In the paleo-future.....

Mark Shea recently wrote an article about old predictions about the future, such as those collected on a blog called Paleo-Future. (Hat tip to Sci-Fi Catholic.)Of course, most of these predictions were wildly inaccurate, although some have come true. (I think here of a Renaissance woodcut that depicted the technology of Utopia, with submarines, "light projected great distances," fire that burns on water, and plants modified to bear larger and tastier fruit.)



Since I have nothing wise or illuminating to say about that, I'll just show you an old prophecy that I came across in the book Misguided Weapons, which quotes at length one Dr. Vannevar Bush.


Dr. Vannevar Bush was head of the Office of Scientific Research and Development during World War II, which was in charge of everything American scientists did for the war effort, from the Manhattan Project to penicillin production. After the war - in September of 1949 to be exact, he wrote a book (Modern Arms and Free Men) on the nature of a future conflict. Of course, this could only refer to a confrontation with the Soviet Union, which by then had its own atomic bombs.

The most notable predictions:

1. Future navies would operate only against enemy submarines, since they alone would be capable of strategic bombardment. Bombers, missiles, and land-based rockets would be useless because...
2. Jet aircraft and anti-aircraft guns would make short work of any bomber before it got in range of any important target. Jets, however, would be incapable of dogfighting, since their velocity wide turning radii would leave them at the mercy of more maneuverable propeller aircraft. (Bush apparently believed that speed is a liability in a fighter aircraft.)
3. As for missiles, their predictable flight paths would make them easy to shoot down.
4. Rockets (i.e. ballistic missiles) would have a practical range of only 400 miles, and therefore only submarine-mounted rockets would be threats to the U.S. homeland.
5. Even if rockets were capable of intercontinental flight, they would be impossible to guide, and would miss their targets by hundreds of miles - making them completely useless.
6. The limited supply of uranium would make it "quite a few years" before the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. had enough bombs to wage an all-out nuclear war. (In 1951, the USSR had 25 bombs, while the U.S. had 438, 268 of which had been built after the Soviet bomb test.)
7. No totalitarian regime would be capable of producing the sophisticated products which free countries like the U.S. were capable of. (Bush, however, does praise the Nazi-developed V-2, which required "great ingenuity and engineering skill," and which formed the basis for all subsequent rocket science.)

Now, this is the exact opposite of what Paleo-Future is about. Bush is prophesying that various forms of technology would not be used in the future: by 1959 all of his predictions were proved wrong. So spectacularly wrong, in fact, that the author of Misguided Weapons conjectures that Bush was deliberately making false predictions in order to confuse the Soviets. However, Bush may have in fact believed everything he said, in which case a scientist, with access to the most up-to-date information on military technology, and years of experience in military research, was flat-out wrong about everything he expressed an opinion on.

I think you know what that implies.

Please excuse my humanity...

I was sick on Sunday - had some kind of cold which gave me a headache. The bad side was that I felt bad and had to miss Mass. The good side is that I got some reading done - although nothing I haven't read before.

I reread Dune for the fifth or sixth time, and now have decided to inflict you with a review of it. It's going to be long in the gestation, however, as dealing with the freaky pyschology and wacky religion of Frank Herbert (let us not mention the drugs) is certain to be tough. However, the heart of the story - boy forced to save the world at the end of a complicated chain of events, planned and otherwise - is excellent. The best thing is that there is free will - although the hero sees into the future, there are multiple possibilities, and he cannot know all the paths ahead. This is important in the later part of the book.

Darn, I'm giving away much of the book already. Here's a distraction.

It's called "Kitty Looking Out Upon Landscape Illuminated By Burning Trees Causing Global Warming And Bad Grammar Now." Note the symbolism of the box (which originally stored coffee), the near-empty kitty food bowl, and the upturned wagon. It is a powerful of statement. I am selling unsigned prints at $200 each. Add $30 for signatures.

Here's another, showing that hubris is more common than I thought.

God's College is pretty darned good though.

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Sometimes I hate this generation, and tell myself it's the dregs of history, that it couldn't get worse. And then I see things like this, from the 60s.

And I feel better.

I just snagged my cargo pants on the knob of a desk, shaking it awfully and spooking my relatives.

And we mind as well end there.

Idea for a science-fiction story

The year: 3000 AD. Science has reached the peak of its capabilities: not a thing about the physical world remains that we do not fully understand. Then the Magical Club, a well-funded clique of former scientists, artists, and others, starts seeking government money for research into "preternatural sciences," code for magic. They give amazing demonstrations of their power - and a few veiled threats - to the Solar Federation.

