Hard Science Made Stupid: Mayflower II (Stephen Baxter)
James Nicoll
As I've often said, I'm a fan of hard SF. No, it's more like I
am addicted to it, even the stepped-on 20 times and cut with powered
milk and rat-poison sort of hard SF. This gets us to Stephen Baxter's
_Mayflower II_, published last year in a limited edition from PS
Publishing. In one of the great tragedies of publishing, it was not
a limited enough edition and so I have read it.
There are two main problems areas with "Mayflower II", how
it leaves the solar system and what it does once it has left.
Leaving the Solar System:
The hapless wretches in this story have the unenviable position
of living next to a hegemonist, expansionist authoritarian regime [HEAR]
and of having citizens whose very nature offends said HEAR. Clearly, they
are for the chop, sooner rather than later. What to do?
The solution they hit on is to build a fleet of generation
starships and light out for distant destinations, hoping that the HEAR
will not detect them and then track them down to destroy them. Since
HEAR has fast FTL ships, this plan means that stealth is essential,
which given the tremendous difficulty of stealth in space [1] is quite
a challenge. It's also moot because the very first thing the Mayflower II
does is race deep into the heart of HEAR territory to use Jupiter for
a bit of free boost and for free redirection.
Why is this a bad idea? Well, given that a BOTEC seems to indicate
that the Mayflower's drive is visible over something like 10 light years,
choosing a path that takes them within 5 AU (or 1/126,000th of 10 ly) of
Earth, the center for the HEAR, would appear to undermine an already dubious
stealth ability. It's actually even worse, because the HEAR control the
system so the nearest sensors are likely to be much less than 5 AU away.
The reason they do this is to pick up a little extra velocity
from a Jupiter fly-by. It would be _very_ little, on the order of 60 km/s,
which seems rather pointless given that their cruise velocity is about
150,000 km/s and given that they accelerate at a good chunk of a gee
all the way from Port Sol, out in the Kuiper Belt. Despite the fact
that their approach to stealth is about as effective as covertly
sneaking into the USA by running naked through the Oval Office while
waving road flares and wearing musical pasties, the Mayflower II and
its fellow generation starships manage to make it into deepest space
untouched.
Flight plans:
A possible reason why the HEARs don't bother to swat the MFII is
that to date (in this case, thousands of years in the future), no generation
ship has ever managed to complete its mission. Our gallant heros are aware
of this and so they try to set up social systems to prevent the eventual
collapse of shipboard culture into barbarism. Rusel, the protagonist, is
selected to be one of the lucky few who are granted immortality so that
they can provide continuity to the ship. Alas, the immortality is flawed
and most of the "immortals" die after only a few centuries. Rusel is left
to manage the ship's cultural continuity by himself.
The first significant error the MFII steering committee makes
is to select a nearby dwarf galaxy as their eventual destination. Although
the target galaxy is nearby as these things go, it is distant enough that
the ship will take 50,000 years to reach it, more than enough time to allow
undesirable trends to play out.
Have I mentioned that no generation ship has ever reached its
destination in this universe? So perhaps less ambition and more focus
on getting there alive is what is called for.
The other error the selection committee (well, mostly one person
but I assume some humaniform rubber stamps were involved) makes is that
Rusel is as passive as a seat cushion. When he is saddled with the
tremendous responsibility of safeguarding his community, he elects to
decline into a bemused fog, never bothering to replace any of his dead
"immortal" companions, apparently unable to pay enough attention to the
goings-on around him to spot unfortunate social trends (such as the tendency
of the people in charge of the ships eugenic programs to deliberately
breed intelligence out of the passengers).
Not surprisingly, things go to hell under his neglect. The
passengers speciate into two different non-intelligence hominid species,
with necessary technical skills preserved only because they have been
put into the service of sexual selection. Rusel's primary role is to
provide a familiar point of view to watch the evolution of these new
hominid species. Although he does intervene from time to time, it is
generally too late and completely ineffectual.
Also unsurprisingly (given that they are expansionist and have
FTL) the human culture back home does find the Mayflower II. Because so
much time has passed, the Sol-based humans have mellowed quite a bit
(while sticking closer to the current model of homo sapiens sapiens)
and so this part of the story isn't a tragedy. Of course, it doesn't
need to be, because the hominid passengers have become something closer
to chimps [2] than people, and not those nice chimps who used to be on
TV when I was a kid, either.
