Singular Patriots

In Alcor we trust.

State of the Union
January, 2020

Mister Speaker, Madam Vice President, members of Congress, distinguished guests, and fellow Americans:

Presidents have come before Congress for 230 years, in times of war, prosperity and, now, Singularity. It is fitting that we look back, briefly, on past times of strife and struggle. Not so long ago this mighty nation was on the brink of ruin, faced with ballooning deficits and ever increasing costs for medical entitlements and social security payments.

Now, thanks to the wise actions of this legislative body, those old days of tribulation are behind us and our union is stronger than ever before. This year, rather than stop smoking or lose weight, millions of Americans are free, freer than ever before, to continue making selfish and short-sighted decisions. Tonight we can celebrate the source of our new found freedom: the Singularity.

Our faith in the Singularity allows us to have confidence in the cryogenic preservation of our sickly and dying patriots who volunteer for immortality. Rather than burden their fellow citizens with the cost of their medical care, this year alone, a record 7.3 million Americans were reversibly frozen. (Applause) These singular patriots have truly achieved the best of both worlds. While in this world they were free to enjoy the pleasures of self-indulgent excess and the hyper-consumptive lifestyle. And in the future post-Singularity world they will enjoy miraculous wonders that we can only imagine in science fiction stories and binding cryopreservation contracts.

However, our work is not yet done. I now call upon congress to increase the government incentive that is paid to our good citizens who volunteer for cryonic life-extension and the guarantee that they will live in post-Singularity America. Although the great visionaries of the Singularity assure us that post-Singularity America is never more than 30 years in the future, many Americans wisely take no chance and have themselves frozen now. Our great patriotic motto is: why wait? It is wise to have yourself frozen before your lung tumors swell or your neurodegeneration proceeds very far. I say, save what is left of your youth for your wonderful life in post-Singularity America! (Applause)

As convincing as that argument is, some of our sick and dying citizens still balk and hesitate. Of course, we know what truly motivates Americans. We are a nation where logic has always taken the back seat to free market forces. Therefore, I am sending legislation to the Hill, proposing that current medicare and social security recipients be paid a lump sum $32,000,000 benefit, compounded at a 45% annual interest rate, to be paid in full when these cryogenically preserved patriots resume their lives in post-Singularity America. Our goal is to make medicare and social security entirely virtual entitlements that will only ever be paid out in post-Singularity America. (Applause)

I also call upon both the House and the Senate to extend the Avatar Science Tax Incentive. We need to continue to provide this incentive to Hollywood for the creation of more fictional and uncritical accounts of miraculous future technologies that will satisfy, or at least seem to satisfy, the quest for mind transfer and our dreams of eternal life. (Applause)

My fellow Americans, what does all this mean for you? Nothing less than eternal life in a future age of miraculous wealth and personal luxury! Contact your representatives today and demand that they give you what you deserve. Now is the time to demand your own piece of the American pie. Think of what has been learned from the great visionaries like Bernard Madoff and demand your $32,000,000, compounded at a 45% annually! (Applause)

We have come through a difficult decade. But a new dawn is perpetually upon the horizon. A new decade stretches before us where the Singularity will again be dangled just beyond our grasp. We won’t quit. We will seize the opportunity afforded by the dream of Singularity! (Applause) Let’s seize this moment to carry the dream forward and strengthen our union once more.

Thank you. God bless you. God bless the United States of America. And God bless the Singularity! (Applause)

A Clarke number of 2?

According to “Which science fiction writer are you?”

I am: Gregory Benford A master literary stylist who is also a working scientist.

That “quiz” also says, “The real Greg Benford once took this quiz, and it told him he was Arthur C. Clarke.”

I’ve only read one of Benford’s books, Timescape. I had a personal problem while reading Timescape because, as a biologist, I found the “crisis” that drove the story (biodisaster in 1998) to be less than satisfying. This is the same kind of problem I had with Asimov’s novel Nemesis, for which I’ve written a review in which I expressed unhappiness with Asimov’s attempt to motivate the reader by shouting “in 5,000 years the sky is falling“. Asimov’s book (Nemesis) was “saved” by introducing us to an interesting extraterrestrial life form with telepathic abilities. However, the ending of Timescape had no redeeming features. I was particularly unable to swallow the idea of a school kid going to pick up reading material and preventing President Kennedy from being shot.

After having read Timescape I was reluctant to purchase Benford’s Foundation Saga novel, Foundation’s Fear. However, I was (and still am) intrigued by the way that Asimov left us with a hint (in Foundation and Earth) about a coming clash between humanity and extraterrestrials. I was intrigued by the back cover of Foundation’s Fear where it says that Yugo Amaryl is an alien.

