Sci-Fi

I’m reading a novel by Iain M. Banks at the moment: Look to Windward. Oddly, it’s the first Banks novel I have read, and I say oddly, because this sort of thing is right up my street. It is an excellent book. I have a love/hate relationship with Science Fiction. I’ve optimistically sat through innumerable trashy films, in the hope that this is the one that will satisfy my investment in the genre. It is a curious thing; by definition, there are no limits to Science Fiction. It has, as its boundaries, the entirety of existence, time and space, and the capacity of the human imagination to travel. At its best, Sci-Fi is species defining and magisterial, but such quality is rare. A significantly high proportion of the Sci-Fi produced, especially on TV and in movies, is formulaic, clichéd. Maybe the writers and directors who produce it are too keenly aware of the loyalty of the particular fanbase associated with a production. I’ve known a few Trekkies in my time, and their concept of what is and is not good are vastly different to mine. Star Trek is a good example. At its best, it is aspirational in a species sense – we are, despite our humble origins, noble and capable of greatness. Episodes where the individual rights of someone different are fought for, for example, or where a genuine challenge from a fundamentally alien species is confronted, are where it is strong. Where it is weak is where it ‘panders to the geek’, where ‘technobabble’ as it is termed, is prevalent, and it founders on details and cliché. Perhaps I should not be too judgemental. It must be hard coming up with good ideas, but I do get the impression that the writers are often lazy.

What really irks me about bad Sci-Fi and fantasy is internal inconsistency. What is clearly not understood by many writers is that, as a viewer, I can be made to suspend my disbelief almost limitlessly, but only as long as there is internal consistency. An internally consistent piece of Sci-Fi is The Matrix. Cunning production and script allow the audience to clearly understand the relative powers of each of the characters, and why they are that way. We see the protagonist go on a journey, gaining in prowess at each step as he learns more of his own nature, until the conclusion shows his final transition that was promised due to his own change – and the fact that he had found love. In contrast, the sequels had none of this internal balance (not to mention that they lacked its sassiness and class). The relative powers of the characters made no sense, and were merely a vehicle for showcasing some breathless but shallow set piece sequences.

Look to Windward is set in the distant future, and concerns the politics and history of The Cuture, an immensely powerful race that spends its time in hedonistic pursuits thanks largely to the near omnipotence of its robotic overlords, the so-called ‘minds’ (one of Bank’s weak points in nomenclature). One shrewd critic has noted that, since the inhabitants of this civilisation suffer no material want, and, to all intents and purposes, are limitless in their biological and technological freedoms, all Culture stories take place at the periphery, i.e. its interaction with other (in this case less well developed) species/races. This is all to the good, as these are where the stories are, but the intrinsic nature of the society described fascinates me utterly. I have discovered there is even a name for it: Post-Scarcity.

Post-Scarcity is a state of existence of a society where material want has effectively been removed. One can imagine such a state of affairs being delivered by technology. Once methods for producing near limitless amounts of power have been found (say, Hydrogen Fusion, Antimatter Reactions, Dyson Shells, etc. My research tells me that the first is the most likely to be a viable proposition, since the basic physics have been well known for decades and it is merely an engineering one, albeit a monumentally difficult one), and once complete control is available over the atomic structure of matter, then all human need will be instantly and harmlessly catered for. For example, a person who was cold and hungry could approach an appropriately ergonomic device and command it to build, atom by atom, a nice warm coat and a fish supper.

These are old ideas and have long since consistently reappeared in many works of Sci-Fi, most famously the ‘replicators’ in Star Trek. What much Sci-Fi fails to comprehend is the awesome effect such post-scarcity capabilities will have on the structures of society itself. In fact, in all Sci-Fi I have encountered, only, so far, The Culture of Mr. Banks has adequately predicted a sensible sounding outcome. I am no doubt wrong in this, as there is much excellent Sci-Fi I must still read, but a lot of books and series fall on to old ideas of human communal structure even the post-scarcity technology is clearly available. Star Trek is an excellent example of this. In the latter series, it is clear that all human need can be catered for simply by the use of what they call ‘warp cores’ and ‘replicators’. And yet society still appears to conform largely to a similar structure to our own, with bureaucracies and economies. There is a species called The Ferengi whose entire existence (shallow and ill thought out) is based around the accumulation of wealth. Wealth for what? Their technology is comparable to that of humanity, so what do they have to spend money on, if everything and anything can be freely constructed atom by atom? More likely it is the Star Trek ethos creating an enemy whose outstanding characteristics the writers saw as a distillation of that which they hated in us, and be damned the inconsistencies. Nothing that a bit of twisted plottery won’t sort out.

The point is, if such post scarcity were to become a reality, fundamental changes to the structure of society would occur. The first thing to go would be money, obviously, since anything that could previously only be bought can now be obtained for free in limitless quantities. The one major exception to this would be property – how would one own a house with no money? I suspect that the transition would be chaotic and probably violent. If post-scarcity were to overnight become a reality, there would be no need for anyone to go to work. Presumably, with atomic control of matter, all maintenance tasks, such as the removal of waste, would occur automatically, and medical care carried out by teeming hoards of nanobots (a trace fanciful, perhaps). Since there would be nobody working, there would be no structure, with no police or regulatory bodies. People would literally roam about aimlessly, breaking in to and claiming whichever property they fancied. What would occur would be an overnight diffusion of the density and concentration of the human populace, until at some point, a natural balance would be found, and an appropriate bureaucratic body, ideally an impartial artificial intelligence, would oversee the fair rationing, and possibly rotational occupation, of property.

So the conditions of the race would move from an initial state of chaos, and most likely violence, to a calm equilibrium of genetically immortal humans with limitless power and only time to fill with hedonistic pleasure. In our current epoch, evil on a societal scale is largely the result of money and religion. The former, having long since become obsolete, would obviously cease to have a negative effect on human affairs. I suspect, too, that religion would die. Religion is an emergent consequence of our tribal nature. Our need to identify with a specific group, plus our instinct for organising and bureaucratising, plus our fear of death, plus our tendency to see causality and intent where there is none, are the things that make religion. Since our tribalism does have a practical base in the sense that we trade with other tribes and are mindful of the economic health of our own, and since such trade and economics would die, so, then, would this first pillar of religion. Since all monolithic bureaucracies exist to fulfil a specific purpose, and all that purpose is removed, there’s the next pillar gone. Once we are genetically immortal, that’s a strike three, and I seriously doubt that our fantasies of intent will be sufficient to maintain religion in anything like its current form. Perhaps a kind of animism will become popular, and, with the abundance of artificially intelligent nanotechnology shrouding our existence, maybe even partially accurate. So, money goes directly, religion by proxy. And there you go. No more evil, aside from the evil that men do individually, as in the psychotic, but if post scarcity can be truly achieved, dealing with the mentally deranged will be small fry in comparison. Look to Windward really is very good.