 I was looking at the California vowel shift and thinking how, if it continued, it would create a vertical vowel system where there are just unrounded and rounded allophones of /i/, /e/, and /a/, with no back vowels at all. Thinking about how such a thing might be accomplished (no literacy, the complete breakdown of civilization, isolation from influence from other languages), I thought of the barbaric future world of the comic First Knife, which I wrote with Simon Roy and Artyom Trakhanov several years ago, and whose sequel we're now preparing. Subscribe to find out more about that ;)
But anyway, maybe in some secluded Rocky Mountain valley, the descendants of 21st-century Californians might survive as mystical mountain-men. How exactly would you say "The Rocky Mountains" in their mystical mountain language? <ahem> <In-universe voice> Although the Vekhi call their homeland Dekhmwuz /ˈdekhˈmwɶz/, they would probably translate "The Rocky Mountains" as Dwuzawekhsall /ˈdwɶzaˈwekhsal/.
Take Dwuzawekhsall (“The mountains are rocky”). Vekhiz speakers would break that into dwuza (the definite form of Mwuza, “mountains”) and zawekhsall (the plural tail form of vekhiz “rocky,” with the adjectival suffix -all). However, you or I would break it down as:
So that’s Vekhiz. It's more of a game than a conlang, and I've been having fun with it. I like the Bronze-age majesty of "Deyangalz" and whenever I say "Dwuzawekhsall" out loud, I get the tune to "nkosi sikelel iAfrica" stuck in my head. Ask me, and I’ll give you your name in Vekhiz ;)
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 So there I was, turning the little crank that lifted the surface of my Ikea desk. Higher. Higher! Even higher, so that when I stand at its western edge, my left temple brushes the corner of the skylight. That’s the only place in this sloped-ceilinged loft where I can stand fully erect.
Then came the enjoyable task of sifting through all my books to find the works of reference I could shelve under my new desk. Birds of Europe, An Introduction to Sumerian Grammar. Gnomes. My old, dusty art supplies. I left things that way for a whole week of classes, prep for classes, writing, and housework. I managed for a time to stand at my desk (or rather to plant my elbows and dangle off it) after a long day and write in my journal. Finally, on a Saturday, I opened my sketchbook to its most recent page. Six months ago, I’d inked over a pencil drawing of men and beasts. Now, I started thinking about color palettes. Red, brown, black, and pine green for contrast. What would that look like? With if successive green washes gave depth, and green made shadows? Too much, it would turn out, but I didn’t know that then. I wanted to find out. I’d catch myself asking are you painting? Are you making art again? For the first tie in half a year? Why don’t you paint more often? I quieted myself. Just dip the brush, touch the pigment, add and squeeze the water away. Smell that sweet, wet paper. And while you’re waiting for it to dry, take up that pencil. What if a deer walked on its hind legs? What would that look like? Some blog, maybe it was A Quantum of Caring on Tumblr, called it “base expansion.” You invest energy in objects and practices that gain you more energy. You go to Ikea, invest in a Trotten, and you find yourself standing taller. In other news, I drew this castle-head guy and wrote a long-form review of Theft of Fire. Big news about Wealthgiver, but I’m not quite ready to share it yet. And I read a whole lot last month: Between Home and Ruin by Karl K. Gallagher The previous book in this series promised us a war, and we got one. The fun is watching exactly how. The diplomatic maneuvering felt very real, even better than the space battle and detective side-story. All three threads of the story deliver what I appreciate most in plotting, which is when you think A is going to happen, B happens instead, and B is more interesting than A. I will definitely read the third book in this series, and everything else Gallagher might write. Nine Lives by Aimen Dean This ghostwritten autobiography of an Al-Qaeda defector shows us what espionage looked like between the collapse of the Soviet Union and the Abraham Accords. James Herriot's Dog Stories by James Herriot I read this collection to my daughters, for whom it was perfect. No sex, but some men and women eyeing each other significantly. Serious consideration of mortality, but no hopelessness. And cute and funny doggies. I looked forward to bedtime. The Everlasting Man by G.K. Chesterton Chesterton gives his history of the Western world, from cave paintings to cities growing around the periphery of the inland sea to the Roman crisis of faith and its resolution in the coming of Jesus Christ. Apparently, he wrote this book contra H. G. Wells, but I don't care about the disagreements of two old scholars. I appreciate Chesterton's timeline of civilization superimposed over my own life from childhood to now. It's a story I'm glad to be part of. Balkan Ghosts by Robert D. Kaplan I’ve lived in Bulgaria since 2008, so I was fascinated by the impressions of another American who visited this country both before and immediately after the fall of the Berlin Wall. His