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Engineering InIinity


Edited by Jonathan Strahan


Including stories by
Charles Stross
Gwyneth Jones
John Barnes
Peter Watts
Kristine Kathryn Rusch
Karl Schroeaer
Stephen Baxter
Robert Reea
Hannu Rafaniemi
Kathleen Ann Goonan
Gregory Benfora
Damien Broaerick & Barbara Lamar
John C. Wright
Davia Moles
In memory of Charles N. Brown ana Robert A. Heinlein, two giants of our fiela who each in his
own way inspirea my love for science fiction.

First published 2010 by Solaris, an imprint oI Rebellion Publishing Ltd, Riverside House, Osney
Mead, OxIord, OX1 0ES, UK
www.solarisbooks.com

ISBN(.mobi): 978-1-84997-235-2
ISBN(.epub): 978-1-84997-236-9

Introduction and story notes and arrangement
copyright © 2011 Jonathan Strahan.
"Malak" copyright © 2011 Peter Watts.
"Watching the Music Dance" copyright © 2011 Kristine Kathryn Rusch.
"Laika's Ghost" copyright © 2011 Karl Schroeder.
"The Invasion oI Venus" copyright © 2011 Stephen Baxter.
"The Server and the Dragon" copyright © 2011 Hannu Rajaniemi.
"Bit Rot" copyright © 2011 Charles Stross.
"Creatures with Wings" copyright © 2011 Kathleen Ann Goonan.
"Walls oI Flesh, Bars oI Bone" copyright © 2011
Damien Broderick & Barbara Lamar.
"Mantis" copyright © 2011 Robert Reed.
"Judgement Eve" copyright © 2011 John C. Wright.
"A Soldier oI the City" copyright © 2011 David Moles.
"Mercies" copyright © 2011 AbbenIord Associates.
"The Ki-anna" copyright © 2011 Gwyneth Jones.
"The Birds and the Bees and the Gasoline Trees" copyright © 2011 John Barnes.

The right oI the author to be identiIied as the author oI this work has been asserted in accordance
with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part oI this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or
transmitted, in any Iorm or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or
otherwise, without the prior permission oI the copyright owners.
A CIP catalogue record Ior this book is available Irom the British Library.
Designed & typeset by Rebellion Publishing
$FNQRZOHGJHPHQWV

An anthology is not assembled by one person, neatly and tidily, working in idyllic isolation (at
least, not in my experience). Rather it's the incredibly Iortunate outcome oI the eIIorts oI a small
village oI talented and extremely generous people.
Engineering Infinitywould not exist without the eIIorts oI Jonathan Oliver and the remarkable team
at Solaris, my indeIatigable agent Howard Morhaim and his assistant Katie Menick, and the
wonderIul Stephan Martiniere who has done another remarkable cover - I am grateIul to them all. I
am also grateIul to each and every one oI the book's contributors who have been Iar kinder and more
patient than I had any right to hope.
Finally, as always, I would like to thank my wiIe Marianne and my daughters Jessica and Sophie,
who allow me to steal time Irom them to do books like this one. It's a giIt I try to repay every day.
Introduction

Beyond the Gernsback Continuum...

