Andrea thinks that current technology would be able to reach Proxima Centauri in 92 years;
he has well-informed ideas about what will happen next in the UK, the US and elsewhere but I will wait to see how his ideas pan out;
he has been listening to Empire Of Silence by Christopher Ruocchio.
Comments:
I have not kept up with recent sf!;
this novel - correct me if I am wrong - projects Roman historical situations into an interstellar future - like some we know already (Asimov, Anderson);
the novel involves STL interstellar flight with suspended animation and instantaneous interstellar communication by quantum entanglement.
We are familiar with these themes in sf: a (maybe) credible means of interstellar travel and a scientific rationale for instantaneous communication.
One problem is that such concepts begin to sound like cliches but I would obviously have to read the book to judge for myself and I am reading or rereading more than enough already.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
I also thought of a Chinese empire ruling the world and extending at least to Mars, as in Wingrove's CHUNG KUO series.
Analogies were made to the Roman Empire in Anderson's Technic series, but I think it would be mistaken to press them too far. The Terran Empire had many real and substantial differences from the Roman.
I don't often quote Asimov, but this bit from his poem "The Foundation of S.F. Success" (EARTH IS ROOM ENOUGH, Fawcett Crest/Doubleday [1957], page 55) is appropriate: "Take an Empire that was Roman and you'll find it is at / home in all the starry Milky Way."
I can see STL interstellar travel as being possible, but I am very skeptical about instantaneous interstellar communication.
Ad astra! Sean
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