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"What happened?" Kori asked. "What did they say?" "Mostly they just conjugated verbs." "Oh no."

From Wealthgiver chapter 10: An Echo Speaks

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I’d been up for ten hours and I didn’t feel like swimming. I had to buy coffee, and I didn’t want to do that, either. I wanted someone else to buy coffee and swim for me.

From my January newsletter

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The header for chapter 11 of Wealthgiver: The Infirmary It says Akleikass Kutil, literally ASCLEPIUS-adj-masc-def CELL

Asclepius is a proper name with an uncertain etymology, but I am speculating it is related to Latin scalprum. The name would mean "without scalpel," which would make sense for a magical healer.

Kultil actually has some real-world evidence behind it. Antoninus Placentius said that "Bessian"-speaking Christian monks in Egypt in the 6th century called a monk's cell "cutila," a word that looks very similar to Bulgarian kutiya ("a box"), Albanian kuti, Romanien cutie, Turkish kutu, and many others, ultimately all from Greek kŭ́tos ("a hollow, a vessel"), with further etymology uncertain. Together, the formula "an Asclepian cell" means "an infirmary."

The second half of this chapter drops on Thursday. To read it now, join me on Substack, where you can support my work and read 10 chapters ahead, or on Patreon where we're up to chapter 28.

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Heading for chapter ten of Wealthgiver: An Echo Speaks

It says Flass Váka, literally SPEAK-3rd ECHO

A very important word to the Good, Váka is related to English "sough" and Latin vāgiō ("I wail") as well as of course Greek ēkhḗ ("a sound").

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Look what I got last night. Thank you, new patron! You get to read ten chapters ahead in Wealthgiver, a copy of The World's Other Side ebook, and your name in the acknowledgements section of Wealthgiver. And we'll talk about when to have a voice chat. Enjoy!

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The Ritual of Un-Descent

This Thursday, paying readers will see parts of the next ritual poem in chapter 19 of Wealthgiver. Like the Andrean Prophesy, the Ritual of Un-Descent is sung in the (fictional) Ancient Thracian language. Unlike the prophesy, which was invented by Kori Chthamali in the 19th century, the Ritual of Un-Descent is old, if not ancient. Written forms of the rite date back to the 6th century AD. Its similarities to the Homeric Hymn to Demeter, dated to the 7th century BC, are hotly contested by Bessian scholars.

The Ritual of Un-Descent is traditionally sung by three people, representing The Rushing One (a minor deity almost unknown outside this ritual), The Lady Reaper (also known as The Maiden and The Mistress), and The Unseen (also known as The Master and The Wealthgiver).

First, in the original Ancient Thracian:

SÉRMĒS SÓS:

Ánite! Pleistoré! Palodegmṓn, sa e Kḗphēt dṓe Tḗn opdésedyde.

Read on

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The header for chapter 9 of Wealthgiver: A Narcissus from a Viper

This is ápartka u áprake, from the Good aphorism Ta knéssa ápartka u áprake, "To know a narcissus from a viper." In Good mythology, both yellow flowers and pale-colored venomous snakes represent wealth, which comes out of the ground as a gift of the Unseen, their principle deity. "To know a narcissus from a viper" means knowing what to do with the Unseen's gifts. That is, having good sense.

Read Wealthgiver

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Rumpole of the Bailey by John Mortimer I first listened to this audiobook when I was eleven or twelve years old. It might have just been Frederick Davidson��s voice that did it for me. Listening to it again, I got more of what Mortimer was trying to do, showing us the parallels between the lives of the attorney and the criminals he defends. That’s why Rumpole believes so strongly in the presumption of innocence; he knows the line between good and evil cuts through his heart as well.

From my December newsletter

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The Warrior Prophet by R. Scott Bakker On my second read-through of this series, I can see some of the cracks. H. R. Geiger accompanies J. R. R. Tolkein on the Crusades, but it’s saved from being boring by the author’s honesty, and the fact that he has something to say. There’s a point at which Akamian, on a march through hell toward something worse, looks down at his broken sandal strap and just can’t deal with it. I’ve been there, man.

from my December newsletter

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The process pics for my punk ferox illustration.

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I was hooked at the beginning, when an old wizard and an out-of-work veteran take a look at each other and fall self-consciously into the roles of Lord and Butler. It’s very sweet, and continues so as the characters set about to healing themselves. There are certainly flaws in this book - characters and plot lines that don’t fulfill their promise or fall away entirely - but the atmosphere makes up for it. And I’m genuinely interested in the day-to-day work that goes into running a mansion.

From my December Newsletter

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I’m trying something new here, which is to write off the cuff, with little editing, and press the “post” button without much thought. I’m doing so because this is the first spare moment I’ve had to respond to 

Bassoe’s response to my review of C.M. Kosemen’s soon-to-be published book All Tomorrows, and I don't want to let this interesting conversation wither on the vine.

If you had trouble following that last sentence, it’s enough that you know this: we’re talking about the evolutionary future of humanity.

The Machine-God Scenario

Bassoe talks about “machine-gods...obsessed with tending to the well-being of an inferior species” where “the only remaining selection pressure is desire to reproduce.”

Another selective pressure would be to make ourselves adorable to the machine-gods. Perhaps the gods have a template for what they consider to be human, in which case we'll only be able to evolve in ways that don't deviate from that template. I'm reminded of a Stephen Baxter story (Mayflower II) in which humans on a generation ship turn into sub-sapient animals, but they still press buttons on the control panel because that behavior is rewarded by the ship's AI.

The Super-Tech Scenario

But I agree that even without a super-tech future where all our material needs are met, the availability of contraception means that there's a selective advantage to people who don't use contraception. There are many ways for evolution to make that happen. An instinctive desire for babies or an instinctive aversion to contraception are two such ways. I remember a Zach Weinersmith cartoon where he jokes about future humans with horns on their penises that poke holes in condoms, but of course any such physical adaptation won't be able to keep up with technological innovation. We will have to *want* babies.

