Saturn in the Sea of Time: 1968 (An ISOT Scenario)

[JMHthe3rd]

Well, I don't know about the technical feasibility, but in Larry Niven's World Out of Time Uranus is moved via a gigantic pulse engine that uses the gas giant's atmosphere as fuel. The lower end of the tube stays lit to keep the engine "afloat," while the end outside produces thrust to push against the atmosphere. Rinse, repeat.

But then, this isn't something the Saturnines are going to build anytime soon.

If they can't, we can't either. It's the kind of thing you build when you've already got most of a Dyson shell's worth of sunpower satellites in orbit and are seriously thinking about dismantling Mercury for building materials. The space-elves weren't there yet as a civilization.

It may be a moot point, anyway. I ran the Universal Sandbox simulation for about 2,500 years, and while every few centuries the two Saturns would pass each other, their orbital instability ensured they weren't on the exact 'path' and so they were still several million kilometers from each other when this happened. Perhaps after a large number of iterations they'll eventually be close enough to collide, but if that's eighty thousand years from now, who cares?

These close fly-byes might mess up the moons' orbits, however.

Are you basically asking us to vet your writing or something? Because that's what it smells like.

This was just a scenario that popped into my head. I just finished reading John Birmingham's Weapons of Choice in which a UN naval fleet from 2021 gets ISOT'd to June 2nd, 1942, right before the Battle of Midway. I kind of played around with that general idea, and the narrative aspect of this ISOT reflects some of the tropes commonly associated with the ISOT genre. Like Eric Flint's 1632 and SM Stirling's Nantucket series, the Saturnine Elves are essentially a non-industrial "small town" transported to more primitive world. I decided against just having them come from the future, because I think their lack of shared history with the humans adds to their "otherness."

Although honestly this is offset by the... well, the WOW COOL SPACE ELVES aspect. I think that intentionally making them "like the elves from Skyrim" and using one of the most overused cliches of fantasy writing plus one of the most pop-culturey video games of the past few years... not a good combination.

Agreed. For the AH forum, I'll clean up the silliness a bit. The elf bit is a little distracting. Perhaps I'll just go with them being homo sapiens or near enough as to make no difference[1]. But whenever their timeline diverged from ours, it was well before recorded history.

[1]-Albeit a genetically augmented, immortal, racially mingled humanity. In fact, I think I prefer this. This may influence race relations on Earth.

Also, the problem here is that it's not clear whether you're asking us to vet the technical quality of your writing, or the consequences that would evolve in the story.

Consequences more than the writing itself. The narrative part of my post was quickly written, and was more to just get the general idea across.

That said. Elves are boned in the long term. Their best options are probably to work out a mutually beneficial trade agreement slash resettlement with Earth. They will have the temporary upper hand thanks to higher technology, but that's about it. Knowing there's a for-real alien race out there will give the human race strong motivation to expand out into space.

Even if the Saturnines give every indication they're peaceful, they're still a threat neither the United States or Soviet Union can counter. What if they decided to bombard Earth from orbit? Or drop dino-killers? Or hell, even just threaten to? The humans need to get some pieces in the game. Space needs to be weaponized ASAP. As another poster on the SB forum pointed out, we should expect to see these become reality:

Very debateable. I don't know if you ever found this out, but nuclear pulse propulsion has problems. Some of them are major unsolved engineering issues (building the shock absorbers, making sure the pusher plate isn't ablated away by point blank nuclear initiations). Others are social issues (this is the height of the Cold War, both sides just got done pushing a test ban treaty to avoid dumping even more fallout into the atmosphere, neither side is going to be remotely inclined to trust the other with a big flying gun platform that is by its very definition armed with hundreds of nuclear bombs).

It is more likely that the Earth powers will seek to use their political leverage over the space-elves (we have the only long-term viable biosphere in the solar system, and the only population base that could conceivably sustain your industry)

One reason "Isle in the Sea of Time" stories tend to strand modern protagonists in primitive times is that in primitive times, local power blocs would be less capable of a systematic, coordinated, organized response to the sudden appearance of a handful of technologically advanced foreigners in their midst. They might not be stupid or easy pushovers, but they're still limited in terms of communications and the list of 'thinkable' concepts, prone to mistake high technology for magic and so on.

Here, the space-elves have to contend with powers that are much more organized and capable of communicating with each other, and that have the real humans' experience of what happens when a handful of advanced people come into contact with a larger mass of primitive people.

Excellent points. On reflection, I do see a pressure to immigrate to Earth, and the governments of Earth would welcome people with advanced scientific knowledge. However, as madd0ct0r pointed out, the threat nuclear war may spook the Saturnines into staying in space.

