Science Fiction Aficionados discussion

I was forwarded this io9 article from my Yahoo! Groups Science Fiction group: http://io9.com/can-galactic-empires-e...

What do you think?

Define galactic empire.

If you define it as classical empires go...i.e. one centralized government legislating, controlling and policing a population, exerting control over its combined resources and all that...then I'd say "mabye."

But only if there is FTL communication. If you cannot at least communicate in something close to real time (like, say, a few month's lag between orders given and orders received...which is probably about the lag time between the far flung reaches of the British empire in Victorian times), then there's no way an empire could exist on a galactic scale.

Artificial constraints like your "lock-step" concept look good on paper and might make for good story-telling but coordinating and maintaining that across an entire civilization is unrealistic.

Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe has it more accurate, I think. FTL is not possible in that universe either. And what you have there is the idea that technology has reached a kind of plateau so that there is no huge change in tech over centuries. Humans have conglomerated in planet-sized cultures and space-based factions. There are no large centralized cultural or political institutions. Those who travel between the stars do so in suspended animation, and/or are parts of ship-based independent agencies.

Empires require coordination, efficient command structures and rigid power hierarchies. None of that is possible to maintain if years or centuries separate the disperate parts of the empire. Human nature would always be for local power factions to arise and reject/usurp the empire's power base.

...On further thinking, though there may be one way out of it: Machine intelligence enforcers that disallow breakaway factions and operate on standing orders issued by official agents of the empire. Even then, though, major changes in the empire's political structure would take centuries to filter out to the machine enforcer overlords.

Maybe in some parts of the universe where star systems are in clusters and less than a light year away or a few light years away.

Earth my understanding is between two sprial arms and not close to many stars systems. The nearest possible planet in the life zone is like 50 light years away.

I have started reading On Basilisk Station. At the start it sounds like all the groups get around via wormholes.

What Micah said.

Micah wrote: "Define galactic empire.

If you define it as classical empires go...i.e. one centralized government legislating, controlling and policing a population, exerting control over its combined resources ..."
If information were that slow moving around then no one far away would know if things were breaking down or not. Each little group could imagine they live in the empire as it's supposed to be. So long as they never meet, they'd never know the difference. So does the empire exist? a bit like a tree falling in a forest with no one there to see it.

Mickey wrote: "Maybe in some parts of the universe where star systems are in clusters and less than a light year away or a few light years away..."

A few light years away is still a very long distance.

Alpha Centauri, for example, is 4.365 light years from Earth. That's more than 276,000 times the distance between Earth and the Sun. If you averaged 3% the speed of light, the journey would still take you 145.4 years (as observed by a passenger on the ship) to get there.

So a round trip would take neary 300 years.

That's the reality of space. As Douglas Adams said, "You just can't imagine how vastly, hugely, mind-boggling big [space] really is."

Micah wrote: "Mickey wrote: "Maybe in some parts of the universe where star systems are in clusters and less than a light year away or a few light years away..."

A few light years away is still a very long dist..."

My understanding that some parts of the galaxy has as many as one hundred star systems less than one light year apart. Light takes only one second to reach the moon as perspective. I am assuming an advanced civilization could travel greater than half the speed of light. And for them a galactic Empire could exist. A bit more difficult for humans on earth.

It may be possible to reach perhaps half the speed of light without much relative time to take place. Current technology, yea will take hundreds of years. However, I believe once humans get going in space that things will go a lot faster. Even if a ship could accelerate at six G's will take months to reach half the speed of light.

As for current technology, no one on earth has the technology to send a person to mars and back. To get off Mars like Earth requires a rather large multistage rocket to get of that planet using current tech.

As for other worlds other than earth I think is possible. I will continue to dream of better worlds. That is why I like science fiction. The current world I live on sucks :)

Micah wrote: "Alastair Reynolds's Revelation Space universe has it more accurate, I think. FTL is not possible in that universe either."

