A New Breed of Space Opera
|
|
|
|
A New Breed of Space Opera |
Space opera, that wonderful genre of rip-roaring adventuring among the stars, was established in the 1920s by E. E. "Doc" Smith, one of the founders of modern science fiction, and this continued during the Golden Age of Science Fiction (the late 1930s and early 40s). Beginning at this time, and on through 1950s and 60s, a more intelligent form of space opera was developed by such greats as Isaac Asimov (the classic Foundation Series, published in book form in the 1950s) and (in the 60s onwards) Frank Herbert (Dune series) in the print media, and for TV by Gene Roddenberry, creator of the original Star Trek in 1966-7. These writers, and their lesser imitators, pretty much set the genre, and it has been faithfully followed ever since. 1970s, 1980s and 90s adaptations include Larry Niven's Ringworld and Known Space universe, Frederik Pohl's Tales of the Heechee, Gregory Benford's The Galactic Center series, and David Brin's Uplift Universe in the print media, George Lucas' Star Wars, and J. Michael Strazinsky's Babylon 5, the very innovative role-playing game Traveller, and the current owners of the Star Trek franchise, along with numerous derivative Star Wars and Star Trek type first person space computer combat games.
Incidentally, the first space combat game with a touch of opera was 
Elite released
in 1984 on the BBC model B by Cambridge maths students David Braben and
Ian Bell. Every space combat game since has imitated Elite
in one way or another
Classic Space Opera is very often rigidly formulaic. It is usually set in the far future where humanity has colonised the galaxy (or in George Lucas' case, a pure fairy tale in another galaxy "a long long time ago"). There is always some sort of faster-than-light hyper-space drive, or hyper-jump or warp drive, which enables a ship to zip around the galaxy in a reasonable time without having to worry about the uncomfortable realities of a relativistic universe. There is at least one galaxy-spanning empire or federation or whatever, or else a number of such empires, perhaps at war with each other. There are (apart from Asimov's Foundation series) a large number of different alien races, many of which are humanoid or at least mammalian and not too dissimilar to human psychology (although there are a few rare exceptions, a being of pure energy, say). Also, many races appear to be at roughly the same tech level. There are plenty of habitable planets, and almost all the action (re civilisation) occurs planetside. There are big battles and big fleets. And despite astonishing technology, human beings are not too dissimilar to their present status.
It doesn't take much to realise that classic space opera is nothing more than the world of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s projected onto a deep space fantasy canvas. The interstellar empires are basically nation states or historical empires of Earth writ large. The space ships are like 20th century ocean-going ships; the different alien races are like different earth nations, religions, and races; the interstellar battles are just exaggerated versions of WW II. (Lucas used WW II footage of fighter planes to get ideas - hence his space craft wheel and bank in a vacuum! He was not the only one - all sci-fi fighter/ship battles have exactly the same problem of not simulating the proper physics of a dogfight in zero G; even Babylon 5 has made mistakes in this department). Rather than being about the future, space opera is about the past.
And therefore it looks for inspiration to the past, to history, not to the future. Frank Herbert's Fremen seem closer to Arabs or Bedouin then a real future tech society. Asimov's crumbling galactic empire is an adaptation of Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire (a point that Asimov readily admitted). Although I once read somewhere that the Star Wars empire is modelled on Mandarin China, it is also clear that George Lucas' Galactic Empire is another one inspired by imperial Rome, with the republic becoming more and more corrupt and divorced from mainstream life (like certain politicians today), and then Caesar enters Rome with his legions.
Of course this entire genre ignores, totally ignores, the astonishing impact ultra tech will have on human society. History does not repeat. The future will be nothing like the past; any more than the Roman Empire say was like Paleolithic Europe. And yet constantly in TV, movies, computer games, and pulp fiction, there is this reliance on the Asimov/Heinlein/Roddenberry/Lucas vintage of SF.
One can also posit, as a transitional stage between Classic and Transhuman Space Opera, a genre that could be termed Proto-Transhumanism. Here the impact of technology on society has been considered, yet it remains quintessential space opera. Heinlein's Time Enough For Love would be an early example that immediately springs to mind. Also his Assignment in Eternity - where in the short stories Gulf and Lost Legacy, Ambrose Bierce (he of The Devils Dictionary) belongs to a secret order of superhumans who use a mcguffin to boost all their senses by a factor of five. And Methuselah's Children which introduces Lazarus Long, the fictional character that has inspired almost every Immortalist since the 1950's.
