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Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge, Edited by Damien

Broderick. Atlas & Co., New York, (2008) 330 pages, $40

Article  in  Futures · November 2009

DOI: 10.1016/j.futures.2009.04.004

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 Futures 41 (2009) 663–668

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Futures
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/futures

Book reviews

Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge, Edited by Damien Broderick. Atlas & Co., New York, (2008) 330 pages, $40.

Eyes large, lustrous, beautiful: above them, no longer separated by rugged brow ridges, is the top of the head, a glistening,
hairless dome, terete [round and tapering] and beautiful; no craggy nose rises to disturb by its unmeaning shadows the
symmetry of that calm face, no vestigial ears project; the mouth is a small, perfectly round aperture, toothless and gumless,
jawless, unanimal, no futile emotions disturbing its roundness as it lies, like the harvest moon or the evening star, in the wide
firmament of face.

H.G. Wells, ‘‘The Man of the Year Million’’, Pall Mall Gazette, November 1893
This snippet of H.G. Wells’ vision of man in the Year Million is found in the introduction of this intriguing book of the same
name. In a sense, this book is meant to reprise Wells’ fascinating exploration of humanity’s deep future. To accomplish this
task, the editor, Damien Broderick, assembled an excellent team who contributed fourteen thought-provoking essays on
topics as diverse as faster-than-light physics and planet-sized computers. He sets the tone this way: ‘‘This book is a voyage of
exploration into that barely conceivable distant future, into a time so remote that we cannot even be certain how many
generations extending to the right will be required to get there.’’ (p. xii).
This book is full of intellectual presents. One million years seems like an eternity with respect to social and technological
change yet, as Dougal Dixon explains in his chapter titled A Changing Earth, not much will happen on earth geologically
speaking during this time span. However, if the earth’s magnetic field dissipates for any significant length of time, which it is
want to do and could do at any time, this could severely deplete the layer of stratospheric ozone that encircles the earth and
protects life. Maybe by the Year Million we will learn how to turn the theoretical aspects of superluminal physics into reality,
as suggested by Catherine Asaro in her chapter titled A Luminous Future. Robin Hanson, in his chapter titled The Rapacious
Hardscrapple Frontier, demonstrates how game theory can be used to better understand a race to settle the galaxy.
Two themes threaded throughout the book that are especially noteworthy. The first is interplanetary exploration. The
second is the future of computation. Several authors, including Steven B. Harris in his chapter titled A Million Years of
Evolution, make the case that human beings as now constituted will not be exploring the universe. In the nearer term,
exploration will be done primarily through more advanced remote data collection devices (e.g., see Life Among the Stars by
Lisa Kaltenegger). Deeper into the future, we would probably send probes out into the universe and then ‘fax’ those probes
that found promising new home recipes for earth-life (e.g., see Citizens of the Galaxy by Wil McCarthy). Or, according to
Harris, we could send self-replicators optimized for space travel that would construct emissaries of earth-life optimized for
survival anywhere in the galaxy. A sobering thought raised by Harris is that if alien cultures followed the same strategy, then
it could be that, as Harris states: ‘‘We meet the Aliens: Hey, they look just like us!’’ (p. 76). For me, this prospect greatly
diminishes the romance of space exploration.
Several authors, most notably Robert Bradbury in his chapter titled Under Construction: Redesigning the Solar System,
envision a ‘computational’ future for humankind. Bradbury is known for his design of matrioshka brains, which are planet-
sized, multi-layered, presumably self-aware computational systems that require the energy outputs of Suns to power them.
It can be assumed that humans, who have previously up-loaded themselves to smaller computational systems, will
eventually migrate into M-brain systems. Bradbury envisions solar systems, including our own rearranged, mined, and
eventually dismantled to create ‘computronium’, a universal computing substrate, to build M-brains. It is suggested that
‘humans’ could have so much fun in their virtual earth that their urge to explore the real universe could disappear. It was also
suggested that this might be one reason why we have not seen signs of life elsewhere in the universe.
One contributor, Rudy Rucker, a famous science fiction writer, takes issue with this vision. In his chapter, The Great
Awakening, he dismisses Vearth (virtual earth) as a mere simulation, one which will never be able to capture the richness of
reality. He asks: Who would want to live in a simulation? Instead, Rucker prefers a biological future augmented by intelligent
nano-dust particles which he calls orphids. Orphids blanket the earth and ourselves, creating an all encompassing Orphinet,
which links every aspect of our lives in real-time, including our most private moments (which no longer exist) and our
thoughts as well. Eventually, we master telepathy among ourselves and then learn how to interact telepathically with other
life forms and then with any object on earth. Rucker’s vision is also brilliantly captured in his novel titled Post-Singularity.