I love Alastair Reynolds. In his book House of Suns when humans first ventured into space they settled into a configuration around a sun (don't think it was our sun from memory) called the Golden Hour - basically an orbit that was around 1 light hour in diameter so that the furthest planets/asteroids from each other could expect a reply to any communication within two hours. When they eventually abandoned that idea humanity fractured into individual factions and groupings.

Mickey wrote "...has as many as one hundred star systems less than one light year apart."

I think you'd find that radiation there would put paid to most civilisations, galactic or otherwise.

Rob wrote: "Mickey wrote "...has as many as one hundred star systems less than one light year apart."

I think you'd find that radiation there would put paid to most civilisations, galactic or otherwise."

Hmm.. In my unprofessional opinion, I am not an astronomer. It takes only 8 light "hours" to reach Pluto. It takes about 22 light "hours" to reach the termination shock, where the suns gravity does not take hold.

The sun of ours is a real scorcher at only one AU from the earth. One light year is, I am having good guess here at 100,000 AU's. I think it is possible to have much more than one solar system well beyond the termination shock and within a light year without excess radiation.

Crush my dreams on science fiction.... NEVER!

Mickey

You are right that we could put a lot of solar systems within a volume of space around a light year. But I think your idea, while fun, is too simplistic when it comes to just plonking 100 stars in a 1 light year sphere. Sure they'd fit, but then there's gravity, age of star(s), brightness of stars,types of star, and a million other variables. They'll all be moving relative to each other.

Let's say it was there, 100 stars packed within one light year and one of them goes nova, the empire will be seriously damamged by the expanding radiation.

Hey, I'm getting an idea for my next novel...

And I would never crush science fiction dreams. Never.

Rob wrote: "Let's say it was there, 100 stars packed within one light year and one of them goes nova, the empire will be seriously damamged by the expanding radiation"

True, but think bigger, every galaxy has a black hole as its center and it has been found that black holes also explode wiping out the entire galaxy. This is now the second biggest event that can occur in the universe, next to the big bang. This was an episode a few years back on the show NOVA on PBS, the episode was called "The dark star".. I think. Earth could end before you know it :) Sweet Dreams :)

So Mickey let's start by saying the Mickey-verse (this is only in jest we need a good title, The Crystal Sky or some such. Suggest away) is 1 ly in volume and there's some mechanism for keeping all the stars at the same distance from each other. What do we think the night (and daytime) sky would look like?

We'll have the empire be old, really old. A star has exploded inthe past and the radiation has ripped the empire to shreads. Pockets of tech remain, but on many worlds the empire is a forgotten memory. Into this we can chuck a new threat. Any Ideas?

Not my universe, there are solar systems that are that close, especially the closer one get to the center of the galaxy. Our solar system is closer to the outer rim of the galaxy.

The tidal forces would be much greater than our world, more quakes. I really do not think radiation is a problem, it depends on a protective atmosphere. I live in the north where there are few stars in the sky, the south has many stars where the milky way is visible. Closer systems should be a bit brighter, perhaps a lot brighter.

I am not an expert, most of my knowledge about the universe is from TV shows like the Universe on the history channel or NOVA on PBS (that has gone down hill over the years). So take my knowlege with lots of skepticism. It is your book, not mine when it comes to story making... Hope the best for you :)

The apps "Star Walk" and "Solar Walk" are excellent apps for your gps tablet for learning about the universe as well.

To put in perspective the danger of nearby suns, let me recall something I read in Perfect Symmetry by Heinz Pagels...

In it he was talking about the power of supernovas and how devestating they can be "locally." He concluded with something like this: "Fortunately none of the stars in our local group is large enough to go supernova, with the possible exception of Sirius. If Sirius went supernova, it would light up as bright as our sun in the sky and make all life on Earth impossible to sustain."