observation that Bulgarians weren't allowed to complain before 1989 made much clear to me. But seriously, I value this book's "what-it-is-like-ness" as well as its summaries of the parallel but mutually-ignoring histories of Croatia, Serbia, Macedonia, Kosovo, Albania, Romania, Bulgaria, and Greece. Kaplan talks too much about the line between "east" and "west," but maybe that just reflects how much has changed. Alternate Routes by Tim Powers This book starts out with a great concept and a blast of an opening, but about halfway through it runs out of momentum and falls apart. I admire how much backstory the characters have and how quickly we get to know them and their problem, a villain compellingly similar to C.S. Lewis’s Doctor Frost.But then it seems like Powers doesn’t know what to do. He loses track of how his ghosts and their world work and what his characters want. I gave up about halfway through. Exodus from the Long Sun by Gene Wolfe The third Book of the Long Sun having wrapped up the story of Patera Silk, this fourth book feels a bit in excess, until you realize it is a bridge between Silk and Horn, who fictionally wrote this series, and will star in the next (The Book of the Short Sun). A good story in itself, Exodus also makes sense of much of what happened in the previous three books. "Of course we didn't know at then that Patera Quetzal was an Inhumu." Awesome. Secret Agents of the Galaxy by John C. Wright Another ride, though not as wild as the last one. While the previous book pulled us through the death-defying pirate hunt of Athos Lone, this second book focuses more on the psyonic espionage of Lyra Centauri. This is less exciting, and her story and Athos's have little to do with each other. Between the first and last scene, both of which are excellent and gripping, the rest of the book sags. However, I'm still eagerly awaiting book three. Wright's mediocrity is everyone else's mastery. See you next month  So there I was, disapproving of a student. We were in the "big classroom," where light and noise rushed past the potted plants and through the frosted glass partition behind us. I usually avoid this room because it makes me feel I'm conducting class under a waterfall, but my problem wasn't feng shui. "What happened to the script you were working on?" I've learned to take most students as they come, but this one presented an unfamiliar challenge. She wanted help writing fiction, which is closer to my heart than English grammar and vocabulary. And, just a few years older than my daughter, she seemed to prefigure the dread shadow of the teenager. I'll call her Daniela. Daniela creates short animations about characters from a particular horror movie. All of them were molested as children and a whole lot of them are gay. She should stand up straighter and not spend so much time on her phone. And she doesn't do her homework. I say, "Read these three pages of Save the Cat" or "Come to me next week with some ideas about how the protagonist could be responsible for this story's resolution," and I get nothing. This week, I'd planned to just read through her current project, but again, Daniela had dropped it. "Why?" I asked, thinking can't you follow through with anything? And do I have to invent another lesson on the fly again? "Why didn't your last project work?" It was supposed to be a list of different kinds of love for a video on Valentine's Day. "I got eros and agape,” she said, “but for some reason, I got stuck on storge." "What's storge?" "It's Greek. Like, 'Found Family.'" Ugh. Found Family. What I’d like to see is more fiction advising audiences to fix their real families instead of pretending you can trade them in for better models. I didn't say any of that. "Have you every experienced that kind of relationship?" I asked. "Uh, no." "Do you know anyone who has?" I thought I was being gentle and Socratic. "Maybe that's why you're stuck. Because you know Found Family isn't real." "Well, it's a trope.” "Trope is one word for it, but another is cliché." I might as well have said all that crotchety judgement after all. Daniela folded her arms and turned her face away in a pose of defense and denial. Rather than following up with a lecture about writing from experience, or just sitting there so we could fume at each other, I asked Daniela about the worldbuilding of her stories. She was happy to talk, and make up new lore as she talked, but I was both worried and annoyed. Is this what I had to look forward to with my daughters? This sullen incuriosity? This indulgent wallowing in victimhood? Are my daughters going to stay up all night watching disturbing videos and then fail to make their own? All of which was a defensive shell around my real fear, which was I was wasting Daniela’s time. It seemed as if she would get just as much good out of brainstorming with her friends, or bouncing ideas off a pet rock. I even asked her if my criticism and scrutiny was killing her ideas. "No," she said, "I always give up on most of my projects." Fine, but I still wasn't happy with how I was conducting these classes. I'd never taught creative writing before, and I could tell I was spending a lot of mental energy getting in my own way. I asked around for advice, and