This series began as a short story and expanded to about a million words. Enough! When I began, I had no idea that the range would expand beyond our solar system, much less to the center of the galaxy.
To the best of my ability I have kept the imaginings of these novels within the constraints set by astronomical observations. The explosion of our astronomical knowledge has been one of the wonders of the last few decades, but it’s been tough on fiction writers.
In the last two decades the Very Large Array and other new varieties of telescopes have opened windows on our galactic center, with astonishing results. I’ve had to change my own ideas and, indeed, some of the inventions in this novel arise from theory as well—particularly from advances in the theory of gravitation.
Plainly something enormously powerful is going on at the galactic center, apparently driven by a vast explosion about a million years ago. Electrodynamic effects are strikingly strong within a few hundred light-years of the exact dynamical center, about which the entire spiral disk spins. There, the magnetic field is at least a hundred times more intense than is typical in such mild-mannered, suburban neighborhoods of the galaxy as our own. Apparently, the long, luminous strands there derive from this strong field. They are neon signs, some a hundred light-years long, announcing the work of forces unseen. These, in turn, suggest that in the far more energetic active galactic nuclei of distant galaxies, magnetic fields may play a shaping role.
So, of course, I made magnetic structures a plot element in this series. In later novels—particularly in Eater and The Sunborn—I’ve worked these ideas into different guises. Partly this comes from the theoretical research I have done on the central galactic region, wearing my hat as a professor of physics. The tension between these roles plays out in my position at the University of California, Irvine. Many faculty think there is (or should be) a firm boundary between science and fiction. They don’t seem to fathom that you cannot do anything unless you can first envision it.
It has been an unusual experience to conjure up imaginary events about a place that figured also in my hard, detailed calculations. Freed of the bounds of The Astrophysical Journal, I have felt at liberty to speculate on what processes might have transpired over the galaxy’s ten billion years of furious cooking, to create forms of life and intelligence beyond our ken. (Coincidence: Just after writing the above paragraph, I got a note from the editor of that same august journal, appreciating an earlier novel. Someday I must attempt to trace the interactions between science and science fiction. Or, better, let an energetic graduate student do it. There’s a good doctoral thesis lurking there. . . . )
This series owes a debt to the scientists, editors, academics, and writers who have kept me going over two decades with ideas, advice, encouragement, and insightful reading. These include, in no particular order, Marvin Minsky, Sheila Finch, David Hartwell, Elisabeth Malartre, Mark Martin, David Brin, Betsy Mitchell, Martin Rees, David Samuelson, Steven Harris, Stephen Hawking, Lou Aronica, Joe Miller, Jennifer Hershey, Gary Wolfe, Norman Spinrad, David Kolb and Arthur C. Clarke. Stimulating ideas kept drawing me on. In preparing this new edition, Jaime Levine and Devi Pilli have been enormously useful and insightful, catching my many errors.
I especially thank Mark Morris of UCLA, who in the early 1990s assembled and directed the International Astronomical Union’s Symposium on the Center of the Galaxy. The data and theories of that and later meetings spurred me to look beyond the models I had concocted for magnetic phenomena at the galactic center. Speaking at length about my own notions, and having them raked over by the observers—always a daunting prospect for a theorist!—made me confront the bewildering profusion of neon-brilliant displays, violent explosions, piercing energies, and mysteriously highly organized structures that mark our galactic center. Doing so opened my imagination to the possibilities of life (and, indeed, of death) in so virulently extreme a place. These took a long while to develop; one has distractions, particularly with a day job.
And then there is Real Life, too, always demanding. My ideas about life in the universe have changed greatly since I set grumpy Nigel Walmsley on his odyssey in 1970 (beginning with that short story, “Icarus Descending,” which was later slightly adapted and now opens In the Ocean of Night). Despite such evolutions, I have tried to keep these novels consistent. Events spanning several tens of thousands of years are not often reconciled, especially when the author has been off doing other things.
This concluding volume of the series, and the novella written afterward, “A Hunger for the Infinite,” comprise all I now wish to write about the stretched future. The whole series echoes, for me, with the haunting facts of our mayfly lives. No one reading this will know what our destiny is on the galactic stage. Indeed, we may not have one, unless we venture more boldly out into our own backyard of a solar system, and then dream of even greater stages upon which we can perform our dramas. It is not at all obvious that we will.
