Peter Lihou

Is science fiction fundamentally different from other genres—ideas-led, rather than character-led? I suggested that once, in one of the discussion groups here on Goodreads, and was sort of shouted down: fiction (all fiction) is and can only be first and foremost about characters. Well, I not only think SF is about ideas first, but that it’s one of the best vehicles we’ve ever devised for exploring interesting, new, or just plain strange, concepts—and why it remains so popular, despite everything that gets thrown at it.
    Anyway, CHAT reminded me of all that because it is definitely a novel of ideas. For instance: imagine you could devise a computer programme able to analyse—in fact, completely deconstruct—the very book review you’re reading right now; the idea is that, using the stream of English words on this page as your sample, you would run the film backwards so to speak, trace my own particular branch of the language-tree all the way back to its trunk to find a proto-language early enough in history, then run the film forwards again—but this time along the branch leading to modern French. You’d have translated this book review into perfect French. In theory, you could do this for any pair of languages: what you’d have would be a universal translator. Well, CHAT is set in a future where the awesome power of quantum computing has not only made this possible, but led to a new form of social media—or rather, an entity which has replaced today’s social media, a global forum where, in effect, everyone is finally speaking the same language.
    But it has, inadvertently, done something even more profound too. As part of the development of this programme, the team at Cambridge University’s Machine Intelligence Group have been analysing millions of communications channels; their computer has been hooked up to everything from local TV to radio telescopes—and has found one particular signal it can’t either identify or decipher. More puzzling still, it can’t even pin down the location of the mystery transmitter—so could it be coming from space, an alien civilisation? Not everyone thinks so—there are other, more earthly, possibilities—and the research team begin to realise they’re being spied on…
    CHAT sent my mind off in several directions. For a start, there’s quantum computing: this was a subject I knew nothing about before, but have been following up ever since—and trying to imagine where it might lead in real life (if it lives up to its billing, it could change everything).
    Then there’s the message-from-space idea: say SETI did suddenly pick one up, wouldn’t it be the differences between us and its senders which would be particularly fascinating—and perhaps revealing? The similarities might confirm a lot of things we know already, sure, but would tell us little or nothing truly new. It would be the differences between us I reckon—between our worlds and respective minds, our two whole ways of looking at life—which would tell us most, not only about them, but also about ourselves.
    Finally there’s ‘CHAT’ itself, that global forum free from the misunderstandings of language: if it ever really comes about, I think we’ll not only be able to get to know people on the other side of the planet, but actually see them as they see themselves—and (most revealing of all maybe) for the first time in history get a true idea of how we have always looked to them. Now that really would change everything.
    …all of which were good reminders of why I read science fiction in the first place. And also why (because I’m sticking to my guns here) people write it.… (mehr)