as always, Paul Venet hit me with the good, hard stuff: "when I taught drawing, I didn't get up in front of someone and teach from a position of authority." I didn't like the scorn I heard in his voice. I like the idea of authority; I think it would be nice to have some, some day. Did I present my profile to Paul and fold my arms? Maybe so, because he said, "Of course, when I was in front of a big lecture hall, that was a different thing. If you've got fifty students, you stand in front of them and tell them what you gotta tell them. But with one student or a small group, you don't." He told me to speak from experience, and to be patient. Daniela's next class came around, and here she was with yet another new project. I listened and took notes on her characters' magic powers and their phobias. Once she'd wound down, I said, "Working on lore is a lot of fun. It's like candy for me. The problem is I can have too much candy. I just go around and around inventing lore without actually telling a story." You, gentle readers, may have noticed. "Yeah," she said. "I do." As homework, I gave Daniela the assignment of keeping a log of her writing. Where she writes and when and what. She didn't do it, but she scribbled something in her notebook five minutes before class, which we used as the start of a conversation about writing habits and patterns. The week after that, she brought in a script we could read together. It's hard to get out of your own way. You want to be listened to, followed, and liked. You want, in fact, people to pay for your wisdom. The problem is that you need to have some wisdom first. I’m working on it. I did some brainstorming this month about how English spelling might disconnect further from phonetics and evolve into a logographic script. And I wrote up the third poem in Ancient Thracian from my novel Wealthgiver: The Nikolaic Theophany. My favorite line: Dégmōn iadí. Mē / Ápseran pouteté. “The Host will ride upon the ground. / Do not complain. And turn around.” And I read some things Middlemarch by George Eliot Funnier than Anna Karenina, more insightful than Vanity Fair. I wish it had focused more tightly on Katherine and Dorothy, whose relationship is the sweet counterpoint to the bitter ones with foolish husbands and untrustworthy peers. The conversation between Dorothy and her befuddled old husband is tragically perfect. I wish there was a sharper climax, though, and the superior husband isn't drawn with nearly the detail as the bad one. I definitely need to read it again. Into the Looking Glass by John Ringo Fun and un-serious events occur after portals open up to a whole bunch of alien planets. There were some big ideas – one right at the end and seemingly attached to nothing. I guess, to the sequel? I wish Ringo had treated this book as a first draft and written another that was better thought out. General Pta-pta-pta needed a lot more screen time. The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald As I was reading this to my kids, I kept thinking of Hayao Miyazaki. There's a scene where little princes Sophie and her foolish nurse are fleeing home as dusk falls and the goblins emerge. I could see Miyazaki’s blooby wobbly-outlined style. I really wonder if he based Sheeta and Pazu on Sophie and Curdy. The Miranda Consipracy by James L. Cambias Cambias used to be one of the authors whose books I bought on sight. I still think about The Initiate and its meditation on moral desserts. The Godel Operation wasn’t as thoughtful, but it still had something to say the godlike-AI conversation and how not to be an egotist. The sequel, thought, had a hollow space inside it where there should have been an answer to the question, “what’s the point if your civilization is a sideshow to posthuman AIs?” In this, the third book, that hollow has grown enormous. There’s some action, some sex, some death, and none of it matters. I’ll pass on the next book. On Christian Doctrine by Augustine of Hippo On this, my first reading, I spent most of my time appreciating what a good language teacher Saint Augustine was. I’m going to use his “the snail has no voice” example in a class one of these days. And I’ll read it again. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe I enjoyed this book until the narrator went to jail and mended her ways. I put it down at that point, but after a few months I picked it back up and finished it. I would have liked a sharper edge to this story. A wrong harder to forgive or atone for. But I do appreciate the highlight of a bad mental habit: seeing your money as a pile of treasure that you can only deplete. See you next month I’m working on a conlang commission and reading Between Home and Ruin, both set in the future, where English has splintered into several dialects united by a common written language. This is a fun idea and a plausible one - Chinese and to some extent Arabic work this way. English arguably already works this way. There are people in Jamaica and Scotland whom I won’t be able to understand when they speak (see Jamaican Patois and Angry Scottish People Using Real Words Maybe) unless I have subtitles written with standardized spellings.But how exactly will that spelling system work? I did some