by Paul Gilster | May 9, 2014 | Culture and Society |
Today begins Heath Rezabek’s survey as we look at the curation of a booklist on interstellar flight, using as basis a list of books I’ve gradually accumulated over the years. Before Heath introduces the survey, a few words about my methods: Many of the books listed below are ones that I used in preparing my 2005 book Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration. But in the time since, I’ve added a number of more recent titles. I’m hoping this curation project will reveal other books that may be useful as we flesh out the list. Please glance over the entire list and be thinking of additional possibilities as you engage with Heath’s survey.
As to the choices made, these are non-fiction science books, although several recent titles contain a mix of non-fiction and science fiction stories. Feel free to suggest SF titles that specifically broaden our thinking about interstellar flight — we can either integrate them into the main list or develop a second list focused on fiction. The latter may be more practicable. Also, books on SETI and exoplanetology are under-represented in favor of books on spaceflight and propulsion. Given how often we discuss these matters on Centauri Dreams. I’d like to see recommendations for more titles in both these areas.
I also restricted the selection to books that have been through serious peer review from the publisher itself or qualified people chosen by its editors. Books that largely compile previously published papers that have been through rigorous peer review also make the list. While self-publishing is a growing phenomenon, if no peer review is evident, I cannot add such titles to the short list. With that in mind, let’s see what happens as Heath’s work develops.
by Heath Rezabek
In yesterday’s entry, I summarize my work to this point as an Intern with the Long Now Foundation, assisting and advising on the community curation of the Manual for Civilization collection.
In today’s entry, we’ll undertake our own experiment in community curation, by asking the readers of Centauri Dreams to compare the books in Paul Gilster’s Centauri Dreams shortlist, and most importantly, to recommend titles which you don’t see represented but which you feel are integral to the themes explored here over time. We’ll end up with two resources which Paul can use in the future: The list itself, and the relative rankings based on community comparison of titles’ relative importance to a core Centauri Dreams community collection.
In the Centauri Dreams Vessel Survey (link immediately below), participants are encouraged to add as many titles as they wish — particularly newer or older titles not yet reflected — and sort between titles as often as they like. Over time, we’ll end up with our own wish list for a core collection reflecting the Centauri Dreams readership community.
This survey tool works a bit differently from other surveys you might have taken, but may be familiar if you’ve run across our use of it here before. At the link below, your task to complete as many times as you wish to weigh in is simply to pick between two titles from the list in any given round.
Once you’ve picked one as more integral than the other, another pairing will come up. You are encouraged to sort between titles as many times as you can, as the more data such a survey has, the more useful its results. You may stop when you’re weary, and return later if you wish.
You are also greatly encouraged to add related titles, items which have informed your thinking on these themes as a member of the Centauri Dreams community of readers. Duplicates are not much of a problem, as they cluster over time and we can deactivate them once they do. Again, the more data, the better the results. Click on the image or the link below it to participate in the survey.
Centauri Dreams Vessel Survey: Community Curation
We will revisit this survey as time passes, as votes accrue, and as titles are added.
Thank you, Paul, for giving the nod to try community curation on Centauri Dreams; thank you, readers of Centauri Dreams, for lending your voice as community members.
Paul’s original list is below, though because of character limits in the surveys, annotations and publisher details are not always included in the survey version.
[PG note: The breakdown of my list into General Audience, College, Graduate and Professional was an attempt at sorting that I’ve grown uncomfortable with — many of these titles could go in more than one such category. So don’t let the categories concern you at this point].
General Audience
Adler, Charles (2014) Wizards, Aliens and Starships. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Caleb Scharf calls this “…a delightful, funny, and immensely interesting romp through science and fiction,” which precisely nails the spirit of the book. Adler looks at the wonders of science fiction from alien civilizations to teleportation and warp drive, framing the discussion against judiciously explained physics. It’s hugely entertaining and scientifically sound.
Berry, Adrian (2000) The Giant Leap: Mankind Heads for the Stars. New Yorks: Tor Books.
A look at the technologies that might one day lead to the nearest stars and beyond. Discusses the options for making such journeys, along with the political and philosophical imperatives that might drive such a mission. Interesting chapters on interstellar navigation and suspended animation.
