The Hard SF Renaissance

by David G. Hartwell

  This freedom is not without price. I’ve mortgaged the last usable tissue in my body. Sylvie hasn’t repossessed the rights to her corneas, despite her attempts to find a legal loophole that will allow her to do so, and although the time may come when she has to give up an organ or two, she insists that her body is her own.

  More painful is the fact that, every so often, we have to spend several weeks each year participating in the Phase One tests. Sometimes they’re the very same experiments, conducted simultaneously at the same test facility, so we have to pretend to be strangers.

  I haven’t quite become used to that, but it can’t be helped.

  But the money is good, the airfare is free, and we sometimes get to see old friends. We spent a week with Doug a couple of months ago, while doing hypothermia experiments in Colorado. He and I discussed favorite Jules Verne novels while sitting in tubs of ice water.

  For all of that, though, I lead a satisfactory life. Sylvie and I have enough money to pay the bills, and we visit the most interesting places around the world. I have a woman who I love, my mother has stopped bothering me about getting a job, and I’ve learned how to read.

  Not only that, but we can always say that we’ve done our part for the advancement of science and all mankind.

  For what more can a good rat ask?

  BUILT UPON THE SANDS OF TIME

  Michael Flynn

  Michael Flynn (born 1947) is a statistician by profession. In his fiction, Flynn is concerned with technology and the people who work with it. His first story appeared in Analog in 1984, and, as The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction remarks, he “soon became identified as one of the most sophisticated and stylistically acute 1980s Analog regulars.” So he’s a perfect match for the traditional image of the hard SF writer, except that his interest in characterization goes deeper than most. In this regard he is more like Nancy Kress and James Patrick Kelly than, say, James P. Hogan, though the politics of his major work certainly leans to the Libertarian right. His first novel was In the Country of the Blind (1990), now revised and reissued in hardcover in 2001; his second novel was Fallen Angels (1991) in collaboration with Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle. His third, The Nanotech Chronicles (1991), is a series of linked stories. At that point in his career, John Clute (in The Encyclopedia of Science Fiction) said, “[Flynn] is on the verge of becoming a central creator of hard SF.”

  His major work of the 1990s is comprised of Firestar (1996), Rogue Star (1998), Lodestar (2000) and Falling Star (2001); four volumes in an ongoing future history concerned with reinvigorating the space frontier through private enterprise, done in a very Heinleinesque manner. It is an interesting parallel and political contract to Allen Steele’s future history (see Steele note). Many of Flynn’s best stories, including the excellent novella “Melodies of the Heart,” are collected in The Forest of Time and Other Stories (1997).

  “Built upon the Sands of Time” is Flynn the Analog writer doing a bar story about scientists and ordinary people. Clarke defined the tradition with a series of stories collected in Tales from the White Hart (1957), full of clever notions and (occasionally bad) jokes following the lead of L. Sprague de Camp and Fletcher Pratt’s Tales from Gavagan’s Bar (1953). Larry Niven’s Draco Tavern stories and Spider Robinson’s Callahan’s Place stories have been the standard bearers for the tradition since the 1970s. Flynn’s story is notable for its deft and economical characterization, humor, and its scientific twist.

  A wise man once said that we can never step in the same river twice. A very wise man, indeed; because by that he did not mean we should refrain from bathing, as some half-wits at the Irish Pub have suggested, but that times change and the same circumstances are never fully repeated. You are not the same person you were yesterday; nor am I.

  But perhaps that old Greek was not half so wise as he thought. Perhaps you cannot step into the same river even once; and you may not be the same person yesterday as you were yesterday.

  Friday nights at the irish pub are busier than a husband whose wife has come home early. When The O Neil and myself arrived, the neighborhood crowd was there bending elbows with the University folks from down the street and making, as they like to say, a joyful noise. It was so busy, in fact, that Hennesey, O Daugherty’s partner, had joined him behind the bar and even so they were barely keeping ahead of the orders. There were another dozen or so boyos in the back room, watching the progress of the pool table and providing encouragement or not to the players, as the case might be. The O Neil placed his challenge by laying a quarter down on the rail and promised to call me in for a game as soon as he won the table. Then he set himself to study the opposition. Seeing as how the quarters were lined up on the rail like so many communion children, I knew it would be a long, sad time before I held a cue in my hand, so I took myself back out to the bar.