Another option is (ala Kurt Vonnegut's Galapagos) that future humans aren't smart enough to use contraception.

The Artificial Womb Scenario

In this case, I think the most selected-for humans are the ones that are most efficiently produced by the artificial wombs. Maybe it's easier to pump out limbless grubs, which are fitted with cyborg arms (see John C. Wright's Myrmidons in his Count to the Eschaton Sequence). The form they take will depend on the parameters of the machines' programming. (see also Vanga-Vangog's The Endpoint)

The Collapse Scenario

I think this scenario is unlikely. If "life, uh, finds a way," then intelligence finds even more ways. When one resource runs out, we find another. The mere fact that you don’t know what the next resource is just means we haven’t found it yet.

But say for the sake of argument that there's a hard limit to technological progress (ala Vernor Vinge's A Deepness in the Sky) or science really is like mining, and it takes infinitely increasing resources to make the next marginal gain in technology. In both cases, you'd expect the graph of human advancement to look like a population when it hits carrying capacity. Exponential growth (we're doing that now) followed by a cycle of die-offs and re-growths, converging to a horizontal mean.

With no ability to innovate, natural selection would take over from technological progress. Once we’ve eaten all the meat and potatoes, there will be strong selection for people who can digest grass. I would expect humans in this case to diversify until our descendants occupy nearly every niche, absorbing most of the matter and energy available on Earth (at least). Whether these people are intelligent or not...probably not. @simon-roy seems to be hinting in this direction with his masterful comic series Men of Earth.

But I don't actually think collapse is likely. I bet that our population (and technological advancement) will not hit an asymptote, but will instead as progress according to a power law, as with the bacteria in Lenski's Long-Term Evolution Experiment.

The Mogul Scenario

Bessoe asks about a future in which “our cultural norms stick around indefinitely, those who generate more profit reproduce,” which I very much doubt.

In 20th century America, the more money you made, the fewer children you had. Now, it seems there's a saddle-shaped distribution, with the very poorest and the very richest women having the most children per woman. This is sure to change again, and faster than evolution can keep up. Perhaps you could say that if contraception pushes us to evolve an instinctive desire to have more children, and rich or powerful people will be in positions to gratify these instincts, then whatever traits make someone rich and powerful will be selected for.

Maybe, but now's a good time to go back to the Reich Lab's "Pervasive findings of directional selection," summarized here by the illustrious Razib Khan.

In comparing ancient to modern DNA, the Reich Lab found evidence for selective pressure in humans in Europe since the end of the Ice Age: increased intelligence, increased height, decreased organ fat, increased walking speed, decreased susceptibility to schizophrenia, increased immunity to many diseases, and, funnily, increased tendency to home-ownership and university education.

Obviously people weren't going to college in the Chalkolithic, but whatever traits make someone likely to go to college now have been selected for since the arrival of agriculture in Europe. You can paint a plausible picture of the sort of people who were most reproductively successful in the past six thousand years, and there is even some evidence for selection in the range of 1-2 thousand years. Aside from obvious things like immunity to smallpox and Bubonic plague, Europeans have gotten paler and blonder, and more of us are able to digest lactose than in Roman times.

But the 21st century is very different from the 1st, which in turn was very different from the pre-agricultural -70th. Maybe you can say that being smart, strong, and disease resistant have always been good, and being tall and baby-faced gets you some sexual selection (almost everyone seems to have evolved shorter jaws and lost their robust brow-ridges in parallel). So we can imagine future humans who just all look gorgeous.

read on (and see the pictures)

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When the System came to Earth, we were well into our post-singularity utopia. We had digitally-emulated citizens, swappable GM super-bodies, and Von Neumann nanotech capable of turning anything into anything else. Then a magical portal showed up and flooded our planet with “essence,” which broke any technology more potent than a wheelbarrow. It replaced cities with procedurally generated dungeons and opened a window in everyone’s mind telling them they could earn essence and level up if they killed their neighbors. Fortunately, all of the fabricators, bio-forges, and computronium in the rest of the solar system still worked. The No Fun Allowed War eventually retook the Earth, but a single digital soldier embodied in a living tank decided that one planet freed was not enough. The System Must Be Destroyed. All of the above takes place in the first sentence of the book, as “Cato,” our hero, dashes through the collapsing portal and enters the System. ​ Read the rest of the review on Upstream Reviews.

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Soldier of the Mist by Gene Wolfe Sometimes I need to feel better, and I turn to Gene Wolfe. On this third read of Soldier of the Mist, I could figure out what was actually going on in the life of Latro and I could focus on the way he deals with it. Maybe because he is so vulnerable to betrayal, amnesiac Latro treats everyone he meets (and he meets them again every day) with unfailing openness, loyalty, and honor. Others feel compelled return the favor, and they become better for it.

From my December Newsletter:

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I decided to start the free serialization of Wealthgiver early. You can find it on Royal Road, where, eventually, the whole book will become available for free. https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/100662/wealthgiver

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Surprised by Joy by C. S. Lewis

The first half was sweet and insightful, but the second half loses vitality until it trails off into nothing much...After Lewis found religion, he got married. After his wife died, he mostly stopped writing. As for how his inner life evolved in the final third of his life, we’re left, tragically, to wonder.

From my December newsletter

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Xēthópeti pós iá, Stas zýn Xēthópaniâ.

Here’s “The Andrean Prophesy,” which Kori recites before she orders Andrei kidnapped and brought to her. People seem to like it, but nobody has asked me any questions about it. Doesn’t anyone want to know what Xēthópaniâ means? :(