Boyce, Christopher (1979) Extraterrestrial Encounter: A Personal Perspective. Secaucus, NJ: Chartwell Books.
Speculations on the nature of alien intelligence and the possibilities for understanding and communicating with it. The odds on SETI and the possible use of Bracewell or von Neumann robotic probes for studying other planets play a role in this lively discussion.
Burrows, William E. Exploring Space: Voyages in the Solar System and Beyond. New York: Random House, 1990.
One of the best histories of the space program ever written, this book gives full weight to automated probes rather than manned flight, and speculates on the technologies that will take us outside the Solar System. Burrows’ look at the politics behind programs like the Space Shuttle resonates today.
Calder, Nigel (1978) Spaceships of the Mind. New York: Viking Press.
Speculations on space technologies including many interstellar concepts. Numerous useful though dated illustrations. The driving factors pushing space colonization are carefully examined.
Forward, Robert L (1995) Indistinguishable from Magic. New York: Baen Books.
Perhaps the greatest interstellar theorist of them all, Robert Forward offered mission concepts galore in the course of his career, many of them entertainingly discussed in this collection of essays. The author’s wry humor often shows through in discussions that range from wormholes to antimatter engines.
Friedman, Louis (1988) Starsailing: Solar Sails and Interstellar Travel. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Friedman’s background working at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory on a once-considered solar sail mission to Halley’s Comet allows him to tap deep resources in explaining how solar sails will one day open up the Solar System, with potential for interstellar flight via particle or laser beam.
Kaku, Michio (2008) Physics of the Impossible: A Scientific Exploration into the World of Phasers, Force Fields, Teleportation, and Time Travel. New York: Doubleday.
Kaku discusses three levels of ‘impossibility,’ ranging from things we may one day puzzle out to technologies that would strike us as indistinguishable from magic, to use Arthur Clarke’s fine phrase. This wide-ranging study includes a look at interstellar technologies now under active study.
Krauss, Lawrence (1995) The Physics of Star Trek. New York: Basic Books.
A theoretical physicist offers thoughts on the scientific wonders of the popular TV series, discussing such issues as teleportation, time travel, warp drive and black holes. Excellent at untangling the futuristic but possible from the hugely improbable, based on known physics.
Macvey, John W. (1977, 1991) Interstellar Travel: Past, Present and Future. New York: Stein and Day.
Revised in 1991, this book examines interstellar travel technologies ranging from space arks to wormholes, with a long discussion of the nature of extraterrestrial life and how it might communicate with humans. Wide-ranging and easy to read, this is a good choice for young readers.
Myrabo, Leik and Dean Ing (1985) The Future of Flight. New York: Baen Books.
Starship drives are only one of the topics covered by this survey of future flight technologies, but the interstellar chapter is strong, surveying concepts from the Bussard ramjet to the laser-driven lightsail and antimatter engines. A good though now backgrounder for those wanting a quick survey of these ideas.
Nicholson, Iain (1978) The Road to the Stars. New York: William Morrow & Co.
A well-illustrated and lively survey of future space technologies, with a useful discussion of SETI and the possibilities of communicating with extraterrestrial intelligence. The major ideas for upgrading today’s engines are presented, beginning with ion drives and carrying forward to the Bussard ramjet.
Sagan, Carl (1980) Cosmos. New York: Random House.
Carl Sagan’s classic offers some of the most captivating illustrations ever made available in a space book. While the book, like the TV series it parallels, offers perspective on the entire human experience of the heavens, it places the possibilities of interstellar flight in a readable, powerful context.
Wright, Jerome L. (1992) Space Sailing. New York: Taylor & Francis.
A history of the solar sail concept, one that uses momentum from the Sun’s own light to drive a space vehicle, without the need to carry heavy fuel. Well illustrated, this book examines all the ways solar sails may change our future in space, both in the near term and the far.
College Level
Adelman, Saul J. and Benjamin Adelman (1981). Bound for the Stars: Space Travel in our Solar System and Beyond. Inglewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
The exploration of space from travel in the nearby Solar System to interstellar missions. The latter chapters discuss interstellar propulsion, navigation, the search for extrasolar planets and the first starship. Useful discussions as well about a plausible program for long-term interstellar planning.