I may venture back into this universe in future, if the impulse occurs, but the basic plot and lines of reasoning are here set forth. What a long, strange trip it’s been.
September 2004
Timeline of Galactic Series
2019A.D. Nigel Walmsley encounters the Snark, a mechanical scout. 2024Ancient alien starship found wrecked in Marginis crater, on Earth’s moon. 2041First signal received at Earth from Ra. 2049First near-light-speed interstellar probes. 2060Modified asteroid ships launched, using starship technology extracted from Marginis wreck. 2064Lancer starship launched with Nigel Walmsley aboard. 2066Discovery of machine intelligence Watchers. 2067First robotic starship explorations. Swarmers and Skimmers arrive at Earth. 2076Lancer arrives at Ra. Discovery of the “microwave-sighted” Natural society. 2077Lancer departs Ra. 2081Mechanicals trigger nuclear war on Earth. 2085Starship Lancer destroyed at Pocks. Watcher ship successfully attacked, with heavy human losses. 2086Nigel Walmsley and others escape in Watcher ship, toward Galactic Center. Humans launch robot starship vessels to take mechanical technology to Earth. 2088Humans contain Swarmer-Skimmer invasion. Alliance with Skimmers. 2095Heavy human losses in taking of orbital Watcher ships. Annihilation of Watcher fleet. No mechanical technology captures due to suicide protocols among Watchers. 2097Second unsuspected generation of Swarmers emerges. 2108First-in-flight message received from Walmsley expedition: “We’re still here. Are you there?” 2111Final clearing of Earth’s oceans. 2128Robot vessels from Pocks arrive at Earth carrying mechanical technology. Immediate use by recovering human industries. 2175Second mechanical-directed invasion of Earth, using targeted cometary nuclei from Oort cloud. Rebuilding of human civilization. 2302Third mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. The Aquila Gambit begins successive novas in near-Earth stars. Beginning of Ferret Time. 2368First mechanical attempt to make Sun go nova. Failure melts poles of Earth. 2383Second nova attempt. Continents severely damaged. 2427Fourth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Rebuilding of human civilization. 2593Fifth mechanical-directed invasion of Earth. Diplomatic ploy thwarted. 2763Fifty-seventh Walmsley message received: “Are you there?” 3264First expedition launched toward Galactic Center from Earth. 4455First appearance of fourth chimpanzee species; clear divergence from host, Homo sapiens, the third species.
FLIGHT OF HUMAN FLEET TO GALACTIC CENTER “THE BIG JUMP”
29,079 Formation of added geometries to Wedge space-time around the central black hole. Old One manipulation of local Galactic Center space-time, apparently in anticipation of further mechanical-Natural violence. Mechanical forms carry out first incursions into Old One structures. 29,694Walmsley group arrives at Galactic Center in Watcher craft. 29,703First human entry into Wedge. Some communication with Old Ones. 29,741Arrival of Earth fleet expedition at Galactic Center. 29,744Meeting of Earth expedition and Walmsley group. 30,020-The “Great Times” of human development. Unsuc- 34,567cessful search for Galactic Library. Successive conflicts with mechanicals. Development of higher layers of mechanical “sheet intelligences.” Philosophical conflicts within mechanical civilizations. Formation of mechanical artistic philosophy. 34,567-Chandelier Age. Humans protected themselves 35,812against rising mechanical incursions. Participation of earlier humans from the Walmsley expedition. Some collaboration with Cyber organic/mechanical forms. Discovery of Galactic Library in the Wedge. 35,812-The “Hunker Down.” Exodus from the Chandeliers 37,483to many planets within 80 light-years of Absolute Center. Includes High Arcology Era, Late Arcology Era, and High Citadel Age as human societies contract under Darwinnowing effects of mechanical competition. 37,518Fall of Family Bishop Citadel on Snowglade, termed the “Calamity.” 37,524Escape of Family Bishop from Snowglade in ancient human vessel. Clandestine oversight of this band by Mantis level mechanicals. 37,529Surviving Bishops reach nearest star, encounter Cybers. Defeat local mechanicals. Adopt some human refugees. 37,530Bishops leave, escorted by Cybers and cosmic string. 37,536Bishops reach Absolute Center, enter Wedge. 37,538Temporal sequences become stocastically ordered. Release of Trigger Codes into mechanical minds. Death of most mechanical forms. Intervention of Highers to rectify damage done by excessive mechanical expansion. Preservation of several human varieties. Archiving of early forms in several deeply embedded representations. Beginning of cooperation between Higher mechanically-based forms and organic (“Natural”) forms. Decision to address the larger problems of all life-forms by Syntony, in collaboration with aspects of lower forms.
