One of the questions that confront a science-fiction reader is to decide how much of the 'science' in a story is real-i.e., is at the time of writing consensually agreed by a significant number of actual scientists-and how much is made up by the author. I don't personally make up much in my writing. I do, however, quite often make use of scientific ideas that have been put forth by some actual scientist but fall a long way short of being consensual. For example, I did not make up the faster-than-light 'tachyons' I have used in this story (and in others) in order to provide a mechanism for getting my characters around this very large universe in reasonable travel times. They were originally proposed by Dr. Gerry Feinberg and others thirty or more years ago. Tachyons may or may not exist. There is no direct evidence that they do, Feinberg was able to show that they are not excluded by relativity theory; but they have never been detected. So the question remains open for scientists-but, in my view, such concepts are perfectly legitimate for writers like myself to borrow.
Which, I think, is also true of the concept which provides the central thesis of this story, the 'Omega Point' or eschaton at which every person who has ever lived will, it is said, live again, and then go on doing so forever.
Much of what I know about the stranger scientific ideas that are floating around comes from the kindness of friends, who know what sort of thing interests me and are often good enough to send me copies of obscure papers from unlikely sources. The stimulus which led to the present story came from a paper by Dr. Frank Tipler, sent to me some years ago by Dr. Hans Moravec of the Robotics Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University. Tipler's paper, originally published in a journal devoted to religious questions, was quite tentative in tone. However, it appears that, having started thinking on the subject, Tipler began to feel that he was onto something really important. So in 1994 he published a book, The Physics of Immortality, expanding on the original notion and buttressing it with what he says are formal, scientific proofs that it is true. There are some differences between the arguments in the original paper and those in the book, however, and I should mention that in this novel I have preferred to follow those of the original paper.
Tipler's claimed scientific proofs take the form of quite abstruse arguments that are dense with equations and occupy 223 pages in his book. I am not qualified to pass judgment on the accuracy of his science, and the reviews of the book that I have seen in various scientific publications have been, to put it as impartially as possible, pretty uniformly unconvinced. Still, Tipler is a heavyweight scientist in his own right, and we all know that the history of science is full of pioneers who were at first scorned-but were ultimately shown to be correct.
So the question remains: Are we indeed all going to be reborn at some remote time eons in the future?
I don't know. If I had to bet, I must confess that I would be inclined to bet quite heavily against it… but it is certainly pretty to think so.
FREDERIK POHL
Palatine, Illinois March 1995
A multiple Hugo and Nebula Award-winning author, FREDERIK POHL has done just about everything one can do in the science-fiction field. His most famous work is undoubtedly the novel Gateway, which won the Hugo, Nebula, and John W. Campbell Memorial awards for Best SF novel. Man Plus won the Nebula Award. His mature work is marked by a serious intellectual agenda and strongly held sociopolitical beliefs, without sacrificing narrative drive. In addition to his successful solo fiction, Pohl has collaborated successfully with a variety of writers, including C. M. Kornbluth and Jack Williamson. The Pohl/Kornbluth collaboration, The Space Merchants, is a longtime classic of satiric science fiction. The Starchild Trilogy with Williamson is one of the more notable collaborations in the field. Pohl has been a magazine editor in the field since he was very young, piloting Worlds of If to three successive Hugos for Best Magazine. He also has edited original-story anthologies, including the early and notable Star series of the early 1950s. He has at various times been a literary agent, an editor of lines of science-fiction books, and a president of the Science Fiction Writers of America. For a number of years he has been active in the World SF movement. He and his wife, Elizabeth Anne Hull, a prominent academic active in the Science Fiction Research Association, live outside Chicago, Illinois.
