The Darkside of Evolution

Transcript

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Evolution is probably the most useful lie that science fiction ever inherited. And I don't mean lie like it's fake, obviously evolution is real. I mean the story we keep telling ourselves about it, the story where evolution is this staircase where time automatically turns a primitive into advanced, where the future is a cleaner, smarter version of the present. A lot of sci-fi is obsessed with that staircase. Because evolution is kind of like the perfect narrative loophole. It lets a writer change everything and still sound like they're being responsible about it. You want humans that have no eyes because they live underground, evolution. You want a society that communicates through color and scent and not language, evolution. You want something that used to be human but isn't anymore, evolution. And what becomes interesting the more science fiction you read is that science fiction tends to treat evolution less like biology and more like a myth generator. It's the excuse that makes the impossible feel inevitable. But it's not always like that. Sometimes you have the hopeful myth, you know, evolution as progress and as transcendence, as the species growing up, you know, the idea of the body becoming less of a cage, the mind becoming wider, and then as we evolve, the universe starts to feel like a place that can be understood and even improved. But then sometimes it's the complete opposite. Evolution as indifference, evolution as pressure, evolution as the slow discovery that what survives is not necessarily what deserves to survive. Beauty doesn't matter, morality doesn't matter, and even intelligence might not matter if something else does the job better. What I really like about when science fiction explores concepts of evolution is that it gets at the fact that evolution is not really a moral story at all. It's a process, and science fiction can use evolution to ask questions about which of our assumptions about, let's say, what makes us human are permanent and which are just temporary advantages. And this is why science fiction that deals with evolution can be kind of scary sometimes, because it forces us to take humanity off of the pedestal, and it's not that humans are necessarily bad, it's that maybe humanity is a face, and that is either humbling or terrifying depending on who you ask. But to me it is kind of freaky the thought that humanity might be evolved beyond humanity. And then another way science fiction uses evolution is that evolution is a way that science fiction writers can make aliens feel alien. These aliens present in the way they are because biologically they evolved on a completely different planet. You know, aliens in science fiction are really just like lines of life that solved reality in a completely different direction. You know, they'll have different senses, different instincts, uh, completely different social structures, different relationships to violence, to cooperation, to selfhood. Evolution in science fiction is one of my favorite topics, so this video is going to be a compilation of some of my other videos focusing on books and stories that deal with evolution in science fiction in all of its beautiful and horrifying forms. If you've been following this channel for a while, some of these videos you may have seen, some of them you may have not seen. Let's get into it. It's basically a gorgeous illustrated encyclopedia of the inventions and discoveries that built the world we're standing in right now. From engineering fundamentals to the weird little breakthroughs people forget or even breakthroughs. And the presentation is the reason I'm talking about it. The illustrations are this wild blend of engineering drawings and medieval art vibes. It's premium, heavy, matte art paper, hardcover, the whole thing feels like this incredible artifact. I've been flipping through it like a survival guide for if the world ever becomes a little too much like Area X. If the lights do go out and the infrastructure collapses, what do we actually need to know to rebuild? And what knowledge would we lose first? So if you want to check it out, the link is in the description. Use my promo code QINTIN if you're looking for a gift for a smart friend or honestly just a gift for yourself. This one hits. The technical term for modern humans is Homo sapien sapien. We are the current iteration of a genus going back two million years. There were, however, obviously many species of humans who did not go on, who for whatever reason could not adapt to their environments well enough to carry on their DNA. Examples include Homo Neanderthalensis, Homo erectus, and Homo Florcianus. Peter Watts, in his novel Blind Sight, merely adds an additional species to that list. They evolved in a different way. The wrong way. This particular species of humans lacked the ability to synthesize the protein Protocatarin Y, which other species of humans produced naturally. Their brains and bodies were different as well. They were smarter, stronger, and faster than other humans. And in earlier eras of humanity, when myth and legend were still being formed, they preyed upon us in the night. Ancient humanity was only able to drive them to extinction when they discovered that the creatures had an aversion to right angles. This trait had developed naturally through some fluke of genetics. It was seemingly neutral at first, as right angles do not form very often in nature. But once this fact was revealed to humanity, they drove them back into the darkness, seemingly forever, until many eons later, when science brought them back. In the age of space exploration, humans needed to find a way to be able to survive the necessary conditions for long-term hibernation in space. For this reason, they resurrected the vampires, though they did not repair the gene which gave them their aversion to right angles, the crucifix glitch. It is mentioned that they could have, if they wanted to. They extracted the traits which gave them the potential for long-term hibernation and gave it to certain humans who would travel in deep space. Blindsight follows the crew of the spacecraft Theseus, all of which are human hybrids except one, their leader, Saresti, who was a vampire. The crew understood that if he so chose he could prey upon them at any time. This created tension. They knew that the psychology of vampires had to be different from their own, and the back and forth of whether or not humanity can trust the resurrected vampires definitely adds to the uneasy feeling of the book. Vampires had to be sociopaths. They're too much like their own prey. A lot of taxonomists don't even consider them a subspecies, you know that? Never diverged far enough for reproductive isolation, so maybe they're more syndrome than race. Just a bunch of obligate cannibals with a consistent set of deformities. And how does that make if the only thing you can eat is your own kind, empathy is gonna be the first thing that goes. Psychopathy is no disorder in those shoes, eh? Just a survival strategy, but they still make our skin crawl, so we chain them up. You think we should have repaired the crucifix glitch? Everyone knew why we hadn't. Only a fool would resurrect a monster without safeguards in place. Vampires like Sarasty had to constantly take anti-Ecclideans, which kept them from short-circuiting