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The Continent Makers by L. Sprague de Camp
Star flight allows Earth's vast bounty of confidence agents to bilk the peoples of other star systems... or attempt to, at least.
On Sun, 04 May 2025 09:26:51 -0400, James Nicoll wrote:
The Continent Makers by L. Sprague de Camp
Star flight allows Earth's vast bounty of confidence agents to bilk the
peoples of other star systems... or attempt to, at least.
If L. Sprague de Camp is going to avoid including faster-than-light
travel in his stories about people casually hopping from one star-system
to another, the least he could have done was, say, include the invention
of a *longevity drug* in his stories instead, so as to make them not
utterly implausible.
Of course, it seems clear to me that the invention of the Internet has
made interstellar travel an impossibility, except for a few very rare individuals, unless we do have not merely FTL, but ridiculously fast
FTL. People just won't stand being offline for years; they couldn't
endure the boredom.
On Sun, 04 May 2025 09:26:51 -0400, James Nicoll wrote:
The Continent Makers by L. Sprague de Camp
Star flight allows Earth's vast bounty of confidence agents to bilk the
peoples of other star systems... or attempt to, at least.
If L. Sprague de Camp is going to avoid including faster-than-light travel
in his stories about people casually hopping from one star-system to
another, the least he could have done was, say, include the invention of a *longevity drug* in his stories instead, so as to make them not utterly implausible.
Of course, it seems clear to me that the invention of the Internet has
made interstellar travel an impossibility, except for a few very rare individuals, unless we do have not merely FTL, but ridiculously fast FTL. People just won't stand being offline for years; they couldn't endure the boredom.
John Savard
On Sun, 04 May 2025 09:26:51 -0400, James Nicoll wrote:
The Continent Makers by L. Sprague de Camp
Star flight allows Earth's vast bounty of confidence agents to bilk the peoples of other star systems... or attempt to, at least.
If L. Sprague de Camp is going to avoid including faster-than-light travel in his stories about people casually hopping from one star-system to another, the least he could have done was, say, include the invention of a *longevity drug* in his stories instead, so as to make them not utterly implausible.
And real ansibles are in the works as well with quantumentanglement
We could send the Amish and they could use generation ships,I would say that the ansible makes no sense but then, a lot of quantum
farming all the way to the stars. No boredom when you have physical
work every day.
And real ansibles are in the works as well with quantum entanglement
providing the basis, so maybe we could keep in close touch but new
problems will be discovered that may keep us closer to home. There is a
high energy barrier as well at the end of the Solar influenced static >electrical
fields.
We still don't understand Dark Matter/Energy very well but it mayIf you consider the determination with which scientists hang on to
be vital to the matters of SF. And none of the authors of the Golden Age >Classics knew anything about it.
But if I were to do so... and I were to indulge my own feelings about
how FTL would play out in real life, instead of following genre conventions...
I might end up with a story in this setting:
Humanity lives underground beneath the surface of Proxima Centauri b.
Both Sol and Alpha Centauri have long since gone nova, but Proxima
Centauri still has most of its future ahead of it.
People live in gigantic dome-shaped caverns, brightly lit by sunlight
sent down narrow shafts from the surface; simple optics allows this, and
it's still more efficient than any form of artificial lighting.
Before Alpha Centauri went nova, because its system was near at hand,
unlike Earth, they once obtained resources from that system, to add to
what was initially brought from Earth.
Life goes on. People grow food, they tend to forests, they have and
raise children. But this former colony of long-dead Earth has a purpose.
As on Earth, people pursue the arts and sciences; crafting sculptures
and paintings, writing symphonies; researching the nature of matter and
the truths of mathematics. But one particular ambition has pride of
place as the purpose for which Man extended his domain to that world.
And that pursuit, of course, is the quest for FTL.
Maybe in another few million years our scientific knowledge will advance
far enough so that we can start working on it directly...
This scenario, of course, assumes the Alcubierre version of warp drive
didn't pan out (perhaps because time travel into the past is impossible,
so something non-relativistic, based on quantum mechanics instead of
general relativity is needed)...
Although their underground domes have beaches, and small hills to climb,
and new caverns are regularly dug, and life can expand into them...
while advanced technology provides material comfort, living in a
constrained society with only a very slow rate of growth possible,
oriented around a goal which may be impossible, and which is certainly
at least incredibly distant of achievement...
the story would be about finding purpose and maintaining hope (or
failing to do so) in the face of a fundamental existential ennui that undermines all the distractions that are used in an attempt to keep it
at bay.
On Sun, 3 Aug 2025 19:33:25 -0700, Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote:
<snippo>
We could send the Amish and they could use generation ships,
farming all the way to the stars. No boredom when you have physical
work every day.
And real ansibles are in the works as well with quantum entanglement
providing the basis, so maybe we could keep in close touch but new
problems will be discovered that may keep us closer to home. There is a
high energy barrier as well at the end of the Solar influenced static
electrical
fields.
I would say that the ansible makes no sense but then, a lot of quantum
stuff doesn't either, so this might be correct.
Then again, until we have the Grand Unified Theory, who can say what
the real story may be?