Jonathan Strahan

I was in a bar. I think it was in Calgary in Canada. And it was the middle oI winter. Or it might
have been the bar in Denver in the United States, a little earlier in the same winter. Wherever it was,
it was the winter oI 2008 somewhere in North America and George Mann and the Solaris team had
asked me to join them Ior a drink. I don't drink oIten and I don't drink heavily, but I do drink at science
Iiction conventions, especially when publishers have invited me to join them. It seemed that Solaris
would like me to edit an anthology, a hard science Iiction anthology or something similar, the book
that has become the one you now hold in your hands: Engineering Infinity. I was Ilattered, delighted
in Iact, and given that I had some experience editing such stuII, I agreed readily to the idea.
At the time, and in the several months Iollowing that trip to Canada (it was Canada, I'm sure) we
went back and Iorth a little about titles and about which writers might be involved, but oddly, in
retrospect, what we didn't discuss was what hard science Iiction was, or what it might be in the 21st
Century. The reason Ior that, I think, is what I now think oI as the "Gernsback continuum." Science
Iiction readers love taxonomy - classiIying, arranging and deIining things - and what we love to
taxonomise the most is science Iiction itselI. The Gernsback continuum is the slice oI science Iiction
history that starts with Hugo Gernsback's Ama:ing Stories, progresses to John W. Campbell's
Astounaing Maga:ine and the Big Three oI Science Fiction (Robert Heinlein, Isaac Asimov and
Arthur C. Clarke), and then on to the New Wave and its descendants). It's a mostly male worldview, a
mostly white one, and it holds at its heart "hard SF."
The term "hard SF" or "hard science Iiction" was Iirst coined in 1957 by P. Schuyler Miller to
describe science Iiction stories that emphasize scientiIic detail or technical detail, and where the
story itselI turns on a point oI scientiIic accuracy Irom the Iields oI physics, chemistry, biology, or
astronomy, although engineering stories were also commonly described as hard science Iiction in the
early days oI SF. The great early works oI hard science Iiction - James Blish's Surface Tension, Hal
Clements' Mission of Gravity, Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations," and Arthur C. Clarke's A Fall of
Moonaust - are some oI the best and most enduring works oI science Iiction our Iield has seen. They
all exempliIy the hard SF approach: emphasizing science content, linking it directly to the narrative,
and maintaining a rigorous approach to the science itselI. They also meet the most important
requirement Ior the true hard SF story: they all are as accurate and rigorous in their use oI scientiIic
knowledge at the time oI writing as was possible.
Hard science Iiction has remained a constant throughout the history oI science Iiction. In the 1950s
it was where the best tales oI space exploration were Iorged; in the 1960s it was the heart oI near-
Earth science Iiction; in the 1980s it was the radical centre Ior the British drive to the new space
opera; and in the 1990s, with the arrival oI both quantum mechanics in science Iiction and the
singularity, it was the basis Ior Kim Stanley Robinson's meticulous and demanding Mars trilogy,
Greg Egan's explorations oI human consciousness, and Charles Stross's post-scarcity space operas.
This, however, is the 21st century and I think things are becoming more complicated and complex.
Science Iiction no longer subscribes readily to a single view oI its own history. There's Iar more to
our past than the Gernsback continuum, or indeed more recently the Gibson continuum (the past and
Iuture history oI cyberpunk), and science itselI seems to be an ever more wriggly and complex beast
as we come to better understand the universe in which we Iind ourselves. Frankly quantum mechanics
oIten sounds indistinguishable Irom magic. We're also well into the Fourth Generation oI science
Iiction: the genre has been born, passed through adolescence, into adulthood, and is moving into a
post-scarcity period oI incredible richness and diversity. That impacts on everything in our Iield,
Irom the diversity oI the people who write science Iiction to whom and about what they choose to
write. We've also long since accepted that science Iiction writers aren't back-room nostrodamusses
reading tealeaves and predicting the Iuture. They're people using science Iiction as a tool to
interrogate and extrapolate Irom our present Ior what we can learn about the human condition.
All oI this became increasingly clear to me as Engineering Infinity came together. Slowly driIt set
in, we moved away Irom pure hard SF to something a little broader. Yes, each and every story here
has at its heart a piece oI scientiIic speculation. Yes, there's a real attempt not to break any known
laws oI physics. But Iar more importantly, I think, the writers here who are some oI our Iinest
dreamers turned away Irom Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" and towards the promise embedded
in the title oI this book itselI: the point where the practical application oI science meets something
without bound or end - our sense oI wonder. There'll be times as you read the stories collected here -
encountering everything Irom a mirror that makes us ask who is real and who is not to a cannibalistic
zombie cyborg - when you might ask, how is this story hara SF? My answer, the best answer I can
give you, is that some oI the stories are classic hard SF, some are not. Some hold at their heart a
slightly anachronistic love oI science Iiction's days gone by or simply grab some aspect oI science
Iiction and test it to destruction and beyond, but all are striving to be great stories.
I should add, Engineering Infinity is not the last statement in an evolutionary taxonomy oI hard SF.
For all that I'd love to see such a book, it's neither a deIinitive book oI hard SF nor an attempt to coin
a new radical hard SF. Instead, it is part oI the ongoing discussion about what science Iiction is in the
21st century. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have enjoyed compiling it, and that maybe, just perhaps,
it inspires you to look Iorward at what's coming next.
Jonathan Strahan
Perth, Western Australia
July 2010
Malak