in the presence of right angles. Sarasty also hides a lot, and he's only ever really seen when he needs to be seen. The other crew members of Theseus can't tell if this is because he knows that he makes them nervous, or because the vampire doesn't fully trust himself around them. Either way, it's somewhat unnerving when also added to the fact that Saresti has the tendency to seemingly appear out of nowhere. The actual reason Sarasty hides likely goes back to primitive instinct. In the early days of mankind, when his kind stalked us in the night, they did it from the shadows. He hid and waited because it was his nature to hide and wait, and that was the nature of all the vampires they had resurrected. It wasn't just Sarasty. They all hid from us, even when they had the upper hand. They always stayed just the other side of myth. It started pretty much the same way it did for anything else. Vampires were far from the first to learn the virtues of energy conservation. Shrews and hummingbirds, saddled with tiny bodies and overclocked metabolic engines, would have starved to death overnight if not for the torpor that overtook them at sundown. Comatose elephant seals lurked breathless at the bottom of the sea, rousing only for passing prey or redline lactate levels. Bears and chipmunks cut costs by sleeping away the impoverished winter months, and longfish, Devonian black belts in the art of estavation could curl up and die for years, waiting for the rains. With vampires, it was little different. It wasn't shortness of breath or metabolic overdrive or some blanket of snow that locked the pantry every winter. The problem wasn't so much a lack of prey as a difference from it. Vampires were such a recent split from the ancestral baseline that the reproductive rates hadn't diverged. This was no woodland variety lynx hair dynamic, where prey outnumbered predators a hundred to one. Vampires fed on things that bred barely faster than they did. They would have wiped out their own food supply in no time if they hadn't learned how to ease off on the throttle. By the time they went extinct, they'd learned to shut down for decades. It made two kinds of sense. It not only slashed their metabolic needs while prey bred itself back to harvestable levels, it gave us time to forget that we were prey. We were so smart by the Pleistocene, smart enough for easy skepticism. If you haven't seen any night stalking demons in all your years on the savannah, why would you believe some senile campfire ramblings passed down by your mother's mother? It was murder on our ancestors. Even if those same enemy genes co-opted now served us so well when we left the sun 50,000 years later. But it was almost heartening, I guess, to think that maybe Saresti felt the tug of other genes, some aversion to prolonged visibility shaped by generations of natural selection. Maybe he spent every moment in our company fighting voices that urged him to hide. Hide. Let them forget. I really enjoy the interpretation of vampires in this book. Typically, vampires are depicted in the vein of Bram Stoker and have supernatural elements to them. I appreciate Watts' science fiction explanation for vampires because for me that makes it creepier. Also, I find the description of earlier humanity living in a world where vampires would sleep for decades only to be reawakened after humans had forgotten to be truly creepy. The lore Watts sets up surrounding vampires and the history of their genetics is extremely compelling, and I honestly wish there was more of it in the book. But the mere fact that a vampire is on the crew of Theseus helps to elevate the other horror elements of this book. The crew of Theseus itself are the first crewed mission sent to learn more about the alien race which had scanned the earth suddenly and vanished years ago. The ominous atmosphere set up by this book is extremely impressive, and that's due to the combination of the tension between Ceresti and the crew, and due to their mysterious interactions with the alien vessel, which speaks to them using a human voice. Now, just in case you missed it, earlier I put out this video on the blind site where I go deeper into the main theme of the book: The Necessity of Consciousness. If you like these kinds of videos on science fiction books, check out my channel and make sure you like and subscribe for more Quinn's ideas. The Xenogenesis Trilogy, aka The Lilith's Brood Trilogy, is a series of science fiction books written by one of the greatest science fiction authors of all time, Octavia E. Butler. Now, to even talk about this book series a little bit, I'm gonna have to give some minor spoilers, so if you don't want to know anything about the Xenogenesis trilogy, probably don't watch this video. This series has so many intriguing ideas. Essentially, through nuclear bombs, humanity ends up destroying itself, rendering most of the world to be utterly uninhabitable. A race of aliens known as the Owankali managed to save some humans, and they put them in stasis aboard their giant biological spaceship, which is not quite animal, not quite plant, and not quite asleep, not quite conscious. These aliens are able to alter things about the humans. They make them resistant to diseases, they make it so they no longer have cancer. The ones they'd rescued from Earth would now live extremely long lives, and for most of their lives, they would look young. As the Owenkali healed the rescued humans and stasis, they repaired the earth, making it once again inhabitable for life. So all of this seems good. The Owencali seem benevolent. This all seems like some great act of cosmic altruism. But of course, it's not. The Owenkali aren't doing this out of altruism. They have a very specific reason for doing what they're doing. And I'll explain why. Life perpetuates itself. Biologically speaking, the goal of life is to spread its DNA, to multiply. Now we've all seen the classic sci-fi horror movie Alien, where the xenomorph lays its eggs inside of a host, and the chestburster comes out and it grows into a full-fledged alien, and that's how the creature perpetuates itself. That's not exactly what's going on here, but it is about the perpetuation of DNA. The Oenkali themselves would call it trade. And to help you understand, I have to tell you something about the Oankali and their nature. So naturally, there are three Oenkali sexes. There are male, there are female, and there are Uloi. The Uloi have the ability to store and alter the DNA of others. What the Oankali have done continuously throughout the eons of their existence is merge with different species, and in the process, that specific species would be forever changed, and so would the Oankali, and they would forever be one, and this is the fate they intended for humanity as well. So, in a sense, humanity would no longer exist, for their children would be Owenkali. So this book series follows the last surviving humans as they come to terms with the fact that they will likely be the last humans, as they see humans at least. So this book has a lot of really interesting themes and ideas. Of course, it brings up the question, what even is a human? But it's also about oppression and ostracization and being different and being feared for those differences. It's about humanity's tendency to hold on to archaic things and resist progress for fear of change. So the aliens seek to trade with