All posts by Paul Raven

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Charlie Stross: we’re probably never going to build starships

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an unlikely spaceshipHere’s a second piece of punditry for your Monday morning, this time from the inimitable Charlie Stross. He’s been poking the traditional sf mythology of the starship with a sharp stick over the last few months, and the end result is a suggestion that – as far as realistic speculation about the future is concerned – we need to recognise the starship as the nautical metaphor it really is, and face up to the fact that the only plausible way we could reach other stars is through tiny “starwisp” probes made of memory diamond substrate. [image by Brenda Starr]

Again, the whole piece is well worth your time (if only to see that Stross has sat down and run the numbers on it), but here’s the coup de grace:

… yes, I think human interstellar exploration (and yes, maybe even colonization) might be possible, after a fashion. But to get there, we’re going to have to master at least two entire technological fields that don’t yet exist, even before we start trying to blast compact disc sized machines up to relativistic velocities. And that’s without considering the difficulty of how to cram an industrial infrastructure capable of building more of itself, of a machine capable of surviving in deep space — the equivalent of those 300,000 NASA technicians and engineers — into the aforementioned CD-sized machine …

If we succeed in doing it, it’s going to look nothing like the Starship Enterprise. Or even New Horizons. The whole reference frame we instinctively assume when we hear the word “ship” is just so wrong it’s beyond wrong-ness: it’s on a par with Baron Munchausen’s lunar exploits as seen in light of the Apollo Program. We need a new handle for discussing and analyzing such a venture. And the sooner we consign the “-ship” suffix to the dustbin of failed ideas, the better.

If Stross is right, then the only sf writer of my experience who has written truly plausible descriptions of post-human exploration beyond the solar system is Greg Egan… can anyone suggest any others?

But just in case Stross has put you on a downer with his debunking, here’s a potential antidote in the form of scientists speculating about using the Hawking radiation from small man-made black holes as a power source for interstellar propulsion. One of them even goes so far as to suggest that the sweet-spot in the physics that informs the theory implies that we live in “a universe optimised for building starships”…

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David Brin: is America’s loss the world’s gain?

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Marshall Plan propaganda posterY’know, I really like David Brin, even though I don’t always agree with what he says; he’s got a contrary stripe a mile wide, and he’s one of the few self-identifying conservative thinkers in science fiction who’s willing to break ranks with populism and call out the failings of his own side – something that is just as rare on the liberal side of the fence, IMHO.

Brin’s guest-blogging at Sentient Developments again, and his latest post is provocative reading, regardless of your personal politics. The thesis is roughly as follows: America may have spent itself into economic and political decline, but in doing so it leaves as its legacy a world lifted out of poverty thanks to the counter-mercantilist trade flows set up by the Marshall plan. [image by kafka4prez; orginal copyright status uncertain, so please contact for takedown if required]

You should go read the whole thing (there’s probably ten minutes worth of text there, so it’s one of his smaller rants), but here’s a few highlights for the impatient:

While Marshall crafted a historically unprecedented, receptively open trade policy called “counter-mercantilism” (I’ll explain in a minute), MacArthur vigorously pushed the creation of Japanese export-oriented industries, establishing the model of what was to come. Instead of doing what all other victorious conquerors had done – looting the defeated enemy — the clearly stated intention was for the United States to lift up their prostrate foe, first with direct aid. And then, over the longer term, with trade.

[…]

At the behest of Marshall and his advisors. America became the first pax-power in history to deliberately establish counter-mercantilist commerce flows. A trade regime that favored the manufactures of many foreign/poor countries over those in the homeland. Nations crippled by war, or by millennia of mismanagement, were allowed to maintain high tariffs, keeping out American manufactures, while sending shiploads from their own factories to the U.S., almost duty free.

Moreover, despite the ongoing political tussle of two political parties and sometimes noisy aggravation over ever-mounting deficits, each administration since Marshall’s time kept fealty with this compact — to such a degree that the world’s peoples by now simply take it for granted.

Forgetting all of history and ignoring the self-destructive behavior of other empires, we all have tended to assume that counter-mercantilist trade flows are somehow a natural state of affairs! But they aren’t. They are an invention, as unique and new and as American as the airplane, or the photocopier, or rock n’ roll.

[…]

Even if America is exhausted, worn out and a shadow of her former self, from having spent her way from world dominance into a chasm of debt, the U.S. does have something to show for it the last six decades.

A world saved. A majority of human beings lifted out of poverty. That task, far more prodigious than defeating fascism and communism or going to the moon, ought to be viewed with a little respect. And I suspect it will be, by future generations.