experiments with English’s closest cousin (that is also a national language): Dutch. Example 0: De Nederlandse krijgsmacht is de militaire organisatie van het Koninkrijk der Nederlanden. De krijgsmacht wordt in de kern gevormd door de vier krijgsmachtdelen: de Koninklijke Marine, de Koninklijke Landmacht, de Koninklijke Luchtmacht en de Koninklijke Marechaussee. (from wikipedia) Dutch and English parted ways between 1,600 and 1,400 years ago. In that time, they accumulated three kinds of differences: pronunciation differences caused by sound changes, grammatical differences caused by regularization, and vocabulary differences caused by coinages and loanwords. Forcing Dutch into standardized English spelling* will cover up only the first difference. Example A: The Nederlandse Criesmight is the militarie organization fan the Kingright ther Netherlanden. The Criesmight wortht, in the corn, geformd through the four Criesmightdealen: the Kinglie Marine, the Kinglie Landmight, the Kinglie Loft Might, and the Kinglie Marshalcy. Remember that Example A above is still pronounced as Example 0. It’s just been spelled so that it’s easier for speakers of the “English dialect” to read. But is it easy enough? Maybe the Spelling Standardizers do away entirely with phonetics and translate the grammatical morphology. Speakers of the “Dutch dialect” have to remember to write <-s> when they say /-en/. Example B: The Nederlands' Criesmight is the military organization fan the Kingright the's Netherlands. The Criesmight worths, in the corn, a-formed through the four Criesmightdeals: the Kingly Marine, the Kingly Landmight, the Kingly Loftmight, and the Kingly Marshalcy. Or they go further could go further and simply translate words not found in English. Dutch speakers would say /krijg/ but write <war>. Example C: The Lowerlands' Warmight is the military organization of the Kingdom of the’s Lowerlands. The Warmight is, in the core, formed through the four Warmightdeals: the Kingly Marine, the Kingly Landmight, the Kingly Loftmight, and the Kingly Marshalcy. We could go farther (Warmight > Warstrength > Armed Forces). Where we stop is a matter of taste and practicality. Which brings me to the question of how this writing system would actually work.  This message consists of 6 "words" and 25 "glyphs.” Since glyphs are like Chinese characters, the second one in the table might be pronounced /war/ or /waa/ or /krijg/ (as in this case) or any other way. If you pronounce it like 21st-century Dutchman, you would say, "de-ned-er-land-se krijg-s-macht-is de-milit-aire organ-is-atie van-het-konink-rijk der-ned-er-land-en." If you pronounce it like a 21st-century American, however, you would say "the-lower-land-s' war-might-is the-milit-ary organ-iz-ation of-the-it-king-right the's-lower-land-s." Although you'd probably understand it, you'd know you were reading something written in a non-American dialect. The standard way to write the same message in the American dialect would be:  "the-neither-land-s arm-ed-force-s-are the-milit-ary organ-iz-ation of-the-king-dom of-the-neither-land-s."
As an educated person, you would know to pronounce <is> as /ar/ in this sentence, and you’d know that <neither> doesn't actually mean "neither"; it's just a phonetic approximation of /nether/, a marginal word that has no dedicated glyph. The next step will be to make a better mockup using Krita and a Times New Roman typeface. And I’m waiting for the guy who’s working on the future standard of English. Then I’ll start working on the 3-4th alien creole derived from it. In the mean time, what do you think? *why not force English into standardized Dutch spelling? Because this is practice for a scifi story written in English. The future English-alien creole of the commission has nothing to do with Dutch. Last month, I posted the Ritual of Un-Descent, written in my reconstruction of Ancient Thracian, featured in chapter 19 of my novel Wealthgiver.
If you read chapter 19, you’ll know that the ritual goes sideways and the Unseen One delivers a personal message to Nikolai, the high priest: Árbeie! Bilospelé! Kapēssophiá, klyié Méan. Klyié iós tan Idexétai éis tomón. Deseí ke gorê tón 5 Ásan tói tymí ión! Staiýn ni tai pór tói ke pós Zēltón tón ke sós ganós. Dégmōn iadí. Mē Ápseran pouteté. 10 Literally, that’s: Orphan! Word-friend! Passion-drunkard, listen To me. Listen to he who Welcomed you into (his) house. Welcome and rejoice in that 5 which I gave to you! There stand before and behind you Gold and Death. The Welcomer rides. Do not Pule back (in response). 10 And the poetic translation: Listen, Orphan, Friend to Words Hear me now, Passion-Drunkard. I and I alone am who welcomed you this house into. Death or treasure will you find. 5 One before you, one behind. The Host will ride upon the ground. Do not complain. And turn around. 10 Doggerel? Yes, but it’s pretty good considering what all was going on. To read this poem in the context of the story of Wealthgiver: Subscribe now …and wait until the end of March for the free version. Or else upgrade and read it right now.  I stepped out from my student’s office onto Patriarch Evtimi, where the sky was a cold, bright blue and pigeons swept up the faces of the buildings.
