Space is big

artistic impression of Pluto and Charon. From the New Horizons website

It’s hard to believe how far we are from anything else created by humankind. Except for our own, now-derelict third stage, nothing made by people or from the Earth — nothing — is within more than a billion miles of New Horizons.

From the latest news update of the New Horizons Project, NASA’s attempt to reach Pluto and the Kuiper Belt. The latter being the belt of Pluto sized planetoids at the edge of the classical Solar System. It’s some 30 to 55 Astronomical Units away; one AU being the distance from the Sun to the Earth, or about eight light minutes, or some 8 x 60 x 300,000 kilometres. Space is big, as Douglas Adams already noticed.

Space is not just big in distances, but also in time:

But you won’t have to wait another three years for our next significant distance and flight-time milestones — they come next year, when we cross the halfway point! But whenever quoting such milestones, I have to be careful about the meaning. So when will our spacecraft be halfway to Pluto? Well, that depends on which halfway you mean. (No, I am not kidding.)

  • If one asks, when have we traveled half the flight time to reach Pluto? That halfway milestone occurs on October 17, 2010.
  • But if one asks, when will we be half as far from the Sun as Pluto will be at the time of our encounter on July 14, 2015? That occurs somewhat earlier, on April 20, 2010.
  • And if one asks, when will we have traveled half the heliocentric distance to Pluto from our launch at Earth? That milestone occurs even earlier, on February 25, 2010.

So, as you can see, the answer to the halfway question depends on precisely what it means to be halfway. In fact, you could even ask when the halfway day was from New Horizons project inception on December 20, 2000, to Pluto arrival on July 14, 2015 — that was April 4, 2008. Or one could ask about the halfway day from when we began our push for a Pluto mission on May 4, 1989 (when we had our first meeting with NASA officials) until Pluto encounter — that was on June 9, 2002. So in some ways we’re already halfway there, and in other ways, we have well over a year to go to reach the halfway point.

In other words, any big deep space mission consumes a significant chunk of somebody’s career. Sure, a trip to Pluto is an extreme example, but even missions to our planetary neighbours like Mars or Venus require years of planning, preparation and monitoring.

Science fiction is too often impatient with these distances, zooming around the Galaxy through Hyperspace or Warp speed or whatever. It’s all so easy that real life space travel just seems unnecesarilly complex and difficult. Now I like a good space opera as much as the next guy, but I would like to see more attention paid to our own Solar System, because it is vastly more complex and big as Golden Age Science Fiction ever suspected. Surely it must be possible to write a good, exciting novel taking into account the realities of space travel rather than resorting yet again to shortcuts?

(Paul McAuley, from whose blog I plucked this link, has done his bit with The Quiet War, which makes full use of the latest research results on what our solar system actually looks like.)

Verb Noire

If you read this blog regularly you’ll probably be aware by now of Racefail 2009, the ongoing discussion/flamewar about cultural appropriation and racism, systemic and otherwise in the science fiction/fandom community. This discussion, long overdue, has been generating a lot of heat and little light (most of the latter can be found through the excellent services of Rydra Wong’s daily link list). One positive outcome of Racefail ’09 has been the founding of Verb Noire, a new publishing initiative aiming at providing greater diversity in science fiction:

The mission:

To celebrate the works of talented, underrepresented authors and deliver them to a readership that demands more.

What does that mean? That if you’re a talented writer with an awesome, original story about a POC girl/guy/transgendered character, there is a place for you. And that if you’re a sci-fi/fantasy fan who has grown tired of the constant whitewashing of these genres, there is a place for you, too.

Now that isn’t to say that we will accept ANY ol’ manuscript as long as it features a POC protagonist, because we will NOT. What we’re looking for is quality, soul and PASSION, something that will resonate with readers for years to come.

“Everyone has a story.” These words are the driving force behind this project, because we believe that EVERYONE has at least one good story in them, and that story demands to be shared with the world.

As start-up costs can be enormous, we’re relying on the generosity of strangers to help us launch. So far, you guys have been absolutely fabulous in donating your money, time and effort, and we hope you will continue to do so as we grow. Even if you can’t volunteer at this time, feel free to spread the word (and the widget) around.

