At the end of ABC World News one evening last week, Kip Thorne made an appearance.  Seems he was a consultant for the new movie Interstellar.  The subject, of course, was FTL (faster-than-light) travel, what you need to visit other star systems in subjective times less than several hundreds of human generations.  Seemed Thorne was proposing wormholes (Deep Space Nine, anyone?).  While most sci-fi authors (including myself) just write a few words of pseudo-scientific technobabble and then get on with the story, I guess the director of Interstellar wanted to put some fancy ribbon around the technobabble.  I’m sure Prof. Thorne did a good job.

Generations of grad students have struggled with Einstein’s general theory of relativity.  The “classic texts” are Weinberg’s more experimentally grounded tome and the much longer differential geometry-oriented tome written by Misner, Thorne, and Wheeler (yes, that same Thorne).  Both were creatively and simply titled Gravitation.  Between the two, you had more than enough information to solve any problem on a PhD qualifying exam related to that subject, assuming you had learned the material well, of course.  Feynman’s simpler and less mathematical introduction in some of the first editions of the second volume of his famous lectures could be used to get in the mood, so to speak (Feynman did the same with his introduction to quantum mechanics in Vol. 3; with a bit more material, it’s a better introduction than any you’ll find elsewhere).

Of course, you won’t need any of these three books to enjoy Interstellar, the movie.  The question remains: will we someday find a way to visit nearby stars at least?  Will Interstellar, the documentary, be watched on the PBS of some faraway planet circling another star?  Because my “Chaos Chronicles Trilogy” covers many future generations, both on Earth and elsewhere, I opted to describe a “natural transition” from generational starships to FTL starships.  I imagined the first starships to be refurbs of huge commercial ships called “big rigs” that are used to explore and exploit our home solar system; they are huge freighters designed to carry huge payloads reliably if not speedily.

After reaching the 82 Eridani system in a 100+ year journey, the colonists spend many years and suffer many setbacks developing a FTL drive—but only FTL in the sense that by skipping around through string theory multiverses and tapping into zero-point energies, the ship can take “shortcuts” between ordinary points in space-time.  (These are just Asimov’s “jumps” with more technobabble added, of course.) That’s probably more pseudo-science than you’ll find in Interstellar, but I had more fun with it.

Of course, those plodding generational starships have the advantage that they’re more believable than wormhole vessels and other imaginary creations.  In some sense, they depend more on a large number of people getting along in confined quarters for hundreds, maybe thousands of years.  Never mind that there might not be an Earth left by the time they arrive at their destination (in Sing a Samba Galactica, there essentially isn’t, but you’ll have to read the story).  I solved that sociological problem of getting along like many other authors; I postulated cryosleep technology.

That’s why I was encouraged by the brat that stowed away in a jet’s landing gear in Seattle and flew to Hawaii.  Somehow he survived when he should have frozen to death.  That might mean that by a fortuitous combination of genetics and temperature gradients, our young gentleman went into cryosleep.  Seeing him stumbling around on the tarmac in Hawaii reminded me of the colonists stumbling around in Survivors of the Chaos after being in cryosleep for a century.  I don’t know if anyone followed up on this unusual event.  Someone should.

Cryosleep solves some of the environmental problems on a generation ship.  Presumably, those future colonists would need less oxygen, less sustenance, and emit less CO2 and sewage, while in cryosleep than a bunch of cowboy types partying it up in grand style for one hundred years.  The ship would still have to be huge, though, because, even if you stacked the cryobeds on top of each other like those hotel rooms in Tokyo, you’d still need many colonists.  The reason: genetic diversity.  (I also contemplate banks of frozen ova and sperm too, but you can’t go that way 100%–who would take care of the kids?  Robots, you say?  Write your own book, damn it!)

Recent discoveries about the young Egyptian Pharaoh King Tut (who can remember the full name?) have shown that the poor bloke would have died early anyway—his mother and father were sister and brother, something not recommended, and generally taboo for many cultures (some old royal families in Europe come close).  In the young Pharaoh’s case, he didn’t have a tail between his legs, but he suffered from many other genetic deformities.

In small populations of humans, the same thing can happen.  It’s a genetic roll of the dice whether good traits or bad are selected but, if the gene pool is small enough, bad things can happen and take over.  Throughout history humans used this to select for positive traits, where they defined “positive,” of course—everything from Great Danes to black roses and tulips (the original GMOs).  In general, though, genetic diversity in a population is good because it ensures against negative mutations taking control and wiping the population out.

In Sing a Samba Galactica, I showed how this could effect a small population of ETs.  When humans land on New Haven, their new home in the 82 Eridani system, they discover someone beat them to it.  Humans call them Rangers.  A bad mutation has taken hold, and the Ranger scientists have lost their bioengineering abilities.  Humans solidify their friendship by solving the problem.  In appreciation, the Rangers teach them how to terraform responsibly.  Quid pro quo.

Back to Prof. Thorne.  While I imagine he did a pretty good job with the technobabble needed to put FTL starship travel into Interstellar, I can’t imagine that he’s treated the other topics I’ve mentioned above, or others I haven’t mentioned.  That’s not his fault, of course.  Scientists tend to be over-specialized and not generalists (although they might have a lot of opinions about a lot of things, they can’t be experts in many things).  If Newton stood on the shoulders of giants, the sci-fi writer must stand on the shoulders of many scientists, each specialized in his own field or subfield.  The sci-fi writier must be a jack-of-all-trades-and-master-of-none, at least in what he writes.

I’m referring to what’s called hard sci-fi, of course.  Too much sci-fi today borders on or becomes fantasy (Star Wars is a movie example) or moves into the paranormal (many King and Koontz’ novels).  Hard sci-fi is an extrapolation of current science into the future.  Heinlein’s The Moon is a Harsh Mistress is hard sci-fi; his Glory Road is fantasy.  But one mustn’t be too critical.  Arthur C. Clarke said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”  I’m sure an iPhone or Smartphone would seem like magic to a Neanderthal; I’m also sure that if human beings hang around long enough, their futuristic technology will seem like magic to us.  In other words, the line between fantasy (magic) and hard sci-fi becomes more blurred the farther one extrapolates into the future.  So be it!  Wormholes, here we come….

And so it goes….

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