I’d been up for ten hours and I didn’t feel like swimming. I had to buy coffee, and I didn’t want to do that, either. I wanted to just turn left and go down the stairs into the subway. I’d read my phone on the train and go home and have a snack. I wanted someone else to buy coffee and swim for me. But, and I know this sounds silly, I remembered a post I’d read on Substack: “Work out every day so that you can be the sort of person who works out every day.” As I walked between the cliffs of Shesti Septemvri, I repeated that to myself out loud. I hope other people thought I was on my bluetooth. I found the coffee shop, where the bags were very small, but the grinding machine was large and impressive. The barista had an elegant little broom he used to sweep up every spilled miligram of precious grounds. That would do me for the next five days, maybe. After that it was just one foot in front of the other all the way to the pool. Get naked, shower, swim until done, but here’s what’s strange: I wasn’t tired or hungry when I finally got home. I finished my desk work, it was now my twelfth hour awake, and I was neither stumbling nor moaning. I was a zombie two days later, though. Thursday seemed like it lasted a week. Thank God my kids are on the spring schedule now and I don’t have to wake up every day at 6. In other news, Upstream Reviews posted my review of the anti-litRPG Invading the System . Another review: I wrote this one for C.M. Kosemen’s All Tomorrows, soon to be published: A Portrait of the Future …and that started a conversation that resulted in The Future of Humanity, a little essay I wrote thinking about future of human evolution. I posted The Ritual of Undescent, my second poem in Ancient Thracian and English, from chapter 19 of Wealthgiver. Finally, thank you to my new $10 Patron, Anthony. He and my other patrons at that tier and above can read up to chapter 28 of Wealthgiver. Every Thursday I’ll post whatever chapters I’ve finished that week, and patrons can join me right at the coal-face. And I read some things: Running Lean by Ash Maurya I’ll have to read this book again. The first revolutionary thing it says is that in the same way businesses once switched from valuing products to valuing intellectual property, the era of IP is in turn giving way to the era of the business model. Can your process produce something that attracts customers? I’m working on it. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoevsky I first tried and failed to read Dostoyevski’s The Devils. Now that I’ve read Brothers Karamazov, I have a better idea of what he was driving at. These people are vicious, mean-spirited, self-defeating fools. Yes, and so are you, reader. Now watch: this is how you practice compassion. The Pilgrim of Hate by Ellis Peters Another book I first listened to 30 years ago. Ellis Peters has aged less well for me than John Mortimer - I guess because Brother Cadfel isn’t as funny as Rumpole. And although there were some action scenes, Peters’s story is so very girly. One man has a gleaming curtain of raven hair. DanDaDan by Yukinobu Tatsu (Science Saru Studio) One Thursday night in January, this anime absolutely wrecked me. I’ll give you the premise: teenage girl (who isn’t as much of a delinquent as she likes to pretend) gets into an argument with boy (who is exactly as much of a dweeb as he appears). He’s obsessed with UFOs, she’s embarrassed by her grandma the ghost-wrangler. After arguing about whether UFOs/ghosts are real, they challenge each-other to spend the night in a haunted service tunnel (him) and an abandoned hospital (her), where they are, respectively, possessed and abducted. That’s the first 15 minutes. You won’t get to the part that made me cry until episode 8. And I read a draft of a book for a friend, but I can’t say more until it comes out. It was good, though ;) See you next month. This Thursday, paying readers will see parts of the next ritual poem in chapter 19 of Wealthgiver. Like the Andrean Prophesy, the Ritual of Un-Descent is sung in the (fictional) Ancient Thracian language. Unlike the prophesy, which was invented by Kori Chthamali in the 19th century, the Ritual of Un-Descent is old, if not ancient. Written forms of the rite date back to the 6th century AD. Its similarities to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated to the 7th century BC, are hotly contested by Bessian scholars.
The Ritual of Un-Descent is traditionally sung by three people, representing The Rushing One (a minor deity almost unknown outside this ritual), The Lady Reaper (also known as The Maiden and The Mistress), and The Unseen (also known as The Master and The Wealthgiver). First, in the original Ancient Thracian: SÉRMĒS SÓS: Ánite! Pleistoré! Palodegmṓn, sa e Kḗphēt dṓe Tḗn opdésedyde. ÁNITĒS SÓS: Ergeí, Porhēgéntiâ! 