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ANALOG SCIENCE FICTION AND FACT
Vol. CXXVII No. 11, November 2007
Cover design by Victoria Green
Cover Art by Jean-Pierre Normand
NOVELLA
MURDER IN PARLIAMENT STREET, Barry B. Longyear
NOVELETTES
THESE ARE THE TIMES, John G. Hemry
THE PARADISE PROJECT, H. G. Stratmann
SHORT STORIES
YEARNING FOR THE WHITE AVENGER, Carl Frederick
THE SUIT, Bud Sparhawk
PERMISSION TO SPEAK FREELY, David Walton
SCIENCE FACT
THE SEARCH FOR THE WORLD'S FIRST EQUESTRIANS, Richard A. Lovett
Probability Zero
ALL THE THINGS THAT CAN'T BE, Ian Randal Strock
READER'S DEPARTMENTS
THE EDITOR'S PAGE
IN TIMES TO COME
THE ALTERNATE VIEW, Jeffery D. Kooistra
THE REFERENCE LIBRARY, Tom Easton
BRASS TACKS
UPCOMING EVENTS, Anthony Lewis
Stanley Schmidt Editor
Trevor Quachri Managing Editor
Click a Link for Easy Navigation
CONTENTS
EDITORIAL: DOUBLE STANDARD REQUIRED Stanley Schmidt
MURDER IN PARLIAMENT STREET by BARRY B. LONGYEAR
IN TIMES TO COME
THE SEARCH FOR THE WORLD'S FIRST EQUESTRIANS by RICHARD A. LOVETT
THESE ARE THE TIMES by JOHN G. HEMRY
YEARNING FOR THE WHITE AVENGER by CARL FREDERICK
PROBABILITY ZERO: ALL THE THINGS THAT CAN'T BE by IAN RANDAL STROCK
THE ALTERNATE VIEW: DRILLING TO THE GOLDEN AGE by JEFFERY D. KOOISTRA
The Suit by Bud Sparhawk
PERMISSION TO SPEAK FREELY by DAVID WALTON
THE PARADISE PROJECT by H. G. STRATMANN
UPCOMING EVENTS by ANTHONY LEWIS
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EDITORIAL: DOUBLE STANDARD REQUIRED Stanley Schmidt
This past spring I attended a dinner at which a well-known science journalist spoke about global climate change, after seeing the latest report from the UN's panel on that subject. He talked about the evidence that it's happening (pretty convincing); the extent to which we can slow, stop, or reverse it (not much in our lifetimes, maybe a little better in the somewhat longer term); the extent to which we can adapt to it (a lot for rich countries, not much for poor ones); and what kind of aid rich countries owe poor ones in dealing with it (considerable, at least in his opinion, since they played the largest role in causing it and will suffer relatively little from its consequences). He was a good speaker, but didn't say much that was new to me. What I found most interesting was what he didn't say.
In a talk that ran approximately 25 minutes he never mentioned, except in passing, the one problem that is clearly at the root of all the others—the one that, if we continue to ignore it, will ultimately make all our efforts to chip away at the others insignificant and meaningless. When he threw the floor open to questions and comments, I listened intently to see whether anyone else would bring it up. Finally, but only after another 25 minutes, two people did. The first did so very cautiously, talking around it in terms of what he saw as changes in quality of life that he'd observed, but without ever saying The Word. The second was more direct, applauding the first for the courage it took to say even as much as he had—and then adding, “So I'll be the one to mention the elephant in the room. The problem is overpopulation."
And then, in a very short time, the subject died and conversation returned to smaller, safer topics.
It was a good demonstration of something on which I commented in passing a couple of issues back: as long as population keeps growing, nothing we do to try to offset it can be more than a stopgap—but people don't want to talk or think about that. You tell me how much change we need to make in any aspect of conservation, recycling, or increased efficiency to stop whatever dangerous trend is already underway, and I can tell you how much the population has to increase to negate the change. And I can tell you that, given current population trends, it won't take long for that to happen. We can argue about when a critically dangerous point will be reached, or whether it already has—a question that's partly a matter of fact and partly a matter of taste, since some people are comfortable with levels of crowding that others find intolerable. But there's no escaping the fact that unless people control their population growth, none of the other things we can do will ultimately matter.
Yet hardly anyone wants to face that fact head-on, much less seriously consider doing anything about it. Even our speaker, when he did glancingly refer to population, did not say anything about overpopulation. He merely mentioned, as if it were simply an immutable fact that we must accept and work around, that Earth already has more than six billion people, and before long it will have to accommodate nine billion.
There, I think, is the crux of the problem. Most people simply assume that the ongoing population explosion is a given rather than a variable—something we have to accept—so they don't talk about how we might change it. But we have to talk about it, because the problem is central and it won't go away on its own. If it's that difficult for people to talk about, maybe we need to look at why it's so hard, and how we can make it easier.
