Before The Golden Ellipse, Book One in the exciting new trilogy, my award-winning Lost Cactus comic strip anthologies first hit the bookshelves. In addition to the comics and short stories that proved foundational to The Powers That Be trilogy, I included a series of humorous essays on fascinating—sometimes confounding—topics. Reading the original drafts with a fresh eye is a cringeworthy experience. However, the observational humor and fresh perspectives covering wide-ranging topics continue to resonate in the dark recesses of my mind. To that end, I am editing and providing updated versions of these essays, injecting fresh material, and deleting the word salad portions that left me muttering, “What the hell was I thinking?”
As a sci-fi author reliant on a warehouse of inventions that do not exist in the real world, space travel, in general, and light speed, in particular, present a unique set of issues. Yes, I have seen Chris Nolan’s Interstellar, which debuted years after the original published version of this essay, but I have to be honest. It left me with more questions than answers.
The Inconvenient Truth About Light Speed
Science fiction books and movies portray light speed travel as a ho-hum no big deal, overwhelming audiences with complicated inventor backstories and über-realistic CGI. Futuristic heroes and villains flip wonky command console switches, rotate glowing orbs, instruct engineers to initiate particularly warped factors, and the like. Suddenly, the stars transmogrify into zooming light streams outside the ship’s viewing portal. This common visual trope represents going really fast in the limitless vacuum of space. If budget permits, swirling colors are sometimes added to the zoom effect, giving it the appearance of a pharmaceutically-enhanced 60s space adventure. Groovy.
As if that weren’t enough, directors will gild the proverbial lily by instructing the actors to push back in their seats to demonstrate acceleration, like speeding from a stoplight in an abrupt, lead-footed manner. I know. It’s a lot of fun. I love these books, movies, and TV shows as much as the next gullible person craving binge-worthy entertainment. However, it’s hard to get around that if these actors were thrust through space at the speed of light—with nothing more than an unused seatbelt at their disposal—there would be nothing left of them or their ship. I’m not delving into the physics because frankly, it’s above my pay grade. However, anyone can search the words light speed. From what I’ve gleaned, it’s impossible for a frail human to move anywhere close to the speed of a light photon. We’ll just leave it at that and let the eggheads battle it out.
In science fiction, not every writer shuns the sad reality of light speed travel. Scores of books and movies—and books made into movies, and comics, novelized and turned into movies, and sequels, and then sequels of sequels—have made an admirable attempt at depicting—in hyper-realistic terms—the deleterious bodily effects of traveling at remarkable outer space speeds. And while not light speed, the ion drives, rockets, wormholes, et al., typically come off as plausible methods of propulsion for traveling across the galaxy in a relatively short timeframe. All the intrepid space travelers need is to kill the time it takes to reach the destination. In typical Hollywood fashion, this involves stripping down to the skivvies and climbing into life-sustaining hibernation chambers for a long, and I mean really long, nap. And you know what? Due to the time-space continuum, travelers never age a bit. Don’t ask.
Here is where the fun begins
Once the far-flung celestial endpoint has been achieved, the crew typically are awakened by a well-coiffed, ambiguously fiendish humanoid robot—who kept things running while everyone dreamt amongst the stars. Standing around their sleep pods, the space explorers do a little light stretching, and deep-knee bends before embarking on the meat of their mission. I’m stiffer after a 4-hour flight in coach.
However, the hibernation scenario can come at a price, for it must be noted that occasionally there’s an unlucky crew member whose chamber malfunctioned at some point during the trip—a scary and gruesome scene. The decayed, lifeless form lying prone in their hibernation chamber-cum-coffin is inevitably discovered by a fellow astronaut. I’m not trying to be sexist here, but this individual will be a female nine times out of ten. And this half-dressed young lady will scream at the top of her lungs upon seeing her comrade’s raisin-like appearance and skeletal smile, belying a terrible fate. The other surviving team members, still groggy from their own hibernation, are drawn by the screamer, positioning themselves around the pod where the dead man lies with withered arms still neatly folded across his sunken stinky chest. The leader, captain, or whatever you want to call the guy in charge, then makes an impromptu eulogy that’s usually relatively abrupt, as no one knew the dead guy very well anyway. A fun plot twist is to make raisin head’s role in the mission something that only he knew about or could achieve. At a later point in the narrative, when that realization rears its ugly head, a bit player can be overheard uttering, in a panicked voice, something to the effect of: “Game over, man! Game over!” or “I’ve got a bad feeling about this.”
There has to be an easier way
The gritty realism in most near-future sci-fi tends to get messy—with the corpses, alien intruders, and psychotic fellow space travelers. Not to mention the homicidal guy who may or may not be a replicant. It sure would be a heckuva lot easier just to saunter aboard the spaceship via a ramp, achieve orbit, flip the light speed switch on the console, and travel to the destination minus all the excess drama. (Ask George Lucas, he’ll tell you it’s just American Graffiti in space zipping around in souped up space cars.) But let’s face it. Unless you’re of a mind to suspend reality altogether, like Mr. Lucas, there will be some explaining to do as to how the ship, and the people onboard, were able to survive what in the physical world has been proven to be impossible. Talk about a buzzkill. Sorry, George.
