Quote:
Originally Posted by whswhs
For example, the first story about brain/computer interfacing that I read, back in the mid-sixties, was Anderson's "Kings Who Die." This wasn't a favorable story about upgrading, though it wasn't a favorable story about the unimproved human state, either; it could best be described as tragic.
An interesting correlation might be made of the increased prevalence of transhumanist themes in science fiction and the move away from taking psionics seriously as a scientific hypothesis, which was another mode of envisioning "advanced" mentalities.
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Good point! I had not thought about that, but it fits both the time line and the philosophical themes, and the underlying commonality with past themes.
Here's an area of overlap: 'transcendence'. This shows up in transhuman speculation, esp. when talking about some versions of the Vingean Singularity. But it's an old trope in SF.
For ex, in 'Doc' Smith's
Lensman stories, the transhuman Arisians arose naturally, and it's specifically said that they did so by natural evolution. Smith mentions that the Arisians passed through 'the ages of stone, bronze, iron, steel, and electricity', and on through the atomic age and the psionic age and on to transcendence. It's treated as a natural progression, intelligent races passing up the ladder like a child growing toward maturity.
This was a very, very common way of portraying evolution in SF in the first half of the 20C, but it's
not Darwinism.
The interesting thing is that the transhumanists retain much of that emotional thinking while asserting Darwinism intellectually. In Banks' Culture stories, there is 'sublimation'. In Brin's second
Uplift trilogy, there are the Transcendentals and the Embrace of Tides.
In 2001, of course, we have the Firstborn, who may be the epitome of this SFnal concept. They transcended by their own intentional efforts, right out of transhumanist speculation, first cyborgization, then later transferring the consciousness to purely machine bodies, then into what amount to beings of spirit.
There was a GURPS article (3e based) years ago about tech levels beyond TL16 (which was the old top of the canon scale) that culminated IIRC at TL20 and 'transcendence' to beings of pure thought.
Now the ironic thing is that there's no
scientific reason to think that transcendence is even a meaningful concept. There's no evidence
against it, but none for, either. There's not even any positive reason to think there
might be such a thing, if you're thinking mechanistically. Yet the idea runs all through transhumanist writings and speculation and fiction.
(Of course, mechanistic Darwinism can't explain consciousness yet, either.)
Which brings us back to the Time Machine. Wells appears to have looked into his own philosophy and reached a somewhat similar conclusion, or at least he found it believable enough to construct a story around it that became one of the seminal classics of SF.
(While at the same time leaving lots of doubt about possible interpretations, the way Wells wrote the story leaves
many possible alternative, more hopeful hypotheses that are completely consistent with the canon. Wells really was one of the best SF writers ever, in terms of his talent as a writer.)