At least part of the reason, I think, is the uncomfortable dichotomy between principles that sound good in the abstract and the reality of applying those principles to actual flesh-and-blood people with visible faces. It's easy to say, “Nobody should have more than two or three children,” when you're writing or lecturing to a darkened room full of strangers. But what do you do when you're sitting in a living room with a family including eight or nine children—especially when they're all people you know and like? What if you know that the parents are the kind of people you wish more were like, and they've done a really good job as parents, so that every one of the kids is a joy to know and obviously full of potential? Can you look the parents in the eye and say, “You shouldn't have done that?” Or, even worse, look one of the later kids in the eye and say, “You shouldn't exist"?
I hope not. But neither can you say, “Everybody should do what you've done,” because that would be disastrous.
I think part of the reason people feel so uncomfortable about discussing overpopulation as a problem is that they feel that if they oppose overpopulation in principle, they're implicitly condemning people already alive and saying that they shouldn't be.
I submit that they aren't doing that and we need a way to put their minds at ease, to reconcile accepting big families that already exist with trying not to create too many more of them. We need to make people feel that they can continue to respect the unique worth of every human being, while recognizing that sheer numbers of them can be a profoundly serious problem for everybody.
Is it really necessary? Yes; I've already said why. If population continues to increase, it will overwhelm any per capita decrease we make in any of the problematic variables associated with it, like resource use, increase in greenhouse gases, and other forms of pollution. Certainly improvements in those areas are worth making, and there are plenty of them that are relati
vely easy to make. There are huge amounts of obvious waste in the more technologically developed countries (especially this one): Buildings public and private are heated excessively in winter and cooled excessively in summer. People with no need for them drive massive, fuel-guzzling vehicles, even on trips so short they'd be better off walking. Grocery clerks put single items in plastic bags that will be used once and thrown away, when a single cloth bag could hold half a dozen items and be reused hundreds of times.
And so on. But it's not just a “first-world” problem. It's true that Westerners, and especially Americans, tend to be individually wasteful, but that's partly offset by the fact that their population growth is relatively slow. Deforestation is a major contributor to increasing greenhouse effect, and that's being driven by rapid population growth in places too poor for people to have a large direct per capita effect on energy and resource use or pollution. Family may be especially important to people in such places because they have so little else, but the inescapable fact is that the wasteful rich need to become less wasteful and the rapidly multiplying, wherever they may be, need to multiply less rapidly.
And don't forget that most of those third-world countries aspire to living more like their wealthier neighbors. If and when they succeed, experience suggests that a lower birth rate is likely to accompany increased prosperity. That will help (though it will in turn be offset by increased longevity), but increased prosperity will also tend to increase per capita consumption and pollution. So those places, too, will need to use less wasteful ways to raise their standard of living.
And all places will need to think about controlling population growth. It will be controlled, sooner or later, whether because of voluntary restraint, government-imposed limits, or catastrophic collapse because a stability limit has been passed. I suspect most people would agree that some of those options are less undesirable than others—and we still have some choice about which way it will go. To make sure it happens as painlessly as possible, people have to think about what their options are, what they should personally do, and how they can persuade others to make responsible choices.
To be able to think and talk freely about those things, they must cast off the idea that wanting to limit the number of new people brought into the near future implies disliking, disrespecting, or devaluing those who are already here. What we need is a particular kind of double standard—and we need also to cast off the idea that a double standard is always and automatically a bad thing.
The double standard we need is this: people who could exist at some time in the future are not equivalent to people who already exist, and should not be thought about in the same way. We can and should give full respect and value to every human being who exists (and to those who will exist in the future)—but there's no reason to give the same kind of consideration to those who don't exist and won't unless people choose to make them. Since they don't exist, nobody is harmed or insulted if those “potential people” are not created; but limiting their numbers can help guarantee a reasonable quality of life for those who already exist and those who are created (in smaller numbers) in the future.
And before anyone tries to turn this into another round in the ongoing abortion feud, let's explicitly remove that issue from the arena by leaving fetuses and embryos out of the discussion. My proposal suggests no change in the way anyone treats them—but we urgently need to recognize a fundamental difference between real people and people who have not even been conceived.
Such a double standard in no way devalues human life, but may instead be essential to its future sustainability and quality.
Copyright (c) 2007 Stanley Schmidt
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We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, therefore, is not an act but a habit.
—Aristotle
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time to reform.
—Mark Twain
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MURDER IN PARLIAMENT STREET by BARRY B. LONGYEAR
Illustration by John Allemand
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Wherein Jaggers and Shad rise to new heights....
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"Cold and windy, dreary and damp,” muttered Detective Superintendent Marvin Matheson. “No wonder Guy Fawkes chose November in which to kill King James and blow up bloody Parliament."