I imagine that this story was supposed to let Baxter play with
his current interest in evolutionary biology (which always seems to
involve human descendents who are incapable of rational thought as
the meanest Conservative party member) as well as being a tragedy.
The tragedy was undermined for me by the fact that no real attempt
was made to avoid it, in part because the founder of the ship-culture
made the worst possible choice she could have with regards to selecting
her immortals. The fact that the Xeelee universe has always been a
setting whose humans could not be trusted with soft pillows, let
alone starships and pussient weapons of mass destruction, doesn't
increase my appreciation for this mess any.
I remain completely baffled why Baxter is the name he is
with hard SF. He doesn't think things through (as the "race into
enemy territory to gain the velocity represented by about six hours
of acceleration"), can't do the math (or he wouldn't think ships
visible from 10 light years or more are stealthy) and his characters
are the very worst kind of useless nit wits. Why should we care that
stupid people did a stupid thing that ended in needless tragedy?
And yet despite the multiple and obvious flaws in this piece of
crap, it's made it into several collections and is mentioned as a
possible Hugo nominee. What are people thinking?
1: www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3w.html
I didn't get permission from the owner of the web-site to
quote this or John Schilling to quote him, so I can only refer you
to the page in question. Note that the equation for the distance
at which we can spot a ship under active boost is only for current
sensor technology. The future's will be better.
Assuming Nd = 0.95 for the MFII, its drive should be visible
from about 10 light years, given the dimensions given in the story.
The numbers are much better if it "runs silent"; @ 285 K, the ship
might be visible at 10 AU, quite a small distance in interstellar space.
2: Including gait, according to one off handed comment.
--
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http://www.marryanamerican.ca
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
Gene Ward Smith
> The other error the selection committee (well, mostly one person
> but I assume some humaniform rubber stamps were involved) makes is that
> Rusel is as passive as a seat cushion. When he is saddled with the
> tremendous responsibility of safeguarding his community, he elects to
> decline into a bemused fog, never bothering to replace any of his dead
> "immortal" companions, apparently unable to pay enough attention to the
> goings-on around him to spot unfortunate social trends (such as the
> tendency of the people in charge of the ships eugenic programs to
> deliberately breed intelligence out of the passengers).
I think that must have happened before they left.
James Nicoll
Jell-O with a straw without accidently removing an eye but these particular
humans start off no stupider than than any other human of their era and
proceed to breed themselves into imbecility. Well, farther into imbecility.
Sea Wasp
(snip long horror story)
You know, James, I'm almost ready to rip my eyes out of their sockets
just from your DESCRIPTION. Only a Nicoll could survive reading the
actual thing. We salute you. Dear GOG!
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://www.livejournal.com/users/seawasp/
Moron
coincedence that I happened to be reading a book by said author this
fine siberian day, but I would like to rant about "Space". There is a
section where a character is in orbit about Venus. She is talking to
someone on Earth's moon. Reference is made to a time delay without
mentioning what this delay is. Baxter gets this way off. Baxter thinks
that a message can be sent between Venus and Earth, using conventional
light-speed means in a few seconds.
AAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I was enjoying this book up until now (apart from that quantum
entanglement bollocks which made absolutley no sense at all. Come to
think of it, why does he even mention quantum entanglement when the
gates still have to send messages through realspace at light-speed
rates?).
Moron
Wayne Throop
: Baxter thinks that a message can be sent between Venus and Earth,
: using conventional light-speed means in a few seconds.
Well sure. For sufficiently large values of "a few".
As in, something like 120 to 900 seconds, depending.
: I was enjoying this book up until now (apart from that quantum
: entanglement bollocks which made absolutley no sense at all. Come to
: think of it, why does he even mention quantum entanglement when the
: gates still have to send messages through realspace at light-speed
: rates?).
Because quantum entanglement is very fasionable this season?
Quantum entanglement is the new black.
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Matthew Green
> : matthew...@ntlworld.com (Moron)
> : Baxter thinks that a message can be sent between Venus and Earth,
> : using conventional light-speed means in a few seconds.
>
> Well sure. For sufficiently large values of "a few".
> As in, something like 120 to 900 seconds, depending.
>
It's very clear by the context that the earth and back lag is no more
than a very small number of seconds. Remember, this is earth and back
lag. At the closest point this should be twice that 120 seconds
minimum.
