Beyond Sapiens

Tell us what you thought about the July 2004 issue.

Moderator: Editors

Post Reply
User avatar
kailhofer
Editor Emeritus
Posts: 3245
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: Kaukauna, Wisconsin (USA)
Contact:

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by kailhofer »

Good irony. Good tale.<br><br>I can only see her ending badly, however. Since her children do not want to go to Earth, they will not order her to leave, as she convinced her own "monkeys" to do to her. She must be trapped in the ship, and eventually will be forced to fight her children, or be taken out by them.<br><br>All of this story seems like the opening movement on a bigger horror story...<br><br><br>Nate
Hardcover, paperback, pdf, eBook, iBook, Nook, and now Kindle & Kobo!
Image
A cooperative effort between 17 Aphelion authors. No part of any sales go to Aphelion.
K._Vesi

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by K._Vesi »

Interesting story. You really get a sense of the personality of the character. And I like how the children are not as arrogant as her... but I also like how she knows that though she was arrogant, it is something she has overcome in time. While the indifference her children have to those inferior to them will never change.<br><br>If you ever decide to do a part 2 to this story, I'd like to read it. One suggestion (of course, its only a suggestion): this story is dramatic. But I think it would be more dramatic, if she made actual entries, like a diary, so that what happens to her happens over a period of time. <br><br>Kathleen
User avatar
Robert_Moriyama
Editor Emeritus
Posts: 2379
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Noel<br><br>If you can find it, you might be interested in a nearly-70-year-old novel called The New Adam (by Stanley G. Weinbaum), which chronicles the short and unhappy life of one of the first of a new species of humanity, far superior in intellect to normal humans (in kind as well as in degree) ... or Olaf Stapledon's Odd John (which I should read one of these days myself) ... or Greg Bear's recent Darwin's Radio and Darwin's Children.<br><br>The most remarkable thing about this story is that the protagonist survived long enough to build her starship. I would think that the brown monkeys would have killed this changeling long before, or buried her in some lab where her talents would be exploited for military or commercial gain. If being annoying was enough to get you sent off-world, things would be SO much nicer here!<br><br>That said, here are some technical/ physiological/ logical quibbles:<br><br>If, in fact, our protagonist's brain is 124 times denser in some sense (much more tightly packed convolutions = greater surface area and more neo-cortical tissue in a small package, PLUS other factors), it would also be significantly heavier, I would think. She must have a neck like a Russian female shotput champion ... Also, pushing blood (oxygen and nutrients) through her skull must be something of a challenge!<br><br>How could someone so brilliant be so dense as to NOT realize that her first generation of space-born offspring would likely be exponentially smarter than she?<br><br>It sounds like our protagonist has a 100% success rate at her gene-editing, achieving results both predictable and consistent. Given the mechanical aspects of at least some of the procedures involved, this seems too good to be true.<br><br>'Great fleas have little fleas upon their backs to bite ’em,<br>And little fleas have lesser fleas, and so ad infinitum.<br>And the great fleas themselves, in turn, have greater fleas to go on;<br>While these again have greater still, and greater still, and so on.'<br>De Morgan: A Budget of Paradoxes, p. 377. <br><br>If our protagonist, annoying as she is, is to try to control her destiny, she will have to do it before her nth-batch offspring grow older and larger and stronger, as her ONLY advantage over them is size and strength. Of course, it may be that she will simply surrender to her status as (pretty much) a pet / egg-source, being intelligent enough to recognize a hopeless cause.<br><br>Next possibility: what if, once some of their number grow old enough to reach puberty, THEY make children who are exponentially smarter than themselves? If this generation is born telepathic, what abilities might the next generation have?<br><br>Noel, your serve.<br><br>Robert M.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
User avatar
Robert_Moriyama
Editor Emeritus
Posts: 2379
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

Your points about the brain are good, and were this a full-length novel, they would have to be accommodated.  I wonder, though, why additional weight or difficulty in blood flow would be unavoidable.  Is a Pentium 4 heavier or does it occupy more space than a Pentium 1?  (I believe it is the other way around.)  And does the smaller and more powerful computer of today require a greater flow of electricity or air conditioning...
Noel Carroll
<br><br>Actually, anyone who has held a laptop not based on a chipset specifically designed for a mobile computer will tell you those suckers get pretty hot, as do the super-duper graphics cards. The newest chips run somewhat cooler than the previous generation thanks to redesign to run at lower voltages, but for a while there, waste heat was getting to be a real nuisance (leading to processors with honkin' big metal heat sinks, and a booming market in add-on cooling fans). The reduction in size due to improvements in circuit density (more and more components per square centimeter) was offset by the increasing clock speed -- faster operation generally meant more heat (push them electrons through tinier and tinier wires, and resistance MUST produce heat as a byproduct).<br><br>As for the biological version, the protagonist herself indicated a 124-fold increase in brain power in a normal-sized skull. As noted above, 'thinking' faster implies increased energy consumption (and generation of waste products, including heat and, in the brain, metabolites from glucose), so our girl would need a more efficient circulatory system to provide nutrients and flush out waste heat and chemicals.<br><br>For her to be able to reproduce using her eggs and edited human sperm, I would assume that her brain had to be made up of proteins basically similar to the normal human types; hence packing more tissue (with a huge increase in the density of convolutions) into the same space would imply the greater weight I postulated. (If her brain DIDN'T weigh more than normal, it would have to be different in kind (structure, materials, signal propagation) to achieve the claimed advantage ...)<br><br>Any neurologists reading this, forgive my arm-waving ... ;)<br><br>Robert M.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
User avatar
Robert_Moriyama
Editor Emeritus
Posts: 2379
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

