New Hard Sci-Fi story
Say, I almost forgot to let everyone on these lists know that I've added a new SF short story onto my site of High Frontier fiction at http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/hard_s-f.htm. The story is called "Eyes, Shining Back from the Dark" and is at http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/eyeshine.htm
It's the first fiction I've written in about seven years (I've written some articles in that time, but no fiction). This story might be of interest to anyone interested in High Frontier, mega-structures, the speculations of Freeman Dyson, or SETI.
Mike Combs
> Say, I almost forgot to let everyone on these lists know that I've added
> a new SF short story onto my site of High Frontier fiction at
> http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/hard_s-f.htm. The story is called
> "Eyes, Shining Back from the Dark" and is at
> http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/eyeshine.htm
>
> It's the first fiction I've written in about seven years (I've written
> some articles in that time, but no fiction). This story might be of
> interest to anyone interested in High Frontier, mega-structures, the
> speculations of Freeman Dyson, or SETI.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
current chore: I've finally decided to read Kim Stanley Robinson's
Red, Green and Blue Mars series. Ughh, it's tough sledding but I'm
determined to read all of the books in order to understand why some
people are so enamored of them.
A respite into the world of High Frontier is surely the medicine I
need right now :)
TangoMan
--- In ssi_list@... "victoriatangoman"
> current chore: I've finally decided to read Kim Stanley Robinson's
> Red, Green and Blue Mars series. Ughh, it's tough sledding but I'm
> determined to read all of the books in order to understand why some
> people are so enamored of them.
>
> A respite into the world of High Frontier is surely the medicine I
> need right now :)
>
> TangoMan
I just read it. Bravo! Quite clever too.
TangoMan
Watch out, Tango! KSR's series has a devoted following because of its
ability to suck you in. I loved it...
--- In ssi_list@... "Valens Agnitio"
>
> Watch out, Tango! KSR's series has a devoted following because of its
> ability to suck you in. I loved it...
>
> Val
Right now I'm half way through "Red Mars." I'm coming from a decidely
HF perspective and I'm having trouble suspending my disbelief because
I still don't understand the economic rationale for the missions, nor
why the colonists have extensive industrial infrastructure "magically"
available to them. Also, I find highly suspect the terraforming
decisionmaking being made by the 100 colonists rather than on Earth
and the lack of discipline and appeals to anarchy amongst the group.
And on and on . . .
Other than terraforming Mars and sucking wealth from Earth, what are
those colonists doing on Mars? The High Frontier perspective is a huge
pebble in my shoe with regards to believing the plausibility of the story.
Hopefully it gets better. Nevertheless, I'm determined to finish these
books so I can understand their appeal to the Mars crowd, but it's
still a chore at this point.
TangoMan
I believe that the appeal lies in the creation of a fantasy world, like any
good fiction, except that this takes place on Mars, ergo the appeal to the
Mars crowd. I found the social network and its dynamics to be somewhat
unbelivable in the first book as well, and you can rest assured that KSR's
exploration of governmental and social systems doen't end with the few
relatively minor quips you noted. My own reading of these books occurred
just before taking a serious interest in the real possibilites of Mars, and
so I was completely roped in by the terraforming, etc... Of course, since
having the priviledge over the last year of reading the posts in this group,
I am a bit more skeptical of the science. Very grand scale though, and very
entertaining.
markets and economies, I'd be real interested to hear what your take is.
Val
>Date: Sat, 02 Oct 2004 18:51:42 -0000
>
>--- In ssi_list@... "Valens Agnitio"
> >
> > Watch out, Tango! KSR's series has a devoted following because of its
> > ability to suck you in. I loved it...
> >
> > Val
>
>Perhaps my experience will improve as I progress through the books.
>Right now I'm half way through "Red Mars." I'm coming from a decidely
>HF perspective and I'm having trouble suspending my disbelief because
>I still don't understand the economic rationale for the missions, nor
>why the colonists have extensive industrial infrastructure "magically"
>available to them. Also, I find highly suspect the terraforming
>decisionmaking being made by the 100 colonists rather than on Earth
>and the lack of discipline and appeals to anarchy amongst the group.
