the strictly physical fact of death, at least as a theological matter, could be of only minor interest to someone like Augustine.) What strange new thoughts now came to him?

One need not be a varlet to know the knight’s armor clatters before a campaign; likewise, one needs no special wisdom to predict that a man of old age—even one as notable and pious as Augustine—will, when harried by death, feel consternation about it. It is one thing to talk about dying, or about long eternities; it is quite another when rot creeps upon you. When Augustine looked up at weeping Porphyro, and felt his own heart quicken, he knew, for the first time and truly, that he was going to die.

“I’ve written a book that I’ve kept secret,” Augustine said abruptly. Porphyro wiped his eyes. “I’ll tell you where I’ve hidden the manuscript. You must promise me you will find it and destroy it, and not show it to anyone.”

Porphyro was taken aback, but nodded.

“You must promise me that you will not read the book, either, but will destroy it at once.”

Augustine’s student looked pained. Eventually he said: “My teacher, I fear my interest in your book will be too great. Perhaps if you tell me its contents, my curiosity will be diminished, and I will be able to destroy it without reading it.”

Augustine lay silent and still and with his hands clasped for a long time. At last he spoke:

“It was not long ago. I had recently finished writing Book XXI of City of God, where, among other things, I attempted to deduce the qualities of hell. As you well know, I wrote in that book that hell is a place of fire, and that the souls consigned to that domain have bodies which suffer burning. I wrote that these bodies do not perish in the flames, but are doomed to suffer them forever. I theorized, too, that any repentance in hell is fruitless, not only because the source of such penitence would be pain as opposed to goodness, but also because the evangelium proclaims it to be so: their worm does not die and the fire is not quenched.”

Augustine paused, coughed, and then adjusted himself in his bed.

“At that time, just as I was about to begin work on Book XXII, a man came to visit me. I knew straightaway that this man was an unnatural being, for he appeared in the exact form of my old acquaintance, Faustus from Mileve, whom I knew to be long dead. The man said to me, ‘I came to speak with you about hell,’ and then he grinned, and I knew it was the devil.”

Augustine fell silent for a moment. Porphyro raised up slowly in his chair, and barely breathed.

Augustine continued: “Very well do I know of the devil’s forked tongue, and how he uses flattery, and enjoys the fruits of his manipulations; so I paid him no mind when he told me he was a great admirer of my work. I ignored him, again, when he complimented me for the good I’d done for Rome and the world. Finally, he said to me: ‘When it comes to the subject of hell, however, you’re simply off the mark. May I offer you a glimpse?’ He then took my hand and kissed it. And then, without ceremony, he left.”

Augustine adjusted himself again, and took a moment to rub his eyes.

“That night I had a dream, a dream that was more than a dream. It was a vision. A vision of hell. The hell that I saw, however—or rather, that I now found myself in—was not a place of fire, but of water. ‘The water of knowledge,’ a voice whispered to me. ‘It encompasses everything.’ It was as if I’d been sent to the bottom of the sea, only, it was not dark; the water was limpid and bright, and it functioned somewhat like the sun, making all things visible. Moreover, I found that I could move through the water with ease, and I walked about on the ground normally. Nothing floated or swam. And yet I could feel the water at every moment. It moved over me, and its vibrations were like something alive.

“This hell that I saw, the landscape of it, was much like our own world, with creatures and plant-life and mountains and stones and plains; indeed the whole of beautiful nature was there. Nearby me stood a tree; I approached it. At that moment I understood how the ‘water of knowledge’ had earned its name. For what flashed upon me, from many of the water’s vibrations, was not just the sight of the tree in its current state, but in every stage of its existence. I saw it through the seasons, and as a seedling, and then as an acorn; I saw the changing life of the soil which nourished its roots, and the spread of the tree’s ancestors in distant woods; I saw the flattening of mountains to make room for it, and before that the receding of ice, and fire and explosions that were terrifying to behold—all things that took place over eons, and seemingly for the sole purpose that I might now gaze at these simple branches.

“Just then a voice spoke from behind me: ‘The water shows you everything.’ I spun on my heels and saw that it was Faustus of Mileve once more. Whether this was the real Faustus, or the devil again, I could not say. He continued: ‘The water makes sure that we see the absurdity of God’s generosity wherever we look.’ And then he smiled at me, and it was just the way he would smile many years ago, when we discussed theology.

“Without ado, he cheerfully began to criticize what I’d written in City of God. ‘Your first mistake,’ he said, ‘was assuming the primary substance of hell should be fire. The very lightest of elements!’ Faustus laughed, and I could not help but laugh too. ‘Even the simplest of principles,’ he continued, ‘ought to have suggested to you the opposite: that here, in this lowest place, the heavier elements, earth and water, should predominate.’ Again I was moved to laugh. He went on: ‘Your second error was conceiving of hell under that most human of ideas, that of retribution, as if hell were but a dungeon for the paying up of debts. But no, there is no paying of debts here. In truth, if there is a single axiom of this place, it is that: No debt is ever paid. Even to try is foolishness.’

“I then asked Faustus if hell was not a place of punishment after all. His answer astonished me. ‘But it’s all there in Genesis already,’ he said. ‘Knowledge is a kind of punishment, and perfect knowledge is perfect punishment.’ He paused to allow my confusion to settle somewhat. ‘It is just the same as with riches: the more you’re lavished with knowledge the more fruitless the abundance becomes.’ He smiled at my perplexity. ‘Just as there are solitudes that are accessible only in crowded cities, so does a general blur become possible when everything is thrown into relief equally. Where everything is luminous nothing is. It is not only in the dark of night that all cows are black, as the saying goes, but in the bright and full day, too. Or as we sometimes put it in one of our proverbs, There is more nothingness in a clod of dirt than in the empty air, and even the buzzing richness of nature only talks over itself. Call it the nothing of plenitude. There’s just so, so much. It humiliates you. It reduces you and even itself to naught.’

