While the planet itself was taking shape in the forefront of my mind, other cerebral areas were quietly at work devising an elaborate plot, characters to enact it, a history and a culture and a political system, and all those other features that a lengthy science fantasy novel needs. But most of my conscious attention at that point was going toward envisioning Majipoor: its climate, its native lifeforms, above all its geography and topography. These things, I knew, would determine many aspects of the story itself, from the form of government to the movements of my protagonists.
All right: maps, next.
I drew some quick sketches. Three continents, each far larger than any of Earth's. One, the earliest to be settled and immensely populous, to be the center of the world government; another, not as thoroughly urbanized, though with some major cities and a river of phenomenal size cutting across it, to be the home of the surviving aborigines who would, I already was coming to see, play a key role in the plot; the third, more obscure, a forbidding desert land in the torrid south.
By now I had put some meaning behind the title that had spontaneously offered itself. The eponymous Castle was the seat of the monarch, and I would put it atop a special geographical feature: a super-Kilimanjaro, a mountain thirty miles high in the middle of the primary continent. Castle Mount, I called it. It would be virtually a continent in itself, albeit a vertical one, protected from high-altitude forces of wind and cold and by weather-altering and atmosphere-creating machinery designed and installed when Majipoor still was in its technological era. There would be fifty spectacular cities along its slopes and a gigantic Gormenghast-like royal castle at its summit.
But, since the political structure of Majipoor and the plot of the novel now were unfolding in my mind with the same swiftness as the geographical background, I needed a second capital also, for I intended a double monarchy. In order to sustain Majipoor's huge population under a single stable government, I wanted a ruling system that would provide a long series of enlightened monarchs. Hereditary rule wouldn't do that—sooner or later it gives you a Caligula or a Nero—and neither, as I see it, would democracy. (Hitler was a democratically elected Chancellor.) But I remembered the system of adoptive emperors that produced the most successful period in the long history of the Roman Empire, each ruler choosing the most qualified man of the realm to follow him to the throne and adopting him as his son: Nerva picking Trajan, Trajan Hadrian, Hadrian selecting Antoninus Pius and simultaneously designating the promising young Marcus Aurelius to be Antoninus’ ultimate successor.
I proposed—fantasy, again—to ask the reader to believe that such a system could be kept going for thousands of years if each emperor gave proper care to his choice of a successor. But also I intended to have two rulers in office at once, much as Fifth Republic France has a President and a Prime Minister, and the later Romans operated with an Augustus and a Caesar as senior and junior emperors. The older monarch—the Pontifex, I called him, with a nod to Rome—would live out of sight, in the deepest levels of a labyrinthine underground city thousands of miles south of the Castle. The junior king—the Coronal—would be the highly visible occupant of the Castle atop the great mountain, the public figure carrying out the orders that emerged from the hidden emperor in the Laby-rinth. Upon the death of the Pontifex, the Coronal would take his place in the gloomy subterranean capital and his designated successor, technically his adoptive son, would become Coronal at the Castle.
I realized at this point, also, that what I would be writing was a novel of quest, of internal discovery, of the attainment of responsibility. One should never become so obsessed with the world-building process that one loses sight of the story-building process: the two should grow simultaneously, organically intertwined, once the basic groundwork has been established. A quest-novel, then. But who would undertake the quest, and what would he be seeking? The world I was designing had taken its essential form; it was time to establish the characters who would act out the story I intended to set on that immense planet.
And I see that this is going to take another column to finish the job.
Copyright © 2009 Robert Silverberg
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Department: ON THE NET: THE PEOPLE'S TELESCOPE by James Patrick Kelly
boldly going
As I write this, astronauts aboard the shuttle Atlantis have finished repairs to the Hubble Space Observatory [hubblesite.org]. By all reports this risky and ambitious mission has been a success, giving the Hubble its fifth reincarnation. Assuming that the shakedown cruise goes well in the coming months, NASA [nasa.gov] expects that the Hubble will continue to be our one true starship for another five or perhaps even ten years.
Starship? Okay, so maybe I have interstellar travel on my mind these days; just last week I saw the new Star Trek [startrekmovie.com]. What did I think? Well, Sheila doesn't pay me to review movies and, by the time you read this, all of you who care will have already seen it and thus have your own opinions. But if you ask me, although it is certainly is a rousing adventure and it successfully re-imagines the characters so dear to us [startrek.com/startrek/view/series/TOS/casts/index.html], it doesn't appear to have an original SF thought in its pretty little head.
Oh right, blowing up planets is not cool.
But this is just an origin story and there are bound to be multiple sequels, so there is time for J.J. Abrams [en. wikipedia.org/wiki/J.J.Abrams] and his crew to figure out what the hell the Enterprise is boldly going to the stars for.
We do know, however, what the Hubble is doing. Astronomy and all its associated fields: planetary science; stellar, galactic, and extra galactic astronomy; astrophysics; and cosmology. It is without a doubt one of NASA's greatest hits, perhaps the greatest. Although it is much beloved and has been nicknamed “the People's Telescope” the Hubble has had a checkered history.