>And on and on . . .
>
>Other than terraforming Mars and sucking wealth from Earth, what are
>those colonists doing on Mars? The High Frontier perspective is a huge
>pebble in my shoe with regards to believing the plausibility of the story.
>
>Hopefully it gets better. Nevertheless, I'm determined to finish these
>books so I can understand their appeal to the Mars crowd, but it's
>still a chore at this point.
>
>TangoMan
>
Dont just search. Find. Check out the new MSN Search!
Greetings,
I too read the KSR series. Good fiction, OK science fiction.
What appealed to me was the grand writing vision. From the beginning,
ground level, and the build up from there. The multiple volume made
sense for this series. The passage of time and the growth of the
characters was done well.
I would like to see the same thing done for a Space Habitat.
Somebody take the time to set the same thing up from the first plate
through it's completion. More careful attention to the technical
background why each system or lack of it's present and not just for
action/plot development. Better development of characters and their
motivations. What are the government(s) motivation for and against these
individuals?
A great deal of what has been said on this site would be great
'what ifs' to be fleshed out by a careful writer.
What motivates the current crop of Mars Folks? I don't think they
know. Perhaps they could be hooked on a goal as opposed to really
thinking through the entire process of what it is going to take to live
on a foreign/hostile planet.
Steve
volatilis_leo@... writes:
I liked it -- thanks for making it available!
And do you know if it has been tried?
[trying to be vague as to not be a spoiler...]
--Paul Fernhout
Hash: SHA1
done. However the amount of radio noise just the electromagnetic
transportation system would spew would have made it hard to ignore
with radio telescopes trying to do normal observations.
Mitchell James
| I liked it -- thanks for making it available!
| Is this based on a real suggestion by Freeman Dyson BTW?
| And do you know if it has been tried?
| [trying to be vague as to not be a spoiler...]
| --Paul Fernhout
| > Say, I almost forgot to let everyone on these lists know that I've
| added
| > a new SF short story onto my site of High Frontier fiction at
| > http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/hard_s-f.htm. The story is called
| > "Eyes, Shining Back from the Dark" and is at
| > http://members.aol.com/howiecombs/eyeshine.htm
| >
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=TlSN
Regards,
Mike Combs
Message That was an aspect of it I hadn't even thought of. Interesting. It sort of underscores an important point. I'd freely concede that ETs would probably be more likely to be using lasers to communicate with each other across space than radio waves. But that's not the same thing as proving that highly-advanced alien civilizations would be totally quiet in the radio spectrum. One should expect alarge, advanced civilization to be making quiet a racket in the radio band, even if not intentionally communicating there.
Mike Combs
I am as curious as Paul about if this type of observation as been
done. However the amount of radio noise just the electromagnetic
transportation system would spew would have made it hard to ignore
with radio telescopes trying to do normal observations.
Mitchell James
Thanks -- sorry I missed that link at the end.
just use organic technology or something else beyond our understanding
(I think tech. may ultimately exploit the computational nature of
reality, and "computers" will just interface with some sort of deep
computing, so not much need for radio then, or I guess then space
habitats orbiting stars even -- just bubbles of habitable conditions
maintained anywhere in the multi-universe, but that's a ways off. :-).
--Paul Fernhout
Interesting idea about information channels... I was first introduced to
that concept by Greg Bear, of all people, and it sounded darn interesting.
Does anyone have any idea how 'hard' that science is, if at all? Or is it
more of a mental technique to help conceptualize the goings on in the
subatomic realm? Mr. Crowl, perhaps?
Valens-
"Future Shock Levels"
http://yudkowsky.net/sing/shocklevels.html
Excerpt:
"A Shock Level measures the high-tech concepts you can contemplate
without being impressed, frightened, blindly enthusiastic - without
exhibiting future shock. Shock Level Zero or SL0, for example, is
modern technology and the modern-day world, SL1 is virtual reality or an
ecommerce-based economy, SL2 is interstellar travel, medical immortality
or genetic engineering, SL3 is nanotech or human-equivalent AI, and SL4
is the Singularity. The classification is useful because it helps
measure what your audience is ready for; for example, going two Shock
Levels higher will cause people to be shocked, but being seriously
frightened takes three Shock Levels. Obviously this is just a loose
rule of thumb! ..."
