Freedom

I just finished two books my Robert Reed: Marrow and The Well of Stars. I read them in the wrong order, but really enjoyed both of them. I now consider Robert Reed, along with Steven Brust, Gene Wolfe, and William Gibson, on of the my favourite authors. I look forward to reading more of his books and stories in the future.



Marrow.  Imagine the infinite void our galaxy floats in.  Imagine the immense time it represents.  Now picture a ship, coming from an empty part of space, where only the signature of the most ancient galaxies remain.  Imagine a ship older than our planet, older than our galaxy.  This is the Great Ship.  This ship is round, like a planet, but immense.  Its radius is ten times that of our solar system, and it's full of living areas, enough for millions of races to live side by side, each in their own habitat, but it's empty of life.  Imagine this ship being claimed by humans, then filling with all types of life from across the galaxy.  Everything is good.  Now imagine finding out that the ship is hollow.  There is a space within.  And in this space, beneath the bright sky of one long day is a planet, a planet of heavy metals, a planet with ancient plants and animals more ancient than our galaxy.  Imagine being the first to step foot on this world within a world.  What secrets does it hold?  Why is it there?  This world is Marrow.

I read The Well of Stars first.  Part way through it, I checked Marrow out from the library to find out the first part of the story.  I'm glad I did.  Though I knew some things the reader wasn't meant to know because of reading the second book first, there were many surprises I didn't expect.  I highly recommend reading this book.



The Well of Stars.  Picture the Great Ship traveling through space.  It has avoided several catastrophes and is now pointed out of our galaxy, ending a 100,000 year detour around the Milky Way.  But it isn't into deep space yet.  Before it is a mysterious black nebula dubbed the Ink Well.  There is rumours of life in the Well, but no one knows what.  The crew of the Great Ship work hard to discover what they can about it, hoping to make it through unscathed.  But what do they really know about life?  What do they really know about Creation?  What do they really know about the Great Ship?  Where did it come from?  And who else might want it?

I read The Well of Stars first, before the first one, so there were a few things I didn't understand, but that was fine.  I saw the book for sale in Hastings used in hardback, but wanted to read something in paperback so I could more easily take it with me.  I bought it and put it in my backpack.  One day I accidentally left Changeling at home so I started it.  I couldn't put it down.  I still haven't finished Changeling.

This book was amazing.  I've never read anything like it.  It plays with both your idea of what life is, and with the nature of the universe.  If you like space novels, be ready not to want to put this book down.  But it would be best to read Marrow first.

-ken-

Recently, I finished reading Capacity by Tony Ballantyne. It is the middle book in a triligy. The first is Recursion, which I read back a while. The third is Divergence, which came out this year.

Once again, Tony follows multiple times and points of view. One point of view is Justinian, who is sent to a world between us and the nearest galaxy to find out why a bunch of AIs on that planet committed suicide. The other points of view, seventeen years later, are Helen, a young girl, and several Judys. There is one Judy in the "real" world, and twelve Judys in the virtual worlds, personality constructs. Helen and the Judys are trying to track down a psychopath who sells access to personality constructs to people wanting to play out various sick fantasies. Following rumors that the Watcher, the mysterious AI who has been guiding the human race, has murdered Justinian, Helen and the Judys must track down this psycho and determine his connection with the murder.

This book deals a lot with quantum physics and with the concept of capacity, both physical and virtual.  There is only so much information or entities a given system, be it a computer, a solar system, or a galaxy, can support.

The book was excellent.  I can't really say whether it was better or worse than the first.  Both were excellent, well written, and thought provoking in their own right.  Definitely read the first book first, but read both of them.  I'm sure Divergence will be just as good as the rest.

-ken-

Quantum physics has some interesting ways to look at things.  You can predict possible locations of a particle, but knowing where it is at a given moment while knowing its momentum is impossible.  Once you observe a particle, you know where it is, but no longer know where it is coming from or where it is going.  If its present is known, its past and future are unknowable.  Likewise, to predict its future and its past, where it is at the moment in unknowable.  In a quantum understanding, us and everything around us are made up of particles, each of which is like this.  Hence, this applies to all parts of our universe, from the smallest quark to the largest clusters of galaxies or quasars.

This has interesting implications in our day to day life.  What is the past?  What is the present?  What is the future?

The past is the events leading up to an event that can be marked as the present.  The future is the results of that event.  But if you are standing in the present, what is the past?  Is it the series of events you remember bringing about the present?  Each remembers a different past, so which past is it?  Obviously each observer's memory is limited to what they experienced and what their brain saw as important.  So, what events could have caused this present?  There are many series of events that can bring about a given event.

Likewise, we look at the future.  Do we know what the future will be?  Of course we don't.  Each of us can come up with what seems the most likely result of the current event and each of us will have a different idea.  Many possible futures are possible results of any event.  We don't know the future until we get there, then it's the present, not the future, and then it's the past, or one of many possible pasts.

Okay, so maybe we don't look at the present and try to understand the past and future.  Maybe we look to the past and try to calculate what the present will be like.  Will it be what we predict from the past?  It will be one possibility.  But which possibility?  We don't know without looking at the present.  So, one past means multiple presents and one present means multiple pasts.  We never know both the past and the present as only one at the same time.

The present is the convergence of many possible pasts and many possible futures to one point, to one singularity.  We either live in the past and future, in the should haves and what ifs, or we live in the present, with no concept of a past and future, living in the moment.  In the present, everything is possible.  Our mistakes in the past may or may not have happened.  The future holds infinite possibilities.  Only the present matters.  Living isn't about focusing on the past or worrying about the future.  It's about the present, living in the moment.

The present is outside the flow of time, in a way, much as God is outside time.  It is only by living in the moment that we can truly draw close to God.  Living in the past or future distracts us from Him.  Guilt about the past or worry about the future pulls us away from Him and makes us lose the present.

God Bless and Luck in the Shadows,
-ken-

Questionable Content: New comics every Monday through Friday:

This one's kind of offensive, so don't read it if you don't want to be offended. I've read too much quantum physics lately, so to me it was too hilarious to not post...

Questionable Content: New comics every Monday through Friday: