Asimov's Science Fiction: December 2013 (24 page)

Half a billion possible Earths in our little galaxy alone? That isn't just a hopeful hypothesis any more. And it may be a very conservative one. In January 2013, scientists at Cal Tech in Pasadena who had been studying the results sent back by NASA's Kepler Space Telescope offered an estimate of at least 100 billion habitable extrasolar planets just in the Milky Way galaxy'and our galaxy is only one of a nearly infinite number in the universe. They based their findings on a view of a five-planet system called Kepler-32, all of them similar in size to Earth and orbiting their star (M-type, smaller and cooler than our own) closely enough to ensure sufficient warmth. Since there are 100 billion M-type stars in the galaxy and the Kepler findings show planets around many of them, the Cal Tech people believe it's reasonable to think that they average one habitable world apiece'100 billion more or less Earth-type planets, and that's
billion
with a
b.
A billion, remember, is 1000 million. Somewhere in all those billions and billions, surely, dwell the alien beings I was reading about in the thick SF anthologies of the 1940s.

In fact, the whole idea of an inhabited cosmos was anticipated as early as 300 B.C. by the Greek philosopher Metrodoros the Epicurean: "To consider the Earth the only populated world in infinite space is as absurd as to assert that in an entire field sown with millet only one grain will grow." And it was developed most entertainingly in a lively little book,
A Plurality of Worlds
(1686), by the French poet and philosopher Bernard de Fontenelle, which I've just been reading in the elegant English translation that John Glanville produced the following year.

Fontenelle's book is one of the earliest attempts to make current scientific knowledge accessible to the lay reader, and it achieves that triumphantly. It is cast in the form of dialogs set at a French country estate, one per night for five nights, in which a philosopher who was probably very much like Fontenelle discusses astronomy and the nature of the universe with his hostess, a witty and somewhat flirtatious countess who is eager to understand the motions of the planets and stars.

What he sets forth is essentially a picture of the universe as we understand it today'the Sun at the center of the solar system, the planets in orbit around it, their various moons in orbit around them, and the stars an immense distance away, each one a sun in its own right and very likely having planets of its own. In all this Fontenelle risked flying in the face of the traditional Christian belief that the creation of life has taken place only once, in the Garden of Eden, on Earth, and that Earth was the center of the universe. For some fifteen hundred years it was deemed heretical, and downright dangerous, to disagree with that position, until the work of the great astronomers Copernicus, Kepler, and Galileo had shown the Earth is merely one of many worlds surrounding the Sun. As recently as 1633 Galileo had been called before the Inquisition and forced to declare that Copernicus's "opinion" that the Earth moved around the Sun was false. (There is a story, probably apocryphal, that Galileo, after swearing to his denial, turned aside and muttered under his breath,
"Eppur si muove"
' "Even so, it does move!")

In the years immediately following, the Church reluctantly began to accept the notion that Copernicus might have been right and that the Earth was not the center of all creation. Serious speculation about the possibility of life on other worlds became a widespread philosophical pastime. But Fontenelle remained cautious. In his preface he apologized in advance for any offense he might give the religious, and asserted that if the Moon were inhabited, as he supposed, its inhabitants must be products of a separate creation, for "none of Adam's posterity ever traveled so far as the Moon, nor were any colonies ever sent thither; the men then that are in the Moon are not the sons of Adam." The same, he said, was true of the inhabitants of Mars, Venus, and other nearby worlds, all of whom he described in a playful and inventive manner while taking care to say that he was merely speculating, not claiming any special revelation of truth. ("The people of Mercury are so full of fire that they are absolutely mad; I fancy they have no memory at all... and what they do is by sudden starts, and perfectly haphazard... As for Saturn, it is so cold that a Saturnian brought to Earth would perish from the heat, even at the North Pole.")

