Can we conclude anything about the predictability of the evolution of Earth’s life, then? With some caution, we can arrive to a few takeaways: We can predict quite well how life responds to a new selection pressure using already existing genetic variation. If the response is contingent on new mutations, though, it is much harder to predict if or when it happens.

  In addition, we are able to predict convergence on a broader scale, such as in multiple lineages evolving eyesight or flight. Making evolutionary predictions also has very concrete practical significance: Being able to determine which strains of flu will dominate the next season enables us to tailor each year’s vaccine to them—and it usually works pretty well. The future of COVID vaccines will likely follow this path, with a recommended annual booster tailored to match the virus strain predictions (although new mutations can always upend our predictions).

  What does it all tell us about the prospects of life on other planets, though? There’s the basic conclusions: we can expect body shapes to converge to some of the forms advantageous in a given medium, such as a streamlined fishlike shape for water column creatures that need to be able to move quickly. But what about the evolution of sensoria, intelligence, or even “details” such as the number of appendages? In other words, could four-armed, eight-eyed infrared-sensing beings who think vastly different from us have populated a “replay Earth,” and how likely would they have been elsewhere?

  Paths toward Intelligence

  Some scientists, such as the paleontologist Simon Conway Morris, are convinced that civilization-producing intelligence is both rare and confined to very humanlike beings on very Earth-like planets—a position taking evolutionary convergence and the Rare Earth theory (postulating that for complex life to evolve, a lot of improbable steps had to have happened, such as the impact leading to the formation of the Moon stabilizing Earth’s tilt) to the extreme. Many science fiction novels have been able to challenge that assumption (with life-forms such as the scramblers in Peter Watts’s Blindsight or Eridians in Project Hail Mary by Andy Weir), but coming up with an exotic intelligent species doesn’t equal tracing the whole evolutionary path to it.

  What evolutionary paths did lead to high intelligence on Earth? Apes, including ourselves, cetaceans, birds, and cephalopods are usually cited as examples of animals with high generalized intelligence. Cetaceans are mammals like us—quite evolutionarily close, not a great analogy for contemplating aliens, even if they live in a markedly different environment than we do.

  Despite their different neural architectures, birds such as corvids and parrots evolved complex social behavior and high intelligence independently of mammals; birds’ and mammals’ last common ancestor lived nearly 300 million years ago. Tool use, tactical deception—those are just some of their skills. And yet, from the point of view of trying to imagine evolution in a whole distinct biosphere, trying to use avian and mammalian intelligence as an example falls flat on its face. Within the scope of all of Earth’s biosphere, birds and mammals are practically the same group, and our last common ancestor must have already been fairly intelligent. We diverged—and then in some ways converged again.

  Octopi might be a better example—our last common ancestor with cephalopods lived over 700 million years ago in the Precambrian, and must have had very little brain to speak of (although this rudimentary brain still shared the basic neuronal cell workings with us and present-day octopi, making claims of “alien intelligence” of cephalopods somewhat exaggerated). Indeed, they offer us insights such as that high intelligence does not necessarily mean very high centralization (they do have big brains, but it appears that a lot of their complex behavior is driven by the arms’ own enervation).

  Cephalopods long seemed to be unlikely candidates for creating a civilization, though. It’s not their aquatic environment (one can think up even a fairly technological aquatic civilization), but they appeared to lack the social behavior shared by many vertebrates, especially among mammals and birds. Octopi were thought to live alone and die before or very shortly after their offspring hatch.

  Notice the past tense, though; in recent years, small octopus “villages” have been discovered, and even shallow-water octopi were found to be able to spawn multiple times in their lifetime, something previously suspected in deep-sea cephalopods (which remain very much understudied). With so few long-term observations of octopi in the wild so far, there might yet be social complexity to be discovered in some species (a tantalizing science-fictional subject explored, e.g., by Ray Nayler in The Mountain in The Sea). Even with what we know so far, octopi show us yet another evolutionary path toward general intelligence, converging on it from a different vantage point.

  Roads Not Taken

  By now it’s probably clear that “convergence vs. contingency” is a false dichotomy; both play important roles in evolution, and one or the other can prevail on a given level or in a given lineage or environment. On a deeper level, the occurrence of convergence and degree of predictability will be shaped by the genetic architecture of a given biosphere. There’s no guarantee that the modes of selection will work the same everywhere. We can expect units that are better adapted to the current environment to survive. What would be those units, though? Would they be able to reproduce sexually (or would the distinction between asexual and sexual reproduction seem meaningless in that biosphere)? What would be the information storage medium, how readily would it change, and how would it be repaired? What would be the relationship between this information (genotype) and life’s appearance (phenotype)?

  These questions are very relevant even on Earth, and we can imagine them growing to monumental proportions elsewhere, or perhaps even in the imaginary replay of Earth’s history. If we reran it twelve times, how many times would we even have ended up with DNA as the predominant information-storage molecule? If Earth had ever truly been an “RNA world,” how likely would it have remained one? In other words, do all roads on Earth lead to DNA, or is it an accident frozen in time?