Andreadis, Athena (1999) To Seek Out New Life: The Biology of Star Trek. New York: Three Rivers Press. A professional biologist goes to work on life sciences as depicted in Star Trek, with thoughts on everything from telepathy and the genetic code to the cultural sameness of the societies the Enterprise’s crew encounters. Entertaining and instructive.
Benford, Gregory and James (2013) Starship Century. Lucky Bat Books.
Starship Century is an anthology by authors from both science and fiction writing backgrounds, illustrating some of the tech and ideology behind the illustrious goal of traveling to another star within the next century. Edited by Gregory Benford, New York Times bestselling science fiction author, and James Benford, leading expert on space propulsion, Starship Century includes science fiction by Neal Stephenson, David Brin, Joe Haldeman, Nancy Kress, Stephen Baxter, Gregory Benford, John Cramer, Richard A. Lovett, and Allen Steele, as well as scientific articles by Stephen Hawking, Freeman Dyson, Robert Zubrin, Peter Schwartz, Martin Rees, Ian Crawford, James Benford, Geoffrey Landis, Paul Davies and Adam Crowl.
Billings, Lee (2013) Five Billion Years of Solitude. New York: Current.
The exoplanet hunt as seen through Lee Billings’ eyes as he interviews the major players in the field, from Frank Drake to Jim Kasting, Sara Seager, Greg Laughlin, Geoff Marcy and more. Within their individual stories Billings weaves in the technological and science breakthroughs that have made current work possible, and points eloquently toward the next stages in the journey as we look for a genuine Earth. 2.0. There is no better examination of the basic techniques and issues surrounding exoplanet detection and the human impact of this work.
Clarke, Arthur C. and David Brin, ed. (1990) Project Solar Sail. New York: Roc.
Useful essays from leading theorists examine the role of solar sails in future space missions, with attention to missions in the Solar System and beyond. The essays are interleaved with short fiction and even poetry that explores plausible scenarios for putting sails to work.
Dole, Stephen H. and Isaac Asimov (1964) Planets for Man. New York: Random House.
This is the popular version of a RAND Corporation study originally performed by Dole. The later version includes the thoughts of Isaac Asimov, and examines the factors necessary for planets to be habitable for humans, and our chances of finding them. Although dated, this book still offers useful information about the concept of a habitable zone and the factors that will one day make particular planets useful destinations for our probes.
Dyson, George (2002) Project Orion: The True Story of the Atomic Spaceship. New York: Henry Holt and Co.
Freeman Dyson’s son tackles the great attempt to wed nuclear technology to deep space missions, Project Orion. Told with flair and access not only to key documents but the recollections of the major players, this history shows how one team of experts viewed journeys to the outer Solar System and beyond before the realities of the Test Ban Treaty put the concept beyond reach.
Forward, Robert L. and Joel Davis (1988) Mirror Matter: Pioneering Antimatter Physics. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Interstellar theorist Robert Forward offers a thorough background to the history of antimatter research. Propulsion concepts that could drive our first starships are examined, while the methods for creating and storing antimatter and using it here on Earth receive solid scrutiny. The chapter on antimatter in science fiction is particularly energetic.
Genta, Giancarlo (2007) Lonely Minds in the Universe. Berlin: Springer.
A valuable study of astrobiology and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence, unique in the extent to which it explores the philosophical and religious background of humanity’s awakening interest in the cosmos. The discussion of biology both on Earth and elsewhere offers insights into the possibilities of living organisms around other stars, while the author’s speculations about consciousness and intelligence remind us just how unique each alien ecosystem and its inhabitants may be. How we may interact with any intelligence we discover forms an insightful part of the narrative.
Gilster, Paul (2004) Centauri Dreams: Imagining and Planning Interstellar Exploration. New York: Copernicus Books.
Surveys methods for moving an interstellar probe to speeds that could reach nearby stars in a single human lifetime. These range from fusion to antimatter, beamed lightsails, magnetic sails, Bussard ramjets and other concepts. Also covers interstellar navigation and exoplanet detection.
Grinspoon, David (2003) Lonely Planets. New York: Ecco.
