Imagining Traffic Jams In a Far Universe
Garfinkle's "Celestial Matters" as science fiction
I recently read a novel that got me thinking about an interesting subgenre of science fiction, and also has some very interesting worldbuilding and writing and philosophy: Celestial Matters, by Richard Garfinkle.
This is a science-fiction novel, I believe, but it's a very weird one. Its premise is, basically, "what if the Ancient Greek worldview was exactly correct?" In this geocentric cosmos, many centuries past Socrates and Plato and Alexander and everyone we'd recognize as being from Ancient Greece, there's been a technological revolution: people are using things like the four humors and spontaneous generation on an industrial scale. The Delian League (i.e. Greek empire) is locked in a generations-long war with the Middle Kingdom (Chinese Empire). Imploring the aid of the Greek gods (who clearly exist), they send our protagonist on a mission through the celestial spheres to bring down celestial fire from the Sun.
This isn't the first sci-fi novel I've read to take place in a world with different fundamental principles. A lot of Greg Egan's novels are in universes with different physical laws, explored in loving detail in a way that (as with all of his works) makes the laws of physics the protagonist. Sometimes he also portrays his human or alien characters well, but you don't want to read his books for the characters. For example, in Egan's Dichronauts, our protagonist's quest for a new safe home is interesting, but it wouldn't carry the book on its own. I read it primarily for its picture of life in a universe with two timelike dimennsions. I enjoy Egan's novels because I enjoy reading about well-detailed science and the drama of discovery as our supporting characters pour over the universe in loving detail.
Egan is far from the only author to do this. One could say that old sci-fi novels which (we now know) got physics wrong could be read this way in the modern day. Or, to step back from physics to less mathematical universes, David Brin writes a fun magical-feeling world with The Practice Effect, where he postulates one magical-feeling principle and asks how society would develop in a world where that held true.
Extrapolate this trend much farther, and you get Celestial Matters: What if Aristotelian physics was right, but also, what if the Greek gods really did exist and influence people in exactly the way the classical Greek poets thought?
This was the best part of the novel, to me. Just like in Greg Egan, we see people pouring over the universe in detail. Garfinkle, here, shows people living and navigating a universe where (for example) when someone speaks wisely, it's literally because the goddess Athena has come on him and inspired him. Or, when you travel to the Sun, you're going to interact with the god Apollo. This's the case in the universe; everyone knows it; everyone treats it as a fact of life. It's a matter for awe in one sense, but it's one that you're going to see a lot. Just like Egan or Brin, Garfinkle explores the implications of life in that sort of universe.
As science-fiction writer Frederik Pohl said, "A good science fiction story should be able to predict not the automobile but the traffic jam." In other words, it should explore the world which results from its premises. Sometimes (like here) the premises are more elaborate than at other times, but we still see the consequences. For example, in this universe where spontaneous generation is a real thing, we see large labs growing different animals from carefully-worked-out compounds.
There also is a plot here, and philosophical themes, which integrate with each other quite nicely.
Just like we have the legendary classical Greek religion (with actual gods), we have the memetic versions of Athens and Sparta: a Sparta which actually produces peerless warriors (rather than traumatized mediocrities as in real life) and accepts young applicants from throughout the known world; and an Athens which is dominated by a huge Academy. Rather than being rivals as in reality, they lead Greek civilization together. All of this has been the case throughout the hinted-at history at least back to the days of Alexander the Great.
This dichotomy symbolizes the author's themes around the opposing interests of war and science, and Garfinkle repeatedly evokes it as such from the beginning to end as our narrator continues to question his role leading the war-mission to the sun. Is it really fitting to go to the sun only to steal the celestial fire for weapons? Is it really prudent, when the sun is the home of the god Apollo? And in a broader perspective, how much has science allowed itself to be circumscribed by the demands of war?
The Chinese enemies have sent spies and saboteurs, and much of the plot is taken up with tracking them down amid various suspicions - but it turns out that our narrator can speak of science and philosophy with them at least as well as with any Greek, and they're necessary to save our protagonist's life and his ship.
This builds up naturally into an apt, if swift, resolution. Our protagonist's plan to end the war is presented as being inspired by the gods - but in this universe, wise plans inherently come from Athena the Goddess of Wisdom.
There're many things brushed over in this book with a brief mention, such as the ship getting caught on the epicycles of Mars, or the exact relation between the gods and their celestial bodies. There're other things not really addressed, such as slavery and the relationship between different pantheons and the relationship between Chinese and Greek science.
In the world in this book, slavery exists (as it did in actual ancient Greece) and nobody - even our protagonist - questions it (as nobody did in actual ancient Greece.) Is this a great injustice? Or is this a world where Aristotle's thought on slavery is true, and people with greater souls are perfectly fit to enslave people with lesser souls? I don't know; Garfinkle doesn't mention it; we never see enough of a slave's character to guess.
We see just enough to know that the Greek gods aren't the only ones who exist in this world. In one point where a character from a different culture dies (I'm eliding for spoilers), we glimpse (through our protagonist's eyes) a vision of him being judged by his culture's divinities. Are they the same as the Greek gods under different guises, or are they other beings taking charge of those who give allegiance to them? And if the latter, how does that work with the Greek gods clearly being the ones associated with the planets? We don't know; our narrator doesn't ask; Garfinkle doesn't hint.
I wonder if the utter difference presented throughout the book between Greek (Aristotelian) and Chinese (Taoist) science and technology could be building on the same difference between pantheons? Is this perhaps a deeper difference between this universe and ours, that it works differently for different people and cultures? Obviously, the novel makes it clear they do both work. Or, is it just that (like our universe's wave and particle theories of light) they're both hitting on aspects of a more complicated deeper truth? If so, this would fit in very well with the themes of how science has lost its true calling in service to war - or to take the symbolism, how Athens has let itself be misled by Sparta.
Books that build an entire counterfactual science aren't the typical sort of science fiction. But they're still within the genre, because they use the same tools and approach of science fiction. They show us a traffic jam, after having invented not just the car but the entire concept of combustion and then built the internal combustion engine around it.
And, they're fun.