Let's say, three hundred or so years ago, there was a limited nuclear war in their past. Something between regional powers (think, India and Pakistan), but which still resulted in over a billion dead and massive ecological damage. While the Saturnines managed to avoid the worse fate of nuclear warfare between superpowers, nuclear war is still more than hypothetical to them.

So this is understandably worrying to them, and while between the two superpowers they see the the US as the lesser of evils (though still, by their standards, brutal and oppressive), they know they can't play favorites when it comes to sharing technology.

Let's slow down their ship a bit. Instead of two weeks, it takes a more reasonable two months for their scout ships to reach Earth. In the mean time they learn our languages through a combination of radio and television broadcasts and exchanged messages. [2] With the aid of computer translators, there are soon able to converse with us.

What do they say?

Anything they know about us will be only through broadcast media and what we tell them, both of which they know are unreliable. To make sure we don't just drag them off and dissect them as soon their shuttle lands, they're likely to use a "gunboat diplomacy bluff" to make themselves seem more powerful than they really are--which may scare us into boondoggling up a "space military" (in however limited capacity).

However, the likely arrangement would be to evenly share what they're willing to share (medicine, yes; fusion bombs, no) in return for patent rights. After all, you're right in that there's certain technologies they can't maintain with their low population. But it's possible to "ascend the tech tree" when you both a) know exactly what tools you need to make the tools to make the tools etc, and b) have the financial, material and labor assets to get this done. Around Timmuz, they have "a"[3] but not "b." True, the Earthling laborers don't know the science, but they can learn. It'll just take time.

So, while the colonies around Timmuz putter along in their gradually diminishing self-sufficiency, the elves on Earth can use the native labor pool to build components they can't fabricate on their own. The problem of course is that these components will cost a crazy dollars-to-pound price just to get into orbit . . . and then they have to be ferried back to Timmuz. So there's a conflict here: On one hand the Timmuz colonies are good security in case things turn south on Earth, but on the other they're a big money hole. However, the more stuff they ship to Tiimmuz, the more the colonies will (hopefully) build up their industry and become self-sufficient[4]. Also, the more they beef up Earth's materials science, the cheaper it'll be to send things into orbit.

The space elevator will be a long term project, and one not expected to be complete in anything less than several decades.

But what will we be doing? It'll take several years for the Saturnines to work through the various stages of development, but soon anti-agathic treatments, cancer cures and regenerative medicine will be on the market. Not to mention genetic engineering. I'm seeing this happening in the early eighties, albeit it'd be at first prohibitively expensive, but that will change.

Ditto for computer technology.

The space race will probably take an even more competitive character, not only the US vs. USSR, but against the Saturnines. I guess claims of territorial rights and whatnot would be determined by treaties, I guess.

[2]-If they're homo sapiens with a point of divergence of only, say, six thousand years ago, there may be a recognizable common liquistic ground, at least for ancient tongues.

[3]-The Timmuz colonists are overly represented by scientists and engineers (after all, they live in space habitats, ships and moon colonies), and while none of them are trained to ascend a tech tree from 20th century tech, they have extensive data in their computers, and they are smart. There'll be blunders in their progress, but technology will advance much faster than it did in our timeline.

[4]-Presumably some of these Earth-built components will be equipment and machinery to jump start a space-based industry--even if only on a small scale.

The Apollo Program is aborted--why spend billions so a couple of astronauts can spend a few hours prancing about around on the moon?

It's too late to save significant money. All the hardware for Apollo has already been purchased. Also, the hardware and development for Apollo (including the Saturn V) represents the best prospect for putting materiel into orbit in the foreseeable future. Because IF development of Orion ever does get going, the system is (literally) unlikely to get off the ground before 1985-1990 at the earliest.

Until then, refinement of chemical rocket launch infrastructure is the only game in town. NASA won't be shutting down Apollo, they'll be scaling up their launch infrastructure and developing post-Apollo design concepts. The goal may have more to do with orbital construction than with deep-space exploration, but it's still there.

Good point.

Trust me, Orion drive isn't going to work like Footfall, it's not something you can build on the fly and seriously expect it to work. Either there will be numerous disasters in the testing phase (each of them causing massive radioactive fallout on Earth), or there will be a long, long period of prototyping and testing, over and above the multiple years of negotiation required to get the go-ahead to do start serious work on it at all. Probably the project can't be completed until semimodern computer modeling software becomes available in the '80s and '90s, I think.

Yeah, I was thinking of Footfall too. On further reflection, I think Project Orion is very unlikely to get off the ground. It would escalate the Cold War to such a degree that only a madman would go through with it, and the Saturnines would go ape shit. They already see a nuclear war as likely scenario, so launching giant tin cans full of nukes would in their eyes make that a forgone conclusion. Plus there'd likely be a huge public backlash against the idea, especially if the elves are wise enough to ingratiate themselves with the public media.

