Once in a while, one stumbles upon a work of such quality that one cannot help but to be baffled at how such a work could escape one’s notice for so long. Diaspora, written in 1997 by Greg Egan, is one of the most powerful, mind bending and far reaching book I have ever read.

As I have posted several times before, one of the drawbacks of many Sci-Fi representations and stories brought to the silver screen, is the difficulty in reaching the right balance between depicting a credible future, sometimes a distant future, while at the same time preserving some sense of ‘normality’ as well as traditional frames of references in order to not alienate the viewer. Unfortunately, this balance is rarely reached and most of Hollywood’s visualizations tend to be very limited and writers or directors seem content to show us the same old humans with the same old problems, values and physical characteristics, regardless of when in the future the story might be occurring. Just place these archaic visions of the past in front of a couple of futuristic looking buildings, add some fancy cars with doors that slide vertically and complete the package with the occasional gismo to obtain your average run-of-the-mill Sci-Fi flick.

While Sci-Fi literature offers many possibilities for more credible, fleshed out and geeky visions of the future, there has still been an over-reliance on ‘traditional’ humans as lead or even as only characters. This seems to have changed in the past few years, and the implications of Transhumanisn are increasingly being used as material for many Sci-Fi books. In Diaspora, Greg Egan describes in great detail how the ‘human race’ might split and evolve towards a post human future. While the process of becoming more than human will most likely be very gradual, with humans combining with machines and vice versa (a process that has already started with the adoption of pacemakers, Cochlear implants, prosthetic limbs, or even the mobile phone which has become a natural extension of ourselves), Egan portrays a future a few hundred years hence dominated by three main forms of beings: the Fleshers, ‘traditional’ humans with or without genetic modifications, the Gleisner Robots, robotic shells inhabited by human minds, and the Polis Citizens, the uploaded minds of humans ‘living’ in computer and simulated worlds. In addition, on rare occasions, the polis creates a new mind, a purely artificially conceived one, albeit very human in many ways.

Over a period of several thousand years, Egan traces the quest of some of these Polis Citizens as they attempt to prevent and then escape the destruction of our universe (an early consequence of this destruction is the end of the Fleshers, and thus, the end of humanity as we know it today). This quest will lead these highly advanced non-physical entities, our descendants, to some of the most far-reaching destinations the mind could possibly conceive.

Egan doesn’t shy away from grand mathematical and physical speculation, and for the average reader, his lengthy descriptions of the universe’s most innate workings will seem a bit tedious at times. But sticking through these sections is quite worth it as one is rewarded by an avalanche of fantastic and awe-inspiring concepts. There is plenty to ponder in Diaspora and anyone interested in what existence might be like as an uploaded mind, in a possible direction for the future of the human race, in parallel universes and multi-dimensions, in the potential for alien life, or simply in the infinite mystery and beauty of the cosmos, then this book is an absolute must-read.

I am still somewhat perplexed by Ken MacLeod’s decision to conspicuously display ‘A Space Opera’ on the cover of his book, directly below the title. Is he trying to inform us from the very start that because it is a space opera, we shouldn’t take some of its content too seriously? Is this a way to excuse or justify a certain lightness and comic approach to this story about the future of the human race 400 years from now, after a singularity-type explosion of technological advancement has led to war on earth and to the splitting of the remaining humans in various gangs that compete with one another in space? If yes, is this disclaimer powerful enough to lessen one’s disappointment when reading that the future will be led by a gang of swearing Capitalist Scots or by some East-Asian Communist community of terraformers? Is this fun for 300 pages? I certainly didn’t think so and was bored after 50. The ideas brought forth in Newton’s Wake do not feel challenging and thought provoking enough or have been better depicted in other novels. They seem to rely on a very 20th century understanding of human nature, communication and social interactions. In addition, the lead characters are all quite uninspiring and, in fact, not really likeable, as exemplified by one of the stories which revolves around two musicians who are, in my opinion, two of the most boring characters I have read in a book recently.
In conclusion, my first exposure to the work of a man who is supposedly a new force in Sci-Fi and transhumanist literature has not been a very enjoyable one and it might be a while before I attempt to read another one of his books.

