Comments on Rocketpunk Manifesto: Science Fiction, Hard and Otherwise

Alas, I wasn't even aware of it!

2009-08-13T11:13:04.753-07:00

Alas, I wasn't even aware of it!

As an aside, I wonder if you caught Virtuality a f...

2009-08-13T00:58:55.102-07:00

As an aside, I wonder if you caught Virtuality a few weeks back. I was really very pleased, both at the drama, and at the science, which, seeing as it was good, had rockets, and was on Fox, entailed it was doomed. But no space shootouts at all, a ship with a gimballed centrifuge and an Orion drive on an appropriately long journey to a real star, with attention paid to how they can pass the time (even got the time dilation math right.) Makes for a pleasant two hours of SF harder than you can usually find in visual mediums.

I have a theory about 'The Cold Equations.'...

2009-08-10T13:02:05.701-07:00

I have a theory about 'The Cold Equations.' People who come from a literature/humanities background (and who are often rather intimidated by math anyway) accept the premise as given and therefore are moved by the story.

People with a science or engineering background (or simply interested in those things), on the other hand, immediately try to figure out how to save the girl - and they more they consider it, the more holes they find in the plot.

Anon - I'll argue that the James Bond model works better in film than books, because you can't so easily go back to examine possible plot holes. Even in the DVD era, you can't go back while watching in the theater, and probably don't go back the first time you watch it on DVD.

That said, yes, 'realism' can only embrace current theory, which is almost certainly not the Last Word. On the other hand, new theories usually don't invalidate earlier ones under 'normal' conditions. We still use Newton to analyse orbits, and for that matter most terrestrial motion is effectively Aristotelian - if your car runs out of gas, it stops; it doesn't coast indefinitely on in the direction it was going. :-)

Citizen Joe, I used to think the ground crew and m...

2009-08-10T12:44:32.904-07:00

Citizen Joe, I used to think the ground crew and mission planners were sadists. Now I think they're producers for a reality TV show.

Survivor: Starship! Now with exterior cameras!

Ian_M

It still sounds like he was set up for failure. W...

2009-08-10T07:46:55.325-07:00

It still sounds like he was set up for failure. When you put a man's life on the line by flying a plane or piloting a space ship, you must account for inevitable problems. Airplanes fly with more fuel than they need. Often this extra fuel means that their landing gear can't handle the landing. So, once they get close, the either dump fuel or run dirty to burn off the excess. Proper landing should involve attaining an orbit (sircraft placed in holding pattern), getting appropriate landing instructions (clearance from the tower), and then finally coming in for the landing. If you don't have enough play to deal with a hundred pound kid, then you shouldn't have been sent out there manned. Again I say that that pilot was never intended to survive and the kid was planted there on purpose. It actually sounds more like a Kobiyashi Maru scenario from Star Trek.

Citizen Joe: If I remember the story correctly, it...

2009-08-09T15:05:14.322-07:00

Citizen Joe: If I remember the story correctly, it wasn't that the ship wasn't fast enough to reach it's target destination due to the existence of a stow away. Rather the problem is the slowing down part. The thing is (suppose to be) designed and fueled only to have enough DeltaV to get to its destination and land safely.

Though then again, if enough people in the future did read the story, it'll be a lesson of what NOT to do before an emergency launch on a craft to haul only so many kilograms of mass besides the craft's own and propellant.

- Sabersonic

Wouldn't it have already been too late to ejec...

2009-08-09T10:50:17.209-07:00

Wouldn't it have already been too late to eject her? You need a certain speed by the time your booster rockets give up. If you don't have it, you don't have it. Ejecting someone after that isn't going to make you go any faster. Basically, you've already missed your window and should abort the mission because it cannot be salvaged. At that point you should be trying to rescue both lives.

In order to make up the lost velocity, you'd have to eject her at like mach 7 or something ridiculously fast.

Now if he was on some sort of ion drive or high Isp low thrust system, then her mass might affect things. But that means a long duration trip and there's no way they'd put a person on that trip and cut things that close. If they did that sort of thing, then it was designed by the ground crew as a one way trip with no intention of letting the pilot survive. At that point, the girl probably wasn't 'accidentally missed' but was intentionally placed there to sabotage the mission... and she probably knew too much as well. Obviously, it is a case of the aerospace manufacturer making promises that it couldn't keep and used the girl as an excuse to buy time.

Mark - They did, when they opened the airlock to s...

2009-08-09T10:16:36.609-07:00

Mark - They did, when they opened the airlock to space her.

Ian_M

I think there are two schools of thought for that:...

2009-08-09T04:37:19.533-07:00

I think there are two schools of thought for that: Wizard of Oz and James Bond.

The Oz model uses real examples of physics as a smokescreen so that you don't notice that magic is going on behind the curtain. The distraction is usually enough unless someone pulls back the curtain.

The James Bond model comes right out in the first scene with something so far out there that the rest of the story is plausible by comparison. It grabs the audience at the start when they are most willing and sets the stage. This also works for the "How did I get into this mess?" stories which start at some ridiculous point in the story and then flash back and build up the suspension through a series of events.

