What If Star Trek (1966) Had Been About Colonizing Mars?

If Star Trek in 1966 had been about colonizing Mars, would we have a colony on Mars right now?  If Star Trek hadn’t been about an impossible distant future, but a much closer possible future, would it have influenced the space program?  After we stopped going to the Moon in 1972, did the majority of humanity give up on space travel because they didn’t have a realistic science fiction vision to inspire them?

First Star Trek and then Star Wars changed the face of the science fiction genre.  They created millions of new science fiction fans.  Star Trek and Star Wars also spread the concept of the warp drive and hyperspace across the world so that most people of the Earth now assume that mankind will one day travel to the stars using these propulsion technologies.  And that’s my problem with Star Trek and Star Wars.  They have made the warp drive and jump drive as believable as heaven, hell, angels, gods and life after death.  And although the warp drive has theoretical science behind it, it’s probably as realistic as reaching another world by dying.  The jump drive is even less believable, even though it has theoretical mathematicians supporting it with wild theories.

Star Trek created a future mythology that suggests traveling between the stars will only take days or weeks.  Star Wars enhanced that mythology by letting people believe that travel between the stars will only take hours.

The reality will be interplanetary space travel will take months and years, and interstellar travel, if it’s even possible, will take tens of years, and more likely, hundreds or thousands of years.

Science fiction has oversold the ease of space travel, and that has hurt the potential of manned space travel.

By selling the warp drive and the jump drive, most of our future mythologies are built around traveling quickly between the stars, either at ocean liner speeds or jet liner speeds.  I can’t help but wonder if this hasn’t impeded the public’s support for real space travel.  As long as real space travel is by space capsule and the destinations are rock strewn plains, space travel has little sex appeal.  It’s not an adventure but a scientific experiment to be endured by the toughest humans with the right stuff.  Having a television like Star Trek would have humanized the job.

The important thing though, this theoretical show would have had to been positive.  Most movies about Mars are about failures.

If Star Trek back in 1966 had been about a successful colony on Mars, making the endeavor exciting, and imagining realistic possibilities of what living on Mars might be like, would a science fiction show been able to influence reality?

Why hasn’t science fiction been more realistic about space travel? Why doesn’t science fiction promote the pioneering spirit anymore?  Has Star Trek and Star Wars convinced us all to wait until we can travel in comfort?  There are real advocates of space travel working on the problem of getting people off Earth, and back before Star Trek and Star Wars, many of these real space dreamers saw science fiction as cheerleading the cause, but that’s no longer true.

Can fiction shape destiny?  Is science fiction creating mythologies no more realistic than past mythologies?  Do we dream dreams to make them to come true, or do we dream dreams to fool ourselves about the nature of reality?

It’s been over forty years since humans have last walked on the Moon.  If space travel was a realistic dream we would have colonized the Moon and Mars by now.  Has science fiction failed us by cheerleading us with impractical dreams?  If science fiction had written more stories about realistic interplanetary travel would that have inspired more people to back space travel, or would the popularity of science fiction just have faded?

It’s obvious people want a Star Trek and Star Wars future, but it’s in the same way as they also want heaven, angels and God, by just waiting for them to happen.  We have to colonize the Moon and Mars first.  And that’s just a start.  There are centuries between now and The Federation, so when and how are we going to get going?

JWH – 4/1/13

Is Religion Holding Back Space Travel?

If every person on Earth woke up tomorrow an atheist would there be a surge of interest in space travel?  Does the promise of an afterlife keep us from noticing that we’re living on a very small rock in a very big universe?

Most people living today expect to leave this world for another when they die.  Without heaven, would we travel to the stars instead?

If we were all atheists and expert cosmologists, would we think, “Why are we just sitting on this on speck of dust when there’s endless worlds to explore?”

Because most people are self-centered, addicted to creature comforts, and afraid of death, would freedom from religion make them brave explorers?  And if not willing to go themselves, would a godless existential reality inspire them to pay tithes/taxes so other humans could leave Earth in rocketships?

If there was no God to define who we are, how would we define ourselves?  In other words, if we weren’t burdened by religious beliefs and truly free to shape our own destinies, would many of us seek to leave Earth in spaceships and colonize the galaxy?

If we were all absolutely sure of our mortality would we huddle close to home, hoping for life extension from science?  Or would we bravely fling ourselves beyond the sky and its protective shielding to see if we could adapt to the bizarre habitats of space?

If we knew we lived in a godless universe, and we were the crown of creation, would we work harder to preserve the Earth and colonize other worlds so all our genetic eggs wouldn’t be in one basket?  Or without God, would humanity just become depressed and wallow in self pity?

If we find ourselves in a meaningless universe can we make our own meaning?

Is it true, when the going gets tough, that the tough get going?

