These are the last stories from Greg Benford's latest collection of short stories, Anomalies.
"Gravity's Whispers"
A CETI Tale: A scientist with LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory--a real institution sponsored by CalTech and MIT) has detected a gravity wave fluctuation and sent it to a mathematician to see if there's something there. There is, but it's an artificial pattern, obviously created by someone? And, there's a problem. To be able to create a gravitational wave with a signal requires the ability to "sling around neutron stars and make them sing in code." Do we really want to open communication with a race so powerful?
"Ol' Gator"
Evolution seems to be the focus of this strange little story. It's a narrative told by a GI in Iraq. He alternates between what's happening to him during the conflict with Saddam Hussein's troops and memories of his childhood days in the South. It was that part of Iraq that had been swampland and then partially drained that brought back those memories, for the crocs in the swamp reminded him of the gators back home and his grandpa's war with the patriarch of the swamp--Ol' Gator.
At one point in the story the narrator is separated from his unit and finds a very large contingent of Iraqi insurgents headed his way. However he finds he's not alone, for he has some very unusual companions. Rather than spoil the fun, I'll just quote Loren Eiseley, the eminent anthropologist and essayist: "The world is
fixed, we say: fish in the sea, birds in the air. But in the mangrove
swamps by the Niger, fish climb trees and ogle uneasy naturalists who
try unsuccessfully to chase them back into the water. There are things
still coming ashore." from The Immense Journey.
"The Champagne Award"
According to a Note provided by Benford, this is a satiric look at the government and population control. As the general population seems unwilling or unable to control the birth rate, the government steps in with its own program. People are issued KidCred cards which gives each person the right to bear a child. They can use the credit themselves or can transfer it to someone else. Or they could offer it in a lottery in which they get the proceeds. That could turn out to be in the millions of dollars, if offered at the right time. The parents of children born illegally, to those without KidCred or who have used up their KidCred, are fined heavily, and the children receive no social benefits and no education. There is even some talk about prison sentences for those who bear children without KidCred.
"Mercies"
Inter-dimensional travel. As I think I mentioned in an earlier post, one common theme in SF is the time travel story in which there is an attempt to go back in time to prevent some great evil or catastrophe: assassinating Hitler is a favorite among writers. This story doesn't involve time travel but a different method of preventing some evil.
Set some time in the future, Warren has become rich and uses his wealth to bring his dream to fruition. He has hated serial killers since he first learned of them as a teenager. It's too late to do something about those in the world in the dimension in which he resides, so he decides to do something about those in worlds in other dimensions, especially those so "close" that there's only a very small difference between them and his world.
He has the people who work for him research these other worlds for those who appear to be the counterparts of serial killers in his world. He decides to kill them, and to kill them before they've started killing. In other words, Warren has decided on a pre-emptive strike, since these people have not yet harmed anyone. There's a problem though, something Warren did not take into account, but he eventually encounters it.
The moral question one might consider is Warren's justification for killing these people: they haven't harmed anyone at the point he is to kill them. Is this justifiable?
"Doing Lennon"
This is another cryonics tale. It was written in 1975, some five years before John Lennon was killed in 1980. Henry Fielding has chosen "the long sleep" before he really needed it. When he awakes in the 22nd century, he claims to be John Lennon and that he was "fleeing political persecution." This is why he used the alias.
In his real life, Henry Fielding had been a broker who had done quite well financially, along with surreptitiously dipping into several accounts belonging to others. He was a devoted follower of the Beatles, collecting records, memorabilia, and gossip about them, as well as memorizing the lyrics to all of their songs. On his vacations, he haunted Liverpool, picking up the local colour and accents and visiting places important to the Beatles legend. Now he was going to put all that knowledge to work.
Things go well for a while for him in the future: his singing and guitar playing are accepted by all. Then things get complicated. First, he is told that the corpsicle of Paul McCartney has been discovered, and everybody is breathlessly awaiting their reunion. Then, he discovers Henry Fielding the Real. Who then is he?
