How This Novel Came to Be
How This Novel Came to Be
Although I wrote only essays and books during my professional career, I had substantial literary interests before I pursued a doctorate in counseling psychology. As an undergrad, I majored in Romance Languages and Literature and wrote a senior thesis comparing and contrasting novelists Alberto Moravia and D. H. Lawrence (who was also a poet and painter). After I retired, I called upon my literary interests to give form and clarity to philosophical, religious, psychological, and political ideas that had bounced around my mind for many years.
Initially, I was going to focus on the nature of consciousness, in particular the downloading of consciousness to a computer. An essay would have been my natural methodology, and I pursued this course in the fictional essays of Maria Lisowski, a character in the novel. I wrote and revised these essays as I wrote the novel, with each influencing the development of the other. The essay on time is central to my understanding of an eternal God immanent in our temporal world.
Partly because I am not a computer expert and partly because mind downloads are so speculative, fiction seemed like an appropriate medium to explore and develop the ideas that were still rather fuzzy in my mind. My childhood interests in astronomy and space travel inclined me to move some of the story's action to outer space.
Consciousness obviously has philosophical, psychological, and political dimensions: What is the relationship of consciousness to matter (the mind-body problem)? If a mind can be downloaded, does the computer entity have the subjective consciousness of a human, or is it a complex simulacrum? Would a mind download be a form of immortality because its programming could be backed up and recopied endlessly? Why would anyone want to download his/her consciousness into a computer? What are the social-political implications of mind downloads?
As I pondered these and other questions, a story began to emerge. If the future brought the world a stable technologically advanced society, mind downloads would be accepted if not welcomed. Mind downloads, on the other hand, could threaten such a society. Firstly, the technical and resource demands of the process would preclude the masses from participating, so only a small number of people would be able to pursue cyber immortality. Secondly, members of the society who interpret mind downloads as a spiritual abomination or a threat to humanity's survival would oppose the downloads. A plot began to emerge--a plot that had many variations in books and movies from the past: Rich person becomes a super intelligent cyber entity. Some people rebel. Disaster follows.
As I meditated on this stock plot, God became more important to the story that was emerging in my mind. If God is real, especially the personal God of Christianity, then the story of a machine mind battling rebellious humans gets embedded in God's providence, God's plan for humanity. This makes for a story line that does not stand on the default atheistic philosophy of modernity, in which either the bad machines win or brave, areligious heroes save humanity.
If God exists, He can nudge humanity in unexpected ways. As I contemplated this notion, my religious interests and shaky Christian faith led me to three conclusions. First, if the machines were to threaten humanity, God would at least save a remnant, as in the story of Noah. Second, the advanced technology of a future society would produce options to challenge machine intelligence that are not available today. Third, as God put limits on our mental and physical capacities, He may also have set limits on what science and technology can accomplish, epitomized by the speed of light as the maximum possible velocity (notwithstanding dubious notions about warp drives and the like).
One option that I explore in the novel is the construction of hollowed out small asteroids that rotate to provide artificial gravity at the inner periphery of the cylinder. In the novel I call these "arks" because they are meant to save a remnant of humanity if necessary. Three thousand people inhabit the first ark in the asteroid belt. Christian space arks (and later, colonies on Planet 9, which settlers named "New Christendom") are pilot tests for new forms of social organization, much as the monastic movement of early Christianity invented new forms of community,
Unlike the old Christendom, which inherited much of its social structure and mores from the authoritarian and brutal Roman Empire, New Christendom builds on the technology and democratic ideals of openness and tolerance of post-Enlightenment democracies. Robots and other technologies -- e.g., vertical farms, cultivated meat, new building materials -- efficiently take care of survival needs, thereby enabling inhabitants to devote more time to educational and spiritual development. As the bishop of the New Christendom town Nicaea says:
The towns of New Christendom, on Earth and in space, look at today's secular world and say: "Thank you so much for science and technology! Thank you for making compassion a fundamental value of human society! Thank you for enabling so many people to pursue vocations that are meaningful or at least satisfying! Thank you for the freedom of democracy, even if it is not as robust as it could be."
New Christendom also says, "Please reconsider your focus on pleasure. There is much more to life than maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain. Please allow us to tell you about Jesus Christ our savior. He calls us to sacrifice, that is, to give ourselves to others. He calls us to holiness. He wants us to be better than we are, no matter how good we may appear in the eyes of others.
The novel is divided into two parts. Part One, "Utopia," describes the humanist society that develops mind downloads and struggles with the consequences of this development. This part resembles the stock plot of conflict between rebels and a superintelligent cyber entity, but with Christian themes and overtones. Part Two, "New Christendom," describes the space arks and towns on the newly discovered Planet 9, which is 60 billion kilometers from Earth but nearly the same size and gravitational force as Earth, thereby enabling children to grow normally . Part Two also explores the missionary thrust of New Christendom towns and its influence on the "new Roman Empire," i.e., the would-be secular utopia on Earth that brought peace and stability reminiscent of the Pax Romana. The last chapter of the novel, which follows the intergalactic journey of a cyber entity that is not a human mind download, considers the cosmic reach of God's Providence and the meaning that nonhuman cyber consciousness may have in God's eternity.