ZERO: First Impressions

Star Trek, Blake's Seven and other popular sf series have familiarized us with combat spaceships and their crews. JS Collyer's Zero, Volume I of a series, clearly belongs to this sub-genre. Collyer's space-faring civilization seems to be interplanetary, not as yet interstellar. There is an armed force called simply "the Service," as in James Blish's "Beep"/The Quincunx Of Time.

An author of this kind of futuristic sf needs to describe a future society as if from experience. Thus, Poul Anderson gives us the impression that he is a veteran of faster than light interstellar combat. Robert Heinlein opened a novel with the line:

"If a man walks in dressed like a hick and acting as if he owned the place, he's a spaceman."
-Robert Heinlein, Double Star (New York, 1957), p. 5.

Collyer matches Anderson and Heinlein when, describing two members of the Zero crew, she writes:

"They walked with the wide gait of men used to space decks..."
-JS Collyer, Zero (Nottingham, 2014), p. 16.

Of course they did. We know how spacemen walk, don't we? At least for a moment we feel that we do. I have read only a few pages but must break off to go and watch Superman IV. Obviously, there will be more on Zero.

War World: The Burning Eye

War World, Vol I: The Burning Eye (New York, 1988), created by Jerry Pournelle, "A New Shared Universe," with the editorial assistance of John F Carr and Roland Green, published by Baen Books, dedicated to Jim Baen.

A map of the moon, Haven.

A Chronology from the Moon landing in 1969 to the Great Patriotic Wars, the End of the CoDominium and the Exodus of the Fleet in 2103.

A Table of Contents.

Prolog: "Discovery", unattributed, pp. 1-8.
"Haven": Description; Early History, unattributed, pp. 9-12.
A note on the Bureau of Relocation, unattributed, pp. 13-15.
Nine stories by different authors, each preceded by an unattributed note, the first being the one on BuReloc.
"Discovery," unattributed, pp. 361-362.
An unattributed note, pp. 363-366.

I will at least read the stories by Poul Anderson, SM Stirling and Harry Turtledove and the explanatory notes and check through the rest. I am reminded of Anderson's deposed psychotechnicians exiled on an outer moon in the Solar System.

More Martians And Invasions

The previous post traced a conceptual thread through Wells, Lewis and Anderson. We can also do this with Lewis, Bradbury and Heinlein. All three show immortal beings on Mars. In Lewis' Out Of The Silent Planet, Earthman travel to Mars with evil intent. In Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles and Heinlein's Red Planet, human beings colonize Mars.

In Heinlein's Stranger In A Strange Land, a man raised by Martians founds a Terrestrial religion whereas Lewis' Elwin Ransom returns from Mars and Venus to become the Pendragon of Logres and the spearhead of extraterrestrial intervention.

In Heinlein's The Puppet Masters, as in Nigel Kneale's Quatermass II, alien invasion involves mental control whereas, in Jack Finney's Invasion Of The Body Snatchers, it involves body duplication and, in Larry Niven's and Jerry Pournelle's Footfall, it involves asteroid stikes.

In Olaf Stapledon's Last And First Men, Martians invade Earth and Terrestrials invade Venus and Neptune. In Sleeping Planet by William Burkett, extrasolars invade Earth but are soon defeated whereas, in the Tripods Trilogy by John Christopher, extrasolar invaders have ruled Earth for generations but are eventually overthrown.

And I think that Clifford Simak has some alien invasions?

Through Space With HG Wells And His Successors

In The War Of The Worlds by HG Wells, Martians invade Earth and Venus.

In Star-Begotten by Wells, Planetarium Club members discuss cosmic rays and Martians before one of their number summarizes and criticizes The War Of The Worlds, mistakenly attributing it to "'...Conan Doyle, Jules Verne, one of those fellows...'" (New York, 1975, p. 48), then proposes instead Martianization of human beings by cosmic rays.

In the Ransom Trilogy by CS Lewis, a scientist visits Mars and Venus, in the latter case as the spearhead of a planned demonic invasion. Lewis parenthetically comments that "...Mr Wells' Martians [are] very unlike the real Malacandrians..." (Voyage to Venus, London, 1978, p. 7).

