Subject: Anvil of Stars (spoilers)

From: [email-masked] (Dani Zweig)
Date: Wed, 05 Aug 92 22:26:48 GMT

Greg Bear's "Anvil of Stars" is the sequel to "Forge of God", in which
the Earth is destroyed by alien Von Neumann machines.  A small portion
of humanity has been saved by yet another set of aliens, "the Benefactors",
and a hundred teenagers have been sent out on a mission of revenge.

The Benefactors have a 'law' that civilizations that send out self-
replicating, world-destroying machines be destroyed.  In support of
this law, they have provided the kids with a well-armed starship (stl, 
but capable of moving at relativistic velocities), but the actual 
destruction of the aliens is up to the humans.

Moral ambiguities abound.  One which is not brought up is that in
sending this shipload of humans, the Benefactors too are sending out
self-replicating, world-destroying machines.  Another arises from the
fact, mentioned only once, and in passing, that sending out such machines,
while not uncommon, tends to be a passing phase in a civilization's
ascent to maturity.  In fact, by the time the machines have made the
stl trip to their targets and the revenge ship has made the trip back,
what it will probably find and destroy are the perpetrators no-longer
bloodthirsty descendents.

The reason for the Benefactors' insistance on sending surrogates to
do the job is not clear.  There is considerable reference to the
importance of free choice and the need for the victims to take their
own revenge, but it is the Benefactors' machines that do the job
at the end, albeit under human orders.

(Speaking of ambiguities, there are a number present in the last statement.
First, isn't it equivalent to blaming the gunsmith for a shooting?  To an
extent it is, but I'd suggest that a better analogy would be that of
putting a battleship under the control of a child.

Second, as the story falls out, it's not clear that the order to pull
the trigger was a legal one.  Was the fact that Hans was the elected
leader more important than the fact that he hadn't taken a vote on the
destruction?  Or would the ship have accepted the order from *anyone*?)

There seems little doubt to me that the Benefactors already had the
technology to destroy the Leviathan system.  That system's inhabitants
would not have placed a time-bomb in their midst had they known that
it could be suborned, and that simply seeing it could give enough clues
on how to accomplish the deed.  I conclude that the Benefactors were
more advanced, scientifically, and were deploying canned technology,
rather than producing it in response to new insights.

At the end of the book, they find the smoking gun:  In contrast to
the normal pattern of development, and in opposition to what the
appearance of revenge ships would suggest as common sense, this
civilization was still making and dispatching planet killers.  Which
raises the question of whether this makes what appeared to have been
a bad decision into a good one.

I'd suggest that the Benefactors are indeed in the planet-killing
business.  They've been at it a lot longer than the Leviathans.
They are much more cautious about getting caught:  They only send
out killers when they can do so under the cloak of righteousness,
and use surrogates through whom they can't be traced.  Whether the
Benefactors are responsible for the target's destruction -- and
whether this destruction was wrong -- is very similar to the question
of Hans's responsibility for Rosa's death.

Interesting book.

-----
Dani Zweig
[email-masked]

   'T is with our judgements as our watches, none
   Go alike, yet each believes his own
		--Alexander Pope