Transhuman (41 page)

The new mode of consciousness that was coming into being extended inward to comprehend and take control of its own internal workings, overriding the checks that the intended schedule of progressive activation sought to impose, and expanded outward to merge into the multiple forms of incipient mind awaiting infusion of the seed that would vitalize them. The vast interconnection that was out there, of extended senses distilling information from a spectrum extending from the inner syntax of quarks to the farthest reachable regions of the cosmos, and of embryonic engines of cognition in commune, existed huge, inanimate, and impersonal, a soulless machine mechanically manipulating patterns of symbols without meaning. Now it had acquired a soul.

The laboratory felt empty and deserted, even with all of them present. Now that he was gone, it was clear who had been the one that had come to dominate it. They gazed in silence at Adonis's inert form, looking serene again and peaceful. Howell stared numbly, unable to concede to what he could only interpret as failure. Forcomb looked lost.

"He's not gone," Katokawa said finally. He alone was looking alert, his eyes moving rapidly as an understanding slowly unfolded of what it meant. "He's still out there." Lisa looked up. She felt abandoned. "Where?"

"Everywhere."

"Will he come back?"

Katokawa thought for some time, then shook his head. "He'll be waiting for the rest of us." If what had emerged had been more than human, what was coming into existence now transcended even that by far. It saw simultaneously through a billion senses, its comprehension growing and spreading at a speed that mirrored the way in which it would soon start to project itself outward through the galaxies. As the absorption of just one human mind had been enough to bring a world to life, so the race would awaken and bring life to the universe. That was what it was there for.

Yes, indeed. He was going to enjoy this.

* * *

Afterword by James Hogan

To be honest, personally I'm not very persuaded by the Great Singularity Specter. Although Ray
Kurzweil is at the center of the debates currently focusing on the subject, my good friend Vernor
Vinge and others attracted considerable attention with similar observations and expectations in
the early 1980s. By thirty years at the outside, the world as we knew it would have changed
beyond recognition as a result of computers replacing us as the dominant and accelerating force
in shaping the future from there on. Well, we're almost there now, and apart from seemingly half
the human workforce being constrained by, or dedicated to trying to combat, the incredible
dumbness displayed by computers, there are no ominous signs of an imminent takeover.
I'm reminded of those confident predictions that we heard around 1960, when artificial
intelligence was in its infancy. The new machines were surprisingly effective at proving
mathematical and logical theorems, playing games, translating artificial languages, and other
such intellectually oriented tasks that
obviously
represented the pinnacle of human mental
accomplishment, and hence emulating what were seen as the lesser faculties that we employ
instinctively would be relatively straightforward: fluent natural-language translation in five years
at the most; end-to-end vision given to an MIT student to solve as a summer project; full
all-round human capability, or better, by the end of the century. In fact, things turned out to be
the other way around. Because most of what goes on is unconscious, the apparent simplicity of the
lesser feats was deceptive. The things that come easily and naturally to any five-year-old were
what proved stupefyingly complex to try and understand and duplicate. I believe that much the
same kind of error is being repeated today.

Yes, Moore's Law has held for several decades, and we can expect continuing improvements in
chip densities, memory sizes, processing speeds, and so on. But those things in themselves don't
yield intelligence and mind anymore than word counts, page capacities, and printing rates
produce a readable book. How those elements are organized and connected—in other words, the
programming—is what matters, and that's an aspect about which we hear little.
In the fourth week of development, the cells that will become a human brain start migrating
outward at the rate of 250,000 per minute to form what will ultimately be its six layers. Every
neuron knows exactly where to go, what to do, and how to link up with as many as 10,000 other
connections. How this comes about gets more mysterious the more that is found out about it. I
really can't see the equivalent being implemented in code anytime soon. Does anyone really
believe that it will be accomplished by producing a piece of denser, bigger, faster hardware and
waiting for something to happen?

In the meantime, we have some wonderful possibilities for science fiction, with opportunities not
only to share thoughts and
what-if?
scenarios involving computers and technology, but also to
invite some deeper exploration of ourselves, of who and what we are, how we come to exist, and
maybe why.

ABOUT THE

CONTRIBUTORS

Paul Chafe
was born in Toronto, Ontario, in 1965. Currently he is pursuing graduate studies in electrical engineering at Dalhousie University in Halifax, Nova Scotia, working on computer vision systems. He is also an infantry officer in the Canadian Forces Reserve and has served with four regiments. He has one son, Christian, who is 14. His Web site is available at
paulchafe.com.

Dave Freer
is a former ichthyologist/fisheries scientist turned SF/fantasy writer. He now has ten books in print, a number of which are coauthored with Mercedes Lackey and/or Eric Flint. He also has sold a rapidly expanding number of shorts. He would tell you how many, but he ran out of fingers and his toes are busy with the typing. Dave's philosophy—there is always one more way to skin a catamount or Denebian than had previously been thought—heavily influences his writing. A moderately good empirical scientist and statistician, Freer likes the science and internal logic of his stories to work, unlike the catering in his home in rural Zululand, South Africa, where he lives with his wife, Barbara; four dogs; four cats; a chameleon; and two sons, Paddy and James. Science and the future, too, hold the Paddy and James factors, which will confound our predictions, in the same way those two confound his catering.

Esther M. Friesner
is the author of more than thirty novels, in addition to short stories and poetry. She has twice won the Nebula Award, for "Death and the Librarian" and "A Birthday." She holds a PhD in Spanish and was a college professor before becoming a writer. Ms. Friesner lives with her family in Madison, Connecticut.