And the US pulls out of Vietnam. Who cares about some Southeast Asian jungle country? Those space battleships and orbital weapons platforms and lunar missile bases aren't going to built themselves, and they aren't going to be cheap. Better tighten the belt and prioritize.

What makes you think the US will just randomly put its priorities on hold that way? Vietnam had more to do with national pride than with anything else. Nixon MAY try to de-escalate the war before it causes further frying of the budget, but it'll be a gradual thing.

[Also note that the importance of Vietnam was, not surprisingly, exaggerated in the minds of American policymakers in the late '60s and early '70s. It wasn't just worthless jungle to them]

I think a deescalation would be very likely. Importance is relative, and while Vietnam was an issue of national pride, the sudden existence of aliens would at least partially eclipse that. Plus the Saturnines would disapprove of the war and place what political pressure they can to end it. On the other hand, by the time they're in a position to do this, the war would be mostly ended anyway.

That being said, it'll probably won't be until at least the late seventies before even the most modest Orion ships begin launching. Missile satellites will be up before that. In the meantime, however, space shuttles will arrive sooner, even if only because the Saturnines need us to have them (more on this below).

Far more likely that we will see mass serial production of Saturn hardware. In many ways, for pure ability to chuck cargo into orbit, the Shuttle is inferior to a Saturn V, it costs more to make repeated Shuttle launches ferrying the goods into space. The advantage of the Space Shuttle was that it had a crew and life support system on hand so that it could do things like service satellites or assemble space station modules in orbit.

Note that this is true in general. If you have a situation where an emergency demands that you MUST do as much as you can, as fast as you can... you mobilize, in the military sense of the word. When you mobilize, it is almost always more cost-effective and practical to do it with slight variations on the equipment you already have than to develop entirely new equipment. Because R&D is expensive, risky, and in many cases you can't force the learning curve no matter how much money you throw at it.

Essentially what it boils down to is that the space-elves are between a rock and a hard place, and the humans aren't THAT far below them in terms of technological parity. The humans also have nothing to lose except the possibility of acquiring some advancements in technology; the elves are screwed in the long run. It's really kind of a reversal of the usual ISOT scenario, which you could play with if you went writing upon this background-- a higher-tech race losing out to a lower-tech one.

Good points. And while "losing out" may be a real danger, it depends on whether the Saturnines choose to set themselves as competitors with the Earthlings. The fact that they’re giving us tech by definition means we’re closing the gap. But that’s not exactly a bad thing for the Saturnines. And assuming the Cold War ends peacefully, the Saturnines' arrival could be the best thing to ever happen to us.

Since Utu/Earth was only a few weeks away, the Saturn colonies had little need for shipyards or advanced industry. They have only modest manufacturing capabilities. They can mine and smelt. They have a reasonable supply of spare parts and can repair and perform the usual maintenance on their ships and worker-drones. They did have the extensive orbital factories that built the Muon Collider Ring . . . but these were orbiting Zisustra/Tethys and for the most part were destroyed by flying chucks of ice. They may be able to salvage something useful from the debris, however.

As for food, they have enough hydroponic farms to keep their people fed, but only just. The elves better like protein bars and algae, because once the goods from Utu run out that's what's left on the menu. Advanced medicine can be fairly easily synthesized, and while not all of their equipment is readily replaceable, it's not something they have to worry about for the near-term.

The first decade or so will be hardest, and a catastrophe could doom them, but after that they should have build up their industry enough to make small spacecraft...

HOW?

This isn't just a question of being able to dig minerals out of the ground (or sky as the case may be). There are a lot of components to modern technology which are very specialized and which a frontier community has literally zero need for. Mining and smelting aren't even close to all that's required; do they have their own semiconductor fabricators, or whatever high-tech equivalent they use to make computer hardware? Do they have engineers, in the sense of hardware design, who know enough to design their own equipment? Can they somehow do all this before existing equipment starts to break down?

No semiconductor fabricators, but there's trillions of dollars worth of all sorts of components and high-industry materials floating in the debris field that was once Tethys. They can scavenge from that for a long while.

There would be a steep learning curve, but it's not like they're in immediate danger of everything breaking down. Even if Saturn had ISOT'd into interstellar space, they could keep the lights on for a decade or so, even if by the end thing's would have been held together by bubblegum and duct tape.

There'll be time, and they'll know what they need from the Earthlings.

Remember, this isn't just a case of calmly 'ascending the tech tree.' It's about whether there are physically enough humans (or humanoids, whatever) present to learn and master all the required specialties, of which there are many, before the lack of those specialties causes total collapse.

