Your story - a friendly landing spot

[webberg]

This might be better in the Sanctuary but that part of the forum seems a little devoid of life right now.

When we row we all have time to think.

I'm going to guess that many of us make up stories in our heads and/or they come to nothing post row because we don't capture them.

Like many of us here I'm sure, I've dabbled in the past with writing for publications and whilst I've had a few minor triumphs in publications that have long since gone out of existence, I've certainly never some close to making enough per words to make a living from writing.

My particular preference is science fiction - note the "science" which excludes all fantasy (especially dragon) related topics - and to be more specific apocalyptic and post apocalyptic fiction.

I've read some interesting stuff in that space recently (try Ben H Winter and his Last Policeman trilogy). Without giving the game away too much this is about a an asteroid on a collision course with earth but which is known about and tracked for two years pre impact and the resulting reaction of the population.

Do you have ideas that come to you mid row and which you might be willing to share and perhaps let somebody have a pop at turning into a longer article or short story.

Just remember that in creative writing and ideas, there are no bad ones so don't be shy.

I'll post a thought I had below and let you all take make whatever suggestion enters your head.

[webberg]

As promised/threatened, a stray thought that may or may not have enough weight to be a story on its own or part of a larger story.

Earth is old. The sun is in its last phase and no longer heats us enough to sustain life. Soon the sun will expand and engulf the Earth, destroying life.

The population is already driven underground and surviving on geothermal heat and power.

Suspension/hibernation technology has failed to allow humans to survive centuries long space travel. Faster than light engines remain fantasy.

There are three choices for survival of humans.

One is to make the entire planet a spacecraft and power it away from the dying sun to a new home perhaps half a thousand year away.

One is to use perhaps a quarter of the Earth's mass to produce a globe around and enclosing the sun and to allow perhaps three quarters of the population to survive another few thousand years in the hope of finding a better solution. It means that a quarter of the population does not survive.

One is to send "breeder" ships to all corners of space, crewed by family dynasties with known longevity, boosted by the best science, but carrying enough fertilised eggs and genetic material to start a new colony. What might become of the survivors of such a journey. Madness? Despotic hierarchy? Eden?

Resources permit only one option.

Discuss.

[Iain]

Sadly my thoughts are mainly about my row or occasional concern in my general life that pops into my head. Interesting idea. Not sure I understand the "globe" idea. Not at all sure how you could protect from plasma at 3% of speed of light! But given that you need a really powerful energy source to move the earth, I would have argued for a solar powered engine that will make use of the supernova coming in your direct (as well as helping to shield you from it). As for the journey, I think you may be some way out on time scales. 500 years to the nearest star is an average of nearly 1% of speed of light. That is a big ask given:

1) Mass of the earth
2) You will need to slow down to be captured by the star you are heading for so needing to slow for a good proportion of the flight. You can use planets to accelerate you, but these cannot accelerate faster than the planets move and Mercury (fastest planet) only moves at 0.016% of the speed of light!

Interesting mention of the effect of your breeder ships in Emma Newman's Planetfall Series. This is the easiest to envisage, but unlikely to be agreed to by those left behind!

But otherwise I look forward to reading it in print!

[Mike Channin]

I'm a big SciFi fan too, Graham - maybe start a thread on that in the Sanctuary?

[webberg]

Iain, you're over thinking this!

A globe is essentially an artificial structure that completely surrounds a star. In doing so it captures all the energy that star creates and allows for huge engines to be powered.

It's an idea that's been around in sci fi for a long while (see Larry Niven's Ringworld) and has even been offered in serious science circles as an explanation as to why some observed starts apparently no longer appear to us.

Sci fi stories can (and often are) divided into three camps.

There are "hard" science stories in which the science is the star and the science shapes the reactions of people around it. See Alastair Reynolds and perhaps Stephen Baxter.

There are "people/society" stories in which the science is merely a device to explore how society reacts. Think Philip K Dick, Ben Bova, David Brin.