I found this a useful and deeply entertaining overview of current and historical thinking on extraterrestrial life, with interesting arguments against the hypothesis that the Earth is in any way unique when it comes to the ability to produce living organisms. What intelligent life might become both on Earth and elsewhere is considered with a leavening of personal anecdotes and humor, and a plea that we move beyond definitions of life too firmly attached to our own planet.
Impey, Chris and Holly Henry (2014) Dreams of Other Worlds. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
Read Impey and Henry for an overview of where we’re coming from in unmanned space exploration and robotics. The book lays out our explorations from Viking on Mars to Cassini, WMAP and Spitzer, chronicling the interplay of new technologies and emerging science. Manned missions invariably get more buzz, but until we ramp up our methods, the outer system belongs to increasingly sophisticated machines. This is where they come from.
Johnson, Les and Jack McDevitt, eds. (2012) Going Interstellar. New York: Baen.
A collection of tales by an all-star assortment of award winning authors including Ben Bova, Mike Resnick, Jack McDevitt, Michael Bishop, Sarah Hoyt and more together with essays on high technology by space scientists and engineers – all taking on new methods of star travel. The essays include reports on propulsion technologies including antimatter, solar sails and fusion. The science fiction speculations tackle the human consequences of travel to another star and how our descendants will master issues from species survival to alien contact.
Kaku, Michio (1995) Hyperspace: A Scientific Odyssey Through Parallel Universes, Time Warps and the Tenth Dimension. Oxford University Press.
Understanding the possibilities of interstellar flight demands a look at the things that may warp space and time, including wormholes that could offer fast transit without exceeding the speed of light. Michio Kaku explains the options with a minimum of jargon and clear, readable prose.
Mallove, Eugene F., and Gregory L. Matloff (1989) The Starflight Handbook: A Pioneer’s Guide to Interstellar Travel. New York: John Wiley.& Sons.
A classic of interstellar studies, Matloff and Mallove’s book provides the necessary theory to understand the various propulsion methods proposed to reach the stars. All major concepts are considered by two authors who have been involved in interstellar concepts for decades.
Matloff, Gregory, Les Johnson and C. Bangs (2007) Living Off the Land in Space: Green Roads to the Cosmos. New York: John Wiley & Sons.
Space travel as we do it today requires large amounts of fuel that take up a major part of the rockets we launch. How we can learn to use resources in space itself may determine how soon we push into the outer Solar System and beyond. The science behind space tethers, solar sails and other techniques for in-System voyaging are here explored, along with speculations about even more audacious concepts that could take us to the stars.
Matloff, Gregory, Les Johnson and Giovanni Vulpetti (2010) Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel. Berlin: Springer. A comprehensive survey of solar sail concepts ranging from near-term designs like the Solar Polar Imager to interstellar possibilities enabled by laser-driven lightsails, this book summarizes our sail knowledge at the beginning of the solar sail era, with numerous thoughts on sail design, construction, deployment and trajectories.
Michaud, Michael (2006) Contact with Alien Civilizations: Our Hopes and Fears about Encountering Extraterrestrials. New York: Copernicus.
A thorough discussion of the consequences of our encounters with extraterrestrial civilizations, with background studies of the history of human speculation about extraterrestrial intelligence, our searches for life and for the signals of other cultures, and the various ways contact might play out. In an era when some are trying to extend the SETI (listening) paradigm to METI (broadcasting), this book offers sober analysis of how humanity should weigh these options, and opts for multidisciplinary negotiation and consensus before acting in ways that could impact the entire species.
Savage, Marshall T. (1994) The Millennial Project: Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps. New York: Little, Brown & Co.
An optimistic look at how mankind can spread into the cosmos, offering a program to transfer a large proportion of the world’s population into venues off-planet. Step by step improvements lead to terraforming Mars, using the resources of the outer system, and moving to the nearby stars.
Strong, James (1965) Flight to the Stars. New York: Hart Publishing Company.
An early classic of interstellar studies, Strong’s book offers a rationale for the human expansion to the stars, while considering a variety of propulsion concepts to get the job done. While dated in specifics, the scenarios considered here paint possible futures for a star-faring race with vigor and enthusiasm.
Thorne, Kip S. (1994) Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein’s Outrageous Legacy. New York: W.W. Norton & Co.
