Insistence of Vision Read online

  Table of Contents

  Praise for David Brin:

  Dedication

  Introduction

  The Heresy of Science Fiction

  WHAT WE MAY BECOME

  Insistence of Vision

  Transition Generation

  Chrysalis

  Stones of Significance

  News From 2035:

  HOW WE’LL ENDURE

  The Logs

  The Tumbledowns of Cleopatra Abyss

  Eloquent Elepents Pine Away for the Moon’s Crystal Forests

  WHEN WE OVERCOME

  Mars Opposition

  A Professor at Harvard

  I Could’ve Done Better

  Paris Conquers All

  A Retrospective by Jules Verne

  WHO WE’LL MEET

  Fortitude

  An Ever-Reddening Glow

  The Diplomacy Guild

  The Other Side of the Hill

  WHERE WE WILL GO

  Temptation

  Avalon Probes

  Six-Word Tales

  Reality Check

  WHY WE’LL PERSEVERE

  Waging War with Reality

  Afterword & Book Notes

  Acknowledgments

  Publication History

  About the Author

  Praise for David Brin:

  “David Brin excels at the essential craft of the page turning, which is to devise an elegantly knotted plot that yields a richly variegated succession of high-impact adventures undergone by an array of believably heroic characters.”

  – Entertainment Weekly

  “David Brin is notable for unquenchable optimism, focusing on the ability of humanity to overcome adversity.”

  – Los Angeles Times Book Review

  “Extrapolation of the highest and most subtle order.”

  – Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine

  “Brin writes brilliantly conceived, intellectually supercharged novels.”

  – The Sacramento Bee

  “He is a natural storyteller.”

  – Orange County Register

  “Brin is not only prolific, but thoughtful and highly original.”

  – Los Angeles Daily News

  INSISTENCE

  OF

  VISION

  a short story collection

  DAVID

  BRIN

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons living or dead, is entirely coincidental and beyond the intent of either the author or the publisher.

  The Story Plant

  Studio Digital CT, LLC

  P.O. Box 4331

  Stamford, CT 06907

  Copyright © 2016 by David Brin

  Cover art by Patrick Farley

  Jacket design by Barbara Aronica Buck

  Copyedited by Cheryl Brigham

  Story Plant Hardcover ISBN-13 978-1-61188-220-9

  Story Plant Paperback ISBN-13: 978-1-61188-221-6

  Fiction Studio Books E-book ISBN-13: 978-1-943486-82-3

  Visit our website at www.TheStoryPlant.com

  Visit David Brin’s website at www.DavidBrin.com

  All rights reserved, which includes the right to reproduce this book or portions thereof in any form whatsoever, except as provided by US Copyright Law. For information, address The Story Plant.

  First Story Plant Printing: March 2016

  Printed in The United States of America

  0 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  Dedication

  For Vint, Elon, Freeman, Sergey, and Penn – world-changers needing just one name...

  ...also Mark Anderson, Kevin Kelly, Peter Diamandis, and John Mauldin, who do almost as much with two.

  Also by David Brin

  Brightness Reef

  Earth

  Existence

  Infinity’s Shore

  The Postman

  Sundiver

  Startide Rising

  The Uplift War

  The River of Time

  Otherness

  Introduction

  ᚖ

  By Vernor Vinge

  I first met David Brin in 1980. At that time, Sundiver was already published. David was finishing up his Ph.D. at UC San Diego. (My years at UCSD did not overlap with his, but David was continuing the grand tradition of science fiction and fantasy writers who were at that university: Gregory Benford, Kim Stanley Robinson, Nancy Holder, David Brin, Vernor Vinge, Suzette Haden Elgin...I leave it to others to determine if this marks UCSD as a special source of SFF writers.)

  The ‘70s and ‘80s were good years for science fiction in San Diego, with lots of writers and fans and frequent parties. I hadn’t yet read Sundiver, but David pressed the typescript draft of a new novel into my hands. I politely accepted; I knew that Sundiver was a worthwhile book, so this new manuscript looked like a good story. There was only one problem. I hate manuscripts in manuscript form. I mean I hate to read them in that form. Maybe it’s because that’s what my own, incomplete works look like. Or maybe it’s just that typescript manuscripts don’t encourage a friendly reader/story relationship. The pages get lost (and sometimes are not even numbered). The homogeneous avalanche of double-spaced text conveys a promise of endless boredom. (But I admit, things are worse if there are lots of markups, or faint ink. And handwritten manuscripts occupy a still lower circle of hell.)

  So there I was with this highly legible, but regrettably typescript, novel. It did have a cool title, The Tides of Kithrup. But I was very busy and six weeks went by and I hadn’t had a chance to read it. David gave me a polite telephone call, asking if I had had a chance to look at his manuscript. “Well, no,” I replied. “I’m sorry! Things have been so busy around here. Look, if you need it back right away, I can send it –” David short-circuited this evasion by saying, “Why don’t you keep it another couple of weeks? Even if you can’t read more than a part of it, I’d like to hear your comments.”

