Space Travel De-mystified
Well, here we are living in a world where we can barely get human beings to the moon and with NASA constantly canceling projects like network TV drops shows, the chances of sending people to Mars get worse and worse. But science fiction writers aren’t simply going to give up writing about faster-than-light spaceships because our current society seems to be in a bit of a rut–nothing truly monumental has happened in the last twenty years, at least nothing like the first moon landing.Space travel, however, is rather complicated, depending on the sort of story you intend to write. If you write hard SF you may find yourself in a bind. Einstein–that unrelentingly intelligent bastard–basically makes faster-than-light travel impossible (theory of relativity and all). Yet there are so many different types of fictional, and real, methods of traveling in space. What methods are realistic and what methods are fantasy? Fantasy Faster-than-light Standard & Lightspeed (i.e. at the speed of light)Your typical, commonly used, rarely explained method. Basically, it literally goes faster than light by its own power and within real space–not a wormhole, hyperspace, etc.. This is the type of drive you can’t really explain because it’s so unbelievable anyway it would be a waste of your time, and the time of your readers. You’d find yourself in a conundrum if you did. Einstein made this obsolete as a realistic approach–though it sort of was fantasy to begin with–by postulating that the closer you get to the speed of light, the more fuel you need to close the gap. The problem is that you eventually hit a point where no matter how much fuel you add, the fuel’s weight counteracts the push it would provide. You’d hit a point where you couldn’t ever put enough fuel in the ship to go any faster. It was a lot more complicated than that, because it’s Einstein, but you get the idea.Generally speaking, your standard form of FTL drive has a fuel source that is tangible and accessible and in some way or another works like rocket fuel–meaning it burns away or dissipates and doesn’t have any affect on the fabric of space. HyperdriveI’m referring to your typical instant-to-light-speed drives. Strangely, these are also drives that are never really explained, mostly because you don’t have to. Your audience simply has to assume that you can go from zero to light speed in less than sixty seconds and there isn’t anything out of the ordinary about that. Maybe you’d come up with a really inventive way to make this work, but most likely you’ll just resort to calling it an FTL drive or give it a fancy name and leave it at that. If the rest of your story is good it won’t really matter anyway. Jump DriveThis may have a different name. You could call it a teleport drive. The idea is that your ship simply disappears and reappears somewhere else. These are also called “discontinuous” because the traveler never traverses the actual real-space distance. You simply poof into existence somewhere else–like a genie. These could be in many different forms–jump to anywhere, jump to a ‘node’ in a specific location, jump only certain distances, jump in known space, etc. Either way, it’s all fantasy because, as far as we know, you can’t just disappear and appear somewhere else. The Middle Ground (meaning ones that are plausible, but without any real, consistent evidence to support it) Fold DriveThis is somewhat like a jump drive, as from the perspective of someone watching it would look like the ship simply disappears and reappears somewhere else. Fold drives revolve around the idea of being able to actually fold space so that two points are put side by side. Think of it this way: take a piece of paper and poke a hole on each end (longways), then fold that paper until those holes meet up and put your finger through it. That’s folding space. The concept is, well, probable, but not possible in our near future. The energy required would be considerable. However, since space is filled with events where things get screwed up from black holes and the like, it wouldn’t be all that surprising to realize that folding space isn’t all that hard…at least to the universe. “Trail” DriveThink of this as being like a railroad. A train has to have tracks to get from one point to another. The idea behind a “trail” drive, or railroad drive, is that the ship could achieve FTL in one of two ways: along a fix structure that allows the ship to do so, or along a trail of materials that the ship could use to achieve FTL.In the first case you have two problems. The first is figuring out how to use such a structure to allow a ship to break the light barrier, which, according to Einstein, is impossible. Perhaps if the structure manipulates real-space it my be possible. The second is that you would have to build this structure in the first place, which would take thousands upon thousands of years most likely. You need a lot of material and you need people to watch over the structure when it breaks.The second case is probably even more ridiculous. If you were to put a trail of matter that could be used to propel a ship to the speed of light you would have presented several problems while solving another. While you have figured out how to get a ship up to speed without the ship having to carry its fuel source with it, you also have created a big problem: you can’t do these travels all the time. You’d have to put the material there, which would take thousands of years, and you’d have to keep putting it there every time it is used. This would be a logistics nightmare. It would still be possible, but it is very unlikely that someone would waste the time to do this. Realistic Ion DriveThese are
Some Useful Links of the Week
Well I’m posting a lot of links and this post is basically just some more links to stuff that might be useful to some of you. Mostly I picked them because they’re interesting to me. I’m also not trying to steal what Jason Penney is doing over at All the Billion Other Moments. He does posts of ‘Links of Interest’ on there. So my intention is not to seem like I’m copying, even though technically I’m doing the same thing here. So be it. His links are really good too! Plus I’ve become obsessed with StumbleUpon now, which is a wonderful site you should all be a part of because you can find some wonderful stuff just randomly surfing with the “stumble” button. Also, I don’t know if I mentioned it before, but I did do my first review for SQT here on Spin State by Chris Moriarty. Go check it out! Alright, so some useful links!1. 