From a futurist perspective, the possibility that everything in the universe is connected by a quantum vacuum (or Akashic field, or any other name that might help define what remains an elusive theory), from the smallest particles to the largest cosmic phenomenon, is a fascinating idea to contemplate.
Many transhumanists, such as Raymond Kurzweil and Hans Moravec, believe in the concept of a future global consciousness, enabled through the merging of the human brain with technology, particularly artificial intelligence. Already today, many are pointing at the rise of social applications, the increasing use of mobile technology and at the speed at which the Internet is evolving, to draw comparisons with various aspects of the human brain. Could the Internet become conscious? It is indeed a possibility that is not to be discounted.
Likewise, it is very likely that, sooner than most people realize, human beings, through mind upload and the development of AI, will be able to achieve a pooled consciousness, which one can only hope will lead to a betterment of many ills that plague our world today.
Yet, this connectivity exists already today, as it has for as long as the universe has existed. Moreover, if we believe the System Theorist and Integral Theorist Ervin Laszlo, our universe, having benefited from the infinite learning of this connectivity and coherence, is itself only an enhancement of previous universes, thereby explaining the ultimate perfection that enables every aspect of our cosmic life to come together and function.
Laszlo further speculates that every atom in our body is connected to every atom in the universe, including naturally to those of our fellow biological entities. To support these claims of connectivity between human beings and the cosmos, Laszlo provides a plethora of examples and scientific tests that have been performed over the past 100 years. Regrettably, the troubling and fascinating results from these tests have been mostly ignored by the scientific community (and by the medical community as well, as explained by, for example, Deepak Chopra in his books on Quantum Healing) and by the public as a whole, who prefers instead to discount them and to classify them as alternative and mystical belief.

This loss of ‘focus’ keeps us as a species from reaching towards global consciousness and higher states of being, a realm which is today the exclusivity of a very few, usually those practicing meditation or those gifted with certain abilities such as healing, clairvoyance or even deep compassion and empathy. While technology can be the promise for a better future, there is no need to wait for the Singularity and beyond for the merging of our minds with that of machines to reach global consciousness. We can renew a process that was lost a long time ago by reaching out to the cosmos and by embracing the possibilities of the quantum vacuum that exists all around us and within us. Because we are the cosmos.

In 2001, Judith Berman stated that Science Fiction literature was suffering from a failure of imagination and that the best most writers could offer us these days is Sci-Fi without the Future. This point was made again more recently by Alex Steffen in WorldChanging. After all, even Sci-Fi and Cyberpunk supremos William Gibson and Neil Stephenson have decided to take a break from the future in favour of the present or the past. In the words of Gibson himself, ‘the future is already here. I have become convinced that it is silly to try to imagine futures these days‘. Some writers now find it difficult, and perhaps also less fun and challenging, to write about a future, the near future at least, that has caught up with us. Cyberpunk’s not dead some might retort, but a strong case can be made that we are today experiencing the future more strongly than ever before.

One man for whom the very near future continues to be a source of inspiration is Vernor Vinge. Vinge, an ex-mathematician and computer science professor from San Diego State University, whose novels A Fire Upon the Deep (92) and A Deepness in the Sky (99) I can highly recommend, achieved notoriety in Futurist circles when he proposed his theory of The Singularity at a NASA conference in 1993. Vinge, along with many other fellow futurists such as Raymond Kurzweil and Nick Bostrom, believes that we are fast approaching the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless.

In Rainbows End, which won the Hugo prize in 2007, he explores, by way of a cyber thriller, the impact of this exponential growth in technology on the merging of the real world with the 4 scenarios described in the 2007 report The Metaverse Roadmap issued by The Acceleration Studies Foundation: Virtual Worlds, Mirror Worlds, Augmented Reality and Lifelogging.