humanity, and in the process, humanity would be forever changed. But this series also acknowledges that in doing this, the Owen Kali have taken agency away from humanity, and that in and of itself is a terrible thing. Yes, they saved humanity, meaning they kept them from dying, but they also enslaved them and took away their sense of being in control of their own fate and of their own destiny. And to clarify what I mean, I have to talk about another slight spoiler. The Oankali have removed humanity's ability to have children on their own through male to female contact. The only way that humans can actually produce offspring is by using Uloi to mate, and the Oankali determine who gets pregnant and when. Now, of course, there's plenty of humans that don't want to mate with Uloi, but if they choose not to, they're condemned to live out the entirety of their long lives with no children, which some of them are okay with, a lot of them aren't. So this series is one of the most intriguing and weirdest series that I've read in a long time, and I say weird in the best way possible because I love weird stories. I really enjoyed the themes of how do we rebuild society and avoid the mistakes of the past. I always enjoy themes like that in books. And I also love the concept of biological technology in science fiction. The alien vessel and the way it functions, I found to be particularly interesting. And of course, the nature of the Uloi and their forever-changing existence, and their existence in relation to the biological technology that they possess, I also found to be very interesting. Biological technology is a concept that's really intriguing to me, and it's actually at the center of my upcoming new graphic novel, which I'm not ready to talk about yet, but I've always loved the concept, and I love the fact that it's at the center of this trilogy. Another interesting thing about this series is yes, aliens did save the humans. Yes, they did fix the earth, repair the damage that we had done to the earth and to ourselves. But also there is this level of condescension on the aliens' part, whereas they kind of look down on humanity and they kind of think they could never survive on their own. Well, maybe that's true, but to take away the free will of the human species is essentially to destroy the human species. Now, it is mentioned that the reason these aliens chose to save humans specifically was because there were certain characteristics in humanity that they found very attractive, essentially. But the curious thing about this is in doing what they're doing in quote-unquote trading with humanity, merging with humanity, they may be destroying the very thing that drew them to humanity in the first place. Now, that being said, there is a more solid practical reason that these aliens sought out humanity specifically, but I'm not gonna completely spoil that for you. Unlike the last book I talked about on this channel, The Killing Star, you totally can get this book series as an e-book if you want, it's readily available. So Octavia E. Butler is just fantastic, and I definitely plan on covering more of her books in the future. The Xenogenesis trilogy is extremely thought-provoking. It's extremely strange, but also grounded in real-world ideas. It's deep and thoughtful, but also an absolute page turner. Keep in mind that this video will get into some spoilers for the series, so if you haven't read the series, maybe don't watch this. Now, in this series, the last remnants of humanity are saved by a race of alien beings after the earth is left uninhabitable after a nuclear war. The first book in the series, Don, follows the last humans as they awaken aboard the Owenkali vessel and prepare to return to the repaired earth. The second book in the series, Adulthood Rites, continues the story as humanity and Oenkali attempt to coexist together on a changed earth that resembles the one from before, but has key differences in some plant and animal life. On Earth, humans live in various colonies. Some accept the presence of the Owenkali, many do not. By the opening of adulthood rites, about 30 years have passed since the end of Dawn. Earth is home to humans, Oenkali, and Oankali constructs, the next generation of both species. Constructs were either born to a human mother or an Oenkali mother. Oankali born would appear more as the aliens themselves do, and gradually become more human. Human born would first appear more human and gradually become more Oenkali. At some point in their Lives, these child constructs would reach metamorphosis and meet each other somewhere in the middle, whether they are human-born or Owencali-born. The second book in the series shifts focus to the Oenkali construct, Akeen, the son of Lilith, the main protagonist of the first novel. His human father had been a man named Joseph. Akeen also had two biological Oenkali parents. Akeen looks more human than most human-born constructs, however. Full Oenkali were covered in sensory tentacles, which constantly moved as they responded to the stimuli of their environment. Individual Oankali had tentacle placement on varying parts of their bodies. They had no eyes and no ears. If they wanted to, they could retract their sensory tentacles so close to their bodies that they appear almost smooth, with lumps where tentacles should be. Owencali constructs had mixtures of varying degrees of human and oancali features. The humans saved from Earth after humanity's war were all still physically young due to the extension of their lifespans, but they had been stripped of their ability to reproduce on their own. The only children being born on Earth were Oancali constructs, constructed by the Uloy, the species' third sex. Many humans on Earth were resentful of the fact that they had been denied the right to have fully human children. The ability for humans to be intimate with each other was something else that was stripped away. After humans had made it through an Uloy, they became repulsed by normal human-to-human contact. It had been painfully hard for him when he discovered that his entry into the family meant he could not touch Lilith. This was something Akin did not understand. Human beings liked to touch one another, they needed to, but once they made it through an Uloy, they could not mate with each other in the human way, could not even stroke and handle one another in the human way. Akeen did not understand why they needed this, but he knew they did, knew it frustrated and embittered them when they could not. The children of humanity and the Owen Kali would live long lives, they would be resistant to disease and poison, they would possess elevated intelligence. They also wouldn't be anything that humans living today would consider actually human. This was the price of the continued survival of humanity. This was the cost of evolution. But the price goes further than a change in the appearance and the genetics of humans. The earth itself would be changed. The Owenkali had already destroyed most of the leftover ruins of Earth, intending to encourage humans to look to the future rather than the past. As the books go on, it becomes clear why this was the case. The Owenkali didn't want humanity to continue to hold on to a dream of something that would never again be. In truth, the humans have every reason to mistrust and dislike the Oankali. The Owenkali were not malicious, but they also