There are then those which create a landscape which has forced change upon the people and the science and has created a world in which the normal rules do not apply. New world stories. Think Iain Banks (and his "culture"), Neal Asher, William Gibson.

Hard science is difficult to write credibly unless you have the science background. It was often said that Arthur C Clarke was the best science writer there was whereas Isaac Azimov was the best science fiction writer. I think Clarke has been surpassed now (although 2001 will be a classic for ever) and Azimov (I Robot and other stories) was rather too fond of himself to relate to.

People/society is also tricky to write but easier for a lay person to research and at least give the impression of some knowledge. An early example would be a book called "Earth Abides" written by George Stewart in 1949. In many ways this is prescient in describing how even an advanced society can fall apart very quickly and what qualities the survivors need to continue. Stephen King is good at this sort of story but for me he spoils it with his straying into the supernatural.

New world stories are the easiest to write for a lay person and perhaps the most difficult to get right. Each world needs it own rules and keeping to them is tricky. Philip K Dick was perhaps the best at this. Do Androids dream of Electric sheep (filmed as Blade Runner), VALIS. Vernor vinge was also very good (A Deepness in the Sky for example).

The key to all of this is the initial idea.

I have a number of ideas here including one I've been working on for about five years now (and will not share because I've not seen it elsewhere and don't want to put spoilers out). Many of these ideas occur to me as a distraction whilst exercising.

I'll post one that occured to me today and perhaps the team can develop it.

[webberg]

A short story, opening page and pitch.

The ship was massive. Close on 50km in length, perhaps 10km diameter for most of that distance. 3.9 million cubic kilometeres.

It was home to 400 million.

It was estimated that the dying Earth had used nearly 10% of all its resources to build, crew, populate, fuel and launch this ship.

It was one of three Ark's launched by Earth in the last days. One of those had met disaster within the first year if it acceleration cycle. One had simply disappeared from contact after 76 years. So far as the present Captain and his Executive Committee knew they were alone. Or alone as you could be in a sealed container with close on half a billion people moving through space at 7% of light speed.

And there was a problem. The ship had thousands of engines arranged in rings around the hull every kilometre or so. It had two main clusters, front and rear. Their first target planet was now within 50 years of them at present speed and slowing the vessel needed to be done - now. Despite the maintenance and attention the working crew had devoted to the task over the last 150 years, not enough engines were working to bring the ship into orbit.

The Executive Committee meeting was not going well.......

[Iain]

... there was a growing group of rebels in quadrant 4 purple who wanted to break away and run their own "nation" and control what they saw as their "due resources". While he thought that they could be controlled in the short term without drastic action that might cause a backlash from other groups, unless they could be given the prospect of their own space within the lifetimes of some of them this was likely to grow out of control...

[Iain]

Sorry, I was mainly thinking along the "hard science" line. As a former scientist I find it unsatisfactory where the science underpinning SF is not convincing. I agree that this can be a small or large part of the setting for the story, but it is one that annoys me when it is not achieved. I'm probably old fashioned having been "brought up" on the "Golden Age" of SF that majored on hard science books. I see the benefit of SF in expanding the possibilities beyond the familiar to give greater scope for stories, but to me just as unrealistic characters jar so do unrealistic scenarios.

- Iain

[webberg]

Interesting thought line Iain even if it was not where I was going.

My plot line was running different threads.

One is that the population of the ship is unaware of the situation and the Exec fear the consequences making this known because, as you say, keeping 400m people happy all the time is impossible and this news could create the idea of self governing republics in the ship. However there are members of the Exec who would welcome such disruption for their own ambitions.

Another is the classic - not enough resources to keep everybody alive but enough to keep say half alive - which half? Could the ship be divided with half slowing for the colonisation - an uncertain future - and the other half continue the journey - with uncertain outcomes?