So help them out will you:

Greg Egan does the right thing

So yesterday I posted about Greg Egan’s somewhat dumb and insulting comparison of “geek” and “nerd” to certain incredibly offensive racial insults. What made it even worse was that he made this comparison in the context of responding to Adam Roberts’ review of his latest novel, Incandenscence. Well, Egan popped up in James Nicoll’s post discussing this action. He got into a discussion with Carlos and after some prodding, decided Carlos was right in thinking this comparison was offensive. Egan therefore altered the paragraph in question and it now reads:

These days there’s often ranting about “nerds” and “geeks” — terms that the world would be better off without, though I have to admit there’s something gloriously awful, in a Love And Death on Long Island kind of way, when would-be sophisticates who spend half their time discussing Joyce or Sophocles switch to a vocabulary whose current usage was largely forged in the supremely inane universe of American high school cliques.

I still wouldn’t agree with his argument that nerd or geek are slurs; they used to be but they’ve long ago been reclaimed. But this doesn’t matter. What’s important is that Greg Egan saw he had made a mistake and had inadvertently insulted people and then apologised and took action to recitify this. Well done!

In related matters, cluefulness has not broken out everywhere in science fiction land, as another of James’ posts shows:

Apparently in their current version, the skin of Drow who convert to good becomes lighter coloured while the “blackness of the drow’s skin has become a permanent sign of their depravity”. The Curse of the Lamanites angle seems to have been introduced by self-confessed Canadian author Lisa Smedman in The Lady Penitent.

Oi. That really is some old skool racist imagery, isn’t it? With fantasy there’s always the danger, if the writer isn’t careful, that old racist stereotypes are redeemed by applying them to Orcs or other fantasy races, but this is so obvious that there really is no excuse. This isn’t just an awkward appropriation of an “exotic” culture to populate some generic fantasyland with, but use of an old idea that has served as a particular pernicious justification for slavery: the “curse of Ham”. From wikipedia:

According to pro-slavery literature, Ham’s transgressions, particularly the shaming of his father by looking upon his nakedness, provoked “Noah’s curse”. Allegedly, Ham’s son Canaan and his descendants were thereafter doomed to serve their American lines for all of eternity. Indeed, when discussing the slaves of the pharaoh in Exodus, Origen specifically identifies them as descendants of Ham who were punished due to their ancestor’s skin color. In 1823, amidst controversy concerning the justice and morality of slavery, South Carolinian Frederick Dalcho argued: “and perhaps we shall find that the negroes, the descendants of Ham, lost their freedom from the abominable wickedness of their progenitor (Ham).”

Much worse than some of the offenses that have driven racefail 2009…

Oh No Greg Egan No!

As you may have encountered if you’re following online science fiction fandom, for months now there has been an increasingly poisonous but important discussion about race, cultural apropriation and science fction going on in various sf blogs, mostly on Livejournal. Science fiction/fandom prides itself on being open and inclusive, but in reality has huge blindspots when it comes to matters of race, culture and gender. Which in itself is not a new conclusion of course, but which Racefail 2009 –as this increasingly acrimonious discussion has been dubbed by cynics — makes clear is still a sore spot for the genre. Even well intentioned writers have been shown to be –how to say– less than tactful in their handling of these matters.

Greg Egan’s throwaway remark that the use of words like “geek” or “nerd” is as bad as certain racial slurs could therefore not come at a worse time:

These days there’s often some ranting about “nerds” and “geeks” — words that belong in the same rubbish pile as “niggers” and “gooks” — though I have to admit there’s something gloriously awful, in a Love And Death on Long Island kind of way, when would-be sophisticates who spend half their time discussing Joyce or Sophocles switch to a vocabulary whose current usage was largely forged in the supremely inane universe of American high school cliques. It’s also quite handy to have a word or two around whose use swiftly identifies a proud scientific illiterate just as effectively as the words that mark a proud racist. Of course, there are a handful of scientifically literate people who have decided to self-identify with the same vocabulary, but when it comes to using n-words the example of Fifty Cent is a great deal less appealing to me than that of Barack Obama.

But you have to admit that there is no better proof than this that yes, science fiction is clueless about race. Nerds and geeks may be bullied in high school sometimes, but it’s all a far cry from being forced to use separate water coolers and such, now is it, or being stopped “randomly” for wearing pocket protectors… Especially considering the context in which Egan makes these remarks, his attempted putdown of a negative Adam Roberts review of Egan’s latest novel, this show an astounding level of entitlement and cluelessness.

If you want to read more about Racefail 2009, Torque Control has a good overview post up. I myself have been reading, but not writing about the discussion as I have little to add and there are enough half assed opinions being slung around in it already…