never considered humanity's own agency. The Oankali also continued to conceal extremely important information from humanity. Humans are under the impression that one day the Oankali will leave Earth, that one day they might have a chance to regain independence if they can find a way to reproduce. But in reality, this was not possible. The earth would not survive the events to come. When the Oenkali finally did depart from the Earth, they would leave nothing behind. How would she have reacted if he told her all he knew? That it was not only the descendants of humans and Oenkali who would eventually travel through space in newly mature ships, it was also much of the substance of the earth. And what was left behind would be less than the corpse of a world. It would be small, cold, and as lifeless as the moon. Maturing Shakeshak left nothing useful behind. They had to be worlds in themselves for as long as it took the constructs in each one to mature as a species and find another partner species to trade with. The salvaged world would finally die, yet, in another way, it would live on as single-celled animals lived on after dividing. Oenkali's spaceships were called Shakeshak. The ships were living and somewhat conscious. Males were smaller. The human survivors in the first novel, Dawn, had been kept on a Shakeshak. It was not clear how many of these the Oenkali had. There were maturing Shakeshak on Earth. It was they who would eventually absorb the resources of the earth and become the foundation of the interconnected living community of Oankali constructs. Even if humanity was still able to continue, the earth would no longer be able to sustain life after the Oenkali left it. This fact was concealed from most humans, likely because of the despair that it would have instilled in them if this fact was widely known. Akeen at some point considers telling this fact to Tate, the first human awakened for the mission to Earth by Lilith in the first book Dawn, but he doesn't go through with it because he realizes that if she handled the information poorly, things could go really bad for him. Akeen sympathizes with the humans, for he is both human and Owenkali himself. He believes that the humans need their own version of the Oenkali Akjai. The Akjai are the Owenkali who remain in space. They will not change. They would not merge with the humans. If the merge between humans and Owenkali should fail, the Akjai would continue. Humans didn't have this option. Akeen saw this as wrong. The Oankali did not agree, but they accepted this. I want to make a place for them, he said. I know what will happen to Earth, but there are other worlds. We could change the second one, or the fourth one, make one of them more like Earth. A few of us could do it. I've heard that there is nothing living on either world. The Oancali would not give humans who chose to live on Mars machines. They would have to build any machine they wanted themselves. Those who chose to go would be altered so that they could once again give birth to fully human children on their own, with no help from the Uloi. To the Oenkali, what Akeen was doing in facilitating the terraforming of Mars was a terrible thing. They are sure that the humans will eventually destroy themselves. They accepted it, but they would not go out of their way to help. To them, it was akin to killing them. Why didn't the Oenkali cause this? Why didn't they offer us Mars years ago? They would never offer you Mars. I offer you Mars. Why? Because I'm part of you. Some might view the situation which takes place at the end of adulthood rights, as the humans on Mars choosing stagnation over progress. I can see how some would view it this way, but I think this is at odds with how the character Akeen sees the situation. This isn't about shying away from progress, but about not wanting to trade agency and fundamental selfhood for comfort, safety, or pleasure. Yes, the Owen Kali had helped the human race, but something was inarguably taken from them as well. This was the cost of evolution, and it was a price too high for some. If you have not read the Xenogenesis trilogy by Octavia Butler, I highly recommend you do. Octavia Butler is one of the most captivating science fiction authors. So I wanted to talk to you guys a little bit about a science fiction book that I read at the beginning of this year, Children of Time. Now I really do think that in the last 10 years or so, we really have entered a new golden age of science fiction. Now you've got James S. A. Corey with the Expanse series, you've got Six and Low's Three Body Problems series being originally published in 2008, but then republished in English in 2014. And then you've got Children of Time, which was published in 2015. And then honestly, a lot more. I mean The Martian by Andy Weir was one of my favorites. But moving on from that, this book is very, very good and reading it. It instantly became another modern favorite of mine. Now, this book is about a lot. It's about consciousness, it's about what is the self, it's about evolution, it's about social issues, it's about the struggle for the survival of humanity, it's about the hubris of humanity, it's about war, it's about cruelty. This book is about so much that I can't really discuss it all in one video. But I do want to talk about some specific aspects of the book that I really, really liked. So keep in mind for those of you that have not read the book, there will be some spoilers in this video. So this book starts off at a point in mankind's history where we have the ability to terraform other worlds. Now, not everybody on Earth is okay with this, some people feel like it's playing God, some people don't, but there is ongoing conflict. Now you have a scientist named Kern who is leading this project, and she intends to release a barrel of monkeys onto this newly terraformed planet, along with a virus that will speed up their evolutionary process. From the beginning, it's clear that Kern wants to become a god, and she literally thinks in the first chapter, this is the future. This is where mankind takes its next great step. This is where we become gods. So she intends to wait it out in sort of a cryogenic situation until the monkeys have evolved to the level where they're humanoid and intelligent, and then she'll go down to that world, and she would be embraced by these humanoid monkeys as a god. Now, I won't spoil every detail of this, but of course the plan goes horribly wrong, as it's pretty clear it's gonna go from the beginning. Adrian Tchaikovsky does nothing to indicate that this is gonna go well. You pretty much know from the beginning, and the monkeys in the barrel end up perishing. But the virus itself does get down to this newly terraformed world, which has all sorts of other earth animals on it. And that's where Portia the Spider comes in. So this book is essentially about a man-made virus increasing the speed of the evolution of spiders. And they slowly become sentient, slowly build a civilization, and slowly start communicating with Kern, who for the majority of the book believes these to be her monkeys. And Kern herself has her own situation going where she's melded with the computer system inside of the shuttle that she's been hibernating in. So the line between Kern's mind and the mind of whatever the ship's computer has become have blurred a lot, and she's basically a lunatic. Now, over