Dreamsongs of Ice and Fire Pt 4: A Secret Sci-Fi?

[Phylum of Alexandria]

GRRM has stated that ASOIAF is not set within his Thousand Worlds, the setting of a great many of his stories. Still, even though the Children of the Forest will not turn out to be a slave race of the Hrangan Empire or hybrid experiments of the Promethean geneticists, it is still worthwhile to ask if ASOIAF will end up having some sci-fi plot trappings to it.

What are the chances that Westeros or Essos will show some evidence of being a medieval society that has regressed from a much more advanced society, one capable of stuff like space travel and genetic engineering? What’s the chance that we readers learn that ASOIAF is secret sci-fi, even if the characters in the story remain ignorant of the fact?

I’ll cut to the chase and say that I lean on the “AGAINST” side here. I don’t think it’s secretly a sci-fi story or setting. But I admit that it’s not yet a closed case.

Here’s the evidence “FOR” as far as I understand it:

First off, we know that GRRM loves blending genres in unconventional ways. Even in AGOT, we get chapters that feel like a horror film (the Prologue) and a Film Noir mystery (Ned’s KL chapters), in addition to a historical military drama (Catelyn’s chapters with Robb) and Byronic romance (Sansa and the Hound). At this point, there is a creepy clinical quality to all of the supernatural content in the series that certainly ramps up feelings of horror. But is it clinical to the point of being Sci-fi? That remains to be seen.

Second, it’s important to acknowledge that our beloved genre-blender has indeed already made several stories in which harsh medieval-esque societies are revealed to have regressed from a more advanced (as in sci-fi-level advanced) civilization. I’ve already written about Bitterblooms, which is a fantasy story that exists in the Thousand Worlds universe. There is also In the House of the Worm, where two genetically-altered human societies seemingly embrace decadence and Conan-level barbarism following desolation and extremely harsh conditions upon survival. In GRRM’s first novel, Dying of the Light, the protagonist Dirk travels to the planet Worlorn and meets a quasi-medieval people called the Kavalar. Also, in Call Him Moses from Tuf Voyaging, Tuf’s ecological engineering capabilities are shown to be indistinguishable from the powers of the Abrahamic God, and even the inferior charlatan Moses has successfully duped his followers into believing in the reality of his “powers.”

As Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and GRRM has explored this notion quite explicitly several times throughout his career.

Beyond the precedent of his earlier work, proponents of the sci-fi theory typically turn to TWOIAF and FaB as their main sources of evidence. And it is true that there are plenty of details in both books that sound like weird, sci-fi horror stuff: strange hybrid races created on remote islands, the manufacturing of dragons and human dragon vessels. Plus some mythic stuff that could be interpreted as “magical” tech, like the God-on-Earth who came from the heavens riding on a pod, brought power and prosperity to his chosen peoples in a Utopian empire, then rode back to heaven. Certainly it’s possible that the technology was interpreted in a way similar to how Haviland Tuf’s “miracles” were perceived in Call Him Moses.

As for the evidence “AGAINST,” this is my take:

First, there is no real strong evidence in ASOIAF so far that’s comparable to the evidence that was revealed in Bitterblooms and In the House of the Worm.

Here is some of the “magic” that is witnessed from our naive POV in Bitterblooms:
 

Spoiler

"Morgan giggled. “Very well. I am no Carin, but I am Morgan full-of-magic. I can make it Gathering.” She darted across the room on bare feet, and thrust her rings against the wall once more, and moved them this way and that, in a strange pattern. Then she called out, “Look! Turn and look.”

Shawn, confused, glanced back at the window.

Under the double suns of highsummer, the world was bright and green. Sailing ships moved languidly on the slow-flowing waters of the river, and Shawn could see the bright reflections of the twin suns bobbing and rolling in their wake, balls of soft yellow butter afloat upon the blue. Even the sky seemed sweet and buttery, white clouds moved like the stately schooners of family Crien, and nowhere could a star be seen. The far shore was dotted by houses, houses small as a road shelter and greater than even Carinhall, towers as tall and sleek as the

wind-carved rocks in the Broken Mountains. And here and there and all among them people moved; lithe swarthy folk strange to Shawn, and people of the families too, all mingling together. The stone field was free of snow and ice, but there were metal buildings everywhere, some larger than Morganhall, many smaller, each with its distinctive markings, and every one of them squatting on three legs. Between the buildings were the tents and stalls of the families, with their sigils and their banners. And mats, the gaily colored lovers’ mats. Shawn saw people coupling, and felt Morgan’s hand resting lightly on her shoulder.

