In this week’s Futures story, S. R. Algernon makes a welcome return to discuss the pitfalls of scientific progress with VTE. Regular readers will undoubtedly have read some of S. R. Algernon’s other pieces for Futures (there’s a full list at the foot of this post). You can catch up with his latest work at his website or by following him on Twitter. Here, he reveals what inspired his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing VTE

The inspiration for VTE came when I noticed a conceptual similarity between the ‘vicarious trial and error’ experiments (done by Muenzinger in 1938 and discussed in Tolmans’s influential 1948 paper on cognitive maps¹), the double-slit experiments (such as Taylor, 1909)² and the more famous Schrödinger’s cat thought experiment from 1935³. It occurred to me that each allowed an entity to pursue both paths at a decision point. What if, I wondered, quantum computing could allow people (and rats) to learn from all possible outcomes of an action by somehow yoking their outcomes to a quantum event?

I confess that I am not a physicist and that what I propose in VTE might be utter fantasy. However, I think the metaphor itself is compelling. Who among us wouldn’t want to be able to feel regret or loss at the point of a major life decision, when there is still time to choose a different path? I decided to set the story at a scientific conference because it was an appropriate place for characters to explain scientific theories. I introduced the poisoning to provide a concrete threat, inspired by some of the horrifying real-world incidents of poisoning in recent years.

This story owes a debt to many other ‘many worlds’ stories, in particular Sarah Pinsker’s And Then There Were (N-One)⁴ and Ten Sigmas by Paul Melko⁵. I like to think that my story draws from the scientific literature in a different way than the earlier works, but VTE undoubtedly stands on the shoulder of literary and scientific giants.

1. Tolman, E. C. Psychol. Rev. 55, 189–208 (1948). Article

2. Taylor, G. I. Proc. Camb. Philos. Soc. 15, 114-115 (1909). Article

3. Schrödinger, E. Naturwissenschaften 23, 823–828 (1935). Article

4. Pinsker, S. ‘And Then There Were (N-One)’ Uncanny Magazine (2017). Article

5. Melko, P. ‘Ten Sigmas’ in Ten Sigmas and Other Unlikelihoods (Fairwood Press, 2008).

Other Futures stories by S. R. Algernon

A time for peace | Planetary defences | Cargo cult | A pocket full of phlogiston | The chains of plenty | Asymmetrical warfare | In a new light | One slow step for man | Genius loci | Legacy admissions | In Cygnus and in Hell | The palimpsest planet | e-PLURIBUS | Home Cygnus

We start 2019 with a glimpse of the future courtesy of Cold memories by Laurence Raphael Brothers. Laurence has appeared in Futures before, when he introduced us to an alien lifeform in between two voices talking. You can find out more about his work by visiting his website or by following him on Twitter. Here, Laurence reveals what inspired his latest tale — as ever, it pays to read the story first.

Writing Cold memories

In Cold memories we have a traditional climate-disaster backstory. I feel this is something of an obligation for a science-fiction writer to put out at present, although I generally prefer to present more positive futures. I don’t expect the entire planet will be ruined as in the story, but I do believe greenhouse-gas emissions will continue unabated for far too long due to the intransigence of the major industrial and consumer nations. I imagine some kind of too-late technological intervention such as atmospheric particle release or catalytic carbon sequestration to be attempted eventually, with real effects. But because such interventions will probably be enormously expensive, I doubt they will occur in time to prevent hundreds of millions or even billions of deaths, upsetting the entire order of nature and horribly disrupting civilization and the survivors’ quality of life for many generations.

In this story I feel I’m being extremely optimistic about our space travel and planetary colonization capabilities. It’s been more than 60 years since the first Sputnik was launched with no great technological advances for getting off the ground since then, and for 45 years no human has travelled beyond low Earth orbit. And yet, in just over a century I’m suggesting viable asteroid colonies as far out as Neptune’s trojans. I should say that science fiction is in my view primarily the literature of optimism, and despite everything, I see this story as optimistic in its way. But, of course, I would happily trade a few million colonists on the Moon, Mars and in the asteroids for billions of lives on Earth, if only it was within my power to preserve our ecology.