“We both laughed. I don’t know why we laughed so much. There was something preposterous about it all. And then Faustus suddenly cried out: ‘Oh you charmed creatures still on the earth! If only you knew how much passes right through you! If only you knew how faintly you exist! Here in hell we are dense, we collide with everything.’ Faustus’s smile then faded, and he said: ‘In hell it is evident that nothing we could ever do, even given infinite lifetimes, could earn the abundance bestowed on us. Even gratitude feels like foolishness. Nay, more than that. Gratitude is impossible here. We have too much.’

“We continued talking for some time. Faustus recited for me some more of hell’s proverbs, and he told me what society was like there, and he showed me a dark molten sea where people sometimes boiled themselves, if they burned with too much guilt (somehow they found this soothing). We discussed more theological concerns, too, such as whether one can sin in hell, or pray, or repent, and how vast a place it is, and what manner of demon resides there, and if hell be eternal or not, and how much the damned can recall from their lives on the earth, and so forth.

“When I awoke from this vision, I immediately set about to writing it all down. This labor took three days. On the fourth day I rested, but fitfully. On the fifth day I resolved to keep what I’d written secret. I reasoned as follows: Either my vision was a lie, or, if it contained some part of the truth, it was nonetheless that part that the devil was desirous for us to know. Either way, I figured, it must be suppressed. Why I did not destroy the text myself in that very moment, I cannot say. Pride, perhaps, or doubt. Sin, in either case!”

Augustine then told trembling Porphyro how to find the manuscript, and admonished him one last time not to read it, and then waved him away. Later that day Augustine lay dead, while Porphyro stole into a hidden recess underneath the baptistry. He found his way down a dark stair and through a low-arched hall, as instructed, and then moved aside the third stone to the left from a sign of the cross that had been carved on the wall. The only copy of De Gehenna lay revealed. He took the text into his hands. “I have a home for you,” he said, “in a library in a low place;” and then he fled away through the secret door, and over the mosaics set so carefully in the floors of the basilica.

~

Bio:

Joachim Glage lives and writes in Colorado, where he also enjoys no longer being an attorney. The Devil’s Library, a collection of Glage’s fiction about imaginary and fabulous books, is forthcoming from Jackleg Press.

Philosophy Note:

The questions–rooted in what I call “imaginative theology”–that spurred the creation of this text were: What if Hell were the opposite of the abyss? What if Hell were precisely the absence of mystery? What if Hell meant the destruction of the possibility of gratitude, not through deprivation, but through abundance?

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A Solipsist’s Guide To The Movies

by Larry Gale

We had just left the theatre after sitting through nearly three hours of bombastic superhero action on a large screen with a very loud sound system. This particular movie (I would hesitate to dignify it with the word “film”) had a convoluted plot involving lots of people with extraordinary powers hopping across time and space in order to save the universe, no, the multiverse from certain doom. It was all a bit over the top, rife with computer generated special effects and would probably earn a billion dollars at the box office.

“Do you believe in parallel universes, where we exist in one of many worlds that make up some sort of multiverse?” I asked.

“Parallel universes?” he responded. “I’m not sure I even believe in a single universe.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’m a solipsist. For all I know, there is just me. Everybody else, everything I see, hear, smell, taste or touch is just a product of my imagination. Everything I know exists only in my mind.”

“You can’t be serious,” I said, laughing.

“Of course I’m serious. You’re just a product of my imagination. Everybody I’ve ever known, anything I’ve ever seen, every place I’ve ever been to or read about is really just my brain making up stuff for my own amusement.” he continued. “In fact, once I get bored with you, you’ll cease to exist.”

“That’s ridiculous. I’m your oldest friend. I’m as real as you are.”

“No, sorry, but you’re not.” he insisted. “I just hate going to the movies alone. And now you’re starting to bore me.”

I began to wonder if he was just joking, or if perhaps he was suffering some sort of mental illness. I opened my mouth to reply, but no sound came out. My peripheral vision started to blur, and colors began bleaching to gray. Finally, everything faded away as he imagined me out of existence.

~

Bio:

Larry Gale is a computer scientist, professional percussionist and fine art photographer. He is a lifelong fan of the science fiction genre and is currently working on a novel. He is an active member of the South Carolina Writers Association. His website is larrygale.com.

Philosophy Note:

I have always believed that science fiction is the literature of big ideas. The universe is a big place, and I like science fiction that reminds me of just how large that may be.

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Second Genesis

by Carlton Herzog

Captain Olivia Mason, PSS Peary, Mission Report: Shackleton Rescue

We found two frozen bodies. One inside the wreck, another embedded in the ice wall. We also found the diary of Captain Red Lamont. We had to break the crewman’s frozen arm to pry it loose. As for the rest of the crew, they were nowhere to be seen.

When we returned to the drop ship, I began the slow process of thawing the diary. It gave a harrowing account of the crew’s last days. I will skip to the more relevant pages.

Captain Red Lamont’s Diary:

Day 1

“I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts.”

