The passing of the old: A few observations on Hyperion, by Dan Simmons

 Let us call today's science fiction commentary the result of a convergence of observations.  Yesterday's post in the "Political Science is bullshit" series made the suggestion that the discipline may have reached the end of what existing scientific paradigms can accomplish, perhaps creating openings for the new.  The passing of the old, the rise of the new, presuming there is a new.  Political systems themselves are undergoing such shifts, and that was at the core of my concern.  Whether that is democratic backsliding around the world, or even perhaps the fall of Vladimir Putin, if one can risk optimism, the endurance of any system is always a question mark at best, existing under the cloud of what time series analysis would call "right censoring," which doesn't mean what you think it does.*  And so this morning, I turn to an old classic in the history of science fiction, Hyperion, by Dan Simmons.  Actually, there are four "Cantos" in the series, but I only really recommend the first two:  Hyperion, and Fall of Hyperion.  The next pair are not nearly as good, in my opinion (Endymion and Rise of Endymion).

If you don't recognize the title, "Hyperion," it is the Greek Titan/the sun, and the title of the Keats poem about the fall of the Titans and their replacement by the Olympians.  The poem figures heavily, as does Keats, himself, in a weird form.

Anyway, the Cantos are sort of about the singularity.  In the distant future, Earth has been oopsied.  Humanity is scattered around the galaxy on planets connected by "farcaster" portals.  Walk through a gateway on one planet, walk out on another.  How?  They are managed by a bunch of AIs, collectively called the Technocore.  They are our benefactors, yay Technocore, right?

Um... no.  Actually, they want to build their own machine god and wipe us out.  There is a group of humans who have left to get the hell away from this trap-- the Ousters-- but this is all building towards a war that goes backwards in time, centering on the planet, Hyperion, with a creepy machine/assassin that makes Arnie look like Barney the Dinosaur (the Shrike).

The first book follows a set of "pilgrims," Canterbury Tales-style, to Hyperion to the time tombs, where one finds the Shrike.  You learn their back stories, you understand the universe, and it gets the plot moving.  The war between humanity and the Technocore then really gets going in book 2, Fall of Hyperion.

So why am I thinking about this stuff?  The Hegemony, which was the conglomeration of human planets from which the Ousters left, had come to rely on the Technocore, its own creation, and in doing so, sowed the seeds of its own downfall, hence the reference to Hyperion, the Titans, the Olympians and Keats's poem.

It is difficult to see the Titans or the Olympians in good/evil terms.  The idea of religion as a source of morality is not one that matches up with all religions, and certainly not with Greco-Roman religion.  Hyperion?  Nope.  Zeus the swan-rapist?  Um... no, they're basically all assholes.  Put humanity into the mix and we see things differently, inclined as we are to take the side of humanity, although some of the human characters are better than others.  Some are entertaining, some are sleazy, and some are just icky, but in a humanity vs. Technocore conflict, we are primed to side with humanity.  The old rather than the new.  Read, then, as a cautionary tale?

Yet Keats wrote sympathetically from the perspective of Hyperion and the Titans because within the Greek religion, one might have asked if it would have been better had Zeus failed?  For humanity, perhaps not.  Hence a bit of subversiveness to sympathize with the old in the face of the passing into the new?

What is lost, and what is gained?  The war between the Titans and the Olympians was a war.  The war between humanity and the Technocore was a war fought backwards through time.  The question, then, is the difference between sowing the seeds of one's own destruction and just the passing of an era.

There is a way in which we can place democratic backsliding into this framework.  Part of the model, such as it is (consider yesterday's critiques), is the idea of ideological collusion.  An existing party accedes to a demagogue based on the belief that it has policy gains to be made in the process, yet by doing so, democratic guardrails are torn down, and the system along with it, eventually.  Sowing the seeds of one's own destruction through one's own creation.

Yet such ideas are inextricable from the normative judgment, as the normative judgment we have in the novels.  The Technocore is not something we can see without moral judgment.  Take that away, and it's just the process of history.

But the Technocore really is evil, and the Ousters were at least sort of right.  Seeing that with clarity is the important point.

Stuart Duncan, "The Passing," from his self-titled album.  Duncan is arguably the greatest fiddler in bluegrass history, right up there with Mark O'Connor, and going back to the legendary Scotty Stoneman.  However, he has only recorded one album to his own name.  He has just played as an accompanist for everyone because when anyone in Nashville needs the best, they call Stuart Duncan.

* In survival analysis, the question is the length of time until an event happens.  You may face two kinds of "censoring," which is when you are unable to observe data on one end of the time series.  Left-censoring occurs when you do not know the starting point, and right-censoring occurs when you have to cut off the analysis before observing if/when the event happens.