It is not without trepidation that I take up keyboard and PC to compose this first of a series of soft-science columns, accepting the recent invitation of our Beloved Editor. First, the Esteemed Readers [that's you lot] properly entertain certain expectations of such columns. Stereotypes abound, one of the most common of which is that hard science deals with labyrinthine and incomprehensible equations, and soft science deals with one's feelings of "what ought to be." But A Brief History Of Time, by Stephen Hawking, arguably the pre-eminent mathematician of all time, contains exactly, precisely, one [1] very simple and familiar equation. And soft science [history, anthropology, domestic science, psychology, sociology, etiquette, and their ilk] does not focus on emotions, but rather combines observations and analyses. True, the analyses are subject to interpretation. But the observations, even skewed ones, are concrete--and as a soft, even a tad pudgy scientist, I find concrete an excellent building material.
Second, all hard and soft science essays of any merit whatsoever have already been written--by Isaac Asimov [our house lists to the side where we maintain a sadly incomplete library of his works]. The Good Doctor had an IQ of around 182 [which isn't actually so much. It's the same as that of 364 sports commentators], was grounded in everything, and knew whereof he wrote--which is why I often use him for reference. Question me if you must, but in the dark alley of non-fiction columns, Doctor A's got my back.
Fears allayed, let us now begin.
The ProMartian mission statement encourages stories about humans going to the stars. Indeed, many writers and readers of science fiction were introduced to the genre as the result of such dreaming and longing. Space travel is our common bond, and our curse. We write of it, we imagine it, and one day some of us may be lucky enough to do it [I'm talking about space travel here].
Regarding space travel--which, properly defined, means interstellar travel--one of two statements is true. Speeds faster than the velocity of light [in a vacuum] are possible; or they are not possible. If they are not possible, then--broadly speaking, and barring major advances in cryogenics or some as-yet-undefined science--neither is interstellar travel by an individual.
As regards the views of hard scientists and soft scientists--the Hards and the Softs, if you will--these are generally aligned "impossible" and "possible," respectively. From a creativity aspect--always of concern to creative writers--I suspect the position of the Softs allows for a broader scope of work, especially if the realm of fantasy is included. Observe for example the following:
A soft [pudgy] scientist named Cher
Consumed lovers who were debonair
She devoured them at night
But her morning delight
Was a man in a chocolate eclair
By changing one word, "soft" to "hard", this nifty ditty becomes mirth-free and therefore without merit...unpublishable. Of course, there are other limericks that Hards could compose, but they probably would be unsuitable for public, er, consumption.
Let us then take the view of the Softs--that speeds exceeding the velocity of light are possible. But what, exactly, are we talking about here?
The velocity of light in a vacuum [e.g., outer space] is constant--at approximately 186,000 miles per second [mps] or approximately 300,000 kilometers per second [kps], which is somewhat faster than one usually encounters on the Interstates, although not by much. Let's put that velocity in terms you can take a bite out of. If the Sun, which is about 93,000,000 miles away, were abruptly to be transferred to an Alternate Universe [another Soft concept], we here on Earth would not know it for some 8.5 minutes. If you were to participate in the Indianapolis 500 with a VOL vehicle, you would complete the race in about 2.7 thousandths of a second--thus allowing advertisers to monopolize the remaining four hours customarily devoted to televising the race [which, come to think of it, would not significantly alter the format from what it is now].
How fast is 2.7 thousandths of a second? Did you just blink? During that blink, at the velocity of light, about 101 Indy 500 races were completed--depending on the length of your lashes.
That's fast. But it is not fast enough. If you were to fly off, right now [11 July 2001], at the velocity of light, you would not reach the second nearest star until approximately September, 2005. That's at the rate of completing 101 Indy 500's every single blink. Or, if you wish, at 0.25 seconds per blink--the time required for the average non-flirtative blink--you would reach the second nearest star after a bit over half a billion blinks [a young lady of my acquaintance, while in flirt mode, recently eyed me at the rate of fifteen blinks per second, which certainly would have accelerated the rate of approach of a somewhat younger come-hither invitee. However, that increased rate does not alter the time required to travel to that star]. Time is our problem here.
