I Do The Happy UPS Dance

[woodwardiocom]

-My author's copies of ASJ04 finally arrived. I caper in unseemly glee. In addition to the caricature of me and my nine co-authors on the cover, there are two more cartoony pics of me in my chapter. I am most amused.

-On the down side, the FIENDS had the NERVE to EDIT MY TEXT FOR LENGTH! I shall smite them all. Okay, no I won't. But I really miss one of the quotes I used and they cut:

"In times long past, this planet was the home of a mighty, noble race of beings who called themselves the Krell. Ethically and technologically they were a million years ahead of humankind, for in unlocking the meaning of nature they had conquered even their baser selves, and when in the course of eons they had abolished sickness and insanity, crime and all injustice, they turned, still in high benevolence, upwards towards space. Then, having reached the heights, this all-but-divine race disappeared in a single night, and nothing was preserved above ground."

- Walter Pidgeon as Dr. Morbius, Forbidden Planet

-They also edited most of my commentary out of the bibliography, curse them. I'm tempted to post the uncut biblio here, but that would technically violate my contract. Suffice to say I wrote many wise things.

Comments

[archangelbeth]

Oh, I had to cut sample kids out of my draft entirely, even before sending it in. I'm planning to polish them up and send them to Pyramid.

Mayhap you could do something akin?

(Iolanthe said -- when asked if that looked like Mommy -- that the caricature "has dark hair... and glasses... It's a silly picture of Mommy!" I think she is amused by the chameleon as "her," too.)

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-Oh, I plan on doing that with a section on "Precursor-oriented organizations" that got cut with my blessing. But, my snappy comments in the biblio aren't something Pyramid would pay for.

[archangelbeth]

Awwwwww. Ask for permission to do the bibli with snappy quotes?

[hackard.livejournal.com]

If you would like to post your snappy quotes, I promise not to call them to the Managing Editor's attention.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-After all that build-up, they won't seem all that clever, but I will anyway.

[signsoflife.livejournal.com]

Of course, my reaction is "scientific and technological advancement leading to the perfection of an intelligent race! That's *exactly* what Condorcet was talking about!"

Actually. . . actually actually, in the philosophy I've been reading one of the themes that runs through them all is sustainability -- in particular, even when sustainability is an explicit issue the *value* attached to sustainability seems underexplored to me. They all seem to believe that sustainability is an essential good of the Good Society, but they don't explain why. (John Stuart Mill, at least, gets to the point where he says that sustainability doesn't justify a repugnant practice (in specific, he's saying that you can't force women into marriage and childbearing just because you think that otherwise, no one would have babies.))

It seems to me though that the techno-perfection of the abovereferenced race *wasn't* sustainable. I'm wondering how prevalent that is in sf -- a race achieves perfection through technology and then *vanishes*. I don't think I'm just talking about posthumanism -- I'm thinking of things like that story in Niven about the race which discovered the truth about the afterlife and all immediately committed suicide. Or perhaps if one thinks about the Shaper/Mechanist stories, the Investors (with their stunning lack of curiosity) talk sadly about "lost markets" where the races discovered *something* that made them no longer available to the Investors. So I'm thinking not just of transformation into a different race of beings, but exiting the universe altogether.

Is this making any sense?

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

They all seem to believe that sustainability is an essential good of the Good Society, but they don't explain why.

-This may be too obvious to mention, but if it isn't sustainable, it will by definition be eventually replaced by something worse. The best imaginable society will be permanent.

-The question then is, is the best possible society one that is permanent, but makes some compromises in other areas, or one that's perfect, but not sustainable?

I'm wondering how prevalent that is in sf -- a race achieves perfection through technology and then *vanishes*.

-Pretty damn common -- I spend a part of my chapter in ASJ04 discussing a setting where that's standard behavior. However, I suspect it's common for story reasons, not any general belief that that is what is likely to happen. One of the story reasons is: Eventually any constantly advancing race is going to exceed the human ability to imagine it, at which point it makes more sense to shuffle it off-screen and start fresh.

-Hmm, have you read any Olaf Stapledon?