I was recently asked a question by a reader on Twitter. (And that still feels so good to say that word, reader, like I actually have people reading my work, and liking it). He asked if I did star maps for the Exodus series. And my answer was: yes, no and maybe. Since I wasn’t really sure what he meant by star maps, I really didn’t have an answer. Do I draw a map of the Empire and label every important star on it. Well, no. The Empire is four thousand light years from end to end, and over three thousand light years thick, containing over forty billion cubic light years, with hundreds of millions of stars within that expanse. Now most of the stars are red dwarves, like much of the stellar bodies in the Galaxy. Not of much interest on the whole, though there will be some exceptions. I have a mention in book three about how survey teams visit these stars about once a decade, just to make sure nothing bad is going on. There will also be Blue Giants and Supergiants, again not of much interest, unless one happens to be near an inhabited system (as these stars tend to die early and violent deaths). There will be a book in the series that deals with this kind of problem. There would still be some odd millions of stars in that area that would be of interest. In Exodus I make about ten thousand of the stars in the Empire either having inhabitable, alien home worlds, sources of resources of special interest, or containing worlds that can be terraformed. Not sure if this is a hgih estimate, low or just right. I guess no one will know the ratio of inhabitable planets to stars in the foreseeable future. Still a lot of systems, and not really what I can keep track of. So what do I do to keep track of them?
There was a file on the internet some years ago, back in the late 90s, called the Astrogator’s Manual. There was a cool little three dimensional cube in the manual that represented all the stars within a twenty-five parsec on a side box, with Sol in the middle. Now the box was divided into smaller boxes, each five parsecs on a side. And then it showed one layer of boxes with all the stars in those areas represented, then the next section, until all five sections of twenty-five smaller boxes were covered. It did this from front to back, then from top to bottom. I did something like that with my core systems, all ninety some odd of them represented. I also did a chart of when they would be colonized based on how far they were from the central star, these being important for determining length of cultural development and population density of the planets. I haven’t used this box map much, but when I need it its there. I drew a look down map of the Empire and surrounding powers on a piece of graph paper. All very cool, except that stellar empires are three dimensional entities. So I do a slice of the empire from and surroundings starting at one end and doing another slice every two hundred light years, from coreward to rimward. Not all that detailed, but enough to get my mind around it. Finally I did one big map of the section of the Galaxy where all the action was occurring, showing the New Terran Empire in relation to old Earth and the Ca’cadasan Empire. And that’s it for now. I have a program that is supposed to make star maps and allows the user to input data and change parameters. Only problem is the stupid thing takes forever to run on my two years ago was fast computer. But when I buy my state of the art gaming machine in a month (you know, for work), then I will try it again and see what happens. Until then mapping and drawing allows me to keep my little boy’s mind active and develop ideas. Of course I didn’t discuss the smaller maps, the map of the Supersystem showing the stars and their orbits, solar system maps, some planet maps, and a map of Capitulum, the capital of the Empire. Not all the planets of course, but when I need one I will draw one, just to have the reference.
Terraforming
All posts tagged Terraforming
I have always been fascinated by habitats in space. Now I’m not taking about those small structures with a couple of pressurized rooms and maybe space for a dozen people. No, I’m talking about those multi-kilometer long and multi-kilometer wide cylinders or rings or series of domes that might house ten to a hundred thousand to a million people in an artificial world with plants and trees and maybe even some animals. Like miniature planets in their own right. I have seen designs on the internet, and videos on Youtube, but the things just aren’t used enough in science fiction literature and film. Rama was a self propelled habitat with no people, on a journey to another star, passing through our system. Babylon Five was a space habitat, though we were mostly treated to corridors and rooms. There were always the few tantalizing visions of the artificial habitat as seen by the center mounted train car, with fields and foliage and houses in the open. We may never make it to the stars. We may never terraform other planets in our system, though I believe we will, someday. But I am sure that we will build massive habitats in space, maybe by the millions at some point, establishing a Dyson ring around our sun. They could each house their own culture and government, a place for people to try out new things while still within range of rescue should those things go very wrong. We can experiment with different gravity fields, even if artificial gravity is never developed, just by changing the rotation speed of the ring. I believe that a whole new world will open up for us, and maybe Earth will be relegated to the position of place to be nostalgic about and preserve as a museum, but just too hazardous to actually live on. There are plenty of materials in space to construct huge numbers of such structures, from metals, to carbonaceous materials for soils, to volatiles for air and water. They are just there for the exploiting in the Asteroid Belt and the Cometary Halo around the system.
