Once a man has changed the relationship between himself and his environment, he cannot return to the blissful ignorance he left. Motion, of necessity, involves a change in perspective.
A Social History of Planet
Doctrine: Mobility
Planet's atmosphere, though a gasping death to humans and most animals, is paradise for Earth plants. The high nitrate content of the soil and the rich yellow sunlight bring an abundant harvest wherever adjustments can be made for the unusual soil conditions.
A Comparative Biology of Planet
Centauri Ecology
Until quite recently, spider silk had the highest tensile strength of any substance known to man, and the name Silksteel pays homage to the arachnid for good reason.
U.N. Scientific Survey
Silksteel Alloys
Our scientists now use fractal theory to "teach" the molecules to assume, or resume, a particular form. Substances of amazing strength become simple once the formulae are properly computed.
The Council of War
Nanometallurgy
Man has killed man from the beginning of time, and each new frontier has brought new ways and new places to die. Why should the future be different?
Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
Advanced Military Algorithms
This unusual specimen is not so much a classic particle as a connector--a kind of string attaching two particles. As distance increases the connective power becomes attenuated, but if it is cut the power vanishes: forever.
For I Have Tasted The Fruit
Graviton Theory
What goes up . . . better doggone well stay up!
Company Slogan
Applied Gravitonics
A ship at sea is its own world. To be the captain of a ship is to be the unquestioned ruler of that world and requires all of the leadership skills of a prince or minister.
Leadership and the Sea
Doctrine: Initiative
He held his arm too stiffly, and so was thrown back repeatedly, until at last I seized his forearm and snapped it back against itself. His training suffered while the arm healed, of course, but I felt this was a lesson he must learn early, and well.
Honing the Ki
Doctrine: Flexibility
Man's unfailing capacity to believe what he prefers to be true rather than what the evidence shows to be likely and possible has always astounded me. We long for a caring Universe which will save us from our childish mistakes, and in the face of mountains of evidence to the contrary we will pin all our hopes on the slimmest of doubts. God has not been proven not to exist, therefore he must exist.
For I Have Tasted The Fruit
Intellectual Integrity
Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100 million year production process, we can corner this market once again.
Strategy Session
Synthetic Fossil Fuels
Air Power rests at the apex of the first triad of victory, for it combines Mobility, Flexibility, and Initiative.
Spartan Battle Manual
Doctrine: Air Power
Some vices miss what is right because they are deficient, others because they are excessive, in feelings or in actions, while virtue finds and chooses the mean.
Nichomachean Ethics
Datalinks
Ethical Calculus
The Isle of the Deep is really not a single creature but a colony of thousands of individual tubules, an aquatic vector of the Mind Worm which terrorizes Planet's continents. Over its lifetime certain tubules secrete a tough, gluelike substance which hardens to form the characteristic shell that floats the colony and creates the appearance of a rogue island.
A Comparative Biology of Planet
Centauri Meditation
The happy life is thought to be one of excellence; now an excellent life requires exertion, and does not consist in amusement. If Eudaimonia, or happiness, is activity in accordance with excellence, it is reasonable that it should be in accordance with the highest excellence; and this will be that of the best thing in us.
Nichomachean Ethics
Datalinks
Eudaimonia
Man is a rope, tied between beast and overman--a rope over an abyss. A dangerous across, a dangerous on-the-way, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and stopping. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not an end: what can be loved in man is that he is an overture and a going under. I love those who do not know how to live, for they are those who cross over.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Datalinks
The Will to Power
And when he has brought forth and reared this perfect virtue, he shall be called the friend of god, and if ever it is given to man to put on immortality, it shall be given to him.
The Symposium
Datalinks
Threshold of Transcendence
Observe the Razorbeak as it tends so carefully to the fungal blooms; just the right bit from the yellow, then a swatch from the pink. Follow the Glow Mites as they gather and organize the fallen spores. What higher order guides their work? Mark my words: someone or something is managing the ecology of this planet.
Planet Dreams
Centauri Empathy
The prevalence of anoxic environments rich in organic material, combined with the presence of nitrated compounds has led to an astonishing variety of underground organisms which live in the absence of oxygen and "breathe" nitrate. Likewise, the scarcity of carbon in the environment has forced plants to economize on its use. Thus, all our efforts to return carbon to the biosphere will encourage the native life to proliferate. Conversely, the huge quantities of nitrate in the soil will be heaven to human farmers.
The Early Years
Ecological Engineering
The Morgans fear what may not be purchased, for a trader cannot comprehend a thing that is priceless.
The Collected Sermons
Planetary Economics
The Mind Worms are the natural defenses of the living Planet--the white blood cells, if you will. In a world in which unassimilated thought represents danger, the Mind Worm seeks out concentrations of sentient mental energy and destroys them, ruthlessly and efficiently.
Mind Worm, Mind Worm
Centauri Psi
And so we return again to the holy void. Some say this is simply our destiny, but I would have you remember always that the void EXISTS, just as surely as you or I. Is nothingness any less a miracle than substance?
We Must Dissent
Advanced Spaceflight
Companions the creator seeks, not corpses, not herds and believers. Fellow creators the creator seeks--those who write new values on new tablets. Companions the creator seeks, and fellow harvesters; for everything about him is ripe for the harvest.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra
Datalinks
Homo Superior
Remember, genes are NOT blueprints. This means you can't, for example, insert "the genes for an elephant's trunk" into a giraffe and get a giraffe with a trunk. There -are- no genes for trunks. What you CAN do with genes is chemistry, since DNA codes for chemicals. For instance, we can in theory splice the native plants' talent for nitrogen fixation into a terran plant.