JWH – 3/13/13

Is Heinlein’s Have Space Suit-Will Travel Satire?

Over at Locus Online, Gary Westfahl has proposed a new theory about Robert A. Heinlein in his essay “The Joke Is on Us:  The Two Careers of Robert A. Heinlein.”  Westfahl proposes:

Thus, I wish to argue instead that there were, in fact, only two periods in Heinlein’s career: from 1939 to 1957, Heinlein wrote science fiction, and from 1958 until his death in 1988, Heinlein wrote satires of science fiction. Or, if that language seems too strong, say that from 1939 to 1957, Heinlein took his science fiction very seriously, and after that, he no longer took his science fiction seriously.

Now Westfahl didn’t say Heinlien wrote satires, but satires on science fiction, and even makes a case that Heinlein is parodying his own earlier work.  Westfal starts his essay by claiming Heinlein is a golden age science fiction writer that still has impact:

Still, there is at least one classic writer that every science fiction reader must come to terms with; for when you visit a bookstore today, the science fiction section may have only a few books by Jules Verne and H. G. Wells, or even Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke, and there may be few signs of their influence on other writers. But the works of Robert A. Heinlein are still occupying a considerable amount of shelf space, and the evidence of his broad impact on the genre is undeniable.

I don’t agree.  Heinlein has always been my favorite SF writer, but I’ve watched his reputation’s slow decline in recent decades.  I am totally open to reevaluating Heinlein’s work like Gary Westfahl has done, but not to explain Heinlein’s continued success, but to rescue Heinlein’s work for contemporary readers.  I think we need to find and recognize Heinlein’s best work that will appeal to new readers.  In our Classics of Science Fiction Book Club we have many Heinlein fans but far from most, and his popularity is on the wane, especially with younger readers.

I don’t think repackaging Heinlein as a satirist will sell or fly.

Claiming Heinlein’s later work is satire is not new, William H. Patterson Jr. was the first one I remember proposing this idea in his book The Martian Named Smith back in 2001.  But I’m sorry, I just don’t buy the satire theory of Heinlein.  To me Heinlein was always as serious as a rattlesnake, and even when he was being light hearted, as he was in Have Space Suit-Will Travel, a book for children, he was dealing with kidnapping, murder, torture, genocide and destroying planets.  Heinlein worked awful hard to make that book realistic, even though it had a silly title.

Westfahl believes Citizen of the Galaxy, the 11th juvenile was the culmination of Heinlein’s expansion of stories moving away from Earth starting with Rocket Ship Galileo.  However,  Have Space Suit-Will Travel went further than Citizen of the Galaxy, by leaving the Milky Way.  Have Space Suit-Will Travel is the logical conclusion of the series.  Starship Troopers is the first retreat.   Starship Troopers is the first of the preachy Heinlein novels.  Starship Troopers it the first of Heinlein’s books where Heinlein is flat out on his soap box arguing his philosophy and politics to the reader.  Starship Troopers is Heinlein’s first Putnam novel.

And that preaching has always been in Heinlein’s work, but I believe editors always reined Heinlein in until he went to Putnam.  Once Heinlein moved to G. P. Putnam, we finally get to see the naked Heinlein.  I don’t think he wanted to wear court jester attire, he was a nudist.  When Heinlein’s characters propose killing people for being rude I don’t think Heinlein was trying to be funny or satirical.  I think he really meant we should shoot rude people.  And this horrifies me.

Even at the end of Have Space Suit-Will Travel, when Kip is before the galactic tribunal and Earth is being judged, Kip gets mad and tells them, “All right, take away our star–  You will if you can and I guess you can.  Go ahead!  We’ll make a star!  Then, someday, we’ll come back and hunt you down—all of you!”

That wasn’t satire.  Heinlein meant it.  Heinlein has always believed that homo sapiens are the most dangerous creature in the galaxy.

The Daily Show is satire.  Saturday Night Live is satire.  Satire is something liberals do.  I don’t think deadly serious conservatives do satire.  When Heinlein was younger he had some liberal in him, but I’m pretty sure most of it was gone by 1958.

If you read Heinlein from beginning to end, over and over again, you’ll see he had certain pet ideas that were always present in his stories.  I believe Heinlein changed his writing style to fit his publisher.  In the early days those were pulp magazine editors.  Then he started writing for the slicks after the war, and finally snagged a lucrative deal at Charles Scribner’s Sons in 1947 and wrote twelve amazing juvenile novels.  Heinlein’s writing was confined by Alice Dalgliesh, his editor while at Charles Scribner’s Sons.  In the 1950s he also wrote a handful of adult books for Doubleday, and they were different from the Scribner titles.  Finally he went to Putnam, and his writing changed again.  I think Putnam let Heinlein be Heinlein.

