Collected Essays (10 page)

To a lesser extent than with space, we have some slight power over time: each day you live through brings you one day further into the future, and going to sleep is a way of making the future come “sooner.” And one of the appeals of marijuana is that it can time seem to pass slower, making the future come “later.” And of course, a session of intensely focused recollection can make the past briefly seem alive. (Thus Proust, thus psychoanalysis.)

As with power over space, we must question whether power over time is really enough to wish for. Eventually, both of these powers simply boil down to having a special sort of “car” which enables you to jump here and there, checking out weirder and weirder scenes.

Changing size scale
. Without having to actually travel through space or time, one could see entirely new vistas simply by shrinking to the size of a microbe. Alternatively, one might try growing to the size of a galaxy.

One problem with getting very big is that you might accidentally crush the Earth, and have nothing to come back to. I prefer the idea of shrinking. What need in me does this speak to? On a sexual level, the notion of getting very small is probably related to an Oedipal desire to return to the peaceful and ultra-sexual environment of the womb. On a social level, getting small connotes the idea of being so low-profile as to be unhassled by the brutal machineries of law and fame. Economically speaking, being small suggests independence—if I were the size of a thumb, my food bills would be miniscule. A single can of beer would be the equivalent of a full keg!

I would like to be able to get as small as I liked, whenever I wanted to. But would it be enough? Would I be happy then? Probably not. After a week or so, it would get as old as anything else.

Travel to other universes
. In a way, all three of the powers just mentioned are special instances of being able to jump into a different universe. Most of what was said about space travel applies here. Of course, travel to alternate universes can also be taken in a very broad sense which includes travel into higher-dimensional spaces and the like.

One’s place in the world seems to be fixed by such factors as income and ability—in another world, things might be so much more pleasant. Rich people and poor people live in different worlds—on a crude level, winning a state lottery can act as a ticket to a different universe. A dose of a psychedelic drug can, of course, accomplish an equally dramatic (but temporary) transport—this is one reason why people take them.

The drug issue raises the fact that the universe is not entirely objective. To a large extent, the way your world seems is conditioned by the way you feel about it. Keep in mind that I think the driving force behind all of the SF travel-wishes is a desire to find a place/time/size/universe in which to be happy. Rather than asking for a
different
world, one might equally well ask for a way to enjoy
this
world.

Psychic powers

Travel is only the first category of SF wishes. Psychic power is the second of the four main categories mentioned above. What might we take to be the main types of SF psychic-power wishes? Let’s try these: telepathy, and telekinesis.

Telepathy
. Supposedly, God can see everything at once—God is omniscient. Telepathy is a type of omniscience, particularly if we imagine it as extended to include clairvoyance. It would definitely be pleasant to know everything—to be plugged totally into the cosmos as a whole. I
guess
it would be pleasant—actually, it might get boring. The omniscient gods of our myths and religions do seem a bit restless.

On a more personal level, I think of telepathy as standing for a situation where you are in perfect accord and communion with someone else. This often happens when one is alone with a good friend or a loved one. These moments are, I would hazard, as close to real happiness as one ever gets. The desire for telepathy is basically a desire for love and under-standing.

Of course, what one often sees in SF telepathy stories is the hero or heroine being overwhelmed by the inputs from everyone else’s minds. You want to understand the people you love—the others you’d just as soon not know about.

As with the case of space-travel, telepathy is a faculty that we already, to some extent, have. By talking or by writing, I am able to get someone to share my state of mind; by listening or by reading, I can learn to under-stand others. Maybe we already have enough telepathy as it is.

Telekinesis
. Not only is God omniscient, S/He is omnipotent. Given a really strong telekinetic (also known as psychokinetic or PK) ability, you would be, in effect, able to control anything going on in the world.

This power appeals to me very little. I don’t want to control the world—I just want to enjoy it. I don’t need to run it, it’s doing a decent job by itself. Of course, a person with less self-doubt might find PK very attractive.

As with telepathy, I might also point out that we already have PK in a limited form. I stare fixedly at the cigarettes on my desk. I concentrate. Moments later a lit cigarette is in my mouth! (Does the fact that, by sheer force of will, I caused my material hand to pick up the cigarettes and light one make my feat less surprising?)

There is one special sort of telekinesis that I do find very appealing. This is the ability to levitate. All my life I have dreamed of flying—as far as I’m concerned, the ability to fly is right up there with the ability to shrink.

But what is so special about flying? Flying involves being high off the ground, and most everyone likes the metaphor of being high—in the sense of euphoria, elation, and freedom from worry. Rising above the mundane. Freud used to claim that flying dreams have some connection with sex, and I suppose that a good act of sexual intercourse does feel something like flying. And of course, flying would provide some of the same benefits that teleportation would, as discussed under (1.1) above.

Self change

Under this vaguely titled category, I include: immortality, intelligence increase, and shape shifting, or the ability to change the shape of one’s body.

Immortality
. This is a key wish. As soon as we are born, we are presented with what I have elsewhere called the fundamental koan: “Hi, you’re alive now, isn’t it nice? Someday it will all stop and you will be dead. What are you going to do about it?” The fear of death is up there with the need for love as one of the really basic human drives.

One problem with immortality might be that you would at some point get bored. I’ve occasionally been so depressed that I’ve thought to myself, “Death is the only thing that makes life bearable,” meaning that if I thought I was going to have to be here forever, I just wouldn’t be able to stand it. (Though if you couldn’t die, and you couldn’t stand it, what could you do? Not a bad premise for an SF story…)

There are various sorts of immortality, short of the real thing, that we do comfort ourselves with. Let me discuss them, as I’ve thought about this a lot.