Nonlinear Genetics
Centauri Genetics
The fungus has been Planet's dominant lifeform since about the time of the Lower Paleozoic on Earth. But when, once every hundred million years or so, the neural net at last achieves the critical mass necessary to become sentient, the final metamorphosis kills off most of the other life on the planet. It is possible that we humans can help to break this tragic cycle.
Planet Dreams
Sentient Econometrics
I have often been asked: if we have traveled between the stars, why can we not launch the simplest of orbital probes? These fools fail to understand the difficulty of finding the appropriate materials on this Planet, of developing adequate power supplies, and creating the infrastructure necessary to support such an effort. In short, we have struggled under the limitations of a colonial society on a virgin planet. Until now.
Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
Orbital Spaceflight
I shall not confront Planet as an enemy, but shall accept its mysteries as gifts to be cherished. Nor shall I crudely seek to peel the layers away like the skin from an onion. Instead I shall gather them together as the tree gathers the breeze. The wind shall blow and I shall bend. The sky shall open and I shall drink my fill.
The Weather Paradigm
Symbols are the key to telepathy. The mind wraps its secrets in symbols; when we discover the symbols that shape our enemy's thought, we can penetrate the vault of his mind.
Our Secret War
The Empath Guild
As distances vanish and the people can flow freely from place to place, society will cross a psychological specific heat boundary and enter a new state. No longer a solid or liquid, we have become as a vapor and will expand to fill all available space. And like a gas, we shall not be easily contained.
But for the Grace of God
The Planetary Transit System
I believe Planet will talk to us if we are willing to listen. These fungal stalks behave as multistate relays: taken together, the neural net connectivity must be staggering. Can a planet be said to have achieved sentience?
Arguments in Council
The Xenoempathy Dome
Against such abominations, we organize our defenses on the principle that one strong and able mind can shield the many.
The Neural Amplifier
Learn to overcome the crass demands of flesh and bone, for they warp the matrix through which we perceive the world. Extend your awareness outward, beyond the self of body, to embrace the self of group and the self of humanity. The goals of the group and the greater race are transcendent, and to embrace them is to achieve enlightenment.
Essays on Mind and Matter
The Ascetic Virtues
We welcome you, earthdeirdre and earthwheat and earthtree as honored guests, for you add great power to our ancient song-- planetfungus and planetworm and planetmind sing and play here, and you are welcome among us.
Conversations with Planet
The Pholus Mutagen
Mary had a little lamb, Little lamb little lamb, Mary had a little lamb, whose fleece was white as snow.
Final Transmission
The Dream Twister
We shall take only the greatest minds, the finest soldiers, the most faithful servants. We shall multiply them a thousandfold and release them to usher in a new era of glory.
The Council of War
The Cloning Vats
Proper care and education for our children remains a cornerstone of our entire colonization effort. Children not only shape our future; they determine in many ways our present. Men and women work harder knowing their children are safe and close at hand. And never forget that, with children present, parents will defend their home to the death.
Planet: A Survivalist's Guide
Children's Creche
Although Planet's native life is based, like Earth's, on right-handed DNA, and codes for all the same amino acids, the inevitable chemical and structural differences from a billion years of evolution in an alien environment render the native plant life highly poisonous to humans. Juicy, ripe grenade fruits may look appealing, but a mouthful of organonitrates will certainly change your mind in a hurry.
A Comparative Biology of Planet
Biology Lab
The chief aim of their constitution and government is that, whenever public needs permit, all citizens should be free, so far as possible, to withdraw their time and energy from the service of the body, and devote themselves to the freedom and culture of the mind. For that, they think, is the real happiness of life.
Utopia
Datalinks
Hab Complex
I sit in my cubicle, here on the motherworld. When I die, they will put my body in a box and dispose of it in the cold ground. And in all the million ages to come, I will never breathe or laugh or twitch again. So won't you run and play with me here among the teeming mass of humanity? The universe has spared us this moment.
Datalinks
Habitation Dome
When beholding the tranquil beauty and brilliancy of the ocean's skin, one forgets the tiger heart that pants beneath it; and would not willingly remember that this velvet paw but conceals a remorseless fang.
Moby Dick
Datalinks
Pressure Dome
In the years since our arrival, we have foolishly disrupted so many of Planet's ecosystems that entire species may vanish without our ever having understood, or even known them. We must halt this plunder, and halt it immediately, for our own survival as a species depends on our ability to strike a balance on this world.
Mind Worm, Mind Worm
Centauri Preserve
Let the Gaians preach their silly religion, but one way or the other I shall see this compound burned, seared, and sterilized until every hiding place is found and until every last Mind Worm egg, every last slimy one, has been cooked to a smoking husk. That species shall be exterminated, I tell you! Exterminated!
Lab Three aftermath
Temple of Planet
Sky farms are fantastically beautiful, with their kilometer long networks of glass framed in grids of metal, and the sunlight shining through jungles of vegetation inside. When one of them catches the light, you can see the refracted beauty for miles; they are life-giving stars on a desolate planet...gardens on the wing.
Planet Dreams
Sky Hydroponics Lab