(hopefully this post will appear under my real name, rather than
Moron, for anybody who's wondering).
rja.ca...@excite.com
I suppose it doesn't help a lot if I mention that I own a couple of
digital radio receivers, and a station's signal comes through on FM a
couple of seconds ahead of either digital edition of the same thing.
So there could be a digital encoding lag, then transmission by quantum
entanglement (he writes glibly), then a digital decoding lag.
Michael Grosberg
James Nicoll wrote:
> As I've often said, I'm a fan of hard SF. No, it's more like I
> am addicted to it, even the stepped-on 20 times and cut with powered
> milk and rat-poison sort of hard SF. This gets us to Stephen Baxter's
> _Mayflower II_, published last year in a limited edition from PS
> Publishing. In one of the great tragedies of publishing, it was not
> a limited enough edition and so I have read it.
It's BAXTER. what were you expecting?
It used to be that Hard SF writers scrificed plot and character in
favour of ideas and good science. Baxter has the tendency to sacrifice
plot and character in favour of wonky science that a five year old can
find the flaws in.
I mean, even with my largely forgotten high school physics education I
can easily see the science gaffes in his stories ( I only read _Vacuum
Diagrams_. it was enough for me).
By the way, the synopsis reminded me of the similarily titled
_Mayflies_, by Kevin O'donnell (This is a real person, right? I know
Barry Malzberg used the pen name K. M. O'Donnell, but the ISFDB says
these are two different authors)
James Nicoll
Yep, Kevin O'Donnell is a real writer (now retired, I believe).
One of the last hurrah of the psi-crowd in SF as I recall, although he'd
dropped that by his last few books. I quite liked his _War of Oblivion_,
which takes the rather unusual view that a general civil uprising could
well have undesirable side-effects, particularly in societies heavy on
infrastructure. Of course, if that were true the Taiping Rebellion would
have killed more than a handful of people. SF authors, sheesh.
There were definitely similarities between _Mayflies_ and
_Mayflower II_. The reason _Mayflies_ didn't bug me was that a lot
of the neglect of the crew was because the command was divided due
to the incomplete wiping of the main computer's previous programs,
rather than the one immortal on board being a useless parasite. Also,
O'Donnell does not loathe humans with a spittle-spraying intensity,
not even the ones whose actions are extremely poorly thought out.
Actually, I've read a lot of short fiction recent (the upcoming
Hartwell best of, Dozois' best of, and so on) and it was odd how many
of the stories reminded me of older stories. There was one, for example,
where the point was human no longer had the ability to relate to dogs,
rather like a story discussed recently on this NG. I am not sure if this
is a side effect of having read lots and lots of SF or just that we're
going through a bit of lull in terms of some forms of originality.
Gene Ward Smith
> Yep, Kevin O'Donnell is a real writer (now retired, I believe).
> One of the last hurrah of the psi-crowd in SF as I recall, although
he'd
> dropped that by his last few books.
Eh? Telepathy, etc are alive and well. We even argue a lot about it
when it
is practiced by horses or celery-munching aliens.
Wayne Throop
:: of the last hurrah of the psi-crowd in SF as I recall, although he'd
:: dropped that by his last few books.
: "Gene Ward Smith" <genewa...@gmail.com>
: Eh? Telepathy, etc are alive and well. We even argue a lot about it
: when it is practiced by horses or celery-munching aliens.
Yes, but nobody says "hurrah!" about it anymore.
It's now a more guilty pleasure, about which much
grumbling and snarking occurs. But no hurrahs.
But that does raise a point. Treecats are an example of course, but
I'm blocked on remembering more in recent SF-not-fantasy. That is,
telepathy of the "as-yet-undiscovered force or physical property
that brains can tap into" sort, not the "prosthetic support provided
by implants or sensitive EM monitoring and induction helmets and like
that" sort. I mean, the latter is fairly common in "singularity fiction"
("ratpure for geeks", if you want to sneer). Also cypberpunk-descended
threads of the genre, insofar as that might be considered distinct.
But the former does seem a bit in decline. Or my memory is.
Hm. Babylon 5, of course. But with the life force stuff and the handwaving
surrounding that and the "first one", it could be considered to border
on fantasy. Trek of course. Ditto, onaccounta many aspects of treknology
and trekmythology. Hm. "Rider at the Gate" / "Cloud's Rider", maybe?
