Mystic-bent SF premise

[dvandom]

Recently, I was thinking about Ursula LeGuin's "Rocannon's World" and related books, where they had an FTL comm (the ansible) and FTL ships that had to run on computer control because FTL was intrinsically fatal. So humans moved around on high-STL ships, but in emergencies a supply drop or bombing run could be carried out by a robot ship.

Rocannon's World is fairly hard SF, which makes me think that fatal FTL is merely an engineering issue there. After all, FTL allows matter to survive. It lets complex systems like autopilots survive. So it couldn't be an impossible barrier in hard SF. Maybe there's some sort of radiation that permeates FTL-space, but that just means better shielding. I don't recall LeGuin going into detail beyond "it's fatal", though. It's mainly a plot device to allow some FTL but still play Forever War-style relativistic dislocation.

Still, that got me thinking. In a less hard SF setting, a rather neat way to make sure humans could develop FTL but never travel via it would be to posit that not only do souls exist, but that the soul-body connection cannot keep up past the speed of light. So an ensouled being who hopped aboard an FTL cruiser would have their soul ripped away by the voyage. Maybe they could reunite if the ship went back to the starting point soon enough, but probably not.

This would, of course, lead to an AI arms race, where various factions would want to create the most intelligent soulless life possible in order to get the most benefit from FTL. A story could hinge on finding that souls are an inevitable emergent process that come up whenever self-awareness arrives, so you'd have dead AIs as well, and need to balance on the knife's edge between maximum intellect and ensoulment. A golem class AI, if you will. In fact, I've started to think of such a setting as "Golem".

Okay, someone probably already wrote an entire series of novels around this premise, but I haven't read any of 'em yet. :)

Comments

[zamiel.livejournal.com]

Of course, if there's an Alex-analogue in the setting, alternate research direction is whether humans can be made to exist without souls. Souless humans versus nascently-souled AIs in deep space, fight!

[the-s-guy.livejournal.com]

Hive, bootable, or suspendable intelligences could presumably survive FTL in separated, powered down, or frozen states.

Or maybe it's just something which affects organic intelligences, or specifically Earth-style neural constructs. Did LeGuin say what happened to less-intelligent life forms or brain-damaged individuals during FTL?

My guess would be that FTL-space has a dimensional distortion which screws with one of the many chemical activities which keep the human body and mind running. Once normal space is achieved again, the chemistry goes back to normal, but the damage is done. Computers aren't affected because their chips are using signals hundreds of times stronger and/or they don't use chemistry for their interactions.

[wtimmins.livejournal.com]

From what little I know of it, Warhammer 40k has some funky issues with FTL. Essentially, demons live in hyperspace and it requires the special psionic clergy to allow people to get through. Or something.

[aberrantangels]

This compares with an ancient Arcturan proverb: 'However fast the body travels, the soul travels at the speed of an Arcturan Megacamel.' This would mean, in these days of hyperspace and Improbability Drive, that most people's souls are wandering unprotected in deep space in a state of some confusion, and this would account for a lot of things.
— The Hitch-Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Fit the Tenth (fourth of the Secondary Phase), "In which our heroes have some close encounters with others and themselves"

[dvandom.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the Warp.