Afternotes
Brief comments by Gregory Benford about each of the stories.
Showing posts with label Anomalies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Anomalies. Show all posts
Saturday, January 17, 2015
Monday, December 29, 2014
Gregory Benford: Still more from Anomalies
More stories from Gregory Benford's latest short story collection: Anomalies
Comes the Evolution"
The characters talk, endlessly, about "revolution," but the title of the story refers to evolution, a gradual change that takes place, when one species slowly becomes another. Note the names of the characters: Lenin, Trotsky, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Emma Goldman. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their plans show them to be something quite different. Eventually they all come together to rejuvenate the Cause, but their plans, however, have evolved into 21st century versions whose new focus is not on changing governments but upon finding a safe haven where they can create a utopia.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anomalies"
Another of Benford's short stories that plays with the theme of religion and science. An amateur astronomer has discovered that the moon is a few minutes ahead of schedule. It's still in its proper orbit, but it appears to have somehow been transported to an advanced position. This is impossible, of course. Later it is discovered that several stars are also not in their proper position and appeared to have suddenly moved within an hour of the time the moon had jumped ahead. This also was impossible.
One of the characters theorizes that the universe is a computer program and the sudden movements were the result of a bug in the program. This, of course, brings up the question of the identity of the programmer. Also, computer programs are normally debugged, here on earth anyway. Will this program be debugged? What effect will this possible bug have on earth and how will the debugging take place? Will it also affect earth? Eventually a new field of study emerges: one that is a combination of science, philosophy, and religion--the field of Empirical Theology.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Caveat Time Traveler"
This is a short story about time travel and some facts about human nature. The title says it all: Let Time Travelers Beware. Human nature doesn't change.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Lazarus Rising"
This is a tale of cryonics. Carlos Forenza is 87 years old. He has come in for his medical checkup. If they find something that can't be cured or is extremely expensive to cure, they would put him into cryonic sleep and let the future decide when it was ready to deal with his problem. They wouldn't even wake him to inform him of the situation. But, something has gone wrong for he is awake, with his senses disconnected. Clearly he has returned to consciousness before the process of putting him into cold sleep has been codmpleted. Now, he has to regain control of his body and let them know that something had gone wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Isaac From The Outside"
This is a poem that brings in a number of SF writers, one of whom, obviously, is Isaac Asimov. The theme is simple: one shouldn't make assumptions about a person from that person's writings. The poem points out some inconsistencies between what these SF authors write about and how they live their own lives.
One topic covered is cryonics, about which many of these authors have written in various short stories and novels. But, the poem goes one to ask the following: how many actually went beyond treating cryonics simply as a story element and looked into it as something they might actually consider for themselves?
The next question should be the reader's question. I've always considered cryonics simply as a story element. But today there are companies in existence that will perform this service. What about you? Are you interested?
Hmmmm. . . I wonder how much it costs.
Comes the Evolution"
The characters talk, endlessly, about "revolution," but the title of the story refers to evolution, a gradual change that takes place, when one species slowly becomes another. Note the names of the characters: Lenin, Trotsky, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, and Emma Goldman. She played a pivotal role in the development of anarchist political philosophy in North America and Europe in the first half of the 20th century.
They see themselves as revolutionaries, but their plans show them to be something quite different. Eventually they all come together to rejuvenate the Cause, but their plans, however, have evolved into 21st century versions whose new focus is not on changing governments but upon finding a safe haven where they can create a utopia.
------------------------------------------------------------------
"Anomalies"
Another of Benford's short stories that plays with the theme of religion and science. An amateur astronomer has discovered that the moon is a few minutes ahead of schedule. It's still in its proper orbit, but it appears to have somehow been transported to an advanced position. This is impossible, of course. Later it is discovered that several stars are also not in their proper position and appeared to have suddenly moved within an hour of the time the moon had jumped ahead. This also was impossible.
