Friday 22 November 2013

A Slow Boat To Alpha Centauri

In Is There Life On Other Worlds? (New York, 1963), Poul Anderson imagines a ship or fleet "...bound for Alpha Centauri at one-tenth light speed..." (p. 170):

the journey will take more than forty three years;
families will embark but only the children and grandchildren will arrive;
the self-supporting ships will recycle all organic matter and grow tanked plants or algae;
scientists exploring hostile Solar planets will have perfected these techniques;
after acceleration, the ships will be rotated to simulate gravity;
compatible, self-disciplined crews will have interesting work, libraries, theaters, gyms, gardens and emotion-regulating drugs.

"Some writers have suggested that voyages will be undertaken that last many generations. This is possible, I suppose, but does not look very probable." (p. 172).

But it is how we imagine science fiction "generation ships," i. e., slower than light multi-generation interstellar spaceships:

in Robert Heinlein's generation ship story, part of his Future History, the crew mutinies, destroying organized society within the ship;
in Poul Anderson's generation ship story, part of his Psychotechnic History, psychotechnicians manage ship society, containing conflicts and preventing an ultimately destructive mutiny;
in Clifford Simak's generation ship story, social engineering keeps the crew in line by inculcating religious fervor, e.g., for holy pictures of a House, a Tree and the Wind That You Cannot See But Know Is There.

These three stories form a conceptual sequence in which Heinlein adumbrates a problem to which both Anderson and Simak then respond.

2 comments:

Jim Baerg said...

I expect humans will have decades, if not centuries, of experience with rotating space habitats within the solar system, before anyone tries the generation ship idea. That will give us knowledge of how to keep ecology & society within such a structure running reasonably well.

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Jim!

I agree. And I hope we soon see the beginning of something like that happening if Elon Musk manages to found his Mars colony. That might inspire people to taking seriously the work of Gerard O'Neill, as he presented it in THE HIGH FRONTIER.

Ad astra! Sean