Heinlein always claimed his number one reason for writing was money.  But after he got money, I think he wanted to express his own ideas.  As he got older, I believe Heinlein started expressing his personal fantasies.  I think all his later books are his own personal power and sex daydreams.  I don’t think Jubal Harshaw was Heinlein, but I believe Heinlein wanted to be Jubal Harshaw.

I believe Heinlein changed after Sputnik too, like Gary Westfahl suggests, but for different reasons.  Heinlein was savvy enough to realize that NASA was going to invalidate much of science fiction before the 1960s.  Heinlein knew space science was going to change science fiction and he wanted to be ahead of the curve, so he started writing social science fiction, political science fiction, sexual science fiction, fantasy science fiction, and got away from writing space travel science fiction.

Personally, I believe Heinlein’s writing got sloppy as he got old, and lost his ability to write structured novels.  He never was great at the structure of fiction, but the editors at Putnam let him run wild.  I don’t think Heinlein ever wanted to be Jonathan Swift but Patrick Henry.  Later in life Heinlein claimed his essential books were Starship Troopers, Stranger in a Strange Land and A Moon is a Harsh Mistress.  Oh, I agree some of Stranger does seem satirical, like the scenes with the angels, but I believe that was Heinlein being sentimental, more like A Wonderful Life for grownups.  Most of Heinlein’s political drama is simplistic, like out of a 1930s Frank Capra flick.

I believe all the scenes with Harshaw are Heinlein talking straight.  I believe the scenes with Mike are Heinlein’s power and sex fantasies.  The Fosterite Church scenes could be labeled satire on 1950s television preachers, but what is he satirizing?  One of Heinlein’s pet ideas was proving that the soul existed after death.  Do people attack beliefs they want to be true?  Mike, Foster and Digby become archangels in the end.  Is this satire or sentimentality?

Is Heinlein attacking “Thou art God” philosophy or proposing it?

Satirical writers have a target in mind for their writing.  They want to destroy people and ideas with humor.  Heinlein was cynical and angry, and didn’t think much of the average man, but I don’t think he was trying to kill people with humor, if Heinlein wanted to kill people he’d use a gun.  Heinlein was as funny as William F. Buckley, Jr.  Heinlein never struck me as a George Carlin, Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, or even a Mark Twain.

Although Heinlein is my favorite writer, I’ve always felt he went downhill after he went to Putnam.  None of the Putnam books strike me as funny or satirical.  Heinlein is attacking people, ideas, customs and society, but I don’t believe its with humor.  Humor is a funny thing in that what I might not laugh at someone else will.  Maybe I’m just missing the satire.  Heinlein always seemed to be about getting what he wanted.  He was bad about developing conflict, and generally created faceless straw men to knock over.  Satire is all about the details of the enemy, and Heinlein was always about the details of people who got ahead and took what they wanted.

Have Space Suit-Will Travel has always been my favorite book because its about the overwhelming desire to go into space.  It’s about a boy wanting to go to the Moon, and I grew up wanting to go into space myself.  I took this novel seriously, even though it had a funny title.  Have Gun-Will Travel was a favorite show as a kid, and it wasn’t funny either.  Much of Have Space Suit-Will Travel is about space suits.  I loved those details.  Have Space Suit-Will Travel was a power fantasy for me at 13.  It was a story I wanted to live.

It never occurred to me to think Have Space Suit-Will Travel is satire.  What I worry about now is modern minds looking back on those old books and thinking them silly, and concluding the author must have written them for laughs.   And I can even see why Gary Westfahl claims Have Space Suit-Will Travel is poking fun at science fiction because in modern eyes the story might seem quaint, goofy and naïve, but back in 1964 it was my Bible, my dream, my fantasy for the future.  I would have exchanged places with Kip in a heartbeat.

I don’t consider Have Space Suit-Will Travel poking fun at science fiction, I consider it the ideal expression of science fiction.

JWH – 11/30/12

The Chinese Should Be Writing Some Great Science Fiction About Now!

The Chinese have big plans to explore space, and they are sending manned missions into orbit like the United States and Russia did  in the mid-1960s.  The Chinese even say they are going to the Moon.  I think that’s great, and I imagine it’s a very exciting time to be Chinese.  Not only are they going to become a leading space exploration nation, but in the last few decades their economy has gone from poverty to an economic miracle.  All of this should have inspired their science fiction writers to write some amazing science fiction.

The 1950s and 1960s were very exciting times for America as we went into space, and those decades were my favorite for science fiction.  At the time, the sky was no longer the limit until we succeeded.  1969, we went to the Moon and everyone thought we’d keep going, by 1972, we stopped going anywhere but low Earth orbit.  Will it be different this time for the Chinese?  Will it be to infinity and beyond?  Will they go to the Moon, and then keep going like we dreamed back in the 1960s?

