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Century Rain (Alastair
Reynolds) starts out giving the
impression of a time travel story, with a detective/musician in an
alternative late 1950s French and an archaeologist living on an large
habitat complex orbiting a post-nanocaust earth.
Plot
(Spoiler):
It turns out that the 20th
century earth is in fact a replica of a pre-second world war original
(made by an unknown entity) that has now been 'woken' from a form of
stasis. It is presumed to be encased in one of the many giant, near
impenetrable, spheres dotted around the galaxy. These were discovered
during exploration of an abandoned wormhole network which turned up no
other signs of intelligent life.
Access to the artefact (earth
two or E2 as they dub it) is only possible using a unique wormhole from
under the surface of Phobos (a Martian moon). The point at which the
artefact's timeline diverges from that of the real thing coincides with
past occupation of the moon by enemy forces: Slashers. Things are made
inexorably more difficult and risky because no technology beyond the level
already present inside the artefact is permitted to enter it via the
wormhole gateway courtesy of a mysterious "Censor" membrane.
The crux of the plot is that
Slasher "War Babies" (a group of genetically engineered, warrior
creatures, originally with the appearance of small children) have
influenced the artefact earth's events to avoid the second world war and
therefore the resulting sci/tech progress in rocketry, atomic physics, etc
to reduce the copies' chances of defending themselves or discovering their
encased situation. Their mission appears to be to be to use build and
locate the artefact's position by operating large detectors to pick up the
only signals that can penetrate the shell: gravity waves.
Clever subterfuge allows the
War Babies to send the necessary information back through the gateway in
the possession of unwitting Thresher operatives. Although there appears to
be a gaping plot hole in that the map with the exact positions of the 3
gravity wave sensors (which is mentioned repeatedly) never ends up being
used, despite it's vital necessity in the triangulation process, and
previous convenient exclusion from theft (most annoying bit of the
book).
With the location of the
correct sphere, Slashers then break it open and attempt to wipe it clean
of humans using a self replicating nano-weapon called "Silver Rain" (which
is of course averted by the protagonists of both time lines working
together).
Critique:
As in his Revelation Space
universe, Alastair Reynolds is successful in rendering a future of
disparate factions of humanity. Not only the Thresher-Slasher split, but
the chaotic political organisation of the Slashers: with moderates
fighting to protect the antiquated and practically defenceless Thresher
society, and hard liners (who are the enemy here).
What is lacking (again, as in
all of his novels to date) is any mention of Trans Human AI, or in fact
any AI beyond the sophistication of now. Perhaps Reynolds is in the
Penrose camp; denying the possibility of Strong AI, or maybe it's just
convenient to ignore for the sake of his plot lines...
Anyhow, he at least embraces
the first two of the three coming technological revolutions (as extolled
by the likes of Ray Kurzweil). The Slashers personal appearance and
nanobot symbiosis is cool, but limited to their human form. The argument
presented is that, although the resident nanobots can hold many of the
memories of a host, a personality (a person) is a delicate thing [which is
kinda true in that our brains are only the slinging together of memories,
learned skills and chemical biases] and will be lost without a biological
body to be anchored to [kinda lame].
The Slasher ships, however,
are extremely amorphous (dynamically reshapeable thru-out) and self
repairing with instant manufacturing capabilities; A natural product of
nanotechnological progress that seems reassuringly realistic to
me.
I like the extrapolation of a
modern phenomenon: Slashdot (the website and it's participants) into the
"Slasher" faction, at least in part as it makes me feel personally
involved in the story.
The way the more significant
events in the past of the future time line are gradually pieced together
is fairly artful, gradually presenting a scenario in which nanotechnology
has run amok and the worst case scenario has been realised: grey goo!
(well, to an extent). The not so immediately obvious result of mass
information loss is also visited here, with the Threshers delicately
picking though the wreckage of earth in a vain attempt to reconstruct and
preserve history (somewhat "12 Monkeys" esque).
Some interesting concepts
raised:
The Thresher faction in the
book directly represent an argument against increased digitisation and the
misplaced faith in information stored this way. Although the usefulness of
buried 'time capsules' containing analogue information and artefacts has
long (since at least age 12) seemed humorously pointless to me (due to the
increasing amount of records and information kept on current history), the
possibility for large scale history loss now seems plausible. Given a
sufficiently catastrophic event it is feasible that modern civilisations
could again be lost to the degree of Aztecs, Incas, Egyptians (or even
mythological Atlantans!). Even now vast tracks of digital information are
being lost daily from old web pages being removed without being backed up
to internet achieves to documents and photos lost to hard drive
crashes.
The nanocaust forms the
Thresher society who neurotically cling to safe, if antiquated,
technologies to try to avoid these dangers. In so doing they make great
sacrifice, progress wise, and live backward, relatively uncomfortable,
unextended lives.
*
In the story, during the time
when the worm hole connection is severed, no time passes on E2 (as
observed by the rest of the universe). This would suggest that the sealed
shell is holding the contents in complete quantum isolation. Because no
information can reach or escape the object (excluding gravity waves, which
is slightly dodgy) then the quantum state of the interior can remain
absolutely static. This is somewhat like the old chestnut: if a tree falls
in a forest but no one hears it does it make a noise?. I.e. in reality, do
objects have to share some form of interaction to share a common time
frame? It seems unlikely that quantum isolation could be artificially
achieved in the real universe. Although the event horizon of a black hole
or such like might suffice.
*
The main future character
(Verity) forwards the idea that the entire E2 could be within a computer
simulation. This is because they have to pass through the discontinuity of
the censor barrier which will not permit them to take through any advanced
equipment that could be used to probe the environment beyond the barrier
for flaws that would distinguish it from reality. But even if it let
everything through there would still be no way to know for certain if it
was a simulation as long as it was realistic enough to fool whatever tests
they came up with.
The characters presumed that
the inhabitants of E2 would find out they were in a shell sooner or later
with sufficient progress. But there need not be an obviously visible
boarder change over point from reality to simulation (like the censor
might have been). Provided the boundary interacts with reality as would be
expected of any other open plane of space there would be no way to tell
(i.e. if the boundary could produce the necessary holographic EM
radiation, particle creation, forces, etc, then the boundary could be
placed anywhere). Any space probes that reached the interior surface of
the sphere could simply have been disassembled into simulation and their
simulated behaviour used to send back the necessary signals back to E2 to
convince them it was still passing through real space. Even real life
astronauts would not be able to tell they had been disassembled and
converted to pure information, being reassembled upon return to the
real.
The same question can be
applied more generally: how do we know we're not in a simulation now?
Well, we don't and we can't know for sure if the entire universe we
perceive is actually running on some massive computer. That the universe
is a simulation is the belief of a dominant, galactic, religious movement
in Iain M Banks' Algebraist. There the movement aims to convert a
sufficient percentage of conscious beings to the same belief in order that
the entities running the simulation end it and allow them up to a high
level of implementation (i.e. out of the simulation).
This is an intriguing
possibility, but one that is futile to pursue. Even if the universe is run
on a divine computer we may as well carry on regardless as it makes no
practical difference if no observations can be made to determine evidence
of
it. |