“Do you know what you are seeing, Carin child?” Morgan whispered.
Shawn turned back to her with fear and wonder in her eyes. “It is Gathering.”

Morgan smiled. “You see,” she said. “It is Gathering, and I claim you. Celebrate with me.” And her fingers moved to the buckle on Shawn’s belt, and Shawn did not resist.

Within the metals walls of Morganhall, seasons turned to hours turned to years turned to days turned to months turned to weeks turned to seasons once again. Time had no sense. When Shawn awoke, on a shaggy fur that Morgan had spread beneath the window, highsummer had turned back into deep winter, and the families, ships, and Gathering were gone. Dawn came earlier than it should have, and Morgan seemed annoyed, so she made it dusk; the season was freeze, with its ominous chill, and where the stars of sunrise had shown, now gray clouds raced across a copper-colored sky. They ate while the copper turned to black. Morgan served mushrooms and crunchy summer greens, dark bread dripping with honey and butter, creamed spice-tea, and thick cuts of red meat floating in blood, and afterward there was flavored ice with nuts, and finally a tall hot drink with nine layers, each a different color with a different taste. They sipped the drink from glasses of impossibly thin crystal, and it made Shawn’s head ache. And she began to cry, because the food had seemed real and all of it was good, but she was afraid that if she ate any more of it she would starve to death.”

And here is the strange lair of the Meatbringer in In the House of the Worm:

Spoiler

“The rest of the chamber, in the curious mixed light, was like nothing Annelyn had ever encountered before. The walls were metal, time-eaten, rust-eaten, yet still bright in places. Panels of glass studded the high, dark flanks; a million tiny windows - most of them broken - winked at the flames. Along the side walls, fat transparent bubbles swelled obscenely near the ceiling. Some of these were covered by dripping, glowing growth; others were dry and broken; still others seemed full of some faintly moving fluid. A gulf of shadows and chaos lay between the walls. There were a dozen wheeled beds like the one Vermyllar was bound to, four huge pillars that rose to the ceiling amid a web of metal ropes and bars, a heavy tank of the sort the Yaga-la-hai used for breeding foodworms, piles of clothing (some piles fresh, others covered by mold) and weapons and stranger things, metal cases with vacant glass eyes. In the center was the Meatbringer's throne, a high seat of green-black stone. A theta of some impossibly bright silver metal was sunk into the backrest, just above his head.”

 

Spoiler

In Bitterblooms, Shawn is unknowingly viewing a recording on a screen while sitting in an old spaceship. She interprets Morgan’s use of the control panel as some sort of wizardly rite, yet the metal walls and clear thin glass belie a technology that is far more advanced than the surrounding terrain. Similarly, the construction of the Meatbringer’s lair stands in sharp contrast to everything we have seen before in the realm of the Yaga-la-hai. Someone in a medieval society wouldn’t be able to recognize a space ship, or an old cloning room, yet they would know what metal and glass is—and so far we have no such observations of strange ruined relics in Westeros or Essos that we could possibly name as advanced, since forgotten, sci-fi technology.

 

Speaking of ruins, a big reason GRRM employs the unknowing sci-fi framing in those Thousand Worlds stories is to put a new spin on a much older literary framework: the Atlantis myth, or ruined Utopia. Obviously, the original Atlantis myth was not sci-fi. Neither is the old poem “Ozymandias,” one of GRRM’s favorites. Nor are countless other variations on the myth, such as the people of Numenor in Tolkien’s works. All you need is the ruin of a great society to tell the tale of untold glories, unchecked ambition, and calamitous downfall. And ASOIAF has already put quite a lot of focus on the ruins of formerly glorious peoples. The Great Empire of the Dawn and the Valyrians don’t need to have been ecological engineers on the level of Haviland Tuf in order to serve as the Atlantis stand-ins for the story. They just need to have tried to grasp a star, to have overreached, and to have fallen.

Finally, we know that GRRM also likes to do something that’s almost the opposite of “secret sci-fi,” which is to have something quite advanced emerging from something simple, organic, and non-human.