I would imagine China is living through its version of our 1960s.  Culturally and artistically they should be blasting off in all areas of life.

How are Chinese science fiction writers picturing their future in science fiction novels, television shows and movies?  Who are their big three like Heinlein-Clarke-Asimov were in the 1950s and 1960s?  Do the Chinese have a Gene Roddenberry?  Do they have an old guard and young upstarts like our 1960s Samuel R. Delany, Roger Zelazny and Harlan Ellison?

We get very little news from China.  It’s on the other side of the world, and they speak a very different language.  Taking the pulse of Chinese science fiction is rather difficult.  There is The World SF Blog that covers the entire world, and from there I found World Chinese-language Science Fiction Research Workshop.  From there I found a link to “But Some of Us are Looking at the Stars” by Kun Kun, which profiled  Liu Cixin, who has a handful of novellas and short stories at Amazon for the Kindle.  I found more about Liu Cixin and a history of Chinese science fiction at “Utopia, Dystopia, Heterotopias: From Lu Xun to Liu Cixin.”

China Daily did a profile on Liu Cixin and an overview of his books.  I’d like to read the books they describe, but other than the character names, their plots don’t seem uniquely Chinese.  Are science fiction and fantasy themes just universal?  Like English writers, Liu Cixin writes about threats to the Earth, either from natural forces or alien forces.  I was hoping for stories about China exploring the solar system and building colonies.  Maybe the Chinese people have already learned from us that few people want to colonize the Moon and Mars.

I bought Liu Cixin’s “The Wandering Earth” but it reminds me more of England’s contemporary New Space Opera movement.  It’s about the Sun going red giant much earlier than expected and how Earthmen cope.  But it also reminded me of something that shatters my illusions about the SF of the 1950s and 1960s.  Most SF is about catastrophes, or war, or warnings about self-destruction.  SF needs conflict, and all too often it’s bleak.

For some reason my nostalgia for 1950s and 1960s is confused in my memories of the excitement for the 1960s manned space programs like Mercury, Gemini and Apollo, as well as the Mariner missions to Mars.  Back then, as a teen, I equated science fiction as the cheerleading squad for the space program, and it never really was that.

I do wonder if a boom in science fiction correlates with an expanding space program?  Does going into space inspire the average citizen into thinking about their descendants living in space?  I think the American experience has shown that there is a disconnect between now and a Star Trek future.  People want space travel to be luxury class, not pioneering in covered wagons.  There’s damn little science fiction about actually doing the hard work of colonizing the solar system.  We loved Star Trek because all the dirty work had been done.

Very few 1950s and 1960s science fiction books were about the joys of pioneering space travel.  And the ones I remember best, were all Heinlein juveniles like The Rolling Stones, Time for the Stars, Starman Jones, and Farmer in the Sky.  Have Space Suit-Will Travel had a lot of sense of wonder space travel in it, but it was mostly about interstellar conflict and judging species on their aggression.  Many other classic science fiction stories at the time had space travel in them, but space travel wasn’t the main theme of the story.

The Foundation stories by Asimov had lots of space travel, but it was about the rise and fall of a galactic empire, and space travel was about as important as airplanes are to stories in The New Yorker today.  I’ve always had this false assumption that science fiction was about promoting the colonization of the final frontier.  But if I look at the popular books of the time that isn’t reflected.  Here are the 1960s books from The Classics of Science Fiction List.  [The number states the number of citations that recommended the book.]

1960	Canticle for Leibowitz, A	Miller, Walter M.	24
1960	Deathworld	Harrison, Harry	7
1960	Rogue Moon	Budrys, Algis	11
1961	Big Time, The	Leiber, Fritz	10
1961	Dark Universe	Galouye, Daniel F.	7
1961	Lovers, The	Farmer, Philip Jose	9
1961	Stranger in a Strange Land	Heinlein, Robert A.	19
1962	Clockwork Orange, A	Burgess, Anthony	16
1962	Drowned World, The	Ballard, J. G.	8
1962	Long Afternoon of Earth, The (Hothouse)	Aldiss, Brian	17
1962	Man in the High Castle, The	Dick, Philip K.	20
1963	Way Station	Simak, Clifford	16
1964	Davy	Pangborn, Edgar	11
1964	Greybeard	Aldiss, Brian	8
1964	Wanderer, The	Leiber, Fritz	9
1965	Dune	Herbert, Frank	25
1966	Babel-17	Delany, Samuel R.	10
1966	Crystal World, The	Ballard, J. G.	10
1966	Dream Master, The	Zelazny, Roger	7
1966	Flowers for Algernon	Keyes, Daniel	17
1966	Make Room! Make Room!	Harrison, Harry	7
1966	Moon is a Harsh Mistress, The	Heinlein, Robert A.	17
1966	The Witches of Karres	Schmitz, James H.	7
1966	This Immortal	Zelazny, Roger	8
1967	Dangerous Visions	Ellison, Harlan	12
1967	Einstein Intersection, The	Delany, Samuel R.	10
1967	Lord of Light	Zelazny, Roger	15
1967	Past Through Tomorrow, The	Heinlein, Robert A.	9
1968	Camp Concentration	Disch, Thomas	16
1968	Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?	Dick, Philip K.	14
1968	Nova	Delany, Samuel R.	7
1968	Pavane	Roberts, Keith	10
1968	Rite of Passage	Panshin, Alexei	12
1968	Stand on Zanzibar	Brunner, John	24
1969	Behold The Man	Moorcock, Michael	7
1969	Bug Jack Barron	Spinrad, Norman	10
1969	Left Hand of Darkness, The	Le Guin, Ursula K.	24
1969	Slaughterhouse Five	Vonnegut, Kurt	13
1969	Ubik	Dick, Philip K.	13

