James Nicoll
2008-11-02 17:39:32 UTC
I am going to quote Jo Walton on Third Artist Syndrome because
she said it better than I would:
"SF is becoming the work of the third artist. The first artist goes out
and paints from life. The second artist copies the first artist. The
third artist copies the second artist. (I've usually seen this analogy
applies to fantasy, with Tolkien as the first artist.) The first artist
put things in because there were there, or in the case of SF, because
they were new cool speculation. The second artist put them in because
they were trying to get close to the first. The third artist put them
in because heck, that's what you put in. By the time you get to the
third artist, using things like FTL and uploading yourself and aliens
isn't speculating or asking "what if", it's playing with furniture in
a doll's house. Going back to where we actually are and starting again,
with the techniques but not the tropes of the genre, is trying to become
a new first artist."
And some examples of the doll's house furnitire that I see
all the time in SF set in the Solar System are:
* Early and relatively fast space development. Examples include Sheffield's
Post-Great War series, where the spacers are numerous and rich enough to
rebel against Earth by the 2070s, and Varley's Red Thunder setting.
[One thing that seems obvious from the last fifty years is that development
cycles in space exploitation research are slow compared to R&D for things
like computers]
* Implausibly good rockets, where high accelerations can be maintained
for days or weeks. Sometimes this is merely implausibly good mundane
technology (some kind of fusion drive) and more rarely some sort of
magical mystery drive (as in Blish's Welcome to Mars or Varley recent
Earth People All Suck series).
* Despite the above, many of the settings will have people who customarily
spend hundreds or thousands of kilometers per second getting around worry
about the kilometers per second it costs to get off a terrestrial planet
(Yes, JEP complained about this long before me).
* A focus on local escape velocities over the costs of transfer orbits
within the Solar System, where an author thinks that just because a main
belt rock has a low escape velocity, that puts it closer in terms of delta
vee to Earth orbit than Earth itself or other potential sources.
* Overlooking local escape velocities due a focus on a particular
local resource. This is mainly the idea that Jupiter would be a good
place to get hydrogen, although I can name at least one book where they
want to get ice from Saturn's rings.
[Well, two and as much as I like "The Martian Way", it was dumb there
too]
[The last two look opposed but are two reflections of the same recurring
theme: the author did not do the math]
* High crew/cargo mass ratios. Honestly, if you don't have passengers,
I am not sure you need any crew at all. We already have automated Progress
cargo rockets servicing the ISS and the long term trend in conventional
shipping is to reduce human head count per ton of cargo shipped.
* Unitary governments across the solar system. Aside from Australia,
which is almost an island, we don't even have unitery governments on
single continents. This isn't to say we may not see them but why is the
alternative so rare?
* A perception that the Earth, the largest terrestrial planet, is poor
in resources.
* A perception that the Earth, the home of the human race, will lack for
educated useful people in the future.
* A perception that Earth, the home of the human race, will not be a
dominant market for a long time to come (This is not set in the Solar
System but while reading Regenesis I noticed how tiny Union's population
is. Cyteen has millions of people and the various star stations hundreds
of thousands. New Zealand should be more of a power than Union).
* A curious tendency for technology that works in space not to work on
Earth. Fusion drives that provide gigawatts per kilogram will not be
adapted to address terrestrial energy issues.
* No grasp of how long minimum energy orbits from the Kuiper Belt take.
* No idea how long it would take to terraform a planet. Interestingly,
I think there's a correlation between refusing to accept an anthropogenic
element to terrestrial climate change and believing that terraforming
Venus in a few decades is just a matter of spreading some algae in the
upper atmosphere.
What else am I missing?
There is a parallel discussion on my LJ account:
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/1470522.html
[I thought of some more]
* No grasp of how long minimum energy orbits from the Kuiper Belt take.