Again, that's my recollection of the quote. BUT...Sirius is 8.6 ly away, yet it going supernova would be the same as having 2 suns in our sky...double the heat. Talk about your global warming!

But I could invision a SF world where hundreds of suns (too small to go supernova) exist in a couple of light years of each other. The universe is big enough to support that happenstance.

The travel between part, however, in real life, would still be an issue.

The problem is that achieving and maintaining 6G requires a LOT of energy. I don’t think there's even a theoretical engine that can reach that kind of acceleration for the time you'd need it in order to reach 50% light speed.

Traveling at 6G it would take you just under 65 days (ship time) to reach 50% the speed of light. That's 65 days of constant 6G. If your engine requires any kind of fuel, you'd never be able to carry enough to sustain that...the mass of the fuel would require even more thrust in order to get you up to 6G and keep it there.

If you were able to achieve 6G without power and mass concerns, though, while traveling 2 light years you'd actually hit 99.03% the speed of light. BUT...because your mass increases as you approach light speed, a 1,000 metric ton spacecraft would have a mass of 7197 metric tons...more than 7x its resting mass! And as it approached that speed, the power it would require to maintain 6G would keep going up. Mass goes up, power needed to maintain acceleration goes up. It's a vicious cycle, until reaching light speed when your mass (and the power needed to maintain acceleration) becomes infinite.

Physical laws are a bitch.

(Sites used in my calculations):
http://www.orionsarm.com/fm_store/RTT...
http://mysite.verizon.net/res148h4j/j...

Hi Micah:
I agree with everything you have said. I only wish that I'd known someone like you to consult with 14 years ago when I started researching. I desperately needed advice and answers to some theoretical technical problems so that I could confidently write some of the important chapters in the first version of my sci- fi novel.

Best regards,
Daniel Sinclair Pearson
Alien Birthright.

;D 14 years ago I would have been as much in the dark as you!

However, over the years I've found that staying totally true to known science isn't really all that important to me as a reader (or writer), unless the story is explicitly about realistic exploration (books like Kim Stanely Robinson's Mars trilogy).

But most SF isn't like that and I'd prefer the story take its own course, even if that means a bit of handwavium or glossing over details (Alastair Reynolds, again, glosses over the engine tech in Revelation Space by having everyone use Conjoiner engines, which are self-contained and self-correcting and nobody really knows how they work other than Conjoiners...and if you mess with them they tend to go FOOM!...and I'm fine with all that).

Story first and just enough description of and justification for tech as supports the story and the world creation, that's what I like. OTOH, blatant disregard for real world physics (like in SW where space ships not under acceleration come to a full stop as if there's friction in space...or hearing starships zoom by, hearing explosions in space, that kind of thing) is inexcusable.

Thanks Micah:

Phew! I'm so glad that you invented this handwavium way back then as I believe that I'm now quite good at it.
Best regards,
Daniel Sinclair Pearson

If you don't have FTL communication and drive -- you would need prolonged lifespans. If you can live to be 10,000 years, it matters to you what the old fogeys on Earth think if they can get a fleet to bomb you to nothingness within a century.

I was reading an article about transistions between one kind of economy and another recently and there was a discussion of the economies of empires...Basically as an empire expands, the cost of maintaining the far reaches of the empire rise, eventually outstripping the economic advantages of havine a far ranging empire in the first place.

In space, especially if you don't have FTL drives, and extra-especially if you're relying on high tech means to mitigate that deficiency (putting your entire population in suspended animation for prolonged times), that economic fact does not go away.

What's the point of empire, after all? Historically it's been to gain access to more resources and to deliver those resources back to the imperial seat. Two issues argue against that happening once we can travel interstellarly--with FTL or not:

1) There are a LOT of resources out there just waiting to be taken. Even the solar system is huge and has SO much stuff. Once we head out there we essentially enter a post-scarcity world. The impulse to conquer, command, and horde treasure is devalued by the sheer quantity of stuff available. What the hell are you going to use it all for?

