The Reality Dysfunction

Hamilton, Peter F. The Reality Dysfunction, Part 1: Emergence / Part 2: Expansion. 1996. New York: Warner, 1997. The story is continued in The Neutronium Alchemist (1998; not examined). *

Hard-SF with nifty gadgets introduced during the course of narration, at least one impressive enough to make a character uncomfortable with it as "too much like magic" (I.630; ch. 17)—with "magic" a repeated word in Part 2. These gadgets sometimes have aspects usually more biological, mental, and/or spiritual than mechanical, in a work whose second part includes explicit horror motifs of the dead returning and possessing human bodies: transgressing boundaries seems important to PFH's project. "A spectacular, vast galactic saga […]"—space-opera of, so to speak, Wagnerian proportions, or Dantean epic—or like Ian Banks's Culture. "This is a stunning universe of Edenists, telepathically gene-linked to their sentient [bio-technological] ships and living worlds; of nano-augmented star pilots and warriors … and of terrifying ancient alien mysteries beyond human comprehension. [*** A] data chip from a long-extinct alien race, the Laymil, holds the only key to what the phenomenon [of curses] is—a force unknown to history. The Laymil called it 'The Reality Dysfunction.'

But they might have called it Hell …" (back cover, Part 1). The worlds of the human Confederation range technologically from very high-tech to mixtures of high and low technology on agricultural and, more so, frontier worlds (see I.151; ch. 7), to a world like a rural England, but with something like classy wine production and «appropriate» technology. See for: (1) telepathic Ly cilph, with "no technology, no economy. Their culture is not orientated [sic] towards the mechanical or materialistic; their knowledge is their wealth. The data-processing capacity of their linked minds far exceeds that of any electronic computer system, and their perception is not limited to the meagre electronic electromagnetic wavelengths of the optical bands" (I.21; ch. 2). (2) The truly hybrid bio-tech ("bitek") of the telepathically-linked humans, habitats, and ships of the Edenists: including impressive scenes of "bitek starship" birth (preceded by implantation, gestation) and death (Part 1, ch. 3). (3) Secular, Edenic afterlife existence—although not lasting individual immortality (I.297; ch. 11)—"as Edenists have continuation [after death] through becoming part of a habitat personality," allowing Edenists "to some extent" to have "superceded religion thanks to the mechanics of [… their] culture" (I.45, ch. 3, also I.123, ch. 6, with bold-face in original to indicate telepathic dialog, as here between a human and a "habitat personality"): cf. and contrast continuing but attenuated sentience in B. Aldiss's Helliconia trilogy, cited in Clockworks 1 under Fiction. (4) Implanted nanotech devices that allow: impressive (cyborg) augmentation of human abilities, including heightened senses, and using "boosted" animals for surveillance (e.g., I.337; ch. 13); communications; combat (e.g., II.5-6, ch. 1; II.322, 334 ch. 8; chs. 10-12); and male sexuality. This last presents an interesting ready-made thought-experiment for values/politics clarification: the devices aid one promiscuous and egotistic male protagonist to give women—and at least one girl—great sexual pleasure, which gives him great [sexual] pleasure [I.577; ch. 18 & passim]: should feminists approve?. In another, very brief, episode, a "boosted cock" is explicitly a kind of weapon, in context ineffective (II.134-35; ch. 3). (5) An "insect appearance" for warriors in high-tech body armor (II.7; ch. 1)—and odd appearance for a "cosmonik" cyborgized for space II. 429-30; ch. 9). (6) "Sequestration nanonics" that allow take-over of humans in a high-tech version of possession (II.31, ch. 1; also I.79; ch. 5, & passim)—explicitly paralleled with more traditional body-snatching by the undead, the more traditional forms possible in a process called by one character, "almost […] vampiric" (II. 248; ch. 6). (7) Prohibitions on "antimatter-confinement technology" (e.g., I.322; ch. 12). (8) No prohibitions on use of nukes against the undead, and Buck-Rogersian approval of atomic massacre ("Air Lords of Han") at the climax of Part 2 (chs. 11-12, see esp. 527-28, end of ch. 11). (9) Extra-utero gestation in "exowombs," with the implications for nature lovers vs. figurative "technocrats" made explicit (II.108, 119, ch. 3; II.[366], ch. 9). (10) Alien Laymil technology experienced, in a kind of VR, as extraordinary by a human used to intimate mental contact with the biomechanical: "There was nothing like the human arrangements of decks and machinery, present even in voidhawks. The protective metal shell contained a biological nest-womb, a woody growth honeycombed with chambers and voyage-duration pouches for travellers [sic on spelling], creating an exotic organic grotto. […] Ione fund it hard to tell where the plastic began and the cells ended; the cellular/mechanical fusion was seamless, as though the womb-nest was actually growing machinery. [***]

There was a similarity here [on the alien ship she is experiencing] to the automatic functions a human's neural nanonics would perform; but as far as she could ascertain the shipmaster possessed no implants. This was the way its brain was structured to work. The ship's biotechnology was sub-sentient," unlike with voidhawks of the humans, "so, in effect, the shipmaster was the flight computer" (II.302-03; ch. 7 [cf. and contrast bio/mechanism in ALIEN films). (11) For students of genre, cf. and contrast the "dry and empty" realm of death in RD, and exit from it with the Dry Land of death and threats to the living world in Ursula K. Le Guin's Earthsea series, esp. The Farthest Shore; also: the explicit references to "Magic of a kind" with the powers of the undead (Farthest Shore: 1972; see RD II. 456-57; ch. 10). (12) At least with some of the undead—former Catholics?—exorcism works, with the moral thought out by a hard-headed character: "A ceremony left over from medieval times that can thwart these almost-invincible foes. Where all our fantastic technology and knowledge fails, a prayer […] could become our salvation" (II. 510; ch. 11). (13) In Part 2, the returned undead produce mysteriously what would otherwise—from more conventional enemies—look like technological phenomena: electronic warfare that neutralizes human electronic, but not mechanical, gear, energy discharges of great destructiveness, and long-lasting cloud cover of some direct military usefulness and a major cause for dread. (RDE, Bill Howe, 31/12/06, 4-6/01/07)