In his discussion of the stars, which Fontenelle, like most people of his time, believed were fixed in the heavens and fastened to the sky "like so many nails," he recognized that they were vastly farther away than the familiar planets: "The fixed stars cannot be less distant from the Earth than fifty millions of leagues; nay, if you anger an astronomer, he will set them further. The distance from the Sun to the farthest planet is nothing in comparison of the distance from the Sun, or from the Earth, to the fixed stars; it is almost beyond arithmetic."

And the stars were suns, he said, shining by virtue of their own fires, not by reflection of our Sun's light. "I will not swear that this is true," he said cautiously, "but I hold it for true, because it gives me pleasure to believe it." And around those distant suns were a multitude of other worlds, each held to its own sun by what he called a "vortex," which in an approximate way equates to what we call a gravitational field. Those planets, he thinks, are inhabited, not by humans but by beings of some other creation. In one of his most delightful flights of fancy he says that in some parts of the universe'the Milky Way, for instance—the stars are so close together "that the people in one world may talk, and shake hands, with those of another; at least I believe, the birds of one world may easily fly into another; and that pigeons may be trained up to carry letters, as they do in the Levant."

All this is set forth lightly, as a mere outpouring of the imagination, but Fontenelle leaves no doubt that he is serious. "When the Heavens were a little blue arch, stuck with stars, methought the universe was too strait and close," he wrote. "I was almost stifled for want of air; but now it is enlarged in height and breadth, and a thousand and a thousand vortexes taken in; I begin to breathe with more freedom, and think the Universe to be incomparably more magnificent than it was before."

And now we have proof, thanks to NASA and the Kepler telescope, that that multitude of worlds that Fontenelle imagined more than three hundred years ago is really out there. The trouble is that we can't reach them, because the speed of light is likely always to be the limiting velocity not just for us, but for all the inhabitants of those other galaxies, and, barring the development of some quasi-magical means of faster-than-light travel, that makes the idea of intergalactic contact improbable.

So, as I said a decade ago and am forced still to believe, there won't be any Galactic Federation; there'll be no Bureau of Interstellar Trade; no alien wines or artifacts will turn up for sale in our boutiques. Nor will we meet the real-life equivalents of George Lucas's Wookiees, Doc Smith's Arisians, Fred Pohl's Heechees, Larry Niven's Kzinti, or—just as well, perhaps— A.E. van Vogt's terrifying Coeurl. The aliens exist, I'm sure, but the sea that separates us from them, and them from us, is just too wide. And as Guillaume de Conches said in a different context, long ago, "Nullus nostrum ad illos, neque illorum ad nos pervenire potest." None of us can go to them, and none of them come to us.

A couple of powerful novelettes bookend our January 2014 issue.
Aliette de Bodard
leads off with a suspenseful far-future account of a shady refugee who discovers that the past lives on in some "Memorials."
Nancy Kress
closes the issue with the story of an Earth ravaged by aliens. All hope for humanity may lie with a naïve young man who must discover how to negotiate with difficult people and enigmatic extraterrestrials for "The Common Good."

Don't expect the tension to ease up in the middle of the magazine, either.
James Van Pelt's
teens seem to rule Colorado's back country until they meet "The Turkey Raptor"; new to
Asimov's
author
William Jablonsky's
young couple are unprepared for the truth in the "Static";
Ian McHugh's
scientist learns much from her "Extracted Journal Notes for an Ethnography of Bnebene Nomad Culture";
Ron Collins
reveals the terrifying programming behind "Primes"; and
Steve Rasnic Tem
shows us the unexpected ramifications of "The Carl Paradox."

Robert Silverberg's
Reflections follow up on this month's essay with "The Plurality of Worlds: A Contrarian View"; in On the Net,
James Patrick Kelly
discusses "More Editing and Writing" with Robert Silverberg, Gardner Dozois, and Jeff VanderMeer;
Paul Di Filippo's
On Books includes reviews of works by M.C. Planck, Lucius Shepard, John Varley, and the late lamented Jack Vance; and
Don't Forget to Vote
in our 28th Annual Readers' Award Poll! Look for our January issue on sale at newsstands on November 5, 2013. Or subscribe to
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new stories by
Nancy Kress, Robert Reed, Derek Künsken, Michael Swanwick, Sarah Pinsker, Jason K. Chapman, Mike Resnick & Ken Liu, Matthew Johnson, Maurice Broaddus, Maggie Shen King, Jay O'Connell, Sandra McDonald, Karl Bunker, M. Bennardo, Marissa Lingen, James Patrick Kelly,
and many others!

