So, I have problems with this story. And you will surely have many problems with this blog post too, so we’re even on that score. Yet the core science fiction is compelling enough to investigate more carefully. There are some very interesting concepts and situations, technologies and moral challenges. Particularly the moral challenges are underdeveloped in the text, in my opinion. Unfortunately they are underdeveloped here too. You’ll just have to put up with some annoying parts to get the good bits. Of both of these pieces, mine and Alastair’s.
Warning: here be spoilers. I assume you’ve read the story. I get into details and nuances. But if you haven’t read it, things may not make sense to you because I don’t recap all the events.
What follows is not all of the problems I have with Pushing Ice by Alastair Reynolds. It’s the ones that I wanted to work out.
Alastair, if you’re reading this (doubtful), I hope you take it as a compliment that I engaged with the text this thoroughly.
The following is a deeper inquiry into some questions raised by the story. I tend to treat the text like eyewitness testimony: it’s one interpretation of events, possibly unreliable, and it’s worthwhile to try and reconcile it with other things we can understand about the universe and sequence of events. It tends to be a scientists interpretation, but I am also interested in the story-logic of it. I am still up-skilling on literary interpretation, that is interesting too.
The sequence of events to this point is:
We (A and I) suspected immediately that this cube was the helpful gift that Chromis had sent (technically was planning to send). At this point, my assumption had been that Janus was traveling very fast, and continued to do so, but limited by relativity. And that the cube’s speed was also limited by relativity. I don’t see how the cube could catch up to Janus without the later humans being even more powerful than the Spicans (or whoever), which seems unlikely or at least a rather improbable turn of events in story physics.3
This is a valid time to state the constraints in this universe:
With the rather annoying and misleading help4 from one or two variants of the leading chatbots, I found where Reynolds himself confirms that Rockhopper/Janus does not enter The Structure immediately, but instead have a holding pattern to await the arising of other star-faring species.
So the problem of the Cube’s arrival time is solved. It’s reasonable and a clever enough alternative hypothesis that answers how Janus and the Cube arrive at the same time.
But how did they come to be located together? Perhaps the Spican machine sorted the cultural artifacts together.
Were the Spicans a galactic scale empire, or larger? The Chromis era humans launched the Memorial Cubes throughout the galaxy and even beyond to nearby galaxies and ambitiously beyond the local group. The Chromis era humans were small potatoes compared to the Spicans, those same Spicans that outclass all other species trapped in The Structure, even ones beyond the matter gap. Based on the common knowledge of the species collected in The Structure, and the experience of the Janus explosion, only Spican technology has sufficient energy to damage Spican technology.
But Zvetlana’s last picture shows something missing or damaged at the central location of The Structure’s torus shaped arrangement of many thousands of tubes.
So that central damage was either done by some other species that is at the same level as the Spicans, or it was a faction of the Spicans themselves.
Why is Janus the only source of energy? The tube walls can repair themselves, they have energy from somewhere. It’s untappable?
How much energy is needed to accelerate Janus to \(0.999\;c\) (\(\gamma \approx 22\)), and how does that compare to the energy output of the sun? Rough back-of-the-envelope calculations (with ChatGPT helping) suggest that Janus required the energy equivalent of 300 years of the Sun’s total energy output to achieve that speed. It’s worth also mentioning that the amount of energy (\(E=mc^2\) energy) to accelerate Janus to this speed is 21x the mass of Janus itself, so there is something fishy there.
And the Spica relay acceleration (assuming only a \(\gamma = 10^6\)) would require 14 MY of the sun’s total energy output. That is about 32% of the Earth’s mass converted to energy.
This seems to contradict the Fountainhead McKinley’s statement that atomics are a sufficient deterrent for a superior species trying to simply take by force from less developed ones.
Whatever the source, this is a lot of energy to be manipulating. Perhaps The Structure is some strange variation of a Dyson Sphere. I think the Kardashev Scale could have been more clearly delineated. None of these civilizations appear to be approaching Class III. The Spica relay sounds like something perhaps beyond merely Class II. And The Structure’s behaviors a speculatively more than that even.
The energy problem remains unsolved to my satisfaction. It is science fiction at this point.
How does the time dilation zoo collecting work? What is its purpose? Some provisional hypotheses.
The “Spicans” made it to meet others by preserving themselves (by time dilation) and others (by the same) to meet at the same much later time. It’s a conference center. A giant monument to the possibility that other civilizations will exist later.
Based on the Zvetlana’s final image, the structure is immensely large- the size of a solar system with many thousands of tubes. Some central component is damaged or missing, yet the Stucture still functions. At least its outlying instruments still do, the Janus conveyence and the acceleration relay at Spica. But these are long in the past. (Also the tube chambers in the Structure itself.) How were those devices, the Janus’s and Spica type accelerators, placed throughout the Galaxy? Presumably the “Spicans” were very old and galactic scale.