I have heard people doubt that even Steam Age technological infrastructure could be sustained indefinitely on a population base of 20-25 thousand, let alone futuristic super-Space Age infrastructure.

There's two qualities needed: specialized skill sets and a labor pool. The Saturnines' computers have all the data they need, and though none of their scientists are specialized for this, they can learn.

The labor pool is Earth, and the challenge is getting the stuff made on Earth shipped into orbit and sent on its way to Saturn.

It's doable, and the more it's done, the easier it'll be--and the less the Saturnines will actually need as they develop their industry.

Aid NASA (and the Soviets! Best not play favorites) in designing a cheap, reusable shuttle with off-the-shelf technology. Given that the elves have been at this for a few more centuries than us, they can presumably come up with something better than our space shuttle.

The material science to replicate this may not be easily available. One of the reasons the shuttle was what it was is that that was the best that could be built at the time- a titanium-shielded, slimmer-winged version might have performed incrementally better but it'd still be basically the Space Shuttle, with a cost to LEO measured in thousands of dollars per pound.

Advances in material science directly correlate to advances in space launch capability; we're only now beginning to get close to designing an SSTO-type spaceplane, and that's largely thanks to drastic advances in our ability to make such a spacecraft light.

But if you know what steps to take to get to those advances, you can "speed run" the tech tree. As long as Earth-based governments and corporations agree to fund the Saturnine's 'research,' then it's just a matter of time. And while nano-constructed mono-weave fiber may be a few decades away, they can still aim towards less advanced materials. Which means the Saturnines will have to make do with inferior 'good enough' tech for a while.

If the space-elves have enough material scientists and chemical engineers to set up their own steel mills (or, more to the point, foundries for making high-end composite materials) that changes a bit... but to a large extent they'd still be the ones doing the work of building the things.

Not if they contract out the work to the Earthlings. And between being having both generally competent scientists and access to a vast computer library, the Saturnines can get by. Remember, they're also immortal. Some of them are over two hundred years old.

In 1970, the Saturnine Commonwealth buys property in Brazil along the equator. Using funds from medical, industrial and computer patents, they pay human laborers to start construction for the base of a space elevator. This is a huge undertaking, and at the earliest won't be done until the early 21st century. The high-tensile nanofibers for the cable can only be created (or "grown") in a zero-g environment (and as of 1970, the elves aren't even close to being able to do this--but they're working on it!), but once this is completed, material trade with earth will be much, much easier.

They may know the broad outlines of the theory, but do they have enough chemical engineers and material scientists to oversee and manage quality control on such a facility?[/quote]

Good point. This sort of project would qualify as "mega-engineering," and realistically won't be feasible until the Saturnines have 1) manufactured the vast amounts of high-end specialized materials (and no "good enough" stop gaps) 2) schooled themselves in the "how" part, 3) trained the Earthlings in the same. Call it mid-21st century, at the earliest.

Alternate orbital delivery means such as mass drivers or laser launching may be a more sensible route.

question.

Could the elves build a 2nd installation on out our Saturn and blip that out of this solar system?

I doubt it. It sounds like most of the people with the expertise were killed in the experiment.

Yeah, none of the remaining Saturnines know much of theoretical physics behind the experiment. And building a second, 1000km wide collider would be a feat in itself.

But if Universal Sandbox is to be believed, however, colliding Saturns won’t be a thing for a long, long time.

thinking about Pax Timmus.

There was a fair few sci-fi stories from that era that considered the result of the invention of something like a missile sheild - something that averted MAD for one side. The logical response was for the other side to launch an all-out preemptive attack.

Same here, if either side speculated the elves would give technological edge to the other, then doing unto others first makes sense.
If that knife-edge policy ridge is successfully traversed, and the elves claim they will shoot down any ICBM's that are launched, then the nuclear deterrent is gone.

War in Europe, proxy wars to end all proxy wars.

This will be a major fear among the Saturnines. It’d be a fine line to walk, and even if they don’t play favorites, one side may think they are, which would be just as bad. It doesn’t help that to the US the Saturnines are perceived as socialist, atheistic (or, in a few cases, “pagan”) counter-culture sympathizers—who are also sexual deviants[5]. To the Soviet Union the Saturnines fair somewhat better: decadent degenerates--yet socialistic. [6]

But really, this depends on how the Saturnines choose to portray themselves. If they’re wise, they’ll try to be as least offensive as possible to both sides. And, perhaps in an attempt to “scare us straight,” release footage of the aftermath of their own nuclear war.

[5] Imagine how people in the late-sixties would see citizens of Iain Banks' Culture.'

[6] Of course, now that the Saturnines are cut off from their near-post-scarcity civilization, they may find themselves growing progressively capitalistic.

