The Aetherion
A Futuristic Folly
For maximum crackpot fun, let’s put several futuristic follies together, thus:
The Aetherion is a flying car that levitates via an EmDrive powered by cold fusion. Its carbon nanotube wires superconduct, and it is controlled by an AGI running on a quantum computer. It carries a bipedal robot chauffeur and a VR gaming system. It is made by an anarchocapitalist seastead which accepts crypto.
Eve Did Nothing Wrong
Eve did nothing wrong. The Apple gave knowledge of good and evil; that means moral choice, which means free will. Eve chose to choose. She grew up! Adam followed her, for love. If free will and love are wrong, then there is no right, and there is no wrong. But I say there is, and Eve did the right thing.
Even Yahweh looks good, in this reading of the legend. The breeding pair had attained mental and sexual maturity, so he released them into the wild. That’s competent wildlife management.
Eve did nothing wrong, and she was not punished. She and Adam wanted to know what was good about the world, and what was evil, so Yahweh told them personally. Eve, sex will frighten you. Adam, you’ve got to work for a living. Both of you, you’re going to die. That was the bad news. The good news was: see that gate over there? It’s open now! You’re free to go!
And as for Eve’s suffering: that’s not a sign of sin, that’s a sign of sainthood. Ask any mother if mothers are saints. The polite ones will smile and lie; but watch out, the honest ones might give you an earful.
So blessed be Saint Eve, the Mother of Choice!
Rivendell on Trantor
Call a settlement of limited size but of great duration a “Time colony”, or a “Rivendell”; and call a civilization of great size but of limited duration a “Space civilization”, or a “Trantor”. The names “Rivendell” and “Trantor” refer to, respectively, the Elvish town in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; and to the planet-spanning galactic capital city in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy .
I propose this census:
Rivendell: a million people, for a million generations.
Trantor: a billion people, for a thousand generations.
The first is a fair-sized colony, lasting for tens of megayears, a longish species lifetime. So this is a Local Range; the Home of a Kind. The second is a world civilization, lasting for tens of kiloyears, about the length of history. This is a World Culture with a History.
Rivendell colonizes time, and Trantor colonizes space.
To keep Rivendell fresh, let’s make it a college town, home of Rivendell University, in its new location. They had to leave the old place and build a new campus here, due to mega-volcano eruption. They’ve still settling in, it’s been only 1.7 million years. But despite Rivendell’s traditionalism, it manages to keep up with the times; for they accept students from all across space, especially Trantor. How’s that for a happening place?
And as for Trantor… there is no boredom on Trantor, and no shortage of rebels. Trantor is always up to something big; a war, a revolution, a reformation, a renaissance; political decay, cultural flowering, religious crises and scientific breakthroughs; and whatever Trantor does, it does it.
Trantor never sleeps. So of course people will want to go to Rivendell just for a bit of rest. But sorry, no uninvited visitors.
So which would you prefer? Rivendell or Trantor? Rivendell is at least a somewhat happening place; and Trantor has respectable longevity chops; and it’s a fair trade-off. The elvish city is to the techno-world as deep time is to history.
I see an SF novel in this, with a single world inhabited by both a Trantor and a Rivendell. (Almost everywhere, from Trantor’s point of view; temporarily, from Rivendell’s.) To Trantor, a thousand years is a long time; to Rivendell, a thousand people is a big crowd.
Rivendell has changed locations several times, to keep up with the geography. There are abandoned fossil Rivendells, which other peoples dug up for treasure and technology; notably the precursors to the Trantor world-civilization. The word “Trantor”, to the Trantorians, means the name of their planet; and also mankind; and also ‘culture’, ‘peace’, ‘order’, and many other soothing ideals; with predictable tragicomic consequences.
A spacelike civilization meets a timelike civilization; temporarily, locally; yet everyone in Trantor is affected by Rivendell, all over the planet; and Rivendell never forgot Trantor, even after mountains wore down.
For one thing, they stole a lot of tech from each other. There may even be a tendency for Trantor to re-create another Rivendell, on a distant world; and a reciprocal tendency for Rivendell to recreate another Trantor, in the distant future.
Rivendell’s rebels will leave, and will either vanish into obscurity, or find a Trantor to influence. Rivendell’s influence on galactic culture is slow but cumulative; a trickle of exiled geniuses; Trantor’s influence is all at once.
Perhaps a rebel Rivendellian will leave, mix with Trantor society, collect a cadre of likeminded malcontents, and then leave for a distant world, to found New Rivendell. (Where they will offer modern boredom!)