* No idea how long it would take to terraform a planet. Interestingly, I think there's a correlation between refusing to accept an anthropogenic element to terrestrial climate change and believing that terraforming Venus in a few decades is just a matter of spreading some algae in the upper atmosphere.
she said it better than I would:
"SF is becoming the work of the third artist. The first artist goes out
and paints from life. The second artist copies the first artist. The
third artist copies the second artist. (I've usually seen this analogy
applies to fantasy, with Tolkien as the first artist.) The first artist
put things in because there were there, or in the case of SF, because
they were new cool speculation. The second artist put them in because
they were trying to get close to the first. The third artist put them
in because heck, that's what you put in. By the time you get to the
third artist, using things like FTL and uploading yourself and aliens
isn't speculating or asking "what if", it's playing with furniture in
a doll's house. Going back to where we actually are and starting again,
with the techniques but not the tropes of the genre, is trying to become
a new first artist."
And some examples of the doll's house furnitire that I see
all the time in SF set in the Solar System are:
* Early and relatively fast space development. Examples include Sheffield's
Post-Great War series, where the spacers are numerous and rich enough to
rebel against Earth by the 2070s, and Varley's Red Thunder setting.
[One thing that seems obvious from the last fifty years is that development
cycles in space exploitation research are slow compared to R&D for things
like computers]
* Implausibly good rockets, where high accelerations can be maintained
for days or weeks. Sometimes this is merely implausibly good mundane
technology (some kind of fusion drive) and more rarely some sort of
magical mystery drive (as in Blish's Welcome to Mars or Varley recent
Earth People All Suck series).
* Despite the above, many of the settings will have people who customarily
spend hundreds or thousands of kilometers per second getting around worry
about the kilometers per second it costs to get off a terrestrial planet
(Yes, JEP complained about this long before me).
* A focus on local escape velocities over the costs of transfer orbits
within the Solar System, where an author thinks that just because a main
belt rock has a low escape velocity, that puts it closer in terms of delta
vee to Earth orbit than Earth itself or other potential sources.
* Overlooking local escape velocities due a focus on a particular
local resource. This is mainly the idea that Jupiter would be a good
place to get hydrogen, although I can name at least one book where they
want to get ice from Saturn's rings.
[Well, two and as much as I like "The Martian Way", it was dumb there
too]
[The last two look opposed but are two reflections of the same recurring
theme: the author did not do the math]
* High crew/cargo mass ratios. Honestly, if you don't have passengers,
I am not sure you need any crew at all. We already have automated Progress
cargo rockets servicing the ISS and the long term trend in conventional
shipping is to reduce human head count per ton of cargo shipped.
* Unitary governments across the solar system. Aside from Australia,
which is almost an island, we don't even have unitery governments on
single continents. This isn't to say we may not see them but why is the
alternative so rare?
* A perception that the Earth, the largest terrestrial planet, is poor
in resources.
* A perception that the Earth, the home of the human race, will lack for
educated useful people in the future.
* A perception that Earth, the home of the human race, will not be a
dominant market for a long time to come (This is not set in the Solar
System but while reading Regenesis I noticed how tiny Union's population
is. Cyteen has millions of people and the various star stations hundreds
of thousands. New Zealand should be more of a power than Union).
* A curious tendency for technology that works in space not to work on
Earth. Fusion drives that provide gigawatts per kilogram will not be
adapted to address terrestrial energy issues.
* No grasp of how long minimum energy orbits from the Kuiper Belt take.
* No idea how long it would take to terraform a planet. Interestingly,
I think there's a correlation between refusing to accept an anthropogenic
element to terrestrial climate change and believing that terraforming
Venus in a few decades is just a matter of spreading some algae in the
upper atmosphere.
What else am I missing?
There is a parallel discussion on my LJ account:
http://james-nicoll.livejournal.com/1470522.html
[I thought of some more]
* No grasp of how long minimum energy orbits from the Kuiper Belt take.
* No idea how long it would take to terraform a planet. Interestingly, I think there's a correlation between refusing to accept an anthropogenic element to terrestrial climate change and believing that terraforming Venus in a few decades is just a matter of spreading some algae in the upper atmosphere.
--
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http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)