Asimov's SF, March 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  Our cosmic junkyard isn't just an esthetic disgrace. Littering one's own backyard is at best a tacky thing to do, and space is our planetary backyard. (Remember Bradbury's Martian Chronicles, and all those empty bottles and tin cans that our guys scattered around the landscape?) Space is a big place, and even ten or eleven thousand pieces of orbiting junk in our vicinity take up a very small segment of the available territory. But the quantity keeps growing, not only because the various spacegoing nations of the world keep sending more of it aloft, but because what's already there is constantly being subdivided into lesser junk, either by design (the Chinese rocket shot) or by accident (the fuel tank of an old American rocket engine exploded a few years ago, smashing it into 713 detectable chunks.)

  As the clutter population keeps growing, there's a real risk of collision between one hunk of debris and another, causing a troublesome multiplier effect. With more and more space garbage accumulating around us, creating something like Saturn's belt of rings but not as pretty, the spaceships we send up there (including the manned ones that someday will be zipping through the Solar System the way we thought they would in our stories) are going to need a lot of shielding, and some clever navigational techniques, in order to avoid getting bashed. And if the present rate of debris creation isn't abated, it will eventually become impossible to send anything into space at all. We will have sealed ourselves in with our own garbage.

  What to do? NASA people have begun talking about “environmental remediation"—removing some of this stuff from our vicinity, perhaps by using ground-based lasers to destroy it, or sending drone rockets up to collect the bigger items and nudge them into the atmosphere to be destroyed. But, says a NASA paper on the subject, “For the near term, no single remediation technique appears to be both technically feasible and economically viable."

  Perhaps the free-enterprise system will provide a solution: privately financed space expeditions whose purpose is simply to gather up spacegoing junk and bring it back to Earth for sale to collectors—a kind of profit-based cosmic salvage operation akin to the currently lucrative business of bringing up sunken ships laden with lost treasure from our oceans. It's hard to argue that a program of sending missions into space to recapture this junk for resale on Earth could be anything but virtuous. And it might just jump-start space exploration, finally putting an end to the current long hiatus. I know that Robert A. Heinlein would be pleased by that.

  Copyright (c) 2008 Robert Silverberg

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  * * *

  Poetry: SNOW ANGELS

  by Ruth Berman

  When you flop into new snow

  And wave your arms up and down

  And your legs out and in

  The snow angel

  Waits patiently until you leave

  Then takes a deep breath of ice crystals.

  —

  The angel cracks free and scrambles up.

  The wings shiver once, grow firm,

  And beat the air.

  —

  Turn on the lights at home.

  Put on a warm bathrobe.

  Make a cup of cocoa.

  —

  The snow angels rise

  Toward stars

  That shine like bits of ice

  On the dark sky.

  —

  —Ruth Berman

  Copyright (c) 2008 Ruth Berman

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  * * *

  Department: ON THE NET: MUNDANE

  by James Patrick Kelly

  this world

  Those of us who follow the fantastic genres have been on the lookout for the next literary movement ever since the cyberpunks traded in their mirrorshades for bifocals. Several candidates have presented themselves over the years. Slipstream [scifi.com/sfw/ interviews/sfw12963.html], for example. Or The New Weird [en. wikipedia.org/wiki/NewWeird]. But are these movements in the strict sense of the word, or are they creatures of intense critical discourse, or perhaps of savvy marketeers? What are we to make of the fact that some writers identified as exemplars of these movements deny that they share the same agenda as their alleged comrades?

  It takes two things to launch a movement, it says here: charismatic leadership and an aesthetic that offers an alternative to the literary status quo. No, no, wait a minute, make that three things: a movement also needs a catchy name. And it may well be that its name has kept MundaneSF [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mundanesciencefiction]from enlisting more readers and writers. I'm certainly no expert at naming movements, but mundane does not seem to be the most auspicious label to give a group of ambitious writers who have joined in common cause. My dictionary defines mundane as “1. ordinary, commonplace, not unusual, and often boring. 2. of this world, relating to matters of this world.” Clearly it is the second meaning that pertains, but the movement marches onto the scene with that first meaning in tow.