Trantor’s rebels will go out, in waves after waves, each to form their own utopian Rivendells. Some of those Rivendells will remain static until they go extinct, others will mutate into new Trantors.
Rivendell is to Trantor as spore is to redwood.
Eve Did Nothing Wrong
Eve did nothing wrong. The Apple gave knowledge of good and evil; that means moral choice, which means free will. Eve chose to choose. She grew up! Adam followed her, for love. If free will and love are wrong, then there is no right, and there is no wrong. But I say there is, and Eve did the right thing.
Even Yahweh looks good, in this reading of the legend. The breeding pair had attained mental and sexual maturity, so he released them into the wild. That’s competent wildlife management.
Eve did nothing wrong, and she was not punished. She and Adam wanted to know what was good about the world, and what was evil, so Yahweh told them personally. Eve, sex will frighten you. Adam, you’ve got to work for a living. Both of you, you’re going to die. That was the bad news. The good news was: see that gate over there? It’s open now! You’re free to go!
And as for Eve’s suffering: that’s not a sign of sin, that’s a sign of sainthood. Ask any mother if mothers are saints. The polite ones will smile and lie; but watch out, the honest ones might give you an earful.
So blessed be Saint Eve, the Mother of Choice!
Thurber’s World
I was visiting Marion Zimmer Bradley’s house. After trucing a few rounds of dilemma chess with the fantasy writer’s son, I stepped out to their back yard for a stroll and a breath of fresh air.
It was twilight; the zenith had darkened to deep blue, the horizon all the way around glowed orange and red; the “girdle of Venus”. A crescent moon shone, and a few stars, and the planet Venus too.
I stopped, amazed; for there in front of me stood a goat. An Angora goat, waist-tall, with silky white hair… and a single horn.
He was Lancelot, a successful animal-husbandry experiment by Morning Glory and Otter G’Zell. At the goat’s birth, they had surgically fused Lancelot’s two hornbuds together; the fused hornbud grew into an imposing monohorn.
Lancelot was a unicorn. That surgically-modified Angora goat looked like he had stepped out of a medieval tapestry. Morning Glory and Otter G’Zell claimed that such surgery was possible in medieval Europe; so maybe unicorns were real enough.
Just then, in the evening twilight, with Moon and Venus overhead, that unicorn looked more than real; for Lancelot was eating Marion Zimmer Bradley’s rosebushes. One of James Thurber’s stories was about a unicorn eating the rosebushes in a backyard garden. In that surreal moment, I learned that a visit to Marion Zimmer Bradley’s place can send you into a Thurber story.
I also learned, by observation, that unicorn droppings are about one centimeter long and about half a centimeter wide.
Review of Imaginary Book:
“Both Sides Now: An Afterlife Exposé”
What are we to make of this strange yet familiar book? Surely no-one has ever taken so odd a stance; yet even first-time readers feel as if they had heard this story before. Could it be that this satire tells the true nature of Eternity?
But that would be too simple, too “linear” a way of thinking. The author is an ironist; he delights in reducing ideologies to the absurd. The bigger they are, the harder they fall; what bigger pratfall, what wilder reversal, could you imagine than for Heaven and Hell to swap places?
For that is the author’s heretical jest. In this paradoxical morality play, we see the Paradise and the Inferno of medieval Christian theology set into circular motion. Heaven falls, becoming a Hell, and Hell rises, becoming a new Heaven; and by book’s end it is clear that the cycle will repeat forever.
For this is no accident, but inherent in the nature of the situation. The blessed are corrupted by their pride in being blessed; the damned are reformed by their humility in being damned. We see the all-too-familiar class privilege rationalizing power abuse, in parallel with the inspiring sight of suffering souls redeeming each other through mutual aid. No wonder this book’s subtitle is “An Afterlife Exposé”!
Shall we call this book’s author a cynic? An idealist? Both? Neither? Surely the term “realist” doesn’t apply; yet this admittedly fantastic fable has a compelling inner logic. Small details help, such as the slightly orange tint to Heaven’s golden clouds that deepens as the decline from the peak progresses. It was inevitable that St. Francis prefer Hell to Heaven, as would Mark Twain, Gotthold Lessing, and D. T. Suzuki; and just as inevitable that Heaven’s theocratic bureaucracy have personnel such as St. Torquemada and the Archangel Goebbels.
In the book’s first chapter “Summer of our Discontent”, we see Heaven reaching – and passing – its peak, in alternation with Hell bottoming out. In Heaven, the coronation of the Godling is completed; the new deity’s first command is to declare war on Evil. (The clouds turned slightly orange.) Meanwhile in Hell, a temporary cease-fire is declared.