We still don't understand Dark Matter/Energy very well but it may
be vital to the matters of SF. And none of the authors of the Golden Age
Classics knew anything about it.
If you consider the determination with which scientists hang on to
their current theory in the face of the evidence, they are very understandable: they exist to "preserve the appearances". Just as
Ptolemy's (and Copernicus') epicycles did for their theory that all
orbits are circular.
Until we have the Grand Unified Theory, who can say what the real
story may be?
While quantum entanglement seems to involve Nature transmitting
information faster than light behind the scenes for its own use, from the >outside all we see at both ends is randomness. Nothing we know at this
point gives us a clue as to how to achieve FTL communications.
It can't cause time paradoxes since we
can't encode any useful information into it.
I think there is even a Doctor Who about
the Doctor, Tardis and companion visiting both
the beginning and the end of the Univers and
who is to say that these only represent the
same moment.
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> writes:
I think there is even a Doctor Who about
the Doctor, Tardis and companion visiting both
the beginning and the end of the Univers and
who is to say that these only represent the
same moment.
John Amalfi, the mayor of the city with two names twice?
I think there is even a Doctor Who about
the Doctor, Tardis and companion visiting both
the beginning and the end of the Univers and
who is to say that these only represent the
same moment.
On Mon, 04 Aug 2025 00:00:45 +0000, John Savard wrote:
On Sun, 04 May 2025 09:26:51 -0400, James Nicoll wrote:
The Continent Makers by L. Sprague de Camp
Star flight allows Earth's vast bounty of confidence agents to bilk the
peoples of other star systems... or attempt to, at least.
If L. Sprague de Camp is going to avoid including faster-than-light
travel in his stories about people casually hopping from one star-system
to another, the least he could have done was, say, include the invention
of a *longevity drug* in his stories instead, so as to make them not
utterly implausible.
Of course, it seems clear to me that the invention of the Internet has
made interstellar travel an impossibility, except for a few very rare
individuals, unless we do have not merely FTL, but ridiculously fast
FTL. People just won't stand being offline for years; they couldn't
endure the boredom.
I don't feel that I have the talent to write a science-fiction novel that anyone would want to read.
But if I were to do so... and I were to indulge my own feelings about how
FTL would play out in real life, instead of following genre conventions...
I might end up with a story in this setting:
Humanity lives underground beneath the surface of Proxima Centauri b. Both Sol and Alpha Centauri have long since gone nova, but Proxima Centauri
still has most of its future ahead of it.
If you consider the determination with which scientists hang on to
their current theory in the face of the evidence,
Plan B are the good guys who win the day... ta da, a story to tell.
Paul S Person wrote:I never said it didn't make sense.
If you consider the determination with which scientists hang on to
their current theory in the face of the evidence,
When a theory has been wildly successful in a variety of areas, it is
absurd to drop it in the face of a contrary observation when another >explanation has not been ruled out. The theory is put in some doubt, to
be sure, but not abandoned. Not immediately, anyway.
For example, deviations in the orbit of Uranus put Newton's theory into >doubt, but people speculated that the presence of an unknown planet
could be responsible. Neptune was discovered, and the theory survived
that test.
On the other hand deviations in the orbit of Mercury could not be solved
in this way. A perturbation mass, Vulcan, was hypothesized, but it did
not do us the favour of existing. The theory had to be changed, though
it took a while (Einstein figured it out in 1909 but didn't publish for >several years).
Conservation of mass and of momentum both appeared to be violated in
neutron decay circa 1930. But both of these laws seemed to apply
everywhere else, so it was proposed that a near-invisible particle was a >product of the decay, carrying with it the required energy and momentum.
And the particle was discovered a generation ago.
Since then many particles have been predicted on purely theoretical
grounds, and not found for decades. If we live long enough we may hear
of the discovery of a wino or a slepton - or we may hear that
supersymmetry has been ruled out, to much gnashing of teeth.
As to dark matter, the observational evidence is strong. And for that >matter, what a priori reason do we have for thinking that all matter
will interact strongly with the electromagnetic field?
While our theories cannot possibly be the exact truth, the deviations
from GR in galactic rotation rates, etc, are far more plausibly
attributable to dark matter than to flaws in the theory. Still there
will always be a strong element of doubt until we have both more direct >evidence and a good theoretical explanation.
So yes, it makes sense to hang on to current theory, at least for
a while.
Bobbie Sellers <bliss-sf4ever@dslextreme.com> wrote or quoted:
I think there is even a Doctor Who about
the Doctor, Tardis and companion visiting both
the beginning and the end of the Univers and
who is to say that these only represent the
same moment.
|The Restaurant at the End of the Universe
is one of the most
|extraordinary ventures in the entire history of catering. It
|has been built on the fragmented remains of . . . it will be
|built on the fragmented . . . that is to say it will have been
|built by this time, and indeed has been -
"The Restaurant at the End of the Universe" (1995-09-27) ---
Douglas Adams
What's tough to swallow is that from another frame of reference,
this kind of instant info transfer looks like it's actually sending
information back in time. Maybe we just have to come around to that
idea. It can't cause time paradoxes since we can't encode any useful
information into it.