But I imagine the "psi-crowd" more refers to "flingers" and the
"McGill Feighan" stories. And that sort of thing seems ever rarer.
James Nicoll
that it had 30-50 years ago. Magic-psi powers were promoted as inevitable
as the coming Singularity.
Sea Wasp
> Yes, but nobody says "hurrah!" about it anymore.
> It's now a more guilty pleasure, about which much
> grumbling and snarking occurs. But no hurrahs.
Speak for yourself. Hurrah! Hurrah! Psicops and Lensmen and Talents
HURRAH!
> But that does raise a point. Treecats are an example of course, but
> I'm blocked on remembering more in recent SF-not-fantasy.
Some of the powers in Hamilton's Night's Dawn trilogy?
>
> Hm. Babylon 5, of course. But with the life force stuff and the handwaving
> surrounding that and the "first one", it could be considered to border
> on fantasy.
Until those hard-SF anti-space opera revisionists manage to drag Doc
Smith off into the Fantasy cubbyhole, Bab5 stays SF too.
Stargate SG-1 gets in that category, too.
Wayne Throop
:: handwaving surrounding that and the "first one", it could be
:: considered to border on fantasy.
: Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
: Until those hard-SF anti-space opera revisionists manage to drag Doc
: Smith off into the Fantasy cubbyhole, Bab5 stays SF too.
I suppose. Smith is older-fashioned, and we're talking recent.
Plus which, Arisians and the Lens, and the denizens of the Hub
and their Uld Powers, just have a slightly different feel to it
than B5 or Trek or Star Wars.
YMMV, but they feel different to me.
Maybe I'm confusing genre convenctions changing over time
for a substantive structural difference.
: Stargate SG-1 gets in that category, too.
Are you sure most or all of the cases there aren't high tech prosthetics?
Arguably even the ascended critters.
Sea Wasp
> :: Hm. Babylon 5, of course. But with the life force stuff and the
> :: handwaving surrounding that and the "first one", it could be
> :: considered to border on fantasy.
>
> : Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
> : Until those hard-SF anti-space opera revisionists manage to drag Doc
> : Smith off into the Fantasy cubbyhole, Bab5 stays SF too.
>
> I suppose. Smith is older-fashioned, and we're talking recent.
> Plus which, Arisians and the Lens, and the denizens of the Hub
> and their Uld Powers, just have a slightly different feel to it
> than B5 or Trek or Star Wars.
>
> YMMV, but they feel different to me.
> Maybe I'm confusing genre convenctions changing over time
> for a substantive structural difference.
Slightly different in places, yes -- but not much different from the
powers mentioned in Skylark DuQuesne that were "inadequately" called
"witchcraft" or "magic".
Horror uses psi a lot more often, yet still with a harder edge to it
than magic -- both Koontz and King did several along those lines.
>
> : Stargate SG-1 gets in that category, too.
>
> Are you sure most or all of the cases there aren't high tech prosthetics?
> Arguably even the ascended critters.
The Nox aren't, as far as I can tell. And I think there's a lot of
examples of Power Without Kewl Gadgetry.
Moriarty
Yes, yes, yes. But did they take mammoths with them?
-Moriarty
--
"Arguing with anonymous strangers on the Internet is a sucker's game
because they almost always turn out to be - or to be indistinguishable
from - self-righteous sixteen-year-olds posessing infinite amounts of
free time." - Neal Stephenson "Cryptonomicon"
Wayne Throop
:: prosthetics? Arguably even the ascended critters.
: Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
: The Nox aren't, as far as I can tell. And I think there's a lot of
: examples of Power Without Kewl Gadgetry.
Ah. But the Nox are self-acknowledged to be deep in the ways of
camouflage and fx, so their appearance of using unaided magic, I took
with a few kilograms of salt. On the other hand, I've only seen a couple
episodes where they appeared.
"We study the mysteries of laser and circuit, crystal and scanner,
holographic demons and invocations of equations. These are the
tools we employ, and we know ... many things."
--- Elric
Steve Coltrin
> : Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
>
> : Stargate SG-1 gets in that category, too.
>
> Are you sure most or all of the cases there aren't high tech prosthetics?
> Arguably even the ascended critters.
The abilities Nirtti was chasing after seem to be classic psi, and I'd
say that if ascension is implemented via Clarke's law it's very not
as advertised.