The first serious proposal for a space telescope was floated in 1946 by Lyman Spitzer, Jr. [spitzer.caltech.edu/about/spitzer.shtml], who continued to push for his idea right up until congressional authorization in 1977. He pointed out the two principal advantages of a space-based observatory: it is not hindered by atmospheric distortion and it can make observations in wavelengths like ultraviolet, gamma, and X-rays that are blocked or absorbed by our atmosphere. The new space telescope was named after the cosmologist Edwin Hubble [edwinhubble.com], who was the first to confirm that the universe was expanding.
Hubble's troubles started when Perkin-Elmer [perkinelmer.com] was awarded the contract for the primary light collecting mirrors. For various reasons, the company had problems delivering in a timely manner, so that the projected 1983 launch date was postponed to 1985. Then, just after the Hubble was completed, the Challenger [fas.org/spp/51L.html] exploded and the space shuttle fleet was grounded. For five years NASA kept the Hubble on layaway, powered up in a clean room at a cost of six million dollars a day. Finally, in April of 1990, the Hubble was boosted to low Earth orbit aboard the shuttle Discovery [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-31]. A few weeks later, it started beaming the first pictures back to Earth.
And they were out of focus. To the world's universal chagrin, we discovered that our far-seeing space telescope needed glasses. A blue ribbon commission [ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/199100031241991003124.pdf] was convened to investigate the problem; it put the primary blame on Perkin-Elmer, but also cited NASA for failing to note “that the mirror was made in the wrong shape, being too much flattened away from the mirror's center.... The error is ten times larger than the specified tolerance.” It was at this time that NASA and its billion dollar boondoggle became fodder for snarky comedians, who likened the Hubble to such technological fiascos as the Titanic, the Hindenburg, and the Edsel. It was not a promising start for the People's Telescope.
However, the Hubble had been designed from the start to be serviced as necessary by the shuttle fleet, and so in 1993 NASA dispatched the Endeavour [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-61] to correct the problem. In one of the most complex missi
ons in shuttle history—until the most recent one—astronauts installed both a corrective optics package and the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 [hubblesite.org/thetelescope/nuts.and.bolts/instruments/wfpc2/], which has taken most of the pictures for which the Hubble is justifiably famous. They also replaced solar arrays, gyroscopes, various electronics systems, and upgraded the onboard computer. The Hubble was saved—for the time being.
Altogether there have been five Servicing Missions, although the most recent almost didn't happen. In the wake of the Columbia disaster [space.com/ columbiatragedy] it was deemed too risky to send a shuttle to Hubble. All of the post-Columbia missions had to be able to reach the International Space Station [nasa.gov/missionpages/station/main/index.html] in case of emergency, where it was possible to inspect a shuttle for damage and, if necessary, have the crew take refuge while they waited for rescue. This was not an option with a Hubble visit, so in 2003 NASA announced that it was scrapping the last service mission and preparing plans for a robot to push the space telescope out of orbit so that it would burn up safely in the atmosphere.
This touched off a firestorm of protest from friends of the Hubble, both in the scientific community and in the general public. Websites went up, Congress held hearings, and schoolchildren sent their lunch money to save “the People's Telescope."
And so the Hubble was saved—for the time being.
Because this recently completed mission [en.wikipedia.org/wiki/STS-125] is positively, absolutely the last time that a shuttle will be available for a servicing mission. The fleet will be retired in 2010; the first round of layoff notices [space.com/news/090501-nasa-shuttle-layoffs.html] have already gone out to shuttle contractors. Originally, the Hubble was to be retrieved at the end of its mission and brought back to Earth in a shuttle cargo bay. But there will be no place of honor in the Smithsonian [nasm.si.edu/] for this space pioneer. Current plans call for a robotic craft to lock onto it sometime after 2020 and “deorbit” the Hubble.
* * * *
seeing
Although it is commonly referred to as a space telescope, the Hubble is more properly a space observatory. Of the five instrument systems on board, the output of the Wide Field and Planetary Camera 2 (WFPC2) and the Advanced Camera for Surveys (ACS) are the best known; these take the stunning pictures [heritage.stsci.edu/gallery/galindex.html] of our universe that grace posters and screen savers around the world. On the mission just concluded the WFPC2 was replaced by the Wide Field Camera 3. The ACS, the Hubble's “telephoto lens,” had been malfunctioning, operating with only one of its three channels available to scientists; it was successfully repaired. These systems detect visible light from the most distant, highly redshifted galaxies. They have found massive planets and have been instrumental in mapping the distribution of dark matter [science. howstuffworks.com/dark-matter.htm].
The Near Infrared Camera and Multi-Object Spectrometer (NICMOS) is Hubble's heat sensor. Interstellar gas and dust can block visible light, so the NICMOS sees in the infrared, which is invisible to the human eye. It therefore can see even further than the visible light instruments and is particularly suited to detecting newly forming stars and clusters.
The Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) is a powerful general-purpose spectrograph that allows scientists to examine the chemical fingerprints of distant objects. The STIS has analyzed the chemistry in the atmosphere of extrasolar planets and has detected supermassive black holes [csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/active/smblack.html] rotating at the centers of several galaxies. The STIS failed in 2004, but was resuscitated in the most recent mission.