the hundreds and hundreds of years that Kern's hibernating while this spider civilization is building, humanity has fallen into a state of significant decline to where the civilization has been nearly eradicated. The last remnants of humanity are on a generational ship and it's not going very well for them. And it's interesting because you get to see the rise and decline of the culture and the society on this generational ship as various characters go in and out of hibernation decades at a time, often. So at one point in time things might be stable and peaceful, and at some other time a dictator might have taken over the entire ship and like enslaved everyone. And so this first book constantly flips between what's up with the last remnants of humanity and what's going on with this building spider civilization. And as the book goes on and on, you're realizing that where this is leading to is that the last remnants of humanity will have to face off against Kern's spider civilization, which does get pretty advanced. And it was also very interesting to see how exactly that spider technology develops. It's a lot of biological technology. I particularly loved the idea of ants being used to build an organic computer. It was just endlessly fascinating and very, very intriguing. So apart from all the incredibly cool sci-fi ideas in this book, and I haven't even got to all of them, there's so much more. It's just a really engrossing story. It's very engaging, an absolute page turner because you just want to know how far does this go? How advanced will this spider civilization become? Because evolution doesn't necessarily have an endpoint. Species continually adapt to their environments, and as their environments change, they have to develop new adaptations, but evolution never ceases to continue. And the other really engrossing part of this book was to see the formation and the evolution of the extraordinarily complex social and societal structure of the spiders themselves. So human behavior on a mass scale, I'm speaking in general, is informed by our biology because we are descended from primates, our society formed in a specific way. Now, because the society of arachnids in this book are descended from spiders, their society develops in a very specific way. That's distinct from humanity, and actually Kern has a very difficult time understanding them at all because though they have developed intelligence, it's a different sort of intelligence to the intelligence of a human being. And there's a lot of like reconciling that you have to do to be able to communicate effectively between two species with entirely separate evolutionary tracks. Spiders would not evolve intelligence and then immediately start thinking like humans and feeling like humans. They wouldn't become humanoid, they would still be spiders, but intelligent spiders with intelligent spider thoughts. So Children of Time was an absolute tin out of tin for me. I love this book, and I'm definitely going to discuss it more in the future. Now, in this book, you have the last remnants of humanity on a ship called the Gilgamesh. Whenever you have a situation where humanity is diluted to such a small number, everything means more. Every event on this ship has more impact. Any small thing could threaten the future of all of humanity. So throughout the book on this ship, we basically follow three key characters: Dr. Holston Mason, Issa Lane, a key crew engineer, and Vryguyen, the commander of the Gilgamesh. Most of the humans on board this ship are still cryonically frozen. Key members of crew are unfrozen when necessary. We mainly follow the perspective of Dr. Holston Mason as he is frozen and unfrozen throughout the eons. And this does eventually start to disorient him, as it would. Can you imagine if you were frozen and then awoke decades later and then were frozen again and woke another decades later? And everything is constantly changing around you, it's not really a good way to experience existence. What happened? He was asking himself frantically. Lane was working to contain the Gullian infection. There was nothing I could do. I had to go back to sleep in the end. So how did it come to this? He felt that he was developing some kind of hitherto unknown ailment, some equivalent of motion sickness, caught from too many dissociated moments of history crammed into too little personal time. So what's interesting about this is if we ever hope to travel space, we either have to create ships that are fast enough to get to the destinations within our lifetime, which seems unlikely, or we have to figure out a way to extend our lives so that we can last long enough to reach our destination. And one of the ways that that is done in science fiction is cryonics. Now, realistically, if we had this technology and we were able to cryonically freeze people and put them aboard a vessel heading to another location, there likely would have to be people that woke up every now and again to check on the systems and to do maintenance. I like how this book is considering what exactly that's like. But what makes the situation particularly stressful and disorienting for Dr. Halston Mason is the fact that things aren't staying static as they should because humanity is looping back into old patterns. Now we've talked about Dune a lot on this channel, and one of the main themes of Dune is don't put all of your faith in charismatic leaders. So you have the character Gujin, who is the commander of the Gilgamesh, and he essentially creates a cult around himself, he allows people to start having children, and these children are raised believing that he is some kind of god. So members of the crew are being awakened out of their sleep only to realize that Gujin has become a madman who's taken over the ship and also has a following of fanatics on board. So it's really interesting to watch all of this evolve over the course of this novel. And it's also interesting to see the Gilgamesh, a ship which was not meant to be a generational ship, be repurposed as a generational ship, and the results are not pretty. So if you're not familiar with the concept of a generational ship, allow me to explain. So when considering how humanity can survive long-term liminally in space, then we often talk about generational ships, which are essentially space vessels which are equipped to house multiple generations of humanity over long periods of time. So rather than the initial people on the ship making it to the destination, their ancestors will be the ones that make it to the destination. The rest of them will live and die aboard the ship. Now, the problem with the Gilgamesh in this story becoming essentially a generational ship is that it was never equipped to do so. They do not have the resources to support this many humans. The vast majority of people were meant to stay frozen until they reached a suitable destination. Because of Gugin, this didn't happen. So as time goes on, they're stripping the ship and repurposing pieces of it, people are crammed into very small spaces, everything has to be reused, it is just, quite simply, not at all a comfortable environment, and not any way that humans should be living, and that's very disturbing to know that this is a potential possibility, should we actually go this route. So the character Guyin eventually uploads himself into the ship's computer, and even after years and years, they