What makes this novel a convincing and compelling read is not necessarily its big ideas or even the underlying plot. Instead, it is the amount of details that Vinge uses to describe everyday life circa 2025. Almost any field of progress that is being discussed today is represented and elaborated on in Rainbows End, providing for an overall depiction of a richly constructed ‘reality’ that feels extremely believable. While great strides have been made in areas such as health, transportation, building and construction, and genetic engineering, it is around the 4 Metaverse scenarios mentioned earlier that Vinge builds its portrayal of a near-term society. As it is envisioned in The Metaverse Roadmap, reality in 2025 is a mishmash of the ‘real’, the virtual and the augmented, with the later two (both enhanced and complemented by lifelogging) increasingly replacing the first one as the preferred choice for socializing, learning, communicating, and for entertainment. Vinge uses an ‘old-fashioned’ character, Robert Gu, a man born in the 1960s and cured of Alzheimer in 2025, to not only advance the plot of the story, but also to contrast two worlds and sets of beliefs and to attempt to answer the question: what would life be like for a person with prejudices about the future and about technology if this person woke up in 2025? How would he or she deal with a society where most people below a certain age now wear special contact lenses connected to an astounding amount of computer power embedded in their clothing, thereby allowing them to access instantly information about anything they could possibly want to access, to communicate immediately with anyone on the planet, to create whatever virtual spaces they desire to enable this communication and to see in various layers of augmented reality the fruits of their creation or the results of their requests for information and interaction? In short, how would such a person feel if reality as they knew it had pretty much ceased to exist?

But Vinge doesn’t stop there. He also goes into a fair amount of details about the technology itself and about issues that are already important today with regards to the internet and the WWW and that will obviously become even more so in the future: open source vs proprietary, free vs fee-based, security, privacy, gender, identity, laws and regulations, universal currency, trust, reputation…

If this sounds like a lot to chew on, credit must go to Vinge for adroitly incorporating these discussions into the plot and into the daily life of the characters without the dialogue ever sounding preachy or pedagogic. It’s good entertainment all the way but skilfully mixed with all that you might need to know about the technological, social, economical and philosophical benefits and challenges facing humanity within the next 20 to 30 years.

If, like me, you enjoyed Rapture, A raucous tour of cloning, Transhumanism and the new era of immortality, you will undoubtedly be captivated by Radical Evolution. Whereas Brian Alexander focused mainly on the history of genetics and Transhumanism, Joel Garreau propels us full speed ahead towards the future, not only by discussing some of the various ‘enhancements’ that await human beings in the short to medium term, but also by exploring what the term ‘human nature’ really means through the examination of three possible scenarios for the future of the human race….

The Heaven scenario is exemplified by such illustrious people as Raymond Kurzweil, Eric Drexler, Nick Bostrom, Marvin Minsky, Hans Moravec, Vernor Vinge, and Gregory Stock (who actually stands slightly outside of this group based on his stronger beliefs in the benefits and practicality of germline genetic engineering over what he describes as cyber exuberance) and is based on the belief that the Singularity is near, the point at which technological advancement will become so rapid that the possibilities will become endless…

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Theodore Sturgeon was one of the early Sci-Fi pioneers in the 50s, along with Heinlein, C. Clarke and Asimov. He has influenced many writers since, through the various ideas he set forth but also through a rich and elaborate writing style that is often not experienced in Sci-Fi literature.
More than Human is the story, over several years, of a group of youngsters who, individually, were rejected by society and considered abnormal or simply stupid, but together, became the next step in human evolution, each one applying a unique skill and talent towards the functioning of this paranormal entity, the Homo Gestalt.

The novel does not dwell so much on these ‘powers’ as much as it does on the humanity of these rejected and troubled children. It is much more than Science Fiction, it is a story about love, about what it means to be different, to be lost, to find meaning, and to be part of something greater than you.

Fascinating and thought provoking.

Often considered one of the best Sci-Fi novels ever written, and winner of the first Hugo award in 1953, The Demolished Man tells the story of Ben Reich, a rich and corrupt businessman in 24th century America, who murdered one of his rivals (the first murder in 70 years) and is being investigated by a very intelligent and telepathic detective. Yawn.

I clearly was not engrossed by this detective story which, aside for the concept of a telepathic society, offers few surprises and interesting ideas. Perhaps it did in the 50’s when it came out but I find it today to be quite dated and to propose a vision of the 24th century that I think is way off the mark and slightly irritating in its simplicity and lack of imagination.

Recently, at work, I mentioned that I felt that we humans are living at the most exciting time of our history in terms of changes, opportunities and dangers. The reply was that surely there have been many other periods before when humanity faced major opportunities and challenges and managed to continue moving up the ladder of moral and technological progress.

I have since read Brian Alexander’s Rapture, and I am now convinced that, indeed, Humanity has never been confronted with such possibilities, and in the process, with such risks and perils. We, the people of this Earth, are about to redefine the meaning of human nature (if such a meaning ever truly existed in the first place). We are about to take control of our own evolution.