It seems social unrest in very inspiring for science fiction too, maybe more so than success in space travel.  If you look at the breadth and variety of subjects covered in the books above, can you imagine what the Chinese writers must be writing about now?  In some ways I feel China is as far away as alien life in another stellar system.  I could physically fly there to visit, but without knowing the language I’d never actually get there. 

I felt the same way about Russia back in the 1960s.  The Soviets were our competition and enemies back then, but I figured it had to be exciting times living there, at least for the men and women who built their space program.  We eventually got a trickle of Soviet SF but never enough to really feel what their science fiction world was like.

We never saw a Dune, Canticle for Leibowitz, The Left Hand of Darkness or Stand on Zanzibar come out of Russia.  Will we ever read such great stories translated from the Chinese?  Hell, for all I know, Russia could have produced a library of great SF that blows our classics away, but because of the language barrier we’ll never know.  If any Russian or Chinese readers read this, please post a comment below to lets all know about the state of science fiction in your country.

JWH – 7/29/12

Losing My Faith in Space Travel

Science fiction promised children growing up in the 1950s something different than what it does to our children today.  The innocent expectations of tomorrow culminated in the 1964 World’s Fair which seemed all about the future and the promise of space travel?  Was there ever another time in history where kids truly believed they would walk on the Moon or Mars when they grew up?  Between 1961 and 1972 NASA always went further and faster with Mercury, Gemini and Apollo space programs.  For the forty years since 1972 we’ve been retracing old orbital paths below those reached in Project Gemini in 1965.  Now, the U.S. can’t even launch men and women into orbit.  When did the final frontier fizzle out?  I’m sure the budget bean counters know.

It’s not like we don’t have the technology to travel to the planets, we just don’t have the desire, or at least the desire to spend the money.

Like religion, science fiction promised true believers life in the heavens.  As long as NASA kept rocketing to new heights it was easy to believe the faith of space travel.  Like religion, space travel has failed to answer the prayers of its devoted – nobody leaves Earth.  Could it be that humans are meant to stay on Earth?  Forever?

What if it becomes obvious we’re not going to the planets and stars, and humans must live for thousands, if not millions of year here on planet Earth?  How does that change science fiction and the faith in the final frontier?  What if we come to realize that travel in space isn’t practical or even desirable?  What if we come to realize that alien spaceships will never visit us either?  That gulf between the stars is too vast for travel by biological creatures.  Robots might go, but not us.  How will that change our faith in science fiction?

We won’t know our limits in space until we hit them.  So far, we’ve only hit the money barrier!

I always believed science fiction was the sacred writing of the space travel faithful, but again like other belief systems, tenets of the faithful change.  If humans aren’t meant to travel to the stars, what is our destiny?  Science fiction, instead of selling space travel, promotes turning inward with artificial intelligence, cybernetic worlds, brain downloading, biological immortality, and other fabulous speculation about living on Earth.   I can accept the confinement if there are real limitations to humans traveling in space, but I’d sure hate it if we’ve just reached the limits of our vision.

Oh sure, there are still true believers who can’t give up the idea there’s a world just 35 million miles away that’s ripe for terraforming.  They keep preaching their gospel hoping to convert enough believers to make their visions come true, but their creed dwindles.

Yes, there is another time when kids grow up thinking they will walk on the Moon and Mars.  It’s now, and those kids live in China.  Do they dream my old 1950s dreams?  Will their dreams come true this time for all us humans?

This is what we get for cutting taxes.

A small government leads to smaller dreams.

China will get bigger with bigger dreams, while we grow small, clutching our tax dollars.

