The Green Leopard Plague<\/b> \u201dSo if you\u2019re Adrian, what you do is gut out the virus and re-encode to create chlorophyll. Once a person\u2019s infected, exposure to sunlight will cause the virus to replicate and chlorophyll to reproduce in the skin.\u201d<\/p>\n Hur skulle det vara om m\u00e4nniskan producerade sin egen f\u00f6da? Inte genom att odla den eller d\u00f6da andra levande varelser utan genom att ens egen kropp producerade energi och n\u00e4ring genom fotosyntes?<\/p>\n Terzian gave Stephanie a skeptical look. \u201dThat\u2019s not going to be very efficient,\u201d he said. \u201dPlants get sugars and oxygen from chlorophyll, okay, but they don\u2019t need much food, they stand in one place and don\u2019t walk around. Add chlorophyll to a person\u2019s skin, how many calories do you get each day? Tens? Dozens?\u201d<\/p>\n Stephanie\u2019s lips parted in a fierce little smile. \u201dYou don\u2019t stop with just the chlorophyll. You have to get really efficient electron transport. In a plant that\u2019s handled in the chloroplasts, but the human body already has mitochondria to do the same job. You don\u2019t have to create these huge support mechanisms for the chlorophyll, you just make use of what\u2019s already there. So if you\u2019re Adrian, what you do is add trafficking tags to the reaction center proteins so that they\u2019ll target the mitochondria, which already<\/i> are loaded with proteins to handle electron transport. The result is that the mitochondria handle transport from the chlorophyll, which is the sort of job they do anyway, and once the virus starts replicating, you can get maybe a thousand calories or more just from standing in the sun. It won\u2019t provide full nutrition, but it can keep starvation at bay, and it\u2019s not as if starving people have much to do besides stand in the sun anyway.\u201d<\/p>\n Vilka implikationer skulle detta ha? Hur skulle det inverka p\u00e5 v\u00e5rt samh\u00e4llssystem? V\u00e5rt s\u00e4tt att t\u00e4nka? Hela v\u00e5r v\u00e4rld?<\/p>\n \u201dJust imagine that food is nearly free,\u201d he said. \u201dSuppose you and your children can get most of your food from standing in the sunshine. My next question is, Why in hell would you take a filthy job like standing on a scaffolding and sandblasting some old building?<\/i>\u201d<\/p>\n Omv\u00e4lvningen skulle vara n\u00e4rmast kataklysmisk.<\/p>\n \u201dYou think our friends in Transnistria will have any qualms about rounding up people up at gunpoint and forcing them to do labor? The powerful are going to want their palaces kept nice and shiny. The liberal democracies will try volunteerism or lotteries or whatever, but you can bet that we\u2019re going to want our sewers to work, and somebody to carry our grandparents\u2019 bedpans, and the trucks to the supermarkets to run on time. And what I\u2019m afraid of is that when things get desperate, we\u2019re not going to be any nicer about getting our way than those Sovietists of yours. We\u2019re going to make sure that the lower orders do their jobs, even if we have to kill half of them to convince the other half that we mean business. And the technical term for that is slavery.<\/i> And if someone of African descent isn\u2019t sensitive to that<\/i> potential problem, then I am very surprised!\u201d<\/p>\n I en fj\u00e4rran framtid f\u00e5r Michelle ett uppdrag. Hon ska reda ut vart filosofen Terzian tog v\u00e4gen n\u00e4r han efter sin hustrus d\u00f6d i tre veckor var f\u00f6rsvunnen. F\u00f6r att detta \u00e4gde rum precis innan han kom ut med sin \u201dcornucopia theory\u201d \u2013 ymnighetshornteori \u2013 kan f\u00f6rsvinnandet vara viktigt. Michelle matar in hans biometriska information i sin dator och b\u00f6rjar kamma igenom datan\u00e4tverket med s\u00f6kspindlar. N\u00e4r hon hittar hans bild i Paris ser det ut som om han stod bredvid ett lik, en m\u00f6rdad karl.<\/p>\n Ett snabbt klipp: I Paris st\u00f6ter Terzian p\u00e5 den m\u00f6rdade karlens kompanjon Stephanie. Hon p\u00e5st\u00e5r sig ha en medicin eller ett motgift, en bioteknisk uppfinning som en g\u00e5ng f\u00f6r alla g\u00f6r slut p\u00e5 hungersn\u00f6den.<\/p>\n Ber\u00e4ttelsen alternerar mellan dessa tv\u00e5 tidsplaner, dessa tv\u00e5 niv\u00e5er: framtiden och det f\u00f6rflutna, v\u00e4rlden som den \u00e4r och orsaken eller f\u00f6rklaringen till att den blev som den nu \u00e4r.<\/p>\n N\u00e4rmast briljant m\u00e5lar Williams framf\u00f6r oss en ytterst bisarr, ibland fullst\u00e4ndigt of\u00f6rklarlig framtid. Utan att alls bry sig om att f\u00f6rklara den pressar han bara p\u00e5. Varf\u00f6r \u00e4r Michelle en sj\u00f6jungfru med vingar? Varf\u00f6r f\u00f6rs\u00f6ker hennes pojkv\u00e4n som \u00e4r d\u00f6d hitta henne? Varf\u00f6r har hon tidigare varit en apa? Varf\u00f6r r\u00e4knar hon hela tiden kalorier, men p\u00e5 ett fullst\u00e4ndigt uppochnerv\u00e4nt s\u00e4tt? Hur var det egentligen hennes pojkv\u00e4n dog?