[madd0ct0r]

if we assume two Saturns are stable, that gives the Timmus crew three gas giants + moons + rings to spread out on. I honestly don't think there'd be much advantage in them moving to Earth Orbit.

Since Utu/Earth was only a few weeks away, the Saturn colonies had little need for shipyards or advanced industry. They have only modest manufacturing capabilities. They can mine and smelt. They have a reasonable supply of spare parts and can repair and perform the usual maintenance on their ships and worker-drones. They did have the extensive orbital factories that built the Muon Collider Ring . . . but these were orbiting Zisustra/Tethys and for the most part were destroyed by flying chucks of ice. They may be able to salvage something useful from the debris, however.

As for food, they have enough hydroponic farms to keep their people fed, but only just. The elves better like protein bars and algae, because once the goods from Utu run out that's what's left on the menu. Advanced medicine can be fairly easily synthesized, and while not all of their equipment is readily replaceable, it's not something they have to worry about for the near-term.

The first decade or so will be hardest, and a catastrophe could doom them, but after that they should have build up their industry enough to make small spacecraft...

Implies they have a fairly capable industrial potential (although not existing base anymore), with enough automation. It's getting through the inital pinch point that is the riskiest position.

The other extreme is to abandon ship and everyone relocates to earth. Probably to Africa.

[Ultonius]

Now that I think about it, do the Timmuzians actually have the ability to land on Earth? Apart from Timmuz itself, the highest gravity they would have to deal with in their own neighbourhood would be that of Titan - 0.14 g, less than that of Earth's Moon, and presumably Utu had its own orbital spaceports and shuttles, so they would have had little reason to have shuttles capable of landing on and taking off from Earth. Their Orion-drive ships might be able to do it in theory, but in practice, landing by detonating small nuclear bombs under your ship sounds quite risky to me, and that's before you consider how the nuclear-armed locals will react.

[madd0ct0r]

you can land with a glider or the equivilent of the apollo cabins (small, heat shield, retros, parachute).
They might have to build it and drop a test one, but it should be doable.

[Me2005]

Is it even necessary to have two Saturns? Why not just say the experiment (worked!) swapped Elf-Saturn for Earth-Saturn? That seems like way too much trouble to leave floating around, even if you can say the universal simulator shows no trouble, most of the initial reaction is "oh shoot, if those collide it's over, and we can't stop them doing that." That also gives you a possible future development that allows your peoples to go FTL (or between universes, but that's still got to be useful).

[madd0ct0r]

hmm. forgot to mention this.

In the Kremlin:

"The report shows this new planet is a near identical copy of Saturn, with clear implications of parrallel movement between overlain universes. They came through on Saturn. Who can we expect to come through on Earth? How many other Earths are there out there? Would the American's use it to launch a sneak attack? Do we have a lifeboat option in the case of MAD?"

[JMHthe3rd]

if we assume two Saturns are stable, that gives the Timmus crew three gas giants + moons + rings to spread out on. I honestly don't think there'd be much advantage in them moving to Earth Orbit.

Since Utu/Earth was only a few weeks away, the Saturn colonies had little need for shipyards or advanced industry. They have only modest manufacturing capabilities. They can mine and smelt. They have a reasonable supply of spare parts and can repair and perform the usual maintenance on their ships and worker-drones. They did have the extensive orbital factories that built the Muon Collider Ring . . . but these were orbiting Zisustra/Tethys and for the most part were destroyed by flying chucks of ice. They may be able to salvage something useful from the debris, however.

As for food, they have enough hydroponic farms to keep their people fed, but only just. The elves better like protein bars and algae, because once the goods from Utu run out that's what's left on the menu. Advanced medicine can be fairly easily synthesized, and while not all of their equipment is readily replaceable, it's not something they have to worry about for the near-term.

The first decade or so will be hardest, and a catastrophe could doom them, but after that they should have build up their industry enough to make small spacecraft...

Implies they have a fairly capable industrial potential (although not existing base anymore), with enough automation. It's getting through the inital pinch point that is the riskiest position.

The other extreme is to abandon ship and everyone relocates to earth. Probably to Africa.

Even if the Timmuzians were to be transported to a universe with no humans on Earth, or even a lifeless Earth, they wouldn't necessarily be doomed to a slow death. It depends on how much time they can buy through scavenging and equipment cannibalization, and how fast they can bootstrap their industry in space. The Tethys debris cloud could certainly come in handy. It's practically a junkyard.

Now that I think about it, do the Timmuzians actually have the ability to land on Earth? Apart from Timmuz itself, the highest gravity they would have to deal with in their own neighbourhood would be that of Titan - 0.14 g, less than that of Earth's Moon, and presumably Utu had its own orbital spaceports and shuttles, so they would have had little reason to have shuttles capable of landing on and taking off from Earth. Their Orion-drive ships might be able to do it in theory, but in practice, landing by detonating small nuclear bombs under your ship sounds quite risky to me, and that's before you consider how the nuclear-armed locals will react.