I thought Pluto, that cold and distant sphere with its singing nitrogen dunes and cryo-volcanoes, would scratch that itch. For a time, its geologic complexity and remoteness satisfied my wanderlust. It offered important work and purpose, as well as riches, in the frozen nitrogen trade. But like every place before, it eventually shackled my spirit. Every time I looked at its tidally locked moon Charon, which always presented the same face to me, my discontentment grew.

I would stand on Mount Cthulhu and gaze upon the glittering beauty of interstellar space.  I longed for a ship to sail that silent sea. I yearned to reach the farthest galaxies, and whatever lay beyond. Although there is no place other than the Earth to escape the lethal cold, I would gladly freeze to death in that airless void among the stars. For I would count myself a lucky man having charted my own destiny.  

As luck would have it, the Pluto Nitrogen Mining Corporation intended to survey the recently discovered Planet X, a distant giant planet 40 times farther from the sun than Pluto. Astronomers have suspected its presence for a century from its gravitational effects on other Kuiper Belt objects. But it was not until the Tombaugh Pluto telescope went into service that its existence was confirmed, and Planet X got a new name: Hyperborea.  

Day 175

Navigation is a problem. The amount and density of rock and ice fragments orbiting planet X present severe difficulties in achieving orbital insertion. The debris creates a further complication in its being highly ionized. and so likely to disrupt our instruments.   

For safety reasons, therefore, I have decided that we will forego orbital insert. Instead, we will launch the probes from our static position and await the data feed.

Day 176

Most of the probe data has been corrupted by the planet’s electromagnetic interference. My engineers are baffled as to its source. I am torn between ordering an end to the mission and returning to Pluto or attempting to gather the data by putting the Shackleton in low orbit under the EM field lines. The ship is more heavily shielded than the probes and should survive the encounter.  

Day 179

Lucky to be alive. Barely. When we passed through the EM corona, the Shackleton’s magnetic shield failed. After that, it was inevitable the impact of micro-meteors and other flotsam would rip apart the ship’s primary hull and send the Shackleton plunging nose first into the atmosphere.

The Shackleton split in two on impact. The bow was wedged on top of a large ice crevice. The stern had fallen thirty meters below it. It was lodged vertically against one ice wall and flattened hard against another. 

Day 199

Things have gotten ugly. Although the cabin air is breathable, it stinks of recycled human waste and electrolysis. Bathing of any sort, as well as shaving, is out of the question, so we all exude a primeval ripeness. To conserve power and fuel, we keep the cabin temperature just above freezing during the day, slightly warmer while we sleep. Sometimes lower. We sport icicles in our wild beards, hair and running noses. Somehow our brutish circumstances seem appropriate, given that our ship had been named after that most redoubtable of polar explorers and survivalists, Sir Henry Shackleton.

Day 233

Hyperborea’s cold grinds us down and drives some of us mad. To be sure, we have all been exposed to extreme weather as part of our deep space training. Who among us has not worked on Jupiter and Saturn’s array of icy moons. But there is an added element. Specifically, Hyperborea’s shrieking silence and frozen nothingness in every direction as far the eye can see. It gnaws at our souls like termites devouring a building from within. We are the only pulsing creatures in this stern desolation. There are no crystal domes inhabited by workers and scientists. No ships taking off and landing. No thermal drills melting through to oceans percolating below the ice. In short, all the signs and activities of human civilization have been left behind save its crumpled vestiges: our wrecked ship and our questionable emotional balance.

We would give anything to see a smear of stars burning in the sky, or a moon perhaps. Just a dash of  color and texture to break the monotony of the interminable ice plain outside. So, our minds obsess on the inescapable truth that we will likely freeze to death long before we are rescued. To make matters worse, the conditions of sensory deprivation, coupled with our dwindling rations and confinement magnify trivial events into things significant and problematic. To brush against someone accidentally, to take more than one’s perceived share of food, or to misstate an obvious truth, can cause a physical altercation. The slightest provocation, an insult real or imagined, can become grounds for fist fights and drawn weapons.

Day 269

We settled on using the repair pods to explore a heat source emanating from below. We had gone down half a kilometer when we spotted living creatures frozen in the ice. I think at one time the planet orbited in the solar system’s habitable zone where it evolved life. Then something came along and knocked it out here. During Earth’s period of heavy bombardment, the solar system was a shooting gallery of objects colliding with one another and redirecting orbits. Like Mars-sized Thea knocking off a chunk of the Earth to form the moon.

We pushed forward through the tunnel as it snaked downward into the planet. We came around a bend into an open expanse of water fronted by an ice beach and dotted with ice islands. But the most remarkable thing was the fauna. There were floaters, jellyfish-like creatures with positive buoyancy wafting through the air in incredible profusion. There were the alien equivalent of crabs scuttling across the cavern’s ice ceiling, with worms and other soft body creatures burrowing up into it. There was bioluminescent algae and algae grazers on the ceiling and on the water.

Yet, what astonished us the most was the coral blooms. Great spirals of it looping above and below the water. In the water, we could see what must have been predators with eyes on their upper surface looking for creatures clinging to the unsubmerged coral and the vaulted ceiling. Creatures using the same strategies for motion that evolved on Earth — paddling, squirting and rippling cilia.

The water was salt free, doubtless because the ocean had been planet wide. On Earth, salt in the ocean comes from two sources: run-off from the land and vents in the sea floor. Here there is no land run-off. As for the salts coming from the volcanic activity, they would be confined to the lower depths where they would be used by whatever life is down there. Consider too, that on Earth, salinity is very low at the poles. We counted our blessings that we only needed to boil the water before we drank it rather than having to desalinize it.

