For sirius transhumanists

Former Mondo 2000 editor R.U. Sirius, under the auspices of Humanity Plus (aka the World Transhumanist Association) is editing a new web-based quarterly magazine called h+. The magazine “covers the scientific, technological, and cultural developments that are challenging and overcoming human limitations." Highly recommended for my futurist and sci-fi geek friends. The first issue is available as a free PDF right here.

Beyond Galt's Gulch, there's Macrolife

Macrolife, by George Zebrowski, is utterly mind-boggling science fiction. Its scope is certainly epic, spanning one hundred billion years, so I suppose it qualifies as space opera. Maybe Space Opera Plus. And I think it offers exciting ideas for radical libertarians, freedom-seeking secessionists, and anarcho-transhumanists to mull over.

First published thirty years ago, the book is a heady mix. It’s a novel, yes, but it’s also a future history, a polemic, and a call to action. More than anything else, it’s a far-reaching meditation on the ultimate survival of humankind. You don’t dash through this book and then toss it aside. After I finished reading Macrolife, I didn’t slip it back on a shelf. It sits bedside, where I plan to take a sip from time to time.

The novel’s premise is compelling. Its author contends that our species must reach out to the stars in order to endure. Zebrowski writes in an afterword to this latest edition (2006):

“[E]ven in the near term, across the next millennium, our failure to become a space-faring world may well be suicidal when we consider what we can do for our world from the high ground of the solar system: energy and resources, planetary management, and most important the ability to prevent the world-ending catastrophe of an asteroid strike. This last threat will happen; it is not a question of if but when. Today we are utterly helpless before such a danger and would know of it only when it was already happening.”

But Zebrowski argues that merely vacating Earth and populating other planets — or “dirtworlds” — is only a short-term solution. Limited resources, he says, assure the consistent failure of planet-based civilizations. Likewise, the proposed “space cylinder” habitats of Gerard O’Neill, which assume construction from scratch, lack long-term vision. With a nod to futurist Dandridge M. Cole, Zebrowski suggests that hollowed-out asteroids serve us as nomadic “societal containers,” or macrolife, “a mobile … organism comprised of human and human-derived intelligences. It’s an organism because it reproduces, with its human and other elements, moves and reacts on the scale of the Galaxy.” These “mobile utopias” will be larger inside “than the surface of a planet. And larger still within its minds.” In the Big Picture, macrolife is an open-ended, expanding union of organic, cybernetic, and machine intelligences, spreading itself through the galaxies.

Macrolife suggests futures beyond this planet, beyond Old World cultures, beyond governments, beyond authoritarian institutions. It’s utopian but acknowledges the dangers of utopianism. It’s worth reading, worth study, and worth serious discussion.

Neither Left nor Right -- just Up

I needed a pick-me-up after a kinda funky weekend. So to realign my attitude, I dipped into a few books by my old friend, the futurist F.M. Esfandiary (aka FM-2030).

I first became acquainted with FM through a book review by Jerome Tuccille in Libertarian Forum in 1971. I read everything I could find by FM over the next few years. His stuff was exhilarating. I finally met him in 1989, when I took one of his UCLA extension courses. Soon after, I interviewed FM for the corporate magazine I was editing at the time and we became friends. FM used to hold monthly “salons” for idea-sharing at his apartment in Westwood; after four or five late-night hours of discussion, I usually couldn’t sleep for days.

FM died from pancreatic cancer in 2000 at the age of 70. He now lies in cryogenic suspension at the Alcor Life Extension Foundation in Scottsdale, Arizona. I really miss him. But FM lives on for me through his books, all of which are now out of print. I treasure my tattered copies.

Here’s something from Up-Wingers, his futurist manifesto, first published in 1973:

“[T]he Up-Winger proceeds from the premise that we are now flowing to a higher evolution and that therefore it is no longer enough to resolve age-old social economic political problems. We must urgently overcome the more basic tyrannies of nature — the arbitrariness of evolution — the limitations of the human body — the confinements of Time and Space.

“It is the human situation that is basically tragic. Right/Left revolutions cannot alter this basic dilemma. For instance the most revolutionary Left-wing group has no program to overcome death. The entire Right/Left establishment is still death-oriented.

“Space programs and biological advances in capitalist and socialist countries are outgrowths of modern science and technology — not of Right/Left ideologies. We are extending ourselves in Space and in Time not because of capitalism or socialism but in spite of them.

“The Right/Left Capitalist/Socialist establishments have used their Space programs chiefly to advance their nationalistic militaristic hang-ups. They still do not comprehend the evolutionary impact of the Space dimension.

“The Right/Left establishment is psychologically and ideologically unprepared for our emerging situation in Time and Space. It is not surprising that much of the Right/Left is vehemently opposed to this new cosmic dimension.

“The Right/Left establishment wants to maintain an evolutionary status quo. It is resigned to humanity's basic predicament. It simply strives to make life better within this predicament.

“Up-Wingers are resigned to nothing. We accept no human predicament as permanent no tragedy as irreversible no goals as unattainable.

“To be Up you must sever all ideological ties with the Right/Left establishment. You must make a break with the traditional concept of linear historical progress. That is now too slow and limited.

"You must be prepared to quantum-leap forward. This means starting with a new set of premises new visionary aims.”