Peter Watts

Peter Watts (www.riIters.com) is an uncomfortable hybria of biologist ana science-fiction
author, known for pioneering the technique of appenaing extensive technical bibliographies onto
his novels, this serves both to confer a veneer of creaibility ana to cover his ass against
nitpickers. Describea by the Globe & Mail as one of the best hara SF authors alive, his aebut
novel (StarIish) was a NY Times Notable Book.
His most recent (Blindsight) - a philosophical rumination on the nature of consciousness which,
aespite an unhealthy focus on space vampires, has become a requirea text in such aiverse
unaergraauate courses as "The Philosophy of Mina" ana "Introauction to Neuropsychology" -
maae the final ballot for a number of genre awaras incluaing the Hugo, winning exactly none of
them (although it has, for some reason, won multiple awaras in Polana). This may reflect a certain
critical aiviae regaraing Watts´ work in general, his bipartite novel ?ehemoth, for example, was
praisea by Publisher's Weekly as an "aarenaline-chargea fusion of Clarke´s The Deep Range ana
Gibson´s Neuromancer" ana "a mafor aaaition to 21st-century hara SF," while being
simultaneously aecriea by Kirkus as "utterly repellent" ana "horrific porn." (Watts happily
embraces the truth of both views.)
His work has been extensively translatea, ana both Watts ana his cat have appearea in the
prestigious fournal Nature. After a quiet couple of years (he only publishea one story in 2009,
although he managea to publish it five times thanks to various Best-of-Year anthologies) a recent
foray into fanfic, ana a more recent foray into the US fuaicial system, Watts is back at work on
State oI Grace (the siaequel to Blindsight) ana another profect he´s not quite allowea to talk about
fust yet. He aoes, however, feel a bit better about his life since winning the Hugo in Melbourne for
his 2009 novelette "The Islana."

"An ethically-inIallible machine ought not to be the goal. Our goal should be to design a machine
that perIorms better than humans do on the battleIield, particularly with respect to reducing unlawIul
behaviour or war crimes."
- Lin et al, 2008, Autonomous Military Robotics:
Risk, Ethics, ana Design

"|Collateral| damage is not unlawIul so long as it is not excessive in light oI the overall military
advantage anticipated Irom the attack."
- US Department oI DeIence, 2009

It is smart but not awake.
It would not recognize itselI in a mirror. It speaks no language that doesn't involve electrons and
logic gates; it does not know what A:rael is, or that the word is etched into its own Iuselage. It
understands, in some limited way, the meaning oI the colours that range across Tactical when it's out
on patrol - Iriendly Green, neutral Blue, hostile Red - but it does not know what the perception oI
colour feels like.
It never stops thinking, though. Even now, locked into its roost with its armour stripped away and
its control systems exposed, it can't help itselI. It notes the changes being made to its instruction set,
estimates that running the extra code will slow its reIlexes by a mean oI 430 milliseconds. It counts
the biothermals gathered on all sides, listens uncomprehending to the noises they emit -
--
- hartsanamynasmyfrenahartsanamynas -
- rechecks threat-potential metrics a dozen times a second, even though this location is secure and
every contact is Green.
This is not obsession or paranoia. There is no dysIunction here. It's just code.
It's indiIIerent to the killing, too. There's no thrill to the chase, no relieI at the obliteration oI
threats. Sometimes it spends days Iloating high above a Iractured desert with nothing to shoot at; it
never grows impatient with the lack oI targets. Other times it's barely oII its perch beIore airspace is
thick with SAMs and particle beams and the screams oI burning bystanders; it attaches no
signiIicance to those sounds, Ieels no Iear at the proIusion oI threat icons blooming across the
zoneIile.
--
- thatsitthen. weereelygonnaaoothis? -
Access panels swing shut; armour snaps into place; a dozen warning registers go back to sleep. A
new Ilight plan, perceived in an instant, lights up the map; suddenly Azrael has somewhere else to be.
Docking shackles Iall away. The Malak rises on twin cyclones, all but drowning out one last voice
driIting in on an unsecured channel:
- fustwattweeneea. akillerwithaconshunce. -
The aIterburners kick in. Azrael Ilees Heaven Ior the sky.

