From: silanian@mail.tele.dk (Simon Laub)
Subject: Who are the far Downstreamers
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.misc, rec.arts.sf.science, 
rec.arts.sf.written,alt.philosophy,alt.religion

Who are the far Downstreamers?

Who are the far downstreamers 
(in Stephen Baxters universe)?
----------------------------------

  Just finished reading the Manifold series
by Stephen Baxter. One of the greatest SF series ever!
 
  It leaves you with a whirl of questions though.
For me the overshadowing is "who or what are the
far downstreamers in his universe".

  In Manifold 3, Origin, it seems to me that 
Baxter imagines that humans survives indefinitely 
and that our unimaginably distant descendents, 
distressed with the finitude of time, 
eventually reaches back and triggers 
changes which results in a universe 
with an infinite number of parallel branches, 
yielding an infinite amount of subjective time?
Pretty close to saying G*d?
   
  In manifold 1, Time, the story is pretty similar,
but not completely, here genius kids, 
who turn out to be from the future?
intend to transform the structure of space, i.e. the vacuum collapse,
destroying the current reality but producing 
a universe where many intelligent species exist?
  
  However, The intelligent squids (Time) confuses me.
As I guess Stephen Baxter hints that they are actually
the inhabitants of the universe in the distant future?

  Which brings us to the Fermi's Paradox, 
which asks the simple question, if there are other creatures 
in the universe like us, where are they? 
In Manifold 1, Time, the answer was that we are alone 
- with these genetically engineered intelligent squids. 
In Manifold 2, Space, it turned out that the other 
technological civilizations just hadn't gottan here yet, 
Finally, Manifold 3, Origin, states that our universe
was made without aliens, by ourselfes/downstreamers,
for protection.
 
  Obviously? Stephen Baxter thinks there is a connection
between the Fermi paradox and the (identity) of the far down
streamers.
  The Fermi paradox is unresolved by science, so 
it seems reasonable discussing it makes for good SF. 
But what is he really saying? Get an answer to the Fermi
paradox, then you know something about the far downstreamers
(if they exist and who they are) and then you really
know it all?

  Beats building a Feynman "radio" to listen to the future and, 
by detecting coded quantum waves traveling back through time, 
divine the fate of human "downstreamers" :-)

January 5th 2002.
Simon Laub
   
http://www.fortunecity.com/skyscraper/lol/1165/recentposts/mypostindex.html