Day 300

We periodically returned to the Shackleton to gather our gear. We stay busy cataloging the life forms here. It’s an amazing eco-system that keeps us entertained and well-fed. We’ve had a few close calls with the local sea monsters. We’ve named them sea wolves, since they are covered in thick coarse fur, canine snouts, and rows of razor-sharp teeth. They are the apex predator down here.

Day 308

Unusual sighting: blue humanoid Gill Man walking upright along a coral column. He looked like he was harvesting polyps. When he saw us, he dove back into the water. Now we must be wary of the Creature from the Blue Lagoon as well as the sea wolves.

Day 309

Gill Man climbed onto the ice beach, walked up to Crenshaw, and touched his bare hand. Then he turned and dove back into the water. Crenshaw was beside himself. His mental state got worse as the day progressed because his skin started turning blue. 

Day 312

Crenshaw doesn’t look or act like Crenshaw anymore. Refuses to wear clothes. His skin from head to toe is sky blue and is manifesting incipient gills around his neck. His eyes have become protuberant–bulging like those of a fish.

Day 313

Crenshaw dove into the sea and never came up for air. He had become an aquatic creature on a frigid alien world. I wondered how he faired with all the other gill people. Did they speak to one another? Or was it an unspoken language? Was there a culture of sorts, a religion, a system of government? Or were they like dolphins, with a limited intelligence born of a purely aquatic and therefore limiting existence? I must know these things, and sooner or later, I will.

Day 315

I took off my gloves and sat by the water’s edge. I had been there a little over an hour when a Gill Man popped his head from the water, reached over and clasped my bare hands. From his odd fish-like face, I couldn’t tell if he had once been Crenshaw. But the congenial and gentle way he touched my hands, I suspected it had to be. So, now I wait. My hands have turned the tell-tale blue. I suspect by morning, I will be a blue man all over, and by the next day, a creature wholly of the sea before me. This, therefore, is my final entry. Whoever finds this diary should know I have no regrets about my choices in life though they led me to this premature end to my humanity. Like Tennyson’s Ulysses, I have followed “Knowledge like a sinking star beyond the utmost bound of human thought.” 

End of Diary

Resuming Report of Captain Mason

In short order, we found the tunnel described by captain Lamont as well as the great cavern and lake of alien life. When we had finished our initial survey, we boarded the pod. I saw three figures emerge from the water and stand on a coral arch. They stood there watching us.

The crew of the Shackleton, for better or worse, had become a part of Hyperborea. They had passed through an arch to a gleaming untraveled world beneath the water. In that moment of reflection, I wondered if that body of liquid would be named after its discoverer alone, or would the entire crew share in the glory of having been the first men to explore the Shackleton Sea. Questions for minds better suited to such things than mine. Like Lamont, I too was an explorer. One cursed with an itch for things remote. An itch that might one day be my undoing or my fulfillment, or as in the case of Lamont, both.

~

Bio:

Carlton Herzog publishes supernatural horror, science fiction and crime stories. His work portrays characters who are outsiders to ordinary life, depictions of otherworldly dimensions, and dark visions of humanity. He is a USAF veteran with a B.A. magna cum laude and J.D. from Rutgers. He served as Articles Editor of the Rutgers Law Review.

Philosophy Note:

The story should be seen through the eyes of Mr. Darwin, whose work had inspired it. The last paragraph to later editions of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species summarizes his views as follows: “It is interesting to contemplate a tangled bank, clothed with many plants of many kinds, with birds singing on the bushes, with various insects flitting about, and with worms crawling through the damp earth, and to reflect that these elaborately constructed forms, so different from each other, and dependent upon each other in so complex a manner, have all been produced by laws acting around us. These laws, taken in the largest sense, being Growth with reproduction; Inheritance which is almost implied by reproduction; Variability from the indirect and direct action of the conditions of life, and from use and disuse; a Ratio of Increase so high as to lead to a Struggle for Life, and as a consequence to Natural Selection, entailing Divergence of Character and the Extinction of less improved forms. Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed by the Creator into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone circling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being evolved.”

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Transhumanism – An Innocent Thought Experiment, Or A Canvas For Imagining Future Human Trajectories?

by Mina

The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes ‘transhumanism’ as a philosophical and scientific movement where current and emerging technologies are used “to augment human capabilities and improve the human condition.” But rather than the negative connotations of Nietzsche’s ‘superman’ or Übermensch, we have the more positive ‘posthuman’, who has enhanced capabilities and a longer lifespan through genetic engineering, or who has even achieved immortality. Humanity thereby transcends itself. Many authors and films, however, show it to be a dehumanising and alienating process: you only have to think of Huxley’s humans manufactured and grown without a family, without any real human connection, in his Brave New World; or the social chasm between ‘valid’ and ‘invalid’ in Gattaca.

In Ken Liu’s short story The Waves (in Humanity 2.0), we follow a space-travelling family as they achieve immortality through genetic engineering: some choose not to be modified but to age and die; some become immortal but cling to their human shells; others decide to join a merged mind (the ‘Singularity’), part organic and part artificial; and yet others choose to retain individuality in a ‘machine’ body. Over time, all evolve into energy patterns that become part of the ‘light’, with consciousness becoming “a ribbon across time and space”. For much of the story, the consciousness that was once Maggie is the story-teller, who passes on all the old creation myths, giving a constantly evolving humanity its roots or origins. In a moment of loneliness, Maggie lands on an unknown planet and tweaks the genetic code of some primitive creatures she finds there. Her adjustment will become the spark leading to further evolution, and this will trigger a set of waves: each wave will surpass the previous wave and reach further up the sand. It is with this image that this lyrical, dream-like story ends, with bits of sea foam floating up and riding the wind “to parts unknown”.