--
Steve Coltrin spco...@omcl.org Bill Hicks died for your sins
"A group known as the League of Human Dignity helped arrange for Deuel
to be driven to a local livestock scale, where he could be weighed."
- Associated Press
James Gassaway
news:11096...@sheol.org...
> :: Are you sure most or all of the cases there aren't high tech
> :: prosthetics? Arguably even the ascended critters.
>
> : Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
> : The Nox aren't, as far as I can tell. And I think there's a lot of
> : examples of Power Without Kewl Gadgetry.
>
> Ah. But the Nox are self-acknowledged to be deep in the ways of
> camouflage and fx, so their appearance of using unaided magic, I took
> with a few kilograms of salt. On the other hand, I've only seen a couple
> episodes where they appeared.
>
As I recall, in the Stargate universe they are operating on a combination of
"advanced evolution" and tech a couple of tens of thousands of years more
advanced than what we have. They just might be using Kewl Gadgetry. Its
just too advanced for us to recognize it.
(That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :) )
--
Multiversal Mercenaries. You name it, we kill it. Any time, any reality.
ncw...@hotmail.com
Wayne Throop wrote:
>
> Because quantum entanglement is very fasionable this season?
> Quantum entanglement is the new black.
>
Shouldn't that be "Quantum entanglement is the new Quantum black hole"
?
Cheers,
Nigel.
Michael Grosberg
Moron wrote:
> Sigh, sigh sigh sigh, this is for a different book, incredible
> coincedence that I happened to be reading a book by said author this
> fine siberian day, but I would like to rant about "Space". There is a
> section where a character is in orbit about Venus. She is talking to
> someone on Earth's moon. Reference is made to a time delay without
> mentioning what this delay is. Baxter gets this way off. Baxter
thinks
> that a message can be sent between Venus and Earth, using
conventional
> light-speed means in a few seconds.
John C. Wright had similar intra-system conversations in _The Golden
Age_ and the way it was done there was, the tech involved caused each
participant in the conversation to lose consciousness and not be aware
of the passage of time while the message was sent and the reply came
back, so they never noticed the lag and the conversation seemed like
realtime to them(Of course, it still takes hours of objective time).
You can do that if you're immortal, I guess.
Sea Wasp
And one of the things they knew, I suspect, was (A) don't piss off
the Psicops, and (B) Get the hell out of the way when the Shadows are
moving.
Keith Morrison
>>:: Are you sure most or all of the cases there aren't high tech
>>:: prosthetics? Arguably even the ascended critters.
>>
>>: Sea Wasp <seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com>
>>: The Nox aren't, as far as I can tell. And I think there's a lot of
>>: examples of Power Without Kewl Gadgetry.
>>
>>Ah. But the Nox are self-acknowledged to be deep in the ways of
>>camouflage and fx, so their appearance of using unaided magic, I took
>>with a few kilograms of salt. On the other hand, I've only seen a couple
>>episodes where they appeared.
>>
>
> See, they're so good at it that even Hollywood can't find them. :)
>
> As I recall, in the Stargate universe they are operating on a combination of
> "advanced evolution" and tech a couple of tens of thousands of years more
> advanced than what we have. They just might be using Kewl Gadgetry. Its
> just too advanced for us to recognize it.
>
> (That's my story and I'm sticking to it! :) )
Well, if that "advanced evolution" includes some genetic engineering,
they might *be* the Kewl Gadgets.
--
Keith
James Gassaway
news:d0297...@news1.newsguy.com...
Damien R. Sullivan
>Hm. Babylon 5, of course. But with the life force stuff and the handwaving
>surrounding that and the "first one", it could be considered to border
>on fantasy. Trek of course. Ditto, onaccounta many aspects of treknology
>and trekmythology. Hm. "Rider at the Gate" / "Cloud's Rider", maybe?
Firefly had a character with psychic powers of some sort.
Telepathy/farseeing/precognition, or some mix there of.
The Liaden books have increasing mondo psi powers, but I don't know when they
started.
The SF comic Finder mentions 'magic' a few times, and one char seems to have
visions of the past, but for all we can tell that might mean a special link to
some historical archive nanites, or something.
Rider at the Gate is totally classic psi (psychic animals) and 1995 but I
suspect that was a delayed reaction to Mercedes Lackey's telepathic horses,
and conversely Cherryh's been around for a while and might have had the story
idea stewing for a few decades.