Another is the "hard science" options. The ship will have landing craft. Can these be adapted, perhaps by cannabalising the main ship to a degree, to allow the majority of the crew to be slowed and landed. How long would that take? Is there enough resource to do that?

Another is what I call the "cult" option. Does a faction believe that the ship is a god or deity and that slowing the vessel until such time as they are all enlightened is a heresy?

I find that running more than four themes/plots in a short story is unmanageable (certainly for a writer of my meagre talents).

The above however allows us to comment on whether an elite could/should have information and power and be able to exercise it? The second allows us to explore what value we place on people and their abilities. The third is allowing us to explore the ability of humans to produce a last minute answer or solution and the ingenuity that has keep our species alive for thousands of years. The last is a particular itch of mine which I explore often and involves the (to me) shocking ability humans have to convince themselves that certain things can be true and real. In this scenario I was going to introduce a new disease which reaches epidemic proportions forcing isolation and containment at the same time the news of the problems is broken. Is the disease a means of selection of those who will be landed, leaving the infected to continue the journey? In other words a conspiracy theory which in fact is a circumstance driven coincidence (or is it?)

I also like to have a title when I start. It does not always survive the writing.

Here - The Last Ark: Journey's End.

I'm already thinking the the sequel: The Last Ark: New beginnings

And to finish. The Last Ark: Homecoming.

not sure about the middle one - a bit too Star Wars perhaps. Maybe The Last Ark: Rendevous

Anyway, next time you row (and anybody else who reads this) have a think and put some ideas out. We'll see if we can't create something out of our time on the stell horse, (other than superbly fit bodies and immaculate CV systems of course.)

[webberg]

Based on the above, I've drafted the first 20 or so pages of what is in essence an extended pitch.

Takes the story from genesis to the crisis point.

I'm looking for sub editors, commentators, anybody with half an hour to spare to read what I have and add a thought or two.

Any takers?

[Mike Channin]

Wow. Keep going!

[webberg]

Thanks.

It's shaping quite nicely but I'm pondering a crucial point.

Almost all sci fi stories from the "golden age" (circa 1935 to perhaps early 1970's) were what might be called "space opera".

Basically stories from human history on the themes of love, death, disaster, resilience, courage, etc.

When 2001 hit the shelves we see a move into "hard" sci fi in which the science and more especially the machines and the realities of physics and travel across a universe shapes the story. The story becomes how does technology make us live rather than how do we live to technology.

Later we see the rise and rise of the virtual world (captured in cartoon form in Tron and others) where again the interaction of people to the internet is key.

Any story which starts with the building of an ark to save humanity from disaster, fits space opera. Tracing the evolution of closed societies over generations and how they might evolve is standard fare for that sub genre.

The hard science element I want to cover by having an engineer cadre on board who are constantly "upgrading" the vessel.

One idea however is that the ship has a "shield" of rock and water held together by a metal lattice which can be flexed to suit by electro magnetics. This shield is perhaps 100+km out from the hull. The idea is that travelling at 10%c, potentially dangerous objects can be on the ship before they are detected and evasion can be effected. A shield can slow/capture such objects perhaps. More likely an object hitting such a shield would create a huge release of energy (explosion) - can that be leveraged?

The idea of the engineer group is however crucial.

And that is because rather than create sympathetic (or not) human characters who the reader cares about or gets invested in, I'd like the ship to be the "character".

I have an idea for an ending for the first part of the story in which I need readers to become invested in the idea of the ship as a living entity and to care whether it lives or dies.

Any thoughts?

(I'll be doing 10k later so I'll have a pnder myself).

[Iain]

Can't instantly see how the force of an impact could be utilised much as it's momentum is in the wrong direction. The material could be anhilated and possibly heat / shock-wave converted to useful energy.

Re sympathy for the ship, you could make the AI for the ship a character as per Blake 7 / Hal etc.

[webberg]

Thanks Ian.

The HAL style AI is pretty trite these days and basically if that was used all I'd be doing is moving the furniture around in Arthur C Clarke's universe. And frankly he's a way better writer than I will ever be.