The Fine Guidance Sensors (FGS) are devices that lock onto the Cepheid variable stars [imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/science/mysteriesl1/cepheid.html] to aim the Hubble in the right direction. These so-called “guide stars” have been used by modern astronomers to measure distance in space; however, until Hubble and its FGS, those measurements were known to be inaccurate. The data returned by these sensors has helped us pinpoint distances in the universe, refine the Hubble Constant [cfa.harvard.edu/~huchra/hubble], and estimate the size and age of the universe.
Black holes, dark matter, extrasolar planets, galaxy formation, the age and size of the universe—Hubble has confirmed some theories about the nature of the universe, called others into question and, in the process, spectacularly fulfilled its mission. In the scientific community, that would easily account for its popularity. But why has it become “the People's Telescope?” I think it is because, unlike much of our technology, it has a story. The Hubble has ever ridden a rollercoaster of expectations. Its history is filled with crushing disappointments and dazzling recoveries.
But perhaps there is something more.
* * * *
exit
Back to Star Trek for a moment: I am old enough to remember when the original series made its debut on television. As you might expect, this fifteen-year-old was pretty much hooked, as much by the future Star Trek seemed to promise as by the plots and the characters. Like me, many science fiction fans at the time were convinced that, while our future in space would not necessarily involve velour uniforms and dilithium crystals, humans would leap someday to the stars. Maybe even Jim Kelly! In 1966, it didn't seem all that farfetched. According to the holy trinity of science fiction—Heinlein, Clarke, and Asimov—stardrives were very doable.
My longtime readers might remember a column entitled FTL [asimovs.com/ issue0406/onthenet.shtml], wherein I reviewed all the reasons why faster than light travel is more fantasy than science fiction. I doubt very much that humanity is going to the stars, at least not in a starship. As the history of the Hubble and the shuttle program show, even getting to orbit is fraught with peril. Missions to space are far from routine.
But in our starship of the mind we have traveled some twelve billion light years from Earth, exactly at the speed of light. With the aid of images taken by the Hubble we have witnessed planets being born and the death of stars. We have ventured to distant galaxies and soon, with the improvements just installed, may be able to see back in time and space to the universe's adolescence, some five hundred million years after the Big Bang [umich.edu/~gs265/bigbang.htm]. It seems to me that's one reason why the Hubble has so endeared itself to the world.
Pictures may not be exactly what we wanted, but they are enough, thanks to “the People's Telescope."
Copyright © 2009 James Patrick Kelly
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Department: THOUGHT EXPERIMENTS: ALMOST POSSIBLE by Mary Robinette Kowal
Mary Robinette Kowal is the 2008 recipient of the Campbell Award for Best New Writer. Her short story, “The Consciousness Problem,” appeared in our August issue, and she has sold fiction to Strange Horizons, Cosmos, and other venues. The author, a professional puppeteer and voice actor, lives in Oregon with her husband Rob. Tor is publishing her first novel, Shades of Milk and Honey, in 2010. Visit www.maryrobinettekowal.com for more information about her fiction and her puppetry. Recently, she sat down with Dr. Michio Kaku to discuss where the cutting edge in science lies, what science fiction is, or could soon be fact, and which scientific conjectures are food for thought for the next generation of SF writers. Dr. Kaku is a theoretical physicist, best-selling author, and popularizer of science. He's the co-founder of string field theory (a branch of string theory), and continues Einstein's search to unite the four fundamental forces of nature into one unified theory. His book, Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration of the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel, was reprinted by Anchor last April. The book has been on the New York Times Bestseller List and it is also the inspiration for a series that is currently being filmed for the Science Channel.
* * * *
There are a lot of things that pull folks to science fiction, but probably the biggest draw comes because it makes impossible things seem possible. Who wouldn't want to travel to distant stars or back in time? Aren't there times when being invisible would be hand
y? Given a choice, I'd teleport instead of mucking about with the average commute.
But the interesting thing about some of the best science fiction is that the science in it doesn't stay fiction for long. Remember Jules Verne and the Nautilus or the communicators on Star Trek? These fictional devices are part of our everyday world because science doesn't stand still. It makes you wonder which of today's science fiction tropes are tomorrow's reality.
I had the opportunity to talk to theoretical physicist Michio Kaku about his book Physics of the Impossible, in which he breaks the impossible down into three useful categories. Class I—Technologies that are impossible today, but do not violate the known laws of physics. They might be possible in a few decades or in this century. Class II—Technologies that sit at the edge of our understanding. They are centuries to millennia away from realization. Class III—These break the known laws of physics.
The handy thing about thinking of the impossible in this way is that it helps when planning science fiction. If you can make a guess about whether an invention might have occurred by the time your story takes place, then you can build more believable futures.
Take, for instance, force fields. These invisible barriers have been a part of science fiction since at least 1912 with William Hope Hodgson's The Night Land, but have often seemed to be pure fantasy. Much to my surprise, it turns out that not only are force fields mere Class I impossibilities, the elements to make one are already in development.
Asimov's SF, October-November 2009 Page 2