2) The time it would take to collect and deliver those vast resources back to your imperial seat, then to collect and utilize them for whatever bizarre purpose you have just seems too high to bother.

I suppose there could be an impulse to expand empire if there were extremely powerful enemies out there to contend with...but that would actually make empire building more costly and, therefore, less likely (in my mind).

I just don't find the imperial system translates well to that scale.

Mary wrote: "If you don't have FTL communication and drive -- you would need prolonged lifespans. If you can live to be 10,000 years, it matters to you what the old fogeys on Earth think if they can get a flee..."

I once read a couple of sci-fi shorts set in a universe where there were no FTL drives. People were put into stasis pods for interstellar journeys. This lead to people who travel a lot (big business people, marines, envoys, long distance cargo haulers) having effective ages of 1000's of years.

The problem with that and interstellar empires is that if you don't stay in one of those pods, you live out your normal lifespan.

So you revolt and overthrow the imperial governor. What do you care that in ten generations, your descendants might get bombed to hereafter for it?

Define 'FTL' drives too!

Or for this discussion does this include hyper jumps (which like any quantum transition) doesn't really include travel at a speed. Just a new state being assumed which includes location from a change in energy.

A number of science fiction writers have used a 'different' mechanism than just going really fast or altering velocity calculations.

Dune by Frank Herbert is one example. The fabric of space itself is bent to allow instantaneous point to point travel when the points are galaxies apart.

Robert Heinlein proposed different methods that had similar effects including moving directly across multiple dimensions including time without transiting through intermediate points.

Orson Scott Card more directly has addressed this with the Quantum communication device, the ansible, using paired particles that echo each others behavior at the quantum level regardless of the physical separation. No FTL drive needed (or available in his original Ender stories) but instantaneous communication.

To more directly address the question about galactic empires existing without Faster-than-light travel it easy to say that sure it can be done. There is an actual example in history. The Roman Empire. Areas of the Empire took months if not years to get to and from. Gains and losses in territory, forces, political alliances etc., were not known immediately and then with less than totally precision or accuracy for some time.

It might also result in a different kind of 'Empire'. One than shared motivations and goals initially with guidelines for independent evolution as needs required. This kind of an Empire would not need to be centralized. No need for a central power, in fact one couldn't exist. But there could be a common goal whether it was benevolent or not. If expansion was the goal of the 'Empire' that could be very easy to codify and reports would just roll in to a central repository (or several for purposes of integrity) as they became available.

One other place where physics as we know it adds a kink to this whole mess is around the speed of light very strange things happen. Even getting into the double digit percentage of the speed o' light results in noticeable twin paradox problems where time slows down. Better technology means that your grandkids could possibly get to where you are traveling and have already had a significant life/impact on the 'empire' and you with older travel speeds are still young and are marching on older orders. The possibilities are astonishing.

Slightly faster than the speed of light (and we can't really prove this beyond the theoretical) and another set of problems occur that may include not being able to slow down again. Or there is one set of calculation that show an echo effect might occur where you catch up with yourself. Infinitely. Sort of like a pinball caught between to bumpers - forever.

So yeah, a widely dispersed empire is very possible.

Don't believe it? Read Thucydides

Mary wrote: "...So you revolt and overthrow the imperial governor. What do you care that in ten generations, your descendants might get bombed to hereafter for it? "

Exactly. The only way out of that, which I mentioned earlier, is to have everlasting machine enforcers who ensure the Empire's not overthrown. I can see plot devices built around that like, the Empire back home goes into civil war or at least some kind of schism; there's an effective stalemate with two sides claiming to be the real Empire; they both send out radio signals and envoys to convince the machine enforcers that they are the legitimate power...the machines either side with one side or the other, or just carry on with their old instructions, denying either side.

CD wrote: "...for this discussion does this include hyper jumps (which like any quantum transition) doesn't really include travel at a speed..."