  And while MundaneSF has challenged the scientific rigor and intellectual honesty of the genre, it has also been criticized as misunderstanding the nature of modern science fiction and rejecting many of its marvelous pleasures.

  So what is the alternative that this movement offers? And who are its charismatic leaders?

  * * * *

  privileging the likely

  Once upon a time there was an actual Mundane Manifesto on the web. It has long since disappeared, but you can always Google it to see if it has popped back up again. However, it's entirely possible that it never will. Its author, Geoff Ryman [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geoff Ryman], has written, “The first Mundane Manifesto had a mocking tone (self-mockery as well) and that seems to have got up some people's noses. I came up with the idea of calling it Mundane and the basic concept of privileging the likely over the unlikely, but it's gone through many revisions since as smarter people than me have gone through what the movement might mean or do. We need a new manifesto urgently."

  While we're waiting for someone to issue the Mundane Manifesto 2.0, we'll have to make do with the Mundane-SF blog [mundane-sf.blogspot.com]. Several writers contribute to it, some of whom prefer to remain anonymous, some of whom would appear to have been present at the birth of MundaneSF at the Clarion Writers Workshop [clarion.ucsd.edu] in 2002. Like any blog, it presents as a miscellany of comment and linkage, along with occasional forays into mundanespotting on bookshelves and magazines’ tables of contents and announcements of markets that are kindly disposed toward the movement. However, here is a blog worth checking regularly to get the latest from the MundaneSF brain trust. The proprietors warn the casual surfer: “We will transform the way you think about SF,” and more often than not, they do.

  For example, it was while perusing the Mundane-SF blog that I got sidetracked by a link for Long Bets [longbets.org], a website that features “a public arena for enjoyably competitive predictions, of interest to society, with philanthropic money at stake.” While not exactly science fictional, it presents a unique forum for the kind of futurist speculations central to MundaneSF. An expert makes a prediction about some issue important to society. If someone disagrees, they make a bet against the prediction. On the bet page, the bettors submit their arguments—and back them up with a sum of money to go to the designated charity of the winner. For example, of particular interest to the Mundanes and science fiction fans in general is Bet 1: “By 2029 no computer—or ‘machine intelligence'—will have passed the Turing Test.” Agreeing is Mitch Kapor [kapor.com]; Ray Kurzweil [kurzweilai.net] disagrees. The stakes: twenty thousand dollars. Book lovers will want to consider the back and forth on Bet 6: “By 2010, more than 50 percent of books sold worldwide will be printed on demand at the point of sale in the form of library-quality paperbacks.” Two thousand dollars is at stake as Jason Epstein [jason epstein.cgpublisher.com] and Vint Cerf [ibiblio.org/pioneers/cerf.html] square off. This is a fascinating site!

  Meanwhile, back to the movement. The first I ever heard of MundaneSF was in 2004. I had been asked to teach Clarion West [clarionwest.
org]in Seattlewith my friend John Kessel [www4.ncsu.edu/~tenshi/index2.html], and our week at the workshop immediately followed Geoff's. John and Geoff and I went out to dinner on the changeover day with the Clarion West administrator, Leslie Howle, to catch up on happenings around the critique table. Geoff had been talking with the students about mundane science fiction during his week and shared a précis of the discussion with us. I admit that I was perplexed at first by his thinking: how was MundaneSF all that different from what had up until then been called hard science fiction?