Thorne is a major player in the theory of wormholes, and thus the kind of distortions of spacetime that may one day make it possible to travel vast distances quickly without ever exceeding the speed of light. This book places his theories into the Einsteinian context in readable if challenging fashion.
Zubrin, Robert (1999) Entering Space: Creating a Spacefaring Civilization. New York: Tarcher/Putnam, 1999.
The case for becoming a spacefaring civilization is made with enthusiasm and panache. The action ranges from terraforming nearby Mars to exploiting the resources of the outer planets, with solid chapters on interstellar propulsion and contact with extraterrestrial civilizations.
Graduate/Professional Level
Carroll, Michael (2011) Drifting on Alien Winds: Exploring the Skies and Weather of Other Worlds. New York: Springer.
From the Soviet Venus balloons to the advanced studies of blimps and airplanes for the atmospheres of Mars and Titan, Drifting on Alien Winds surveys the many creative and often wacky ideas for exploring alien skies. Through historical photographs and stunning original paintings by the author, readers also explore the weather on planets and moons, from the simmering acid-laden winds of Venus to liquid methane-soaked skies of Titan.
Czysz, Paul and Claudio Bruno (2009) Future Spacecraft Propulsion Systems: Enabling Technologies for Space Exploration. Berlin: Springer.
Space propulsion systems from near-Earth to the outer Solar System and beyond. Focus on applied engineering working within the known principles of physics, with emphasis on fusion rocket designs and the extension of today’s technologies to missions into deep space.
Doody, Dave (2009) Deep Space Craft: An Overview of Interplanetary Flight. Berlin: Springer.
Descriptions of interplanetary spacecraft with detailed looks at their instrumentation and the Earth-based operations needed to acquire and process their incoming data. Flight operations and the interactions between a mission’s science team and the light team are examined, with detailed appendices on the range of instruments that have so far flown, and those likely to be aboard spacecraft in the future.
Finney, Ben R. and Eric M. Jones (1985) Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience. Berkeley: University of California Press.
This is a compilation of papers from the Conference on Interstellar Migration held at Los Alamos in May of 1983, which examined not only the scientific possibilities, but also the social, ethical and even legal ramifications of our move into the cosmos. Its look at how humanity has coped with past challenges, such as the settlement of the Pacific islands, places interstellar migration in context.
Kondo,Yoji, ed. (2003) Interstellar Travel and Multi-Generational Space Ships. Apogee Books Space Series 34. Collector’s Guide Publishing Inc (June 1, 2003).
Papers from a symposium of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 2002, exploring propulsion concepts and the solutions needed for flight to the stars. The book also addresses the cultural and psychological issues related to long-term voyaging and ponders ‘generation ships,’ in which crew members spend their entire lives on voyages several centuries in duration.
Long, Kelvin (2011) Deep Space Propulsion. New York: Springer.
The technology of the next few decades could possibly allow us to explore with robotic probes the closest stars outside our Solar System, and maybe even observe some of the recently discovered planets circling these stars. This book looks at the reasons for exploring our stellar neighbors and at the technologies we are developing to build space probes that can traverse the enormous distances between the stars. All the propulsion concepts seriously considered for interstellar flight are examined here.
Maccone, Claudio (2009) Deep Space Flight and Communications: Exploiting the Sun as a Gravitational Lens. Berlin: Springer.
Maccone has long been the champion of a mission to the Sun’s gravitational lens at 550 AU and beyond. Here he lays out the results of his two decades of study of the concept, discussing possible probe designs, the best targets for investigation, and the underlying principles of lensing. Section 2 examines the challenge of communicating between an interstellar spacecraft and the Earth, focusing on the opportunities found in the Karhunen-Loève Transform (KLT) for optimal telecommunications.
Matloff, Gregory L. (2005) Deep Space Probes: To the Outer Solar System and Beyond. Berlin: Springer/Praxis Books.
Recently revised, Matloff’s look at deep space technologies offers abundant references in its examination of current theories of interstellar propulsion, including nanotechnology and ramscoops that draw their fuel from hydrogen between the stars. Also included are speculations on astrobiology and the development of self-reproducing von Neumann probes that could saturate the galaxy.