Visions of Utopia have been around at least since the days of Plato’s Republic, gaining momentum in 1516 and 1627 with the publications of Thomas More’s Utopia and Francis Bacon’s The New Atlantis, and finding a new energy throughout the end of the 19th century and the early stages of the 20th, at a time when the promises of the industrial revolution filled people’s heads with dreams and a hunger for the possibilities of the future.

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How to begin an explanation of Illium and of Olympos, two novels published in 2003 and 2005 by Dan Simmons, the remarkable author of the Hyperion series?
Where to begin is even more problematic. Four days after finishing Olympos, i am still trying to make full sense of what i just read, and to determine if it is even worth attempting a summary. Or perhaps the only kind of summary worth attempting is a simple list of concepts and ideas that permeate the two books:

Quantum energy and teleportation. Multiple universes. Time travel. Post humans. Old style humans. Nanotechnology. Brane holes. Avatars. Logosphere. Noosphere. Marcel Proust. Shakespeare. The Tempest. Caliban. Setebos. Greek Gods. Achilles. Moravecs from Jupiter. Olympus Mons. Mars. Ariel. Odysseus. Burning Man. Technological singularity. Nuclear apocalypse. Prospero. Sycorax. ARNists. Rubicon virus. Global Caliphate. Wandering Jew. Nabokov. Pantheistic solipsism….

But whereas Illium successfully and wonderfully sets up this amazing and insane concoction of ideas, themes and concepts and made the reader hungry for more, Olympos fails to deliver and to fulfill our expectations. Too many unanswered questions, and too much delivered too early or over too many pages. Still, if you are interested in stretching your imagination and indulging in a little mind bending space opera, this is it.

Isaac Asimov has published over 400 books in his lifetime. This is, apparently, more than anyone else has ever published, in any literary genre. My first reaction when I learned this, is that when someone churns out books so quickly, they are bound to come up at some point (or regularly) with less than average material. Stephen King, for example, is one of these authors whose great works are starting to become invisible in the middle of an ever-growing pile of nonsense.

The Gods Themselves is not one of Asimov’s bests (Asimov declared, however, that this was his favorite novel). It feels to me as if he came up with a great central idea but had to force himself to build a story around it.

This story revolves around the idea of parallel universes and the exchange of energy between these two universes.

‘Aliens’ in a parallel universe find a way to contact earth and to get the people of earth to build a Proton Pump. This pump allows each universe to get a free source of unlimited energy, something that, for different reasons, both sides need badly. But, in each universe, someone realizes that this will come at a cost and tries to stop the pump.

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Margaret Atwood calls her ‘futuristic’ work ‘speculative fiction’, drawing a distinction between what she sees as a possible soon-to-be here future and the more distant extrapolations of traditional Science-Fiction. And Oryx and Crake, like The Handmaid’s Tale before, does indeed feel uncomfortably close, and real.

Influenced by the author’s own fears about the state of our planet and of our society, the book presents a dystopic view of what our world could be like 20, 30 or 40 years from now. The upper-class, represented mostly in the book by individuals and families working for large scientific corporations, live in protected and luxurious compounds that shelter them from external contact with the rest of society. This ‘rest’ lives in what is perceived by the elite as a dangerous and chaotic no-man’s land, whose boundaries and exact geography remain fairly vague. Global warming related catastrophes have become so common that the ‘compounders’ have learned to adapt by changing some of their traditions and habits, such as moving the students’ graduation date to February to avoid the scorching heat of June. One of these students is Crake and he has a plan for humanity. He wants to rid human beings of their shortcomings, which he believes are responsible for the problems plaguing the world.
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You love him or you hate him. The likelihood that someone could have feelings towards Michel Houellebecq that lie somewhere between these two extremes seems very low. And this inner range would probably be characterized more by uncertainty and puzzlement than by direct variations in the levels of love or hate.

His detractors and critics condemn his constant and relentless misanthropy, his self-indulgent style, his inability to create likeable, new and interesting characters that would demark themselves from the suffocating imprint of their creator, his bigotry, his penchant for pornographic descriptions…the list goes on. His admirers claim that French literature hasn’t had a voice this fresh, this honest and this ingenious since Sartre or Camus.