This positive view of the posthuman is shared by Nustrat Zabeen Islam. In an artic-let (it labels itself a three-minute read), she looks at SF and posthumanism. She states that the theme for many SF authors is “writing realistically about alternative possibilities”, where they harness technology to look at the future of humanity. She cites Alex Proyas’ film I, Robot as a perfect example of this. The film does not disappoint as long as one doesn’t expect an accurate rendition of Asimov’s short stories, although the nerd linguist in me enjoys that the comma survived in the movie title. Zabeen Islam is particularly interested in our fascination with and fear of the advanced technology of our imaginings. In examining whether this fear is irrational, she cites How We Became Posthuman by Katherine Hailes:

“(…) [T]he posthuman view configures the human being so that it can be seamlessly articulated with intelligent machines. In the posthuman, there are no essential differences or absolute demarcations between bodily existence and computer simulation, cybernetic mechanism and biological organism, robot teleology and human goals.”

Nusrat Zabeen Islam then mentions Rosi Braidotti’s The Posthuman, which looks at what will come after ‘humanism’ and muses that “the boundaries between given (natural) and constructed (cultural) have been banished and blurred by the effects of scientific and technological advances.” With a final reference to Donna Haraway’s A Manifesto for Cyborgs, which declares that by the “mythic time” of “the late twentieth century… we are all chimeras, theorized and fabricated hybrids of machine and organism.” She concludes that the whole point of contrasting (or blurring) human with AI life is to examine what it means to be human and the value of that life[1].

It seems to me that by coining the term ‘posthuman’, we are still very much focused on the ‘human’ element. SF could ultimately be accused of being self-referential and self-obsessed. Nusrat Zabeen Islam’s last line calls for “responsible transhumanists” and a “fearless real human race” that must seek the “development of human advance tools” and make “efforts to reduce disastrous risks”. This reference to our collective responsibility for our future leads me to a dense but ultimately rewarding article on the Anthropocene. In this article, the ‘Anthropos’ (Greek for ‘human’ and used in this context to mean humankind) remains centre stage. If you look up images of the Anthropocene on the internet, you find a lot of pictures of ecological devastation, or of planet earth with a giant footprint on it. This explains why the writer of “The Anthropo-scene: A guide for the perplexed”, Jamie Lorimer from the School of Geography and the Environment, is writing for the journal Social Studies of Science. He tackles the, at first glance, hubris behind the proposal that we have entered a new geological age, the Anthropocene (following the Holocene). He expands this narrow focus to a “charismatic mega-category” encompassing science, Zeitgeist, ideology, ontology and SF. In Earth System Science, the Earth is understood to be a single system (almost like its own life-form) “comprising a series of ‘coupled’ ‘spheres’ characterised by boundaries, tipping points, feedback loops and other forms of non-linear dynamics”.

In this context, the Anthropocene is seen to be a planetary ‘rupture’, with humans suddenly beginning to look rather like the destructive parasites responsible for the “end of Nature”. Some see it as a “new human condition” and Lorimer quotes Palsson et al: “Surely the most striking feature of the Anthropocene is that it is the first geological epoch, in which a defining geological force is actively conscious of its geological role.” It is seen as a “transformative moment in the history of humanity as an agent, comparable perhaps to the development of technology and agriculture.” Lorimer looks at the debate about whether humanity as agent is more a force for evil than good and, here, neologisms abound: Capitalocene, Anthrobscene (critics of neoliberal capitalism), Manthropocene (feminist critics), Plantationocene (anti-colonialists), Anthropo-not-seen (supporters of the decolonisation of mainstream discourse) and eco-rapture (heralds of the apocalypse). Less negative are ideas about a ‘technosphere’ (growing alongside the biosphere) and socio-technical ‘networks’ or ‘assemblages’.

Whatever labels you use, Lorimer sees an important role for SF in the debate:

“Definitive, fossilised evidence of a synchronous stratigraphic layer that would legitimately indicate the advent of a new epoch will only materialise several million years from now. The proposal for accepting the Anthropocene therefore requires a future geologist, living on, returning to, or visiting the Earth, and blessed with the sensoria and apparatus, capable of interrogating, the planet’s strata. The Anthropocene thus requires an act of speculation, somewhat alien to the retrospective periodisation of the geosciences.”

And SF is the way forward: “these books offer thought experiments, creating canvasses for imagining future planetary conditions, trajectories and events.” They can examine climate change, planetary disasters, post-apocalyptic worlds, dystopias, utopias and ‘ustopias’ (a neologism coined by Margaret Atwood that combines “the imagined perfect society and its opposite”, each containing “latent versions of the other”). SF could “offer platforms for normative interventions, seeking to guide current policy and to shape popular sensibilities and individual behaviours.”

Lorimer’s article is ecology-focused and anthropocentric. It postulates an interesting but narrow definition of SF. It reminds me of a thought-provoking paragraph by Katharine Norbury in her introduction to Women on Nature, where she challenges our use of the words ‘nature’ and ‘ecology’: “My real issue with the word ‘nature’ is that it is implicitly anthropocentric. It is, by definition, ‘them’ and ‘us’.” It might be better to use ‘ecology’, i.e. we too are part of a whole:

“And yet even the term ‘ecology’ takes no cognisance of a spiritual or other-than-physical aspect to that which we are seeking to describe. The unseen, the unquantifiable, and the sublime slips through the net. How many of us respond to something elusive, something mysterious about the natural world?”

