SCi FI stories

A few years ago I read a sci-fi short story that unfortunately I forgot the title and the author. The story is about a machine that does everything for man (or humanity). In the story humanity achieved a level of technology where in they perfected a machine that requires no human intervention in its operation and maintenance --the machine is perfect.

Since the machine does everything for man, man became free of the burden of work. The time came when all the designers and the engineers and all the science people who created the machine died. Generations come and generations go the machine worked as expected. Because the machine provided everything for man not only did work ceased, learning also ceased. Man regressed to ignorance.

For thousands of years the machine worked well. Then the time came when the machine starts to breakdown. Nothing is so perfect that time cannot wear down. The machine started to malfunction and the people, dependent on it, started to realize that something is not right. Since all the learning vanished and the scientific and technological knowledge that created the machine died a few thousand years earlier, man is helpless.

“What are we to do,” said the people to the leader.
“Machine is angry at us for we are not worshipping right,” said the leader.
“Read the book and pray!” The leader was holding aloft a thick book titled “Operating Manual”.
And they knelt down and prayed hard for forgiveness of their sins.

This is how I remember the story. And this story got me thinking of the internet and Tielhard de Chardin. The internet may one day evolved to deity and may one day become the machine, like in the story. Chardin argued that through evolution and the emergence of man (or humanity) evolution entered a new dimension and that is the development of the layer of the mind or the noosphere as opposed to the biosphere or the layer of living things covering the earth. As the power of the internet increases, so does the information it contains and process. It is the pool of man’s mind. Imagine information interacting, processing on the internet on surface of the earth—earth, in reality is evolving a layer of mind.

This got me thinking of Arthur C. Clarke’s Child Hood’s End. (Most of Clarke’s novels that I read are creepy: Space Odyssey series, Rendezvous with Rama, The Songs of the Distant Earth and Childhood’s End.)

One day there came to earth great ships manned by “overlords”. These overlords solved the world’s problem like hunger, war, poverty etc. and promoted a golden age. After a few generations then came the phenomenon of the children; children were born with special gifts or powers. These special children were collected by the overlords.

The “overlords” then revealed that they (the overlords) are nothing more than an instrument of a higher consciousness or the “overmind” and although they are technologically superior to the earthlings they are at the end of their evolution; they don’t have the earthlings’ potentiality to higher evolution.

Thus said the overlord:
“In the centuries before our coming, your scientists uncovered the secrets of the physical world…Yet your mystics, though they were lost in their own delusions, had seen part of the truth…all the earlier changes your race has known took countless ages. But this is a transformation of the mind, not of the body. By the standards of evolution, it will be cataclysmic and instantaneous. It has already begun. You must face the fact that yours is the last generation of Homo sapiens.”

Then the overlords collected the children and left earth. The Homo sapiens left their childhood and evolved to a higher form.


Science fiction is creepy especially if you read some that was written during the 60’s and the 70’s because some their prophecies not only came true but some were even surpassed. Science fiction poses difficult question and they also provides profound answers to the questions they asked through stories that tickles and stimulate the imagination and entertains at the same time.

Another one is the story about the Kinimitz. Kinimitz are aliens that arrived on earth and solved men’s problems. They provided technology that solved war, hunger and poverty. The earth became paradise and all the earthlings became healthy, big and lean. Then came the invitation to visit the Kinimitz’ planet. Because of the promise of immortality, many volunteered and left earth happily. Then one earthman, a CIA cryptologist, decoded one book accidentally left by the Kinimitz in the UN assembly. He decoded the title of the book and it said “How to Prepare Man”. The cryptologist was thinking that the Kinimitz maybe preparing man for greater purpose in the universe. But on further decoding, he was shocked to find out that the book is really a cook book.

Buhay nga naman parang life.