One of the characters theorizes that the universe is a computer program and the sudden movements were the result of a bug in the program. This, of course, brings up the question of the identity of the programmer. Also, computer programs are normally debugged, here on earth anyway. Will this program be debugged? What effect will this possible bug have on earth and how will the debugging take place? Will it also affect earth? Eventually a new field of study emerges: one that is a combination of science, philosophy, and religion--the field of Empirical Theology.
----------------------------------------------------------------------
"Caveat Time Traveler"
This is a short story about time travel and some facts about human nature. The title says it all: Let Time Travelers Beware. Human nature doesn't change.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Lazarus Rising"
This is a tale of cryonics. Carlos Forenza is 87 years old. He has come in for his medical checkup. If they find something that can't be cured or is extremely expensive to cure, they would put him into cryonic sleep and let the future decide when it was ready to deal with his problem. They wouldn't even wake him to inform him of the situation. But, something has gone wrong for he is awake, with his senses disconnected. Clearly he has returned to consciousness before the process of putting him into cold sleep has been codmpleted. Now, he has to regain control of his body and let them know that something had gone wrong.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Isaac From The Outside"
This is a poem that brings in a number of SF writers, one of whom, obviously, is Isaac Asimov. The theme is simple: one shouldn't make assumptions about a person from that person's writings. The poem points out some inconsistencies between what these SF authors write about and how they live their own lives.
One topic covered is cryonics, about which many of these authors have written in various short stories and novels. But, the poem goes one to ask the following: how many actually went beyond treating cryonics simply as a story element and looked into it as something they might actually consider for themselves?
The next question should be the reader's question. I've always considered cryonics simply as a story element. But today there are companies in existence that will perform this service. What about you? Are you interested?
Hmmmm. . . I wonder how much it costs.
Wednesday, December 10, 2014
Gregory Benford: more from Anomalies
Here are several more stories from Greg Benford's latest short story collection: Anomalies
"Twenty-Two Centimeters"
This story plays with one of the present theories of the universe-- the membrane theory. I'll quote from the story itself, as one of the characters expresses her problem with the theory, which is the same as mine.
"She did not really follow the theory; she was an astronaut. It was hard enough to comprehend the mathematical guys when they spoke English. For them, the whole universe was a sheet of space-time, called 'brane' for membrane. And there were other branes, spaced out along an unseen dimension. Only gravity penetrated between those sheets. All other fields, which meant all mass and light, was stuck to the branes."
The "physics guys" discovered another brane just twenty-two centimeters away from our universe, in another dimension, and signals emanating from it. They developed a portal into the other universe and Julie and Al, being astronauts, and not having to understand the theory or the mathematics, were chosen to pop through the portal and take a look. And discover the source of those signals. This is a first contact tale, rather unique I thought. It also has a vivid description of the Counter-Earth and its inhabitants.
"Applied Mathematical Theology"
Benford here plays with an important astronomical discovery that plays an important role in the present theory regarding the formation of the universe. It is not a story with characters, but a journal article or something similar that gives an account of "(t)he discovery that the Cosmic Microwave Background has a pattern buried within it (which) unsettled the entire world."
The temperature of this 2.7 K. emission left over from the Big Bang varies across the sky. Temperature ripples can be broken into angular- co-ordinate Fourier components, and this is where radio astronomers found a curious pattern--a message, or at least, a pattern. Spread across the microwave sky there was room in the detectable fluctuations for about 10,000 bits, or roughly a thousand words."
Naturally considerable controversy raged about the message, its creator(s) (if one), and implications to be drawn from this. At first, the most disputed issue was its nature:was it a real message or just a random collection of fluctuations?
"One insight did come from this, however. Benford's Law (not the author, and a real law), which states that the logarithms of artificial numbers are uniformly distributed, did apply to the tiny fluctuations. This proved that the primordial microwaves were not random, and so had been artificially encoded, perhaps by some even earlier process. So there was a massage, of sorts."