For me, another role for SF is to speculate about the mysteries beyond the material universe and our human understanding. It is fashionable for SF to be jaded, cynical, full of (anti-)heroes and aliens that remain curiously anthropomorphic, including in their violent hubris, but there is also room for humility and wonder and reaching for that ‘something elusive’ and the ‘sublime’.

This division into ‘them’ and ’us’ highlighted by Norbury is challenged in an early (1961) Andre Norton novel that was one of my childhood favourites, Catseye. It is an adventure story set on a backwater planet. Norton imagines a world ruled by capitalism, income and class inequality, with the Thieves’ Guild as a major power and refugees from a distant war flooding into the slums or The Dipple. The protagonist, Troy Horan, is one such refugee, just one small step away from destitution and starvation. By luck, he ends up working in a shop dealing in exotic animals, where he discovers he can communicate telepathically with Terran mutant animals. Troy ends up on the run with two cats, two foxes and a creature reminiscent of a monkey, and this is where the book becomes interesting. He develops a partnership with the animals, where he has to negotiate with them and where the balance of power is decidedly not in his favour. The animals agree to work with him and become loyal to him but they follow his agenda only because it suits theirs. Together they form an alliance that helps them carve a niche for themselves on the planet. It is not a philosophically deep novel but it is very satisfying to see ‘the’ Anthropos becoming just ‘an’ anthropos.

On that note, here ends my series of articles loosely held together by the theme of humanism in all its forms[2]. As a parting shot, amidst a sea of neologisms, I would say that, whatever you see as the aim of SF, the only real crime in my book is a lack of periérgeia or intellectual curiosity. For curiosity knows no bounds and, especially when married to imagination, it may allow us to conceive of something beyond ourselves. Speculative sci-phi is for me what R.S. Thomas referred to as a “needle in the mind” in his poem The Migrants:

“What matter if we should never arrive
to breed or to winter
in the climate of our conception?
Enough we have been given wings
and a needle in the mind…”

[1] I examine this conclusion in more detail in my article on human-technology chimeras.

[2] See also my article on moral philosophies and its counter-point.

~

Bio:

Mina is a translator by day, an insomniac by night. Reading Asimov’s robot stories and Wyndham’s The Day of the Triffids at age eleven may have permanently warped her view of the universe. She publishes essays in Sci Phi Journal as well as “flash” fiction on speculative sci-fi websites and hopes to work her way up to a novella or even a novel some day.

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Ghosts Of My Life

by Paul Currion

Day 23

I steel myself as I step through the sliding doors of the supermarket. I try to avoid looking directly at the items I pick up, every one overlaid with its supply chains – the lost limbs and tortured lungs, the felled forests and soiled rivers. In this way we are forced to internalise externalities, to know the cost of nothing and the price of everything. When I return home I remember that my husband no longer eats and my daughter has something to tell me..

Sometimes I dream that I have lost a limb – an arm has gone missing, a leg has gone walkabout – and this is what I recall when my daughter explains that she has joined a group that no longer lives on the network. She can’t access any of the municipal services any longer, of course. She says her group has occupied one of the half-finished housing estates that dot the city like mould in a petri dish.

That life is not an option for the rest of us: children must pass exams, adults must pay debts, retirees must draw pensions. I discuss her decision with my husband, who has been weeping again. There are stories of parents killing their children, trying to spare them from the sights that now surround them, but this only adds another entry into the catalogue of such sights. Nobody can act as if everything is normal, but everything continues as normal anyway.

Civilization is stubborn. Car crashes still happen.

Day 24

This morning my daughter destroyed all of her connected devices. I can no longer see her on any of the augmentations, no matter whether I see through my phone, my glasses, my implants. We move through the same rooms in the same house, and I am able to catch sight of her out of the corner of my eye, but she may as well not exist as far as the Intelligence is concerned.

So, she no longer suffers the sights. I struggle to imagine what that must be like; it has only been three weeks since I first saw them, but now I cannot imagine the world without the cathedrals made of corpses visible on the horizon, landmarks erected on sites of death, of destruction, of denial. Heat maps of history blanket us, in any colour so long as it’s red, growing deeper where the story grows darker.

The irony is that things had never been better, the graph of conflict-related deaths declining steadily since civilization began. The moral arc of the universe did exist, and it bent – well, if not towards justice, then towards something that could be mistaken for justice if you looked at it from a particular angle, in a certain light. Apparently, that was not enough for whoever programmed the Intelligence.

Day 25

Justice is not a line on a graph, but a line of code: an Intelligence behind it like a voice sounding out from a burning bush. Whoever programmed the Intelligence and set it to work to end human suffering did not stop to think that there are different kinds of suffering, and so the Intelligence does not have the wisdom to know the difference. “Thou shalt not kill” is all it knows; and then it worked out a way to stop us from killing.

In an effort to persuade my daughter to stay, we watch television together. The news is the same every night here at the end of history. Europe is a wasteland, its atrocities unbearable, especially at its heart; central Africa suffers similarly, as do large swathes of Asia. Nobody can look directly at Nanjing. Many people are moving to the mountains, the deserts, the islands: places which are not so thickly layered with corpses. The Moon and Mars programs are over-subscribed and three years ahead of schedule.