  Have there ever been competing genetic codes? Was ours plainly better, or did it prevail mostly by chance? Would others have been more or less prone to effects of mutations, misreading, shifts? What if the mechanism of getting the information to the resulting cell/body had consisted of different steps, more or less prone to error?

  Even Earth, our singular biosphere sample, suggests many roads not taken that would have greatly changed the course of evolution. The million-dollar question: Were these roads not taken (or perhaps taken and abandoned via extinction), because they lead nowhere fruitful, or simply by chance? Are there “forbidden territories” in the imagined evolutionary landscape, or just places not visited in the semi-random walks through it?

  We’ll never know for sure. We can only take a more educated guess after closely examining the (un)repeatability of evolution on current Earth, and, perhaps one day, comparing multiple biospheres—whether with truly endless forms most beautiful, remains to be seen.

  Further Reading

  Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History (Stephen Jay Gould; published by W. W. Norton, 1989)—note that it has become dated, but it’s still a great introduction to the topic of evolutionary contingency

  Life’s Solution: Inevitable Humans in a Lonely Universe (Simon Conway Morris; published by Cambridge University Press, 2003) —a great account of evolutionary convergence, even if taken to more extreme conclusions

  In The Light of Evolution: Essays from The Laboratory and Field (ed. Jonathan Losos; published by W. H. Freeman, 2011, Second Edition) —a collection of essays, some of which deal with the contingency/convergence debate and experimental evolution

  Improbable Destinies: Fate, Chance, and the Future of Evolution (Jonathan Losos; published by Riverhead Books, 2018) —bridging the perceived gap between convergence and contingency

  About the Author

  Julie Nováková is a scientist, educator and award-winning Czech author, editor and translator of science fiction, fantasy and detective stories. She published seven novels, one anthology, one story collection and over thirty short pieces in Czech. Her work in English appeared in Clarkesworld, Asimov’s, Analog, and elsewhere. Her works have been translated into eight languages so far, and she translates Czech stories into English (in Tor.com, Strange Horizons, F&SF, Clarkesworld, and Welkin Magazine). She edited or co-edited an anthology of Czech speculative fiction in translation, Dreams From Beyond, a book of European SF in Filipino translation, Haka, an outreach e-book of astrobiological SF, Strangest of All, and its more ambitious follow-up print and ebook anthology Life Beyond Us (Laksa Media, upcoming in late 2022). Julie’s newest book is a story collection titled The Ship Whisperer (Arbiter Press, 2020). She is a recipient of the European fandom’s Encouragement Award and multiple Czech genre awards. She’s active in science outreach, education and nonfiction writing, and co-leads the outreach group of the European Astrobiology Institute. She’s a member of the XPRIZE Sci-fi Advisory Council.

  Switching Perspectives:

  A Conversation with Marie Vibbert

  Arley Sorg

  Marie Vibbert was born at Booth Charity Hospital in East Cleveland, Ohio. She has lived in the greater Cleveland area since. She earned a bachelor’s from Case Western Reserve University and has also received “some boring technology certifications.” Vibbert met Brian Crick at Case Western, and they were married in 2001 at his mother’s house in Vĩnh Long, Vietnam.

  Vibbert’s childhood was not always bright and full of rainbows. Her family was kicked out of the projects, and they were also kicked out of a battered women’s shelter for being too violent. She only first experienced driving when she had been kidnapped. “It was this nasty gold Volvo with a VW engine, we were in the mountains of Idaho, and I only managed to get it into reverse and glide halfway across the parking lot, so not the thrilling escape I’d planned.”

  Writing has always been an important part of her life, and Marie brings the events of her past to many of her stories. During high school she read that her favorite author—Isaac Asimov—published his first story by age eighteen. She wanted to beat his record. Within a few years she had amassed a short stack of novel rejections.

  At age sixteen, Marie Vibbert met author Mary Turzillo at a writing conference, and told Turzillo that she’d written three novels. Turzillo brought Vibbert into her writing group, the Cajun Sushi Hamsters, also known as the Cleveland Science Fiction Writers Workshop. After learning about the Clarion Writers Workshop from her peers, in 2012, Vibbert decided that if she wanted to attend, she would have to create the funds to make it happen. She joined their “Write-a-Thon” to raise scholarship funds, pledging to write fifty short fiction drafts in six weeks—while also working full-time as a website programmer and administrator. She was accepted for the class of 2013, and she received a scholarship which nearly matched the funds she had raised.

  Reflection’s Edge published Marie Vibbert’s “Brain Trust” in 2006, but her fiction career really took off in 2013 and 2014, with “Deshaun Stevens’ Ship Log” in Escape Pod, “Jupiter Wrestlerama” in Lightspeed, and more. By 2018 she was a regular in the Analog reader’s poll, and she became a regular in the Asimov’s poll not long after. Vibbert’s poetry has also been shortlisted several times for the Rhysling Award. In addition, Vibbert has been a finalist for the Jim Baen Memorial Short Story Award and a Neffy Award. Vibbert’s debut novel, Galactic Hellcats, was on the 2021 British Science Fiction and Fantasy Association’s longlist for Best Novel.