There was a story some years ago about how Earth became sentient due to reaching a critical mass of linked technology monitoring its every moment. That might be worth exploring as the crew/passengers could evolve the ship over the journey.

IN terms of the shield, you're correct that anything meeting it at the relativistic speeds we're speculating on, would produce instant annihilation. Harvesting the energy could be done but only if the initial impact was sufficiently far ahead of the ship to allow rock and solid matter to have dissipated. Given that heat, radiation and energy in general travels at light or close to light speed, that is doable but the shield would need to be much further in front of the ship.

At 10% light, the ship is doing 30m metres a second. To give a minute's warning therefore, you need 30m x 60 or 1.8bn metres. That is too far to be controllable.

I think therefore I'll have to invent some form of intangible shield/harvester and have the shield out at say 10,000 km.

[webberg]

Question for you all to think on when next in the machine. Having some maths knowledge might help.

My space ship here is three nested globes (i.e. smallest at the centre, surrounded by a medium size (relative) surrounded by a larger size, surrounded by the outer hull.

The inner sphere is 10km across at its widest point. So a radius if 5km. I envisage a central column around which the globe spins (for artificial gravity) of perhaps 1km.

My trip into Google says that the surface area of this sphere is circa 314m square metres. I'm seeing people settled only on the interior of the sphere. So taking out the core and allowing for other factors, let's say 250m square metres.

I ahve two other globes, one at say another 5kn out = surface area 1.25bn square metres.

The third and largest occupied only between meridians but even so another 2bn square metres.

SO 3.5bn square metres. 3,500 sq km.

The Earth is circa 510m sq km.

So in theory I have room for around 7% of the population?

Ignoring specialist and technical crew, how would you select passengers or decide which groups should be in which globe? Or would you have a deliberate policy of integration?

Also that's still 650m people. Assuming water loss is limited due to recycling but still is 2 litres per person per week, over 40 years (2,000 weeks) that's 2.6 quintillion litres of water.

Too much I fear.

How do I reduce that?

[Iain]

I haven't checked your maths, but 650m people in 3,500m sqM is only 58 sqft per person. That is Ok for living purposes, but is little more than a dormitory. I assume that you would build multiple levels to allow space to move about, produce food etc. So in effect you would have a multiple of this. This is relevant as I would expect that, unless there is a structural reason, I would expect that the number of floors would vary by location. Gravity from rotation will be dependent on the circumference of the spin. As a result places closer to the axis will have lower gravity and many postulate cylinders rather than spheres to avoid this. Also the speed of rotation for a similar gravity would need to be lower in the outer spheres, so not sure how you join them up.

How you arrange people would be a social decision. Do you want a dominant group separated or more equality? A whole book in itself. An Asimovian solution might be initial integration in pre-schools with selection by intelligence as they develop. I would envisage a requirement for travel between spheres, but how this is done and the scarcity of the power / facilities required might determine the realistic amount of movement. Given the numbers I would expect that people would be more comfortable with "communities" that know each other, although there would hopefully be crossover to avoid sectarian divisions. As for selection, I can only think that there would be criteria of "desirables" topped up with a worldwide ballot. All sorts of possibilities from technocratic selection to philosophical / artistic selection. Perhaps those that support the project financially or through work would have priority and criminals, other undesirables excluded or given a lower weighting in the ballot? Age would also be interesting. Perhaps you could elect for your chance to be reallocated if you didn't want to go? Would you start with predominantly prime age individuals so that schooling / baby care would be reduced while the systems are established? Would you allow those with little prospect of surviving the journey to go if they didn't have irreplaceable skills?

