Charles Sheffield: The Mind Pool

The Mind Pool, the volume you are now holding in your hand, was originally a somewhat different and rather shorter book, The Nimrod Hunt.

Writing a book is hard work. Writing a book twice, the same book, sounds like masochism. I want to explain why I did it.

Before The Nimrod Hunt was published, I knew three things. First, the book was the longest and most complex science fiction novel that I had ever written. Second, because of my own worries over that length and complexity, I omitted a substantial subplot that I was very fond of, but which was not an absolute essential. That did allow the book to be a good deal shorter, although at the cost of an ending different from the one that I had originally intended. (I have put that subplot back in. It first enters in Chapter Three. Although the beginning of The Mind Pool is like the start of The Nimrod Hunt, the ending is radically different.)

Third, and less obviously relevant, in writing The Nimrod Hunt I had been greatly influenced by a classic novel by Alfred Bester, The Stars My Destination. I’ve loved that book since I first read it. I had no thought of imitating Bester’s style, which although marvelous is uniquely his and quite unlike my way of telling stories. But I wanted to emulate the multitude of ideas, the diverse backgrounds, and the blowzy rococo decadence of his future society. I also wanted to put in a good deal more science, an interstellar landscape, and some rather odd aliens. That told me I was going to write a pretty long novel.

My admiration of Bester was not particularly hidden. How could it be, when his book had a major character named Regis Sheffield, and mine had one called King Bester?

But soon after publication, I learned two things that I had not known before it. First, the influence of Bester was direct enough to upset some reviewers, particularly in the way that The Nimrod Hunt ended. Dan Chow told me as much and said it marred the novel for anyone familiar with Bester’s works.

Second, and perhaps more important, I had committed a basic sin of story-telling. At the beginning of the book I set up a red herring, an expectation in the reader’s mind which was never fulfilled. Algis Budrys told me just what I had done, and how to correct it.

All these things would normally be irrelevant. The moving word processor writes, and having writ, moves on. A book, once published, cannot be unwritten, and even if rewritten it will not normally be seen in print.

Enter Jim Baen, publisher of The Nimrod Hunt. In August or 1991, Jim called to say that he was going to reissue the book, with a new cover. Was I interested in changing, deleting, or adding anything?

Was I! Of course I was, and my task sounded easy: remove the red herring, restore the original subplot, and make the homage to Alfred Bester less intrusive.

Naturally, it didn’t work out like that. I am not the same writer I was six years ago. I finished by rewriting the whole novel to match my present tastes. Some passages grew, others shrank or disappeared, many became unrecognizable. I don’t think any page was left untouched. The one-week easy fix became the two-month concentrated effort. I found that I had produced a different book.

The Mind Pool is that book. If you have read The Nimrod Hunt, I invite you to compare the two. If you have not, I invite you to read the book that you are holding.

I hope the story is a success. If not, I’m not sure I want to know about it. It would be a real pain to have to write everything a third time.

The first warning was no more than a glimmer of light. In the array of twenty-two thousand monitors that showed the energy balance of the solar system, one miniature diode had flicked on to register a demand overload.

To say that the signal was neglected by the crew at the Vulcan Nexus would be untrue and unfair. It was simply never seen. The whole display array had been installed in the main control room of the Nexus for the benefit of visiting dignitaries and the media. “There!” — a wave of the hand — “The power equation of the whole system at a glance. Left side, energy supply. Each light shows energy collection from a solar panel. The individual demands are on the right.”

The visitors took a moment or two to examine the array of gently winking lights, and the tour went on. The impressive part was still to come, with the powered swoop past four hundred million square kilometers of collectors, each sucking in Sol’s radiance. The array orbited only two million kilometers above the photosphere, where Sol’s flaming disk filled thirty degrees of the sky. It was an unusual visitor who gave the display room a second thought after a roller-coaster ride to the solar furnace, skimming over vast hydrogen flares and the Earth-size-swallowing whirlpools of the sunspots.

So the overload signal was seen by no one. But human ignorance of minor energy fluctuations was no cause for concern. Supply and demand had long been monitored by an agent far more efficient and conscientious than unreliable homo sapiens. The distributed computing network of Dominus at once noted the source of the energy drain. It was coming from Cobweb Station, twelve billion kilometers from the Sun. In less than one hour, energy demand at Cobweb had increased by a factor of one hundred. Even as that information came through the computer network, a second light went on in the displays. Energy use had increased again, by another factor of a hundred.

Dominus switched in an additional power supply from the orbiting fusion plants out near Persephone. Reserve supply was more than adequate. There was no sign of emergency, no thought of disaster. But Dominus initiated a routine inquiry as to the cause of the increased energy demand and its projected future profile.

When there was no reply from Cobweb, Dominus brought new data on-line. A communications silence for the past twenty-four hours was noted for Cobweb Station. That was correlated in turn with the pattern of energy use, and a signal showing that the Mattin Link system at Cobweb Station had been activated, although not yet used for either matter or signal transmission.

Dominus flashed an attention alert to the main control displays at Ceres headquarters and scanned all probes beyond Neptune. The nearest high-acceleration needle was nearly a billion kilometers away from Cobweb — seventeen hours at a routine hundred gee.

Dominus dispatched the needle probe just a few seconds before the problem first came to human attention. The technician on duty at Ceres checked the status flags, noted the time, and approved both the increased energy drain and the use of the needle probe. She did not, however, call for a report on the reason for the energy use on Cobweb Station. The anomaly appeared minor, and her mind was elsewhere. The end of the shift was just a few minutes away, and she had an after-work date with a new possible partner. She was looking forward to that. Staying overtime to study minor power fluctuations, far away in the Outer System, formed no part of her evening plans.

Her actions were quite consistent with her responsibilities. That she would later become the first scapegoat was merely evidence of the need for scapegoats.

When the needle probe was halfway to Cobweb Station, energy demand flared higher. That surging rise by another two orders of magnitude finally pushed the problem to a high-priority level. Dominus signaled for an immediate increase to emergency probe acceleration and began the transfer to probe memory of all structural details of Cobweb Station.