Alan Kazlev couldn’t give a talk at the recent Terasem Colloquium, so we recorded this conversation instead.
The video is on YouTube. Unfortunately the audio quality on Alan’s side is poor due to a poor internet connection. The transcript generated by Substack is better than the transcript generated by YouTube.
I first met Alan about 20 years ago when I wrote to him to discuss his awesome project Orion’s Arm and the idea to create a virtual world based on Orion’s Arm.
Here's what I say about Orion’s Arm in my book “Futurist spaceflight meditations” [Prisco, 2021]:
Orion’s Arm, a collaborative project to imagine plausible interstellar futures, has produced a really spectacular science fictional universe. Besides published collections of short stories e.g. [Orion’s Arm 2014] and a novel [Bowers 2012], the project maintains a sprawling website at orionsarm dot com. The website includes an “Encyclopaedia Galactica” with thousands of entries and counting.
The Orion’s Arm project was started in 2000 by Alan Kazlev and Donna Hirsekorn, who “wanted stories set in a future which might really happen” [Orion’s Arm 2014]. I was involved in a project to create a virtual world based on Orion’s Arm. This project eventually stalled, but I hope others will continue it.
The Orion’s Arm universe, set ten thousand years from now, spans thousands of light years with countless worlds and space habitats. People range from “near baseline” to heavily modified humans with all sorts of body plans and embedded technology, including superhumans with extremely advanced augmentations and AI subsystems. Most people are virtual beings living as pure software.
Engineered wormholes are used for long distance interstellar hauls, but wormhole physics doesn’t allow using wormholes for time travel. A few alien civilizations have been found, but none advanced as humans. There are, however, clues that suggest very advanced alien civilizations that existed in the past.
Directed superhuman evolution has produced vast God-like beings with mega brains, internally connected by instantaneous wormhole links, which span star systems and light years. Only these beings can understand and create some extremely advanced technologies used in Orion’s Arm.
This short outline doesn’t even begin to do justice to the vast complexity of Orion’s Arm. Visit orionsarm dot com for much more. Or even better, participate in the project. I can promise that Orion’s Arm will give you awesome dreams and a burning enthusiasm for our interstellar future.
All that started with Alan’s adventurous mind!
The current issue of Terasem’s “Journal of Geoethical Nanotechnology” includes a sneak preview of Alan’s forthcoming book (perhaps a series of books) titled “Machines of Loving Grace.” I can’t wait to read the rest! This conversation is mostly about the book.
The title of the book is inspired by Richard Brautigan’s immortal poem.
“I like to think (and
the sooner the better!)
of a cybernetic meadow
….
where we are free of our labors
and joined back to nature,
returned to our mammal
brothers and sisters,
and all watched over
by machines of loving grace.”Richard Brautigan - All Watched Over By Machines Of Loving Grace
Machines of loving grace