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The next thing I need to review for the LT Early Reviewers program is a book on space ethics and my problem is I want my review to basically say, "You silly, we already know the basic ethical principles we need for a functional interstellar society, and they go like this:

In Life's name and for Life's sake, I assert that I will employ the Art which is its gift in Life's service alone, rejecting all other usages. I will guard growth and ease pain. I will fight to preserve what grows and lives well in its own way; and I will change no object or creature unless its growth and life, or that of the system of which it is part, are threatened."

Like there's a whole section about when it is and isn't ethical to introduce change to a previously mostly-isolated system and he never once uses the phrase "troptic stipulation" (or even prime directive, heh.) Also he never once uses the word "entropy" in an ethical sense at any point in the book and like. why bother?

...somehow I feel like that's a review that would be useful to only a few people, though. help.

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In a possibly related note, I finished the Silmarillion awhile back and tbh most of it either actively annoyed me or made very little impression, but the one thing that stuck with me was the idea that the world of the Silmarillion is the universe that was created at the end of The Wounded Sky (it all fits!!!! I mean they start the book with an attempt to recreate the gardens of Lorien...)

which logically means that Ungoliant, who came from Outside to bring entropy and darkness, is the avatar of K't'lk.

Who wants to play "find the other Wounded Sky characters in Middle-Earth"?

~~who wants to write me the fic~~

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Also we need to get enough of a Tale of the Five fandom together that we can finally do the thing, okay.

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Whatcha quoting? It sounds familiar but I can't think why.

It's the Wizard's Oath from Young Wizards (or the most commonly quoted version of it, anyway.)

(All the stuff in this post is about Diane Duane novels.)

(sometimes it makes me feel weird that a huge about of my basic ethical thinking derives from someone who turned out to be a Sherlock fan, but then I remember that there a much worse things in the universe.)

Ah. I keep meaning to read those...

I knew that sounded familiar... reminded me (positively) of Duane's Door Into series. Which would make up a fairly significant part of my basic ethical thinking, or, at least, my thinking about how ethics should be thought ... if that makes any sense.

And yet another reasons why pseudonymous posting rocks... I just spent the last six hours teaching a double class on legal ethics. It seems unlikely that my employer --or the relevant bar-- would be pleased that I suggest the opposition of entropy as a value higher than the rules of conduct. Rules of conduct can far too easily become tools of entropy.

The Door Into books (and most of her Star Trek books as well, tbh) are all explicitly tied in as being part of the YW multiverse (and share its basic cosmology and ethics, although there are variations, as you get when skipping universes.) If you liked the ethics in Door Into I def. recommend YW (although I think book 2 is a better starting point than book 1, at least for people who are in it for that.)

It's so hard to talk about ethics without talking about entropy, isn't it.

I'm not familiar with your quote at all, and I don't think I've ever heard the term "troptic stipulation". Unlike "Prime Directive", which I would assume to be common knowledge ...

It's Young Wizards references, as above. And yeah, that's why I don't think it would be a very useful review. :P

A more useful way to put it would be something like, when there is over a century of space-based science fiction out there, a great deal of it very intensely considering these exact ethical questions from all different angles, it seems odd to me that the only science fiction you reference is the Red Mars, Green Mars, Blue Mars series, White Mars, and "The Cold Equations." Either ignore SF altogether or acknowledge the depths of its ethical work, don't play the "I read one SF series once and that's all I need" game.

I mean if you were going for Mars colors at the very least you could also have cited "Rainbow Mars", gosh.

That would be disingenuous though because really 95% of my working framework of space ethics comes from just Diane Duane and Star Trek.

I know that quote well, and I quite agree. :-)

Yep! I mean, if you were starting from first principles you would probably want to add something justifying the primacy of life by defining life as that which can continuously reduce entropy in local areas of a system, and therefore life is a fundamental good because it is the only method that has any chance of extending the universe, but other than that, what else do you need, really? :D

Edited 2015-08-09 18:01 (UTC)

Also we need to get enough of a Tale of the Five fandom together that we can finally do the thing, okay.

...but who gets to write Hasai/Sunspark? :)

Given the people I know of who might be willing to write for that fandom, I suspect we'd have a LOT of takers. ^_^ (I actually think it'd be REALLY INTERESTING to see them interacting even if it's just as spouses/metamours? Sunspark learning what it's like to be different from all its people, Hasai who's had to live with that knowledge since before he was born...) And that's not even to mention how they would do sex.

I dibs Suspark/Freelorn and Hasai/Wyn first, though. :P