Hogan's work

--- In ssi_list@... "Paul D. Fernhout"

> or the novel _Voyage from Yesteryear_ by James P. Hogan (one of
> my favorite books and authors).

I remember reading that over 20 years ago. He's a good storyteller
with a hard science patina, but underneath the veneer he's very
liberatarian and prone to exploit discredited theories to make his
stories readable. Not that there's anything wrong with that! :-)

He put a new spin on Marxism (it's there, you just have to look for
the kernal of it) in "Voyage from Yesteryear".

He took the works of Immanuel Velikovsky and Catastrophism and
crafted "Cradle of Saturn" with the usual mix of libertarianism and
hard science veneer. It's entertaining and he makes Velikovsky look
plausible, but only because he guides you through a biased process
of examination, which he uses as a plot device, in order for you to
suspend disbelief. That doesn't make Catastrophism the science that
all are conspiring against.

Same too with Marxism and the value of human labor and creativity. A
real world examination encounters the hard wall of human behavior as
modeled in economics.

He does pose an interesting question though: what will economics
ration when energy and materials are limitless? I've often wondered
that over the years because I *think* I see the beginnings of the
trend lines with the potential of the High Frontier (but we all know
that it's hard to see trends at their beginnings.) But I'm not
holding my breath waiting for that to happen, if it ever does. We'd
have to jump way in advance of the curve to see it.

Let me end with a recommendation to all: Read the prologue of "Code
of the Lifemaker" by the same author. It deals with the self-
replicating seeds issue you bring up in this thread. What happens
when a self-replicating process goes askew over a million years.
Hogan crafts a Machine Evolution that parallels our own biological
evolution, where the machines develop speciation, gender roles,
reproduction, etc etc. They develop a society that advances to the
Middle Ages and while as ingorant of the mechanical processes that
form the basis of their lives, as we were of the biological, they
are masters of the biological, as we are of the mechanical. I found
the prologue to be extremely entertaining and well done. It's
interesting too, how we're looked upon as big bags of goo by the
Machines who can't fathom that intelligence could reside in
biological goo. LOL

TangoMan