SHADOWS OF THE NEW SUN

Stories in Honor of Gene Wolfe

Edited by J.E. Mooney & Bill Fawcett

Tor, $25.99 (hc)

ISBN: 978-0-7653-3458-9

Gene Wolfe, chosen this year as Grand Master by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America, is one of the writers—fortunately, there are now a fair number—we can point to in refutation of those who still sneer at the genre as "subliterary junk." A good indication of how widely he is admired by his fellow professionals is this collection of Wolfe tributes, which includes some of the most admired writers currently working in the field—plus a couple by Wolfe himself, for good measure. Also, each of the authors contributes a brief description of how they know Wolfe, who has been a frequent and congenial presence on the science fictional social circuits over the years. Editor Mooney begins that sequence with a story about how Wolfe called him out of the audience to join a convention panel for aspiring writers— despite never having met him.

The contributors make the anthology's theme more interesting by including allusions to and echoes of Wolfe's own stories. For example, one of the authors—no, I won't tell you which one—brings together a group of Wolfe's protagonists, all from different stories, leaving the reader to figure out who they are. For another example, Joe Haldeman and Nancy Kress both base their stories' titles on "The Island of Dr. Death and Other Stories," one of Wolfe's iconic tales—a title on which he himself has played several variations.

Other authors here emulate Wolfe's narrative approach, in which not even the most basic "facts" of the story can be taken at face value. Still others adopt material reminiscent of one or another of his tales. And many of them also make punning references to the author's name, or to Rosemary, his wife. The more a reader knows about Wolfe's writing, the more this kind of fun will be obvious.

But even if you're not intimately familiar with his work, the stories here are likely to pique your interest—especially the two by Gene himself, "Frostfree" and "Sea of Memory." The first takes a completely ordinary household item and turns it into an alarming character in a story that combines comedy and an edge of terror. The second plays variations on one of Wolfe's most haunting themes, the nature of memory—a theme several of the other authors incorporate in their works.

The contributors, just to pick some of the more familiar, include Neil Gaiman, Timothy Zahn, David Drake, Jack Dann, Michael Swanwick, Todd McCaffrey, David Brin, and Jody Lynn Nye. All were evidently inspired by the project—no doubt spurred to their best by the knowledge that Wolfe was contributing two stories of his own.

A fine testimonial to the importance of Wolfe, and to his impact on writers of all ages and schools. Readers who like this one should follow it up with a look at some of Wolfe's own work, some of the best writing in our genre over the last several decades.

THE GUIDING NOSE OF ULFÄNT BANDERŌZ

By Dan Simmons

Subterranean Press, $35.00 (hc)

ISBN: 978-1-59606-541-3

Simmons, one of the more respected authors of his generation, tips his hat to one of his significant influences in this homage to Jack Vance's "Dying Earth" series. Illustrated in appropriately witty style by Tom Kidd, it's a fitting entry in Subterranean's catalog, which includes a number of Vance reissues and tributes.

Set in the final days of the planet's life, when the waning sun appears ready to give up the ghost at last, the book follows the adventures of Shrue the diabolist, one of the many magicians who are the ruling class of the era. Shrue learns of the death of a major wizard, the Ulfänt Banderōz of the title. Banderōz, who lived in a strongly guarded isolated palace, is rumored to have collected some of the most potent spells to hold off the impending extinction of the sun. Unsurprisingly, Shrue—and, equally unsurprisingly, several others— decide to avail themselves of the contents of Banderōz's Ultimate Library and Final Compendium of Thaumaturgical Lore.