On a different note, I'll point out again that 'hard scifi' is really just current theory. It is inherently murky because we really don't have the perfect understanding of the universe that an author needs. I think internal consistency is more important. Avoid the unintended consequences. I can accept a setting with reactionless drives, but if that setting doesn't also have relativistic weapons (putting said drive on an asteroid) then the suspension of disbelief fails. So physics defying technology needs to play an important part of the story, or you're just better off not having it.

every time I remember "the cold equations&quo...

2009-08-09T04:32:37.812-07:00

every time I remember "the cold equations" I think of another way she could have been saved. And I remember my english teacher going on about how it was an example of "good sci-fi". urgh. (even if everything was bolted down, they could have released her weight in air!)

-Mark

There are two motivations for 'realism' in...

2009-08-08T20:12:16.985-07:00

There are two motivations for 'realism' in SF. A secondary one is to describe how things might plausibly happen in the future - but for every hit that SF writers have scored, they've had many and often entertaining misses. (Which after all is largely what has given rise to steampunk, and possibly rocketpunk.

But by far the main purpose of 'realism' is as an aid to fakery, to help sustain the willing suspension of disbelief.

"That said, the, um, hard truth is that even ...

2009-08-08T18:41:21.143-07:00

"That said, the, um, hard truth is that even most of hard SF is, in its heart of hearts, space opera. My posts on space warfare are the most popular I've done on this blog, and probably are what brought a good many of you here. From a Realistic [TM] perspective, space armadas or 'constellations' are none too likely – it is indicative that even though the Space Age began amid superpower rivalry and continued that way for a generation, neither side ever found reason to build and deploy space warcraft. But it makes for cool space opera."

I have to agree! people want just so much realisim in a story...after all, we read any fiction to fire up our imagination not (usually) to increase our store of knowledge.

Ferrell

Carla - Apparently it isn't Sir Walter Scott&#...

2009-08-08T11:31:50.561-07:00

Carla - Apparently it isn't Sir Walter Scott's fault, either - according to Wikipedia, at least, the movie was not based on his book.

Ian_M - Thank you for the potted summary :-) It s...

2009-08-08T07:49:25.620-07:00

Ian_M - Thank you for the potted summary :-) It sounds absolutely dire.

Rick - Ah, yes, that Rob Roy film. A fine example of the Braveheart school of film-making.

They could have even shown the event in space and ...

2009-08-08T06:59:29.386-07:00

They could have even shown the event in space and then cut ahead several months where the astronomer develops the theory of the missing asteroid and only just spots the incoming meteor with a few days left in the trip. There's just so many ways they could have done things that would have made more sense...

OK, I'm going to forget about it now, or it will just keep eating away at me.

Wow, a meteor going 1000 km/s plus - now that'...

2009-08-07T21:12:10.598-07:00

Wow, a meteor going 1000 km/s plus - now that's impressive!

It doesn't even make sense from dramatic perspective. A few months would be just the thing to get a little soap opera going, but I guess they wanted to cut to the chase.

Oh, if we're going on to rants about bad scifi...

2009-08-07T12:52:57.517-07:00

Oh, if we're going on to rants about bad scifi, let me bring up the recent TV movie Meteor. Ugg... The initial premise, while conceivable, completely ignored the reasonable travel time from the asteroid belt to Earth. Synopsis: Comet hits a huge asteroid in the belt and it heads for Earth. The 'heralds' show up within 24 hours of impact and the big rock is due in less than 48. I'm sure there was some sort of drama where everyone tries to make peace with their lives and all that, but I couldn't get by that huge gaff. If they had simply used months instead of days, I probably could have watched it. But there is no way anything could survive the momentum transfer that would drive a rock from the asteroid belt to Earth in 48 hours.

Ian - I hadn't even thought of some of the poi...

2009-08-07T11:20:38.590-07:00

Ian - I hadn't even thought of some of the points you make! But yeah, I hate plots that depend on stupidity, especially on the part of the hero.

I walked out of the movie 'Rob Roy.' First Our Hero sends his friend riding across the 18th century Highlands, at night, after letting everyone know the friend is carrying a bag of gold coins. Then, he leaves wife Jessica Lange (and their children) unprotected, because of course no one would ever imagine that the 18th century English might attack by boat.

Two strikes and I'm out! :-)

Roadtripper - I don't recall elevators from (m...

2009-08-07T11:10:05.946-07:00

Roadtripper - I don't recall elevators from (most of) the 70s, though I'm sure the idea was around. I first encountered it in Clarke's Fountains of Paradise, which I see dates to 1979. But my impression is that it only became a fashionable SF and space-geek trope well into the 90s.

That said, it's a fair point that after some point particular ideas cease to be fads and become more or less permanent tropes.

Carla - Well, yeah, all fiction manipulates the reader. I suppose I'm speaking of heavy-handedness, as in the example you give about Claudius. (Really, of the Julio-Claudian emperors he seems one of the least likely to gloat in that particular way. Nero or Caligula, on the other hand ...)

Carla - The Cold Equations is a particularly heavy...