  Marie Vibbert has published fiction and poetry consistently since 2013, including the novelette “We Built This City” in the June 2022 issue of Clarkesworld. Vibbert’s latest novel, The Gods Awoke, came out from Journey Press in September of 2022.

  How did you first get into reading genre fiction, and how did reading genre fiction become writing genre fiction?

  I grew up in poverty, and reading was a huge escape for me. My sister and I would get out eight books at a time from the library, because that was the maximum allowed, and always turned them in before the two weeks was up. I don’t remember a time when I didn’t prefer the books with little rocket ship stickers on the spines. My parents and grandparents liking Star Trek might have tilted me that way?

  In second grade, our teacher had us make books as a project. We would get ten pages, max, stapled together with sheets from a wallpaper sample book for covers. Mine was called “Jimmy’s Planet,” and it was largely stolen from a Bugs Bunny book I’d read where Bugs Bunny builds a rocket, only to land on a construction site nearby and think it’s an alien world. Jimmy actually did go to space, and he encountered alien twin girls who looked like me and my twin sister, and a dinosaur-like monster. (This book was of course illustrated.) It was my favorite school assignment ever, and my book was the longest in the class.

  Soon after that, I started stapling scraps of paper together at home and writing more books, which I carried around with me to try to get people to read. Mostly stuff about fairies and witches and aliens. In sixth grade, I grandiosely decided to write my memoir, but turned that into science fiction four pages in by giving myself an after-school job for an interdimensional spy agency and a sassy robot best friend.

  The rest was history. I have not had a month since where I wasn’t working on a novel.

  You went to the Clarion Workshop in 2013. Did the experience have a significant impact on your writing or your career?

  It had a huge impact. Just the focus of studying stories for six weeks, worrying them back and forth, my classmate’s drafts more than my own, exposed a lot of the lies I’d been telling myself about fiction. It also exposed a lot of my emotional hang-ups about my writing, and ways I had been quietly sabotaging myself for years.

  And even if I hadn’t learned a single tip or trick, the mere fact of sinking my entire savings and six weeks without a paycheck into this workshop meant that I HAD to make it worthwhile, so the good old sunk cost fallacy had me writing story drafts and submitting like mad, and I haven’t slacked off since. Well, much. (I’ve really slacked off the past two years.)

  On your site, you mention selling “eighty-odd short stories, forty-some poems, and a few comics . . . ” and you’ve been publishing consistently since 2013. Do you feel that reading what’s current and new is important to selling fiction and staying in the game?

  When I was younger, I had a misguided stage of worrying that my reading was going to “contaminate” my writing, and I tried to ween myself off my voracious reading habit. All I did was make myself miserable. The things I read join the experiences of life and the random ephemera in my head and create a lush compost heap to grow new ideas.

  I’m definitely on team Read to Stay Abreast. I will even admit to studying magazines I want to break into, reading one magazine intently for a long period. But it’s not always a conscious effort. I just really like to read. Having been a slush reader, too, I can see how people who are not reading current SFF fail to join the conversation their intended audience is already having, with stories of the past, with current events, with the shared metaphors we build up and call language. You can’t jump in and say, “Hey what about green aliens?” when the talk has already moved on to what being green means to those aliens.

  Has your writing changed in notable ways since 2013?

  After I started regularly selling short stories that were around four to five thousand words long, I worked hard on writing shorter and shorter stories until I could confidently sell flash fiction. Then I went the other way, exploring longer lengths and slower paces. I sold my first novella last year and my first novelette this year. I still don’t feel I’ve quite got a feel for novelette length.

  After 2016, my life got hella stressful, and I stopped being able to write dark fiction. My work got downright optimistic. Which was nice! I think I’m settling back into the mix of happy and sad I used to have these days.

  Honestly, I feel like I’m just learning how to write? My latest goal is to write more heartfelt stories with more complex emotional arcs.

  Looking at your body of work, are there ideas and themes in your fiction that you tend to come back to, that stand out as more important to you?

  Sibling relationships, found families, economic and social class struggle. Subverting stereotypes.

  For folks who have never read your short fiction, if they were to look at one or two pieces, which would you want them to look at, and why?

  My most successful story is “Knit Three, Save Four” which plays to all my strengths—it’s a near-future space story with sassy characters and humor. That’s my comfort zone. You can find it in The Best Science Fiction of the Year: Volume 5 edited by Neil Clarke. It’s my first “best of” reprint, and I love that I wrote it on a bet—to show someone knitting a spaceship.

  On the less humorous side, I’m proud of my novelette, “We Built This City,” in the June 2022 issue of Clarkesworld—it’s the culmination of decades of trying to write a science fiction story about a labor strike. My dad was a union laborer and so that’s very important to me.

  The Gods Awoke is your third published novel. What did you learn from writing and publishing prior novels which you brought to this project?

  I do everything out of order. I wrote the first draft of The Gods Awoke around 2001. I lost that draft when my laptop was stolen and wrote a brand-new version in 2004. So technically it was written well before Galactic Hellcats, though I wrote a juvenile version of that in 1989.

 

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