I've long been programming (since the late 1970s). So I find it somewhat
natural to explore that notion. And in a sense, computers really have
stolen the thunder from, the space program and attracted attention and
ideas and money. I think I first came across the beginnings of this idea
of taping into the computational nature of reality in a deep way in the
1989 book _Three Scientists and Their Gods: Looking for Meaning in an
Age of Information_ by Robert Wright
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0060972572?v=glance
specifically the interview of Edward Fredkin who maintains the universe
is a computer (not "is like", or "could be thought of as", which has not
endeared him to mainstream physicists).
Here is Google links on Fredkin:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=fredkin+computer&btnG=Google+Search
see for example:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2002/07/01/MN108224.DTL
I've been musing on this idea and refining it some myself. Some stuff
started from before that coming from the AI field and some ideas in it,
specifically one paper I read on simulating brains as multiple levels of
VMs from the early 1980s.
Obviously movies like "The Matrix" or any "Star Trek:TNG" episode where
the characters think they got out of the Holodeck but are still in it
are also inspirations. But there are lots of other variants of it -- and
it is becoming more and more popular. Here is a recent online story
related to it:
_The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect_ -- A Novel by Roger Williams
http://www.kuro5hin.org/prime-intellect/mopiall.html
(a little too graphically violent for me in parts, especially at the
start). That novel's computer is based on a breakthrough with faster
than light information transmission. Even books like "The Chronicles of
Narnia" have issues with changing space and time and levels of reality:
"ever inward, ever upward?" Jack L. Chalker has his "Well of Souls" series.
In fact, these idea sort of tie into Eastern/Hindu notions of
reincarnation even, if you think about it. :-) Essentially, as in the
novel/movie "What Dreams May Come"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0120889/
the notion that people can construct their own reality to an extent (if
not on "earth", then in "heaven", where earth is some testing ground or
"level up"-ing place). [Still, if you are in heaven, how do you know
that isn't a level beyond even that? Even C.S. Lewis has infinite levels
in Narnia's Heaven]
Still, I would think ethical provisions would prevent creating AIs to
fill in for other people acting the way we want them too (implied by
being able to design your own populated city to your tastes), so it
would be a lonely world unless shared by other intelligences with some
forms of rights. Inspired by _The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect_
(where developing consensual rules for worlds shared by two or more
people is a big issue) I've realized that the only ethical way to create
your own simulated universe without AIs is for the simulator to split
your own conscious runtime across all actors (thus running the simulator
X times slower than real time for X AIs, assuming it took a certain
amount of realtime to simulate one AI, obviously this may not be a limit
to future systems if computing continues to grow exponentially).
http://www.kurzweilai.net/articles/art0134.html?printable=1
Your conscious runtime would be split across multiple beings each with
different memories and perspectives (like a computer running several
application programs at once), so even if you set those conditions in
advance, you are not imposing them on others because all the players are
you. And then you end up with the classical "we are all dreams in the
mind of a common god" philosophy or a similar "we are all god but it is
hard to see that unless you are a Buddha" which is again very Eastern.
(Not claiming to be a Buddha here. :-)
I've sometimes mused over what it would take technologically for example
to make the Harry Potter universe real (hack into the substructure of
reality to tie voice commands and gesture recognizers "lumos, tap" into
operating general purpose reality code). And of course, all that may not
work the first time through in the universe, but if we are ancestor
simulations (Google on "the singularity" or "the omega point") then by
exploiting flaws or shortcuts in our underlying simulator we could
access such commands. And of course, such hooks may already exist in
this simulation if we are ancestor simulations, which some color of
"magic" may tap into already (perhaps debugging hooks?). This sort of
stuff happens already in on-line games live Everquest where players
discover a bug and exploit it somehow. Still, going down that route, of
course perhaps, we might be terminated as a simulation run gone out of
bounds if we do that, like you might reboot a computer. Although more
advanced ethical constructs maintained by future beings might limit such
reboots, the same way we now debate about R&D with stem cells or
embryos, and so future beings might debate about the merits of rebooting
a hacked simulator. They might instead rewind the simulation to a stable
point and rerun with minor changes that cause us to make different
decisions. Or might fell compelled to let it run its course.