A few of their ships have shuttles capable of entering an atmosphere and landing. Of course, they can't take off again without being attached to boosters. The first Timmuzians who visit Earth are going to be there for a while.

And nuclear pulse drives are only used for their interplanetary craft, not their shuttles. Also, they're not so crude as Project Orion. Think Project Daedalus. BTW these drives are going to be irreplaceable for a while. They and their fuel pellets aren't exactly something that can be slapped together.

Is it even necessary to have two Saturns? Why not just say the experiment (worked!) swapped Elf-Saturn for Earth-Saturn? That seems like way too much trouble to leave floating around, even if you can say the universal simulator shows no trouble, most of the initial reaction is "oh shoot, if those collide it's over, and we can't stop them doing that." That also gives you a possible future development that allows your peoples to go FTL (or between universes, but that's still got to be useful).

Timmuz's sudden appearance makes for a better "world gone mad" feel. In a scenario where Saturn is merely replaced, then you have radio signals coming from Saturn, followed by an apparent incoming spacecraft. This of course would be unexpected, but it's still within normal first contact expectations: There are aliens around Saturn. That's weird, but OK.

But if a whole second Saturn were to suddenly just dump into the Solar System . . . Holy Shit! This does violence to not only our world, but our worldview. To many people, it'd be almost as if reality broke. Human-aliens from another dimension is one thing: bringing a twin of Saturn with them is a whole a new level of crazy.

And even if the Saturns don't collide until the 300th century of whenever, the prospect that this will/may one day happen will always be in the back of people's minds.

I guess ISOTing Saturn is just an extra "wow" factor.

"The report shows this new planet is a near identical copy of Saturn, with clear implications of parrallel movement between overlain universes. They came through on Saturn. Who can we expect to come through on Earth? How many other Earths are there out there? Would the American's use it to launch a sneak attack? Do we have a lifeboat option in the case of MAD?"

Heh, I like that. I can see both superpowers fretting over this, as well as dumping lots of money trying to discover the secret of parallel universe travel. Without success, I might add. But the prospect of nuclear IDBMs will be the stuff of nightmares.

[Simon_Jester]

The problem is that there's such a thing as too much "wow" factor. A certain amount of "wow" makes the story compelling and serves to justify taking characters and breaking them out of the rut their lives are in. But there's level of "wow" at which it becomes harder to portray believable characters reacting logically to the situation in a way that makes for a compelling story. Remember that the goal here is a story, not just a story hook.

It's like, there's a lot of "wow" factor in "suddenly everyone's brain is transplanted into a hermaphroditic methane-breathing echidna on the planet Xffto," but there's not much of a story to tell based on that, because it's hard to come up with reasonable, compelling actions for a person to undertake when they suddenly wake up in the body of a hermaphroditic methane-breathing echidna on another planet. The situation is so weird that there's not much of a story to tell.

[JMHthe3rd]

The problem is that there's such a thing as too much "wow" factor. A certain amount of "wow" makes the story compelling and serves to justify taking characters and breaking them out of the rut their lives are in. But there's level of "wow" at which it becomes harder to portray believable characters reacting logically to the situation in a way that makes for a compelling story. Remember that the goal here is a story, not just a story hook.

It's like, there's a lot of "wow" factor in "suddenly everyone's brain is transplanted into a hermaphroditic methane-breathing echidna on the planet Xffto," but there's not much of a story to tell based on that, because it's hard to come up with reasonable, compelling actions for a person to undertake when they suddenly wake up in the body of a hermaphroditic methane-breathing echidna on another planet. The situation is so weird that there's not much of a story to tell.

I disagree. While harder, it's still possible--and arguably a lot of fun--to portray believable characters reacting (logically or not) to finding themselves in aliens bodies on an alien planet. Some would go insane, some may think their lives are greatly improved, some may conclude they've always been these aliens, their lives are humans being mere dreams. The scenario may be absurd, but it can still be well written.

And a second Saturn isn't anywhere close to that crazy. It'd be a very alarming bit of weirdness, but in the end life goes on. Pragmatism will win the day as people ask: How can we benefit from this?

The story could be streamlined by having only one Saturn, but two Saturns isn't that big a distraction, especially when collision won't happen for a period of time several times longer than human civilization.

And there's something delightfully eerie about how any amateur astronomer could stand in his backyard with his 80mm telescope and see a Saturn that shouldn't be there.