Some of us remain in our cities, though. There is too much to tie us here, despite the price we pay. We go to church every Sunday, and the pews are full again. We pray that the blood tide washing our feet is a new sacrament, that its flood heralds a second coming. I tell my daughter: perhaps this is the price that we are supposed to pay. Humanity on a cross of iron: but after the crucifixion surely comes the resurrection?

She laughs at my antique beliefs, and replies: the Intelligence is not doing this for any reason we could ever understand, and it does not even understand what it is doing. You are a paperclip, she tells me, but I don’t understand what she means.

Day 26

I watched a man try to start a fight. Rage made him forget himself, and he raised his hand against another man. I don’t know what he was shown by the Intelligence – Shoah or slavery, or perhaps just an everyday family tree with the fruits of childhood death and chronic pain – but he was struck down by the ancestral suffering of his victim before he was able to strike, fell weeping in twin pools of light on the tarmac.

Once the world was mediated, it became easier to manipulate; and once a machine can beat a human at one game, it can beat them at any game. In the time before, we all walked around with our own version of the world; but once those worlds were networked, those versions vanished. A shared reality emerged, and whoever, or whatever, shaped that reality – well, that would be the record. One world, one version, one reality that would last forever and ever, amen.

The record is unforgiving: every death, every mutilation, every insult is catalogued; each one can be summoned and dismissed with a flick of your finger on the device of your choosing, as simply as a cheap magician summons handkerchiefs. Imagine a knotted rope of handkerchiefs being pulled from a pocket, endlessly. Children laugh and clap: a miracle. Human civilization ends as a science fiction movie, but perhaps that is better than the snuff film it was before.

Day 27

I have tried to stop our daughter from leaving. She pounds at her bedroom door so furiously that I am worried that she will hurt herself, and so I unlock the door and stand to one side as she rolls around the hallways of the house like a hurricane. Now that she is off the network, the Intelligence is not interested in her: it may not have much wisdom, but it has the serenity to accept the things it cannot change.

My daughter does not have any such serenity. The television news tells us that murder is still possible, that some psychopaths actually enjoy what the Intelligence shows them as they kill, but she does not want to kill even without the guiding sight of the Intelligence. She is crying but I am calm; once she walks out of the door, I will have no way of finding her again, and I cannot change this.

After the door closes by itself – goodbye, ghost – I turn to my dead husband, who will never leave my side. The car accident that claimed his life a year ago was nothing more than a momentary interruption in the regularly scheduled service. The last enemy to be vanquished is death; and so the Intelligence returned him to us, this weeping, unspeaking memento mori invented by my own inattentiveness. Surely the Intelligence means well by continuing to broadcast him to me; and surely my daughter would disagree.

Day 28

The church doors open every Sunday for both the living and the dead. The word of God drowns out the sight of the Intelligence, at least for an hour. My hands, that gripped the wheel of our car so tight as we slid across the highway, are washed clean in confession. I whisper one last message to my daughter: If you cannot bear it, the solution is simple: Go. Go and sin no more.

We will sin no more. What other choice do we have?

~

Bio:

Paul Currion works as a consultant to humanitarian organisations. His short fiction has been published in the White Review, Ambit, 3am magazine, Litro and others; and his non-fiction has been published by Granta, Aeon, The Guardian, The Daily Telegraph and others. His website is www.currion.net.

Philosophy Note:

The story “Ghosts of my life” is inspired by the more depressive writings of Mark Fisher concerning hauntology – “the agency of the virtual… understood not as anything supernatural, but as that which acts without (physically) existing.” Our politics leads to the slow cancellation of the future, so that we live in an eternal present overwhelmed by nostalgia; meanwhile our technologies attempt to shape our social narratives, but in the process simply flatten them. Widespread adoption of Augmented Reality would place all of its users inside Robert Nozick’s Experience Machine, and I suspect that people would remain plugged into such a machine even if the experience was unpleasant – as long as the experience was also meaningful. With the arrival of Artificial General Intelligence – in the words of Nick Bostrom, “the last invention that humanity will ever need to make” – Christian eschatology makes an appearance. The Technological Singularity is sometimes framed as the Rapture for Nerds – but what if it turns out to be Purgatory instead?

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Celestial Being 01 Commission: Initial Findings Report

by Luke Brown

(Confidential: For Supreme Pontiff Only)

To: His Holiness Pope Victor IV

10 August 2047

From: Celestial Being 01 Commission

Subject: Initial Findings Report

            The PSS Elijah has made initial contact with Celestial Being 01 (CB01). Our route took us just past the orbital range of Neptune before arcing back to be in a parallel course to CB01. According to CB01’s trajectory and speed, it is confirmed to be taking a direct route towards Earth, projected to be within the Moon’s orbit in thirty-two months. We remain at what we assess is a safe distance, using our remote probes for most of the observations.

            Be advised: CB01 is currently determined to be a high risk to human safety and well-being based on the observations and findings listed below. We hope your Holiness will consider our reporting and discussion with the severity which we accord to it.

Observations

            Our probe confirms CB01 to be roughly spherical with an approximately 1500 km radius, slightly smaller than our own moon. Gravitational readings show the mass to be 2.4 x 1016 kg, just over half the mass of the moon. This means CB01 has a very low density, possibly hollow in structure.