  O Daugherty Himself was a wise man, for he had saved a stool for my sitting and, more quickly than I could order it, had placed a pint of Guinness before me. O Daugherty is a man who knows his manners; and his customers, as well. After a polite nod to the man on my right, whom I did not know, I occupied myself with the foamy stout.

  Hennesey was a contrast to his partner. Where O Daugherty was short, dark, and barrel-chested, Hennesey was tall, fair, and dour, one of the “red-haired race” from the North of Ireland. His long, thick, drooping face seemed always on the verge of tears, though never quite crossing over into the real thing. His shoulders were stooped because, tall as he was, he had to bend over to communicate with the common ruck. He gave me a smile, which for him consisted of raising the corners of his mouth from the vicinity of his chin to a nearly horizontal position. I hoisted my own mug in reply.

  But no sooner had I taken the first, bitter sip than I heard Doc Mooney, on the far side of the oval bar, complain. In itself, this was no unusual thing, since complaint is the blood and spit of the man. But the nature of his complaint was more than a little out of the ordinary.

  “Which of ye spalpeens,” he cried, “has taken my jawbone?”

  Danny Mulloney, sitting two stools to his left, looked at him. “Why, no one, you omadhaun, seeing as how you’re still flapping it.”

  Doc gave him the squint-eye. “It’s not my own jawbone I’m speaking of, ye lout; as you would know if you applied what little thought you have to it; but the jawbone we keep at the medical school for purposes of demonstration. I had put it in my pocket when I left for the day.”

  “Ah,” said Danny with a sad shake of his head, “and I would hate to be your wife, then, after turning out your pockets for the laundering. Sure, a pathologist should never take his work home with him.”

  There was a ripple of laughter at our end of the bar. I confess that I smiled, myself, though it is my constant purpose never to encourage the wit of Danny Mulloney.

  Doc turned a shade darker and tapped the bar top with a stiff finger. “I had set it right there, and now it is gone. Someone has taken it.”

  “You weren’t thinking of leaving it as a tip, Doc?” I asked, getting into the spirit of the thing.

  Doc gave me a look of betrayal. Et tu, Mickey? But Himself spoke up, a twinkle in his eye. “It would depend, I’m thinking, on how many teeth were yet in the jaw. Placed under my pillow, it might draw a tidy sum from the wee folk.”

  Hennesey only shook his head at the blathering of mortals. “Now, who would wish to steal such a thing?” he asked, contrabasso.

  “Samson,” Danny suggested. “Were there any Philistines about?” Danny being of a religious frame of mind, a Biblical example came most naturally to him.

  Doc, who knows a little of Scripture himself, leaned past the poor man who sat between him and Danny and consequently had to listen to the argument with both his ears, and said sweetly, “Nor is it your own jawbone we’re speaking of.”

  “There is too much foam,” said the man sitting between them.

  Both Danny and Doc pulled away, puzzled at the nonce of the sequitur. Himself reared up. “Too much
foam, d’you say? Why, I give honest measure; and the man who says I do not is a liar.”

  The man blinked several times. “What? Oh.” He glanced at the sturdy glass mug before him. “Oh, no, I did not mean your fine beer. I was responding to this gentleman’s question concerning his jawbone. I meant the quantum foam.”

  Hennesey scratched his jaw. “The quantum foam, is it? And that would be an Australian beer?”

  “No. I mean the timelessness that came ‘before’ the Big Bang. We call it the quantum foam.”

  O Daugherty drew a fresh·mug and set it down with a flourish before the man. “Sure and it is worth the price of a good pint to hear what connection there might be between the Big Bang and Doc Mooney’s jawbone.”