What we need to do, then, is alter the time required. This is where we Softs come in. For our stories, we assert that faster-than-light [FTL] speeds are possible. We do not, of course, go into detail about how they are achieved. We simply assume them. Star Trek's Warp, Vance's Intersplit, Campbell's Track, Heinlein's Gates, and assorted hyperdrives are fundamentally the same thing: a means of FTL travel. Still, although we cannot explain the mechanics of FTL, we can list its literary characteristics. Three are paramount and pertinent here.
Probably the most significant and utile characteristic of FTL is that it does not refer to a minor incremental increase. We are not talking about 300,144 kilometers per second here. Manifestly, 300,144 kps will allow you to arrive in the vicinity of the second closest star only a few hours sooner than you would at 300,000 kps. When we say FTL, we are talking whoosh! We are talking zoom! We are talking about reaching the second closest star in about, oh, ten minutes. Maybe an hour or two at most.
Secondly, and of almost as great a significance, is that FTL as we Softs employ it does not require prolonged acceleration times. You're here and you're outta here. We Softs get around the consequences of instantaneous acceleration from zero to a hundred million kilometers a second, which in realtime circumstances would render you a little less thick than a layer of quarks, by...well, pretty much by ignoring it. We assume that inertia is not a factor, or, if it is, that "damping fields" and the like can neutralize it. We might even assume that the rules of physics do not apply once the velocity of light is exceeded, and it is exceeded instantaneously.
And third, we assume that time dilation does not occur. If Nyx departs from Peter's Gate at 1137 hours on Zulu Day 5663, and makes the four-hour Track to Malache, a real distance of just over 422 light-years, then she arrives on Malache at 1537 hours on Zulu Day 5663. In the world of Hard physics, of course, this is not possible. Time telescopes as you approach the velocity of light. Your mass approaches infinity. And the energy required to accelerate you approaches infinity. But in our Soft view, time dilation is rendered irrelevant by instantaneous FTL. Time does not stretch, because time does not pass at all.
Already I see several people in the audience hopping up and down. For some of you, let me point out that the restrooms are that way. For others, let me suggest that your objections to my reasoning are grounded in Hard science, and that I am presenting the Soft science view. In other words, you Hards may be right. But Soft conventions rule in a Soft SF story. Get over it.
Before we continue, let's have a brief recap. One: FTL enables us to travel hundreds of light years in a few hours. Two: FTL is achieved instantaneously, with minimal acceleration, and minimal inertial resistance. Three: FTL makes time dilation and its consequences "optional." The writer can include them, or not, as she decides.
Given these three features, what might be the sociological and economic consequences of interstellar travel at FTL speeds?
History--which inevitably repeats, whether we remember it or not--provides us with a few clues. It has been fashionable, even trendy, over the past century or so, to tout democracy and freedom as the highest of human ideals. One might argue plausibly that democracy does not function well in a competitive, mercantile milieu, or that freedom has never truly existed. Nevertheless, these words hold a certain cachet, especially for those populations that have only at best a passing acquaintance with them. But it may be argued, with perhaps greater plausibility, that the leitmotif of human history has been, and continues to be today, the domination of one class of people by another, specifically by the rich over the poor, the haves over the have-nots.
Let me hasten to add that it is not the purpose of this column to make value judgments regarding sociological, political, and economic conditions. I wish only to assert here that class conflict is the way of things, and that there is no indication that the way of things will change, however much we may wish otherwise on our first or falling stars. Nor am I at all convinced that "the way of things" ought to change. As Heinlein wrote, the second best thing about space travel is that it made it possible to go elsewhere. In Ballroom Of The Skies, John D. McDonald, the creator of the Travis McGee series, postulated that the very purpose of miserable conditions on this planet was to prepare certain selected individuals to move elsewhere.
The question, then, is: given the three features, who's going to go?
This is where history comes in. Who went last time?
The circumstances surrounding the settlement of the New World [i.e., North and South America] suggest that most people stayed home. The vast majority of the population of the settling or colonial countries did not resettle. People stayed right where they were. In a manner of speaking, they were just like you and I. They did not want to get out of bed in the morning.
