Borders of interstellar societies...
Johnny1A
societies and sometimes interstellar governments exist. Usually, they
are depicted as having borders, etc, much like planetary surface
states.
Naturally, it's easy to show that this is at best a radical
oversimplification of such a situation. 'Borders' in space are an
iffy concept. Ever star is in motion relative to the others, and the
proper motion of a star system might well carry it right across the
border from Star Nation A to Star Nation B, complete with the home
planet of the people of Star Nation A.
Assuming the star-nations were made up of planet-dwellers, and of
habitats and stations and so forth in close association with planets,
it seems to me more likely that you'd have territories consisting of
little 'dots' in space, volumes centered on the planets in questioned,
with neutral territory in the (incomparably larger) volumes between.
If different species require different sorts of worlds, settled
nations might even interpenetrate after long periods of colonization.
For ex, humans like Earth-like worlds, but the Zanarians like oven-hot
carbon-dioxide atmospheres, so when they reach the Sol System they
send a polite greeting to Earth and colonize Venus. Then later the
Phlorians, who think sulfur and intense magnetic fluxes are comfy,
arrive and settle in on Io. Meanwhile H. sapiens invents FTL, or buys
it from the Zanarians, and spreads out to those nitroxy worlds that
nobody's found any use for.
In the Solar System, the Zanarians might claim sovereignty over a
sphere, say, a million miles in diameter, centered on the center of
Venus, the humans might claim the same for a sphere centered on Earth.
That would have the side-benefit of making Luna part of our domain,
anyway. That way the 'national' space moves along with the planet(s)
it contains.
You could end up with Galactic Atlases showing the settled area for
given empires overlapping each other every which way, in this scenario
(call it scenario A).
Or would that happen?
Timothy Zahn (IIRC) suggested in a story that even under those
circumstances, the settled zones would _not_ interpenetate, because
resources are scarce and even a world you can't live on or settle
represents a source of metals, etc. ISTR that he postulated for the
sake of the story that asteroid belts are rare, though, to make
planets more valuable as mineral deposits.
Opinions? What would the borders between interstellar species
_actually_ look like, assuming FTL turns out to be possible?
Shermanlee
David Dyer-Bennet
> Opinions? What would the borders between interstellar species
> _actually_ look like, assuming FTL turns out to be possible?
Among many other things, it depends on the FTL technology. In _Mote_,
they note that they think of their empire as contiguous, but actually
never go into the space between stars because of their Jump
technology. And then the motie probe comes out of that space at
them.
Similarly, in David Weber's Honorverse, and in Lois Bujold's
Vorkosigan universe, the details of what strongpoints (enforcable
borders) are important depend a lot on the details of the particular
FTL technology involved.
I've also seen at least one author have species who use different
types of planets interpenetrate.
--
David Dyer-Bennet, dd...@dd-b.net / http://www.dd-b.net/dd-b/
John Dyer-Bennet 1915-2002 Memorial Site http://john.dyer-bennet.net
Dragaera mailing lists, see http://dragaera.info
Matt Austern
> sherm...@hotmail.com (Johnny1A) writes:
>
> > Opinions? What would the borders between interstellar species
> > _actually_ look like, assuming FTL turns out to be possible?
>
> Among many other things, it depends on the FTL technology. In _Mote_,
> they note that they think of their empire as contiguous, but actually
> never go into the space between stars because of their Jump
> technology. And then the motie probe comes out of that space at
> them.
>
> Similarly, in David Weber's Honorverse, and in Lois Bujold's
> Vorkosigan universe, the details of what strongpoints (enforcable
> borders) are important depend a lot on the details of the particular
> FTL technology involved.
>
> I've also seen at least one author have species who use different
> types of planets interpenetrate.
Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry books, for example, and
C. J. Cherryh's Chanur books, and (depending on one's definitions)
perhaps E. E. Smith's Lensman books. Again, I suspect it's not a rare
idea. I'm sure it goes back to the very beginnings of space opera.
Jordan179
> David Dyer-Bennet <dd...@dd-b.net> writes:
>
> Poul Anderson's Dominic Flandry books, for example, and
> C. J. Cherryh's Chanur books, and (depending on one's definitions)
> perhaps E. E. Smith's Lensman books. Again, I suspect it's not a rare
> idea. I'm sure it goes back to the very beginnings of space opera.
In both the Flandry and Lensman series, for instance, the
biochemically different aliens were allowed to colonize planets in the
Solar System, so little was the concern over the overlap of their
spheres. (In the case of the Empire, this was largely because they
didn't want the headache of fighting a war with powerful numerous
utterly alien beings; in the case of Civilization, because it was
inherently peaceful).
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
Mark Atwood
>
> You could end up with Galactic Atlases showing the settled area for
> given empires overlapping each other every which way, in this scenario
> (call it scenario A).
>
> Or would that happen?
This is exactly how it works in Phil Foglio's "Buck Godot" stories.
The Gallimaphry is not a "region" of the Galaxy, but instead a
consortium of all the species that can actually understand each other.
Basically, all the non-transcendent (mostly) four-dimentional
matter-based species that live in or can survive on a oxynitro
atmosphere plantary surface.
There are other such "galactic governments", ferex, of all the plasma,
coherent light, and pure energy beings that live in hard vacuum or in
steller corona.
The Prime Movers act as the translaters/diplomates between the realms.
--
Mark Atwood | Well done is better than well said.
m...@pobox.com |
http://www.pobox.com/~mra