  Doc protested again, “It’s not my jawbone,” but no one paid him any heed.

  “Well,” said the man, “not to the jawbone, but to the disappearance of the jawbone.” He seemed hesitant and a little sad. For a moment, he managed to make even Hennesey look cheerful. Then he sighed and picked up the mug. “It’s like this,” he said.

  “My name is Owen fitzHugh. I am a physicist at the university, but my hobby has always been the oddities of the Universe. Quirks, as well as quarks, as a colleague of mine has remarked …

  “One of these quirks is what I call ‘phantom recollections’ and ‘causeless objects.’ Non-Thomistic events, if you must have a fine philosophical name for it. Have you ever looked in vain, as your friend here, for an object you clearly recall having placed in a certain spot? Or, conversely, found small objects for which you cannot account? Or recalled telephone numbers or appointments that turned out not to exist?”

  “I had a key on my key chain, once,” said Maura Lafferty, “that I did not recognize and that fit no lock that I own. I still have no idea where it came from.”

  “I had a date one time with Bridey Lynch,” said Danny, “but when I called on her, she had no recollection of it.”

  Doc made an evil grin. “Why, there is no mystery at all in that.”

  FitzHugh nodded. “They are usually small objects or bits of information, these anomalies of mine. Usually, when we notice them at all, we ascribe them to a faulty recollection; but I’m a natural contrarian. I wondered: What if it is the Universe, and not ourselves, that sometimes forgets.”

  Danny and Doc flanked the poor man with a bookend of skeptical looks. Danny, I was sure, believed in God’s Infallible Memory; while Doc reasoned from the predictability of Natural Law. Still their thoughts had come to rest in the same place. Himself shifted his apron and cocked his head in interest. “Now what might that mean?”

  “History is contingent,” said fitzHugh.

  Himself nodded. “Aye, so it is.” But Danny scratched his head. “If it is, I’ve never caught it.” Doc leaned past the unfortunate physicist once more.

  “He said ‘contingent,’ not ‘contagious.’”

  FitzHugh looked at Danny. “I should have said that history is a chain of cause-and-effect,” he said. “One event leads to others, and then to still others. Often, great events hinge on small occurrences.”

  Wilson Cartwright, a history professor at the University, spoke up from the booth behind fitzHugh. “That’s gospel truth. In 1862, a Confederate courier lost a copy of Lee’s troop dispositions. Two Union foragers found them and McClellan managed—barely—to win the battle of Antietam, which gave Lincoln the opportunity to issue the Emancipation Proclamation. And when the news of the Proclamation reached England, the cabinet reversed its decision to intervene on the Confederate side. In consequence of which …” He lifted his drink in salute to the bar. “ … my great-grandpappy became a free man.”

  Hennesey nodded. “Da met me Ma in the same way. Another small chance—though the outcome was not so momentous as war and freedom. He was on the run—. This was during the Troubles, when the Big Fella and the Long Fella had their row—bad cess to ‘em both—and Da, he found himself in on the wrong side. O Daugherty, you know what I’m speakin’ of, and enough has been said about that. Da took himself to the Waterford hills and, finding himself at a crossroads, tossed a coin. The shilling sent him to Ballinahinch, where me ol’ Gran was keeping a pub in those days and Ma waited tables. Now Da was not the man to pass a pub without a drop of the creature, so he stopped and …” The man’s long, doughy face turned a deep red. “ … here I am. Had the shilling read tails, he was a dead man, for his enemies were waiting down the other road. As it was, what with one thing and another …” And he pointed with his drooping chin to the photograph on the wall opposite, where a far younger Hennesey and O Daugherty stood side by side in black-and-white, stern-faced splendor, arms crossed and legs akimbo before the newly opened Irish Pub.

  Doc Mooney raised his pint. “I have always thought you an unlikely man, Hennesey.”

  “But that’s just the point,” fitzHugh said. “Everything is unlikely … and therefore fragile.”

  “‘Fragile,’” said Himself. “A curious word.”

