Erk
Anyway, I would appreciate your words on it, and want to hear any other ideas you have. And if anyone knows, please tell me if this was used in the EG series.
"Learn your science from science books, not other peoples' science fiction"
--Frederick Pohl (IIRC)
I think that "philotes" are an invention of OSC, although some recent experiments in the phenomena called (IIRC) "quantum inseperability" show similar effects, as well as a phenomena called JS Bell's theorem.
If I understand Bell correctly (I've never seen the math, just a written summary, so suffice to say I don't "understand" it), he said that by breaking apart a molecule and seperating the atoms, changing the quantum mechancial spin of one electron will effect the electrons in the other atom, no matter where it is.
So, this may be a way to transfer INFORMATION, rather than matter/energy. Maybe you could send a huge data packet that a computer can recognize as Captain Kirk, and then allow a computer to drive an energy-to-matter "creator" at the other end.
The problem is, energy CAN be converted to matter, and vice versa, but the conversion factor is HUGE:
E=m*c*c
c-squared is ~90,000,000,000,000,000 meters-squared per second-squared. The energy released by a nuclear bomb is associated with maybe a gram -- or less, I forget exactly -- of direct conversion. Converting Captain Kirk to energy could easily steralize a continent, and a similar amount of energy would need to be harvested to re-create him at the other end.
My advice: don't explain how your transporter works, maybe just make an off-the-cuff comment about quantum inseperability, and leave it at that.
Travelling faster-than-light IS time travel, whether you meant to or not, as you will "arrive" before you "left."
A thought experiment:
You are on the moon, looking at my house through a powerful telescope. The moon is about one light-second (c-sec) away; that is, when you see me wave at you, I actually waved about one second ago!
Let's say I have an instantaneous teleporter in my front yard. I step in and, from my point of view, appear on the moon next to you, instantly.
From your point of view, I appear next to you about one second before you see me step into the teleporter in my front yard!
Larry Niven had a number of outstanding short-stories using "transfer booths," and in _The Ringworld Engineers_ (or was it _The Ringworld Throne_?) he had some fun with light-speed teleportation over multi-light second distances.
In the new mss that I have started they use "gates" to go from one place to another. Since the story is mostly Fantasy---I do not explain them--you get in at one spot and end up at another. Often times the reader will speculate as to what makes them work---but if they work they work.
Just keep them consitant, and make them plausable and you shouldn't have a problem. I.E. if you start out that they can't transport children or can't go through this material---keep it that way. Without a good reason for an exception, you will lose the reader.
Shawn
If you left alpha centauri and came here instantaneously, then looked with a super powered telescope at alpha centauri, you'd still be there, pre-departure. You got to Earth well before the light leaving Alpha Centauri arrived - so the light carrying the images of your pre-departure actions would get to earth long after you did.
If you made several stops, all traveling instantaneously, you could then look to each of those departure points, once you stopped at Earth, and see yourself (yourselves?) predeparture.
You don't technically travel back in time, but you would perceive yourself to have. The difference is, you aren't *actually* in all those places at once - you only appear to be. When we look at the light from other stars, we're actually looking into the past (in some cases the distant past).
But if you remove perception from the equation, and rely on empirical data, you did not actually move backward in time. From a removed perspective (say, that of a blind god who can trace your exact position relative to time, regardless of available light reflection) you would disappear from one place at one moment, and appear in another the moment immediately after you left.
But you beat your image, and relative to an observer on earth, it might be perceived as you traveling backward in time.
Cow
I guess it's all a question of perspective.
Luckily, FTL travel -- in the real universe, if not in SF -- is impossible, so we don't have to worry.
I am thinking what the person on the moon would see if he looked at the man on earth coming to see him at faster than light. So as you said, he could see the person on Earth and also the same person standing beside him, simultaneously.
Let's assume the man on the moon watches the other 'fly' towards him through space at FTL: Since, from his perspective, he sees the man get there before he left, what he will see through his telescope is the man actually split in two, one part travelling *from the moon to the earth*! the other staying beside him. When the image that he sees going backwards meets the image he sees on Earth, the two merge and pop out of existence, from his perspective, and the only one left is the one beside him.
Does that make any sense?
Anyway, this is just how weird things might happen from some particular point of view--doesn't say anything about if it is possible or not.
This is a fact, AFAK, that in particle physics, matter traveling bakward in time IS antimatter. Perhaps some of you can confirm this for me.
Erk
quote:
in particle physics, matter traveling bakward in time IS antimatter. Perhaps some of you can confirm this for me.
The word "IS" might be a little strong. It can be thought of that way, or represented in a Feynman diagram as a matter particle moving backwards in time, but is it REALLY moving backwards in time....?
The porblem is, were discussing mathematical concepts in words. We'll never get our definitions quite right.
quote:
FTL travel is impossible.
As in what chad said:
quote:
he said that by breaking apart a molecule and seperating the atoms, changing the quantum mechancial spin of one electron will effect the electrons in the other atom, no matter where it is.
Though it may seem like time travel it is all in the same time frame flow.(not sure if anyone got that).
Also, it was kinda an Idea of mine to fiddle with the two places at once type of thing.
And of course, it is.
But some other things, even though they seem more difficult, are not so impossible, like bending the space-time continuum, or punching a hole from one region to another, of even generating an artificial "space-time" and connecting it to real space-time in a controlled manner (or making use of a natural "hyperspace"), or any number of things to silly to be imagined within the limits of current physical theory.