13 Things That Do Not Make Sense from New Scientist Space. This one really grabbed me because of the Horizon Problem, the Pioneer Anomaly, and the Wow Signal. Some crazy things going on there!2. Magnetic Refigerator. What? Yeah, exactly. It doesn’t need electricity apparently and the lovely people in Denmark came up with it. It uses magnets to keep the thing cool. This places higher importance on magnets and magnetism now doesn’t it?3. Discworld…the cake. This is an example of someone with far too much time on their hands.4. The Evolution of the Alphabet. The short version really. This one got my attention. It shows you line to line how the alphabet evolved to what it is today from culture to culture, time to time. It’s very basic and obviously a hell of a lot more is going on behind the scenes, but still, this is interesting!5. Kinetic energy, living creatures. I’m not sure what else to even call this. It’s so bizarre and yet amazing at the same time that I had to put it up for everyone.6. eFanZines. I’m not sure how good this place is, but it does have quite a bit of literature on there and maybe there’s some good stuff there. Anyone been? I’ve just discovered it. Gives me some material to read now that I’m not working.7. Duotrope and Ralan. Both sites where you can find places to submit your work. Ralan is more for speculative fiction and Duotrope seems to be a bit of everything. Both lovely sites I think. There you have it. Enjoy!
Start Wars and Write Better
Yes, the title is intended to make you blink twice. I wrote it that way on purpose. How can wars be good for writing? When they are “Word Wars”. So, what exactly is a Word War?A Word War is essentially a no pressure contest between two or more individuals, all writers for obvious reasons, who decide on a set amount of time, stop everything, and write. Technically speaking, the person who has the most words at the end wins, but really, if you write 100 words and your partner writes 1,000, it doesn’t really matter at all. Why? Because you wrote something!Sessions can be 5, 10, 15, 20, even 30 minutes. If you’re brave you’ll go for an hour, but I recommend doing two 20 minute sessions with a 5-10 minute break in the middle. How are Word Wars helpful?Simple, they actually make you write. The object of a Word War isn’t to make you write something that is superb and amazing, it’s to get you writing in the first place. Forcing yourself to just write something with a surefire deadline truly can aid in sparking creativity. You might find yourself suddenly drawn into a new story. In that case, you just ask your fellow Word Warrior if you can sit back and write for a bit, or go for another 20 minute round and see if the creativity continues to flow. Most likely you won’t churn out anything Nobel winning, but again, that isn’t the object of the game. If it was, well it probably wouldn’t be all that fun. So, go start a war!
Stuffs For Us Writers (Part One)
Decided to have a short post of nifty sites, programs, and the like that I have discovered that could come to great use for some of you guys out there. FreemindI’ve already mentioned this program, but it is worth mentioning again. Freemind is a mindmapping program. Here’s a picture of one of my mindmaps for a military scifi idea I have–updated from the last one I had shown. (click the image to see larger version) StickItThis program I randomly discovered has become one of my favorite little tools. This program allows you to put little post it notes on your desktop. Perfect for keeping track of all the writing stuff I have to do. I love it. It also apparently has a feature where you can send notes to other users provided they are added to your friends list. I haven’t used it yet, but sounds like a cool idea to me.Here is a pic of my desktop with StickIt running. (Click for larger image) WordWebWhat better a program to have than a portable dictionary on your desktop? Wordweb is an awesome software program that comes in a free version and a pro version ($29). It’s a great program to have on your desktop while writing. With a click on the icon in your taskbar you can start searching for a word right away. What about stationary?Well, what about it? Are you craving strong little journals and notebooks that can withstand a nuclear explosion and still won’t let your ink or pencil smear? Then you should probably be looking into Moleskine’s. A little pricey, but when you think about it, it’s not a bad deal at all in comparison to the competition. Moleskine notebooks come with acid free pages, a hard cover, threaded binding, a nifty place keeper, an back cover inside pocket for keeping stuff in, and a lovely elastic band for keeping it closed. You can get lined, blank, or even squared pages. There are many sizes and styles too. Check them out. Large: $14.95 Small: $9.95Now, if you are wanting to go for a cheaper notebook, you can try the ru Journal from Xonex. Now, these are blank paged pocket journals in the same fashion as the Moleskine, only a little flashier and without the legendary reputation. $5.00Now, I wouldn’t recommend anyone go this direction unless they intend to make good use of it. If you aren’t very serious about your writing, don’t bother forking out the money for any of these items. It falls upon the dilemma of placing value on the item rather than on the writing and really if you aren’t serious you might as well be spending $0.25 on a regular every day notebook than one of these.But if you are serious, I can definitely recommend the Moleskine as a good start. I’ve enjoyed mine thoroughly thus far. Critique CircleI’ve mentioned this lovely place before, but I have to bring it up again. This is one of the best places to go for online critiquing. It’s completely free, but there is a pro account that offers a few more features that in all honesty most of us will never use unless we are in desperate need for an organized system for personal critique groups (something I brought up before as an idea). Check it out! The Gender GenieThis site has been passed around quite a bit I think, but I find it rather interesting to allow this little web app to attempt to figure out whether you are male or female based on a sample of your writing. Go on, give it a try. Take a short story or chapter from your WIP and throw it in. According to the site (using Ch. 14 as an example) it says that I am male by a margin of almost 1,000 points (which isn’t saying much really). The Official Seal GeneratorThis has absolutely nothing to do with writing, but I couldn’t help but put it in. It’s such a nifty idea. This site allows you to create a little seal with a whole slue of options. I made a couple below. Go ahead, put them on your website. It’s not my attempt at shameless promotion…not at all. Honest. Okay, it is, but I think it’s completely adorable how you can create these little things. Go on, put it on your site, wrap some HTML tags back here on them, and there you go. Or just look at them and say they are pretty. Enjoy!