I worked very hard to read Foundation’s Fear, but I could not get past page 289 (my copy is 597 pages long). I’d like to ask this of anyone who was able to read the entire novel: does Benford actually depict Yugo as an alien? Ever since I started writing The Start of Eternity I’ve felt I should make another attempt to finish reading Foundation’s Fear. I’d like to know the details of the kind of interaction that Benford imagined between Daneel and extraterrestrial life forms.

When I got stuck at the start of Part 4 of Foundation’s Fear I scanned ahead and found Part 5. I was put-off by the idea that people could have their minds transferred into chimps. This was the “step too far” for me. I had been able to grit my teeth and accept all of the other alterations made by Benford to Asimov’s Foundation story, but this was too much. The mere existence of this sort of mind-transfer technology is not consistent with Asimov’s Foundation Saga. I can accept switching from “hyperjumps” to “worm holes” for faster-than-light travel and I can accept that computers and industrial robots were working quietly in the background of Asimov’s Foundation stories, but it seems to me that you cannot toss into the mix just any old technology that strikes your fancy. If you have the technical ability to transfer a human mind into a chimp brain then you do not end up with Toran Darell II later using primitive methods like brain wave analysis to study human minds. I walked away from Foundation’s Fear at that point. The book cover said that Foundation’s Fear was a continuation of Asimov’s Foundation Saga. No, that is a lie. In his afterword, Benford wrote that he tried to add to the sweep of the Foundation Saga, but I think he swept it out the door and went in new directions that clash with Asimov’s story.

I remain astounded by the fact that my copy of Foundation’s Fear has no table of contents. The book is divided into “parts”, and if there was a table of contents I probably would have quickly made my way to “Part 6 Ancient Fogs” and found Benford’s aliens (I bought the book in order to see his idea for how to introduce aliens into the Foundation Saga) before growing tired of all the slogging in the early part of the book. I agree with this review: “Some of the Joan-Voltaire sections are muddled and confusing, and the whole chimpanzee adventures feels tacked on.”

I’m amused by the idea that Benford took the “Which science fiction writer are you?” quiz and was told that he is like Arthur C. Clarke. I’m a fan of the way Clarke often depicted extraterrestrials as being vastly advanced beyond us and having only a very small interest in primitive creatures like humans…that is my kind of solution to the Fermi Paradox. Today I skimmed through the final parts of Foundation’s Fear and I like the idea that when humanity spread into the galaxy it ran into artificial life forms that had out-lived their biological parent species. I take a different approach to the conflict between humanity and space aliens in The Start of Eternity, but I really like the idea that robots with positronic brains (such as Daneel) become aware of alien intelligences before humans do. I do not think it fits into Asimov’s Saga to say that Seldon became aware of the aliens, so in The Start of Eternity I stay true to the idea (from Asimov’s Foundation and Earth) that Trevize is the first human in the Foundation Era to start thinking seriously about contact with aliens.

Darkest before the storm

Not long after I started reading science fiction, I bought Science Fiction Hall of Fame Volume 2B, a collection of stories edited by Ben Bova. I got that collection of stories because it had a story by Iasac Asimov, who I had been introduced to by way of his novel, The Gods Themselves. That collection of stories also introduced me to Bova, James Blish, Algis Budrys, Theodore R. Cogswell, E. M. Forster, Frederik Pohl, Clifford D. Simak and Jack Vance…that volume provided a rather mind blowing expansion of my science fiction horizons. Jack Vance eventually became one of my favorite authors, but I mention that “Hall of Fame” volume here because of the story by Theodore Cogswell called The Spectre General which introduced me to the concept that published science fiction could be humorous. At the time I only knew of humor in science fiction from television, particularly The Trouble With Tribbles.

I think it was after reading The Spectre General that I first started to realize that I lack the ability to name characters. One of the characters in The Spectre General is named Schninkle. In a story full of soldiers with names like Krogson, Dixon and Blick, what could be better for comic relief than a stray Schninkle?

When the internet exploded and computers became geeky-cool, ReBoot appeared on television as a science fiction show. For an example of ReBoot’s nerd humor see this joke.

While on the topic of humor in science fiction, check out the video in this blog post from last July (a scene from The Bicentennial Man with comedian Robin Williams as a joking robot).

While reading the science fiction story No. at Novelas, the fiction wikia, I could not get images of ReBoot out of my head. Normally I am too busy being serious to include much humor in the science fiction I write. Evil aliens who are somewhat doltish about their invasion of Earth seems to be a sub-genre of science fiction, and No. includes a rather bumbling alien who is intent on enslaving humanity. I’ve often wondered why aliens would come half way across the galaxy to enslave humans and conquer Earth…I mean, besides all the girls. If I had been a more avid movie goer then I might have figured this out sooner. As explained in No., the big attraction is movie theater popcorn. Not to eat…all the fatty flavoring makes good rocket fuel. I’m glad we have that settled.

Image. The image at the top of this post is from the story No.
See this page for image credits.