This should be contemplated, soberly, as other nations start to consider their time ahead as one of potential triumph. As they start to contemplate the possibility of becoming the next great pax or “central kingdom.”

If that happens — (as I portray in a coming novel) — will they emulate Marshall and Truman, by starting their bright era of world leadership with acts of thoughtful and truly farsighted wisdom? Perhaps even a little gratitude? Or at least by evading the mistakes that are written plain, across the pages of history, wherever countries briefly puffed and preened over their own importance, imagining that this must last forever?

I’m as guilty as the next man of casting American influence in a negative light, and Brin’s analysis provides an intriguing counterpoint to that nay-saying: an argument to the effect that history may remember that influence more positively than our proximity to it currently permits.

What do you think America will be remembered for in fifty years’ time? (And keep it cordial, folks; nation-bashing and racism will be deleted without hesitation, so keep a historical perspective, please.)

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Fresh blood at Futurismic: Tim Maly, Excavating Worlds

For various reasons, I’m too short of time to do any blogging today, but I have a new voice to introduce to the Futurismic choir instead. You may have noticed me linking to and mentioning one Tim Maly quite a few times in the last few months, most recently for his post on the demise of Fed-Ex.

I really like Tim’s style – caught somewhere between Geoff Manaugh and Jorge Luis Borges, perhaps – and decided to take a chance on pestering him to write for Futurismic. To my great pleasure, he agreed; his column will be titled Excavating Worlds, and there’ll be a post from Tim later today explaning what he’s intending to do. I think it’s something that a lot of you are going to enjoy. 🙂

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Battered avatars – feminist statement or misogynist pandering?

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"Battle Royale" Second Life avatar skinWith its ability to allow us to take on new forms, appearances and identities, the metaverse is opening up as a whole new arena for discussions about cultural perceptions. Here’s a fresh example: a Second Life avatar skin designer released a collection of skins named “Battle Royale” on to the market, which would make the female avatar wearing them look like they’d been in a pretty serious brawl – black eyes, bruises and grazes, that sort of thing. Cue angry protest from commentators decrying the skins as a potential glorification of domestic violence. [image borrowed from JuicyBomb]

As the designer made plain, there was no such intent – but offence is in the eye of the beholder in such incidents, and domestic abuse is a deservedly sensitive topic. SL fashionista Iris Ophelia makes the point that hardly anyone would consider making a fuss about the already numerous male avatar skins that portray a similarly battered appearance, despite the largely unreported incidences of male-victim domestic violence, and hypothesises that the incident actually underlines a less-observed double standard in our attitudes to abuse. She also sees battered avatars as a potentially feminist statement, a subversion of the perfect and unruffled female characters from combat-based computer games, for example.

Whichever side of that debate you favour, it’s interesting to consider the potential of the metaverse as a place where this sort if discussion can be had slightly more safely and comfortably than in “reality”; given the theoretical anonymity of each avatar, it may be easier to speak out as a victim of real-world abuse while spending time in a virtual space. But of course, anonymity works both ways[nsfw], as anyone who’s spent more than five minutes on the web already knows…

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Can fictional characters be libelous?

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gavelHey, writers – ever based a character on a friend, no matter how loosely? Well, you’d best be careful to stay friends with them if you get published, because there’s now a legal precedent for a character in a novel being considered as libel:

A Georgia jury has ruled that Haywood Smith, author of the bestselling novel “The Red Hat Club,” libeled a former friend who had served as inspiration for a character portrayed as a sexually promiscuous alcoholic. The jury awarded $100,000 in damages to the plaintiff, Vicki Stewart.

In the past, defamation claims based on fictional characters haven’t been very successful. (For example, in 1985, Nathaniel Davis, the former US ambassador to Chile, lost a $150 million libel suit against the makers of the Universal film “Missing.”) But that might be changing.

In the “Red Hat” case, Smith’s lawyers took this case up to the Georgia Court of Appeals before it could be heard by a jury. As a result, the case likely won’t amount to a net monetary win for Stewart, who spent five years litigating the battle.

Given that the plaintiff pursued the case beyond the point of financial victory, I’m inclined to believe that there really was some deep offence caused in this case… but as TechDirt points out, “for it to be defamatory, you have to be able to show the harm caused, and that’s only going to happen if a lot of people know that the character is supposed to be the real person, which seems unlikely in most cases.” [image by bloomsberries]

Indeed, the Barbra Striesand Effect has probably made more people aware of the character in this case. Either which way, there’s a whole lot of ambulance-chasers out there who’ll see an opportunity here, so I guess we can add libel to plagiarism on the roster of “lawsuits to file against people whose success you resent”.