Those who did come to the New World were social refuse of one form or another. Young men without a proper inheritance of land. Young men without "expectations." Soldiers with no battles to fight. Men fleeing prosecution. Men who were resettled subsequent to prosecution. Men who sought the opportunity to make their fortune. Men whose adventurous restlessness had no proper social outlet in the Old World. And religious outcasts, of course. The Pilgrims did not come to the New World because they wanted to. They came here because nobody in Europe could stand them. We regard them now as heroes [and properly so], and celebrate them on Thanksgiving...but I would not want them on our library or school boards, because most of the stories I write and read and you write and read would be banned for all time and cast into a 451-degree bonfire.
Between the years 1500 and 1650, perhaps half a million European men arrived in the Americas. That's about 3000 a year, or about 8 a day. About one-tenth of one percent of the population of the world, during those 150 years.
Yes, and women...but the fact remains that women stayed home in even greater droves. Besides, the New World was already chock-a-block with women, easily accessible women, women who did not regard sex or their bodies as sinful in the predominately European religious views, although they had their own codes of moral behavior, some quite strict. Women who could be coaxed or cajoled or coerced far more readily than those in Europe, where there were, after all, laws and social mores that inhibited such behavior to some extent. There was, in short, no great need for men to bring women to the New World.
[One supposes that New World--and particularly Polynesian--women provided unprecedented opportunities for investment riches. In retrospect, one rather imagines a dramatic increase in the share value of the stock of brassiere manufacturers--although preliminary research suggests that codpiece sales varied from steady to plummeting, depending on the weather].
What there was a shortage of was not women, but laborers.
In some locales, particularly in Central and South America, laborers were available and enslavable. But to the great inconvenience of the landowners, these laborers kept dying off, their immune systems unable to cope with imports such as smallpox. In North America, the rule of the day involved clearing, eviction, dispersal, and of course murder. Europeans did not make slaves of the Iroquois. They obtained their slaves from other sources.
Without detailing the history of slavery in the New World, let me summarize it thusly: men, women, and children, whole villages, whole nations, were uprooted, for profit, and often with the cooperation of the village chiefs, and shipped as cargo to the New World. Slaves were sold in all of the Americas, especially to agricultural landholders. They were forced into labor, into domestic service, into concubinage. They did not come to the New World voluntarily.
They did not come to the New World voluntarily.
But history, as I did just now, repeats. We regard slavery as odious. But there are sweatshops in New York. We trade with China for goods manufactured by convict labor [and some of those laborers were convicted for what they thought, not for what they did]. We munch chocolate bars, the cacao pods for which were picked by nine-year-olds who are shackled to trees in the Ivory Coast. Recently an airline attendant was involved in liberating an Indian child who had been purchased by a businessman and was being flown back with him from Delhi to...somewhere. And even now, probably as I write this, a dhow has swooped across a bay near Zanzibar or Somalia or Djibouti, gathered up some children, and is transporting them to Saudi Arabia, or Iran, or Pakistan, for work in the date orchards or the textile industries or the fleshpots.
History repeats.
And tomorrow...?
Let's say you were a corporate executive whose survey drones had just discovered an easily-exploitable deposit of iron ore on Gamma Skodge Four. You have the extractive equipment ready for transport; you have the machinery for exploitation on standby. But what you do not have, is people who are willing to go to GSF and extract and exploit that deposit for you.
You do, however, have a means of gathering people up swiftly--a small spacecraft will do, and the act will require only a minimum of armed and unwholesome personnel. You have a means of getting away before anyone in authority can act. Properly done, you should be able to evacuate a small village in, say, five minutes. FTL enables you to get those people on site, where they can be trained to clear the conveyor belts, glean for talus, performs small repairs as needed, feed and otherwise service the few cadre you already have on site.
You don't think so?
What would prevent it?
What prevents it now?
Faster-Than-Light applications hold for us many marvelous possibilities. There is no particular need to dwell on the misuse or abuse of the applications. But from the point of view of a creative SF writer, the abuse of those applications makes for some very interesting stories, especially for a Soft SF writer.
And story-telling is what we do here.