Futures is delighted this week to be featuring another story by Norman Spinrad, who, as his bio notes, has been publishing novels for 50 years. This week, he takes a look at the options for post-mortem existence in An excerpt from Dying For Dummies (2020). Norman is no stranger to Futures, having appeared in both the Futures 1 and Futures 2 anthologies as well as writing about the possible foibles of Google car, a new ice age and the likelihood of a Brown Revolution. You can catch up with Norman at his blog — if you’re curious about his work, The Quietus hosted a good overview of his bibliography a couple of years back. Here, Norman kindly explains the inspiration behind his latest piece — as ever, you’re better off reading the story first.

Writing An excerpt from Dying For Dummies (2020)

Way back in the 1970s, Dona Sadock and I wrote an article called Psychosomics which was published in Analog Magazine, or call it a paper if you will, as it was about as researched as it could be at the time. We were predicting or trying to create a new science that we called Psychosomics, the science of how the non-material experience of consciousness actually arose from the physical matrix of the brain. We predicted that this would be real known science within a decade or so, but we were wrong, and it still isn’t.

Our extrapolation was that moment-to-moment consciousness (not memory) existed as the interface between the sensorium, moment-to-moment sensory input, and the processing meatware of the brain. As such it had to be a bioelectronic phenomenon, which at the time we supposed was a hologrammatic standing wave pattern.

A decade later at a conference in Tokyo celebrating the American Space Shuttle, Robert Jastrow made fun of the sci-fi notion that protoplasmic humans would ever travel beyond our Solar System — or even very far within it — as fantasy. No, humans would download their consciousnesses into computer matrices, thereby becoming immortal, and travel to the stars as programs in computers.  That, he declared, was real hard science, and he seriously wanted to do it himself  before he died.

A decade or so later, Timothy Leary told me that he planned to be cryogenically frozen upon death, or at least have his brain frozen, and he actually did. At the time, I was sceptical that he or anyone else could ever achieve immortality this way.  So was Tim.  Ever the realist, he admitted that the odds against it were quite long.  But considering the alternatives — being  buried or cremated — why not? he told me. “And after all, you wrote Bug Jack Barron, with its cryogenic Foundation For Human Immortality, now didn’t you?”

Well yes, I did, and I also wrote Deus X, in which downloaded post-mortem consciousnesses continued to exist as entities in something like the Cloud. But there the question was whether they were ‘souls’, which is to say, were these entities actually continuous with that which arose in the protoplasmic meatware or just simulations capable of passing a Turing Test?

If an upload of  your consciousness could  be stored in the Cloud, it could  obviously be backed up ad infinitum. And if it could be downloaded into single clone, it could obviously be downloaded into many.

Would it simply be only memory being uploaded and downloaded or actually consciousness, A.K.A. the soul, as the Catholic Church asks in Deus X.

And if so, which one is ‘you’?

I’ve asked this question but I haven’t tried to answer it because I don’t know how.

At least not yet.

Some day perhaps someone will. But I’m not holding my breath.

Regular Futures author Alex Shvartsman this week presents a cautionary tale in the shape of Grains of wheat, which explores the world of pharmaceuticals. Alex has previously tackled a range of topics in Futures, from advertising to alien invasion and the perils of time travel. His first tale for Futures was Ravages of time, and the story The rumination on what isn’t appeared in the Futures 2 anthology. He also teamed up with Alvaro Zinos-Amaro to write about coffee. You can find out more about what Alex is up to at his website or by following him on Twitter. Here he delves into the backstory for Grains of wheat — as ever you need to read the story before venturing farther.

Writing Grains of wheat

I played chess when I was a kid, and I learned of its supposed origin story early on. It went pretty much the way Rohana describes it: an ancient monarch loved the game so much that he wanted to reward the inventor and magnanimously offered him an opportunity to name his own remuneration.

The inventor asked to be paid in wheat (or rice, depending on the version of the story): a single grain for the first square of the chessboard, two on the second, and so forth. The total would equal 2 to the 63^rd power + 1, which is many times more than our entire planet can produce annually, even with modern agricultural techniques.