Re water, that is a hugely inefficient recycling system. From O'level Biology people can survive on 250ml per day of water (although they will also get water from some chemical processes, notably respiration, they will use part of this for digestion, not sure of magnitude), less than your 2l per week. Yes some for washing, hygiene required (and probably this excludes hydrating food) I would be very surprised if say an average 5 people on today's ISS would release 500l (0.5 tonnes) of water a year. I would expect minimal leaking to space as a rule, although some loss would occur when anyone/thing exits and for potential damage. A bigger issue might be the regulation of population. 650m people contain 32B litres of water, so if you plan a doubling of population you would need to increase the water by this amount (excluding that required for the hydroponics etc.). Given large water sources on comets and some asteroids readily collected, I would have thought that this could be managed with "spare" capacity of perhaps 10l per person?

Interesting thoughts 'though.

[webberg]

Thanks Iain.

One of the themes in space opera genres is whether you have some sort of elite group leading the crew/passengers/colonists where you select from each generation those best suited by intelligence or lineage, new members of the elite to continue the process and where this leads.

In some cases it leads to revolution, the failure of the project, a better project, a divided population exploring different goals. All metaphors for asking whether humans are suited/able/trusted to know what is best for themselves and others.

The nested globes idea is one I'm wavering on. A sphere is efficient in terms of maximum number of people in the smallest space. However in theory space has no matter or not enough to create significant resistance so having instead a central tube around which a series of rings could be constructed and spun up for gravity allows a modular construction - which fits into some elements of the story.

Having a series of rings with different groups - by which I mean politically or philosophically or spiritually - is a theme I want to explore. Is democracy always best or is there merit in other systems? (I've been reading about Kemel Ataturk recently who is a fascinating example of both the best and worst that we are capable of).

I also understand that water is a good shield for cosmic radiation? If so, storing water on the space side of living quarters, seems sensible? Could I store more water frozen or in liquid form?

I'm also pondering energy sources whilst in system and out of system.

There are stories about ships with huge shields allowing them to drop a nuclear bomb behind them, trigger it and use the force to accelerate the ship. I understand that there are ion engines which produce little thrust but which can operate for years. There is a famous story about what is essentially a ramscoop throwing out an elctromagnetic net to capture whatever is in space and using it to feed engines. Solar power has problems if there is no sun close enough. Traditional rocket engines require fuel. Transdimentional engines are the thing of science fiction so far. Still pondering.

[Iain]

I would think in the cold of space ice would be the easiest form to store water and easier to handle. Know very little of Ataturk other than he inspired his country and created what was a quite long lasting secular Western influenced society that lasted a surprisingly long time for a diverse and huge country. I haven't read much about the use of fusion, but that seems the obvious power source deep in space, more efficient than ion drive and more appropriate to a huge ship.

[webberg]

Well fusion engines and power would solve a lot of problems.

My limited understanding is that "room temperature" fusion is still a distance off but then so is the need for an ark.

If however we had fusion, would we need an ark?

Ataturk was a contradictory person. Brilliant general who held off the might of the Allies in WW1. Brilliant stateman holding Turkey together when the Allies wanted to carve it up. Arguably very unusual in that he created space for a republic whilst serving as a de facto dictator and moved aside when he felt the country was mature enough to be trusted with a republic. Also allegedly guilty of ethnic cleansing progroms and suppression of "undesirables".

In my plots, there is usually either a dictator/supreme leader type who is eventually overcome by his/her own insanity or a quiet revolution (or in one short story just goes missing) or a cabal of ambitious

[Iain]

A commercial fusion plant has now been comissioned in UK, realistically it may be fully operational in mid 2050. Room temperature fusion was shown to be a myth, it would need such enormous pressures that it is much more sensible to create the very high temperatures otherwise required.

2 approaches: laser induced and magnetic containment have both been made to produce more energy than they required to operate. These all "cheat" on the requirement to make energy like the sun. The latter ultimately uses protium (normal hydrogen) which requires a temperature of 15,000,000 celsius at the pressures in the sun. Current fusion uses the very rare tritium (produced in nuclear reactors and still present from nuclear testing of the past, it would be produced from some collisions of water with cosmic rays, but I doubt would be anything like enough for your purposes) and deuterium (1.5 parts per 10,000 of hydrogen) which still requires millions of degrees, but is easier.

