The various bits of weaponry portrayed in this novel—from Miri’s arsenal to Desjardins’ booby-traps to South Africa’s ICBMs— are taken from a variety of sources including the USAF[40]; The Economist[41]; Cornell University Peace Studies Program[42]; and even the European Centre for Medium-Range Weather Forecasts[43]. Evidently weapons-grade infrasound isn’t all it’s cracked up to be. (On the other hand, it seems surprisingly simple to generate your own electromagnetic pulse[44]).
Electronic Wildlife & Digital Evolution
Maelstrom hung on the premise that the same Darwinian processes that shape life in this world are equally applicable to the digital realm—that self-replicating software will be literally alive when the conditions of natural selection are met. That position has gained recent ground; terms like “digital organism” crop up in the most respectable scientific journals[45],[46],[47], and you can now download freeware apps that let you experiment with digital evolution on your own desktop[48]. E-life is proceeding on track; maybe the Maelstrom Ecosystems won’t be far behind.
Maelstrom extended the conceit of Internet-as-Ecosystem to a “consensus superorganism” that exploited the myth of the Meltdown Madonna as a reproductive strategy. Five years further down the timeline, parts of that superorganism have transmuted—with a little help from their friends—into the “Shredders” and “Lenies” of ßehemoth. Ecologically, we’ve moved from a climax ecosystem to a weedy and impoverished landscape of virtual rats, gulls, and kudzu—and in keeping with that spirit, the virtual-ecology aspects of this novel echo the pest-species dynamics common in real-world ecosystems.
A common response to outbreaks of unwanted insect species is to haul out the pesticides. The pest’s usual response is to a) develop resistance, and b) crank up its reproductive rate to offset the increased mortality. Once this happens, human “managers” don’t dare stop spraying, because the pest has been pushed into a state of chronic outbreak; its increased reproductive rate will result in a catastrophic population explosion the moment spraying sends. This is essentially what happened during the spruce budworm infestations of the North American Maritimes back in the seventies and eighties[49]; I rather suspect we may in for a replay with the current bark-beetle invasion.
You don’t need a Ph.D. to see the parallels between this and the exorcist/shredder dynamic at play in N’AmNet. Lenie Clarke never took Ecology 101; she made her moves for her own twisted and unrelated reasons. Ironically, though, it may have been the right course of action from a purely ecological standpoint. Pest species tend to peak and crash cyclically if you just leave them alone; once you’ve cranked them into outbreak mode, perhaps the only way to restore any kind of natural balance is to just take your foot off the brake, grit your teeth, and take your lumps until the system stabilizes.
Assuming it does.
Predicting the Past:
Smart gels. Head cheeses. Those neuron puddings that the corpses used to jam the rifters in the first half of this book, and which played a much more central role in the previous ones. They exist now, in real life. Neurons cultured from rat brains, now operating remote-controlled robots at a lab near you[50].
Piss me right off. I thought I had years before this stuff caught up with me.
40
“When Killing Just Won’t Do”—Excerpt from
42
Altmann, J. 1999. Acoustic weapons—a prospective assessment: sources, propagation, and effects of strong sound. Occasional Paper #22, 87pp.
43
Beljaars, A. 1992. The parameterization of the planetary boundary layer. Available at http://www.ecmwf.int/
45
Lenski, R.E.,
46
Wilke, C.O., and C. Adami. 2002. The biology of digital organisms.
47
O’Neill, B. 2003. Digital evolution.
49
If you’re looking for primary sources on this, though, you’re SOL. I’m just regurgitating memories of a grad course I took in theoretical ecology back at the University of Guelph.
50
Eisenberg, A. 2003. Wired to the Brain of a Rat, a Robot Takes On the World.