Souls in the Great Machine

We've got another science fiction review today, this time of Sean McMullen's Souls in the Great Machine. The book is about a post-apocalyptic future with the re-birth of technology - click below to learn more if you want this book in your stocking this year. Souls in the Great Machine author Sean McMullen pages 448 publisher Tor, 06/1999 rating 8/10 reviewer Sviluppo Lavoro ISBN 0-312-87055-8 summary The rebirth of technology in a world 2000 years after a global apocalypse and a new dark age. The Scenario The novel takes place in Australia about 2000 years in the future, following a great catastrophe (which takes place about 100-200 years from the present). This catastrophe created a period of global drop in temperature known as Greatwinter. There are no electrical devices, due to the presence of orbiting satellites (known as Wanderers) that pass over periodically and EMP the hell out of any device using electricity. Thus, the technology of the civilization is limited to clockwork and human powered machines (there are various religious sanctions against the use of steam power--a leftover fear of global warming and its consequences, which are believed by the people to have caused the eventual Greatwinter). It is the latter category that brings out the most impressive feature of the novel, the Calculor. The main librarian of the city of Rochester creates an analog computer using human prisoners as components. They work together as a giant processor to perform the functions of a computer. In fact, the prisoners are referred to as FUNCTION 9, MULTIPLIER 342, etc. The librarian, Zavora, is using the Calculor to try to predict the coming of a second Greatwinter, which does not appear to have resulted from internal causes on earth but rather an exterior force. The discovery and investigation of this force is quite fascinating. There is also a force on land known as the Call, which lures people to the southeast and eventually into the ocean. This may seem like fantasy fiction, but if you stay with the novel a rational explanation is offered. Although I was turned off by that particular plot device in the beginning, it is a unique idea, especially once it is fully understood. In the meantime, you have plenty of blood and action supplied by a large war and plenty of small duels (the preferred method of justice), and a healthy sprinkling of sex and drinking (mainly supplied by the Han Solo character John Glasken).

What's Bad? The novel does a poor job of getting you hooked at the beginning. It takes a little while to get to the plot, and itÕs also difficult to see how the novel is going to deal with such issues as nanotechnology and genetic engineering when youÕre wading through pages of medieval technology and society. But there are wonderful rewards for readers who stick with it. Also, I found the dueling to be impractical for continual conflict resolution, as it would end up with a lot of dead people and a few dictators who happened to be good with a pistol. But this isnÕt a particularly enlightened society.

What's Good? The variety of subjects covered in a novel this size without being an epic. The writing style is excellent, and doesnÕt put you to sleep or give you the whole picture all at once. IÕve never read anything else by him, but apparently heÕs fairly well received in Australia. (Any comments from readers in Oz?) The numerous positive aspects of this novel are covered in more thorough detail in the following paragraph...

So What's In It For Me? The range of issues is immense. Nanotechnology and genetic engineering are presented not as cure-alls or as the cause of all of the worldÕs problems, but as part of technology as a whole, which can be used for good or evil. There are also ingenious solutions to communication in a non-electronic world, and the use of encryption as part of that communication. The human computer system is an intriguing thought experiment, and I would love to see smaller scale versions tried out in math classrooms and computer science classes. Imagine a lecture on networking in which students carry pieces of paper back and forth and groups of students process the information or send it on to the next group, depending on where that particular packet is needed... But I digress. Something that springs up on you is the excellent treatment of women in the novel. Women hold many important positions in the main civilization featured in the novel, and are the holders of most of the important information. The main character is an incredibly complex woman whose motives are not completely understood until the very end. McMullen manages to accomplish this without putting the women on some sort of goddess-pedestal or making men into unthinking troglodytes. The novel also covers issues of religion, where language and science would go given 2000 years of isolation and no modern technology, and the never-say-never tenacity of the human race to pull itself up through a second Renaissance. It appears as though there will be some other novels to follow this one, so it should be a good series to read.

Purchase this book at fatbrain.

Comments

remember HAB Theory?

[g0d0t]

kindof the opposite i suppose, but HAB Theory presents what sounds like very much the same info ... and suggests it's happened before ... excellent read for the subject. by Allan Eckert, circa 1976 ... check out www.habtheory.com

Medeivilization

[Effugas]

I remember when I was growing up, there was a cartoon entitled "Visionaries". Now, like most shows in the early 80's, this was another Toy Advertising Vehicle, this one for stupid little dolls with holograms on their chest. But the show itself had a cool concept--all tech was destroyed, and everybody had to figure out how to survive.

