Af DWBL

Som jeg sidder og ser President François Hollandes åbningstale fra COP21 i Paris, kommer jeg til at tænke på den bog jeg er ved at læse: 2312 af Kim Stanley Robinson. Jeg er stor fan af Kim Stanley Robinson. Han er en science fiction forfatter med en håbefuld og utopisk åre, hans bog Antartica er et superb klima-værk, ligeså Mars-triologien – aldrig har beskrivelser af mos og lav været mere spændende. En af mine største literære oplevelser er da aktivister på Mars starter en revolution imod de multinationale hyperkapitalister fra Jorden, ødelægger rumelevatoren og tager en grundlæggende beslutning om at sigte mod en anden planetær fremtid end den Jordens hyperkapitalister for længst har vist kun leder til udnyttelse af menneskeheden og naturen, og ultimativt undergang.

2312 er fra 2012, og foregår lidt længere ud af en lignende tidslinje. 2312 er en detektivhistorie med menneskehedens befolkning af solsystemet som backdrop – Kim Stanley Robinson skriver meget realistisk scifi, på den gode måde, og rammerne er helt vilde, og billederne og situationerne smukke og bevidsthedsudvidende.

Jeg skriver sikkert mere om 2312 når jeg har læst den færdig. Her vil jeg blot gengive hvordan historikeren Charlotte Shortback i 2312 karakteriserer udviklingen fra vores egen tid. De er nemlig interessante set fra et ikke-fiktivt 2015. Først kommmer »Fjumreårene«:

The Dithering: 2005 to 2060.
From the end of the postmodern (Charlotte’s date derived from the UN announcement of climate change) to the fall into crisis. These were wasted years.

Lyder det bekendt? Nå men så kommer krisen:

The Crisis: 2060 to 2130.
Disappearance of Arctic summer ice, irreversible permafrost melt and methane release, and unavoidable commitment to major sea rise. In these years all the bad trends converged in “perfect storm” fashion, leading to a rise in average global temperature of five K, and sea level rise of five meters—and as a result, in the 2120s, food shortages, mass riots, catastrophic death on all continents, and an immense spike in the extinction rate of other species. Early lunar bases, scientific stations on Mars.

Sagde jeg at Kim Stanley Robinson havde en utopisk åre? Det er først efter 2130 at der for menneskeheden sker en markant ændring i forholdet til naturen, og det er først i rummet det lader sig gøre at at lave samfund der er bæredygtige, sociale retfærdige og grundlæggende utopiske – de fleste udhulede astroider er en del af The Mondragon Accord, et økonomisk co-op system hvor der ikke findes penge (inspireret af det nutidige co-op der startede i Mondragon i Baskerlandet i 1956). Jorden er stadig katastrofalt styret af hyperkapitalisme, og helt afhængig af madproducerende udhulede astroider. 95% af alle pattedyr eksisterer kun i udhulede astroider – de er uddøde på jorden.

Det interessante er at alle menneskerne i rummet er biopsykisk afhængige i at komme tilbage til jorden, så selv om jorden er som et fortidigt mareridt, er mennesket som organisme fuldstændig afhængig af vores alles ophav. Spacers der ikke vender tilbage regelmæssigt lever meget kortere, og bliver grundlæggende syge og biologisk stressede. Så selv om Jorden er årsagen til konflikt i solsystemet, er alle afhængige af ophavsplaneten.

Her er en beskrivelse af New York i 2312:

A few parts of Manhattan’s ground still stood above the water, but most of it was drowned, the old streets now canals, the city an elongated Venice, a skyscraper Venice, a super Venice—which was a very beautiful thing to be. Indeed it was an oft-expressed cliché that the city had been improved by the flood. (…) Manhattan on foot: workers pushing narrow handcarts on crowded skyways, connecting island neighborhoods suspended between skyscrapers at differing heights. The rooftops were garnished with greenery, but the city was mostly a thing of steel and concrete and glass—and water. Boats burbled about on the water below the catwalks, in the streets that were now crowded canals. All the aerial plazas and catwalks were jammed with people. As crowded as ever, people said. (…) Below her the slop of water threw up a big ambient sound. Human voices, and water splashing, and the cries of gulls back on the docks, and the rush of wind through the canyons of buildings; these were the sounds of the city. The water below was completely chopped up with intersecting wakes. Behind her, down the avenue to the west, mirrorflakes of broken sunlight bounced on the big river. This was the thing she loved—she was outdoors, truly in the open. Standing on the side of a planet. In the greatest city of all.

Det kunne da være vi ikke skulle vente til 2130, eller enddog 2060, med at tænke anderledes? Indtil videre er titlen »Fjumreårene« desværre en meget præcis beskrivelse for årene 2005-2015,  selv om den er lavet  af en fiktiv historiker fra fremtiden. [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KIkv71319PE]
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Kim Stanley Robinson’s 2312 kan kun anbefales! Her gengives hele Charlotte Shortbacks periodisering, som omend uhyggelige de næste 115 år, er et yderst interessant fremtidsscenarie:

The Dithering: 2005 to 2060.
From the end of the postmodern (Charlotte’s date derived from the UN announcement of climate change) to the fall into crisis. These were wasted years.

The Crisis: 2060 to 2130.
Disappearance of Arctic summer ice, irreversible permafrost melt and methane release, and unavoidable commitment to major sea rise. In these years all the bad trends converged in “perfect storm” fashion, leading to a rise in average global temperature of five K, and sea level rise of five meters—and as a result, in the 2120s, food shortages, mass riots, catastrophic death on all continents, and an immense spike in the extinction rate of other species. Early lunar bases, scientific stations on Mars.

The Turnaround: 2130 to 2160.
Verteswandel (Shortback’s famous “mutation of values”), followed by revolutions; strong AI; self-replicating factories; terraforming of Mars begun; fusion power; strong synthetic biology; climate modification efforts, including the disastrous Little Ice Age of 2142–54; space elevators on Earth and Mars; fast space propulsion; the space diaspora begun; the Mondragon Accord signed. And thus:

The Accelerando: 2160 to 2220. Full application of all the new technological powers, including human longevity increases; terraforming of Mars and subsequent Martian revolution; full diaspora into solar system; hollowing of the terraria; start of the terraforming of Venus; the construction of Terminator; and Mars joining the Mondragon Accord.

The Ritard: 2220 to 2270. Reasons for the slowing of the Accelerando are debated, but historians have pointed to the completion of Mars’s terraforming, its withdrawal from the Mondragon and increasing isolationism, the occupation of all the best terrarium candidates, and the nearly total human entrainment of the solar system’s easily available helium, nitrogen, rare earths, fossil fuels, and photosynthesis. It was also becoming clear that the longevity project was encountering problems, and was not completely distributed in any case. Recently some historians have pointed out that this was also the time when quantum computers reached thirty qubits and were combined with petaflop classical computers to make qubes—their point being that qubes have not yet been demonstrated to improve the function of already fast AIs, while the decoherence problems inherent in quantum computing may have helped create conditions for the next period:

The Balkanization: 2270 to 2320. Mars-Earth tension, aggression, and cold war for control of the solar system; Mars isolationism; Venus internal strife; decision in the Jovian moons to terraform their big three; proliferation of the unaffiliated terraria, and the disappearance of many populations behind “event horizons”; influence of qubes; volatile shortages pinching harder, causing hoarding, then tribalism; tragedy of the commons redux; splintering into widespread “self-sufficient” enclave city-states.