My unexampled science fiction novel , Lockstep , was recently serialise in Analog magazine . Reactions have been pretty favourable — except that I ’ve negociate to go against a diminished but vocal group of readers . They ’re outraged that I ’ve write an SF story in which quicker than light travelling is impossible .
I did publish Lockstep because I understand that it ’s not actual starflight that interest most people — it ’s the romance of a Star Trek or Star Wars - type interstellar civilization they want . Not the world , but the fantasy . Even so , I misjudged the , well , the fervor with which some people adhere to the belief that the lightspeed limitation will just somehow , as if by magic and handwavingly , get engineered around .
This is ironical , because the whole percentage point of Lockstep was to find a way to have that Star Wars - like interstellar civilization in world and not just fantasy . As an artist , I ’m intimate with the might of creative restraint to father idea , and for Lockstep I put two constraints on myself : 1 ) No FTL or unsung skill would be allowed in the novel . 2 ) The novel would contain a full - flub interstellar civilisation precisely like those you find in books with FTL .
creativeness under constraint is the best form of creativeness ; it ’s the kind that really may take us to the stars someday . In this case , by placing such mutually contradictory — even impossible — restrictions on myself , I was forced into a solution that , in hindsight , is obvious . It is simply this : everyone I roll in the hay of who has thought about interstellar civilisation has opine that the big job to be solve is the job of f number . The issue , though ( as fight down to the problem ) , is how to travel to an interstellar goal , spend some clock time there , and come back to the same home you leave . cheeseparing - c travel solves this problem for you , but not for those you pass on at home . FTL solves the problem for both you and home , but with the caution that it ’s unacceptable . ( Okay , okay , for the incensed among you : as far as we know . To put it more exactly , we ca n’t prove that FTL is impossible any more than we can prove that Santa Claus does n’t exist . I ’ll concede that . )
generation of thinkers have doubled down on trying to work out the job , unaware that the problem is not the same as the issue . The problem — of generating enough swiftness to enable an interstellar civilization — may be insoluble ; but that does n’t mean the way out of how to have a prospering interstellar civilization ca n’t be overcome . You just have to overcome it by solving a dissimilar problem .
The problem to solve does n’t have to do with speeding ( or velocity , for you purists ) , but rather with duration .
Enter Lockstep . In the novel , all universe , all spacecraft and all habitats participating in a peculiar civilization apply cold - sleep technology “ in lockstep : ” the entire civilisation sleeps for thirty years , then at the same time wakes for a month , then sleep for another thirty age , etc . All citizens of the lockstep experience the same passage of time ; what ’s vary is that the duration of one nighttime per calendar month is stretched out to allow meter for star travel at sublight hurrying . In the novel I do n’t rag with interstellar travelling , actually ; the Empire of 70,000 Worlds consists almost altogether of nomad planet , wanderers populate bass place between Earth and Alpha Centauri . mean farsighted - aloofness travel velocity is about 3 % lightspeed , and ship are labour by fission - fragment projectile or ‘ simple ’ nuclear nuclear fusion reaction engines .
The solution is a classic space opera house universe , with individual starships , explorers and despots and rogues , and more approachable worlds than can be explore in one lifetime . There are locksteppers , realtimers prey on them while they log Z’s , and countermeasures against those , and on and on . In short , it ’s the kind of setting for a infinite escapade that we ’ve always dreamt of , and yet , it might all be possible .
Cold sleep engineering is theoretical , but unlike FTL , it ’s not study out of the dubiousness that we could acquire human hibernation . It ’s a bio - engineering trouble , and in all probability admits of more than one solution . It ’s an easier problem to puzzle out than FTL , in other words . And by solve it , and using locksteps , we have a universe where travelers can go to slumber at their nursing home port , come alive up the next day at a world that could be idle - year off , pass some metre there and , when they render , find that just the same amount of time has passed at home . Locksteps give you the result of FTL , without call for FTL .
I wo n’t go into all the implications — that ’s what the novel ’s for . But , to circle back to the theme of creative constraint , by requiring an FTL - similar civilisation without FTL , I stumbled into a whole young universe . In the universe of Lockstep , there are log Z’s Beauty - same tales , a edition of the Twin Paradox , and an even strange paradox in which the new immigrants to the lockstep have the farseeing history with it … It ’s no exaggeration to say that many books could be written in this world without use up its possible action . Maybe I ’ll pen more of them myself .
Meanwhile , the estimation ’s out there . It ’s a moment crazy , but it ’s a potential solution to an issue , that avoids have to resolve an unimaginable job .
A constraint that gives us a way to reach the stars .
Tor Books will have Lockstep on the bookshelf March 24 .
This articleoriginally appearedat Centauri Dreams .
Top image : Borkur Eirksson / conception nontextual matter Copyright of CCP Games . Morehere .
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