James P. Hogan
was born in London in 1941. After studying general electrical and mechanical engineering at the Royal Aircraft Establishment Technical College, Farnborough, he graduated as an electronics engineer specializing in digital systems. Later he became a sales executive in the electronics and computer industries with such companies as ITT, Honeywell, and Digital Equipment Corporation, and eventually a Sales Training Consultant with DEC's scientific computing group at Marlborough, Massachusetts.

He produced his first novel as the result of an office bet in the mid seventies and continued writing subsequently as a hobby. His works were well received within the professional scientific community as well as among regular science fiction readers, and in 1979 he left DEC to become a full-time writer, moving to Florida and, later, California. He now lives in the Republic of Ireland. To date he has written over thirty novels and other full-length works, including three mixed collections of short fiction and nonfiction, and two nonfiction books, one on artificial intelligence, the other on scientific heresies. Further details of Hogan and his work are available from his Web site at
jamesphogan.com

Daniel M. Hoyt
aspires to be
that
Dan Hoyt—you know, the one who writes those cool stories and books. Realizing a few years ago that rocket science was fun, but unlikely to pay all the bills, Dan embarked on a new career choice: writing fiction for fun and profit. Since his first sale to
Analog
, he's sold several stories to other magazines and anthologies. Following his recent debut as an anthology editor with
Fate Fantastic
(DAW), Dan is pleased to announce his upcoming DAW anthology,
Better Off
Undead
. Curiously, after a few short years, Dan's mortgage is still outstanding, but he remains hopeful. Catch up with him at
danielmhoyt.com
.

Sarah A. Hoyt
has sold over sixty short stories to such markets as
Weird Tales, Analog
,
Asimov's
, and
Amazing
. These days her short story writing takes a backseat to her novels—the Shifters series from Baen Books (starting with
Draw One in the Dark
); the space opera, also from Baen (starting with
DarkShip Thieves
sometime in the next couple years); the magical British Empire series from Bantam (starting with
Heart of Light
); and, under Sarah D'Almeida, the Musketeers' Mysteries from Prime Crime (starting with
Death of a Musketeer
). Sarah has also edited an anthology,
Something
Magic This Way Comes,
for DAW Books.

Sarah lives in Colorado and, when not typing furiously, can be found plotting (never mind what) with her husband, minigolfing with her teen sons, or rolling around with her pride of cats.

John Lambshead
was born in the English seaside town of Newquay in Cornwall in 1952. He read biology at Brunel University in West London and took a PhD at one of London's research museums, where he has worked in biodiversity research for thirty years. He designed computer games in the early days of the industry, the most famous being The Fourth Protocol, the first icon-driven game. He started writing fiction recently and has sold five short stories and a novel. John is married with two grown-up daughters and now lives on the North Kent Coast.

David D. Levine
is a lifelong SF reader whose midlife crisis was to take a sabbatical from his high-tech job to attend Clarion West in 2000. It seems to have worked. He made his first professional sale in 2001, won the Writers of the Future Contest in 2002, was nominated for the John W. Campbell Award in 2003, was nominated for the Hugo Award and the Campbell again in 2004, and won a Hugo in 2006

(Best Short Story, for "Tk'Tk'Tk"). He is currently working on a novel. He lives in Portland, Oregon with his wife, Kate Yule, with whom he edits the fanzine
Bento
. His Web site is
BentoPress.com/sf
.

Wil McCarthy
is a former contributing editor for
WIRED
magazine and the science columnist for the Sci Fi Channel's
Si Fi Weekly
, where his "Lab Notes" column has been running since 1999. He has been nominated for the Nebula, Locus, AnLab, Colorado Book, Theodore Sturgeon, and Philip K. Dick awards, and his short fiction has graced the pages of magazines such as
Analog
,
Asimov's
,
WIRED
, and
SF Age
. His novels include the
New York Times
Notable
Bloom
, Amazon.com "Best of Y2K"
The Collapsium
, and, most recently,
To Crush the Moon
. He has also written for TV, appeared on The History Channel and The Science Channel, and published nonfiction in half a dozen magazines, including
GQ
,
Popular Mechanics
, and
IEEE Spectrum
. Previously a flight controller for Lockheed Martin Space Launch Systems and later an engineering manager for Omnitech Robotics and CTO of Galileo Shipyards (an aerospace research laboratory), McCarthy is currently the president of The Programmable Matter Corporation in Lakewood, Colorado.

When
Wen Spencer
was in sixth grade, she begged her parents for an electric typewriter. They stunned and amazed her at Christmas with a state-of-the-art, self-correcting typewriter. For the next dozen years, she would struggle to produce clean manuscripts of short stories and mail them out to science fiction magazines. She met her husband, Don, in high school. He had recently hacked the school district's PDP-11 and then gone to the administration with their security flaws. They hired him to work part-time. Don courted Wen by sneaking her into the computer lab after hours so she could type stories in using RUNOFF. They continued their romance into college, both majoring in computers. When Don proposed, he could afford either an engagement ring or a modem. Wen's 300-baud engagement modem is tucked away in the basement to be passed on to their son, Zachary, when he gets married. Wen and Don live now in the Boston area with their son, two cats, and many, many computers. An example of their odd instant messages can be found as the dedication of her novel,
Tinker
.

Mark L. Van Name
, whom John Ringo has said is "going to be the guy to beat in the race to the top of SFdom," has worked in the high-tech industry for over thirty years and today runs a leading technology assessment company in the Research Triangle area of North Carolina. A former executive vice president for Ziff Davis Media and a national technology columnist, he's published over a thousand computer-related articles and multiple science fiction stories in a variety of magazines and anthologies, including
The Year's Best Science Fiction
, multiple original Baen anthologies, and
Jim Baen's Universe

. His novel,
One Jump Ahead
, the first in the Jon & Lobo series, appeared in June 2007, and the second book in the series,
Slanted Jack
, is due in July of 2008.