The book’s second chapter is “The Purge”. In Heaven, St. Torquemada and the Archangel Goebbels start expelling suspect blessed; meanwhile in Hell, the cease-fire holds and peace burgeons.
In chapter three, “Zeroth Circle”, falling Heaven and rising Hell meet and pass each other. Separated souls exchange messages; some choose this point to escape the Wheel.
In chapter four, “Fallen Spring”, fallen Heaven turns into veritable Hell, and rising Hell becomes truly Heavenly.
The last chapter, “Looking Up” sees attain – and pass – Heavenly perfection, just as the former Heaven bottoms out.
And that completes the cycle!
Rivendell on Trantor
Call a settlement of limited size but of great duration a “Time colony”, or a “Rivendell”; and call a civilization of great size but of limited duration a “Space civilization”, or a “Trantor”. The names “Rivendell” and “Trantor” refer to, respectively, the Elvish town in J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; and to the planet-spanning galactic capital city in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy .
I propose this census:
Rivendell: a million people, for a million generations.
Trantor: a billion people, for a thousand generations.
The first is a fair-sized colony, lasting for tens of megayears, a
longish species lifetime. So this is a Local Range; the Home of a Kind.
The second is a world civilization, lasting for tens of kiloyears,
about the length of history. This is a World Culture with a History.
Rivendell colonizes time, and Trantor colonizes space.
To keep Rivendell fresh, let’s make it a college town, home of Rivendell University, in its new location. They had to leave the old place and build a new campus here, due to mega-volcano eruption. They’ve still settling in, it’s been only 1.7 million years. But despite Rivendell’s traditionalism, it manages to keep up with the times; for they accept students from all across space, especially Trantor. How’s that for a happening place?
And as for Trantor… there is no boredom on Trantor, and no shortage of rebels. Trantor is always up to something big; a war, a revolution, a reformation, a renaissance; political decay, cultural flowering, religious crises and scientific breakthroughs; and whatever Trantor does, it does it.
Trantor never sleeps. So of course people will want to go to Rivendell just for a bit of rest. But sorry, no uninvited visitors.
So which would you prefer? Rivendell or Trantor? Rivendell is at least a somewhat happening place; and Trantor has respectable longevity chops; and it’s a fair trade-off. The elvish city is to the techno-world as deep time is to history.
I see an SF novel in this, with a single world inhabited by both a Trantor and a Rivendell. (Almost everywhere, from Trantor’s point of view; temporarily, from Rivendell’s.) To Trantor, a thousand years is a long time; to Rivendell, a thousand people is a big crowd.
Rivendell has changed locations several times, to keep up with the geography. There are abandoned fossil Rivendells, which other peoples dug up for treasure and technology; notably the precursors to the Trantor world-civilization. The word “Trantor”, to the Trantorians, means the name of their planet; and also mankind; and also ‘culture’, ‘peace’, ‘order’, and many other soothing ideals; with predictable tragicomic consequences.
A spacelike civilization meets a timelike civilization; temporarily, locally; yet everyone in Trantor is affected by Rivendell, all over the planet; and Rivendell never forgot Trantor, even after mountains wore down.
For one thing, they stole a lot of tech from each other. There may even be a tendency for Trantor to re-create another Rivendell, on a distant world; and a reciprocal tendency for Rivendell to recreate another Trantor, in the distant future.
Rivendell’s rebels will leave, and will either vanish into obscurity, or find a Trantor to influence. Rivendell’s influence on galactic culture is slow but cumulative; a trickle of exiled geniuses; Trantor’s influence is all at once.
Perhaps a rebel Rivendellian will leave, mix with Trantor society,
collect a cadre of likeminded malcontents, and then leave for a distant
world, to found New Rivendell. (Where they will offer modern boredom!)
Trantor’s rebels will go out, in waves after waves, each to form their own utopian Rivendells. Some of those Rivendells will remain static until they go extinct, others will mutate into new Trantors.
Rivendell is to Trantor as spore is to redwood.
Trantor or Rivendell?
Check out:
http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/06/are-future-folk-friends-far-folk-rivals.html#comment-473929
“Is Time Us, Space Them?”
They ask;
which is better, a “Time” civilization of a mere 100,000 people, which lasts a
billion generations, or a “Space” civilization of 1,000,000,000,000 people
which lasts a mere hundred generations? It’s the same number of people but
differently distributed in time and space.
Most of the people on that thread preferred the Time civilization; but I, in contrarian mode, wrote:
<<
A civilization of a trillion doesn’t go ‘extinct’, any more than the
Roman Empire did; it ‘falls’, which means that some of the people
survive, but the way of life goes away, and there are successor
civilizations, which inherit some of the founding civilization’s ideas
and values.