Nifty Tools and Brainstorming
I decided that even though I have posted for this week, I would post again for the weekend because I’ve come up with some interesting information for those of you who are writers, and presumably this same information could come of use to perhaps businessmen and the like as well. At least I suppose so. First, I’d like to thank all of you who have commented and have said nice things about my writing. I greatly appreciate it and I hope that all of you will continue to read. I discovered this program called FreeMind from the blog of Jason Penney (Using a Mind Map to Organize Novel Notes). It essentially organizes notes for you into Mind Maps. What are Mind Maps? Well, remember when you were a kid and your teacher said, “Write one idea in a bubble and then start drawing lines to new ideas and thoughts, and then more thoughts and ideas on those”, so that you ended up with this paper of connected thoughts and information? That’s basically a Mind Map, albeit less complicated. Now, this isn’t to say that using FreeMind is complicated. Not at all. In fact, once you figure out the very basic commands it’s incredibly simple to use. Here’s an example of one I’m working on right now. Albeit, I have some things closed off (lines that end in little ‘o’ things are ones that can be further expanded for more info within the program), simply because they would make it too big to get an accurate image of.(Clicking the image should make it larger so you can see the words better)This makes organizing my thoughts so much easier. In fact, when I started doing it, I only have some minor ides of certain things. After a while I had huge lists of stuff on there because the Mind Mapping process allowed me to come up with more ideas. Now, this isn’t to say that I use this to come up with story ideas, but it is saying that I’m using this process to organize valuable information. In the case of the above image, I’ve had to keep note of different stars, their types, and various other information that would come in use during the story that I’m modeling on this subject. So, essentially, that’s Mind Mapping.Now, this is a whole new thing for me and I’m still not entirely sure how I will utilize it for all my writing efforts. In the instance of science fiction the program comes in great use because it allows me to keep track of various little minor facts that otherwise would get forgotten–physics, star system information, and the like. With fantasy, I imagine I could do much the same, but I have yet to start Mind Mapping all my info for The World in the Satin Bag yet. Perhaps it will happen. Alternately, I’m wondering what all of you do in your brainstorming sessions–you being the reader of course. Before this program, it was mostly coming up with a basic plot or event. In the case of The World in the Satin Bag, my first thought was of a boy who gets sucked into an alternate world. Originally I had no idea it would be at the state it is now. I had no idea that his friend would get sucked in first, nor that war would break out, or anything of that nature. I had expected that he would just gain magic from being there, and not because he had a Fearl–a concept I didn’t come up with until more or less by accident while writing the scene when Laura gets sucked in. So my brainstorming starts out to be very basic. I don’t flesh out entire ideas on purpose. For me, fleshing out ideas tends to leave me with little ‘freedom’. I know I can change anything at any time, but the problem is I’ve already come up with a story I like. I’d much rather leave the majority of the plot unwritten in my mind so that I can have free reign in the direction of the story. The furthest I think ahead is what the next chapter is ‘basically’ going to be about. This is all of course referring to fantasy.But for science fiction I have a lot more issues to deal with. I tend to have grand scale ideas of a aliens and Earth and humankind. So, my first thoughts are: How am I going to get Humans from here to there in reasonable time? How did they get there in the first place? Did someone help us? Are we alone in our fight for whatever might need fighting for?I try to answer those, because they serve as the backdrop of my science fiction world. So, I’m curious what those of you do to flesh out your ideas, or if you do that at all. Are you the type to simply sit back and go with the flow? Or do you like to work out the story ahead of time?