0016-3287/$ – see front matter ß 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
664 Book reviews / Futures 41 (2009) 663–668

To conclude the book, several authors went beyond one million years to contemplate the end of the universe. Well,
actually, the universe does not seem to end. Sean M. Carroll, in his chapter The Rise and Fall of Time, describes heat death, or in
other words, the death of heat in the universe. As explained in more depth by Gregory Benford, another noted science fiction
writer and physicist, in his chapter The Final Dark, when the universe gets to be about 1034 years old, even protons will
disintegrate, leaving a universe forever composed only of positrons, electrons, and dark matter. Life still might exist in this
cold quantum environment as, you guessed it, slow moving computational systems.
The book is not short of grand computational futures but does lack a good dose of humanity. Only one author addressed an
issue that could be considered humanistic. In The Laughter of Copernicus, Jim Holt predicts that laughter will survive one
million years into the future (along with numbers). But what about love? What about religion, spirituality, ethics, and
morality? What about family, community, and nation? Do the social sciences, politics, economics, psychology, anthropology,
etc., have any value in the distant future? Do these concepts become mere simulations in Vearth? Most of the authors were
silent on these points, leaving me wondering how life in the Year Million could possibly be psychologically fulfilling.
The visions presented in the book also fail to convey a sense of what humanity’s grand achievements could be in the
future. What indeed is the unfinished business of humanity, in the words of the famous futurist Wendell Bell, and will we
finish this business before retreating into our M-brains, where nothing of note seems to happen in the real world? Will we
create a piece of art so compelling that it could be considered the capstone of any sentient beings and become the pride of the
galaxy? Will humans finally understand the meaning of life? Will we meet God? Will we traverse the multiverse to save
ourselves from heat death? Will we invade the mutliverse to save our creators? Maybe. Maybe not. But, it can be argued that
human life needs the sustenance of real, not virtual, challenges and adventures, real, not virtual, heros, and real, not virtual,
journeys, else it will wither away into inconsequence.

Bruce Tonn*
University of Tennessee, Knoxville, USA

*Tel.: +1 865 974 7041

E-mail address: btonn@utk.edu

Available online 28 May 2009

doi:10.1016/j.futures.2009.04.004

Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years, Vaclav Smil, 320 pp., 74 illustrations, $29.95/£19.95, 2008.

Vaclav Smil’s books are always a refreshing read. At a time when, in many quarters of the futures research community, the
ecological collapse of modern civilization is discussed as being almost unavoidable, Smil’s analysis reminds the reader that the
Earth is a complex system and that sweeping attempts to forecast this system’s future in simple terms are likely to be wrong.
Smil’s newest book Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next Fifty Years is no exception to this view. He bluntly calls Jared
Diamond’s book Collapse ‘‘a derivative, unpersuasive, and simplistically deterministic book’’ (p. 2). This statement is very
courageous, given the enormous popularity of Diamond’s writings during the last decade. In turn, Smil makes the point that his
new book is not a book of forecasts. To pick out one of his many statements on forecasts: ‘‘I have a strong personal dislike of such
efforts and plenty of historical evidence to demonstrate their ephemeral nature and their repeated failure to portray the
complexity of future natural and human affairs’’ (p. 219). Instead, Smil refers to his book as ‘‘simply a multifaceted attempt to
identify major factors that will shape the global future and to evaluate their probabilities and potential impacts’’ (p. viii).
After his biting critique on ‘‘how not to look ahead’’ in Chapter 1, in Chapter 2 Smil examines what he calls ‘‘key fatal
discontinuities’’. Some of these discontinuities he discusses are based on volcanic eruptions or the Earth’s encounters with
extraterrestrial bodies. They must, says Smil, simply be accepted as unavoidable, but since they are highly unlikely they
would not need further attention. As part of his discussion on fatal discontinuities Smil gauges the potential impact of major
wars and terrorist attacks, that is, he analytically lumps together socially and naturally based radical changes. Interestingly,
Smil makes a clear case that the threat of terrorism has been greatly exaggerated in public discourse. In his view, terrorism
can and will be managed.
Chapter 3 on ‘‘Unfolding Trends’’ makes up the major part of the book. Here Smil discusses the trends he thinks will be most
important until about the middle of the 21st century. He begins his discussion with energy as the basis for the survival of human
societies, since without energy, the generation, distribution and consumption of food and commodities will not be possible.
Instead of ringing the alarm bell, Smil explains why there will be no transition away from fossil fuels any time soon, despite its
desirability. Simply, there are no realistic alternatives. After his relatively short discussion on energy, he jumps to the theme of a
new world order, that is, to political, ethnic and economic issues. Despite his preference for quantitative measurements, in this
section of the chapter he admits that his ‘‘appraisals respect the multifaceted nature of rising or falling national fortunes,’’ and
henceforth ‘‘do not attempt quantitative international comparisons’’ nor ‘‘definite rankings’’ or ‘‘time frames’’ (p. 91). Instead, he

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