Kevin's Watch

Donaldson does a good job of avoiding actual speeds during the later books, but he still mentions at one point Calm Horizons travelling at 0.2C.

In order to accelerate to this point using "hard G" (which, for the sake of argument, I'll assume to be roughly 5G), the Amnion defensive would have to accelerate steadily for more than 70 days.

With more manageable acceleration, say 2G, it would still take more than 177 days.

I remember Donaldson mentioning that he simply couldn't grasp the scale of forces, distances and speeds involved in interstellar travel, and that after having his errors pointed out to him he tried to avoid them in future books. Still, just for fun I figured out how hard Captain's Fancy would have to brake when travelling at a relative speed of 0.9C. I don't remember the exact deceleration time, but I think it was something like 3 days (36 hours).

200G.

For a large person (say, my size) this is the equivalent of having a Brontosaurus balance its entire weight on my head

Other than that, I really have no complaints

While we are doing minor nitpicking, 3 days is 72 hours, not 36 hours.

Of course, the G forces involved would still be entirely beyond what living creatures could endure.

I think Donaldson has recognized the flaw you put your finger on, Rigel.

In the Gradual Interview, Stephen R Donaldson wrote:... No, the *real* problem, at least as I see it, has to do with the sheer SCALE of the velocities I describe, especially in "Forbidden Knowledge".

To a certain extent, I have trouble understanding general relativity (which would be effectively meaningless in any case at velocities less than, say, 0.1C): to a much larger extent, I--I'm fumbling for a description here--CAN'T DO THE MATH. I can't comprehend the forces involved in the accelerations I specified. I can't estimate the effects of those forces on living tissues.

Well, I knew that about myself before "The Real Story" and "Forbidden Knowledge" ever saw a publisher. So I did what I always want to do in similar situations: I consulted an expert. In this case, an honest-to-spaceship Rocket Scientist, a design engineer for JPL. And he told me that I had nothing to worry about. Everything looked fine to him.

Since I trusted him, I can hardly describe my horror when I learned--*after* "Forbidden Knowledge" was published, of course--that I had screwed up. Dramatically. In other words, IT'S NOT MY FAULT!

But of course it *is* my fault (he admitted ruefully). I'm the author: there's no one else to blame. However, a close reading of the whole story will reveal that references to *specific* velocities are almost entirely absent from "A Dark and Hungry God Arises," and *are* entirely absent from the last two books. That was the only solution I could come up with for my peculiar problem.

(02/04/2009)

SRD is not alone.

In the first edition of Ringworld, Larry Niven, noted "hard" Science Fiction author, has the Earth rotating in the wrong direction (East to West).

Savor Dam wrote:While we are doing minor nitpicking, 3 days is 72 hours, not 36 hours.

Of course, the G forces involved would still be entirely beyond what living creatures could endure.

Gosh darn it, there goes my dinosaur analogy!

A Brontasaurus on a Brontasaurus on one's head. All fixed!

Demondim-spawn wrote:SRD is not alone.

In the first edition of Ringworld, Larry Niven, noted "hard" Science Fiction author, has the Earth rotating in the wrong direction (East to West).

Cracks me up...and if I remember rightly, a bunch of his fans-who-happen-to-be-scientists showed up at a convention or reading he was having chanting? or with signs? "The Ringworld is Unstable! The Ringworld is Unstable."

Vraith wrote:Cracks me up...and if I remember rightly, a bunch of his fans-who-happen-to-be-scientists showed up at a convention or reading he was having chanting? or with signs? "The Ringworld is Unstable! The Ringworld is Unstable."

I don't even think they were scientists. Just nerdy fans nerdy enough to check on this stuff and call the author on it.

I had my own comic character living on a space station in "chronosyncronous orbit" of the Earth. He's always above midnight on the surface, regardless of the geographical location.

I wanted to know if such a thing was even possible, so I called the Astronomy Dept. of the local university, and I got these grad students interested enough to look into it.

A few weeks passed and I kept pestering them about it but they couldn't figure it out. So I was talking about it with this 13-year-old neighbor kid, and he says, "Think about it. It's midnight. The Earth is always directly between the space station and the Sun. The station isn't orbiting the Earth, it's orbiting the Sun a little bit further out than the Earth's orbit."

Duh.

He also pointed out that it would take constant acceleration in order for the station to maintain it's position relative to Earth and not lag behind because of the slightly larger circumference of its orbit compared to the Earth's.

Anyway, I scrapped the whole space station idea and just put my character in a jet plane. Thanks a lot kid, but I really wanted to use the expression "Chronosyncronous Orbit."

PS. almost forgot. The astronomy grad students finally came to the same conclusion about a week later.

So clear in retrospect...

Reminds me of the tale of the savants in the Edison labs who were trying to compute the volume of a glass bulb back in the early days of electric light. After a very long period and lots of high-order math, they brought their best approximation to Thomas himself, who huffed at them, took the bulb, filled it with water and measured the resulting volume of water.

He was never one to suffer fools gladly. We need more like him today...just not around us in our weaker moments.