  Of all of those associated with MundaneSF, Geoff is by far the best known—and the most charismatic. He has spoken and written eloquently about the movement's goals in any number of online ven-ues: Infinity Plus [infinityplus.co.uk/nonfiction/intgr.htm], Locus [locusmag.com/2006/Issues/01Ryman.html], and the Chronicles Network [chronicles-network.com/forum/11294-geoff-ryman-interview-in-four-parts.html]. Here's some of what he has had to say:

  “We felt as if SF had accumulated so many improbable ideas and relied on them so regularly, that it had disconnected from reality. The futures it was portraying were so unlikely as to be irrelevant, if not actually harmful. Julian Todd, a British SF writer, pointed out the moral problems as well. If we keep telling ourselves that faster-than-light travel will whisk us to scores of new Earths, then we'd feel better about burning through this one.” Speech at BORéAL 2007 SF convention.

  And there's the argument that gradually won me over: “apart from anything else, if you're writing science fiction you want to be privileging the more likely over the least likely, especially if the least likely happens to coincide with all your hopes, dreams, and desires. If it's more likely and you're not looking at it because it seems less attractive, that's probably where you should go. That's where you'll find the new material, the difficult material.” Locus 2006

  I may be naive, but it seems to me that any rational consumer of science fiction must acknowledge that Geoff is scoring points here. (Note: although I ultimately accept Geoff's interpretation of the subtext of FTL, that we can burn through this planet on our way to colonizing New Asimov and Heinlein Five, I do have to stretch to get to acceptance.) Faithful readers of this column will recall that I wrote of the near insurmountable difficulties in creating starships [archive.org/details/FreeReads21OnTheNetFTL] or time machines [asimovs.com/issue0407/onthenet2.shtml]. So how can the new—or old—space opera be “science” fiction? How much of science fiction's cherished canon is ... well ... fantasy?

  * * * *

  nots

  This question has sparked a fierce debate. When the advocates of MundaneSF call science fiction to account, they assert that many of our most cherished tropes must be reassigned to our less realistic sister genre. Which tropes? Well, consider that the movement has captured one of SF's most prestigious showcases, the British magazine Interzone [ttapress.com/category/interzone] for a special MundaneSF issue [freesteel.co.uk/cgi-bin/ mundane.py] and has issued a checklist of prohibited topics. Know that the table of contents will not contain FTL, psi, nanobots, aliens, computer consciousness, profitable space travel, immortality, mind uploading, teleportation, or time travel.

  Here are the guest editors setting out their agenda in no uncertain terms: “For one issue only, we are going to set aside all the noise and electric guitars and anything-goes-as-usual mentality associated with contemporary Science Fiction, and do it properly."

  Hmm.

  As you sift through the smoking ruins of your library, it may be time to reconsider the definition of SF

  * * * *

  properly

  What the MundaneSF movement is asking in their polemical way is important: what is proper to science fiction? Are we to be futurists [wfs.org] who wrap our predictions in plot, character, and setting? How much may we deviate from what scientists and technologists tell us is possible, and what is the price we pay for straying too far into the precincts of pure imagination?

  The criticism of MundaneSF has two chief threads: it is unnecessary and it is wrong-headed. A blog rant [ianmcdonald.livejournal.com/2378.html] of the brilliant Ian McDonald [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IanMcDonald(author)] covers the ground nicely. “But I wrote all this (MundaneSF-eligible masterwork like The River of Gods [trashotron.com/agony/columns/2004/08-23-04.htm]) without knowing of the Mundane Manifesto, let alone that such a movement existed, and certainly without having read a single word of the dogme. If I had, it would have been much worse a book for it. For at one level you can call such a dogme creative constraint. At another it's box ticking. Ignorance, in my case, was bliss. And I wish I was ignorant again, because I don't want those boxes there, to either have to tick or ignore.” Later he writes, “It's a poor manifesto that would venerate Verne (tech-speculation) but consigns much of H.G. Wells’ core texts to the ‘bonfire of stupidities’ (interplanetary war, aliens, time-travel...). To me, one of the strengths of SF is that it is an allegorical literature: parables and myths of our age."

