“Science is my spiritual dig, science fiction my figurative gospel.”
Ancillary Justice, Ann Leckie
What is the alternate formalism for the collective mind? Can the Borg be affected by multiple personality disorders? Do ships dream of electric sheep? Or maybe rather, one of the ship's many decks likes to sing.
Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy, Cixin Liu
The Three Body Problem, the first of the trilogy, took the science fiction shores by storm. It posits our civilization in an ominous corner of the universe, fighting to unite its factious politics against alien contact. The first arc is so intensely organized around human struggle for survival, that it became impressive when the continuation of the series gradually strips away at its anthropogenic tone. The concluding narrative, Death's End, spans across time and space and climaxes on a most resplendent cosmic scale.
The physical laws ruling the universe do not impose morality upon those that inhabit it. Fleeting life forms evolve and innovate, but also ravage and destroy. There is little guarantee that any form of life adopts noble prime universal directives as higher forms of consciousness develop. Intelligence is unmarkedly remarkable in the grand scheme, and sometimes the only reason to go on is being able to go on.
The End of Eternity, Isaac Asimov
In this iteration of Reality, I jumped on the Asimov train rather late.
Vying for control over time is alway so recursively meta. Can there even technically be a final iteration? Underneath the spatial-temporal-altering dilemmas lie some sort of argument for letting nature take its course. How much of this extrapolate to institutions versus anarchy? Where does small government end and collective freedom begin?
My favourite sentiment from this novel, however: "You smile at the ignorance of the Timer who know only one Reality. We smile at the ignorance of the Eternals who think there are many Realities but that only one exists at a time." In the grand scheme of the parallel multiverses, do our childish attempts at tampering physical laws even matter?