Still, then you run into the other philosophical issues of if you can
have anything, do anything, be anything, then what would you have, be,
or do, etc? That is an issue glossed over somewhat at the end of this
(otherwise excellent) story:
http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm
The novel mentioned above _The Metamorphosis of Prime Intellect_ does a
much better job of exploring that problem (although I think
incompletely, but it at least makes one think about it, rather than be
rah-rah about immortality and virtual omnipotence).
Anyway, just all speculation at this point. And it could easily wander
off into anything is possible, exploring the occult (which just means
"hidden", which is a relative term) and so on. Yet, computers might have
seemed occult or magical to those living 2000 years ago (Arthur C.
Clark's line, any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable
from magic -- today's laptop might be Merlin's crystal ball?).
Wile I respect Dyson very much, both as a creative thinker and as a
human being, and not having read all his works, it seems to me he stays
away from that sort of speculation, and that weakens some of his
predictions. I'd be curious what he could do with those ideas if he put
his mind to them.
And of course, like much in the computer world (and any magical
storytelling) it often is easiest to just do things the way nature seems
to intend (self-replicating space habitats :-).
The "Mars Base Zero" thread is probably more interesting in the sense of
being grounded in experiment and more on-topic. :-)
--Paul Fernhout
Two points, Mike!
watt, digitized laser,many light years away, would it
perhaps be mistaken for a "natural" phenomenon? If it
was far enough away, other radio noise from such a
civilization might get lost in background noise.
2) While I greatly admire the accomplishment of
SpaceShipOne, I wonder how long it will take to up the
velocity 4 times and the consequent energy input by 16
times? Won't that require a burn time about 20 times
longer (additional fuel to accelerate to 17,500 mph
plus the weight of the fuel itself)?
Tanks,
Gary 7
> That was an aspect of it I hadn't even thought of.
> Interesting.
>
> It sort of underscores an important point. I'd
> freely concede that ETs
> would probably be more likely to be using lasers to
> communicate with
> each other across space than radio waves. But
> that's not the same thing
> as proving that highly-advanced alien civilizations
> would be totally
> quiet in the radio spectrum. One should expect a
> large, advanced
> civilization to be making quiet a racket in the
> radio band, even if not
> intentionally communicating there.
>
> Regards,
>
> Mike Combs
>
Y! Messenger - Communicate in real time. Download now.
1) If we were directly in the line of sight of a tera
watt, digitized laser,many light years away, would it
perhaps be mistaken for a "natural" phenomenon? I don't think it would because the light would be monochromatic. I'm pretty sure there are no natural phenomena which produce monochromatic light, so it would be a definite indicator of technology. Of course it's being directly in the line of sight that's the long odds. 2) While I greatly admire the accomplishment of
SpaceShipOne, I wonder how long it will take to up the
velocity 4 times and the consequent energy input by 16
times? Won't that require a burn time about 20 times
longer (additional fuel to accelerate to 17,500 mph
plus the weight of the fuel itself)? It's been said more than once that if Rutan had to develop an orbital vehicle, he'd have to start from scratch with a new design. But the best hope of CATS enthusiasts right now is that these little suborbital vehicles will be able to do something that government-built orbital spacecraft have never been able to do: fly often, perhaps several times a week. It's been suggested that space travel has not progressed at the same rapid rate as aviation because flights are too infrequent. With frequent space flights, this newindustry may accumulate a large body of operational experience in the same way that we were able to do with passenger air travel. The technology then might start pushing the envelope incrementally. This would take the form of higher and higher ballistic hops to provide tourists with longer and longer periods of 0-G. Each improvement would involve greater amounts of kinetic energy, and greater re-entry heating. One might then eventually get to an orbital vehicle in a series of tiny baby steps. That may sound slow, but certainly the way the government has been doing it for decades isn't getting us anywhere very quickly.
Mike Combs