How does Robert know all these things? he must be one of them super-beings from the story.
Lee
<br><br>Naw, I just read a lot. I'm only slightly brighter than the (let's face it, not too bright) average. Now that guy that has won 30 or more times in a row on Jeopardy -- HE must be some kind of mutant!<br><br>Robert M.
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
User avatar
kailhofer
Editor Emeritus
Posts: 3245
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: Kaukauna, Wisconsin (USA)
Contact:

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by kailhofer »

the protagonist herself indicated a 124-fold increase in brain power in a normal-sized skull. As noted above, 'thinking' faster implies increased energy consumption (and generation of waste products, including heat and, in the brain, metabolites from glucose), so our girl would need a more efficient circulatory system to provide nutrients and flush out waste heat and chemicals.
Robert M.
<br><br>Actually, the story says that it is 124 times more 'compact'. Compact in this case may not refer to capillaries and related structures at all, but instead the number of dentritic connections. Brain cells, while decreasing in number all the time, gain or lose dendrites. The number of connections made between them influences the speed and efficiency of thought, not the numbers of the parent cells. (If I recall correctly from a book by Dr. Richard Restak entitled "The Brain" used to accompany a PBS series by the same name.) I don't believe there is any evidence that the circulation in the brain is incapable of handing the waste products of such an increase.<br><br>Moreover, I can't recall reading that there was any difference in brain structure in the slices of Einstein's brain floating around in labs since Dr. Herman removed it from his head during the autopsy (and kept it). I'm not aware of any studies of the number of dentritic connections, but it seems to be that from this evidence... why did her brain need to be any more dense at all? Perhaps she just thought more efficiently than the rest of us monkeys.<br><br>Nate
Last edited by kailhofer on July 15, 2004, 11:02:36 PM, edited 1 time in total.
Hardcover, paperback, pdf, eBook, iBook, Nook, and now Kindle & Kobo!
Image
A cooperative effort between 17 Aphelion authors. No part of any sales go to Aphelion.
lokifan

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by lokifan »

Yep, Robert, there is no need to be quite so irritatingly modest. Who do you think you're fooling? Lee - the average leaves much to be desired, does it? Remember the message of the story we're talking about and don't be such a homo insufferable!
lokifan

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by lokifan »

Oh yeah - Lee - 'peeps'. ???????!!!!!!!!!!!! That has to be the most annoying expression ever, worse than 'like'! My little sister (who is going through a dreadful 12-year-old giggly phase) uses it far too often, and if I can't escape that kind of thing here, there is no hope! Robert, I know you're about to comment on that whole chick thing. Way ahead of you. Personally I think it's nowhere near as annoying, and almost as commonly used as 'kids'. I'm not sure why you think it's sexist, which is what you seemed to be implying...<br><br>DOWN WITH 'PEEPS'!!!!!!!
User avatar
Robert_Moriyama
Editor Emeritus
Posts: 2379
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: Toronto, Ontario, Canada
Contact:

Re:  Beyond Sapiens

Post by Robert_Moriyama »

it's ok to be vain once in a while. We are the next evolutionary rung, don't ya know it?

Lee
<br><br>Of course, to be curmudgeonly, ladders go both ways, ye dern whippersnapper, ye!<br><br>Robert M.<br>
You can't wait for inspiration. You have to go after it with a club.

Jack London (1876-1916)
CameronNeilson
Commenter
Posts: 17
Joined: December 31, 1969, 08:00:00 PM
Location: 0

Re: Beyond Sapiens

Post by CameronNeilson »

The whole story was told in narrative. That just doesn't work for me. When I read a short story I want to have some scenes...some dialogue...some action. Bring the story to life....flesh it out. That is what a short story is about. In a larger work, like a novel, you can afford to go into long narratives, but in a short story it just doesn't work. When you do that it reads more like a script to a larger movie or something.<br>But as far as the idea for the story...I liked it. <br><br>-Joe
Post Reply

Return to “July 2004”