  Hmm. Okay, a geas had now been laid upon me. But it was a gracious geas that admitted of an easy observance. I could read fifty pages, give some honest comment, and be free once more. Of course, that was fifty pages of typescript manuscript by someone whose work I’d never read before. But hey, I could put up with that for an hour or so, right?

  I dutifully set aside an hour and began slogging through the neatly double-spaced typescript… And after a few pages, magic happened. See, the pages became transparent. There was a world to play in. There was an adventure that accelerated me on past page 50, through the whole novel. You probably have read this novel yourself. It was published under the title Startide Rising. It won the Hugo and the Nebula for best science-fiction novel of the year. David went on to complete the Uplift series and later the new Uplift books. Along the way there were many other awards and award nominations. The novels have become a secure part of the SF canon of the twentieth century.

  So no one can say that I can’t recognize quality – at least if it’s hard SF and nova bright. And I doubt if I will ever again look askance at typescript SF from David Brin

  I later learned that David shows his draft work to a number of people. I show my drafts to four or five friends who won’t bruise my ego too severely. David shows his to dozens of others. One of his favorite sayings is that “criticism is the most effective antidote for error.” He surely lives by that in his writing. In fact, I think it takes a special clarity of mind to avoid the contending of “too many cooks” syndrome. I admire someone who can sustain that much criticism, and who also has such openness with his newborn ideas.

  ᚖ

  In the years since UCSD, David has ha
d various day jobs, including university prof and astronautics consultant. Fortunately for us, his readers, he has not let that get in the way of his writing. We have many Brin novels to enjoy, across a range of lengths and topics. He once told me his strategy for What to Write Next. He liked to write a long, serious book (perhaps Earth?) and then something lighthearted and short and fun (such as The Practice Effect). I’m not sure that David is still following this strategy, since his most recent novel (as of September, 2002), Kiln People, is essentially both types of book at the same time.

  David Brin’s published writing career began with a very successful novel, Sundiver. Initially, I thought of him solely as a novelist. The success of his novels – and his novel series – may obscure the fact that all this time he has also been writing short fiction. And the amazing thing is that David Brin often does even better with short fiction than with novels! You’ll get to see a few of his short stories in this volume. Others are available in Brin’s published collections, The River of Time and Otherness. David’s background in hard science and hard SF shows in these stories, but often in indirect ways, in setting the stage for seriously weird and sometimes disturbing points of view. Some of the stories are fairly transparent, such as the funny and logical and optimistic “Giving Plague.” Others, such as “Thor Meets Captain America,” are bizarre and effective fantasies. And then there is “Detritus Affected,” which builds on simple words to create a reality that is disturbing and mysterious and percolates for days in your mind, until you may finally invent a context and consistency.

  ᚖ

  I have a friend who is a world-class inventor and engineer, about the closest thing you can get in the real world to the stuff of John W. Campbell’s “scientist/engineer hero.” This fellow likes science fiction very much, but recently he made the off-hand assertion that, contrary to what we SF weenies would like to believe, virtually nothing in science fiction has presaged the contemplation of similar ideas within the scientific and engineering communities. Fighting talk, that. His claim would make an interesting topic for a convention panel, where I think my friend could make a good cause for his position. At the same time, it’s certainly true that science fiction has caught the imagination of generations of young people and drawn many of them into the sciences. Beyond that, a slightly more imperial claim is reasonable: Many SF writers are voracious skimmers of current science research. Their stories may cross specialty boundaries and act as tripwires to engage the attention of the real doers of the world. And since good stories involve emotions and social context as well as technical ideas, SF writers can have a greater impact than most other commentators.

  Over the last twenty years, David Brin has certainly been this kind of inspirer. But in one way, David has gone beyond most of his fellows. He’s written many essays about wider issues. Some are in this collection. The bright imagination that we see in his fiction carries over into his essays.

  There is a subgenre of Brinnian essay writing that consists of moral criticism of fiction and drama. (See, for instance, the piece about romanticism and fantasy in this book.) This kind of essay may be a surprise to some people. “It’s just a story!” they may say of the work that David is criticizing. It also takes a certain courage for a writer to undertake such moral criticism. I write fiction, and I know that sometimes the drama of a story may take it in directions that violate my vision of moral truth. Sometimes I can guide it back, but sometimes I surrender and say to myself, “It’s just a fun story.” (And at least once, I later ran into a fan who praised me because he found what I disliked to be morally positive!) In any case, I find such criticism to be extremely interesting. Such essays give an edge to issues that usually seem far removed from everyday concerns.

  In much of his writing, David Brin looks at hard problems, the kind of problems that turn other writers to dark realism or blindly sentimental optimism. But David takes those problems, turns them sideways, and tries to see some realistic way that happy solutions might be found. The most striking and relevant example of this is his nonfiction book, The Transparent Society: Nowadays, we are confronted with the choice between freedom and safety. Technology has made appalling breaches of privacy possible, and the arguments on both sides of this state of affairs have become steadily more strident. Then David Brin comes along and says, “Well, what if we lost privacy, but the loss was symmetric?”