It's a short article, almost three pages long and possesses a rather tongue-in-cheek resolution, which leaves everybody happy.
"The Man Who Wasn't There"
This is a high-tech action story set a few decades in the future. Islamic extremists are trying to reconquer Europe through the use of terrorist tactics and the courts. Fully aware of the West's ability to intercept electronic communications, they have gone to a low-tech solution--human memory. All plans and strategies are now committed to memory and communicated by certain Masters. And, these masters are fully prepared to commit suicide rather than be captured.
The anti-terrorist squad has learned that one of these masters is now living in a compound in one of the suburbs of Paris. They are preparing to attack the compound and have a few surprises in store for the terrorists. One is an invisibility suit, comprised of optical fibers which transferred light waves around the suit. However, it was still dangerous because it affected light only, not an actual object, such as a bullet. They also had one other surprise for the terrorist.
To get in and get the information, they have to be fast and efficient.
"The Final Now"
With a stretch, one might see this tale as a sequel to the earlier story,"Applied Mathematical Theology," a story about a message that seemed to be encoded within the Cosmic Microwave Background." The message's existence had been thoroughly documented, but three questions still remained: who left the message, why was the message left, and what was the message.
The story begins:
He suddenly thought that they had not seen anyone for quite a while. Amid the vast voyages, adventures, striking vistas--and yes, while basking in symphonies of sensation--they had not needed company.
Even as twilight closed in. But now--
"Do you recall--?" He asked, turning to Her, and could not recall an ancient name. Names were unimportant, mere symbols, yes. . .but He did remember that names had existed to distinguish between multitudes. When? First task: to name the beasts. When had He and She said that?
. . .
They were, of course, the two who gave tension to this finite, bounded existence. This universe. Duality was fundamental, as was helicity itself, which necessarily had to be included in this exponentially expanding space-time.
Creativity seems to require two--male and female. They had also brought forth the Others, short-lived and limited creatures, but who yet had consciousness and intelligence. These, however, were not completely separate beings for the Others were, in a sense, part of the He and the She. They were brought forth to "To summon up insights that lie within the two of us, but that we cannot express overtly. To be vast meant having parts of yourself that you could not readily find.
He and She now realize that the universe is running down. They call forth one of the Others and tell him that the end time is near. Upon hearing this, the Other said strongly, "I do not accept this." At last, the point. She said with love and deep feeling, "Then strive to alter."
Perhaps this story provides the answers to the earlier story in the collection as "The Final Now" was published four years after "Applied Mathematical Theology."
Perhaps not.
Your thoughts?
"Twenty-Two Centimeters"
This story plays with one of the present theories of the universe-- the membrane theory. I'll quote from the story itself, as one of the characters expresses her problem with the theory, which is the same as mine.
"She did not really follow the theory; she was an astronaut. It was hard enough to comprehend the mathematical guys when they spoke English. For them, the whole universe was a sheet of space-time, called 'brane' for membrane. And there were other branes, spaced out along an unseen dimension. Only gravity penetrated between those sheets. All other fields, which meant all mass and light, was stuck to the branes."
The "physics guys" discovered another brane just twenty-two centimeters away from our universe, in another dimension, and signals emanating from it. They developed a portal into the other universe and Julie and Al, being astronauts, and not having to understand the theory or the mathematics, were chosen to pop through the portal and take a look. And discover the source of those signals. This is a first contact tale, rather unique I thought. It also has a vivid description of the Counter-Earth and its inhabitants.
"Applied Mathematical Theology"
Benford here plays with an important astronomical discovery that plays an important role in the present theory regarding the formation of the universe. It is not a story with characters, but a journal article or something similar that gives an account of "(t)he discovery that the Cosmic Microwave Background has a pattern buried within it (which) unsettled the entire world."
