The Reading Corner.

[Buster's Uncle]

I'm most of the way through another re-read of SF classic Tau Zero by Poul Anderson.  -Has it ever occurred to anyone that the resolution of the ship's dilemma is impossible several times over?

a) They are traveling slower than light -the central idea of the book, after all- and would have been drawn into the monobloc with everything else.

b) The cosmic egg should have sucked up space-time along with all the matter and energy, leaving them nowhere to orbit.

c) The creation of a new universe would be an energetic event, to say the least, many orders of magnitude of orders of magnitude beyond surviving a ground zero nuclear explosion.


...Am I leaving anything out?  Any holes in my analysis?  Anyone think they can handwave these problems away?  Geo?  Anyone?...

I merely read the Wiki synopsis, but to me it looks like they'd never even be able to reach this 'monobloc'. The synopsis says they have to keep the engine running for anti-radiation shielding reasons. But between galaxies there's appearantly not enough particles to fuel the engines. Ergo, the engines will quickly run out of (earlier collected, if any) fuel, so the shielding goes down at the worst possible moment, when the ship is already approaching speed of light, with all the increased energetic radiation that comes with that.

Agreed - the first time they reached a new galactic cluster, the radiation should have killed them before the shielding kicked in.

You should read the book - it's still a classic, despite those problems and even though I don't think Anderson wrote women very well.

I should mention that Anderson gave the ship an impressive set of batteries or fuel reserve or something, and they had the magnetic shielding raised for a week (ship time) ahead of when they thought they'd need it leaving intergalactic space.  I don't believe for a second that that's possible -the field just has to consume more power in a day than all of Europe burns through in a year- but he did try to deal with that...

So I finished the book, and two more problems I find insurmountable:

1) I didn't take point b) above far enough.  There's a bit near the end where some astronomers show the captain a light showing in the far reaches of the burned-out universe.  It's the beginning of the new monoboc.   BBBBBBZZZ!  Wrong.  It would be impossible to view it forming at a distance.  The Universe has no center and the cosmic egg forms around you.

2) New universe, new physical laws.  If they'd found a way past the other problems I've pointed out -and there's no way they could-  the likelihood that the new universe would be so similar as to even have three spatial dimensions is so low as to make no difference from impossible, barring bringing in some quantum observer effect where the crew's minds unconsciously shaped the new conditions.

-Actually, that last handwave occurred to me as I was writing, and I hearby invoke it to avoid having to rechristen the book Probability Zero.

Now somebody read the darn book so you can discuss it with me, if I haven't ruined it by spoiling the ending.  It's still a really good yarn, and deservedly a classic.

[Geo]

I'm loath to say it, but its unlikely a fifty year old novel can be found abroad?

[Buster's Uncle]

You tell me.

[Geo]

Would you buy Outies then?

[Buster's Uncle]

Isn't that Jerry Pournell's daughter's Mote fanfic?

You can buy that?

And it's actually good?

[Geo]

Isn't that Jerry Pournell's daughter's Mote fanfic?

You can buy that?

And it's actually good?

Yes.
AFAIK, yes.
I have no idea.

[Buster's Uncle]

Are you familiar with Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom books?  -His son Jack ghost-wrote the first half of John Carter of Mars, the story about Pew Mogli and the giant hormad - and it sucked pretty hard.

I have a feeling Outies is like that.

[Geo]

I read some allusions to it in one of Heinlein's novels. The 'universe' were other writers characters turn out to be 'real'.
So I gather the Dune novels written by Heinlein junior are fanfic in your view?

[Buster's Uncle]

They're bad, is what they are.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Breath of God, by Harry Turtledove. 

Turned up in a box with recent-ish reads, but it appears that I previously overlooked this one, so first new book since early last year.

[Buster's Uncle]

The Breath of God, by Harry Turtledove. 

Turned up in a box with recent-ish reads, but it appears that I previously overlooked this one, so first new book since early last year.

Sometimes Turtledove is freakin' brilliant (Guns of the South) - but sometimes -more frequently of late- he craps out 400+ pages of leaden, positively retarded, (In the Presence of Mine Enemies) dialogue.  This is one of the latter.

--

Currently struggling through a re-read of Liberating Atlantis, also one of the latter.

[Rusty Edge]

I'm reading more nautical fiction, this time it's Victorian nautical fiction, at the height of the British Empire.
The Dawlish Chronicles by Antoine Valler
http://dawlishchronicles.com/

Our hero has embraced the age of steam ( even learning to use a metal lathe ), rather than denounce and resist it, like his contemporaries.  Dawlish is seeking career advancement in peacetime by taking leave of absence from the Royal Navy to take volunteer assignments on other continents to serve British political and commercial interests.

Unlike the Napoleonic Wars, which were a desperate global conflict, the great game is more like the Cold War, a discrete sort of us vs them, waged with proxies. You set things in motion without regard for future consequences and generations. In the Napoleonic Wars captured gentlemen officers could offer their parole ( give their word ) and be free to roam the streets of an enemy city while wearing their swords, absurd as that sounds,  until they are exchanged.

Dawlish is like a spy- if captured he might be tortured and killed by his enemies. Even if he succeeds he might be disavowed and made a scapegoat by his own country- he is on his own in  very risky ventures.  Why take such risks? He's a career naval officer of little influence during peacetime, and he's ambitious. Sure, he's brave and patriotic, but so is everybody else in the navy, so it's no advantage, and you can't exactly demonstrate your courage unless there's danger.

Machines and the world are becoming increasingly complicated. Now ships need fuel in their holds rather than fresh water. Masts are just for flags, signals and look-outs. Winches and hydraulics do the work of capstans. Flintlock pistols have been replaced by revolvers. Gatling guns have replaced squads of marines with muskets on the decks of ships during battle. Only the cutlass is unchanged.

[Geo]

Only the cutlass is unchanged.

And the lance.

[Lord Avalon]

Fever Season (Merovingen Nights #2) - CJ Cherryh

[Rusty Edge]

I've been reading The Otto Prohaska Novels, by John Biggins
It has a slow, pretentious start, reminding me of Alan Quartemain / King Solomon's Mines.

It's a 101 year old man dictating his memoirs.

Once you get past the first chapter or so, it turns into an interesting series of tales about the early days of flight and submarine warfare. It had some laugh out loud moments for me, too.

As maps of Europe go, I was always kind of partial to the ones with the Austro-Hungarian Empire. Something big enough to have diverse resources.  This series is showing me unwieldiness of the aging empire, with all it's languages, religions, and ethnic divisions. The bureaucracy, the royal family, the classes. The strains put upon it by the war were enough to fracture it, even if it was on the winning side.

The author is English, but in the voice of his Austrian protagonist, he shares this observation-

"One of the least endearing traits of the English, I have often had cause to observe-- now quite as much as in those early post-imperial days-- is their total inability to take any nationality but themselves seriously; as if Englishness were some God-ordained ideal state of humanity of which all the other peoples of the earth fall short to a greater or lesser degree. And in my case, of course, being an  Austro-Czech by birth placed me in a sort of third-class compartment of risibility some way below Belgians and only just above the Portuguese and the Greeks: remote, quaint and absurd, probably untrustworthy but basically harmless:"

That seemed to be a popular section to highlight in the e-book. Anyway, he has a sort of Forrest Gump experience.