  Maybe in the past this was an empty question, since surveillance technology favored asymmetry (and favored the elites). Nowadays however, it is quite possible that technology can support the “ordinary people” in watching the powerful…as well as each other. The resulting loss of privacy is a very scary thing, but there is an SF’nal tradition for considering it (for instance, the many stories from the ‘40s and ‘50s about widespread mental telepathy). The first years of such transparency would be very bumpy, but afterwards the world might not be that different – except that vice laws might be a little less obnoxious, and the worst of the bad guys might be more constrained. I would probably not buy into such a world – except that it may be by far the happiest outcome of our current dilemma.

  At a more abstract level, David’s novel, Kiln People, takes on the problem of duplicate beings. Here I don’t mean biological clones, but near-perfect copies, even unto memories. This is the stuff of many SF stories (Damon Knight’s The People Maker, William F. Temple’s The Four Sided Triangle…). The concept has almost endless possibilities for abuse and tyranny and tragedy. In the past, stories about such duplication have been close to fantasy. More recently, with the possibility of AI and downloads, the idea has moved more into the realm of hard science fiction. We are nearing the time when the most basic “metaphysical” questions of identity and consciousness may have concrete and practical meaning. In Kiln People, Brin imagines a (marvelously non-computational) technology to achieve duplication. The resulting world is partly familiar and partly very strange. But – in the end – much of it seems more congenial than ours. I wrote a publicity quote for the novel. Normally it’s hard to write blurbs that meet the exacting standards of publicists. Writing the quote for Kiln People was easy: Leaving aside the transcendental issues of the ending, Kiln People is simply the deepest light-hearted SF novel that I’d ever read.

  There are very few issues that escape David’s advocatorial interest. Many of his ideas are in the area of sociobiology, how we may harness the beasts within to be engines for good. Often his ideas are couched in flamboyant and colorful terms. (John W. Campbell, Jr. would understand!) Simply put, David is a brilliant busybody, forever enlisting those around him in projects that he sees will benefit everyone. Be aware of this. Be prepared to bail out with a polite “No on this one, David.” But also be prepared to listen. Because almost always his ideas will contain sidewise thinking that just might make the world a better place.

  The Heresy of Science Fiction

  ᚖ

  What is Science Fiction?

  Arguments fill books, resonating across hotel bars, internet discussion groups, and academic conferences. It matters for many reasons, not least because this genre encompasses just about everything that’s not limited to the mundane here and now, or a primly defined past.

  Up till the early 18th century, when Daniel Defoe, Samuel Richardson and Henry Fielding fed a growing appetite for “realism” in fiction, nearly all previous storytelling contained elements of the fantastic – from tribal campfire-legends to Gilgamesh and the Odyssey, to Dante and Swift. So why did literature change, about three centuries ago?

  All through the long preceding period, life and death were capricious on a daily basis, but society seemed relatively changeless from one generation to the next – ruled by chiefs or kings or noble families, defined by the same traditions and stiff social orders. This era of personal danger amid social stability stretched on for millennium after millennium – during which epics overflowed with surreal, earth-shaking events and the awe-inspiring antics of demigods.

  Then a shift happened. Peopl
es’ physical lives became more predictable. Increasingly, from about 1700 onward, you and your children had a chance of living out your natural spans. But civilization itself started quaking and twisting with change. Your daughter would likely survive childbirth. But her worldviews and behavior might veer in shocking directions. Your son’s choice of profession could be puzzling or even bewildering. Your neighbors might even begin questioning the king or the gods – not just in fables but in real life!

  Amid this shift, public tastes in literature moved away from bold what-if images of heroes challenging heaven, toward close-in obsessions with realistic characters who seemed almost-like-you, in settings only a little more dramatic or dangerous than the place where you lived.

  Having made that observation - and having pondered it for years - I’m still not sure what to conclude. Is there a total sum of instability that humans can bear, and a minimum they need? When uncertainty shifted a bit, from personal upheavals to the social and national scene, did that alter what we wanted from our legends?

  ᚖ

  Into this period of transformation, science fiction was born. The true grandchild of Homer, Murasaki, Shelley and Swift, yet denounced as a bastard from the start, by those who proclaimed (ignoring 6000 years of human history) that fiction should always be myopic, close, realistic and timidly omphaloskeptic, a trend that accelerated when “literature” became a field for high-brow academic dons. The possibility of social, technological and human change could be admitted... even explored a little... but the consensus on a thousand university campuses was consistent and two-fold.

  Proper explorations of how change impacts human beings should:

  1 - deal with the immediate near-term, and

  2 - treat change as a loathsome thing.

  This obsession is as unfair to fantasy as it is to science fiction. Indeed, as I said, nearly all pre-1700s storytelling incorporated fantastic imagery and other-worldly powers. Both fantasy and science fiction carry on that tradition, shrugging off the disdain and constraining prescriptions of parochial mavens.