The temperature of this 2.7 K. emission left over from the Big Bang varies across the sky. Temperature ripples can be broken into angular- co-ordinate Fourier components, and this is where radio astronomers found a curious pattern--a message, or at least, a pattern. Spread across the microwave sky there was room in the detectable fluctuations for about 10,000 bits, or roughly a thousand words."
Naturally considerable controversy raged about the message, its creator(s) (if one), and implications to be drawn from this. At first, the most disputed issue was its nature:was it a real message or just a random collection of fluctuations?
"One insight did come from this, however. Benford's Law (not the author, and a real law), which states that the logarithms of artificial numbers are uniformly distributed, did apply to the tiny fluctuations. This proved that the primordial microwaves were not random, and so had been artificially encoded, perhaps by some even earlier process. So there was a massage, of sorts."
It's a short article, almost three pages long and possesses a rather tongue-in-cheek resolution, which leaves everybody happy.
"The Man Who Wasn't There"
This is a high-tech action story set a few decades in the future. Islamic extremists are trying to reconquer Europe through the use of terrorist tactics and the courts. Fully aware of the West's ability to intercept electronic communications, they have gone to a low-tech solution--human memory. All plans and strategies are now committed to memory and communicated by certain Masters. And, these masters are fully prepared to commit suicide rather than be captured.
The anti-terrorist squad has learned that one of these masters is now living in a compound in one of the suburbs of Paris. They are preparing to attack the compound and have a few surprises in store for the terrorists. One is an invisibility suit, comprised of optical fibers which transferred light waves around the suit. However, it was still dangerous because it affected light only, not an actual object, such as a bullet. They also had one other surprise for the terrorist.
To get in and get the information, they have to be fast and efficient.
"The Final Now"
With a stretch, one might see this tale as a sequel to the earlier story,"Applied Mathematical Theology," a story about a message that seemed to be encoded within the Cosmic Microwave Background." The message's existence had been thoroughly documented, but three questions still remained: who left the message, why was the message left, and what was the message.
The story begins:
He suddenly thought that they had not seen anyone for quite a while. Amid the vast voyages, adventures, striking vistas--and yes, while basking in symphonies of sensation--they had not needed company.
Even as twilight closed in. But now--
"Do you recall--?" He asked, turning to Her, and could not recall an ancient name. Names were unimportant, mere symbols, yes. . .but He did remember that names had existed to distinguish between multitudes. When? First task: to name the beasts. When had He and She said that?
. . .
They were, of course, the two who gave tension to this finite, bounded existence. This universe. Duality was fundamental, as was helicity itself, which necessarily had to be included in this exponentially expanding space-time.
Creativity seems to require two--male and female. They had also brought forth the Others, short-lived and limited creatures, but who yet had consciousness and intelligence. These, however, were not completely separate beings for the Others were, in a sense, part of the He and the She. They were brought forth to "To summon up insights that lie within the two of us, but that we cannot express overtly. To be vast meant having parts of yourself that you could not readily find.
He and She now realize that the universe is running down. They call forth one of the Others and tell him that the end time is near. Upon hearing this, the Other said strongly, "I do not accept this." At last, the point. She said with love and deep feeling, "Then strive to alter."
Perhaps this story provides the answers to the earlier story in the collection as "The Final Now" was published four years after "Applied Mathematical Theology."
Perhaps not.
Your thoughts?
Saturday, October 18, 2014
Gregory Benford: Anomalies
Gregory Benford
Anomalies
a collection of short stories (1975-2012)
The following are three of the short stories found in Gregory Benford's latest short story collection, Anomalies. The stories focus on a wide variety of topics, from wormholes to AIs to string theory. I will post brief reviews of the other stories in the collection over the next few weeks.
"A Worm in the Well"
Claire, the pilot/owner of an independent freighter, is deep in debt, so much so that she about to lose the freighter to her creditors. She more or less controls the ship with the aid of Erma, a wisecracking AI. Erma knows that she really runs the ship.
