Magical Science

Hi Guys,

This time I thought I'd turn to a slightly different aspect of writing - magical science. Or put another way, science that simply isn't possible.

Now as you know I write space opera and one of the impossible sciences that's fairly much vital to the genre is faster than light travel. To those purists among you who only read so-called hard science fiction, this is pure fantasy. And who knows, maybe you're right. But maybe, you're wrong. It all comes down to whether the theory of relativity is right. And for my part, while I don't intend to expound in great detail about the problems I find with the theory, I would point out one important fact. It's a theory. Therefore I feel quite comfortable inventing and using various methods of FTL travel in my books.

There are however, other scientific principles that I have a harder time allowing to be broken. One of them as you may know - since I actually wrote a book about it - is the concept of disassembling and reassembling someone and expecting them to somehow live through it. Yes this is the Star Trek transporter! This device, invented because the show was low on budget and they couldn't afford to create sets of shuttles etc, if it worked would actually be a killing booth that murdered a man at one end and created an exact duplicate at the other, Or according to others a nearly exact duplicate with bits of fly mixed in!

Having said that, there are other, similar ideas which for me at least, don't pass the sniff test. One of them, which pops up all over the place, is the idea of somehow uploading your consciousness into a computer to become a digital immortal. To me at least, this is pure nonsense. It will never be possible. Yes you may be able to make an exact digital copy of your brain / mind one day and put it out on a network of some sort. That seems perfectly plausible. But what isn't plausible is that that copy will be you. It'll just be a copy. You'll still be where you were in the real world - though quite possibly dead.

Time travel also falls within the spectrum of impossible science for me. I don't accept that time travel is possible in anyway - and not just because of the inevitable paradoxes it would cause.

And while I'm at it, mirror universes are also out. Parallel universes are fine. But mirror ones where there's an exact duplicate of everyone on Earth living the same lives? No. That's fantasy too. I mean think about it - an exact duplicate universe with just one tiny little change as they all inevitably have? That change, no matter how minor, after its been experienced by every person in the mirror universe for millions of years, is no longer minor. The butterfly effect would have kicked in and it would be extremely unlikely that any single person in our universe would have a duplicate in the other one.

I could go on. I could mention the bizarre mish mash of diseases that turned up in the Helix tv series - none of which made any sense. Or the immense windstorms on Mars that apparently blow people around like confetti when the atmosphere there is only one percent as dense as that on Earth. Then there's the Xelayan heavy worlder from the Orville. Yes she may have vast strength. But unless she also weighs thirty or so tons, when she hits a metal wall with all her strength, she's the one who's going to be bouncing off it!

My point here, is that everyone has different limits to what they will accept as believable, and when it comes to basic scientific principles you have to tread very carefully as authors. Because it doesn't matter how you spin it - whether you try to gloss over the impossibility without any explanation, make up some pseudo scientific sound basis, or simply assert it as scientific fact - the moment you cross these boundaries, you're going to lose readers.

As someone once said, as a writer you can be allowed one impossible thing in a story, but no more. So treasure it and use it wisely.

Anyway, Cheers, for now,

Greg.

The Man Who Wasn't Anders Voss - The Idea.

Hi Guys,

To start April off with a bang I published a new book - The Man Who Wasn't Anders Voss and I thought I'd share something about the book with you. Mostly I thought I'd share where the concept for the book came from.

As a writer I sometimes get asked where I get my ideas from, and in this case it is - and I'm proud to admit it - Star Trek.

This book began with one of the unexplained and potentially unexplainable mysteries about the show - the transporter. How does it work, and more importantly if it does work how is it that the guy being transported, having his atoms scattered through space and reassembled somewhere else, survives?

As a trekkie this has been one of the questions that has puzled me for a very long time. I mean it's fairly obvious that if you disintigrate someone into their composite atoms, they die. But then somehow when the atoms get put back together somewhere else, they live again. And that of course leads to the next question - how do you know that the person assembled elsewhere is the same person that was dissassembled?

So my take on this was that they aren't. That the transporter in fact kills the person sent and a completely new person with the old person's memories and features is created. In short a copy.

Naturally this wouldn't make for a good story. Not if the copy was in fact completely convinced that he was the original. Then as far as he was concerned and the rest of the universe, he would be the original. Only the original woul know better and he of course would be dead.

So that lead to the next key idea in the book. What if the copy in fact knew he was the copy? Then we end up in a whole new world of possibilities and plot elements, and key among them, identity.

All of us are blessed with one certainty in life - we are who we are. It never occurs to us that we might in fact be someone else. Other works have touched on this idea, that we might in fact be someone other than the person we think we are. That we might have say been brainwashed, or had amnesia. But the transporter gave me a whole new vehicle to examine this possibility, and to look at the conflicts it creates.

Identity is crucial to us. It is who we think we are. It is the one thing we never consider we could be wrong about. But if we were a copy of a man, perfect in every way, and so every memory we have is of being the original, but at the same time we also have the additional memory of the original having died and of being created from his remains, what would that do to us? Could we call ourselves by the name of the original even though we know we aren't him? Can we consider his family as ours? What about his actions, both good and bad? Can we truly be held responsible for the crimes the original migt have committed? Can we accept the credit for the good things he did?

So in large part this book is an exploration of those questions. Of the struggle of a man to decide whether he is in fact the original or is a new man.

And then of course I threw in some aliens, a transporter that doesn't work perfectly, and a rather nasty scientist with a God complex!

So that's where the book goes, and I hope that those who read it will find themselves asking many of the same questions as I have in writing it.

Cheers and as always, be good or don't get caught! (And if one is ever invented do not step into a transporter!)