Whereas that billion-generation backwater sounds deadly dull; and it
will go extinct, all the way, its people and its ideas too. Why even
bother living there? It was never alive in the first place!
I think the Space civilization will have a bigger positive cultural
impact on the galaxy than the Time civilization… even after a billion
generations!
So I personally prefer the Space civilization over the Time. Trantor
rocks, Rivendell flops.
>>
The names
“Rivendell” and “Trantor” are references; the first, to the Elvish town in
J.R.R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy; the second, to the
planet-spanning galactic capital city in Isaac Asimov’s “Foundation” trilogy .
In my email I overstated the case. Details matter. First, let’s change the numbers a bit. As is the census proposed is:
Rivendell: 100,000 citizens; 1,000,000,000 generations.
Trantor:
1,000,000,000 citizens; 100 generations.
But then Rivendell has too few people, and it changes too slowly. With 100K people, they have maybe a small college, two theaters, a business district, and it all shuts down at 11 p.m. Bo-ring! In fact the Council of Rivendell would consciously use boredom as a means of population and political control. Dissidents either get out of town or kill themselves. Imagine this Peyton Place of a townlet lasting for tens of billions of years! They’d have to pack up and move when the sun burns out; and meantime erosion and mountain-building is a major threat. If the landscape changes but the city doesn’t, then isn’t Rivendell literally dumber than the rocks?
And as for
Trantor; a trillion people would need to colonize distant worlds; so in what
sense would it be ‘a’ civilization?
So I propose this revised census:
Rivendell: a million people, a million generations.
Trantor: a
billion people, a thousand generations.
The first is a fair-sized colony, lasting for tens of megayears, a
longish species lifetime. So this is a Local Range; the Home of a Kind.
The second is a world civilization, lasting for tens of kiloyears,
about the length of history. This is a World Culture with a History.
Trantor
colonizes space, and Rivendell colonizes time.
To keep Rivendell fresh, let’s make it a college town. Rivendell University, in its new location; they had to leave the old place (mega-volcano eruption) and build a new campus here. They’ve still settling in, it’s been only 1.7 million years. But despite Rivendell’s traditionalism, it manages to keep up with the times; for they accept students from all over the Solar system. How’s that for a happening place?
And as for Trantor…
there is no boredom on Trantor, and no shortage of rebels. Trantor is always up
to something big; a war, a revolution, a reformation, a renaissance; political
decay, cultural flowering, religious crises and scientific breakthroughs; and
whatever Trantor does, it does it.
Trantor never sleeps. So of course people will want to go to Rivendell just for a bit of rest. But sorry, no uninvited visitors.
So which would you prefer? Rivendell or Trantor? In this
revised version Rivendell is at least a somewhat happening place; and
Trantor has respectable longevity chops; and it’s a fair trade-off. The
city is to the world as history is to deep time.
I see a perfectly fine SF novel in this, with a single world inhabited by both a Trantor and a Rivendell. (Almost everywhere, from Trantor’s point of view; temporarily, from Rivendell’s.) To Trantor, a thousand years is a long time; to Rivendell, a thousand people is a big crowd.
Rivendell
has changed locations several times, to keep up with the geography. There are
abandoned fossil Rivendells, which other peoples dug up for treasure and
technology; notably the precursors to the Trantor world-civilization. The word “Trantor”,
to the Trantorians, means the name of their planet; and also mankind; and also ‘culture’,
‘peace’, ‘order’, and many other soothing ideals; with predictable tragicomic
consequences.
A spacelike civilization meets a timelike civilization; temporarily, locally; yet everyone in Trantor is affected by Rivendell, even on the other side of the planet; and Rivendell never forgot Trantor, even after mountains wore down.
For one
thing, they stole a lot of tech from each other. There may even be a tendency
for Trantor to re-create another Rivendell, on a distant world; and a
reciprocal tendency for Rivendell to recreate another Trantor, in the distant
future.
Rivendell’s rebels will leave, and will either vanish into obscurity, or find a Trantor to influence. Rivendell’s influence on galactic culture is slow but cumulative; a trickle of exiled geniuses; Trantor’s influence is all at once.
Perhaps a rebel Rivendellian will leave, mix with Trantor society
collect a cadre of likeminded malcontents, and then leave for a distant
world, to found New Rivendell. (Where they will offer modern boredom!)
Trantor’s rebels will go out, in waves after waves, each to form their own utopian Rivendells. Some of those Rivendells will go extinct, others will remain static, others will mutate into new Trantors.
Rivendell is to Trantor as spore is to redwood.