Some Stargate SG-1 powers seem mediated, but others (such as Nirrti's
hauktaur) looks like classic psi. I don't know about Farscape.
As for whether life force makes B-5 fantasy, vs. Doc Smith: one might say that
B-5 should have known better. A few people probably still believed in
vitalism back in Smith's day, whereas B-5 was written when molecular biology
was a more developing science. "But it's hubris to think that we know
everything", said JMS. "Yeah, but we're pretty sure our bodies aren't kept
together by life force" said disgruntled fans. "Look, my fighters don't
bank!" said JMS.
And finally I'll give an honorable mention in the other direction to
Kingsbury's _Psychohistorical Crisis_ for taking the psi powers of its source
material (Foundation books) and making something sensible of them.
Actually, does that book count as a mildly Singularity book? It's in large
part about the difficulty/impossibility of someone without a brain enhancing
implant to keep up with the society full of implant-using people, which, after
we throw out stupid asymptote and infinite growth stuff, is what the core
Singularity is all about.
-xx- Damien X-)
Gene Ward Smith
news:d02nk9$e4n$1...@rainier.uits.indiana.edu:
> Rider at the Gate is totally classic psi (psychic animals) and 1995
> but I suspect that was a delayed reaction to Mercedes Lackey's
> telepathic horses, and conversely Cherryh's been around for a while
> and might have had the story idea stewing for a few decades.
I'm waiting for telepathic, celery-munching horses myself. Horses that can
smash through 700 foot high walls of ice, sweeping down and terrorizing the
world out of their petty infighting, dooming all celery to a hideous death,
and finally forming a cartel controlling the world's supply of stategic
Boraxo.
Sea Wasp
> "Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
> news:d0297...@news1.newsguy.com...
>>Well, if that "advanced evolution" includes some genetic engineering,
>>they might *be* the Kewl Gadgets.
>>
>
> With the Asgard at least, I think that's a given.
>
And the difference between "Kewl Powers to Manipulate Matter Far
Beyond What Biology Can Produce, But Still Produced by Genetic
Engineering" and "Psionics" or "Magic" is...?
Earl Colby Pottinger
But can Tree-Cats ride them.
Earl Colby Pottinger
--
I make public email sent to me! Hydrogen Peroxide Rockets, OpenBeos,
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James Gassaway
news:42250618...@sgeobviousinc.com...
> James Gassaway wrote:
> > "Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
> > news:d0297...@news1.newsguy.com...
>
> >>Well, if that "advanced evolution" includes some genetic engineering,
> >>they might *be* the Kewl Gadgets.
> >>
> >
> > With the Asgard at least, I think that's a given.
> >
>
> And the difference between "Kewl Powers to Manipulate Matter Far
> Beyond What Biology Can Produce, But Still Produced by Genetic
> Engineering" and "Psionics" or "Magic" is...?
>
A sufficiently advanced technology? (Not sure if I should put a smilie
after that or not.)
rja.ca...@excite.com
Sea Wasp wrote:
> James Gassaway wrote:
> > "Keith Morrison" <kei...@polarnet.ca> wrote in message
> > news:d0297...@news1.newsguy.com...
>
> >>Well, if that "advanced evolution" includes some genetic
engineering,
> >>they might *be* the Kewl Gadgets.
> >>
> >
> > With the Asgard at least, I think that's a given.
> >
>
> And the difference between "Kewl Powers to Manipulate Matter Far
> Beyond What Biology Can Produce, But Still Produced by Genetic
> Engineering" and "Psionics" or "Magic" is...?
No difference, if each requires you to ignore or discard the generally
understood laws of physics. E.g., "telepathy" by fitting a cell phone
inside your skull, not magic. "Empathy" by sensing pheromones
exceptionally well, not magic. Doing either between different planets
does need magic.
rja.ca...@excite.com
Has it been noticed that they have similar appearance and similar
attitude to bodily survival, to the aliens who save Doctor Doom's life
in _Fantastic Four_ #10, in 1962?
Martin Wisse
Nicoll) wrote:
> There were definitely similarities between _Mayflies_ and
>_Mayflower II_. The reason _Mayflies_ didn't bug me was that a lot
>of the neglect of the crew was because the command was divided due
>to the incomplete wiping of the main computer's previous programs,
>rather than the one immortal on board being a useless parasite. Also,
>O'Donnell does not loathe humans with a spittle-spraying intensity,
>not even the ones whose actions are extremely poorly thought out.
