As a matter of fact, World Without Stars and After Doomsday each have a unique setting. In World Without Stars, a spaceship can make an instantaneous jump not only to another planetary system but even to another galaxy but must first accelerate to the relative velocity of its destination system or galaxy. Thus, any space journey does after all take time. However, human beings have unlimited time because, thanks to the antithanatic, they die only by accident or violence, not from disease or old age, and memories must be artificially edited so that a lot of people write journals. How long would they remain recognizably human?
In After Doomsday, a spaceship can cross the galaxy in months although there is no mention of any extra-galactic travel because there is more than enough to occupy a space travelling species not only within this galaxy but even in an immediate vicinity within the galaxy. There are a hundred billion stars, at least half of them with at least one life-bearing planet and many of these bearing intelligent life.
The superlight drive was invented once or many times. Some species explore. Others learn from the explorers. There is usually nothing to fear. There is room for all. Each planet is economically and politically self-sufficient. Most races are primitive or uninterested in space travel. However, among the few that are industrialized and outward looking, superlight tech spreads randomly like dandelion seeds. There is tourism and trade in non-essentials but each planet deals regularly only with others in its own immediate civilization-cluster because anything more than that would be too much. There are a million clusters numbering anything from one to one hundred planets.
A hundred and fifty years ago, a race that had been exploring space for centuries discovered Monwaing. Twenty years ago, the Monwaingi discovered Earth. A language of the first spacefaring race in a cluster is adapted for inter-species communication. Goldberg has studied scientific texts in Tantha and Uru as well as in translation. There is a sudden explosion of knowledge.
This novel is right about the size of the galaxy but optimistic about superlight and the number of intelligent species.
3 comments:
If they had to edit their memories, they'd remain human because their memories would be limited.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Also, possibly in a comment to me, you suggested memory editing would not be necessary because humans would simply forget memories they did not need.
Ad astra! Sean
"but must first accelerate to the relative velocity of its destination system"
That struck me as a plot hole that was put in to create the problem the humans had.
Jump to a point near the destination solar system such that the motion of the spaceship is toward the destination and then decelerate to bring the spaceship to a halt near the destination.
If you want to investigate a previously unvisited star jump to where your intrinsic velocity will take you through the planetary system, make observation as you pass through to see what is most worth going to and jump to where intrinsic velocity will take you if you decelerate appropriately.
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