Or, more aptly titled, "A Discussion of Morality." But first...
First of all, let me say that collaborative efforts are rarely very good. This is no exception.
Secondly, let me say that I am a huge Frederik Pohl fan and even his bad stuff is pretty awesome.
Thirdly, let me start this review with a few thoughts on science fiction novels and short stories written from the 50s through the 70s. Much like the roaring twenties in hollywood, the first century of the Roman Republic, that brief period between 1870 and 1890 in the American west, this was the true golden age of science fiction writing. Our first step into space, putting a man on the moon, was during this time first a dream, then reality, then food for futuristic thought. The atom bomb laid open whole new doors of speculation, and the newly propagated chaos theory gave science fiction writers entire new worlds of imagination in which to expound their theories.
And expound they did. Modern "hard science fiction" is a term to describe sci-fi written with a knowledge of our modern understanding of astrophysics, and incorporating that into whatever worlds the writer cares to dream up. "Soft" science fiction didn't really rely on an understanding of science, but rather the setting of a story in a fantastical world, like Robert Heinlein did. Science fiction, as it dealt with and relied upon space-related subjects, but left out the physics. But the thing is, the more the understanding of our universe has given us, the closer the boundaries these worlds find themselves wrapped in.
But in the days before Richard Feynman won the Nobel Prize for Physics for drawing his little squiggly lines to describe certain sub-molecular particles pathways through the strange and unknown gravitational wells that the atom possesses, writers like Isaac Asimov, Frederik Pohl, Larry Niven, and others built entire universes starting only with the foundations of modern science. The gateway to the universe was open, and as of yet, few constrictions and boundaries existed. These were writers who not only knew the craft of telling stories, like Robert Heinlein, but also possessed a great amount of knowledge of what was known about astrophysics, and many other areas of science, at the time. They were able to make very real and believable universes and situations and to describe the awesomeness of the unknown with such scientific clarity as to baffle the minds of the readers. Anyone who has read Protector by Niven can grow to understand and appreciate the complexity of the theory of evolution, even with the entirely fantastical twist he gives it. Anyone who has read World at the End of Time by Pohl will never look at the night sky again without feeling a pressing sense of terror at the infinite magnitude of both time and distance that he describes and portrays so well, and then theorizes about so fluently. Reading anything in Asimov's robot series will tell you more about human psychology by contrasting it to robot psychology than you would think possible in a fictional novel, despite the fact that, though based on modern understanding of both the human mind and what steps we have made with artificial intelligence, it is entirely theoretical.
So, with the universe open and unaccounted for, these writers in this time period had a far greater area of freedom within which to work. And they took full advantage of that. If the genre of science fiction had not been invented, there is little doubt in my mind these writers would have been great psychologists, behaviorists, and sociologists. They took advantage of these free worlds by using the ideas of "aliens" to shine a mirror on humanity itself. They put man outside his element and into space to better describe mankind. Science fiction afforded them a far larger arena to explore human psychology, by pushing the mind to its limits in the never-ending terror of the unknown. They were able to explore evolution thoroughly, because they weren't bound by Darwin's rules, as they took his rules then added to them as they saw logically fit. They were able to discuss religion and philosophy in ways that had never been done before, letting us as a species see these subjects from an outsider's perspective. When it comes down to it, science fiction was just a by-product of academic curiosity, and the search for new areas in which to shine light on the culmination of the human experience.
All of which is to explain, by the way, my appreciation and respect for science fiction written during this time period. Which leads me to the current review of a most interesting book, which has brought up a most perplexing question regarding morality; one which I have wrestled with now for some time.
But first (or fourth or fifth or one hundred and fifth, sorry), a little lesson in science.
The tachyon is not quite scientific fact yet, but has been theorized about for some time, especially after observing certain particles behaviors. Years ago I found an article (and clipped it and kept it) in the science section of the Houston Chronicle about paired particles. Now, I had heard about these before, and the tachyon is merely an extension of this theory (I think, more or less). The weird thing about paired particles, that is still baffling scientists the world over, as it totally defies all modern understandings of the universe, is that you take a couple of particles that come in pairs, measure them, catalog them and so forth. Then you send one of them way over there. Could be miles, could be light years away, distance doesn't matter. Then you take the one here, affect it in a way as to give it an opposite spin (say, for simplicity's sake, that it had a clockwise spin, and you nudged it counter-clockwise), you will find that the other particle, already millions of miles away, will automatically spin the exact same way that the particle here spins. That means that there is some form of communication between these particles, and it happens faster than the speed of light. Crazy, yah?
So now we have a theoretical particle that can basically be thought of as two particles at an undefined distance from each other, yet inexplicably connected. Nudge one, and the other is nudged the same way. How is that relevant or practical? How else do you think you could construct an inter-galactic telegraph system? Put it in binary, use them to describe colors, bump them in timed series to produce acoustic waves and send the latest top-40 hit to Alpha Centauri with no time delay; anything is possible given the ability to manipulate them.
So what Frederik Pohl does in Farthest Star, getting back to the book review (finally! I know...) is take this idea one step further. Given the ability to use these tachyons as messages over distance, and the ability of a tachyon receiver to receive these messages and organize them as a blueprint, then use that blueprint to organize matter on the receiving end in the appropriate way, you basically come out with a copier/transporter. You take something here, map it out, send the blueprint via tachyon there, which reads it, copies it, and arranges the matter and voila! You have a perfect copy sent light years away.
Frederik Pohl raises the morality issue by posing the question of copying a human, and using this ability to send the copy on a suicide mission.
Think about this carefully. Say there is a space probe in dire need of repair. The knowledge it could accumulate can help humanity very much. You volunteer to copy yourself/send yourself out there to fix the probe, which is bathed in radiation due to its power source to the extant that anything organic on that probe will die within a week.
Now YOU volunteered for this. This is YOU going out there. But when you step out of the tachyon transmitter, YOU are still here, able to grab dinner and go to bed then go to work as usual the next day, while a perfect copy of you, with all your memories and feelings, including volunteering, steps out of the tachyon receiver on the probe with the full knowledge that *you* have a job to do, and after you do it, you die.
You remain here, and you go there. At the same time. Which one of you is YOU? You volunteered for this, and the you that is on the probe is the same you that volunteered, but really, the you that volunteered still gets to live back at home. When you step out of the tachyon sender, do you breathe a sigh of relief that YOU are still here? And when you step out of the tachyon receiver, do you curse that you lost the coin toss, and YOU are the one that was sent?
Could you, in all conscience thought, really send this copy to die, knowing that your selfless act of sacrifice was really sacrificing a part of you that was merely a copy (though in every way possible, exactly as real as the you here, making you both, essentially, a copy of the original you)?
Messes with the mind, yah? There's an ethics question that you won't find in text books. This is what I love about good science fiction. It is able to pose questions like these because it has the advantage of a far larger vocabulary than most other writing.
On a side note (seeing as how this started, or was supposed to start, as a book review) the book itself is quite enjoyable, though the parts written by Pohl and the parts written by Williamson are too easily definable, and I'm afraid that Pohl, in exploring the morality issue, lets the plot get away from him a bit. But if you can read Charles Dickens (who, in my humble opinion, though one of the greatest novelists in the English language of all time, couldn't hold onto a plot to save his life) this mightn't bother you too much. Williamson is a rather bland and far-reaching novelist himself, and may have bitten off more than he could chew in doing this with Pohl.
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