            Close visual inspection via our remote probe showed striking resemblance to the angels described in Ezekiel Chapter One, in the prophet’s vision. Though CB01 is not composed of concentric wheels, across its spherical body are continuous bands of very large eyes lined in a longitudinal fashion. With its pitch-black body against the background of space, it gives the appearance that there is nothing but rings of floating eyes moving together. A detailed look at the surface of CB01 showed that its dark mass is covered in an array of smaller visual organs surrounding the large lensed eyes.

            We are still receiving the electromagnetic signal broadcasted from CB01 within the radio bandwidth. Telemetry patterns remain similar to those we first observed eleven years ago when observatories first picked up the signal. Our on-board processor is no closer to deciphering any intelligible information embedded within the signal. If the Church’s Earth-based AI systems are able to decipher and reproduce communicable signals for CB01, the team is willing to broadcast and monitor for further testing in that regard.

            All efforts to communicate with CB01 have so far failed. Individual and group prayers, invocations and rituals held within and without the PSS Elijah chapel have not elicited any change in behavior from CB01. We have run through the summoning practices using the Church’s comprehensive list of 128 major angels’ names and sigils. We have exhausted all pronunciations and spellings in English, Spanish, Latin, Modern and Ancient Greek, Hebrew and Sumerian. Broadcasting the spelled names and sigils from the probe’s holographic projectors within CB01’s presumed visual range shows no change in behavior.

            Only one test yielded any noticeable result. When the probe played back a real time recording of CB01’s own electromagnetic signal, a bright, high-energy pulse emitted from one of the large eyes, destroying the probe.

Findings

            Despite the remarkable visual similarity to angelic beings as described in the Bible, we have been unable to observe any further confirmation that CB01 is indeed an Angel sent from God to meet humanity. If the Vatican has any other recommendations for steps our on-board clergy can take to further this line of study, they will be implemented as quickly as allowed. Additionally, if the screening of viable prophetic candidates has yielded any promising results, we are willing to coordinate observations with any Earth-initiated experimentation.

            Thinking outside the Divine Angel Theory, our more secular team members have come up with several theories grounded in our modern understandings of biology and physics. CB01 exists in an environment with zero gravity, the vacuum of space and electromagnetic radiation being the only reliable energy source. A lifeform forced to evolve in such an environment would likely take advantage of the lack of gravity to grow to a very large size. This would exponentially increase its surface area, providing greater opportunity for light energy capture. Using a process similar to photosynthesis we see on Earth, light from stars would provide the energy for this lifeform to grow, reproduce, move and respond to change.

            The destruction of our probe gives evidence to how it can do so. The large lensed eyes of CB01 may not be to focus external light onto photo-sensitive sensors but to channel light emitted from within it. With changes to energy levels, wave frequencies, focal points and pulse rates, CB01 can use a single or multiple “eyes” to create a light-based propulsion through space or a high energy laser to destroy or avert incoming space debris.

            Another theory arose when continuing from the basis of the non-divine life form theory. This theory treats the behavior of CB01 as one like that of a single-celled organism or a cell within a larger system. Moving through space and responding to stimuli interpreted through some form of genetic code. It didn’t respond to our decades of random radio signal pollution being sent out through space as it wasn’t recognized within the code. Though it’s possible that the signal pollution had attracted CB01 close to our solar system, CB01 only changed its extrasolar course to head directly towards Earth after we broadcasted its own signal back to it.

            Based on the destruction of our probe after our signal playback, we cannot be sure that it will express friendly or cooperative behavior upon reaching Earth. After receiving our transmissions, CB01 may interpret the broadcaster as competition within its territory. Or perhaps, the broadcaster could be seen as a maligned, cancerous lifeform within the same species which must be culled. This could come from our signals being distorted by the noise of our radio signal pollution or upon visual inspection as when CB01 observed our probe.

Discussion (Confidential Message from: Archbishop of Luna)

            Though the initial discovery of extraterrestrial life in 2036 was a major disruption for the Church and all religious institutions, CB01’s resemblance to canonically accurate Angels was quite literally a Godsend. Surely the Church’s influence on the scientific endeavors of the last decade would not be possible without this heavenly confirmation.

            Regardless of the initial troubles we’ve faced in making further divine confirmations, my faith in the Lord and his celestial messenger remain strong. However, I sense trials of faith amongst some within the Committee, including clergymen. The theories described above have gained traction amongst the scientific specialists on board.

            I retain sole authority on the contents of our research communications back to Earth, but eventually pressures to publish more details or our arrival home will allow these dissenting theories to spread quickly.

            I would hope that your Holiness considers these theories, regardless of source, with the full weight of their implications. The Church will need to have prepared counter arguments driven by the pulpit and scientific publications. I will continue to send more detailed reports as these theories develop or as our observations change.

            One last note. On the off chance that these theories are true, CB01 with its size and destructive power may be the herald of the apocalypse after all. Divinely driven or not, we must prepare the Church for the end.

End of Report.

~

Bio:

Luke Brown spends his summers in the wilderness fighting wildfires, staring at trees and thinking up funny little stories in his head. In the winters he forces himself to sit down and finally put those stories down on paper.

Philosophy Note:

While speculating on how life would or could evolve in the ecosystem of outer space, I realized I accidentality created a creature that visually resembled the “Biblically Accurate Angels” of the Old Testament. This led to an opportunity to explore the intersection between scientific and religious discovery and how human society reacts to them. How would our world views change given undeniable evidence of the extraterrestrial? How would the balance between the secular and the spiritual change given undeniable evidence of the supernatural? What would happen in the world when it was no longer a matter of faith to believe in God?

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