Wormholes are big right now, and I think that a hypothesized "warp" universe, as well as a related drive similar to that used in Star Trek are all constructs that have not yet been proven untenable by current theory. In fact, even the mass/energy transporter discussed earlier isn't impossble, merely dependent on a technology that would make a much better weapon than vehicle. The same was once true of rockets (or perhaps still is, it could be argued).
Anyway, one grace that we have (being writers rather than theorists) allows us to stay within the limits of what our POV characters actually understand about a technology. People write stories everyday in which television, radio, airplanes, and medicine play large roles, and it is certain that most of the authors and many of those in the audience have not the least idea how these things work. But I only notice the ignorance underlying these creations when one of the main characters is supposed to know something about them.
If this is a grace, surely it ought to be taken advantage of, I say.
Think of H.G. Wells' Time Machine. He briefly set up the theory of time travel, but he never really explained how the machine did what it did. But that's not important to the story, the how. He glossed over it so he could get to the important part, which is what he found once he traveled.
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein does the same. Her point was not the fact that one could create a life from inanimate matter - it was what would happen to that life once it was created, how it would develop. She glossed over the science completely, and got down to the business of her story.
Maybe it's because I'm more focused on fantasy writing than science fiction, but I don't find it necessary to intricately explain my advances in technology. Often, these explanations bog down the narrative or dialogue to the point where, as a reader, I would tire and put down the story. "Infodumping" it was called in the Boot Camp workshop.
Lots of really great stories skip over the "how" of time travel and other things. All You Zombies did this - just saying how the character threw a net over himself and engaged the machine. Great. That's done with, no let's move on with the story.
If I encountered a hovering skateboard like the one in Back to the Future, I'd be fascinated to find out how it worked - but I'd have no idea unless some scientist told me. I might speculate, but I could be wrong. And if I needed this vehicle to escape from someone, I don't think I'd care how it worked, just *that* it worked.
To explain your science, or not to explain it?
STARSHIP TROOPERS explains very little of the science because it is firstly, a political tritise, and secondly, an adventure novel -- not hard SF. Good job, Heinlein.
A story in the most recent ANALOG magazine (I forget the title) is a scientific puzzle. A space elevator has been built, and it is causing weird enviromental effects on local wildlife. The author explains some of the science as the characters try to find a way to prove their theory about what it going on. This was CLASSICAL hard SF, so it was neccessary to explain. Good job, whoever-wrote-it.
STAR WARS: Good space-opera. We want swordplay, not science. Good job, Geroge Lucas.
ENDER'S GAME: he gives us WHAT the technology does (ie, the Dr. Device) and how we use it, but not really how it works. It's psychological/social SF, not hard SF. Good job, Card.
Personally, I'd take any one of them over a "hard" science fiction story. To me, story is all important, and if the whole story revolves around scientists trying to figure out a scientific problem... well, that's not exactly character motivation I can relate to. But this is personal preference.
It's why I like OSC and Ellison and Heinlein, I guess. And Dan Simmons. There's more going on other than the science, and the science really is just there because the plot or character couldn't exist without it.
It's part of the reason I have trouble getting really into Analog, preferring F&SF. The science itself isn't that important to me - as long as there are no gaping holes (like a Macintosh laptop hacking into an alien mothership, or a temporal anomaly that had very specific rules and totally scrambled a space pod being then easily programmable to jump back to present day... I mentioned ID4 and PotA before, thought I'd do it again).
I know a couple people on this forum have expressed the opposite opinion, though. They *want* more hard and fast science to their stories, and they *want* stories that revolve around new cool aspects of the science in science fiction.
Maybe we live in two different worlds.
In other words, if you want to do true SF, use only what is now known to be scientifically plausible to your audience. But to make that SF readable, only write about the story elements that engage the audience in the character's experience.
If you want to do speculative writing (meaning far-future and fantasy) then you can relax the rules of current science and use devices like FTL, telepathy, non-human species, "magical" powers, and such things. But you still should avoid being drawn into making intrusive explications of the fuctioning of these story elements. There should be enough internal logic in how they are used to satisfy the reader, but lengthy explainations will only get you in trouble. One thing I must say about "magic" in fiction. You should not use primitive attitudes towards magic any differently from how you use magical attitudes towards technology in your writing. Let any who read understand.
Ultimately you should remember that the reason that you put the science in an SF story is to illustrate how you imagine certain novel developments will affect people. If you just want to explicate the science itself, you should just be a science reporter (unless no one has developed the technology that you are explicating, in which case you should become an inventor).
The same is true of the magic in a fantasy, it is in there to give the characters an interesting situation to resolve (and if it is a well thought out and engaging situation, then your readers with think of their own resolutions).
I like to race him to the scientific conclusion. Rather than "who dun it?" it's a question of "how dun it?"
Xenocide never struck me as SF; the whole fairy-god-mother and magic-pumpkin across the galaxy irritated me. I thought Xenocide was, basically, fantasy.
The metaphyscial explaination behind philotes also cemented that opinion in my mind; had he used the words "quantum inseperability" even once (if he did, I've since forgotten it -- sorry), it would have been SF.
I would consider the Ender series "sociological" SF. Good, excellent even, but not crunchy.
I also think it applies to a lot of the science fiction that's published now. FTL and time travel and so on and so forth are all magic spells that some "science fiction" writers use to tell their stories.
Which is okay, as long as they don't get snooty towards fantasy writers. <grin>
I don't read REALMS OF FANTASY, but you're more than welcome to. It's the sign of a healthy genre, no?
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