still can't fully get him out. And I think that might be kind of a metaphor for how certain leaders will influence the population for years to come, even if those ideas aren't necessarily the best. Some people leave a kind of scar or residue on society. So, of course, what's really interesting about this novel is that we actually jump between reading about the trials and tribulations of the last humans to reading about a society of sentient spiders who have been evolved by a man-made virus. I've already done an entire video on that, which you can check out here. But it's interesting to see this spider civilization grow and actually become fond of them, and to also see humanity continue to decline. And though you want humanity to be saved, you don't want them to be saved at the expense of the spider civilization. So curiously enough, in my opinion, you end up rooting more and caring more about the spider civilization than the human civilization, which I think is just fantastic. So eventually I'm gonna cover the sequel to this book Children of Ruin, which takes place directly following the events of Children of Time, so I will get to that soon. If you enjoyed this video, make sure you like and subscribe for more Quinn's ideas, and if you're interested in learning more about science fiction books, check out my channel. Thanks guys. Today we're gonna talk about a science fiction book that I bet most of you have never heard of. Rick Remender's Lowe. Lowe is absolutely one of the best graphic novels I've ever read, and if you've not read it, I suggest you stop this video and grab it because this is absolutely worth your time, money, and attention. Now, if you don't care that much about spoilers, continue forth. But don't worry, I won't be spoiling too much of the story. In Lowe, almost all of the future humans have migrated underwater and now all live in dome cities due to the fact that the surface had become too hot for normal human habitation. This is because this story is set billions of years in our future, and the sun has expanded to a red giant. The protagonist of our story, Stelle Kane, lives in the dome city of Sallas with her husband and children. Using robotic probes, she desperately searches for a new planet that can support human life. The dome cities themselves are crumbling. The filtration systems which keep them oxygenated are becoming continuously less efficient. The citizens of all the known cities know that they do not have. Long before none of the cities can support life. Because of this, Sallus and the other domed cities display many aspects of the dying society. The governments are corrupt. People are addicted to drugs that allow them to escape from reality. The populace has grown apathetic, depressed, and careless. Humanity had nearly run out of hope entirely. And yet, one day, a signal is received, and a planet has been found. But Stelle will have to journey to a world now unknown to humankind to collect these coordinates. And I'll just let you know right now that this journey is not easy. Rick Reminder pushes these characters to their breaking point and really test who they are and really test how long they can actually cling to the hope of a better future. I think one of the biggest themes of this book is that hope is all that matters. How do we hold on to hope when all seems lost? Well, if you've given up on hope, then all is lost anyway, so the only reasonable option is to keep fighting, to, as they say, rage against the dying of the light. The character Stelcane is essentially the embodiment of this concept, relentlessly hopeful in the face of devastating odds. I remember when I was your age, finding out that our world would one day be consumed by the sun. What a waste of time all this is, it seemed to me. No matter what we build, no matter what we do, no matter what, the sun will expand and eventually consume it all. I felt like a powerless observer of the end of my species. It wasn't until I met your mother that I could see any reason to try. That we can find strength in the unity of family. Strength enough to find a better tomorrow. Reminder in this book really centers the Kane family and their misadventures. They are put through a lot, and their relationships with one another are so complex and realistic. There's something about the way Remender writes these characters that makes them come alive. You really feel like you know them, you really root for them. And this, of course, makes the book really hard to read sometimes because you really don't want anything bad to happen to these characters. But ultimately, as I said, this book is about hope. So there is a light at the end of the tunnel. The world building is another giant highlight of this graphic novel. The Dome Cities are distinct from each other, they feel ancient, and they each have their own distinct history and culture. One thing I find particularly interesting is the concept of the Helmsman. Apparently, in the early days of the Dome City, there had been several Helmsman suits, each capable of immense destruction. As the eons passed, most of those suits were lost to time or destroyed. The last suit in Sallust belongs to the family of Joel Kane, the husband of Stel Kane, having been passed down throughout the generations. The suits only responded to specific DNA, which is why it was important that they be passed down through the family line. Humanity has also begun to evolve and diverge into different groups. There are many species of humanoid aquatic creatures, like the vampiric mermaids who dwell in the deep dark places of the ocean. The world above has also continued to develop separately from the world below. The humans, which had been left behind, had adapted to the new sun and continued their own society on the surface, creating essentially what was a utopia. However, much of their culture is based around hatred for those below. They were embittered because their own ancestors had been left to die on the surface eons ago, when the ones in their dome cities refused to rescue them. Because of this, the surface dwellers, who call themselves the burnt, have no intention of allowing the dome citizens to escape the earth. As their ancestors had been left to die, they would allow those below to perish. Though we Neo Sapiens are descended from Homo sapiens, we are burnt by the surface. We adapted to the good sun instead of hiding from it. A sun that is slowly expanding still, becoming a red giant star that will one day engulf the earth. Our small-minded ancestors saw this as their doom. Fearful and superstitious monkeys have always misunderstood the sun. We, however, know it is part of the natural and cosmically intended evolution of our species. Neanderthals and Crow Magnons both came from the same common ancestor, but the superior Crow Magnons survived, while their inferior cousins were destroyed. Similarly, we burnt our superior to Homo sapiens, having faced our natural evolution, while our ancestors fled to the depths of the sea. We have adapted and flourished, put an end to all war, famine, and disease, created the first post-scarcity society. I found this particular part of the story where we encounter the burnt to be so interesting. Evolution is powerful. Throughout the eons of the existence of life on Earth, any species that has failed to adapt to changes in environment has gone extinct. But, curiously, often rapid changes