Even starting from H.G. Wells, the subject of contact between humans and aliens in science fiction has a history of more than a century. But this subject matter still attracts science fiction writers to write and readers to read.
One of the reasons may be that in the real world, human beings have not really come into contact with extraterrestrial civilizations, and there is not even a little evidence that there may be intelligent life on a planet in the vast universe. This leaves a very broad space for imagination (but I don’t know if this kind of subject matter will still be popular if humans really come into contact with extraterrestrial civilization).
In science fiction works, the results of contact between the earth and alien civilizations are basically only two categories, peace or war. There will also be a rare third kind, such as " Meets Rama " by Clark , where higher civilizations are dismissive of human civilization.
Stories about wars with alien civilizations often turn into clichés that involve moving certain passages of human history or the author's summary of historical laws (such as power struggles and constant wars) to space to re-enact them. And this point was probably written in "The True Story" by Lucian , an ancient Roman .
"The Rose and the Worm", a 2015 science fiction work, is almost written in a similar way. A certain civilization is accelerating towards the earth, and its purpose is definitely to destroy the earth. Facing pressure, the people on earth united, formed a space fleet with the highest power, and colonized the moon, Venus, etc. After repelling a wave of attacks, power was divided. Some people wanted to unify the solar system, while others wanted independence. However, human civilization cannot escape the fate of destruction.
From a historical perspective, these are not new, and rulers’ short-sightedness, violence, hypocrisy and terror-mongering are also commonplace. Regarding the historical reappearance in this novel, readers can even see that the official buildings of these colonies almost all follow the myths and legends of certain ethnic groups and the unique art of before the 21st century. For example, a certain conference hall was decorated in the style of Napoleon III ! People in the 25th century are still listening to popular songs from the 21st century! This is probably unbearable.
One of the author's titles is a doctorate in history. These stylistic regressions may perhaps be explained by some kind of catastrophic side effect. In an era of strongman rule, unity of mind, and declining living standards, people's aesthetics will regress significantly, and forces such as religion and tradition will take advantage of this situation to revive. The author of
also has the title of bachelor of theoretical physics and system developer of artificial intelligence . Therefore, in addition to the attraction of historical reenactment, the tried-and-tested techniques like "explanatory lumps" in the book may be very appetizing to hard science fiction fans.
The experience in developing artificial intelligence systems provides highlights in this book's conception of the galaxy civilization system and the evolution of civilization. This is also an important part of this novel.
In the book, the Milky Way civilization system is a super network or super intelligence. Each civilization is a large node in it, and each city in this civilization is a next-level node. Each intelligent life is a "broiler" of this intelligence, serving as the terminal of distributed computing.
Unfortunately, this is the judgment of the evolutionary trends of civilization shown in this novel. Human civilization will inevitably form a super-intelligent collectivism, thereby connecting to the large network of the Milky Way and becoming a node of super-intelligence in the Milky Way. A similar idea has actually been seen in Clark's " Childhood's End ", where human consciousness is connected into one and eventually merged into the super-lord.
So we see that this imagination of humans fighting alien civilizations is also thinking about the future of mankind to a certain extent. Faced with the fate of destruction, what are the possible choices for human beings? Or is it that humans have almost no choice.
In "The Rose and the Worm", humans actually did not have in-depth contact with galactic civilization at all. The only few contacts they had were with some representatives. That is the rose and the worm in the title.The cosmic scavenger represented by the rose wants to fully control mankind. The solution provided by the worm is to find an agent to rule, and at the same time, a part of all human consciousness provides a "field" for distributed computing. Under the attack of these two, human civilization fell faster.
The author of "The Rose and the Worm" is obviously pessimistic about the future of mankind. His disapproval mainly stems from the present. The book writes, "The progress of media has made society more integrated. In such a society, the importance of individuals is getting lower and lower, and the importance of structure is getting higher and higher." The proliferation of modern information has made everyone's IQ rise. Going backwards, individuals are unable to process so much information and they begin to become irresponsible and lack vision. Therefore, in order for human civilization to survive, it is obvious that a collectivist super intelligence using the power of science and technology is needed.
This kind of evolution is not only the case among other civilizations in the galaxy. In the hundreds of years after the earth was devastated, a group that has been isolated from other countries and tribes also evolved collective wisdom with the help of their servers.
Is this the only future for mankind? If this is the case, is it possible for the "freedom" that people admire to exist? This is also a question that the author thinks about. But the answer is still pessimistic.
's work ends with the choice of Captain Kong Ji, who is insignificant in the entire solar system. This captain is infected with the Rose "Virus". He understands that the Milky Way Super Network will definitely incorporate the Solar System Network, but he hopes that this isolated collective intelligence can fight against it. And he chose to wander between the two, serving two masters with one servant, in order to gain some freedom.
If galactic civilization really develops in this way, then the "freedom" that represents the highest value of human individuals will also disappear. Captain Kong Ji is the last free man in human civilization.
