Monday 23 July 2001

Pic of the day: Screenshot from the old and much maligned game Outpost. While boring, it is sadly also more realistic than most science fiction. Not that this says much.

Books in my head

Last night I sat up till about half past three, writing on a science fiction story. I'm kind of fed up with the notion that all Earth-like planets come with a breathable atmosphere and native life of at least Jurassic levels. Yes, Earth seems to have harbored life since shortly after the first seas formed. But neither Mars nor Venus show the telltale effects of life, and Venus is almost a twin of Earth, eminently habitable once the atmosphere is converted from CO2 to O2. I think most Earth-like planets will be like Venus, unless someone has actually been seeding new worlds with life.

If life is for some reason common, colonization will be much simpler. Or perhaps not. There will be an oxygen atmosphere; but there may be bacteria and virii able to invade human bodies. What there probably won't be is highly developed life. Earth had single-celled life for three billion years before multi-cellular organisms became widespread. Much of the time we didn't even have eukaryotic cells (with nucleus and organelles). These modern forms of life seem to us clearly superior over simple cells; but it seems now that they only gained dominance after several bouts of extreme glaciation. The oceans actually froze over. Not once, but repeatedly. Not until then did multi-celled life bloom. Most life-bearing planets probably never had such upheavals, or if they did, life may not have survived.

So not only will we most likely fail to find bug-eyed aliens, there probably won't be animals at all. And almost certainly not grass and flowers, both of which showed up around the death of the dinosaurs. In fact, no visible life on the ground at all, and in the sea only mats of bacteria, like pond scum in the tidal zones. A world empty and desolate. Add in the possible infections by strange microorganisms, and you may as well take the Venus-like planet after all.

***

Imagine landing on a Venus-like planet with a couple hundred colonists and enough equipment to build a small base. Only the highest mountains have enough sunshine to grow plants, and then only in greenhouses with a less alien atmosphere. No one can venture outdoors without a helmet and oxygen tank.

Once you have deployed all the equipment from the ship, you're basically in the stone age. The nearest supermarket is light years away. And unlike Earth's stone age, there's no wood or bone or even clay. The colony will not be able to grow outside the original base for centuries, at worst millenia. You release hardy archebacteria that will eventually convert the atmosphere to oxygen, but it won't happen in many generations. How do you raise your children? How do you prepare them to carry on the torch of civilization in a world contained in a few airtight buildings? How do you teach them to maintain the life-giving equipment for several centuries?

And many generations later, when the Landing is just a creation myth and the Founders gods or heroes, when Earth is a mythical paradise in the sky ... Something begins to change. The planet cools, and water vapor starts to fall out of the sky for the first time. The Deluge starts ... A rain that lasts for generations without cease. Children grow up, grow old and die without ever seeing any other weather than rain. And then, as the planet cools even more, the mountains are covered in snow. The humans will need to migrate, to leave the only life they know. Now that's drama.

It would be so interesting to follow the first colonists in their struggle to dig into a hostile world. Then to see their children grow up hearing stories of Earth, seeing pictures and even movies ... thinking that they understand. Living in a cluster of airtight stone homes, they think they can understand a civilization spanning an entire planet and the space surrounding it. Living in a tribe where everyone knows everyone's face, voice and quirks, they think they understand a world of ten billion people, a multitude of races and languages and religions. Now tell me you are not itching to write that story yourself...

Not to mention 500 years later, when there's a serious theological dispute over the Rite of the Cabbage. The Book of the Founders specifies that each year on Landing Day a small cabbage plant shall be planted outside, under very specific conditions. One year, says the Book, the cabbage will not die but will instead grow. This is an omen of a new age, where life will change greatly. Of course, the plant has died every year. A charismatic young man gets a revelation that the Rite is to be understood spiritually, not literally. He claims that the Time of Change has now arrived, and many listen to him ... Oh the suspense! Still not itching to write that story yourself?

Well, I am. You see, I sort of have these stories in my head. I can write till my hand is half numb (which does not take as long as it used to when I was younger) and it just keeps coming. But it is a window of opportunity. After a while it will close. The hazy memories of the stories will be gone, like a forgotten dream. I won't remember what happened next, and whatever I make up will be boring and stilted. And I can't just sit down and dictate it to my tape recorder either. I need to see it ... somehow the white area with black dots on works like an extension of my brain, and stories just pour from one to the other.

But of course it is just a big fat lie anyway. Dreams and fantasies. It doesn't really matter. There are already more books out there than anyone can read. I just think a bit more realism could be interesting. How to organize a small society like that to survive for centuries. In practice, it probably wouldn't work. There are simply too many ways to blow it up. If it is possible to do something in the wrong way, as Murphy said, someone will sooner or later do it. But it's kind of a nice dream, isn't it?