The funny thing though, when you meet Stephen Baxter in person, he is
the nicest, unassuming guy you could ever meet, witty and interesting to
listen to.
Martin Wisse
--
On two occasions I have been asked [by members of Parliament!], `Pray,
Mr. Babbage, if you put into the machine wrong figures, will the right
answers come out?' I am not able rightly to apprehend the kind of
confusion of ideas that could provoke such a question.--Charles Babbage
Kai Henningsen
> I remain completely baffled why Baxter is the name he is
> with hard SF. He doesn't think things through (as the "race into
> enemy territory to gain the velocity represented by about six hours
> of acceleration"), can't do the math (or he wouldn't think ships
> visible from 10 light years or more are stealthy) and his characters
> are the very worst kind of useless nit wits. Why should we care that
> stupid people did a stupid thing that ended in needless tragedy?
> And yet despite the multiple and obvious flaws in this piece of
> crap, it's made it into several collections and is mentioned as a
> possible Hugo nominee. What are people thinking?
Ok, now tell us how you really feel!
(Firmly added Baxter to virtual book-buying killfile (as opposed to
rejecting each individual book).)
Kai
--
http://www.westfalen.de/private/khms/
"... by God I *KNOW* what this network is for, and you can't have it."
- Russ Allbery (r...@stanford.edu)
Wim Lewis
Moron <matthew...@ntlworld.com> wrote:
>I was enjoying this book up until now (apart from that quantum
>entanglement bollocks which made absolutley no sense at all. Come to
>think of it, why does he even mention quantum entanglement when the
>gates still have to send messages through realspace at light-speed
>rates?).
I haven't read "Space", but quantum entanglement lets you transmit
information about an object's quantum state that can't be extracted
for transmission by normal means. You do still need to transmit information
(presumably through a conventional channel) in order to make use of the
entanglement info, though, and this requirement also keeps you from
using QM to break causality (by talking FTL, etc.). Without the
side information you can't distinguish the entanglement effect from
random noise.
At least, that's my understanding of physicists' current understanding
of the topic.
--
Wim Lewis <wi...@hhhh.org>, Seattle, WA, USA. PGP keyID 27F772C1
Bryan Derksen
<seaobvi...@sgeobviousinc.com> wrote:
>Wayne Throop wrote:
>> : Stargate SG-1 gets in that category, too.
>>
>> Are you sure most or all of the cases there aren't high tech prosthetics?
>> Arguably even the ascended critters.
>
> The Nox aren't, as far as I can tell. And I think there's a lot of
>examples of Power Without Kewl Gadgetry.
Normally, the "aliens who become so advanced they turn into glowing
special effects" thing really annoys me. But in the case of the
Ancients, I think they actually did it right; the Ancients spent a
long time studying existing noncorporeal animals and experimenting
with trans-dimensional gadgetry before they developed the technology
necessary to cause themselves to "ascend to a higher plane" - we've
found several of their abandoned ascension labs and experimental
devices over the course of the series so far. It's not something that
"just happens" in that setting.
The humans that wind up developing supernatural-seeming abilities in a
few episodes also aren't doing it spontaneously, or naturally. It
turns out that tendancy was deliberately designed into us by <spoiler>
and also by <spoiler>. It's still not very close to real-world
physics, but at least there's reasonable story logic behind it.
Personally, I think that of the Four Great Races the Asgard seem to be
the junior member that never quite "got it" and are stuck fiddling
around with their clunky corporeal technology trying to figure out
what fundamental concept they've missed. :)
Bryan Derksen
wrote:
>The abilities Nirtti was chasing after seem to be classic psi, and I'd
>say that if ascension is implemented via Clarke's law it's very not
>as advertised.
Spoilers for later seasons of Stargate SG-1 and Atlantis:
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fhpprffbef - gur "frpbaq ribyhgvba" bs gur Napvragf. Gur Napvragf unq
frireny cfv-yvxr cbjref rira orsber gurl nfpraqrq, fb Aveegv znl
npghnyyl or whfg qvttvat hc byq grpuabybtl uvqqra ol gur Napvragf va
bhe trarf. Fur znl be znl abg unir orra njner bs guvf urefrys, gubhtu.