Thank you, Republicans.

JWH – 4/9/12

A Practical Plan for a Lunar Colony

Newt Gingrich last week got politically slammed for proposing a Moon colony while campaigning in the Florida primary.  In an obvious bid for votes from space coast residents Newt Gingrich claimed he would build a permanent colony on the Moon by the end of his second term.  Sounds great if you’re a science fiction fan and space enthusiast, but everyone else just hears more national debt.  The other Republican candidates quickly thrashed Gingrich for being impractical.

Even if the United States was flushed with dough and out of debt would Americans really want to return to the Moon?  China is making plans to land on the Moon but will they develop a colony there when we didn’t?  Back in 1969-1972 the U.S. landed six missions on the Moon, but the public grew bored after two.  The Chinese will discover the same thing – only a geologist can love the Moon up close.

Sending humans to the Moon, or Mars or anywhere else in space just doesn’t make sense right now, and hasn’t since 1972.  Sadly, robots have turned out to be far better astronauts, but we shouldn’t feel too choked up over being replaced by machines.  The human body isn’t suited for life in outer space, at least not yet, whereas robots can thrive in the harsh climates beyond our atmosphere.

What we need to do is colonize the Moon with robots.  Have machines roam over the lunar surface high and low and make a complete survey of natural resources.  Then send robots that mine those resources and build other robots.  Eventually we’d have enough robots on the Moon that could build underground cities suitable for humans to visit or colonize.  Whether humans can live on the Moon for extended stays, reproduce, and safely raise children is still unknown.  We may yet discover that humans can’t adapt to low gravity.

My point though is robots can build a colony on the Moon far cheaper than using manpower.  And it would be a far greater scientific achievement to develop a robotic colony because most of the money and resources used for a lunar colony for humans would go just to keep people alive. 

There are few reasons to go to the Moon:

• Scientific study of the Moon
• Base for very large telescopes
• Mine helium-3 when fusion reactors come online
• Prove that humans can live permanently in space

Three of the four reasons can be handled by robots, and robots could prepare the Moon for humans for the fourth.

Building a robot civilization on the Moon would be a new accomplishment and would outclass anything the Chinese could do by just repeating the Apollo missions.

Building a robotic colony would be far cheaper and it would lay the foundation for a cheaper human colony in the future.

Finally, developing the technology for a robotic civilization on the Moon would be more valuable than the accomplishment of putting men and women on the Moon again.

JWH – 1/31/12

Would You Hitch a Ride on an Alien Spacecraft?

Over at the Classic Science Fiction book club a member said she would gladly go off with an alien visitor to see their world.  We were reading Calculating God by Robert Sawyer last month, and the main character has to make that decision.  Other members in the club also said they would go if they didn’t have wives and/or children.  The original replier even said she’s take an anal probe if that’s what it took to hitch a ride as long as the aliens provided her with the necessities of life.  She thought it would be the grandest experience possible.

I’ve seen this discussion before and many people claim they would hitch a ride on an alien spacecraft.  But why?  When I was young I would have said the same thing because I had space fever so bad, but now that I’m older it doesn’t seem wise.  Don’t get me wrong, I want to know about life on other planets, and I’d love to see other worlds, but HD video will be plenty good for me.

Has science fiction oversold the romance of space travel?

Now this discussion is for a one way trip only.  All or nothing.  And it still get takers.  When NASA was first planning trips to the Moon there was even discussion of one-way trips, and one-way trips to Mars have also been discussed, and there’s always folks claiming they would volunteer in second.

How bad do people want to go into space?  How much do they want to see another habitable world?  Evidently quite a lot.

Now in the book Calculating God the main character is dying of cancer and his decision is whether to die on Earth or out in space, so the hardest part of the decision was whether to leave his wife and kid, losing his last few months with them.  But I’m hearing from people they would go even if they weren’t dying.

I have to compare this to Christians who want the Rapture to hurry up and come.  It seems some people want certain answers very badly.  In Calculating God the whole world knows about the alien visitors.  They are scientists who come to Earth to work with other scientists, and when they leave they ask a few human friends if they’d like to come along exploring with them.  Under those circumstances my questions about life on other planets would already be answered.  The aliens brought lots of data and video with them about their worlds and the worlds they had already explored, so that would have been good enough for me.  So why do some people just have to go no matter what to see for themselves?

Do some people need a deeply mind-blowing adventure to make their lives worthwhile?  Is a portion of our population totally dissatisfied with a normal life on Earth?  Or is there a travel gene that makes some people want to roam?

Or has science fiction sold us a romantic view that’s irresistible to some?

Or consider the reverse, maybe we love science fiction because we have genes that want to explore the universe and we can’t go.

I’ve always compared science fiction to religion, and outer space is the modern substitute for heaven, and aliens are the angels.