Reminds me of the tale of the savants in the Edison labs who were trying to compute the volume of a glass bulb back in the early days of electric light. After a very long period and lots of high-order math, they brought their best approximation to Thomas himself, who huffed at them, took the bulb, filled it with water and measured the resulting volume of water.

Damn, didn't they ever hear of Archimedes?

Savor Dam wrote:He was never one to suffer fools gladly. We need more like him today...just not around us in our weaker moments.

Actually, we don't. Edison, like Galileo, was a total dick.

In the genius department, we need more people like Tesla and Kepler.

At the risk of further enhancing our THOOOTP reputations...

I agree about Edison's people skills, but still have to respect the quality of his mind and his demonstrated ability to turn ideas into practical applications. While the others mentioned were primarily conceptual theoreticians (albeit GREAT conceptual theoreticians), there are few people who can measure up to TAE in either quantity or quality of inventions and innovations.

True, many inventions were as much the collective product of his labs as his personal work, but the organization of those labs was another of his signal achievements. Like Henry Ford, his innovations in managing work processes were as important as the products produced by them.

Ford, too, was "a total dick." I don't defend either man's personality, but can't help but admire the results of their respective genius.

(Edit: on doing further research, I see that Tesla did a bit more inventing that I had recalled, including some highly significant developments. Still, much of his body of inventions were abstract and only achieved practical fruition with the innovations added by others. While Edison's inventions surely have been improved upon as well, by-and-large they were of much greater immediate practicality.)

Demondim-spawn wrote:

Savor Dam wrote:He was never one to suffer fools gladly. We need more like him today...just not around us in our weaker moments.

Actually, we don't. Edison, like Galileo, was a total dick.

In the genius department, we need more people like Tesla and Kepler.

Get me started on Tesla/Edison and this thread will never get back on track.

Savor Dam wrote:At the risk of further enhancing our THOOOTP reputations...

Notoriety is better than nothing...

Savor Dam wrote:(Edit: on doing further research, I see that Tesla did a bit more inventing that I had recalled, including some highly significant developments. Still, much of his body of inventions were abstract and only achieved practical fruition with the innovations added by others. While Edison's inventions surely have been improved upon as well, by-and-large they were of much greater immediate practicality.)

Somewhat unfortunately, too much of the focus on Tesla today is surrounding his "wizardry." His alternating current is arguably as great a contribution as any of Edison's, and what made the application of Edison's inventions universal rather than provincial. At George Westinghouse's suggestion/request/demand, Tesla relinquished his patents on AC and gave up Billions in royalties.

I was extremely gratified to see some homage paid to Tesla in the movie The Prestige, where he was admirably portrayed by David Bowie, though that too focused on Tesla's Science Fictional Mad Scientist reputation/myth/legend rather than his very real and extremely profound work of the mundane and practical variety.

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[HALF-WAYON-TOPIC] I only ever read the first two books of the Gap series. It was WAY BACK when they were first published and I just couldn't get into them at the time. Perhaps it's time I revisited them. These Amnion sound intriguing. [/HALF-WAYON-TOPIC]

Sorus wrote:Get me started on Tesla/Edison and this thread will never get back on track.

am i doin' it right?

Demondim-spawn wrote:I only ever read the first two books of the Gap series. It was WAY BACK when they were first published and I just couldn't get into them at the time. Perhaps it's time I revisited them. These Amnion sound intriguing.

Yes, I would heartily recommend returning to the Gap. At least read A Dark and Hungry God Arises. The overall story both broadens and intensifies considerably. At the end, you may very well be eager to continue to the next volume, and at the conclusion of Chaos and Order, you almost certainly start This Day All Gods Die as soon as possible.

I freely admit that in the early 90s when I read the first two books as they came out, I was not particularly enthused and wondered whether SRD was going somewhere I wanted to follow. Obviously, I did continue. While the journey still had parts that made me squirm (as his stories always do), it was definitely worth it.

The experience of doubting SRD early in the Gap sequence and his redemption of that doubt by the totality story arc is one of the reasons I am so adamant about witholding judgement of the Last Chronicles until the whole tale has unfolded.

Savor Dam wrote:The experience of doubting SRD early in the Gap sequence and his redemption of that doubt by the totality story arc is one of the reasons I am so adamant about witholding judgement of the Last Chronicles until the whole tale has unfolded.

Darn good advice that I am genetically predisposed to reject out of hand. Contempt Prior To Investigation is writ large in me and suffuses my being to the sub-atomic level.

But who knows? I just may give the Gap series another shot and the balance of SRD's Last Chronicles the benefit of the doubt he's by rights earned from me.

I have to agree that the GAP (and hopefully the LC) was worth it. I read The Real Story three times before I could bring myself to continue; once I got into Dark and Hung ( ) I couldn't put the rest of it down, and the end of TDAGD goes on and on and on with unbearbable tension.

Shh, people, I'm trying to read over here! Halfway through This Day and counting!

Rigel wrote:Shh, people, I'm trying to read over here! Halfway through This Day and counting!

- I'd love to be there again!

StevieG wrote:

Rigel wrote:Shh, people, I'm trying to read over here! Halfway through This Day and counting!

- I'd love to be there again!

Yeah, it's too bad that you're only able to read books once