Twenty thousand meters up, Azrael slides south across the zone. High-amplitude topography Iades
behind it; corduroy landscape, sparsely tagged, scrolls beneath. A population centre sprawls in the
nearing distance: a ramshackle collection oI buildings and photosynth panels and swirling dust.
Somewhere down there are things to shoot at.
Buried high in the glare oI the noonday sun, Azrael surveils the target area. Biothermals move
obliviously along the plasticized streets, cooler than ambient and dark as sunspots. Most oI the
buildings have neutral tags, but the latest update reclassiIies Iour oI them as unknown. A IiIth - a
rectangular box six meters high - is oIIicially hostile. Azrael counts IiIteen biothermals within, Red
by deIault. It locks on -
- and holds its Iire, distracted.
Strange new calculations have just presented themselves Ior solution. New variables demand
constancy. Suddenly there is more to the world than wind speed and altitude and target acquisition,
more to consider than range and Iiring solutions. Neutral Blue is everywhere in the equation, now.
Suddenly, Blue has value.
This is unexpected. Neutrals turn Hostile sometimes, always have. Blue turns Red iI it Iires upon
anything tagged as Iriendly, Ior example. It turns Red iI it attacks its own kind (although agonistic
interactions involving Iewer than six Blues are classed as domestic and generally ignored).
Noncombatants may be neutral by deIault, but they've always been halIway to hostile.
So it's not just that Blue has acquired value; it's that Blue's value is negative. Blue has become a
cost.
Azrael Iloats like three thousand kilograms oI thistledown while its models run. Targets Iall in a
thousand plausible scenarios, as always. Mission objectives meet with various degrees oI simulated
success. But now, each disappearing blue dot oIIsets the margin oI victory a little; each protected
structure, degrading in hypothetical crossIire, costs points. A hundred principle components coalesce
into a cloud, into a weighted mean, into a variable unprecedented in Azrael's experience: Preaictea
Collateral Damage.
It actually exceeds the value oI the targets.
Not that it matters. Calculations complete, PCD vanishes into some hidden array Iar below the
here-and-now. Azrael promptly Iorgets it. The mission is still on, red is still red, and designated
targets are locked in the cross-hairs.
Azrael pulls in its wings and dives out oI the sun, guns blazing.

As usual, Azrael prevails. As usual, the Hostiles are obliterated Irom the battlezone.
So are a number oI Noncombatants, newly relevant in the scheme oI things. Fresh shiny algorithms
emerge in the aItermath, tally the number oI neutrals beIore and aIter. Preaictea rises Irom RAM,
stands next to Observea. the diIIerence takes on a new name and goes back to the basement.
Azrael Iactors, Iiles, Iorgets.
But the same overture precedes each engagement over the next ten days; the same judgmental
epilogue Iollows. Targets are assessed, costs and beneIits divined, destruction wrought then
reassessed in hindsight. Sometimes the targeted structures contain no red at all, sometimes the whole
map is scarlet. Sometimes the enemy pulses within the translucent angular panes oI a protected object,
sometimes next to something Green. Sometimes there is no Iiring solution that eliminates one but not
the other.
There are whole days and nights when Azrael Iloats high enough to tickle the jet stream, little more
than a distant circling eye and a signal relay; nothing Ilies higher save the satellites themselves and -
occasionally - one oI the great solar-powered reIuelling gliders that haunt the stratosphere. Azrael
visits them sometimes, sips liquid hydrogen in the shadow oI a hundred-meter wingspan - but even
there, isolated and unchallenged, the battleIield experiences continue. They are vicarious now; they
arrive through encrypted channels, hail Irom distant coordinates and diIIerent times, but all share the
same algebra oI cost and beneIit. Deep in Azrael's OS some general learning reIlex scribbles
numbers on the back oI a virtual napkin: Nakir, Marut and HaIaza have also been blessed with new
vision, and inspired to compare notes. Their combined data piles up on the conIidence interval,
squeezes it closer to the mean.
Foresight and hindsight begin to converge.
PCD per engagement is now consistently within eighteen percent oI the collateral actually
observed. This does not improve signiIicantly over the Iollowing three days, despite the combined
accumulation oI twenty-seven additional engagements. Performance vs. experience appears to have
hit an asymptote.

Stray beams oI setting sunlight glint oII Azrael's skin, but night has already Iallen two thousand
meters below. An unidentiIied vehicle navigates through that advancing darkness, on mountainous
terrain a good thirty kilometers Irom the nearest road.

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