A couple of book club people mentioned they’d like to be ambassadors for the human race.  And one member said if he was the only one going it would be more important than if he was one of hundreds, so the desire to have a unique experience is a factor.  Another member reminded us of Close Encounters of the Third Kind where the Richard Dreyfuss character leaves seemingly without thinking about his wife and children.  That implies a very strong desire to go joyriding with aliens.

This overwhelming desire to go to an alien world reminds me of love and sex.  How often have you been overwhelmed with love and sexual desire and then got lucky with the person of your desire, only to discover that the sex and relationship wasn’t everything you dreamed it would be?

Is travel to the stars so irresistible because it’s something we can’t have?  What if we got to consummate this love and the aliens turned out to be annoying as hell, and you became jaded over their beautiful exotic world after six weeks?

This desire to go to the stars seems very powerful.  I wonder if Freud or Jung ever examined it?

JWH – 8/2/11

Can a New Science Fiction Inspire a New Space Program?

Many people firmly believe that science fiction was the original inspiration for sending men into space and going to the Moon.  I don’t know if that could ever be proven, but there’s a certain logic in thinking dreams come even before the horse or the cart.

The space program has lost its way.  The Shuttles are being mothballed, and we’ve never left LEO for four decades now.  If we’re honest, we’ll admit it was the cold war politics that got us to spend billions on NASA, and  I’m afraid real science has made space a far less appealing destination than the fanciful vistas of old pulp fiction.  Robotic probes have toured the solar system and we have a very realistic view of off Earth real estate, and the sites are far from the exotic locales described by our cherished space opera.

Yet, I have to ask:  Can a new kind of realistic science fiction, incorporating the latest scientific knowledge about space, make the final frontier sexy again?  I remember talking many years ago with a young woman about space exploration.  She said unless we had spaceships like the Enterprise in Star Trek: The  Next Generation then it wasn’t worth traveling in space.  I have a feeling most people think that too. 

I told her it was unlikely we’d ever have spaceships like NCC-1701-D and she acted like I had told her there was no Santa Claus.  She had assumed such luxury space travel would be available soon, or at least well within her lifetime.  Her attitude was, if we can’t travel in comfort, why go into space at all.

And there’s the rub.  The final frontier will be rougher than any frontier a pioneer has experienced in the history of our species.  Science fiction originally sold space exploration as an colorful adventure vacation.  Now we know it’s going to be more like years of reconstructive surgery and physical rehabilitation with little hope of full recovery.

There are only two destinations for people in our solar system: the Moon and Mars.  Forget the satellites of Jupiter and Saturn, they are much too cold and those systems have tremendous radiation levels.  The Moon and Mars are far from habitable, but with determination we might colonize them.  But we can’t oversell those two worlds like Kim Stanley Robinson did in his Red, Green, Blue Mars series.  That trilogy was among the best “realistic” science fiction in recent decades, but it had way too much fantasy for the kind of science fiction I’m suggesting here.

Can a new generation of science fiction writers envision practical human life on the Moon and Mars in such a way as to sell the idea to the tax paying public?  So far a majority of the public refuse to believe in evolution, so I find it hard to imagine such scientific science fiction selling, but it’s still a possibility.

JWH – 6/21/11

The Ethics of Interstellar Colonization

We science fiction fans have always assumed the destiny of mankind is expanding our habitat across the galaxy, exploring new worlds, conquering new frontiers, expanding our territory, because that’s the kind of species we are.  But what are the ethical issues involved.  Think of the Federation policies in Star Trek, and it’s rules about first contact.  It’s pretty obvious that we should leave emerging civilizations alone, to let them find their own way, but what are the right ethical conditions for us to land on a planet and start colonizing it?

If it’s a rocky world like Mars I would think there would be no problems at all, even though some people do advocate leaving Mars untouched.  I think we at least have to establish two ends of the spectrum.  On the left is a dead world, and the right is emerging intelligent life, somewhere in between is where we need to place our mark as the beginning point for not interfering.

Let’s say we landed on a planet that had life like in the Jurassic, tiny brains and big bodies, and no chance of intelligent life appearing for a hundred million years, would it be okay to stay there and setup a colony?  Ignoring the butterfly effect, it should be possible to colonize this world without misdirecting the path of its evolution.  Now we couldn’t utilize this world like we’ve done Earth, using up all the resources and killing off endless species, but it might be possible to coexist with the indigenous life without doing much harm or changing its evolutionary direction.

It would be unethical to use up the heavy metals and other minerals, so we should import them from off planet and make sure we didn’t produce significant waste.

So how close in time to an emerging self aware intelligence should we stay?  Could we live on a planet with a homo erectus type intelligence and just avoid contact with them?