But what about these places as settings for stories. That is the part that really fascinates me as a writer, the millions of different settings that can be constructed in a hard factual universe where the stars are out of reach and the planets to inhospitable for more than mining bases. Now these structures can contain surface areas in their rotation rings or cylinders from dozens to thousands of square kilometers, larger than most counties in the United States. Imagine them forested, or filled with jungle. And imagine hunting preserves stocked with animals that were illegal to create. Or cults of peoples who don’t want the scrutiny of outsiders. Or plagues or viruses, or maybe even nanites. And imagine entering this structure through the hanger area, and seeing a thousand square kilometers of jungle, not just to front and side, but also overhead. Of winding rivers in the sky. Of people who may have reverted back to savagery, or mutated to some new form. This would be plausible setting for many of the old pulp style adventures. I have some ideas for settings like these, and may explore them in the near future when my current projects are done. A setting for a sequel to The Deep Dark Well, or in one of the sequels to the future series based on that novel. Or perhaps a volume of short stories, all showcasing a different environment on one of the habitats. The possibilities are endless. It surprises me that more has not been done in this area. Maybe the time is coming.
Very exciting news came out the other day; at least as far as all of us children of the Space Age are concerned. Those of us who grew up in the 1960s were promised Moon bases, space stations with Howard Johnson’s restaurants, and missions to Mars. 2001 A Space Odyssey showed a glimpse of the future that we expected to see. Regular trips into space by commercial airlines (spacelines?), a city on the Moon, even a mission to Jupiter by the turn of the century. Instead, after the initial excitement of the Moon Race we were treated to space buses into the lower orbitals, satellite launches, and lots of robotic probes. Now the information sent back by those satellites and probes, especially the Hubble, were exciting. But the thrill of men and women going into space was subsumed under a work a day attitude for NASA. Now granted, the Cold War sucked in a lot of money that might have gone into planetary exploration. And the two shuttle disasters made the powers that be more cautious. But realistically pioneers have always taken risks, and some have always been burned. Ships went out into the unknown and never came back. Fragile aircraft crashed on a whim. But because there was money to be made the pioneers forged on. That was the catalyst that made people risk all to gain all.
The other day Producer James Cameron and the executives of Goggle announced that they were starting up a company to mine the asteroids. While they certainly will not be able to carry out this dream by themselves, they hope through some practical demonstrations to attract capital that can be used to grab a foothold in space and expand. The simple fact is that the most expensive part of the exploration and exploitation of the Solar System is getting off the Earth in the first place. It is horribly expensive to put things into orbit and beyond. But once beyond it becomes almost ridiculously cheap to go further. The pursuit of space by private companies has been in the news lately, but Cameron and Google’s announcement is the most ambitious to date. And they have a reasonable timetable for its accomplishment.
So what is our future in space as a species? If, of course, we don’t just blast each other out of existence, still a possibility, but with the end of the Cold War standoff less of one. We will definitely colonize the moon, build orbital habitats and go on to the other planets. Asteroid mining of course, including bringing some of the smaller ones to Earth orbit to use for the materials needed to build the orbital infrastructure. Colonies on Mars eventually, and even on the moons of the gas giants and the larger asteroids. Beyond that? Once we control the energies then the Terraforming of Mars is a distinct possibility. Venus not so much, but not impossible. Maybe even our moon with a mantel of atmosphere. We may never reach the stars, though even if Einstein remains the ultimate authority that may be possible. Once megascale production becomes mundane then generation ships may not be far behind. Beyond the light speed barrier, wormholes, warp drive? We just don’t know. Some would say that star ships are impossible, but real scientists are looking into the possibilities of hyperlight travel, or at least some way around the distance barriers, some of which we can’t even imagine.
So the news is hopefully the beginning of something really big. It probably won’t happen according to any projected time frame that we can formulate today. It probably will contain some unforeseen pitfalls, as well as unforeseen promise. Some will grow rich and powerful, while others spend all and lose everything, just as merchants and explorers did in the past. People will die, dreams will be realized, new cultures and nations will be born out there in the Solar System. Wars will be fought. Never believe that everything will be peace and love and joy in the greater Solar System. But I believe with these new steps outward we will forge on. This is an exciting time to live in, and I truly hope I see some of this come to pass.
