Has anyone anticipated a system like Alexa or Siri still working after a disaster, and being understood by non-technological people as a genie or a god answering requests from believers?
This is averted in Darkover Landfall by Marion Zimmer Bradley - when the survivors of the crash realize that they are stuck on this world and will have to make the best of it, one character realizes that the shipâs computer is becoming an oracle that their descendants will worship as a god, and so takes steps to prevent this from occurring by destroying the computer. Kind of like applying the prime directive to your own childrenâŚ
In my own work, âInherit the Earth: Quest for the Orbâ (a 1992 computer game taking place in a post-apocalyptic world, one in which humans have gone extinct but their uplifted animals remain), the âOrb of Stormsâ is a Macguffin which can predict the weather (actually a terminal to an ancient satellite network), which lets them know when to sow and when to plant, etc. The protagonist goes on a quest to recover the stolen orb, and fails - but in doing so gains the knowledge needed to develop a much more trustworthy tool: a calendar.
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I started writing my own SF epic novel just weeks before suffering a stroke which ended my teaching and writing careers. I have recovered 90% in the last two decades, but alas, now my problem is lack of free time.
It told the story of a Paleolithic tribe that had just enough leisure time to play with stacks of pebbles. Simple games at first, then basic counting, then rudimentary computation using a crude abacus laid flat on the ground. The next steps (which I didnât get to) were to manipulate these stacks in more complex ways than just pushing pebbles onto and pulling them off of stacks and to implement the beginnings of a stack âlanguageâ (a very simple FORTH).
This was a bootstrapping process, a mechanism fundamental to learning, from individual to family/friends to tribe to posterity.
I hadnât made up my mind whether to write it as an alternate history (which the invention of computers before agriculture would have to be), or whether to have them defeated by a natural disaster, or perhaps an apocalyptic end caused by that technologyâs god-like power. Character development was a fun part of the effort.
Perhaps the bone-tool scene at the start of â2001 A Space Odysseyâ (1968) was the inspiration, I donât know. That was an important movie that is an answer to several TASAT questions. As is any history or speculation about the Antikythera Mechanism.
It should be noted that Nature had computation long before we ever climbed down from the trees. The ribosome is one example.
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I believe you want the MacAffrey novel Dragondawn.
This was also covered in Jack Chalkerâs Spirits of Flux and Anchor and Midnight at the Well of Souls books where
âŚreality is to some degree controlled by a computer, and programs may be written so as to re-write reality.
How cool, Talin! I hope itâs okay to share a link to the game, still available on Steam with a âVery Positiveâ cumulative rating and comments like:
- âVery wonderful story, loveable charactersâ
- âThis is the greatest port of an old game Iâve ever seen, runs very well and the story really gets you invested in the gameâ
- âMemorable characters, funny conversations and a believable worldâ
- âThe world is very immersive and has a well-earned cult followingâ
- âa strange future thatâs both funny and deeply creepy at the same timeâ
- âabsolute cinemaâ
I hope you get to finish your story! Iâm no anthropologist but I imagine our ancestors were pretty preoccupied with food. Itâs interesting to think about the outcomes if theyâd had the bandwidth to discover math.
Yes. My uncle was an anthropologist and he certainly influenced my thinking for the story. Early cultures did spend a lot of effort on non-food work, eg paintings in dark, cold, dangerous caves.
This is part of the background to the computer games âHorizon: Zero Dawnâ and âHorizon: Forbidden Westâ. (Itâs a ripping yarn so⌠beware! Spoilers ahead)
It starts when the protagonist Aloy, a child of a hunter-gatherer society, discovers a device that gives a virtual overlay of her surroundings: identifying threats and structures. As her exploration of the world proceeds, she finds that the environment is, or was, being operated by Gaia: an AI managing the terraforming system sustaining Earth after a calamity. Aloyâs original tribe (The Nora) does in fact worship an âAll Motherâ in the form of one of Gaiaâs facilities, from where the tribal ancestors originated. While Gaia was active, it has watched, but did not intervene. When circumstances forced Gaia to deactivate itself, it formed Aloy, leaving her outside the facility doors for the matriarch priestesses to find. Unsure whether the mysterious babe was the product of the All Mother or Metal Demon, she was entrusted to the care of an outcast warrior, and so became an outcast herself.
Much of Gaiaâs duties are performed by mechanical machines, which by some whimsy, a young emergent AI chose to model from the forms of extinct animals. The manufacture of these machines is managed by a sub-component, Hephaestus. At the time the story is set, Hephaestus has gone rogue, and is operating independently. It has been antagonised by humans hunting its machines for parts, and is reacting. The machines have become increasingly hostile to humans, and many will attack on sight. Worse, Hephaestus has begun releasing machines specifically intended to hunt humans. People refer to this as the âDerangementâ. They have no idea what is causing it but the king of one tribe, the Carja, developed a deranged notion of his own that the Sun God (not Hephaestus) was displeased, and required human sacrifices for appeasement. Hades, another rogue Gaia sub-system, uses the politics resulting from this situation for its own ends, and does present itself as a diety.
Much later in the game, Aloy encounters Cyan, a separate AI tasked with monitoring and controlling a supervolcano. Aloy discusses how Cyan should present itself to the local tribe, now that they are aware of it.
In the Forbidden West, Aloy encounters yet another tribe, the Utaru, who venerate a certain soil remediation machine as âLand Godsâ for the fertility they bestow on the land. For some reason, the Land Gods have not yet been affected by the Derangement, but they have begun acting erratically, and itâs only a matter of timeâŚ
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