Claire takes on a high-paying but dangerous job--dropping down into the sun's corona to take photos of a wormhole that has suddenly appeared. The scientific community is seriously bothered by the appearance of a wormhole so close to the sun and need the photos and other data gathered by her close encounter by the sun in order to determine what the dangers are.
Once there, however, she decides to do a career change from "nature photographer" to a "bring 'em back alive" hunter. The photos and data still won't bring in enough money to pay off all of her debts, but capturing and bringing back a wormhole, something that has never been done before, will give the scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study and even experiment with a wormhole. Claire figures that she can negotiate a much bigger fee. Erma, of course, has her doubts.
The story naturally is heavy on the science, but the information is handled very nicely in the arguments (discussions) between Claire and Erma.
"The Worm Turns"
It's several years later and Claire and Erma are still broke and about to lose the ship again. This time they are forced to take on a hazardous job: it's either that or lose the ship. Since Claire transported the wormhole away from the sun, earth scientists have meddled with it and enlarged it. It now is more likely to be dangerous to anything in the neighborhood, the solar system for example.
Claire's task is now to fly through the wormhole, check out the other side, and then report back. However, life (or a wormhole) is never that simple, so life gets exciting again. And, what she finds at the other end is something neither she nor Erma nor the scientists expected.
"The Semisent"
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman,[a] novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important (from the Wikipedia entry on Bildungsroman).
What's unusual about this short story is that it's a bildungsrom or coming-of-age story, not about a human being but an AI. The AI begins as a small box and by the end of the story it has evolved into a tall distinguished gentleman with sorrowful blue eyes. And there's also a human involved.
Anomalies
a collection of short stories (1975-2012)
The following are three of the short stories found in Gregory Benford's latest short story collection, Anomalies. The stories focus on a wide variety of topics, from wormholes to AIs to string theory. I will post brief reviews of the other stories in the collection over the next few weeks.
"A Worm in the Well"
Claire, the pilot/owner of an independent freighter, is deep in debt, so much so that she about to lose the freighter to her creditors. She more or less controls the ship with the aid of Erma, a wisecracking AI. Erma knows that she really runs the ship.
Claire takes on a high-paying but dangerous job--dropping down into the sun's corona to take photos of a wormhole that has suddenly appeared. The scientific community is seriously bothered by the appearance of a wormhole so close to the sun and need the photos and other data gathered by her close encounter by the sun in order to determine what the dangers are.
Once there, however, she decides to do a career change from "nature photographer" to a "bring 'em back alive" hunter. The photos and data still won't bring in enough money to pay off all of her debts, but capturing and bringing back a wormhole, something that has never been done before, will give the scientists an unparalleled opportunity to study and even experiment with a wormhole. Claire figures that she can negotiate a much bigger fee. Erma, of course, has her doubts.
The story naturally is heavy on the science, but the information is handled very nicely in the arguments (discussions) between Claire and Erma.
"The Worm Turns"
It's several years later and Claire and Erma are still broke and about to lose the ship again. This time they are forced to take on a hazardous job: it's either that or lose the ship. Since Claire transported the wormhole away from the sun, earth scientists have meddled with it and enlarged it. It now is more likely to be dangerous to anything in the neighborhood, the solar system for example.
Claire's task is now to fly through the wormhole, check out the other side, and then report back. However, life (or a wormhole) is never that simple, so life gets exciting again. And, what she finds at the other end is something neither she nor Erma nor the scientists expected.
"The Semisent"
In literary criticism, a Bildungsroman,[a] novel of formation, novel of education, or coming-of-age story is a literary genre that focuses on the psychological and moral growth of the protagonist from youth to adulthood, and in which, therefore, character change is extremely important (from the Wikipedia entry on Bildungsroman).
What's unusual about this short story is that it's a bildungsrom or coming-of-age story, not about a human being but an AI. The AI begins as a small box and by the end of the story it has evolved into a tall distinguished gentleman with sorrowful blue eyes. And there's also a human involved.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)