2009-08-07T11:03:19.743-07:00

Carla - The Cold Equations is a particularly heavy-handed short story. All stories manipulate the reader, but this one is downright Spielbergian in its unsubtle yanking of the reader's chain. And the plot requires that all the people in the story be fools.

- The stowaway, who sneaks aboard an emergency medical craft because she wants to visit her brother in the colonies.

- The pilot and 'ground crew', who don't do a full inspection of the ship before takeoff despite the fact that the craft is designed with absolutely no margin for error.

- The engineers, who designed the craft with absolutely no margin for error but left in an unneeded storage closet for stowaways to hide in.

- The unmentioned emergency planners, who decided to deliver the everyone-dies-if-they-don't-get-it medicine by the futuristic equivalent of a dogsled outfitted by the Scott Expedition.

- The pilot, for throwing the girl out the airlock rather than, say, his chair and bunk.

I'm all for stories that show people forced into making hard choices. But in this case the characters were railroaded into the editor's* preferred fate.

* I checked and it looks like John W. Campbell demanded that the writer, Tom Godwin, change the ending so the girl died. That makes a certain amount of sense. People were always disposable in Campbell's vision of the future.

Ian_M

"Now I can come out of the closet as a non-fa...

2009-08-07T09:34:11.992-07:00

"Now I can come out of the closet as a non-fan too. 'The Cold Equations' is a chain jerker, manipulating the reader. It is like having the bad guy stomp a kitten just so we know he's baaaaad"

I can't comment on 'The Cold Equations'. However, don't all stories manipulate the reader to some degree? Is it a matter of heavy-handedness / obviousness (like the kitten-stomper, or in one novel I read of the Roman invasion of Britain, the Emperor Claudius stopping to gloat after his elephant had trodden on a little girl), or am I missing something?

Back in the 70's the Space Elevator concept mi...

2009-08-07T07:07:55.177-07:00

Back in the 70's the Space Elevator concept might have looked like a 'Fad of the Decade.' But fascination with the idea persisted into the 80's, surged in the 90's when the discovery of buckytubes made it look more plausible than ever, and refuses to go away in the 00's. If SF authors continue playing with the idea for a few more years, it'll enter its fifth decade. When does this stop being a fad?

Rt

Ian - Now I can come out of the closet as a non-fa...

2009-08-06T20:41:38.061-07:00

Ian - Now I can come out of the closet as a non-fan too. 'The Cold Equations' is a chain jerker, manipulating the reader. It is like having the bad guy stomp a kitten just so we know he's baaaaad.

Sabersonic - One thing that quickly dates a lot of hard SF is the Fad of the Decade, which by next decade is likely passé. I suspect elevators might fall into that category, and I'm pretty near sure that magico-nanotech will.

In contrast, much of Clarke and 50s vintage Heinlein stands up well, including Starship Troopers (IMHO one of the last good books he wrote; starting to show his later bad habits but not overwhelmed by them).

Heinlein's Between Planets starts with a kid on horseback answering his phone. Heinlein makes no special deal about it, and the reader today would think nothing of it ... but of course would miss how it read in the 50s and 60s.

To Rick: Actually, I meant to say that the only st...

2009-08-06T19:29:06.793-07:00

To Rick: Actually, I meant to say that the only stories I myself have read that is remotely considered Hard were "The Cold Equations" and "Starship Troopers". Sorry for the misconseption. *Knocks on own skull* Dumb, dumb.

Though the arguments on Hard SF being dated in a few years is an interesting point. Especially in the technical matters of how a particular piece of technology or physics phenomenon is explained to the reader such as the one example given on Atomic Rockets where what sounded like a modern cell phone for a book written in the early to mid twentieth century and the illusion is destroyed when the hero of the story pulls out the wax disk. The suspension of disbelief and plausibility can be easily destroyed if the technology described betrays the decade to which it was written. It would appear that the more technical and accurate the technology and science used in the book, the less standing power it has over time compared to more softer SF whose technology is either littered with technobable that would give Star Trek a run for its money or the actual workings are so obscure and briefly mentioned that they hold decades after they're written if only because fans of the story are still trying to explain in plausible scientific theories as to how ti all works out.

Hard Sci-Fi as we know it is a trick upon itself, a very difficult trick that only a few have mastered that balances technical plausibility with plot and characters that one can understand and relate to. A balance that becomes an enjoyable read. The Author is either too technical and the book shows its age in only scant years since its publication, or knows enough about story telling that it keeps the suspension of disbelief that is kept taunt decades or more since it is first put to paper but with the scientific accuracy of a fifth grader with an all F report card if one looks at it hard enough.

- Sabersonic

Rick - She hid in the broom closet. She wasn't...

2009-08-06T13:38:48.632-07:00

Rick - She hid in the broom closet. She wasn't noticed because if she had been found (Say, during a simple pre-flight inspection that you would expect on a no margin for error craft) the author wouldn't have been able to lecture us about The World Is A Hard Place And You're All A Bunch Of Fools For Thinking Otherwise.

Lousy engineering, an idiot-plot, and a big ol' bumper sticker saying 'Writer On Board'. I'm not a fan.

Ian_M