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One of the things I liked about the show Firefly was how aggressively soft it was. I'm not sure if it was deliberate, but the effect for me, of the ambiguity between system and galaxy, of the careful avoidance of any numerical distance, speed, or often even travel times, was of a cultivated "there are places and a ship that goes between them, enough said". The highlight was when Inara asked how fast the shuttle went and Mal said "oh, standard shuttle". I figure, if you're not going to try to get the numbers right, might as well toss them out and not embarrass yourself by faking it. (Especially for a writer whose age for Spike varied from "less than 200" to "120".)
So, I just read Keith DeCandido's novelization of the movie Serenity. I could say that the broken English favored by Whedon's protagonists turns out to be cuter to hear than to read. I could say that while there weren't major revelations (cf. Book) there were nice added touches, though I wouldn't want to be pressed as to what they were, apart from a hint as to how Mal could be really sure Mr. Universe was a trap. Oh, and we learned how Wash knew Mr. Universe, and how the latter got his own moon; that was nice.
But what really prompted this was when they leave Miranda, and the now-sane River says that they can easily reach Mr. Universe's moon, since it's 367,000 miles away and they can reach that at full burn in four hours.
That distance is on the order of the Earth to the Moon. Miranda is supposed to be in the outer outer [sic] system, completely overlooked by the telescopes (these people *have* telescopes, right?) people might have. This doesn't work!
The speed is 40 km/s, which is better than we can do right now and not too bad, though not great either for distances in the outskirts of a system. Even for inner system it's giving you week travel times and that's assuming going in a straight line and ignoring orbital mechanics and delta-vee. We'll also ignore "fuel" and what max speed could mean in space without a fuel constraint.
And at some point Zoe mentions Quadrants and I wanted to scream "planets MOVE! And not in synchronized fashions!" Though given how slowly outer system bodies move, a quadrant might almost make sense for a while.
There's a reason FTL is popular in ScF. Lots of stories are hard to work otherwise.
I still love the show, but it ain't for the science. (Though I'll take that silence in space. And the guns, too.)
In other news, Lady of Mazes was pretty neat. But it's late.
So, I just read Keith DeCandido's novelization of the movie Serenity. I could say that the broken English favored by Whedon's protagonists turns out to be cuter to hear than to read. I could say that while there weren't major revelations (cf. Book) there were nice added touches, though I wouldn't want to be pressed as to what they were, apart from a hint as to how Mal could be really sure Mr. Universe was a trap. Oh, and we learned how Wash knew Mr. Universe, and how the latter got his own moon; that was nice.
But what really prompted this was when they leave Miranda, and the now-sane River says that they can easily reach Mr. Universe's moon, since it's 367,000 miles away and they can reach that at full burn in four hours.
That distance is on the order of the Earth to the Moon. Miranda is supposed to be in the outer outer [sic] system, completely overlooked by the telescopes (these people *have* telescopes, right?) people might have. This doesn't work!
The speed is 40 km/s, which is better than we can do right now and not too bad, though not great either for distances in the outskirts of a system. Even for inner system it's giving you week travel times and that's assuming going in a straight line and ignoring orbital mechanics and delta-vee. We'll also ignore "fuel" and what max speed could mean in space without a fuel constraint.
And at some point Zoe mentions Quadrants and I wanted to scream "planets MOVE! And not in synchronized fashions!" Though given how slowly outer system bodies move, a quadrant might almost make sense for a while.
There's a reason FTL is popular in ScF. Lots of stories are hard to work otherwise.
I still love the show, but it ain't for the science. (Though I'll take that silence in space. And the guns, too.)
In other news, Lady of Mazes was pretty neat. But it's late.