I, a 10 year old techie at the time, was extraordinarily annoyed that anyone would presume all tech would just *disappear*. I didn't know about EMP yet. Necessity is the mother of horrific inventions, eh? ;-)

So, here I am a decade later, and I'm reading about a book based on a similar concept as that old show. This time, I know what EMP is...and also know that, if applied on a global scale, repeatedly, at the bare minimum much of the marine population would be disoriented to extinction. Sharks, and many other marine species detect minute variations in the electrical field to find their prey. Intermittent massive pulses of energy would almost certainly blind them, causing some pretty nasty changes to the ecosystem.

OK, OK, the Greatwinter could be argued to make such minor extinctions irrelevant. But consider--anything that would indescriminately destroy electronics would cause *any* metal to spark--so you'd actually be looking at a pre-medeival society, no?

I'm actually liking these Slashdot book reviews alot. Makes me realize I need to go read more ;-)

Yours Truly,

Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com

Re:Medeivilization

[jquiroga]

I think we would just go back to the slide rule. Mine works perfectly. Pretty cheap computer, completely debugged, impervious to EMP, fits in your hand. Many of the technological achievements we admire while waiting for our machines to reboot were built using slide rules.

I haven't zenned out on it yet, but I keep trying :-)

Re:Medeivilization

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmmm.

What prevents the inhabitants of this world to build large enclosed metal rooms, shielding the electronics from the effects of EMP?

Would`nt military bunkers which are already protected from such forces guard against the loss of technology?

Further, since the satelites blast the heck out of any electronics, once the buildings are shielded, could`nt the EMP itself be harnessed as a source of energy for the protected electronics? You can harness lightning, why not an EMP burst?

I hate the idea of all technology disapearing, don`t see the "wanderers" satelites as being able to eliminate ALL possibilities.

Heck, worse comes to worse, I`d start developing an organic or chemical based computer. ;)

-Me
PS. I HATED that cartoon. It had a good idea, but why, oh why, did they have all that machinery in still working condition and not have the slightest curriosity on HOW it worked. Was like, boom, world gone. Now you`re not allowed to use that fully fueled car or plane behind you.

PPS. Why`d the world end in Visionaries? What was it`s apocalipse?

"soul of a new machine"

[Anonymous Coward]

the title is so similar to a really excellent 1980 book about Data General. it's set in the late 1970's when micro-computers were new. it's a very good story about the engineers as they struggled to create a 32-bit eclipse when other departments were siding with management trying to can the project. very good read.

Subtle Slashdot propoganda? :-)

[Daniel]

Hmmm. Two post-apocalyptic book reviews on top of one another, just before the end of the milennium. Is /. subtly trying to prepare us for Y2K? Does CmdrTaco Know Something We Don't? :-)
Be afraid. Be very afriad..

Your local conspiracy theorist,
Daniel

Some Ideas

[Life Blood]

Why would this world be limited to a medieval level of technology? Using water and horse power humanity could probably get back to the early industrial revolution without much trouble. Use gas lamps for light like in the 1880s, belt driven machines for manufacturing, etc. Precision parts where going into guns in the early 1820s.

Besides, does anyone here think that a church prohibition would stop steam power? I mean really? It seems to be really stopping premarital sex.

Also, why would a computer use humans as components? Why not build a mechanical calculator? The technology does not require electricity and would be more dependable and repeatable.

Lastly, what is stopping humanity from shooting down the Wanderers or at least avoiding them? You can build a rocket without electricity, or a very large cannon (Saddam Hussein was going to try this incidentally). They've got the calculations for targetting. Simply activate a small electrical power system (or better yet several small ones in a pattern), wait until it gets killed, and repeat. Soon you'll roughly know the Wanderers orbits using some basic math you can do by hand. You will then know how to avoid the EMP sweeps and can use electricity all you want as long as you do it at the right times.

Re:Some Ideas

[Thagg]

The reviewer's (and author's) ideas about using arrays of people as a computer has been done, during the Manhattan Project.

The astonishing Richard Feynman had at his disposal a hundred or so people with early mechanical calculators. He would arrange them in a room so that each could perform part of a computation, and hand the intermediate results off to other people.

This is clearly what we would call 'programming' today. He claims in 'Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman' that this was much more efficient than the alternative, which was to have each of the people, in parallel, performing many different steps of the calculation.

thad

resembles Silverberg's "Alien Years"

[peter303]

Last year Robert Silverberg published The Alien Years with a similar subplot.
Aliens zapped the planet with EMP rendering all electricity driven devices inoperable and plunging us into medieval times.

Calculor in the Manhattan project

[xener]

The reviewer mentions that he'd like to see experiments with human
computers like the calculor.

It turns out that, they used something similar to the calculor during
the Manhattan project. A room full of people with mechanical
calculators working on the same problem. They passed partial results
to each other on pieces of paper according to a sort of program.