[Simon_Jester]

I disagree. While harder, it's still possible--and arguably a lot of fun--to portray believable characters reacting (logically or not) to finding themselves in aliens bodies on an alien planet. Some would go insane, some may think their lives are greatly improved, some may conclude they've always been these aliens, their lives are humans being mere dreams. The scenario may be absurd, but it can still be well written.

OK, I feel like you're kind of missing my point.

Are you actually denying that there is an upper limit on the amount of "wow factor" that can profitably be added to a story? Or are you just quibbling with my choice of example?

And a second Saturn isn't anywhere close to that crazy. It'd be a very alarming bit of weirdness, but in the end life goes on. Pragmatism will win the day as people ask: How can we benefit from this?

The story could be streamlined by having only one Saturn, but two Saturns isn't that big a distraction, especially when collision won't happen for a period of time several times longer than human civilization.

And there's something delightfully eerie about how any amateur astronomer could stand in his backyard with his 80mm telescope and see a Saturn that shouldn't be there.

Possibly- I simply want to establish this as a cautionary; it is very much possible to go for so much 'wow' that it gets in the way of the story, just as having too much technical exposition is bad for the flow of the plot.

[madd0ct0r]

That was a poor choice though Simon. I've read quite a few stories with similar ideas, from Kafka's metamorphosis onwards.

Switching Saturns implies (to me) there are only two parallel 'verses*. Having both makes my head itch since I want to know why the universes at 15 years out of sync (for timmuz to be in opposite side of the orbit). Also, since the technology is possible, law of probabilities dictates an expansionary empire should be turning up soon.


*It's not strictly true, you could have an ifinite number of them strectched along the timeline and you just hop down stream to the next one. Means that terrans trying it would not go to timmus verse, but to one 15 years behind us.

[Simon_Jester]

That was a poor choice though Simon. I've read quite a few stories with similar ideas, from Kafka's metamorphosis onwards.

OK, fine, poor choice, though I'm starting to get defensive about it because it is deliberately weirder than Metamorphosis.

It's not one person waking up as a bug, it's everyone, which is significant because in Metamorphosis the point isn't really about Gregor Samsa waking up as a monstrous vermin- which is barely explored, we never even get a detailed description of what kind of creature Samsa is. It's not about the transformation itself, so much as it is about how everyone else reacts to that.

Here, my intent was to take that "wake up as a bizarre being" question and then overlay it "how would every single person live as a society of hermaphroditic methane-breathing kangaroos?" Which, yes, I suppose you could write a story about. But the point is that by introducing TWO sets of literary themes you complicate the story and make it harder to explore either set fully.

Having more "wow" factor does not automatically confer the ability to tell two stories simultaneously as well as either of them could be told separately.

This is why, for example, we rarely see Isle in the Sea of Time stories (which are a subgenre of time travel story) being told as stories of interstellar space opera. Interstellar space opera is an interesting genre, and so is time travel, but combining the two requires the author

Star Trek might seem like a counterexample... but Star Trek has the advantage of an episodic format. They can tell a murder mystery one day, classic space opera plot the next, and time travel the day after that, separating each story so they can explore it fully.

One of the things I'm noticing about the TNG episodes I've been watching recently is that some of them suffer from having two or three random side-plots cooking at once that come from widely different themes or genres. For instance, having a 'mysterious alien visitor' story and a 'dangerous cargo aboard the ship' story and a random sideplot involving Wesley's long slow coming-of-age... all at the same time.

[This may be why Wesley is now considered an unpopular character. He was very often the protagonist of a sideplot which was only tangentially related to the main plot of the episode, and which served mainly to distract from it]

By contrast, in the original series, there was usually only one major plot in an episode. We might see many different characters reacting in different ways, but if an alien warlord was scheming to hijack the Enterprise, then by golly the whole episode was going to be about that alien warlord's hijacking attempt in some way, shape, or form.

Which made it possible to do a much more detailed and thorough job of making the alien warlord compelling, and exploring the characters of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and team by showing in detail how they react to such a situation.

Switching Saturns implies (to me) there are only two parallel 'verses*. Having both makes my head itch since I want to know why the universes at 15 years out of sync (for timmuz to be in opposite side of the orbit). Also, since the technology is possible, law of probabilities dictates an expansionary empire should be turning up soon.

This is a relevant point- for one, the time jump means that you've taken a displacement in 'hyperspace' between two universes and turned it into a displacement in both hyperspace and chronological time.

[madd0ct0r]

That was a poor choice though Simon. I've read quite a few stories with similar ideas, from Kafka's metamorphosis onwards.

OK, fine, poor choice, though I'm starting to get defensive about it because it is deliberately weirder than Metamorphosis.

It's not one person waking up as a bug, it's everyone, which is significant because in Metamorphosis the point isn't really about Gregor Samsa waking up as a monstrous vermin- which is barely explored, we never even get a detailed description of what kind of creature Samsa is. It's not about the transformation itself, so much as it is about how everyone else reacts to that.