In The War Of Two Worlds by Poul Anderson, Martians militarily conquer Earth but are being covertly manipulated by extrasolars.

In "Soldier From The Stars" by Anderson, humanoid extrasolars conquer Earth economically by selling their superior military services to the highest bidder among Terrestrial governments.

Later, I will add a few more alien invasions but I think that this is a neat progression through Wells, Lewis and Anderson. See here.

Nuclear Warfare In Science Fiction

 Novels involving nuclear warfare:

The World Set Free by HG Wells;
On The Beach by Nevil Shute;
Ape And Essence by Aldous Huxley;
Fahrenheit 451 and The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury;
Twilight World by Poul Anderson (see here).

In CS Lewis' The Hideous Strength, first published in 1945, World Wars I and II "'...were simply the first two of the sixteen major wars which are scheduled to take place in this century.'"
-Lewis, That Hideous Strength (London, 1955), p. 157.

Robert Heinlein predicted "Mutual Assured Destruction" in "Solution Unsatisfactory" and described free men continuing to fight after a nuclear war in "Free Men."

In Isaac Asimov's future history, a far future radioactive Earth probably resulted from a near future nuclear war - although Asimov revised the history later.

In James Blish's A Case Of Conscience, populations wind up living underground in permanent city-sized nuclear air raid "Shelters," even though nuclear war is avoided.

In Jerry Pournelle's CoDominium future history, the Great Patriotic Wars of 2103 end the CoDominium and are followed by the Exodus of the Fleet so they sound like a delayed World War III.

In SM Stirling's Draka timeline, the three major wars of the twentieth century are not numbered but named - the Great War, the Eurasian War and the Final War.

Harry Turtledove describes Anson MacDonald (Robert Heinlein) fighting on after Stirling's Final War.

In Alan Moore's V For Vendetta, "England prevails" under fascist rule after opting out of a nuclear exchange whereas, in the same author's Watchmen, a faked inter-dimensional invasion prevents a nuclear war.

Imagine

Imagine -

I am in a coma from midnight to midnight. My brain is attached to a technology that focuses on the mind of an acquaintance who lives across town. During that twenty four hour period, every mental process that occurs in her brain is transmitted to mine in real time. Thus, I am effectively in a virtual reality where I experience all her thoughts, memories, imaginings, actions, conversations, even dreams during the periods when she is asleep, and I think that I am her. When I emerge from the coma, I remember my previous life as before but my most recent memories are of her previous day because I have directly experienced it.

If done without her knowledge, a total invasion of privacy. Also voyeuristic and distasteful? I further imagine that at some times during the day she has remembered and thought about me. Thus, I now have direct knowledge of how I appear to someone else. Potentially devastating. If someone else did this during a day when I met the subject and then transferred the experience to me, then I would now have both my memories and the subject's memories of a conversation between us.

Has anyone used precisely this idea in an sf story or novel? It would seem to have considerable potential. If the mental transfers were conducted with the knowledge and consent of the subject, then they would be a way for people to share experiences and to deepen understanding.

Translations

In Iron Council (London, 2004), China Mieville disguises Marxist terminology:

"'You can kiss good-bye to philosophizing. We ain't interested in the toil concept of worth, or graphs of the swag-slump tendency and whatnot. With Double-R it's just more and more notions.'" (p. 80)

- translates as:

"You can kiss good-bye to theorizing. We ain't interested in the labor theory of value, or graphs of the boom-slump cycle and whatnot. With [an agitational newspaper] it's just more and more ideas."

Mieville also quotes: "'...don't mourn organise...'" (p. 93), although the reader might not recognize this phrase as a quotation.

Later, he evokes whether deliberately or not, a comic book character: "...Remade to swamp things, amphibian." (p. 140)

Lastly, for now, one of Mieville's many bizarre creations, the Weavers (p. 194), reminds me of similar creatures in Mike Carey's Lucifer.