facilitate rapid adaptation. This, in addition to the radiation of the sun, which caused mutations to occur, is what allowed the humans in this series on the surface to evolve. They became the Neo Sapiens, the next stage in human evolution. The story of life on the surface of Earth didn't just end when most humans went underwater, it didn't just end when we left. Once they were gone, a new society took their place. Perhaps a better society than the one which existed before. When it comes to Earth, there are lifeforms which fill every possible niche. They exist and thrive in places that would be instantly deadly to most life. To quote one of my favorite childhood movies, Jurassic Park, Life Finds a Way. This concept, of course, has been explored in many science fiction series, and I really enjoy how Reminder uses it here. Now, if you've never read any of Rick Remender's work, you are missing out because he is an absolute master at what he does. And when we combine Rick Remender's incredible story, his rich, complex, and deeply emotionally compelling characters, with the beautiful artwork of Greg Tuccini, then we get what I personally believe to be a masterpiece. And I'm not exaggerating. So if you're into great world building, great characters, and great storylines that keep you on your toes, this is the book for you. Absolutely 100% get low, and I'll definitely be covering some more of the lore in future videos. Thanks guys. Now some of you might remember Children of Time by Adrian Tchaikovsky. Today I want to talk about another book of his called Cage of Souls. Cage of Souls, like Children of Time, is about so many things: ecology, lost, forgotten history, accelerated evolution, the idea that the earth itself works as a living organism with motives. This book takes place in an unspecified time in the future where the earth has been poisoned to the point where humanity now lives in a single city called Shadrapar. And outside the city, due to the expansion of the dying sun, much of the world has become desert and some of it has become dense jungle full of rapidly changing ecology and creatures possessing intelligence that may rival human intelligence. So before we go any further, I want to talk about some specific concepts in this book. I'm not going to spoil the plot of it completely, but there will be some spoilers in this video, and if spoilers are a thing that you care about, probably click away until you've read this book. So, when I first picked up this book, I knew nothing about it. I had read Adrian Tchaikovsky's Children of Time series and some other stuff by him, so I really loved his work. The one thing I did know about this book was that the main setting was a prison, so immediately in my head I thought, oh, this book is about a sci-fi prison break. That's not what this book is about. It's much more expansive and much more complex than that. The highlight of this book is the absolutely brilliant world building that Adrian Jikovsky pulls off. And the way that world is unveiled to us is highly effective. We start out as our main character, Stefan Advani, is being sent to the island, a prison in the middle of a jungle that kind of floats on water. It's kind of a prison boat that's huge that floats on water in the middle of a jungle. And there's really no hope of escape because the jungle surrounding the prison is very, very inhospitable, full of monsters and terrifying creatures that evolve rapidly and have a taste for human flesh. So the beginning of this book and a good chunk of this book, we follow Stefan at the prison, and little bits of information about the world outside are given to us by things that Stefan Atvani says because he's the narrator, and given to us through his interactions with other characters, until about a third through the book when we actually flash back to when Stefan was living in Shadrapar, and then our idea of the world and what it's like outside the prison really expands. We learn that basically everything that's happened to the Earth, we did it. Which is an idea that's found in a lot of science fiction books. Because I think that's kind of true, and that's kind of where things are headed. We can very clearly see in the real world the damage that we've done to the planet, and yet we keep going forward, and yet we're not really making significant large-scale efforts to fix any of the looming problems. By the time that this book is taking place, it's already too late. At least for most of the Earth. Take the oceans, for instance. The oceans are black, oozing death. All life in the ocean has died. It is completely toxic to not only human life, but to all marine life. And the eerie thing about it is that it preserves the dead. We can see what we've done. All of the fish, all of the whales, all of the animals float to the surface, perfectly preserved by this chemical black ooze. And there's even human bodies floating on the surface, unlucky people that have fallen into the ocean, or attempted to swim. There's a great quote in the book: The sea is death's unchanging kingdom on earth, and it has no part in this story. My story is, despite all that has happened, one of hope, and there is no hope for the oceans. I mentioned that most of the earth is turning to desert, and the reason this is, is because of what is happening to the sun. The sun is expanding and dying, and it doesn't appear that this is a natural occurrence. It is suggested that the reason that this is happening is because of something that humans did in the past. Some historians even think we tinkered with the sun. You hear that? Some great golden age way back where everything ran off sunlight until there wasn't enough to go around, and so they fooled with the sun. And that's what our problem is now. Typical human stupidity. Nobody ever looks to tomorrow. Thank God we're on the edge of extinction. One concept in this book that I really loved was the idea that the earth itself isn't really dying, it is changing. And it's not changing consciously, but sometimes large systems have emergent properties. In this book, the idea that the earth operates as a living superorganism is brushed upon. And in its current cycle, the earth is actively trying to get rid of humanity and introduce a new dominant species. The world is sick of us. It is turning over in its sleep, trying to come up with something to replace us. Evolution on winged feet. I didn't believe it, but I'm a bloody scientist. I'm the last real scientist on earth. When the evidence says something strongly enough, you have to believe it. Even though it goes against everything all the ancients ever wrote, bugger the ancients, they got us into this mess in the first place. Evolution, all that slow struggle, generation to generation, millions of years, all that out the window. The earth knows it hasn't got much time left. It has thrown the whole machine into high gear. And you know what it's after? Intelligence. You'd think it had enough of the damn stuff after our messing around, but the evolution mill is grinding towards intelligence. Everywhere you look, there is something doing an impression of it. Everything is trying to be smarter. Intelligence could maybe just save life on this planet. That's why the web children. That's why a lot of things. So this concept is fascinating to me. The Earth, operating as a superorganism, somehow realizes that it's dying. And in reaction