Here, my intent was to take that "wake up as a bizarre being" question and then overlay it "how would every single person live as a society of hermaphroditic methane-breathing kangaroos?" Which, yes, I suppose you could write a story about. But the point is that by introducing TWO sets of literary themes you complicate the story and make it harder to explore either set fully.

In both cases the story is about society reactions - it's the same tale as the confused alien visitor, just told at broad scale. Dare me and I'll write it (once this months clusterfuck of stuff passes)

[Simon_Jester]

Well, the catch is that you're simultaneously writing the reactions of individuals to a strange event and the reaction of the whole society. The challenge is that one distracts from the other- by escalating the "wow" factor you wind up having to tell two interlocking compelling stories at once, rather than just one.

I mean, that's what the rest of my post was about- did you read it and have thoughts about it?

[madd0ct0r]

I read the post, but I still don't really agree with you. You can't write the individuals reaction without framing it in a society, and it's hard to write a social reaction without framing it in accessible viewpoints (WWZ being the extreme example). The Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson comes to mind as an example of a book that tracks three themes at once: development of individuals, a broader martian society and the terraforming of the planet itself. War and Peace as another. I can't think of any slim books that do it well though

I do agree with JMHthe3rd - the wow of appearing on a 2nd saturn takes a long step behind the fact they're appearing at all. It's just a plot guffin that's only relevant if there's a scramble for Saturn between the three powers. (well it probably doubles the number of possible slingshot paths available at a time, but that's not a huge deal). It swapping with our Saturn is just as weird, and more so really (same moons, same debris, range of swap ect)

[Simon_Jester]

Eh.

Well, I guess to be honest it's more of a bell curve. There's such a thing as having too much (way too much) plot complication and extra gadgets thrown in for 'wow' power, to the point where it detracts from the narrative and makes it hard to concentrate on any one theme or character. There's also such a thing as having too little, to the point where the narrative can't be framed effectively because there's no context.

[JMHthe3rd]

That was a poor choice though Simon. I've read quite a few stories with similar ideas, from Kafka's metamorphosis onwards.

Switching Saturns implies (to me) there are only two parallel 'verses*. Having both makes my head itch since I want to know why the universes at 15 years out of sync (for timmuz to be in opposite side of the orbit). Also, since the technology is possible, law of probabilities dictates an expansionary empire should be turning up soon.


*It's not strictly true, you could have an ifinite number of them strectched along the timeline and you just hop down stream to the next one. Means that terrans trying it would not go to timmus verse, but to one 15 years behind us.

it could be like Pratchett and Baxter's Long Earth, where you can "hop" to one universe or the other, as if they are all part of a chain. Or it could be that the Timmuzians' arrival in our universe was random, and if they were to recreate experiment, they'd go to some other random universe. Since they won't be able to build another muon collider for a long, long time, the question is rather moot.

That their universe is fifteen years or so out of sync [1] with ours is just a brute fact. Perhaps one universe is an "alternate echo" of the other.

And inter-dimensional empires are a potential threat[2]. Maybe these Timmuzians are a taste of things to come, but hopefully this sort of thing won't happen again for a long while. In any case, there's not a lot anyone can do about it.

As for too much "wow," I think my second Saturn is hardly that much of a distraction. Just a little spice of surreality.

Anyway, I wonder how things would be different if the Timmuzians were to appear in, say, 1962. Or 1953? Or 1941? I chose 1968 because I wanted the Space Race to already be in its near-zenith, right before Apollo 11, but an an earlier appearance might bring interesting results.

[1] Actually, more like fourteen. If Saturn is at "12 O'clock," than Timmuz is somewhere between six and five.
[2] But not if the destinations are always random.

[Me2005]

Switching Saturns implies (to me) there are only two parallel 'verses*. Having both makes my head itch since I want to know why the universes at 15 years out of sync (for timmuz to be in opposite side of the orbit). Also, since the technology is possible, law of probabilities dictates an expansionary empire should be turning up soon.

Interesting point. My issue is that a whole Saturn is a huge thing to insert into our system. Maybe some less-huge, but still head-itch inducing, insertion would be a compromise? Swapping the Saturn but advancing E-Saturn to where it is in its universe would be weird. Inserting *just* the moons & debris from E-Saturn would probably be good too, and still implies that they've built a device capable of useful movement and not just dimension skipping (Objects that weren't there now are as opposed to just moving existing objects around). That should put the elf settlers in more immediate danger too - I can't imagine it'd be a good, stable, orbit that those moons/debris would fall into

[madd0ct0r]

Funnily enough, pullling such a huge object with you struck me as a good reason dimension hopping dosen't happen more often