  * * * *

  exit

  The question of exactly who are the MundaneSF writers is a vexing one. Those who identify themselves as such have been circumspect when naming the names of others who may not share their ideological zeal—or even be aware that a mundane ideology has been promulgated. Instead they point to texts that pass their tests without necessarily dragooning the writers into their movement. Indeed, even Geoff Ryman has committed literary sins against the movement's agenda.

  Like Ian McDonald—indeed, like most science fiction writers—I have written some stories that fit the MundaneSF prescription and some that do not. I find myself in sympathy with their arguments when I recall my intentions as I wrote those particular stories that pass their test. It is difficult to write about futures that could actually come to pass, and not only are most of the tropes they decry unlikely, but some are in dire need of an aesthetic makeover. And yet, since so many of my best known—and favorite—stories are clearly not Mundane, I can't in conscience declare myself for the movement.

  But I am listening to what they say.

  Copyright (c) 2008 James Patrick Kelly

  * * * *

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  * * *

  Novelette: FOLLOWING THE PHARMERS

  by Brian Stableford

  Borgo Press recently released two collections of Brian Stableford's tales of the Biotech revolution, The Cure for Love and The Tree of Life, both of whose title stories appeared in Asimov's. He will shortly launch an ambitious program of translations of classic French scientific romances from Black Coat Press, beginning with Gustave Le Rouge's Vampires of Mars and Théo Varlet and Octave Joncquel's A Martian Epic. Some unexpected consequences of biotech are unsparingly revealed when the author sends us on a journey...

  Following the Pharmers

  * * * *

  "When tillage begins, other arts follow. The farmers, therefore, are the founders of human civilization."

  —Daniel Webster

  * * * *

  It was early in June that the antheric alates began appearing on my verandah. At first I assumed that they were natural insects—some new species of miniature butterfly nurtured in the evolutionary hothouse that Holderness had recently become. Their tiny wings were brightly colored, with a quasi-metallic sheen that enabled them to flare like sparks in the bright light of noon and twinkle like stars in the evening, when the sun sank into the bosom of the Wolds. Initially, I welcomed their arrival as a fortunate discovery, a safe distraction from the burdensome aspects of my isolation.

  Once I had examined a couple of the motiles with a magnifying glass I realized that
they weren't insects, but I was still possessed by the idea that they might be some new kind of invertebrate animal—perhaps an entirely new branch of the arthropoda, spun off by bold mutation from one of the many former sea-creatures that were adapting with astonishing rapidity to the Yorkshire Everglades. Once I had put one under the microscope, though, I realized that they were vegetal, and also that they were artificial.

  That was when I started cursing. It meant that I had a new neighbor. The whole point of our moving to Hollyn—a place that wasn't even supposed to exist any more, in the official cartography of New England—had been to give us the opportunity to do our work in peace. I hadn't wanted neighbors when Marie was still around; I certainly didn't want one now that she was gone, unable to return.

  I wasn't completely isolated from human contact, of course, but I didn't count the Patrington communards as “neighbors.” They performed a useful intermediary function in transmitting my produce to the wholesalers in Hull—a necessary function, given the amount of chemical assistance I'd have needed to go all the way to the city on my own behalf. In any case, Patrington, which had also benefited from an unexpected and so-far-unrecorded re-emergence from the shallows of the Holderness to become a substantial new island, was a good seven kilometers away. The alates, I judged, must have come from somewhere considerably closer.

  The communards were small pharmers like me; they planted, nurtured, and processed their crops according to strict chemical rituals, never taking the risk of producing anything new. Whoever was producing plants with alate pollen-sacs, on the other hand, had to be an artist, an innovator of considerable daring as well as abundant talent. From the viewpoint of a small pharmer, artists qualified as loose cannons: mad, bad, and dangerous to have around. I knew, because I'd fancied myself as one in the days of my folie a deux with Marie, and even before that, in the days when we had both been wage-slaves in one of the corporate giants making up Big Pharma.