to this, it is trying to produce intelligence because it knows that intelligence is the only potential way that it can continue to exist. Somehow the earth knows that if it produces something smart enough, maybe the problems with the sun can be fixed. Now, this brings us to the web children. Now I found the web children to be one of the most interesting parts of this book, and I actually wish the book could have spent a little bit more time on the web children because I would have loved a deeper exploration. So the web children inhabit the jungle surrounding the prison referred to as the island. The interesting thing about the web children is though they resemble humans, they did not evolve from us. They are not an offshoot of us in any way, shape, or form. Humans and the web children are in fact convergent evolutionary species. Which essentially means that side by side we developed similar traits. Now, of course, the web children are a lot, a lot newer than humanity, and they're only here due to the expanded, accelerated evolution of the jungles. The Webb children. Always the Web Children. They were said to be like fish, but others said like frogs, and still others said they could pass for humans if they tried. Except for their eyes, too wide and never blinking. There were folds of skin between those toes, and between the equally long and clever fingers that were unlike a man's, the forefinger being the longest and the others declining in size to form a webbed fan, with only the thumb free. It was impossible to tell if they were male or female, or if the distinction held any meaning for them. If they were children, they were children of the damned, spawned here where the canopy obscured even the view of God. So, ultimately the characterization of them is different, but the web children immediately evoke for me the sense of the deep ones from H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu mythos. And this is just based mostly on appearance because they are definitely framed and characterized differently in this book. In this book, Tchaikovsky uses the Web Children to explore the what-if of convergent evolution and accelerated evolution. The web children definitely have their creepy moments though, and other creatures in the jungle as well. There is a particular scene with a speaking salamander that crawls up from the depths that is particularly horrifying to me. It's really great stuff. And again, all of this, this accelerated evolution, is due to humanity possibly tinkering with the sun, ruining it, causing a catastrophe, and never being able to regain the ability to fix the sun. Now, this brings me to another awesome element of the book, which I love, which is Forgotten History. Now, this to me is very book of the new sun, Gene Wolf, but that's a whole other bag of cookies that we're not gonna open right now. So in Cage of Souls, we learn that long ago, during a time period called the First Genesis, mankind reached a zenith of technological progression. Um we built huge structures like the pyramids and giant cities, and then something happened. We collapsed inward on ourselves, and we haven't been able to get back up since then, and that is what has led to the Cage of Souls era, where mankind is down to the last city and the entire earth is poisoned. And it's not just history that is forgotten, it is eons of knowledge and science that is also completely lost. There's really a lot to explore in this book, but the last thing for this video is I want to talk about what happens to humanity culturally in this book. For one, the Church of the Wasted God becomes a thing, and they have these nuns called the Nuns of the Wasted Order, and these people essentially believe that God is either dying or already dead. They seem to at least be somewhat anti-science and anti-knowledge, um, as if knowing itself breaks the universe, as if trying to understand God's creation is what is poisoning God, what is killing God. Most outrageous sin. For is it not known that the end of the world is brought nearer every time these men of letters unravel yet another piece of it? Is it not the truth that the world grows tired of their constant questioning? Sin, I say, nothing but sin which is rank in the nostrils of God. If we are to save ourselves, we must cast these false teachers, these pendants and searchers, and evil men who seek to know. They pick at the fabric of the world and decay it with their never-ending questions. God does not intend us to question his creation. God will return to his full health only when these men of sin and science have been purged from the ranks of the right and cast into the barren spaces. So, what I love about this is I can see the roots of the formation of the Church of the Wasted God. Science technically did destroy the planet. It was misuse of science, but it was science that did it. And also the book mentions that many images of God depict him as an old man. So they can easily, as far as symbols go, make that transition from God being an old man to a dying man. So it just works symbolically. And lastly, among the portion of them that believe that God is not dead but dying, there is an element of hope there. He is dying but not dead. So perhaps he could be healed if we simply stop tearing at the fabric of reality with this science that has led us to this devastating dystopia. Religions need that element of hope. Um, the world is difficult now, but if you obey God and you follow the tenets of your religion, you will prevail in the end. That is the idea. It also seems likely that the order of the wasted god has influenced the culture of the last peoples of Shadrapar, because Shadrapar itself is very anti-knowledge, very anti-science. They send people to the island if they cause a stir by unveiling new knowledge. It's very anti-learning, and the people of Shadrapar in general are very ignorant of most things outside of their city. So, there's so much in this book that I didn't talk about, and maybe I'll talk about in future videos. Stuff like time traveling, uh, synthetic human beings, the underworld of Shadapar, which is literally under the ground, and the Mazans, the people that used to inhabit a city deep underground that lost power eons ago and they evolved into monsters. There's so much in this book. It is a true sci-fi adventure novel that's also intelligent and fun. I had a lot of fun with this one, and I'm looking forward to reading more Adrian Tchaikovsky in the future and covering more of it on this channel. Thanks for watching, guys. Alright, so I'm gonna let you in on my bonus theory. So in this book, it says that long ago humankind went to the stars and seeded the stars with creatures like them and set out to meet them. I think that could be referencing Children of Time and what happened in Children of Time. So that would mean that Cage of Souls is actually in the distant future of Children of Time, but it's just what happened on Earth. Definitely a possibility. Let me know what you guys think. Peace out. As I said, you can check out our Patreon if you would like to support this channel or use the PayPal link in the description. Thanks, guys. And don't forget to check out my brand new podcast, the Cosmic Chronicles Podcast. I've been having a lot of fun with my co-host James talking about various sci-fi ideas and books and movies that I love and enjoy. Check it out, link in the description.