Take the mud pots in Guardians from Tuf Voyaging. They are biological engineers to rival Tuf himself. And yet they are mistaken for mindless bottom-feeder sea critters by humans without some psychic intermediary. Here’s an extended quote for those who haven’t read it. I think you’ll find some really strong connections to ASOIAF:

Spoiler

“For millennia beyond counting they have dwelled in tranquility and peace beneath the seas of this world. They are a slow, thoughtful, philosophic race, and they lived side by side in the billions, each linked with all the others, each an individual and each a part of the great racial whole. In a sense they were deathless, for all shared the experiences of each, and the death of one was as nothing. Experiences were few in the unchanging sea, however. For the most part their long lives are given over to abstract thought, to philosophy, to strange green dreams that neither you nor I can truly comprehend. They are silent musicians, one might say. Together they have woven great symphonies of dreams, and those songs go on and on.

“Before humanity came to Namor, they had had no real enemies for millions of years. Yet that had not always been the case. In the primordial beginnings of this wet world, the oceans teemed with creatures who relished the taste of the dreamers as much as you do. Even then, the race understood genetics, understood evolution. With their vast web of interwoven minds, they were able to manipulate the very stuff of life itself, more skillfully than any genetic engineers. And so they evolved their guardians, formidable predators with a biological imperative to protect those you call mud-pots. These were your men-of-war. From that time to this they guarded the beds, while the dreamers went back to their symphony of thought.

“Then you came, from Aquarius and Old Poseidon. Indeed you did. Lost in the reverie, the dreamers hardly noticed for many years, while you farmed and fished and discovered the taste of mud-pots. You must consider the shock you gave them, Lords Guardian. Each time you plunged one of them into boiling water, all of them shared the sensations. To the dreamers, it seemed as though some terrible new predator had evolved upon the landmass, a place of little interest to them. They had no inkling that you might be sentient, since they could no more conceive of a non-telepathic sentience than you could conceive of one blind, deaf, immobile, and edible. To them, things that moved and manipulated and ate flesh were animals, and could be nothing else.

“The rest you know, or can surmise. The dreamers are a slow people lost in their vast songs, and they were slow to respond. First they simply ignored you, in the belief that the ecosystem itself would shortly check your ravages. This did not appear to happen. To them it seemed you had no natural enemies. You bred and expanded constantly, and many thousands of minds fell silent. Finally they returned to the ancient, almost-forgotten ways of their dim past, and woke to protect themselves. They sped up the reproduction of their guardians until the seas above their beds teemed with their protectors, but the creatures that had once sufficed admirably against other enemies proved to be no match for you. Finally they were driven to new measures. Their minds broke off the great symphony and ranged out, and they sensed and understood. At last they began to fashion new guardians, guardians formidable enough to protect them against this great new nemesis. Thus it went."

The Greeshka in A Song for Lya is also a seemingly mindless organism that nevertheless enables a collective consciousness for those it consumes, an actual afterlife that can even influence humans outside of the net. The manipulative enemy in Men of Greywater Station is a fungus that can control minds. In GRRM’s imagination, crazy hybrid creatures and psychic hive minds don’t necessarily result from crazy scientific advances; sometimes it’s a simpler bio-technology that does it.

I don’t pretend to know the secrets behind magic, dragons, and all of the weird stuff in TWOIAF and FaB. But my feeling is that the weirwoods will play a very important role there, not unlike the mud pots, the Sandkings, the Greeshka, the Greywater fungus, and possibly also whatever was controlling the people in And Seven Times Never Kill Man! I think the bio-engineering that took place on Sothoryos and elsewhere, and the space travel of the God-on-Earth, will likely have a simpler, organic, bio-tech explanation. One that is still supernatural, of course. Telepathy and telekinesis, after all, are popular in sci-fi stories, but they’re still magic (i.e., weird phenomena with no explanation about how it could work).

Still, the story is not finished, and so nothing is conclusive at this point. I guess if there was supposed to be some reveal about the nature and ancient tech of Planetos that would occur in Book 6 or 7, it is possible that Bran’s visions of the deep past could be a possible mechanism for such a reveal. Coming as it would be so late in the story, I think if it did come, it would be in the form of unexplained descriptions of odd rooms and contraptions, like in Bitterblooms and In the House of the Worm. Bran wouldn’t know and would never learn the full significance of what he’s seeing, but sharp readers could perhaps pick up on those clues for some special new context to the whole story.