5 PORHĒGÉNTIÂ: Dēmḗthera póra Áskeira pephlóu e ion. ÁNITĒS SÓS: Mē dé bladymeiê iâ. PORHĒGÉNTIÂ: Sédzōn me tón dymón. ÁNITĒS SÓS: Óiyk tóus dessóis 10 Áeikhēs te eis. PORHĒGÉNTIÂ: Sēnséithēs tū Éiseis is tó koú. ÁNITĒS SÓS: Diós Brḗthar eimî! PORHĒGÉNTIÂ: Xēthópats eisî! 15 ÁNITĒS SÓS: Xēthópaniâ sezṓn PORHĒGÉNTIÂ: Eis sa serpanthṓn. The meter changes from seven in lines 1-4 (sung by The Rushing One), to eight syllables per line for the conversation between The Unseen and the Lady Reaper, with the exception of lines 16 and 17 (the final line). Both of these are of seven syllables, and both are sung by the Lady Reaper. For example, the first line (the invocation of The Unseen) is sung “A-ni-te ple-i-sto-RE!” Long vowels (for example ē) are always sung as two syllables. Diphthongs (for example ai) are usually two syllables as well, but sometimes they are a single syllable. See the difference between eis (e-I-s) and Xēthópaniâ (“kse-THO-pan-ya”). A circumflex over a vowel indicates an on-glide, such as â (“ya”) or î (“yi”), but there is no spelling to differentiate an off-glide from a diphthong. Accented vowels are stressed. X is pronounced “ks.” TH, KH, and PH might once have been pronounced as aspirates (tʰ, kʰ, pʰ) or as fricatives (θ, x, ɸ), but are today pronounced as normal unvoiced stops: t, k, p. Now, the rhyming translation: THE RUSHING ONE: Oh, Wealth-giver! Oh, Unseen! Host-of-many, take your queen Welcome her below, He deems. THE UNSEEN: Go you now, Oh Lady Reaper! LADY REAPER: To my Mother 5 Un-bright robed. THE UNSEEN Not with smoking heart to meet her. THE LADY REAPER With smoke my heart is all enclosed. UNSEEN: Never, by the Ones who Do Shameful will I be to you. 10 LADY REAPER My man you are No matter where. THE UNSEEN Of Sky I’m Brother! LADY REAPER You’re Guest-Master! THE UNSEEN You will be, Mistress of all 15 LADY REAPER Mistress of all of those who crawl. Readers have asked me to include a linguistic gloss in my literal translation: Ánite! Pleistoré! (neg-SEE-past.part-masc-voc WEALTH.GIVE-masc-voc) “Oh, Unseen! Oh, Wealthgiver!” Palodegmṓn, sa e (MANY.HOST-agent-neu THIS EMPH) That Host of Many Kḗphēt dṓe (HAVE-2nd-plur-subj ORDER-3rd) have. This he orders. Tḗn opdésedyde. (THE-fem-acc UNDER.WELCOME-2nd-plur-imp) Welcome her! Ergeí, Porhēgéntiâ! (GO-2nd-imp GRAIN.REAP-abst-fem) Go, Lady Reaper! Dēmḗthera póra (EARTH.MOTHER-fem-acc TO) To (the) Earth Mother. Áskeira pephlóu e ion. (neg-SHINE-adj-masc-gen PEPHLON-masc-gen EMPH REL-masc-acc) The one of the un-shining pephlon. Mē dé bladymeiê iâ. (NOT IMP BAD.SMOKE-verb-2nd-imp IMP) Do not “bad-smoke” at all. (i.e. “do not hold a grudge”) Sédzōn me tón dymón. (HOLD-1st 1st-clit THE-masc-neu SMOKE-masc-neu) I hold my smoke. Óiyk tóus dessóis (NEVER THE-masc-dat-plur GOD-masc-dat-plur) Never to the gods (the word for “god” is related to the word for “do”) Áeikhēs te eis. (neg-FAIR-adj-masc-nom 2nd-clit BE-1st-fut) I will be shameful to you. Sēnséithēs tū (SAME.LIE.DOWN-part-adj-masc-nom 2nd-nom) Husband you Éiseis is tó koú. (BE-2nd-fut REL INF WHERE) You will be, wherever (you are). Diós Brḗthar eimî! (SKY-masc-gen BROTHER-masc-nom BE-1st) I am (the) Sky’s brother! Xēthópats eisî! (GUEST.LORD-masc-nom BE-2nd) You are the Guest-Master. Xēthópaniâ sezṓn (GUEST.LORD-fem-nom ALL-masc-plur-gen) You, Guest-Mistress of everyone Eis sa serpanthṓn. (BE-1st-fut THIS CRAWL-pres-part-masc-plur-gen) I will be of these crawling (ones) ITo read this poem in the context of the story of Wealthgiver, you can subscribe to the story on Substack or Patreon and wait until the end of March for the free version. Or else upgrade and read it this Thursday ;) Yesterday on Substack I tried something new, which was to write off the cuff, with little editing, and press the “post” button without much thought. I’m doing so because this is the first spare moment I’ve had to respond to Bassoe’s response to my review of C.M. Kosemen’s soon-to-be published book All Tomorrows, and I don't want to let this interesting conversation wither on the vine.
If you had trouble following that last sentence, it’s enough that you know this: we’re talking about the evolutionary future of humanity. The Machine-God Scenario Bassoe talks about “machine-gods...obsessed with tending to the well-being of an inferior species” where “the only remaining selection pressure is desire to reproduce.” Another selective pressure would be to make ourselves adorable to the machine-gods. Perhaps the gods have a template for what they consider to be human, in which case we'll only be able to evolve in ways that don't deviate from that template. I'm reminded of a Stephen Baxter story (Mayflower II) in which humans on a generation ship turn into sub-sapient animals, but they still press buttons on the control panel because that behavior is rewarded by the ship's AI. The Super-Tech Scenario But I agree that even without a super-tech future where all our material needs are met, the availability of contraception means that there's a selective advantage to people who don't use contraception. There are many ways for evolution to make that happen. An instinctive desire for babies or an instinctive aversion to contraception are two such ways. I remember a Zach Weinersmith cartoon where he jokes about future humans with horns on their penises that poke holes in condoms, but of course any such physical adaptation won't be able to keep up with technological innovation. We will have to want babies. Another option is (ala Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos) that