Stafarers.
As in The Boat Of A Million Years, there is a description of the interstellar spaceship in orbit before it leaves the Solar System.As in World Without Stars, one crew member is obviously unstable right from the start and should not have been accepted for the mission.
As in Tau Zero, there is a very long time dilated interstellar journey - although not as long.
As in the Rustum History, time dilated interstellar explorers return to a changed Earth.
As in the Harvest Of Stars Tetralogy and Genesis, extra-solar life is sparse.
As on previous occasions, I run out of steam this late in the evening.
8 comments:
They do have the problem of getting people who are -willing- to become temporal exiles.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Except for Captain Nansen himself, all of the crew had unsatisfactory reasons for signing the articles. The organizers of the Envoy expedition didn't have much choice except to accept whoever was willing to become such exiles.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, anyone who's remotely qualified.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. But the organizers should have rejected Brent's application.
Ad astra! Sean
He is blatantly unsuitable.
Well, it's not absolutely obvious that he's completely unsuitable.
Also, having an unbalanced gender distribution is an -invitation- for trouble.
It can be handled for -short- voyages, with careful discipline, but given human (and male human) nature it's an invitation for disaster on a long one. All male, all female, or evenly balanced. One of Poul's early novels -- the earth is destroyed in it -- has a European starship with an all-female crew that meets the American one with an all-male one at the end of the book. That was more sensible.
(I think you can make a good argument for segregating the sexes in secondary education, for about the same reasons -- less in the way of distractions.)
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Absolutely, it was a bad mistake to send off "Envoy" with a crew with more males than females. Either all male or female, if not evenly balanced, would have been better.
Ah, I remember AFTER DOOMSDAY! But the problem was the problem was that crew of the all males ship was larger than the all females ship. Which means there would still be a sexual imbalance they finally found each other. One of the characters did suggest some of the women would be willing to have polyandrous relationships with several males. And the same character said she would be willing, for the sake of the race, to have children by several men despite preferring monogamy.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: though artificial insemination would do just as well to maintain genetic diversity. It wasn't part of general culture when AFTER DOOMSDAY was written, though -- used only for animals.
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