What about bringing other species with us from Earth?

What if we found a planet with simple life in the ocean, and simple plant life on the land, maybe just grasses and fern type species.  Should we introduce fish, trees, vegetables and fruits, along with dogs, cats, chickens, pigs, sheep, cows and horses?  Or should we believe that given enough time complex life would emerge on this planet and the life forms we bring with us would keep them from emerging?

Should the ethnical rule be that only intelligent species should travel to other planets.  So for dogs to go to the stars they would have to evolve and build their own space ships.  But what if we find worlds that have no life on them whatsoever and we terraform them for life, can we bring our animal and plant friends with us?  I would think yes.

How dangerous is the bacteria in our bodies?

But what about all the bacteria and viruses that live inside of us, won’t those contaminate a world and harm its evolution?  we might could live without viruses, but I don’t know, but it’s doubtful we could live without our bacteria friends.  We have a symbiotic relationship with them.

Are we alone?

Are we alone because there’s no other intelligent species near us, or because it would be unethical to contact us?  Are there wise beings all around us waiting for us to grow up?  If we are alone, and humans are the miracle of the galaxy does that give us ethical clout to colonize like crazy?  Would the greatest ethical crime of all reality be the one where we destroy ourselves or let ourselves be destroyed?  Or what if humans go extinct, and other animals and life continue living on the Earth for millions of years without ever becoming self-aware like we are?  Does it matter?  If a self-aware being arises in reality and dies and there’s no other aware beings to notice, do we make a sound?  Do we have an ethical obligation to expand our territory to other worlds so our species can live as long as possible?

What if we don’t go to the stars?

What if we never go to the stars, either because our bodies can’t handle living in space, or we can’t conquer the physics to travel such distances, and just continue to live on Earth, maybe for millions of years.  What does that mean philosophically?  What if we become fish in an aquarium looking at the glass forever?  Is just existing a good enough ethical existence?  What if expanding our abilities, influence and habitats define our meaning in reality?  What if it’s unethical for us not to try to colonize space?

JWH – 4/17/11

The Decline of Science Fiction

I was playing with Google Insights for Search and Google Trends and discovered that science fiction is in decline, or at least the popularity of searching on the term in Google.  I started with this Google Trends chart on science fiction:

I then switched to Google Insights for the rest of the comparisons.

Warning, the totals given on the graphs are not always accurate – they vary with the cursor position on the time graph.  So ignore them.  Just look at the lines, or I’ll give you the averages from the Google page.

Trying to understand what the numbered scale means is hard, but here is Google’s explanation,

The numbers on the graph reflect how many searches have been done for a particular term, relative to the total number of searches done on Google over time. They don’t represent absolute search volume numbers, because the data is normalized and presented on a scale from 0-100. Each point on the graph is divided by the highest point, or 100. When we don’t have enough data, 0 is shown. The numbers next to the search terms above the graph are summaries, or totals.

When I was growing up they talked about the big three of SF writers, Heinlein, Asimov and Clarke, so I did a graph of them.

Asimov is by far the more popular writer now, but all three writers show a decline in interest.  And why did Asimov have a spike in July 2004, and Clarke in March, 2008?

Because Google doesn’t give actual numbers it’s hard to gauge absolute interest, so I plotted “space travel” versus “Lady Gaga” and got a rather sad graph:

Space travel hits the 0 mark in comparison.  So I did space travel by itself and got this:

Interest in space travel is in sharp decline.  So I wondered how science compared to science fiction and created this chart:

Now I’m starting to doubt my methodology.  Why is time travel so much more popular than space travel?  Or is it a matter of how the phrases are used in popular culture.  I thought I try another comparison to test things.

Science fiction is 2 compared to NASA’s 19.  But notice, interest in NASA is in decline too.

But science fiction is 57 compared to time travel’s 26.  Time travel is probably a common term that’s well used in popular culture outside of the field of science fiction, as is science fiction, but it’s hard to gauge phrase from genre.

Star Wars is way more popular than Star Trek and both are more popular than science fiction.   Is that huge spike for Star Wars due to films or the discussion of the defense anti-missile program?

To get some real world perspective I did a comparison to iPods and iPhones.  On the Google page the totals were SF is 0 and the iPhone and iPods averaged 28 each.

Trying to zero in on the popularity of science fiction I tried:

So science fiction is about as popular as the Kings of Leon before they hit the big time – or at least on Google.

Finally, how does science fiction compare to other genres.

On the web page fantasy and science fiction each get a 2, romance gets a 6, and mystery gets a 28.

Why is murder a more a interesting fictional topic than the future?  Go figure.

I don’t know if any of this means anything, but it is interesting to play with.  I linked to the two services at the top, so go test them yourself.

JWH – 4/9/11