future humans aren't smart enough to use contraception. The Artificial Womb Scenario In this case, I think the most selected-for humans are the ones that are most efficiently produced by the artificial wombs. Maybe it's easier to pump out limbless grubs, which are fitted with cyborg arms (see John C. Wright's Myrmidons in his Count to the Eschaton Sequence). The form they take will depend on the parameters of the machines' programming. (see also Vanga-Vangog's The Endpoint) The Collapse Scenario I think this scenario is unlikely. If "life, uh, finds a way," then intelligence finds even more ways. When one resource runs out, we find another. The mere fact that you don’t know what the next resource is just means we haven’t found it yet. But say for the sake of argument that there's a hard limit to technological progress (ala Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky) or science really is like mining, and it takes infinitely increasing resources to make the next marginal gain in technology. In both cases, you'd expect the graph of human advancement to look like a population when it hits carrying capacity. Exponential growth (we're doing that now) followed by a cycle of die-offs and re-growths, converging to a horizontal mean. With no ability to innovate, natural selection would take over from technological progress. Once we’ve eaten all the meat and potatoes, there will be strong selection for people who can digest grass. I would expect humans in this case to diversify until our descendants occupy nearly every niche, absorbing most of the matter and energy available on Earth (at least). Whether these people are intelligent or not...probably not. Simon Roy seems to be hinting in this direction with his masterful comic series Men of Earth. But I don't actually think collapse is likely. I bet that our population (and technological advancement) will not hit an asymptote, but will instead as progress according to a power law, as with the bacteria in Lenski's Long-Term Evolution Experiment. The Mogul Scenario Bessoe asks about a future in which “our cultural norms stick around indefinitely, those who generate more profit reproduce,” which I very much doubt. In 20th century America, the more money you made, the fewer children you had. Now, it seems there's a saddle-shaped distribution, with the very poorest and the very richest women having the most children per woman. This is sure to change again, and faster than evolution can keep up. Perhaps you could say that if contraception pushes us to evolve an instinctive desire to have more children, and rich or powerful people will be in positions to gratify these instincts, then whatever traits make someone rich and powerful will be selected for. Maybe, but now's a good time to go back to the Reich Lab's "Pervasive findings of directional selection," summarized here by the illustrious Razib Khan. In comparing ancient to modern DNA, the Reich Lab found evidence for selective pressure in humans in Europe since the end of the Ice Age: increased intelligence, increased height, decreased organ fat, increased walking speed, decreased susceptibility to schizophrenia, increased immunity to many diseases, and, funnily, increased tendency to home-ownership and university education. Obviously, people weren't going to college in the Chalkolithic, but whatever traits make someone likely to go to college now have been selected for since the arrival of agriculture in Europe. You can paint a plausible picture of the sort of people who were most reproductively successful in the past six thousand years, and there is even some evidence for selection in the range of 1-2 thousand years. Aside from obvious things like immunity to smallpox and Bubonic plague, Europeans have gotten paler and blonder, and more of us are able to digest lactose than in Roman times. But the 21st century is very different from the 1st, which in turn was very different from the pre-agricultural -70th. Maybe you can say that being smart, strong, and disease resistant have always been good, and being tall and baby-faced gets you some sexual selection (almost everyone seems to have evolved shorter jaws and lost their robust brow-ridges in parallel). So we can imagine future humans who just all look gorgeous. I’m running out of time, but I’ll leave us with some homework. I haven’t yet had time to read: The Urban Future by herofan135 This messageboard discussion referenced by Bessoe Copernican’s Ecotechnic Future John Michael Greer’s Next Billion Years Jack L. Chalker’s Rings of the Master Robin Hanson’s Age of Em CaptainStroon’s Bosun’s Journal So, let’s expand on this. Are there any scenarios I’ve missed? Logical points or facts I’ve misplaced? Or, let’s start small, what do you think will happen in the next ten thousand years? The System Must Be Destroyed: a book reviewUpstream Reviews is back from winter break and just posted my long-form review of Invading the System by Inadvisably Compelled.  When the System came to Earth, we were well into our post-singularity utopia. We had digitally-emulated citizens, swappable GM super-bodies, and Von Neumann nanotech capable of turning anything into anything else.