<\/p>\n Vilket \u00e4r sambandet mellan Terzians inflytelserika samh\u00e4llsteori och den \u00f6desdigra gr\u00f6na leopardpesten? Och vad har Terzian med pesten att g\u00f6ra?<\/p>\n Undan f\u00f6r undan hittar Michelle nya pusselbitar och bilden b\u00f6rjar ta form. Och som i f\u00f6rbifarten besvaras \u00e4ven vissa av l\u00e4sarens fr\u00e5gor. Samtidigt \u2013 i det f\u00f6rg\u00e5ngna \u2013 f\u00f6rs\u00f6ker Terzian och Stephanie komma undan m\u00f6rdarna. Stephanie f\u00f6rklarar hur \u00e4mnet hon har med sig kan r\u00e4dda alla de som sv\u00e4lter. Terzian \u00e4r inte \u00f6vertygad. Inte alls. Men kunde det fungera? I huvudet b\u00f6rjar han formulera en ny samh\u00e4llsteori p\u00e5 basen av det att ingen l\u00e4ngre \u00e4r tvungen att arbeta f\u00f6r att f\u00e5 sig mat.<\/p>\n \u201dLabor,\u201d he said. In a world in which all basic commodities were provided, the thing that had most value was actual labor. Not the stuff that labor bought, but the work itself.<\/i><\/p>\n \u201dOkay,\u201d he said, \u201dit\u2019s labor that\u2019s rare and valuable, because people don\u2019t have<\/i> to do it anymore. The currency has to be based on some kind of labor exchange \u2013 you purchase x<\/i> hours with y <\/i>dollars. Labor is the thing you use to pay taxes.\u201d \u201dHave you been reading Nozick?\u201d Terzian scolded. \u201dThe difference is the same as the difference between paying taxes<\/i> and being a slave.<\/i> All the time you don\u2019t spend paying your taxes is your own.\u201d He barked a laugh. \u201dI\u2019m resurrecting Labor Value Theory!\u201d he said. \u201dAdam Smith and Karl Marx are dancing a jig on their tombstones! In Plant People Land, the value is the labor itself !<\/i> The calories!<\/i>\u201d He laughed again, and almost spilled coffee down his chest.<\/p>\n \u201dYou budget the whole thing in calories! The government promises to pay you a dollar\u2019s worth of calories in exchange for their currency! In order to keep the roads and the sewer lines going, a citizen owes the government a certain number of calories per year\u00adhe can either pay in person or hire someone else to do the job. And jobs can be budgeted in calories-per-hour, so that if you do hard physical labor, you owe fewer hours than someone with a desk job \u2013 that should keep the young, fit, impatient people doing the nasty jobs, so that they have more free time for their other pursuits.\u201d He chortled. \u201dOh, the intellectuals are going to just hate this! They\u2019re used to valuing their brain power over manual labor \u2013 I\u2019m going to reverse their whole scale of values!\u201d<\/p>\n Williams kommer med fascinerande material. Han har skrivit en thriller, en detektivber\u00e4ttelse, en k\u00e4rlekshistoria, en studie i vetenskap och sociologi, filosofi och nationalekonomi \u2013 en analys av v\u00e5r v\u00e4rld och en inblick i en ny och kanske b\u00e4ttre och r\u00e4ttvisare framtid. Eller en f\u00f6r oss p\u00e5 n\u00e4stan varje niv\u00e5 fullst\u00e4ndigt fr\u00e4mmande framtid. Men d\u00e4r m\u00e4nniskan, trots allt, \u00e4r sig lik.<\/p>\n Green Leopard Plague<\/i> \u00e4r en l\u00e5ng ber\u00e4ttelse men den k\u00e4nns allt annat \u00e4n l\u00e5ng. F\u00f6r en g\u00e5ngs skull \u00e4r l\u00e4ngden motiverad och lika med djuphet och dimension. Jag skulle inte kalla texten en fulltr\u00e4ff \u2013 alla element vill inte riktigt passa ihop eller utvecklas till fullo \u2013 men den \u00e4r definitivt en av de mest lyckade och p\u00e5 alla s\u00e4tt mest balanserade och stimulerande sf-ber\u00e4ttelser jag har l\u00e4st p\u00e5 en ganska l\u00e5ng tid.<\/p>\n -Petri Salin- 4.5.2005<\/i><\/small><\/p>\n Recensioner p\u00e5 de \u00f6vriga sk\u00f6nlitter\u00e4ra Nebulavinnarna 2005 hittar du genom dessa l\u00e4nkar:<\/strong><\/p>\n Petri Salin<\/B> recenserar Walter Jon Williams\u2019<\/B> Nebulabel\u00f6nta kortroman The Green Leopard Plague<\/I>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,2],"tags":[58,10,64,32,79],"class_list":["post-1233","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-litteratur","category-recension","tag-kortroman","tag-nebula","tag-petri-salin","tag-science-fiction","tag-walter-jon-williams"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1233"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1237,"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1233\/revisions\/1237"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/enhorningen.net\/e30\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nF\u00f6rfattare:<\/b> Walter Jon Williams
\nPublicerad i<\/b> tidskriften Asimov\u2019s<\/a> i oktober-november 2003.
\nUtgivnings\u00e5r:<\/b> 2003.
\nKan l\u00e4sas p\u00e5 webben<\/b> p\u00e5 Asimov\u2019s sidor<\/a>.
\nF\u00f6rfattarens hemsida<\/b> finns p\u00e5 adressen http:\/\/www.thuntek.net\/~walter\/<\/a>.<\/i><\/p>\n
\nStephanie gave Terzian a suspicious look. \u201dWhat\u2019s the difference between that and slavery?\u201d<\/p>\n\n