Maybe the Structure is not at rest. This is a curious possibility but seems wrong. I will pick it up later and run with it. This is sparked from the comment that the only other species to escape the Structure was never heard from again. My idea is that they left the time dilation field and slipped away in time from the Structure. But, it seems there are just unrecognizable fixed stars, partly occluded by the Structure itself, in the images that Svetlana sends back. Likely it’s just millions (or billions) of years in the future and everything is moved. Later arrivals should have less movement and be more likely model the motions and therefore locate the Structure. Maybe they’re just not sharing. So idk, there are a lot of unknowns here.
Is there more than one Structure? Each successive Galactic empire would possibly create one. Where there is one, there should be many. It is curious that Chromis does not allude to her own people pursuing such a goal. How is it that no later species makes more Janus energy devices and Structures? Where the Spicans far more advanced than anything captured in the zoo? And none of the captive civilizations continued advancing to develop capabilities even greater than the originators of The Structure? It seems unlikely.
Every advanced empire would create one or many such zoos. The Spicans aren’t the only culture to want to meet others.
Some empire reasoned it out and sent maximally advanced envoys to meet this ancient Spican culture, but they couldn’t get along and that let to the missing central part of the Structure. Or the failure was some catastrophic accident, where is the debris?
Why the problem with repeated motions on Janus, by living beings? Is it also a problem on the surfaces of Structure? I think it likely is just a poetic mystery of the author’s making. I can’t figure any logic of it. Maybe it’s filter for less intelligent species, no infestations of lemmings5 allowed at The Structure.
More questions than answers in this section. Sorry.
There is a tension between Bella the Benefactor’s understanding of her timeline and the Descendant’s accounting. Does it resolve? I mean how long it took to reach Spica. 12 years according to Chromis, plus 1 year of additional travel (p. 507-508 in the ebook I have in Libby). I recall earlier in the text they estimated their cruising speed and time to reach Spica as 13 years, but now that I think about it, that may have included a period of slow down, assuming they would stop at the Spica structure.
What is the Chromis’s timeline? 18000 years after Bella’s departure, but it’s the 10000 year anniversary of founding their governing body, and the particular cube Bella got was launched 4000 year after that anniversary, and who knows how much later it is when she found it. When exactly is it now? We have no way of knowing.
If the humans destroyed (accidentally, allegedly) the Spica device, then what? Chromis mentioned that they found another one, but did they reach it?
Did Chromis’s people ever find any other alien races? She makes no mention of it. So it seems that there is only ever one lonely galactic empire in this universe.
How are the latter humans, Chromis’ people, not eternal? The cube is eternal, or near enough. How does a people with such capability cease to exist. I have the mental model that beyond a certain critical point (technonologically or by dispersal), a species or civilization becomes basically immortal. What would end it, except perhaps the end of time itself? The technology is carried in self replicating archives, the raw materials are not unique to any particular star system or region of the galaxy. This same theory applies to all the other advanced races.
How did the Fountainheads find the Thai expansion era suit and also end up on the Structure? The simplest explanation is that their historical archive of human culture happened to contain the vat manufacturing plans and they made one. It was the nearest in time object to Bella’s departure they could make.
The Fountainheads seemed to have access to the rest of human history, or they are able to identify Chromis from some records in the far distant past. Apparently they either traded for this archive or had it when they arrived at the structures, catching their own Janus much much later than the humans did.
There is a flaw in the timing of the Musk Dogs’ departure from Janus and the door closing. They were never going to make it. The humans closed the door on their clock but didn’t know when Janus would blow up. Presumably the Musk Dogs did know when (or they were tricked by The Whisperers). They should have been able to make it out without damaging their ship but could not, even without human and Fountainhead interference.
So that’s all my random thoughts and questions. Surely some of these are intended by Reynolds, but others feel like either logical flaws or misunderstandings on my part. Reading audiobooks while driving is hard sometimes because of distractions.
I will leave aside the possibility that this may be subterfuge. It seems to not be that sort of book so far. Although deceptions do begin to feature more critically into the story after this point. Later facts support this conclusion, and align with the Chromis frame story. ↑
Perhaps the Cube took the non-relativistic path to the Structure, spending the millions or more years simply waiting to arrive, or for Bella to arrive. ↑
Perhaps I should explore a tale featuring this turn of events. Or maybe someone already has and I just need to find it. ↑
It was a bit like I imagined the interrogation of Golum to be: confidently confused, seemingly sure that it knows what it is talking about. Links: bad o3 help, bad 4o help. If you’ve read the book, you can spot the completely incorrect description of the story immediately. Note that Gemini also fails badly here. ↑
Yes, I know that the lemmings cliff thing is wrong. ↑
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