Proto-Transhumanist SF is becoming increasingly popular as modern
writers absorb revolutionary concepts in the development and ideas
regarding artificial intelligence, nanotech, biotech, and
transhumanism. Works like Bruce Stirling's Schizmatrix, Alastair
Reynolds Revelation Space,
Vernor Vinge's Fire Upon
the Deep, David Zindell's Neverness saga, and and
of course Iain M. Bank's Culture
novels, all present a universe in which powerful transhuman themes
reoccur, but which in some way or other avoid or do not follow through
to its logical conclusions the implications of those themes. Thus
Banks, Vinge, and Zindell all present images of an ancient but
essentially static galactic culture, in which godlike AIs play a
greater or lesser role in the lives of humans, but in which humans
themselves do not go through the sort of radical transformations one
would expect given widespread availability of ultratech. Vinge uses the
dramatic device of zones of thought
by suggesting that
singularity events can only occur in regions of space distant from the
main disc of the galaxy, and he freely admits this was done as a way of
avoiding the implications of the technological
Singularity (a concept he himself presented to the world). Other
writers like Stirling, Reynolds, Walter Jon Williams (Voice Of
The Whirlwind), Peter Hamilton (Night's Dawn trilogy),
Michael Swanwick (Vacuum Flowers) and (I have yet to read
his books so I cannot be sure) Ken Macleod set their canvases closer to
the present era (in what would be the Interplanetary Age of the Orion's
Arm timeline) and do not have AI, but instead derived and
modified humans and generally a single ascended posthuman clade. Anders
Sandberg's innovative on-line roleplaying scenario Big Ideas, Grand Vision
also seems to fall into this category. Again, the result is the same,
at least as far as Schizmatrix, Voice Of The
Whirlwind, Vacuum Flowers, Night's Dawn,
and Revelation Space goes, (but not Big Ideas,
Grand Vision) one senses a feeling of decadence, as if the
transhuman process ascended so far, and then inexplicably stopped
short. This same feeling of decadence and faint decay also
characterises William Gibson's otherwise superb Neuromancer
trilogy, in which the original ascended AI fractures into voodoo gods
that in turn disintegrate into smaller shards. Paul J. McAuley's Fairyland
is another near-future story (cyberpunk not space opera!) in which the
original technological peak curiously flattens.
Ultimately, the problem Proto-Transhumanist SF faces is the difficulty of writing about a universe in which human beings (and anthropomorphic aliens!) are no longer the dominant or predominant intelligence. How can the baseline human mind envisage that which is beyond it? This is the brick wall Vinge ran up against, and which forced him to create his "zones of thought" universe.
Currently, a more authentic form of transhumanist science fiction
seems to be developing; one that does not stop short and pull back from
the brink the way that Proto-Transhumanist SF does. Authentic
Transhumanist SF is so new and so cutting edge that you won't even find
it in pure form in print (apart from speculative
non-fiction); you have to look on the Net. This is near-future hard science ultratech SF, which is
based on Vernor Vinge's concept of the Singularity and assumes
astonishing technological progress in the coming century; in fact, in
the next few years. Advocates of this genre include David Pulver (GURPs Biotech, and Transhuman Space) and Anders Sandberg
(who's Death of
the Dragons and Rise of
the Phoenix are more current and realistically gritty than Big
Ideas, Grand Vision). Transhumanist SF is the exact anti-thesis
of Classical Space Opera; it is set in the almost modern world (between
20 and a 100 years time, rather than the distant future. In this solar
system. There are no aliens. And technology does not involve force
fields, matter teleportation, or FTL spaceships, but human beings have
radically changed, becoming "posthuman" or transhuman"
Transhuman SF, with its rather optimistically rapid technological gradient, is not free from implausibility. But even if we double the time-frame to a more reasonable 200 rather than 50 to 100 years from now, that still means a lot will happen in a very short time, perhaps more than in all of human history up till now.
The idea behind Orion's Arm is to balance the deep space interstellar setting of Classic and Proto-Transhumanist Space Opera with the radical transformation of the human (and other) species of True Transhumanism. This presents a challenge, to create what has never been done before - a Hard Science Interstellar Transhuman Space Opera, combining the deep-space adventures and interstellar grandeur of classic space opera, and the developments and insights of proto-transhumanist SF writers like Banks, Vinge, and Zindell, with the scientific ultra-realism and astonishing possibilities of full-on transhumanism.
And here the question arises: if we have posthumans in 2100 or 2200, then what will we have in 10,000?
The answer suggested here (and it is only one possible answer among an infinite number of options) is God-like AIs, traversable wormholes, relativistic (close to the speed of light but not exceeding it) space ships, a trillion different races and cultures the vast majority of whom have never set foot on a planetary surface, and constant destabilising ascensions and transcensions as individuals and societies breach singularity barriers, creating memetic and technological ripples and shock waves for those left behind to deal with.
The reason Vinge set up his zones of thought is that he assumed any transhuman ascension will automatically spell the end of sub-singularity sentients. Personally I find this assumption dubious in the extreme. No evolution removes the preceding life-forms. In Precambrian Earth the appearance of eukaryotes did not render prokaryotes obsolete - in fact it gave them even more opportunities to flourish! In the same way the emergence of transhuman and transapient species will only enhance, not degrade, the options of ordinary sapients. In the interstellar ecology of the far future, near-baseline humans (i.e. beings more or less like you and I) will have not been assimilated, absorbed, or technoraptured up in the way optimistic transhumanists assume. Unless of course they deliberately choose to be. But there are countless other options available. Physical and mental augmentations. The option of changing one's physical characteristics, race, gender, even species (albeit not without some bodily and psychological trauma mind you!). Virtual and real adventures. Lifestyles and occupations we cannot even dream of, or indulgent luxury in a society where no-one need go cold or hungry.
That does not mean a perfect world, even if it is a world more perfect then any possible today. Like any animal, humanity longs to be free, longs to be its own master, and in the Orion's Arm universe this is no longer possible. Because there is a hierarchy of superbrights and posthumans and hyperturings that are in charge. And what they feel is best does not always translate into what is actually best (or does it?). A more benevolent future universe than Orwell or Huxley envisaged, yet not quite as nice as the Culture of Iain M. Banks.
It is a civilization at once utopian and dystopian, where ordinary (or "baseline") humans have long been superseded and yet still have their niche within the galactic ecology, here is the setting. Where hopes and dreams, love and hate, heroism and cowardice, sweet achievement and bitter disappointment, are as real as they are in today's world. Where the frontier is ever expanding, and the opportunity for adventure is endless. And where for every dream fulfilled there are a thousand dreams that are broken.