Mauldin, John H. (1992) Prospects for Interstellar Travel. American Astronautical Society Science and Technology Series, Vol. 80. San Diego, CA: Univelt.
A thorough study of interstellar flight possibilities that covers, in addition to the relevant propulsion concepts, every aspect of starship design, including the navigation problem and the difficulties posed by lengthy voyages with human crews. The overall engineering of space probes designed for such missions is discussed at length, with abundant references for follow-up reading.
McInnes, Colin R. (1999) Solar Sailing: Technology, Dynamics and Mission Applications. Chichester, UK: Praxis Publishing.
The most exhaustive study of solar sail technology available, offering a rich list of references for specialists. Applications for near-term missions are considered in detail, with the relevant equations for understanding the forces at work. A thorough examination of sail materials and design explains where we are now and how solar sails may change the economics of propulsion. Beamed lightsails for interstellar missions.
Millis, Marc and Eric Davis, eds. (2009). Frontiers of Propulsion Science. Reston, VA: AIAA.
A compilation of essays from specialists about the prospects for breakthroughs that could revolutionize spaceflight and enable interstellar flight. Five major sections are included in the book: Understanding the Problem lays the groundwork for the technical details to follow; Propulsion Without Rockets discusses space drives and gravity control, both in general terms and with specific examples; Faster-Than-Light Travel starts with a review of the known relativistic limits, followed by the faster-than-light implications from both general relativity and quantum physics; Energy Considerations deals with spacecraft power systems and summarizes the limits of technology based on accrued science; and, From This Point Forward offers suggestions for how to manage and conduct research on such visionary topics.
Seedhouse, Erik (2012) Interplanetary Outpost: The Human and Technological Challenges of Exploring the Outer Planets. New York: Springer/Praxis.
Interplanetary Outpost follows the mission architecture template of NASA’s plan for Human Outer Planet Exploration (HOPE), which envisions sending a crew to the moon Callisto to conduct exploration and sample return activities. To realize such a mission, the spacecraft will be the most complex interplanetary vehicle ever built, representing the best technical efforts of several nations. A wealth of new technologies will need to be developed, including new propulsion systems, hibernation strategies, and revolutionary radiation shielding materials. Step by step, the book will describe how the mission architecture will evolve, how crews will be selected and trained, and what the mission will entail from launch to landing.
Smith, Cameron (2012) Emigrating Beyond Earth: Human Adaptation and Space Colonization. New York: Springer.
Based on the most current understanding of our universe, human adaptation and evolution, the authors explain why space colonization must be planned as an adaptation to, rather than the conquest of, space. Emigrating Beyond Earth argues that space colonization is an insurance policy for our species, and that it isn’t about rockets and robots, it’s about humans doing what we’ve been doing for four million years: finding new places and new ways to live. Applying a unique anthropological approach, the authors outline a framework for continued human space exploration and offer a glimpse of a possible human future involving interstellar travel and settlement of worlds beyond our own.
Vakoch, Douglas and Albert Harrison, eds. (2013) Civilizations Beyond Earth: Extraterrestrial Life and Society. Berghahn Books.
This collection of essays takes in the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and offers a sociological and philosophical entry into a field that is often dominated by the hard sciences. Vakoch, a sociologist, brings a useful new dimension to the question of how humanity would react to extraterrestrial contact, and the essays chosen for this volume form a discussion that meshes well with Michael Michaud’s work in Contact with Alien Civilizations. Harrison, a psychologist from the University of California, helps to ensure that SETI analysis will continue to deepen its multidisciplinary links as the field evolves.
Woodward, James (2012) Making Starships and Stargates: The Science of Interstellar Transport and Absurdly Benign Wormholes. New York: Springer/Praxis.