Houellebecq hits you hard, and in many different places. He shocks us, amuses us, disgusts us, astounds us, sometimes all in one sentence. He drills and wounds and suddenly applies a balm to the wound, only to re-open it shortly after. His knowledge and understanding of modern society and pop culture can only leave most writers his age, and younger, contemplative. His appreciation and masterly control of technological issues is bound to impress most readers, as is his sharp and witty prose.

But his conclusions and observations of the world are visceral, the reflections of a troubled man who cannot cope with the passing of time and the deterioration of modern society. Houellebecq goes after who we are and his style forces us to confront our own understanding of the world. If that understanding is a different one than that of Houellebecq, we are bound to find his perverse and pitiful. He shocks and puts the reader into an extreme situation and forces a reaction and a realization that her views are either similar or not at all. But the beauty of Houellebecq’s work lies in its ability to touch us all, to awaken emotions, positive and negative, and to take a critical look at what it means to be human.

The Possibility of an Island lacks the snap and energy of the Particules Elementaires, and seems less fresh and relevant. Instead, Houellebecq takes us further into his own soul, further into the depths of his distaste towards humanity and modern culture. Nothing escapes his judgment and critic. There is simply no room for happiness in a Darwinian world where sexuality and the need to pass on genes dominate. Humanity is cruel, as is nature. Humans are no different than animals, and probably worse. Yet, Houellebecq is not all hatred and disgust. The Possibility of an Island reveals an occasional glimpse of sadness, an underlying nostalgia for what could have been, had we not been the humans we are. It is this softness burried deep inside Houellebecq, his longing and his quest for an invisible love, this balm he applies to our wounds, which often entices the reader to go further with him on his journey of doom.

As in Buddhism, Houellebecq’s vision of the world begins with the belief that life is suffering. If in the Particules Elementaires we were given a glimpse of hope through the creation of a new race of human beings, this hope is shattered in The Possibility of an Island. The superior race, even though at an intermediate stage of development, has lost all semblances of emotions. They evolve in a state akin to a void, empty of desire, attachment, sorrow and happiness. Is this the price humanity must pay? Is this the way out of the human condition? Most readers would find this an absurd solution and Houellebecq knows it, demonstrating that, sadly, for the author, the possibility of an island is more remote than ever.

For a Science Fiction writer, it sometimes feels that Philip K. Dick didn’t seem that concerned with the future. A reader of A Scanner Darkly (or a viewer of the recent Linklater film adaptation) might easily question how the term Science Fiction was even applied to this work in the first place.

Like Valis, a book which I found much more disturbing, A Scanner Darkly deals with the present (or close enough to the present), and it explores, in a rigorous and carefully laid-out fashion, one of Dick’s favourite themes, the questioning of reality. Set in Orange County, California, an undercover narcotic agent gradually and painfully looses his grasp on reality, as he becomes the victim of the drug he must use regularly to keep his cover. The change is very progressive and Dick carefully details this path to madness.

Yet, A Scanner lacks the excessiveness of Valis, the accessibility and intriguing speculation of The Man in the High Castle, the pace and futurist appeal of The Minority Report or the even the moodiness and intellectualism of Do Androids dream of Electric Sheep?. A Scanner is a tale about the now, about not so interesting individuals who have few interests and few connections to the world. But its story still feels very real, perhaps too real for a piece that questions reality. I am sure this is also its appeal for a lot of readers who will find its details and believability more interesting and sincere than Dick’s more speculative work.

In 2005, i had the pleasure of attending a lecture by Michio Kaku for the release of his new book Parallel Worlds. Kaku is a leading theoretical physicist and is often credited as being one of the founders of string theory. He also happens to be a fascinating speaker who seems equally at ease in front of an audience or the press as he is in front of his equations.

For a few decades, physicists have been searching for the theory of everything, the theory that would unite all past works and findings regarding gravity, relativity, nuclear physics, and quantum physics. This theory, it is hoped, would explain our universe, from its smallest particles to its largest phenomenon such as its ever-increasing expansion. String theory and its possible 11 dimensions brought us closer, as did its newer incarnation, M-theory. Now, Kaku argues, the idea that our universe is only one out of an infinity could possibly provide the missing answers to help complete the search for this theory of everything. Kaku writes effectively, clearly and convincingly, revisiting succinctly the various theories of the past, and mixing this information with pertinent examples from science fiction works (showing once again that Science Fiction is nothing other than foretelling the future).
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