Simultaneously, a bunch of monks ("backward" and "obscurantist," as the news outlets of the time remind us) start denouncing this as evil. However, the presence of one monk at a Magical Club demonstration screws everything up. Of course, the Magical Club has to Do Something.

18 down, 32 to go

2001: A Space Odyssey

By Arthur C. Clarke

Let me first elucidate one basic principle of my literary work, namely:

That genre known as science fiction, containing as a main feature of its plot the changes wrought in man's life by technological advances, whether those of man or those of nonhuman, ahuman, or superhuman beings, is cool. Particularly those books of the genre which feature swordsmen, enormously fat noblemen, lasers, lots of war and explosions, giant bugs, or good monks.

2001 features none of the above, except an explosion at the very end. However, it still is very good.

I have never watched the film version of 2001, but the preface states both book and film have the same plot. Anyway, I'll recount it and mention some issues about the book.

1. The Basic Plot
2. Question one: What are these Star-Beings?
3. Question two: Is HAL possible?
4. Question three: Where's God?

1.

THE BASIC PLOT

It begins with a monolith, a rock with the dimensions 1:4:9. This strange thing appears in an ape-tribe's backyard and turns them into men. Then it disappears.

It returns again - on the moon. Man has been on the moon for a long time, and in 2001 has made a moon trip just an expensive business flight - like riding the old Concorde. Some men are even born in space. But it is in 2001 that the US finds the monolith, named TMA-1. As soon as sunlight touches it, it lets out a huge electromagnetic screech, which scientists decide is a signal to an extraterrestrial race. So, the space ship Discovery sets out with five crewmen to find the position it's signaling to. Scientists have deduced one of Saturn's moons hold something odd on them, and that something has to do with the monolith.

Fast-forward some. Two men, David Bowman and Frank Poole, and the sentient robot HAL are closing in on Saturn, with all the other men in suspended-animation. The radio antenna that communicates with earth suddenly stops operating. Poole fixes it, but it malfunctions again. When Poole trys to fix it, he gets killed in an "accident." Things get worse, until Bowman figures out the problem - namely, HAL. He overcomes HAL and continues to Saturn.

At Saturn, Bowman now heads off to Japetus, one of Saturn's moon. He manages the touchdown, finds a second monolith - and falls into it. After a confusing faster-than-light trip, he ends up transformed into a strange, spiritual being. He has now become a Star-Child.

These Star-Children mastered travel through space to the extent where they simply ignore all distances; they have also found areas beyond time in which they reside. They are extremely intelligent, and seek (for their own purposes) to change any forms of life they can into thinking creatures. They are the ones behind the monoliths, the ones who started the human race. They can project power by will alone, and one of the first things Bowman does as a Star-Child is just that.

Question 1

What are the Star-Children? They seem quite confusingly like angels. They are not governed by time or space, live in a non-physical body, and meddle often with men. However, their purposes are ambiguous, unlike both angels and devils. I never figured out why they do what they do - out of malice (making animals discontent is key to their methods) or out of charity. And if they were angels, would they, not God, have given men human souls (for ensoulment is the Christian term for what happens in the beginning of the story)?

Question 2

HAL, the robot, thinks. This is an enigma I can't break, all the more so because no definition of thought is given. The "Turing test" is instead used to define whether a robot thinks or not. The British logician Alan Turing said that if a man converses a long time with a machine, but cannot distinguish between the machine's answers and those a man might give, then the machine is thinking. The problem here is, as the Britannica Encyclopedia comments: "any evidence for original thought can be denied on the grounds that it ultimately was programmed into the computer." So, no matter how smart HAL was, he could only do what his programming told him.

We, on the other hand, can create original thoughts. Except I have never seen it done. Every idea I have invented or heard of has its origins in a couple other ideas, which have their origins in some more ideas, and....overall, I suspect there hasn't been a genuinely original thought since Adam. Maybe there's no thinking at all, and it's all programmed into us by others..........but you don't need to think to have a will: you just have to have the ability to answer yes or no, not be forced into it by a program or mechanical process. Or is that thinking? I'm stuck.

Question 3

Does God turn up in here? Two statements will suffice: a)if He did, Arthur C. Clarke would be very miffed, and b) where do you suppose the Star-Children come from?


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Overall, I give this 5 stars. Even if I have to read it again, I'm glad I read it.

And maybe I did think in order to write this sketchy review. But could a robot with infinite memory and infinite processing capabilities have produced this review instead of me?