  “Fragile,” said fitzHugh with an affirmative nod. “Because the slightest bump and … you see, the quantum foam is subject to sudden, spontaneous disturbances. These create ‘probability waves’ in the continuum that propagate down the time stream creating a new past. The old past is obliterated. As it was in the beginning, is not, and never more shall be.”

  Himself scowled a bit at the altered quotation, but Danny Mulloney brightened, which is always a bad sign. “Do you mean to say,” he said. “Do you mean to say that all those dinosaur fossils and such might have been put in the ground only a few thousand years ago?”

  FitzHugh blinked and looked thoughtful. “Certainly, it’s conceivable,” he said slowly. “Yes. Suppose that evolution originally followed a different course—perhaps those strange Burgess Shale creatures I’ve read of won out over our own familiar phyla, and after a time strange things stalked the Earth of sixty million years ago—things that never held the promise of man. Then, a bubble bursts in the foam and a probability wave ripples down the timeline—and now dinosaurs leave their bones in the mud instead of things with no names. So, yes, in one sense, this new past could have been laid down a few thousand years ago; but in another sense, once it had been laid down, it had always been there.”

  Danny pursed his lips, for I do not think he had envisioned a different evolution when he raised his question. Meanwhile, a ripple of wisely nodding heads showed the incomprehension propagating around the oval bar. FitzHugh noticed and said, “Perhaps a sketch will clear it up.” He seized a napkin and immediately began to doodle on it. Sitting as I was on the far side, I could not see what he sketched and Hennesey, noting my frustration, waved me inside the Sacred Oval. “Here,” he said, handing me a bar apron. “’Tis a busy night and we can use the help.” Then he set off to the front end of the bar to tend to the raging thirst there.

  Tying the apron, I stepped across in time to hear fitzHugh say, “This was the continuum in its original state.” I glanced at the napkin and saw he had written:

  “Then, a quantum disturbance alters event A to event A*. A stray chronon—a quantum of time—emitted from the foam, strikes like a billiard ball.” He turned to Dr. Cartwright, who had left his booth to stand behind him. “Perhaps your Confederate courier, Wilson, doesn’t drop his packet.” He held up the napkin again.

  The big historian looked thoughtful, and nodded. Maura Lafferty, who had also joined the little group at the back end of the bar, leaned over the man’s shoulder. “Why did you add the ‘D’?”

  “Oh, time doesn’t stop just because there is a bit of redecorating going on,” fitzHugh said. “The present is … call it the ‘bow wave’ of the Big Bang, plowing through formlessness and leaving time in its wake. But behind it is coming the ‘bow wave’ of the new version, altering all the original consequences of A. When the wave front reaches B, event B ‘unhappens.’ Something else—call it G—happens instead.”

  “Why G?” Danny asked, frowning over the sketch. “Why not call it
B?”

  “It doesn’t matter what he calls it, ye spalpeen,” said Doc Mooney.

  FitzHugh grimaced. “Actually, it does. I don’t want to imply that B happens differently —because it might not happen at all.”

  Cartwright bobbed his head. “That’s right. If McClellan hadn’t intercepted Lee’s orders, it wouldn’t have changed the outcome of Antietam. There wouldn’t have been a battle at Antietam. McClellan only attacked there because he had Lee’s orders. Without them, there would have been a different battle at some other time and place.”

  I scratched my head. “So why didn’t you alter C, D and E?”

  “Because the wave front hasn’t ‘caught up’ to them yet.” He busied himself at the napkin. “Here, this is then next quantum of time, the next parasecond.”

  “You’ll notice that the original causal chain is still propagating itself, and event E has led to event F. But the revision is catching up. Change waves move faster than one second per second—just as water moves faster down a channel already dug than it does across virgin ground—but you really need two different kinds of time to talk about it intelligently. Eventually, the change wave reaches the present, merges into the original Big Bang wave, and the revision is complete.” He held the napkin up one last time.

  “Even our memories are reconfigured,” he said. “The right ripple and … who knows? We might be sitting here discussing Lee’s victory.”