I wouldn’t love it if it happened, given that it would be quite late in the game, but I admit it is possible.

What do you think?

[LynnS]

34 minutes ago, Phylum of Alexandria said:

What do you think?

I think your post is superb!  The weirnet as alien bio-technology is so incredibly close to giving us an answer.  It's very exciting.  

Quote

 

A Game of Thrones - Bran III

Because winter is coming.

Bran looked at the crow on his shoulder, and the crow looked back. It had three eyes, and the third eye was full of a terrible knowledge. Bran looked down. There was nothing below him now but snow and cold and death, a frozen wasteland where jagged blue-white spires of ice waited to embrace him. They flew up at him like spears. He saw the bones of a thousand other dreamers impaled upon their points. He was desperately afraid.

 

I'm reminded of Arthur C. Clarke's Rama novels and the entity in the form of a man with an Eagle's head.  Apart from the ship and mechanical bots, we are never shown the intelligence that created it.  Is the 3EC such a creature?

The Wall and the curtain of light could be considered 'technologies" and the Wall could be dam regulating summer and winter controlled by the wiernet.  These things do hang on the line between magic and technology that looks like magic.

[Springwatch]

On 1/5/2022 at 10:14 PM, Phylum of Alexandria said:

As Arthur C. Clarke famously said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic,” and GRRM has explored this notion quite explicitly several times throughout his career.

Beyond the precedent of his earlier work, proponents of the sci-fi theory typically turn to TWOIAF and FaB as their main sources of evidence. And it is true that there are plenty of details in both books that sound like weird, sci-fi horror stuff: strange hybrid races created on remote islands, the manufacturing of dragons and human dragon vessels. Plus some mythic stuff that could be interpreted as “magical” tech, like the God-on-Earth who came from the heavens riding on a pod, brought power and prosperity to his chosen peoples in a Utopian empire, then rode back to heaven. Certainly it’s possible that the technology was interpreted in a way similar to how Haviland Tuf’s “miracles” were perceived in Call Him Moses.

The feature that looks most like ancient technology is the valyrian road system - clearly it wasn't done with dragons. I can imagine the forging of the Iron Throne, or even dragonfire contributing to Dragonstone (we see what they did to Harrenhal), but it's impossible to imagine teams of dragons crawling between distant cities, fusing the road surface as they went.

I think I'll hope you're right, and there's not going to be any sci-fi tech. Like the Bitterblooms example shows, tech does burst the magic bubble - and alien 'gods' could do that too, there's a danger of a Wizard of Oz effect: the 'true' world kind of de-validating the 'magic' one (that would be everything we've been reading for the past however many years ).

Interestingly, we've seen something like this already, and GRRM did it pretty well: the wonders of the Palace of Dust, especially the beautiful vision of the Undying in the second-to-last room, compared with the Undying themselves. Truth beats fiction, sometimes.

[Phylum of Alexandria]

2 minutes ago, Springwatch said:

The feature that looks most like ancient technology is the valyrian road system - clearly it wasn't done with dragons. I can imagine the forging of the Iron Throne, or even dragonfire contributing to Dragonstone (we see what they did to Harrenhal), but it's impossible to imagine teams of dragons crawling between distant cities, fusing the road surface as they went.

I think I'll hope you're right, and there's not going to be any sci-fi tech. Like the Bitterblooms example shows, tech does burst the magic bubble - and alien 'gods' could do that too, there's a danger of a Wizard of Oz effect: the 'true' world kind of de-validating the 'magic' one (that would be everything we've been reading for the past however many years ).

Interestingly, we've seen something like this already, and GRRM did it pretty well: the wonders of the Palace of Dust, especially the beautiful vision of the Undying in the second-to-last room, compared with the Undying themselves. Truth beats fiction, sometimes.

Yeah, I agree. I think that disillusionment will be an important part of GRRM's narrative, but there is a risk of cheapening everything that came before if it doesn't feel organic. And yes, we have already had some disillusionment, in the House of the Undying, and even to some extent with Bran peering "behind the curtain" of the Old Gods. In both cases, there is power in learning the mechanics behind the fantasy, but the truth's not all that attractive!