Thought Experiment: A Realistic/Hard SF Galactic Empire

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Somes J
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Re: Thought Experiment: A Realistic/Hard SF Galactic Empire

Post by Somes J »

Blackwing wrote:Essentially Time Dilation doesn't mean you're moving through time at a different rate, it means that you're experiencing time at a different rate.
What's the difference?

Cause it sounds kind of like this distinction relies on the assumption of a privilidged external reference frame for time, and I'm pretty sure part of relativity is privilidged reference frames aren't supposed to exist.
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Blackwing
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Re: Thought Experiment: A Realistic/Hard SF Galactic Empire

Post by Blackwing »

The difference being that if Time Dilation affects the passage of time itself rather than the experiencing of time, it's possible to travel through time with some of the wonkier effects of Time Dilation and relativistic speed, while if it only affects the reference frame of the affected, you can't.

Not a privileged external reference frame, but a regular external reference frame.

In other words, if you go really, really fast, you still affect 'slower time' areas around you in the timeframe of that area. (i.e. If you crash your relativistic-speed-going craft into a stationary object, the impact takes the same amount of time in both reference frames, you don't experience your ship blowing up in slow-motion, even if you continue to go at the same speed).
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Re: Thought Experiment: A Realistic/Hard SF Galactic Empire

Post by Destructionator »

Remember, time dilation never affects you. It is always everyone else who is wonky.
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Re: Thought Experiment: A Realistic/Hard SF Galactic Empire

Post by Blackwing »

At any rate, point is that the Science in Science Fiction is there to help the story, not define it.
If you want to write a story about an Interstellar Empire, you're inevitably going to have to throw some part of scientific plausibility out the window.
If you want to write a story about mankind's noble struggle to make it's mark on a huge, cold, uncaring (i.e. realistic) universe, then including warp-drives and alien civilizations is completely unneeded.

Harder science-fiction lends itself well to examining how humankind is affected by the rise of technology, the societal changes that occur when faster, cheaper and more efficient international communication and travel make borders less significant and overall for speculating on humanity's future as a species.

Softer science-fiction lends itself better to 'what-if' (or what-iffy) scenarios about what we'd do if we met alien species, how humanity would react to being an interstellar empire and how faster than light travel, something we may or may not discover to be impossible in the future, would change society.

Or revert it back to an earlier state.
The resource colonialism in Dune, for instance, stemmed from the unique properties of the Spice and the fact that, like many other resources that take a background to Spice, it's production by the Sandworms evolved with the planet in such a way that one cannot have Spice without Worms, one cannot have Worms without Sand Trout and one cannot have Sand Trout without Pre-Spice. Attempts to capture and transport worms to other planets to make Spice there was doomed to fail, because trying to make worms live on a planet that didn't have sand trout (larval worms) would kill them (presumably due to starvation) and trying to import sand trout to a desert world without Pre-Spice already present would kill them (due to starvation).
And so the various Houses of the Dune-verse fought over control of Arrakis (usually not openly) because it was literally the only place Spice could be found. The same way that countries used to fight (usually openly) over spices and other 'new world' cultivated produce, until ways were found to cultivate them elsewhere.
Any time a rare resource is going to be found somewhere that people are already living resource colonialism is going to be one of the options (and one of the preferable options for the ones not living there).
Telling such a story in the future with aliens is going to ruffle a lot less feathers than telling it in the past with existing cultures. Is it an original story? No, but it can be a good one.

You can mix it up a bit (it's a spectrum, after all, this 'hardness' thing) and introduce aliens into an otherwise fully 'realistic' setting. The aliens themselves are going to make it softer.
Likewise you can take a setting which is fairly soft and introduce some harder elements such as making heat management a problem for spaceships in a 'verse where there's aliens, FTL, AI, Nano-tech and whatnot (Yes, Mass Effect).

And ultimately, no Science-Fiction story is going to be completely Hard. Because our understanding of Science is not perfect and if, after twenty years, people are not reading your story and saying either 'Man, that's so accurate' even if people at the time thought it was ridiculous or 'Did they really think that back then?' when people at the time thought it was realistic, you're doing it wrong.
So Einstein was wrong when he said "God does not play dice". Consideration of black holes suggests, not only that God does play dice, but that He sometimes confuses us by throwing them where they can't be seen. ~ Stephen Hawking
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