Then a magical portal showed up and flooded our planet with “essence,” which broke any technology more potent than a wheelbarrow. It replaced cities with procedurally generated dungeons and opened a window in everyone’s mind telling them they could earn essence and level up if they killed their neighbors. Fortunately, all of the fabricators, bio-forges, and computronium in the rest of the solar system still worked. The No Fun Allowed War eventually retook the Earth, but a single digital soldier embodied in a living tank decided that one planet freed was not enough. The System Must Be Destroyed. All of the above takes place in the first sentence of the book, as “Cato,” our hero, dashes through the collapsing portal and enters the System. Read the rest of the review on Upstream Reviews. Full disclosure: the author of this book is a friend, and he asked me to write the following review. Whether he regrets this decision or not is his business.  What is the point of speculating about evolution? Why spend time considering whether a monster is “plausible”? It’s for the same reason your eye is drawn to the image above. You are bound to find it interesting. Consider, for example, the dry fact that flight requires powerful muscles, and heavy muscles require more muscles to lift their weight. It’s an interesting problem for a certain type of mind, but for the rest of us, it’s hard to see why we should care. We don’t fly that way.  But what if we did? Speculative evolution teaches the reader something real by unreal example. Seeing our own form distorted, we feel the impulse to pay attention. Doing so, we come away with some knowledge worth having, but that’s only the first step. You can’t look at a winged man without asking where those wings came from. What processes changed him so much, and why? If it involves people, speculative evolution must become a story. Dougal Dixon, the grandfather of speculative evolution, made an attempt to tell such a story. I would say, though, with less success than his other projects.  I’m glad, therefore, that C.M. Kosemen found ways to push this project further in All Tomorrows. And I’m glad he has finally published his work in a book I can hold in my hands. Let’s see how much farther he went than those before him. There is a problem in speculative evolution when it comes to sapient people. Predict how a bear might take to the sea and evolve into a whale? Darwin could do it, no problem.1 But turn your knowledge of natural selection to people, and the selection cannot be natural. People hunting plankton in the sea will not evolve into giants who strain water through their mustaches; they'll invent boats and nets. Worse, you, the speculator, are a human yourself. You will almost certainly fail to maintain your objectivity as you consider the reproductive habits of your neighbors. Many writers and artists have attempted to predict human evolution under natural selection, but their best work has still been more political commentary than speculative physical anthropology. The solution of both Dixon and Kosemen was to use genetic engineering and remove sapience. In the case of All Tomorrows, both are part of the same program of cruel torment.  Kosemen spends about a third of the book describing the subjugation of humanity by the alien Qu. They create humans-as-pets, humans-as-tools, humans-as-art, and humans-as-victims of hellish and whimsical punishment.    In this way, Kosemen sets the stage for real natural selection to start working. How can we expect these new "sub-humans" to evolve under natural selection? Most simply go extinct, but others produce interesting solutions to their problems. These examples make up my favorite part of the book, from Snake People to Modular People to flying Pterosapiens, most of whom are killed off in the third act by new villains, beginning the Sisyphean process all over again. As you can’t talk about people without telling a story, you can’t tell a story without revealing your philosophy. In All Tomorrows, individuals struggle not only to overcome physical hardship, but to find meaning in their lives. You evolved from the victims of alien geneticists, and now your planet is under attack by cyborgs. Why go on at all? And, in an intergalactic narrative spanning billions of years, who are you in the first place? The first character of All Tomorrows is humanity as a whole, illustrated by Kosemen's own portrait of himself as a Martian.  Our species rises out of the infancy of hunter-gatherers into the dangerous adolescent years of technological progress, war, and pollution before settling down into a global society of mature social democrats. The Qu shatter this unity into a cast of new character-species, who each try, fail, and try again to achieve sapience before fighting with each other in a climactic battle. Aesthetic failings aside, it's this story that elevates All Tomorrows above Dixon’s Man After Man. The art also gives us another window into character, as the illustrations are not merely of typical specimens of their species, but people who posed for a photograph. A Blind Folk toddler pees in fear at the photographer's approach. A Pterosapien shows off her wing-tattoos at a beach resort on the only vacation of her short life. In the book's most enduring sentence: "An Asymmetric nobleman poses nude to reveal his bizarre anatomy." If Man After Man was "an anthropology of the future," All Tomorrows is the future's portrait.  The final character is the narrator, who is revealed at the end to be not the godlike voice of the author but a far-future anthropologist. He’s an alien with no relation to us or our daughter-species, who has written this very personal and somewhat cockeyed interpretation of his findings. The narrator is a fun device, but his existence detracts from the book's nature as a series of portraits. Those models weren't real people after all, but invented by an imaginative anthropologist based on skull fragments and ancient tablets. That's a bit disappointing, but I understand why Kosemen included the narrator. He needed someone to tell us his book's theme: "It is not the destination, but the trip, that matters…Love today, and seize all tomorrows!" All right, so the narrator is an alien space-Buddhist. Looking back on the book after you've finished it, it's easy to see the chain of reincarnation: demon-ridden sufferer, lowly worm, beast, man, and enlightened soul, floating with folded limbs in its zero-G habitat.  Despite all the narrator's protestations about the amoral, goal-less groping of evolution, he draws clear meaning from his subjects. On a deeper level than the book's explicit theme, we are given to understand life is better than death, and intelligence is better than stupidity. As to what is best in life, I’ll bow out with this example of example of the humanism of All Tomorrows.2  Literally brought low by the Qu, who transported his ancestors to a high-gravity super-earth, this Lopsider slides along the ground like a flounder or a starfish. It’s painful just to look at him, and yet he feeds his pets. They aren't prey animals. They don't help him survive. They make him happy, at least for a little while.
ORDER ALL TOMORROWS 1 Except public ridicule 2 I would like to thank Daniel Justice Snow for sharing his thoughts on the Lopsider. |
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