{"id":1025,"date":"2021-04-30T17:44:55","date_gmt":"2021-04-30T17:44:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1025"},"modified":"2022-08-08T12:35:38","modified_gmt":"2022-08-08T12:35:38","slug":"lifeboat-on-a-burning-sea-by-bruce-holland-rogers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/?p=1025","title":{"rendered":"Lifeboat on a Burning Sea by Bruce Holland Rogers"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Lifeboat on a Burning Sea<\/em><\/strong> by Bruce Holland Rogers (F&SF<\/em>, October-November 1995) begins with the narrator\/scientist, Elliot Maas, and his two business partners (Bierley, the PR man, and Richardson, the other scientist) at a press conference. They tell the press that have created a \u201cmulti-cameral multi-phasic analog information processor\u201d, or what they prefer to call a TOS (\u201cThe Other Side\u201d), a device which can store a machine consciousness and which they hope will eventually enable humans to cheat death.
Shortly after this, Bierley dies, and their funding vanishes, so Maas and Richardson use the TOS to build a copy of him:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cBierley, regrettably, is dead,\u201d said Bierley\u2019s image. He was responding to the first question after his prepared statement. \u201cThere\u2019s no bringing him back, and I regret that.\u201d Warm smile.
The press corps laughed uncertainly.
\u201cBut you\u2019re his memories?\u201d asked a reporter.
\u201cNot in the sense that you mean it,\u201d Bierley said. \u201cNobody dumped Bierley\u2019s mind into a machine. We can\u2019t do that.\u201d Dramatic pause. \u201cYet.\u201d
Smile. \u201cWhat I am is a personality construct of other people\u2019s memories. Over one hundred of Bierley\u2019s closest associates were interviewed by TOS. Their impressions of Bierley, specific examples of things he had said and done, along with digital recordings of the man in action, were processed to create me. I may not be Jackson Bierley as he saw himself, but I\u2019m Jackson Bierley as he was seen by others.  p. 23-24<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

After the press conference there is a long conversation between Maas and Richardson, where they discuss possible uses of constructs like Bierley (bringing back dead actors and singers, etc.) before the conversation touches on other (and odder) matters: Richardson starts talking about Shiva and reincarnation, and suggests building a simulacrum of Maas to help work on the project.
Shortly after this Richardson is apparently killed in a terrorist attack on the underground (the story is set in a world where there are constant terrorist bombings1<\/sup>) so, of course, a Richardson construct is created with the help of the Bierley one.
After this the story becomes ever more existential: the Richardson construct talks to Maas (whose obsession with cheating his own death is a thread that runs through the story):<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Irritatingly, TOS started to suffer again from hurricanes. Those chaos storms in the information flow started to shut down the Richardson construct around one in the morning, regularly.
\u201cIt\u2019s like you\u2019re too much contradiction for TOS to handle,\u201d [Maas] told the construct late one night. \u201cA scientist and a mystic.\u201d
\u201cNo mystic,\u201d Richardson said. \u201cI\u2019m more scientist than you are, Maas. You\u2019re in a contest with the universe. You want to beat it. If someone gave you the fountain of youth, guaranteed to keep you alive forever with the proviso that you\u2019d never understand how it worked, you\u2019d jump at the chance. Science is a means to you. You want results. You\u2019re a mere technologist.\u201d
\u201cI have a focus. You could never keep yourself on track.\u201d
\u201cYou have an obsession,\u201d the construct countered. \u201cYou\u2019re right that I can never resist the temptation of the more interesting questions. But that\u2019s what matters to me. What does all of this\u2014\u201d He swept his hand wide to encompass the universe with his gesture, and his hand came to rest on his own chest. \u201cWhat does it all mean? That\u2019s my question, Maas. I never stop asking it.\u201d
\u201cYou sound like him. Sometimes I forget what you are.\u201d  p. 34<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n\n\n

Maas then starts to have suspicions about what is causing the information storms, and tricks the machine to make it think he has left the building. He hides beside the Richardson TOS, and then later that night (spoiler) the real Richardson (who has faked his own death\u2014even to the point his wife is fooled) visits his own construct. When Maas challenges Richardson, it sounds as if he has had some sort of breakdown, and keeps saying he is dead and is going to start another life. This baffling exchange pretty much ends the story, and is followed by a repeat of the opening image, a dream Maas has of a man in a lifeboat watching a ship on fire with trapped sailors (him surviving death while the rest of humanity doesn\u2019t, I suppose).
For the first half or so the story is reasonably interesting, but towards the end it takes a deep dive into its own navel. I have no idea what point the story is trying to make and am baffled as to how it won a Nebula award.
** (Average). 10,100 words.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

1. The Oklahoma bombing that is described took place in April 1995; there is a Wikipedia page<\/a> about the event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Lifeboat on a Burning Sea by Bruce Holland Rogers (F&SF, October-November 1995) begins with the narrator\/scientist, Elliot Maas, and his two business partners (Bierley, the PR man, and Richardson, the other scientist) at a press conference. They tell the press that have created a \u201cmulti-cameral multi-phasic analog information processor\u201d, or what they prefer to call […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[291],"tags":[5,17,292,25,130,7],"class_list":["post-1025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bruce-holland-rogers","tag-5","tag-17","tag-bruce-holland-rogers","tag-fsf","tag-nebula-award","tag-novelette"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1025"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5222,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1025\/revisions\/5222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sfshortstories.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}