1g of hydrogen fully fused to helium produces 350MWHr of electricity. So about 3g/hr would produce the same as a typical power station. Small compared to the sun, it is easy to get hydrogen from water. I'm afraid my relativity isn't good enough to estimate the energy required to accelerate a ship to the speeds you were talking about, this will increase the energy required, but ignoring the increase in mass as an object accelerates, I estimate that even at 100% efficiency it would take the complete fusion of 620 tonnes of hydrogen to accelerate 1kg to 7% of light speed. So good yes, but not good enough! That leaves only annhilation (ie create antimatter and this will annhilate equivalent matter releasing all of its mass as energy and maximum energy we are aware of). Here I estimate that the fuel required would be about .25% of the mass of the ship so theoretically achievable. This is the "dithium" fuel required in Startrek.

[webberg]

Thanks Iain.

If there are issues with carrying enough of even super advanced (in current technology terms) fuels, then it leaves us with three possibilities.

One is the refuelling strategy. You leave Earth knowing that you need to refuel - perhaps from the gas clouds of gas giants. I've always felt this is risky on a number of levels but it does lead to some interesting plot lines. The issue here is that you need to fuel, accelerate, slow into orbit and refuel. I've read stories which have disposable acceleration tugs - basically a big rocket which is discarded once up to speed and perhaps another to slow the ship. I've also read plots in which the fact that energy cannot be destroyed - only converted - is used by having a second ship behind the first, sweeping up the residual matter from the engines and recycling it back to the main ship. I've always struggled with that one.

Another is the sleeper cell idea. IN other words you may have half a billion people on board but only say 10% awake and active at any one time. Again some good plot lines here.

Another is engine/energy technology which we presently don't have. This has been explored many times. I'm presently re-reading the Lensman series (mainly as a reminder of what rubbish people will buy) and this has a theory that the ship can be freed of "normal" space rules and become inertia-less meaning that even small amounts of power can accelerate the vessel to fantastic speeds. Here though the author (E E "Doc" Smith) also thinks that you can "flit" (to use his phrase) from our galaxy to the next in about a month.

Cosmic ray capture and conversion? Harvesting enough of a star to sustain reaction? Magnetism?

Part of the equation here of course is the interplay between satisfying the hard science readers whilst including enough human interest and using both to create some jeopardy and tension which all good fiction needs.

[webberg]

I should also mention that even though this is still very much in the early stages, I have pitched it to a magazine as something that could be episodic. We are discussing how many episodes. The magazine wants circa 4,000 to 5,000 words per episode.

An average novel is 70,000 to 100,000. This means that a year long run of episodes comes in as a short novel. A novella.

It's actually much harder to write a short novel than a long one. Compromises have to be made. In this case, that might be less science and more human interest.

If the episodes are run by the magazine, then I think the first year will cover, launch, journey, first planetfall.

I can always rewrite the episodes into a longer book if their is demand.

I now need to expand my extended pitch document into the first 3 to 5 episodes.

I have a sabbatical starting 1 November for around 8 weeks. We'll be travelling (a lot) but I'll have some down time to get into this and hope that by the time I'm back, I'll have two episodes in reasonable shape.

I'll then need editors and reviewers.

By the way the magazine pays 12p a word. So nobody is going to get rich here. If the episodes work and a book is commissioned, then on average authors get 12% to 20% of proceeds. (New authors at the lower end). So a run of say 5,000 paperbacks at £10 = also a low value.

[Iain]

Annihilation is utilising all of the energy in the fuel so is the physical limit of what energy can be produced from any material. Obviously "inertia free" assumes some physical process that is not currently known and would require a modification of our view of physics ie outside hard science. the "Wormhole" approach assumes that the energy is coming from outside and utilising the fact that in a singularity the laws of physics break down and so providing an excuse to ignore physical barriers and conveniently ignore the destructive effects of approaching a singularity (for the uninitiated, the business end of a black hole, the wormhole being a theoretically possible connection between 2 singularities).

