Bewildering Stories asks...
What Are Spaceships?
In light of the three “space opera” stories in issue 903, some readers examine the distinction between reality and fiction.
[Reader 1] I’m a lot more bothered now than I was as a kid by space-opera authors’ blithe indifference to Einstein’s party-pooping theory that as an object — say, a spaceship — approaches the speed of light, it would acquire infinite mass, making light-speed (or even well below) travel impossible. And since light-speed is still way too pokey for interstellar travel, well, sorry, we just can’t do it; we’re stuck on Spaceship Earth, which is a pretty great place for carbon-based, oxygen-breathers to be. But I guess a run-of-the mill adventure story gets a pass if it takes place on another planet.
[Reader 2] Science fiction has come up with many different workarounds to this relativity limitation! From the “tunnels” in some novels and short stories (wormholes, really) to the concept of hyperspace “jumps” in some of Asimov’s writings, to generation ships, to Vernor Vinge’s sophisticated idea that the laws of physics vary in the universe, I’ve seen many ideas for making interstellar travel happen.
I’m especially drawn to Vinge’s invention. One of his books — I don’t remember which one — has a map of the universe where there are different zones each of which has its own physical laws. In some zones you can exceed the speed of light, in others, like the one we live in, you cannot. In his novels, sub-light-speed travel is accomplished in ships traveling at about half the speed of light. The crew stays in suspended animation until they near their destination. These ships have large protective screens to push aside interstellar matter. At 50% of light-speed even a tiny grain of sand could be a deadly bomb.
[Don Webb] Our readers illustrate vividly at least one kind of spaceship: real vehicles made possible by science and engineering. So far, real spaceships have taken astronauts into Earth orbit and to the Moon. They have also taken robots to Mars and instrumentation to the rest of the Solar System. At least two of them have penetrated interstellar space or are close to doing so. “Space operas” have even been created about them: documentary films recounting their journeys and discoveries.
But all that is science. What are spaceships in science fiction? They are dramatic devices that enable authors to change scenes radically and swiftly. They go from one planet or other place in space to another in the time it takes the reader to turn the page or the viewer to fast-forward through the TV advertisements.
How do science-fictional spaceships actually work? Nobody knows; they’re products of imagination, not engineering. They compress space by the use of warp drives, hyperspace, wormholes or some similar magic. Or they compress time by means of cryogenic hibernation. Or they may presume to replicate planetary resources in the form of generation ships.
In The Stars Like Dust, Isaac Asimov depicts spaceships’ “hyperdrive” engines straining to build up the power to “jump” into “hyperspace.” But that was an early novel; in later ones, he wisely discarded engine rooms as superfluous embellishment.
The Star Trek series, which practically defined science fiction in 20th-century television, substituted the “warp drive” for Asimov’s shortcut through hyperspace. The effect was the same, although the starship Enterprise could vary its speed. Capt. Kirk could say, “Warp 2, Mr. Sulu,” to signal a transition to the next scene in the script.
But the practical side of space travel remained. Star Trek realized early on that spaceships were a handicap over short distances. For example, how could the doctor aboard the Enterprise rush to rescue a member of an “away team” on the planet below? A space shuttle would take too long. Solution: the transporter. Hence the famous line “Beam me up, Scotty.” It was never said but might have become routine if the writers had thought of it at the time.
Do science-fiction spaceships then have nothing to do with real spaceships? There is a connection. The fiction writer must keep in mind not real-world limitations, such as light-speed, but real-world advances.
For example, Isaac Asimov made a point of admitting that his early short story, “Trends,” could not have been written in the space age. Today, no writer would think of having a moon rocket built by what amounts to hobbyists. When he wrote the story in 1939, no one had any idea yet how difficult it would be to construct and launch a rocket to the Moon.
Where no advances yet exist, the field is wide open. The early modern science fiction novel The Other World is probably the most prescient in world literature. In it, Cyrano de Bergerac makes a lighter than air flight from Paris to Canada. In a series of comic misadventures, he constructs an airplane and then a fireworks display to celebrate the holiday of St. Jean Baptiste in Quebec City. By an accidental ignition, the display becomes, in effect, a multi-stage rocket that takes him to the Moon. Cyrano thus recapitulates — more than three hundred years in advance — the history of flight in the 20th century.
In science fiction, imaginary spaceships — usually flying hotels equipped with “replicators” as a form of room service — take fictional characters to other planets by imaginary means. What are these other planets? They’re fictional, too. And they are limited by scientific advances in the real world.
Real space travel has gradually limited the scope of the Solar System in science fiction. The Mars of C. S. Lewis’s Out of the Silent Planet and the Venus of his novel Perelandra are products of their time, not ours. And no one can go to the Moon like Cyrano anymore. Cyrano himself knew that would happen; that’s one of the reasons he objected to the title “Voyage to the Moon” and insisted on “The Other World.”
“Spaceship Earth” is not a vehicle, it’s our home. It’s a mobile home, to be sure, but it has no destination. Wherever real space travelers go, be it in spacesuits, shuttles, spaceships, space stations or habitats or to colonies on other planets, they must take with them a memory of Earth, their home environment.
And the same goes for fictional space travelers. As Cyrano well knew and emphasized, science fiction does not really go to other planets; it goes to “the other world” — an imaginary world — where new and different things can happen that aren’t taking place on Earth, at least not yet.
Related essay: Space Colonies: the Dark Side