Genetic immortality
. If you have children, then your DNA code will still be around, even after you die. Later descendants may look and/or act like you—which means that the pattern you call “me” will still be, to some extent, present in the world.

Artistic immortality
. A human being consists (at least) of hardware (= the body) plus software (= the ideas). In creating a work of art, you code up some of your software. A person reading one of your books is something like a computer running a program that you wrote. As long as the person is looking at your book and thinking along the lines which the book suggests, then that person is, in some degree, a simulation of you, the author.

Social immortality
. Even if you have no children and leave no works of art, you will still, in the course of your life, have contributed in various ways to the society in which you found yourself. Perhaps you were a teacher, and you affected some students. Perhaps you sold clothes, and you influenced what people wore. Even if you had no direct influences, you were, to some extent, a product of the society that you lived in, and so long as this society continues to exist you still have a slight kind of immortality in that the society will continue to produce people somewhat like you.

Racial immortality
. This is similar to (3.1.1) and (3.1.3); similar to (3.1.1) if one takes cousins into account, similar to (3.1.3) if one views the human race as a single large society.

Spacetime immortality
. This perception of immortality hinges on the viewpoint that
time is not really passing
. Past-present-future all co-exist in a single four dimensional “block universe.” Today (May 14, 1984) will always exist, outside of time, and thus I will always exist as well.

Mathematical immortality
. It is abstractly possible to imagine coding my body and brain up by a very large array of numbers. This is analogous to the way in which extremely complex computer programs are embodied in machine-language patterns of zeroes and ones. The numerical description of me may in fact be infinite—no matter. The main thing is that this numerical coding can be represented as a mathematical set. And the Platonic school of the foundations of mathematics teaches that mathematical sets exist independently of the physical world. Therefore, long after I am dead, I will still have a permanent existence as a mathematical possibility.

Mystical immortality
. At the most profound level, I do not feel myself to be just my body, or just my mind. I feel, at this deepest level, that I am simply a part of the One, a facet of the Absolute. The disappearance of my body will mean only that the ever-changing One has changed its form a bit.

Religious immortality
. Who knows—maybe we do have souls that God will take care of. This belief is in some ways like the idea of mathematical immortality. When the good thief asked Jesus to “Remember me,” perhaps he meant it more literally than is usually realized.

So that's enough about immorality. On to some other kinds of self change.

Intelligence increase
. The idea of having a vastly increased intelligence is certainly attractive—particularly to people who already take pleasure in the life of the mind. One difficulty in writing SF about vastly increased intelligence is that it is hard for us to imagine—or to write about—what that would involve.

What does the wish for more intelligence really mean? It is somehow akin to the wish to be much bigger in size—a wish to include more of the universe in one’s scope of comprehension.

Pushed to the maximum, a desire for increased intelligence is a desire omniscience or perhaps a wish to know “the Secret of Life.” What would it be like to know the Secret of Life? Somehow I have the image of an orgasm that goes on and on, a never-ending torrent of blinding enlightenment. It sounds nice, but we do need contrasts to be able to perceive.

Shape shifting
. One form of this wish is analogous to the intellectual’s wish for more intelligence. An athletically-inclined person might naturally wish to be a world-class athlete; and a physically attractive person might wish to be a Hollywood star. In each case, it’s a matter of wanting to be better at what one already does well. We might also include here a compassionate person’s desire to be saintly, and an artist’s desire to be truly great.

Why should we want to be the
best
? The drive for excellence seems to be wired in way down there—it’s good for the race, within limits.

The kind of shape shifting I really had in mind here, though, was things like
turning into a dog
. You could really get a lot of slack if you could totally change your appearance at will. For me, this one is right up there with flying and shrinking: the ability to change my body at will. It would be so interesting to see the world through a dog’s eyes, or through another kind of person’s eyes.

What need is this one coming from? Wanting a diversity of experience, I guess. A desire to break out of the personality-mold inflicted on me by my specific body’s appearance and habits.

Aliens

By aliens, I mean two kinds of beings: robots, andsaucer aliens.

Robots
. Intelligent robots will be very exciting—if we’re ever able to evolve them. One aspect is that if we can bring intelligent life into being, then we will better understand what we ourselves are like. Another angle that appeals to me is that, given intelligent robots, it would be possible to program one to be just like me, so that I would then have yet another type of immortality to access.

In some ways, we think of robots as being like the ideal sorts of people that don’t really exist. The notion of a happy, obedient, intelligent slave, for instance. Given human nature, no such human slave is possible. But still we hope to build a machine like this. Such hopes are, no doubt, doomed for disappointment. A machine smart enough to act human will be unlikely to settle for being a slave.

Another thing that makes robots attractive is the notion that they might always be rational. People are so rarely rational—but why is this? Not because we wouldn’t
like
to be rational. The real reason is that the world is so complex, one’s data are so slight, and so many decisions are required. Full rationality is, in a formal sense, impossible for us—and it will, I fear, be impossible for the robots as well.

There’s another SF tradition of writing about computer brains; here instead of intelligent robots, the vision is of a very large computer brain which is seemingly very wise and just. It is as if we humans might be hoping to build the God-the-Father whom we fear no longer exists. In most such stories the god-computer turns out to be evil, either like a cruel dictatorship or like a blandly uncaring bureaucracy. But this leads us out of the domain of things that writers
wish for
.