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[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] writer; one can simply mention everyday objects and let them set the interior stage of the reader's mind. Yet some of our field's greatest works concern vast perspectives. Most of Olaf Stapledon's novels (Star Maker, Last And First Men) are set against such immense backdrops. Arthur C. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night opens over a billion years in our future. These works have remained in print many decades, partly because they are rare attempts to "look long" -- to see ourselves against the scale of evolution itself. Indeed, H.G. Wells wrote The Time Machine in part as a reaction to the Darwinian ideas which had swept the intellectual world of comfortable England. He conflated evolution with a Marxist imagery of racial class separation, notions that could only play out on the scale of millions of years. His doomed crab scuttling on a reddened beach was the first great image of the far future. Similarly, Stapledon and Clarke wrote in the dawn of modern cosmology, shortly after Hubble's discovery of universal expansion implied a startlingly large age of the universe. Cosmologists believed this to be about two billion years then. From better measurements, we now think it to be at least five times that. In any case, it was so enormous a time that pretensions of human importance seemed grotesque. We have been around less than a thousandth of the universe's age. Much has gone before us, and even more will follow. In recent decades there have been conspicuously few attempts to approach such perspectives in Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html literature. This is curious, for such dimensions afford sweeping vistas, genuine awe. Probably most writers find the severe demands too daunting. One must understand biological evolution, the physical sciences, and much else -- all the while shaping a moving human story, which may not even involve humans as we now know them. Yet there is a continuing audience for such towering perspectives. "Thinking long" means "thinking big." Fiction typically focuses on the local and personal, gaining its power by unities of time and setting. Fashioning intense stories against huge backdrops is difficult. And humans are special and idiosyncratic, while the sweep of time is broad, general and uncaring. We are tied to time, immense stretches of it. Our DNA differs from that of chimps by only 1.6 percent; we lords of creation are but a hair's breadth from the jungle. We are the third variety of chimp, and a zoologist from Alpha Centauri would classify us without hesitation along with the common chimp of tropical Africa and the pygmy chimp of Zaire. Most of that 1.6 percent may well be junk, too, of no genetic importance, so the significant differences are even smaller. We carry genetic baggage from far back in lost time. We diverged genetically from the Old World monkeys about 30 million years ago, from gorillas about ten million years ago, and from the other chimps about seven million years ago. Only 40 thousand years ago did we wondrous creatures appear -- meaning our present form, which differs in shape and style greatly from our ancestor Neanderthals. We roved further, made finer tools, and when we moved into Neanderthal territory, the outcome was clear; within a short while, no more Neanderthals. No other large animal is native to all continents and breeds in all habitats, from rainforests to deserts to the poles. Among our unique abilities which we proudly believe led to our success, we seldom credit our propensity to kill each other, and to destroy our environment--yet there are evolutionary arguments that these were valuable to us once, leading to pruning of our genes and ready use of resources. These same traits now threaten our existence. They also imply that, if we last into the far future, those deep elements in us will make for high drama, rueful laughter, triumph and tragedy. While we have surely been shaped by our environment, our escape from bondage to our natural world is the great theme of civilization. How will this play out on the immense scale of many millennia? The environment will surely change, both locally on the surface of the Earth, and among the heavens. We shall change with it. We shall probably meet competition from other worlds, and may fall from competition to a Darwinian doom. We could erect immense empires and play Godlike games with vast populations. And surely we could tinker with the universe in ingenious ways, the inquisitive chimpanzee wrestling whole worlds to suit his desires. Once we gain great powers, we can confront challenges undreamed of by Darwin. The universe as a whole is our ultimate opponent. In the very long run, the astrologers may turn out to be right: our fates may be determined by the stars. For they are doomed. Stars are immense reservoirs of energy, dissipating their energy stores into light as quickly as their bulk allows. Our own star is 4.3 billion years old, almost halfway through its eleven billion year life span. After that, it shall begin to burn heavier and heavier elements at its core, growing hotter. Its atmospheric envelope of already incandescent gas shall heat and swell. From a mild-mannered, yellow-white star it shall bloat into a reddened giant, swallowing first Mercury, then Venus, then Earth and perhaps Mars. H.G. Wells foresaw in The Time Machine a dim sun, with a giant crablike thing scuttling across a barren Generated by ABC Amber LIT Converter, http://www.processtext.com/abclit.html beach. While evocative, this isn't what astrophysics now tells us. But as imagery, it remains a striking reflection upon the deep problem that the far future holds -- the eventual meaning of human action. About 4.5 billion years from now, our sun will rage a hundred times brighter. Half a billion years further on, it will be between 500 and a thousand times more luminous, and seventy percent larger in radius. The Earth's temperature depends only slowly on the sun's luminosity (varying as the one fourth root), so by then our crust will roast at about 1400 degrees Kelvin, room temperature is 300 Kelvin. The oceans and air will have boiled away, leaving barren plains beneath an angry sun which covers thirty-five degrees of the sky. What might humanity -- however transformed by natural selection, or by its own hand -- do to save itself? Sitting further from the fire might work. Temperature drops inversely with the square of distance, so Jupiter will be cooler by a factor of 2.3, Saturn by 3.1. But for a sun 500 times more luminous than [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ] |