The story illustrates how quickly exponential sequences can grow. From very humble beginnings, it takes only a small handful of moves for the numbers to run far beyond what could possibly be manageable. And that makes for a perfect revenge plot.

There’s quite a lot going on in this story for its length: the exponential sequences mathematics, the ethics of investing resources into research for very rare diseases that afflict few people, the pricing of life-saving medicines, the exploration of how much a man might give up to prolong their life. But at its core, it is a basic morality tale of comeuppance.

When writing this story, the main sticking point for me was to figure out how Rohana could execute her plan once it’s revealed to Green, despite his overwhelming resources. Green isn’t the sort of man who’d play by the rules in this situation. What if he tried to reverse engineer one of her pills? What if he was to send mercenaries to capture her, or corporate spies to infiltrate her lab? I spent entirely too much time figuring out exactly how she could do this and win, and even timed the reveal at the one-week point (seventh square) to better control how much time he had left to act. But inserting all of this information into the story would detract from its overall point, would slow the pacing too much and bog it down in minutiae. So I did what one does when writing flash: I sketched instead of drawing. There are hints of Rohana’s plan in her reveal, just enough of them so that the reader would hopefully believe she can pull it off.

A crucial element to the success of any revenge plot story is that the reader must want to root against the bad guy. I took advantage of the first person point-of-view to show how Green thinks and the sort of person he is. If I succeeded in this, then the reader will tolerate the moral ambiguity of Rohana’s actions and root for her to succeed, too.

This week’s Futures story marks the welcome reappearance of Jeff Hecht with his story When last I saw the stars. Jeff is no stranger to Futures — his first story for us, Directed energy, appeared in 2006. His next story, Operation Tesla, appeared in the first Futures anthology and he has since also tackled topics as diverse as quantum physics, Neanderthal genomics, cold fusion, time travel, dark energy and smart living. His story Event horizon appeared in last year’s Futures 2 anthology. Here, Jeff explains what inspried his latest tale — as ever, it is advisable to read the story first.

Writing When last I saw the stars

I discovered astronomy when my father gave me a one-inch refracting telescope when I was 11, but the seeing wasn’t very good in the series of light-polluted eastern US suburbs where we lived. I did not see the Milky Way or the full splendor of the sky until a decade later when I had my own car and could drive to explore wild areas with dark skies. I was awed by the sweep of the Galaxy stretching across the sky.

These days my wife and I spend a week each summer at a lakeside cabin in rural Maine, relaxing, paddling around and watching wildlife. On a clear dark night, I like to lie on the dock looking up at the Milky Way, and to use my binoculars to reveal the sea of stars that blur together to the unaided eye. Last July, I enjoyed one particularly clear, sharp and glorious night.

We returned to our home in the Boston suburbs late in the evening two days later, and I immediately noticed that the city had installed new street lights. They had been talking about replacing the old high-pressure sodium lamps with LED bulbs, and it had seemed like a good idea at the time. I also noticed that the sky was a bit hazy, but was too tired to pay much attention.

Over the next few evenings, I realized something had changed. The new street lights were so bright they created a harsh bluish glare, making my front yard so bright that I could almost read at night. Observing had never been very good in the yard, but the warm, moist summer air scattered so much light from the new street lamps that only a couple of stars were visible in the night sky. A little research confirmed the problem was the strong blue emission from the LEDs, which is scattered much more than the yellowish light from the older lamps, making the night sky brighter and hiding most of the stars.

That’s how the story began. It evolved further as I thought about the wonderful telescope technology that lets us see distant galaxies in amazing clarity and detail — but only shows tiny pieces of the sky at a time. How can we appreciate the Universe as a whole if we can see only a little bit of it at a time? It’s like trying to comprehend the sweep of geological time shown in the strata of the Grand Canyon by looking at a small photograph of a single rock.

With that in mind, I looked backwards and forwards, and let Big Helen and Little Helen tell the story from viewpoints separated by two generations.

This week, Futures gets a fresh historical perspective in the shape of the story Tempus omnia revelat. The tale marks the Futures debut for China-based author Tian Li. Here, she explains what led her to write the story — as always, it’s better to read the story before diving into the blog post.

Writing Tempus omnia revelat

I really enjoy American TV dramas, and I’m always so eager to see the latest episodes that I will watch them before the original English subtitles have been translated into Chinese. Unfortunately, my English is not always up to speed, so I miss a lot of the fun as I can’t understand all of the English dialogue. An otaku friend of mine is a big fan of Japanese cartoons, and he learns Japanese himself so that he can watch the newest cartoons. Watching foreign TV series without translation is a real challenge for fans, especially when the characters speak more than two languages or have strange accents.

If people watched my version of the ‘real-life’ TV show Rome, beamed straight from the historic past, it is likely that all the dialogue would be in extinct ancient languages or problematic dialects, which made me wonder how many people would be able to understand the show without the aid of translation. And if there was a technology that could edit great historical events into dramas or movies (and it’s theoretically possible in quantum physics), would modern audiences really appreciate them? The truths behind historical mysteries, and the appearance and conduct of famous historical figures, might be very different from what we expect based on what we have learned from history. History, after all, has been written, modified and interpreted by a range of recorders, artists, academics — and even axe-grinders.

Such ‘real-life’ dramas might also throw up some ethical issues. The descendants of historical figures might feel moved to prosecute because their ancestors’ privacy has been infringed, and some historical figures might even end up newly condemned for their actions, even though those actions were determined and limited by the time in which they lived.

More tellingly, if we really could watch real-life historical dramas, might we in turn be watched by people from the future? Would they criticize us in the same way that we might criticize ancient people? Would the watchers from the future travel to our era to interact with us? Would our modern-day famous figures become embroiled in prosecutions over privacy infringement and seek financial compensation?

With these questions in mind, I wrote Tempus omnia revelat, a story about real historical documentaries. And I would like to thank my friends who have supported me and encouraged me to write this story.

This month in Nature Physics, Futures wrestles with the problem of artificial intelligence in the shape of the story Daega’s test by Jeremy Szal. When he’s not writing for Futures, Jeremy can be found on the podcast StarShipSofa and on his blog. He kindly took a moment out of his hectic schedule to explain what inspired his latest story — as ever, it’s best to read the tale first before diving into the backstory.

Writing Daega’s test

I’m fascinated with a lot of things, but when it comes to gritty science fiction, two things take centre stage: artificial intelligence and exotic locations. So sitting down at my desk one lazy afternoon during the summer holidays, I decided to combine the two.

Living in Australia, so close to southeast Asia (and seeing a lot of influence from those nations), I’ve visited that region of the world many times. I even stayed in Bangkok for a period of eight weeks. So setting my story in that sector of the globe just came naturally. Kuala Lumpur provided that gritty and engaging aesthetic that I was going for. I’ve always enjoyed the time I’ve spent in the city, so being able to make it the birth-place of artificial intelligence was a real pleasure.

As for the AI angle, the element of self-awareness is a real drive for me. It stems from the god complex, really. God and man, then man and machine. And the lines only start to blur from there. It’s a given that machines would possess a certain degree of humanity, if not more humanity than their creators. It’s not hard to imagine the impact this will have on people — seeing their creations start to mimic and supersede them. Awe, terror and panic. But I don’t imagine it could possibly measure up to the emotions experienced by AIs/machines at seeing this. Rage, bitterness, disappointment, shame, fear, the list goes on. I can’t imagine they’d want to be human, only to be treated like ones. Perhaps it’s a little cynical, but a world in which advanced AI models are hunted down and destroyed came across as far too realistic to me. The Turing test came as a natural answer — albeit a different one that the Malays conjured up themselves. It gave it that extra sprinkle of grittiness that I was shooting for, and I think the result turned out quite nicely.