Slashdot Mirror

On of the key points glossed over in the novel is that computing hardware and bandwidth (which were part and parcel of the same thing... the primer.. in the book) are really seperate things in our world. Cheap hardware and access to inexpensive bandwidth would be absolutely critical to such a device.

A realistic description of such a society may be found in Walter M. Miller Jr's science fiction classic A Canticle for Leibowitz . Some excellent reviews of this book may be found here, and, on our own Slashdot, here.

If I remember correctly, the first part of the book concerns a garden variety electronic schematic entitled "Transistorized Control System for Unit Six-B". A monastic religious order has devoted itself to the preservation of this and other "memorabilia". In an attempt to preserve it, one of the younger monks has reproduced it by hand. The reproduction is not an exact copy though; it has been "illuminated" with gold lettering, ivy climbing around the margins, and cherubs. One of my favorite scenes is when the "illuminated" copy is mistaken for the original.

I imagine that the residents of such a world would marvel at the amazing artifacts left by "the Ancients". They might wonder about things like Road , as the inhabitants of John Crowley's book Engine Summer refer to our freeway system. I can hear questions like "What was it used for?" and "I wonder how they lived." (See David Macaulay's Motel of the Mysteries for a scholarly discussion of what our descendents might think a toilet seat was used for.)

Of course, perspectives like these are not unfamiliar to us; think about how we view the Egyptians and the Mayans. Makes one wonder...

In Joe Haldeman's forever war the soldiers are told that their suits are powered by a fist sized lump of plutonium. This is fine. It's small, relatively light and will keep running longer than they will live.

One soldier is killed, and their Squad leader radios the news up to the command ship. Command ship radios back to leave the body and proceed as planned. When they get about 30 miles from the body, a sudden shock startles them and they turn around to see a mushroom shaped puff of smoke beginning its ascent to the sky.

In the tons of sci-fi (almost exclusively) that I've read over the last 25 years, the one that's had the most impact was Jack Vance.

For sheer inventiveness, language, and the fact that the trappings of science is relegated to the background of the story, makes Vance a must read, and means that he will last well into the future.

O the worlds! The Dying earth, "Showboat world", "Alastor Cluster", not to mention the cultures: "Trills", The Pnume, "The Connatic", "The Dirdir". The list goes on.

If you love a good mix of ancient and advanced technology, with Fantasy & Sci-fi combinations pick up the Demon Princes series of novels, or the omnibus editions.

On a side note: Does anyone know whether Solaris is named Solaris because of the name of it's producing company or has anyone thought of Stanislaw Lem's great novel Solaris where the planet of Solaris is inhabited by an immense monocellular living intelligent ocean that is too large and too complex to understand?

security though obscurity Does Not McGurk!!!

Wow. A thread about terraforming Mars, and nobody has managed to mention Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars / Green Mars / Blue Mars series? A lot of the discussions in this tread are remarkably similar to the "Red" and "Green" politics that sprouted up in the books.

The Greens were in favor of terraforming Mars. Anything that raised the oxygen level and ambient temperature was favored. Seed the atmosphere and surface with plants to increase oxygen. Set up nuclear reactors and let them meltdown to generate heat (and free up water from deep under the soil as they did the China Syndrome bit).

The Reds wanted to preserve Mars in its natural state, and tried to sabotage the efforts of the Greens.

Personally, I lean towards the Greens. Sure there are some features that would be worth preserving (in the sense of "don't bulldoze it just to put up a McMarsBurger joint"), just as we have national parks to preserve beautiful areas here on Earth. But I think we can be reasonably sure now that there is no life on Mars above the microbe level (darn it). So let's feel free to use it as a laboratory.