"Crude as they were, those early vessels could have made the trip..." (p. 728)
The trade pioneer crew's Muddlin' Through and Dominic Flandry's Hooligan were "crude" compared with Daven Laure's Jaccavrie. Well, there should have been some technological progress in all those intervening millennia after the Long Night although it would be difficult for an author, having imagined a technology and a civilization advanced beyond ours, to continue to imagine further advances into an indefinite future. Jaccavrie is certainly a more sophisticated conscious artificial intelligence than Muddlehead in Muddlin' Through. What changes will a further five millennia bring? The immortals in Poul Anderson's The Boat Of A Million Years agree to reconvene after a further million years but the author cannot possibly take us that far ahead - although he does tackle such Stapledonian time scales with post-organic intelligences in his last sf novel, Genesis.
6 comments:
Kind of speaks to the point that once an author comes up with the handwavium necessary for FTL, it's rare that any make the jump from FTL via Technology A to FTL via Technology B, where Technology B offers a significant "increase" in speed, etc.
Trying to think of an example ... which speaks, presumably, to the point that the entire "FTL travel" conceit is just that, a way to get people from Point A to Point B fast enough so there can be conflict.
Otherwise, how can anyone ever have Bat Durston and the threat of an earth-shattering kaboom?
Logically, once we have a successful theory of everything and have figured out all the technological implications, fundamental technological innovations would cease.
DS; your argument depends on us currently knowing everything there is to know about physics.
This is, to put it mildly, unlikely. In fact, it's completely absurd.
Note that it is not the MO of science fiction to predict the future course of scientific development. You can't do that, scientists can't do that, and in fact nobody can.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I don't know if a "theory of everything" will ever be worked out, but I hope one of those "fundamental technological innovations" will be FTL. That appeals more to me than time traveling!
Ad astra! Sean
SMS - Well, until someone has a better answer, I'll take the universe we can observe. ;)
However, "if" an author asks for the reader to accept "super physics" that allows FTL (of whatever imagined type or subtype) then the question is whether an author is willing to offer a "super physics 2.0" that makes "super physics 1.0" obsolete - i.e., steam engines replacing sails, or aircraft replacing ships, and take a stab at explaining why.
One could imagine some entertaining tales being told of practitioners of "SP 1.0" finding themselves in competition with practitioners of "SP 2.0", so to speak - but if a given author hasn't offered such, it sort of raises the question of why not write fantasy and be done with it?
The difference between fantasy and "science" fiction should be fairly obvious; if an author can't tell their story in a relativistic universe, then just go full boat and buy into Clarke's Third Law and bring in the elves, dragons, and wizards.
Kaor, Dave!
Except you have not convincingly rebutted Mr. Stirling. We still don't know everything it might be possible to know about physics. We still don't have a theory of everything. Hard science fiction writers are allowed to make one or two assumptions in their stories going beyond what is currently known or thought likely to be known in science. Last, no one can predict the future, meaning what is now thought impossible/nearly impossible might happen.
Ad astra! Sean
Post a Comment