I can see your issue with the recapture approach, if the form matters it will be in the same form (ie Helium not Hydrogen after fusion), if a conventional jet then the inertia of recapture would equal the benefit of the initial use so no net gain with a similar issue for electrostatic repulsion etc. Acceleration tugs are sensible where the fuel is a significant proportion of the spaceship from wherever. It reduces the mass ultimately accelerated, but doesn't change the amounts required.

Refueling doesn't help if you have to slow down, but perhaps might be achieved while still travelling at speed.

Interesting re finances, so magazine the way to go (100,000 words being £12,000, at 12% of purchase price that would require 100,000 sales, an impressive readership, according to Reddit only 268 novels achieved this in 2020). For that do you lose the rights to the material? Ie the right to claim the value of the completed novella? Also UI suspect the proportion of paper books sold is decreasing rapidly and that in the future it is the rights from downloads that will be the only real value.

Do I take it that they have agreed to purchase some episodes? If so, congratulations.

[webberg]

"Agreed to purchase.." might be a little strong. There are two magazines (and their websites) which have shown an interest mainly I think because they have published my material before.

Most of the recently established sci-fi writers have either a hard science background = a ready made audience (Baxter, Reynolds) or have built a following through short stories and episodes in magazines followed by shortish self published books on Amazon at 99p a time (Winter, Asher).

Once you have a "name" it becomes easier (Banks, Bear) to sell full length novels.

Most writers never get near selling 5,000 copies of a full length book and so focus on the magazine/website model.

It's a great place to hone skills and make mistakes but can be unforgiving.

I'm part of a number of edit groups whereby we get early drafts of stories to critique. Some are good, most are awful (we had one where the invaders of Earth are called A-lions and apparently look and act like the big cat). We do have the occasional stand out - go and have a look at Adrian Tchaikovsky. (We suggested he use a nom de plume but he resisted).

Anyway, 12 x 5,000 words at 12p a word is £7,200 in a year. 12 episodes is a lot. Normally you get 4 to 6 episodes.

To convert that into a book is a lot of hours with no guarantee of a sale.

The dream is to spark enough interest to get it onto something like Reddit and hope it captures the imagination across many genres. To that end we see stories which try to include a bit of everything from romance to who dun it to thriller to magic and dragons fantasy. People like me who dabble as a hobby will either try the same or adopt the view that we'd rather stay true to the genre we love. I'm very much in the latter camp.

The enjoyment is in the creation and completion. If people read it - that's a bonus. If they like what they read - a double bonus.

[webberg]

Having thought about the issue of acceleration a little more, I'm going to cheat.

I did think about adopting the "Everest" method, i.e. establishing refueling stations on the "out" leg and using conventional rocket engines. I think however the difficulties of finding these stations in the vastness of space, capture at high velocity and then the problem of deceleration mean that this is not reasonable. (But do I need to be reasonable?)

So I'm going to assume that we have workable fusion engines (and internal power) plus rockets, plus steam, plus what I'm calling a trans dimensional component which is a sort of anti gravity. The latter means that the mass to be be accelerated is going to be around 20% of the mass as we understand it now. It will be this component which will fail or be misunderstood or the knowledge lost at journey's end precipitating the crisis.

I've abandoned the idea of concentric globes. Instead I now see a long tube (10km x 1km?) with an engine cluster at one end, a "bridge" at the other and five tori and intervals. These tori will be different sizes dependent upon the nation/ethnic group who commissioned and built them, allowing for different cultures and philosophies.

This also allows for an idea which will "solve" the deceleration problem which I'm not going to reveal here.

For the numbers geeks, if my torus has a maximum radius of 5km and and inner radius of 3km, I think that is around 79bn cubic metres?