The comedian Steven Wright’s funny line is quite apropos: “Anywhere is walking distance if you have the time.” If a human could walk at the speed of light, they could travel across the galaxy in the blink of an eye, right? No. Even if we just wanted to walk at the speed of light to our nearest neighboring star, Alpha Centauri, it’s 4.3 light years away! That’s 1,569 days. Let’s get down in the weeds for a minute; light travels at a constant speed of 671 million miles per hour, which works out to about 6 trillion miles in a single calendar year. Therefore, even at light speed, it would still be a dreadful slog to travel the vastness of space to our closest intergalactic neighbors. This definitely robs the element of spontaneity from most space operas where rampaging across the galaxy to battle slimy aliens is crucial to the script. How about a squad of gritty, foul-mouthed Marines on a snub-nosed interstellar troop transport to the Crab Nebula to execute a daring rescue raid? In reality, by the time they got there, they wouldn’t be very gung-ho.
So, where does that leave us?
Is humanity consigned to a dreary Earthen existence for all eternity? Heck no! Today’s science fiction is tomorrow’s reality. How do we get to the point where we can figuratively flip that light speed switch? Maybe what’s needed here is not the speed of light but the ability to go distances that are thousands and even millions of light years apart. That’s where the action is. And, you know what? We don’t necessarily have to go that fast to get that far. What’s that, you say? Remember the line: ‘anywhere is walking distance if you have the time.’ That’s the key. Rather than accelerating ourselves into oblivion, we need to cheat the distance. Here is my non-physicist example: take a world map and bend it so that New York is folded right next to Moscow. Theoretically, the Empire State building would be within walking distance of the Kremlin. Apply this simple concept to the vastness of space, and you’re getting to the far-out alien planet minus the drama and the devastating effects of light speed. Physicists call these shortcuts wormholes, or tunnels through the fabric of space and time that can be traversed to visit the far reaches of the universe in a reasonable amount of time.
Now hold on just a minute. Before you get too excited and start packing your bags and light saber, we need to figure out some things. First, what happens to our physical selves as we make our way through the wormhole? It is space, and as NASA will tell you, anything can and will happen. Second, there would have to be a reliable method for you to use to access your end of the wormhole on the spur of the moment. Otherwise, what’s the point? I, for one, don’t want to end up anywhere—that could be dangerous. I want to step into the wormhole knowing damn sure where it will lead.
There will have to be an interstellar ride-share app geared to wormhole travel. Picture this scenario: you’re in a dark watering hole in an outer ring of a spinning space hub, orbiting a distant planet, somewhere on the opposite side of the universe. On the bar in front of you is a purplish beverage that the green bartender with three eyes and tentacles in place of hair says is a lock-cinch hangover cure. She’s right! It works after a single sip. Now that you’re feeling like yourself once again, you get a hankering for some universally-renowned fried Zork wings, which can only be found on Zebula, the tropical vacation planet. With its four large moons floating in a gorgeous, emerald sky, lazily reflecting off the warm, cerulean waters, it’s a Fodor’s ten best planets to visit in your lifetime. Fantastic. So you pull out your Apple iPhone (Version 1,976) and access the wormhole app. It’s your lucky day! A transport just pulled up to the station, so you tap your device and confirm your seat. The next thing you know, you’re halfway across the galaxy, elbow deep in Zork sauce, basking in the warm green sunlight Planet Zebula is known for this time of year.
I know what you’re thinking
This überesque wormhole scenario is not nearly as compelling as flipping your light speed switch and watching the stars stream past your ship’s viewing portal. Or being a crew member aboard a deep space hauler just awakened from hibernation, only to discover that one or more of you didn’t make it. Cue the screams.
Well, I couldn’t agree more. But, knowing humans the way I do, I’m reasonably confident that once we get the hang of traveling through wormholes to the far reaches of space, inevitably, it will become a dull, bureaucratic routine. Advertisers will line the tunnels with glowing banner ads for everything from alien bug spore spray to half-off on buckets of fried Zork wings. And, of course, whatever passes for government by that time, will regulate, legislate, and mandate wormholes to the nth degree. You know it’s true. It’s what we do. Never fear, there’s still a chance for some sci-fi-inspired mayhem once you reach your other-worldly destinations. Still not enough? Perhaps your wormhole Uber driver is an ambiguous, latent homicidal android dude, just to keep things interesting.
The Powers That Be Trilogy
Starting with the just-released The Golden Ellipse, The Powers That Be Trilogy takes a cinematic approach in depicting the human condition through the prism of a brave couple pulled from obscurity to join forces with a 300-year-old organization known as The Powers That Be and save a world teetering between transcendence and extinction. As the Trilogy moves into Books Two and Three, a sinister alliance of governments and moguls hellbent on supplanting the PTB at the top of the food chain grows more powerful and pernicious. Meanwhile, new threats from a marauding universe loom within our solar system.
