class: title, middle, center, f40px, inverse # The Totalitarian as Reality-Pilot:<br><small>Transhumanist World Projects in Philip K. Dick's *Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch*</small> **Andrew Pilsch** **Texas A&M University** **<span class="twitter_badge">@oncomouse</span>** **he/him** .f44px[ **Materials: [http://atp1.us/msa2019](http://atp1.us/msa2019)** ] **<small>MSA 2019 ◊ Toronto, ON ◊ October 18, 2019</small>** --- class: inverse, f32px ## Pierre Teilhard de Chardin > Through the discovery yesterday of the railway, the motor car and the aeroplane, the physical influence of each man, formerly restricted to a few miles, now extends to hundreds of leagues or more. Better still: thanks to the prodigious biological event represented by the discovery of electro-magnetic waves, each individual finds himself henceforth (actively and passively) simultaneously present, over land and sea, in every corner of the earth. > > — *The Phenomenon of Man*, 240 --- class: inverse, f27px ## Markus Krajewski > Rather, **the 'world,' with its advancement to the beginning of the project title, asserts a programmatic and overarching claim that ultimately characterizes an expansion of the scope or the broadening of a realm of possibility.** These global projects step forward with an air of usurpation to convert their aspiration into sometimes subversive but nevertheless effective practices. Encouraged by innovative technologies, and with the help of new media, **these enterprises proceed to open up the last corners of the world**, led by the fundamental question of which technologies and approaches make possible nothing less than the 'organization of the world.' > > — *World Projects*, xi --- class: inverse, f34px ## J.D. Bernal > **The progress of the future depends no longer on physiological evolution but on the reaction of intelligence on a material universe**. It will be hindered or stopped either by a failure in the capacity for maintaining creative intellectual thinking, or by the lack of desire to apply such thinking to the progress of humanity, or, of course, by both these causes together. > > — *The World, the Flesh and the Devil*, 49 --- class: inverse, f32px ## J.D. Bernal > It is in the near future where we are still sympathetically related to men and events that our desires have the most power to twist our appreciation of facts. We care less about the more distant future, but to approach it at all we must divest ourselves of so many customary forms, that even the more enlightened prophets lets their **imagination stop in some static Utopia in despite of all evidence pointing to ever increasing acceleration of change**. > > — *The World, The Flesh and the Devil*, 5 --- class: inverse, f27px ## J.D. Bernal > **All these developments would lead to a world incomparably more efficient and richer than the present, capable of supporting a much larger population, secure from want and having ample leisure, but still a world limited in space to the surface of the globe and in time to the caprices of geological epochs**. Already ambition is stirring in men to conquer space as they conquered the air, and this ambition - at first fantastic - as time goes on become more and more reinforced by necessity. […] Even now it is possible to imagine methods of accomplishing it, based on no more knowledge than we already possess. > > — *The World, The Flesh and the Devil*, 14 --- class: inverse, f23px ## J.D. Bernal > **On earth, even if we should use all the solar energy which we received, we should still be wasting all but one two-billionths of the energy that the sun gives out.** Consequently, when we have learnt to live on this solar energy and also to emancipate ourselves from the earth's surface, the possibilities of the spread of humanity will be multiplied accordingly. **When the technicalities of space navigation are fully understood there will, from desire or necessity, come the idea of building a permanent home for men in space**. […] At first space navigators, and then scientists whose observations would be best conducted outside the earth, and then finally those who for any reason were dissatisfied with earthly conditions would come to inhabit these bases and found permanent spatial colonies. Even with our present primitive knowledge we can plan out such a celestial station in considerable detail. > > — *The World, The Flesh and the Devil*, 17-18 --- class: inverse, f32px ## Olaf Stapledon > […] conceiving all kinds of strange practical ambitions, it began to avail itself of the energies of its stars upon a scale hitherto unimagined. Not only was every solar system now surrounded by a gauze of light traps, which focused the escaping solar energy for intelligent use,so that the whole galaxy was dimmed, but many stars that were not suited to be suns were disintegrated, and rifled of their prodigious stores of sub-atomic energy. > > — *Star Maker*, 380 --- class: inverse, f26px ## Freeman Dyson > It is remarkable that the time scale of industrial expansion, the mass of Jupiter, the energy output of the sun, and the thickness of a habitable biosphere all have consistent orders of magnitude. It seems, then a reasonable expectation that, barring accidents, Malthusian pressures will ultimately drive an intelligent species to adopt some such efficient exploitation of its available resources. One should expect that, within a few thousand years of its entering the stage of industrial development, **any intelligent species should be found occupying an artificial biosphere which completely surrounds its parent star**. > > — "Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation", 1667 --- class: inverse, f32px ## Philip K. Dick > What we have here, he realized, **is not an invasion of Earth by Proxmen, beings from another system**. Not an invasion by the legions of a pseudo human race. No. **It's Palmer Eldritch who's everywhere, growing and growing like a mad weed**. Is there a point where he'll burst, grow too much? All the manifestations of Eldritch, all over Terra and Luna and Mars, Palmer puffing up and bursting--pop, pop, POP! > > — *The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch*, 184 --- class: inverse, f31px ## Philip K. Dick > We have lived thousands of years under one old-time plague already that's partly spoiled and destroyed our holiness, and that from a source higher than Eldritch. And if that can't completely obliterate our spirit, how can this? Is it maybe going to finish the job? If it thinks so--if Palmer Eldritch believes that's what he arrived here for--he's wrong. Because that power in me that was implanted without my knowledge--it wasn't even reached by the original ancient blight. How about that? > > — *The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch*, 229 --- class: inverse, f41px ## Recent Works * Benjamin Bratton - *The Stack* --- class: inverse, f41px ## Recent Works * Benjamin Bratton - *The Stack* * Holly Jean Buck - *After Geoengineering* --- class: inverse, f41px ## Recent Works * Benjamin Bratton - *The Stack* * Holly Jean Buck - *After Geoengineering* * Laboria Cubonik - "The Xenofeminist Manifesto" --- class: inverse, f41px ## Recent Works * Benjamin Bratton - *The Stack* * Holly Jean Buck - *After Geoengineering* * Laboria Cubonik - "The Xenofeminist Manifesto" * Alex Williams and Nick Srnicek - *Inventing the Future* --- class: inverse, works-cited, f18px ## Works Cited * Bernal, J. D. *The World, the Flesh and the Devil: An Enquiry into the Future of the Three Enemies of the Rational Soul*. Verso Books, 2018. * Dick, Philip K. *The Three Stigmata of Palmer Eldritch*. Vintage, 1991. * Fitting, Peter. “Reality as Ideological Construct: A Reading of Five Novels by Philip K. Dick.” *Science Fiction Studies*, vol. 10, no. 2, 1983, pp. 219–36, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239550">http://www.jstor.org/stable/4239550</a>. * ---. “"Ubik": The Deconstruction of Bourgeois SF.” *Science Fiction Studies*, vol. 2, no. 1, 1975, pp. 47–54, <a href="http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238910">http://www.jstor.org/stable/4238910</a>. * Krajewski, Markus. *World Projects: Global Information Before World War I*. Translated by Charles Marcrum II, Minnesota UP, 2015. * More, Max. “True Transhumanism: A Reply to Don Ihde.” *H+/-: Transhumanism and Its Critics*, edited by Gregory R. Hansell, Metanexus Institute, 2011, pp. 136–46. * Stapledon, Olaf. *Last and First Men and Star Maker : Two Science Fiction Novels*. Dover, 1968. * Teilhard de Chardin, Pierre. *The Phenomenon of Man*. Harper, 1965.