The mode of travel doesn't matter for this discussion, only the time it takes to go between the stars (from an external observer's point of view). If centuries pass while you're going from A to B, then can an empire effectively be maintained?

I talked earlier about historic empires. Basically my postulation is that for any political system resembling an empire to exist, there is a maximum effective travel time before it is no longer possible to sustain control over the far reaches of the empire.

A few months to maybe a year is probably the max. As you say, the Romans are one example, the British Empire at its height was another. Technology shrunk how long it took to travel, but the span of several months travel seems to be the max before it's impossible to handle uprisings and all that.

CD wrote: "...This kind of an Empire would not need to be centralized. No need for a central power, in fact one couldn't exist..."

That's not just a "different kind" of empire...it's totally NOT an empire: empire: a group of countries or regions that are controlled by one ruler or one government; especially : a group of countries ruled by an emperor or empress

Centralized control is a defining condition of empire.

CD wrote: "Orson Scott Card more directly has addressed this with the Quantum communication device, the ansible..."

Actually, Orson Scott Card borrowed the ansible from Ursula K LeGuin!

"Spooky action at a distance" Einstein.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/physics/...

Quantum Entanglement been around for a long time. Who knows maybe such a device called the ansible might be possible.

Micah wrote: "CD wrote: "...for this discussion does this include hyper jumps (which like any quantum transition) doesn't really include travel at a speed..."

The mode of travel doesn't matter for this discuss..."

Centralized control is not a defining condition of empire. An Empire has a common set of goals and behaviors that are administered across a wide area of influence.

The realization of the problems of distance date back to the Chinese and to the Babylonians. They each independently came up with the idea of sub-rulers, proctors, etc. to administer over great distances or remotely the holdings of the Emperor/Kings/Pharoahs etc that would evolve over the next 5 or 6 millenia.

The British Empire had as an example a Vice-Roy in India that was in effect the ruler. One need look no further than Wellington to see the power vested and exercised not from a central location, but locally as demands required.

An Empire by definition is common set of laws and expected behaviors across great holdings and military dominions. The idea of a Roman citizen was that they could walk unmolested and with certain rights and privileges from one end of the known world to the other because of the existence of Empire. The Senate in Rome and the current Caesar (prior to the beginning of the Roman decline as they declared themselves gods) did not have to intervene or exercise power remotely from a central location. They had other to do it for the Empire.

The power of Empire has always been about the creation of and the effectiveness of the system of administration employed in the wide ranging interests required to make it work. The Chinese raised it to an art form with the Confucian examination to produce generation upon generation of bureaucrats who ran their Empire(s) for thousands of years.

Alexa wrote: "CD wrote: "Orson Scott Card more directly has addressed this with the Quantum communication device, the ansible..."

Actually, Orson Scott Card borrowed the ansible from Ursula K LeGuin!"

So true! I used Card's implementation as I feel he explained it better and the currency of Card's work with the movie of Ender's Game having been recently released.

CD wrote: "Centralized control is not a defining condition of empire...sub-rulers, proctors, etc..."

Hmm. Read the definition again.

Sub-rulers and all that are simply administrative structures that are still beholding to the centralized power of the imperial ruler(s). They allow the extension of the Empire beyond the limits of direct, real-time control, but they rule ONLY at the pleasure of the Empire and are not in any way soverign powers unto themselves. No matter how much they may appear to be independent, they are really only agents of the centralized power and can be/were replaced if/when they stepped out of line. Centralized power was maintained.

I think the test of the above would be to imagine the removal of the Imperial center in one of those historic Empires.

If, say, a volcano wiped out the city of Rome, killing the Emperor and all the Senate and all the top military...would the the Roman Empire, as a "common set of goals and behaviors " continued on? Or would all the sub-rulers just grabbed what power they could and set up their own set of goals and administration?

I'm thinking the latter. Which clearly would mean that it was only a centralized power that was holding them together in the first place.