It was a day after that particular celebration, but superintendent was still celebrating apparently. No knock-knock jokes, which meant he was really down the pipe this time. Matheson was standing behind his desk, his hands clasped behind his back, head hung forward, eyes looking up through a frown and his office window at the gloom of the latest weather front. Superintendent's early-model police replacement meat suit strongly resembled a historical American gangster named John Dillinger. I for one never wished to see John Dillinger depressed. Media ridicule of that model meat suit, in combination with his wife's insistence he keep it, lost Matheson his position as Assistant Chief Constable of Greater Manchester. He was eventually deposited in Artificial Beings Crimes Division of Interpol as a lowly detective superintendent running ABCD's Devon office in Exeter. Never quite let go of that.
"You wanted to see me, superintendent?” I said brightly.
He slowly turned his face toward me. “Jaggers."
"Yes sir."
He turned and looked down at his desk. Twice he tapped on a few papers with the tip of a stylus. “It has been pointed out to me, Inspector Jaggers, you and Shad deserve a day off, principally in recognition of your work on the Hound Tor and Hangingstone Rat inquiries. That recommendation, incidentally, came directly from Middlemoor.” He smiled sadly. “I heartily concur."
That took me back a step. It was uncommon at best to have any mention at all of ABCD issue from the rarified climes of the chief constable's office. Well known to us all, ever since a particular award ceremony, Raymond Crowe, chief constable of the Devon & Cornwall Constabulary, had been rather frosty on the subject of artificial beings, particularly on amdroids in law enforcement. Perhaps we were coming up in the world. “Good news, sir."
Matheson almost maintained his sad smile. “Nice spot of media buzz on both cases, Jaggers. Shad and you have the rest of the day and this evening off. Pass on the word to Detective Sergeant Shad, if you would be so kind."
"Thank you, sir, I will. Doesn't that leave the office a bit shorthanded? Towson called in sick."
"Stay on call, but Parker should be able to handle anything that comes up.” He gave himself a moment of silence thinking upon Detective Constable Ralph Parker, incontinent flea-infested gorilla. His sad gaze elevated until it rested upon me. “So, Jaggers, how is Shad settling into his replacement duck suit?"
"Well enough, sir."
"A bit embarrassing him renting that Watson meat suit from Celebrity Look-alikes after his duck caught it at Hangingstone."
"That was a Nigel Bruce s
uit, sir, made up to look like Dr. Watson."
Matheson shook his head and looked again at the gloomy sky. “Damned silly. You looking like Basil Rathbone and Shad doing his Watson—damned silly. The chief constable put a bug in my shell-like when he heard about it, I can tell you."
"Remarkable amount of cooperation we received from the public, though, sir, as Holmes and Watson. C.C. Crowe, in addition, appears to have forgiven us with this suggestion of a day off."
Matheson looked confused for a moment then sloughed it off. “True. Mercurial man, the chief constable.” He turned and faced me. “I find it hard to tell with a duck, Jaggers, but at times Shad seems a bit depressed. Still recovering from the Hangingstone thing?"
"I don't believe it's Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, sir. As you know better than anyone else, no one ends in ABCD by choice. Being a star on the telly must have been very exciting for him."
"He didn't find getting blown to pieces exciting?"
"I hardly think he'd list that as a job perk."
"I suppose not.” He shook his head. “Those adverts Shad was in: You suppose there's anything to that insurance?” He waved a hand at me to fend off my uninformed answer to his idle question. “All rubbish now they've gone to that slimy little yob of a lizard for a mascot, isn't it? In any event, a night off will do Shad and you both some good. AB Emancipation Week, you know. I may take the missus out tonight myself.” He sat down, opened a file, and said without looking up, “Try and enjoy yourself, Jaggers. Hate to waste a perfectly good gesture."
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It was going to be a good night out. I called Val with the news and she suggested a double date with Shad and Nadine. Val was a golden Tonkinese bio and her orange tabby bio friend had been steady dating Shad. I put it to my partner and Shad decided to shake off his mood and agreed to go with us to a showing of The Adventures of Robin Hood at Exeter's Picture House. Part of the film's appeal to the AB culture was because a generic bio used to replace fallen police males in Britain some decades ago bore a striking resemblance to twentieth century actor Basil Rathbone. Besides Sherlock Holmes, Rathbone also played Sir Guy Gisbourne, Sheriff of Nottingham in the 1938 Robin Hood classic. What amused me about the film, aside from being a detective and wearing one of those Sheriff of Nottingham meat suits myself, was the strong resemblance of Dr. Hitchins, the current Archbishop of Canterbury, to the actor Eugene Pallette who played Friar Tuck. The archbishop was a very outspoken—dare I say rabid—opponent not only of AB rights but of AB existence, which is why Eugene Pallette always drew some good natured booing from the ABs in the audience every time he appeared on screen.
Analog SFF, November 2007 Page 1