Beginning of mature phase of self-organized forms.
END OF PREAMBLE. LATER EVENTS CANNOT BE THUS REPRESENTED.
About the Author
GREGORY BENFORD is a professor of physics at the University of California, Irvine. He is a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, was a Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University, and in 1995 received the Lord Prize for contributions to science. His research encompasses both theory and experiments in the fields of astrophysics and plasma physics. His fiction has won many awards, including two Nebula Awards, one John W. Campbell Award, and one British SF Award. Dr. Benford makes his home in Laguna Beach, California.
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The Sunborn
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1. Firm, friendly, positive
Julia turned her best side toward the camera, a three-quarter shot, and spread her arms. Okay, maybe a bit theatrical, but she had the backdrop for it.
“Welcome to Earth on Mars!” She always opened firm, friendly, positive. She swept an arm around, taking in the stubby trees with their odd purple-green leaves, the raked mounds barely sprouting brownish-green patches, and above it all, the shiny curve of the dome, a hundred meters high. Beyond the dome’s ultraviolet screening hung the dark of space. The somber cap was always there, reminding them of how little atmosphere shielded them.
“We showed you the inflation of the big dome a month ago, the planting of trees right after—now we have grass.”
Not any breed of grass you’ve ever seen before, though; it’s a genetically modified plant more like a dwarf bamboo, and technically bamboo is a grass, just a really stiff one, so . . .
“It’ll be a while before we can play football on it, true. We’re pretty sure nothing like grass ever grew on the surface of ancient Mars even, back in the warm and wet period. So this prickly little fuzz”—she stooped to stroke it—“is a first. It’ll help along the big job that the microbes are doing down in the ground already—breaking up the regolith, making it into real soil.”
Was she sounding strained already? It was getting harder to strike the right level of enthusiasm in her weekly broadcast to Earthside. She could barely remember the days decades before, when she had broadcast several times a day, sometimes from this same spot. But then, they had been breaking new ground nearly every day. And betting pools on Earth gave new odds every time they went out in the rover on whether they’d come back alive. Usually about 50/50. The good ol’ days.
She smiled, strolling to her right as Viktor panned the camera. She had to remember her marks and turns, and to keep out of camera view the crowd of camp staff watching nearby.
Viktor called, “Cut, got sun reflecting in the lens.”
“Whew! Good. Let me memorize a few lines . . .”
She was glad for the break. It was getting harder to sound perky. The Consortium people had been grousing about that lately. But then, they had done so periodically, over the two decades she and Viktor had been doing their little shows. Media mavens had some respect for The Mars Couple (the title of the Broadway musical about them), but the long shadow of the Consortium, which had backed the 2018 First Landing (the movie title), wanted to keep them on the air for the worldwide subscriber base—and always pumping the numbers higher, of course. Axelrod, still the head of the Consortium, The Man Who Sold Mars (the miniseries title), and now probably the wealthiest man in the solar system, played diplomat between them and the execs Earthside. Exploration? Discovery—yes, they still got to do some. But a safari that turned up nothing new—like the Olympus Mons fiasco—could drive down Consortium shares, send heads rolling at high corporate levels, and make headlines. So she and Viktor tried not to think too much about the eternal media issues. It never really helped.
Viktor was fiddling, changing the camera angle, and here came Andy Lang, trotting over with his studied grin. “Julia, got an idea for a last shot.”
“What is it?” She looked beyond him and saw the two arm wings Andy had brought from Earth the year before, bright blue monolayer on a carbon strut. “Oh—well, look, we’ve done your flying stunt three times already.”
“I’m thinking just a closing shot.” He gestured up to the top of the dome, over a hundred meters above. “I come off the top platform, swing around the eucalyptus clump, into Viktor’s field of view—after you do your last line.”
“Ummm.” She had to admit they had no good finishing image, and Earthside was always carping about that. “You can do it?”
“Been practicing. I’ve got the timing down.” He was a big, muscular guy, an engineering wizard who had improved their geothermal system enormously. And a looker. Axelrod made sure to send them lookers. After all, thousands volunteered to work here every year. Why take the ugly ones when the worldwide audience liked eye candy?