A study in three parts: The first deals with information about the theories of relativity needed to understand the predictions of the effects that make possible the “propulsion” techniques, and an explanation of those techniques. The second deals with experimental investigations into the feasibility of the predicted effects; that is, do the effects exist and can they be applied to propulsion? The third part of the book – the most speculative – examine the questions: what physics is needed if we are to make wormholes and warp drives? Is such physics plausible?
by Paul Gilster | May 8, 2014 | Culture and Society |
As a librarian with a futuristic bent, Heath Rezabek has developed the Vessel Project as a way of studying how we can preserve our knowledge and culture against future risk. That work — and Heath’s ongoing engagement with the Long Now Foundation — asks what we might put into a long-term archive housing the essence of our community. Finding the answers involves ‘community curation,’ asking varying interest groups to develop and discuss their choices. We’re going to run such a survey with the Centauri Dreams readership, helping to firm up a shortlist of books on interstellar topics that I’ve been wanting to return to for some time. That list will appear tomorrow, but today Heath explains strategies for building archives to represent communities like the one that clusters here around interstellar flight.
by Heath Rezabek
In my first Centauri Dreams installment, I noted that I had recently begun an Internship with the Long Now foundation, assisting and advising in their initial community curation of a 3,500 volume collection called the Manual for Civilization. At that time, I promised updates on the project as it progressed, since it bears such a kinship to themes and objectives reflected in the Vessel Project. I have not yet done an update.
Image: The Interval: Long Now Foundation, San Francisco, CA.
With the site of the collection soon to open — the name of their headquarters space being The Interval — and with myself about to make a trip out to San Francisco for part of those opening activities at the end of May, now seemed like a good time to reflect upon my experience as an Intern on the Manual for Civilization. The Internship draws to a close, and I look towards the future, by considering the importance of community curation at all levels and in all kinds of communities. I will also tie these thoughts back to current and prior work on the Vessel proposal, and launch an effort towards community curation of a core reading list for Centauri Dreams readers based on Paul Gilster’s existing shortlist on interstellar research.
As a brief summary, the Long Now Foundation is a nonprofit organization whose purpose is to foster long term thinking through concrete projects which catalyze public debate and discussion about the very long term, while at the same time striving for substantial real-world goals. Its cornerstone project is the construction of a 10,000 Year Clock, “designed to run for ten millennia with minimal maintenance and interruption. The Clock is powered by mechanical energy harvested from sunlight as well as the people that visit it. The primary materials used in the Clock are marine grade 316 stainless steel, titanium and dry running ceramic ball bearings.” No completion date is set, but construction work at the first site in west Texas is in preparation.
Image: The Rosetta Disk.
Another project with concrete utility as a key for decoding 1,500 human languages is the Rosetta Disk. At the ESA’s invitation, an early copy of this disk is on the Rosetta probe.
Image: The Rosetta Probe (ESA).
Over time, Long Now has undertaken numerous other concrete efforts, and the Manual for Civilization is one. This collection is to be a 3,500 volume book collection and library, housed at its new headquarters in San Francisco, The Interval. At time of launch, their plan is to have 1,000 of those volumes on the shelf, and to build the rest of the collection over time through various community-driven means. These include annual vetting of the existing collection and the chance to debate the addition or removal of items in what is proposed to be a fixed number of items.
The overarching question used to drive curation is “What books would you most want to help rebuild civilization?” To ask this question of a small subset of individuals is, obviously, to push them to think well beyond their means (much as is true of asking designers and engineers today to plan towards building an eventual interstellar starship). Yet this is a community dedicated specifically to long-term thinking, and to fostering that activity through its efforts.
Image: The 10,000 Year Clock Prototype (Power and Winder test).
One of the earliest critiques and responses to the Vessel proposal on Centauri Dreams was from a reader who could not see the point of attempting comprehensive archival of cultural content in the first place (much less other material, such as endangered biomass or scientific knowledge). The reader suggested that individuals and communities would always be undertaking archival tasks and the passing-down of their own heritage, making any kind of concerted effort unnecessary.
As a librarian, I continue to disagree; yet working on the Manual for Civilization project has reminded me that there is a spectrum of appropriate response to the need for remembrance as a mitigation of permanent stagnation or flawed realization. While the first draft of the Manual for Civilization does strive to be comprehensive, there is also significant room for interpretation and opinion in its scope. Its primary categories, at this stage, are a blend of comprehensive and community-focused topics: Cultural Canon and Mechanics of Civilization are both categories which point at widespread and general utility (once fleshed out by the addition of unfamiliar or more broadly global materials). The two other initial categories, Rigorous Science-Fiction and Long Term Thinking/Futurism, are there in part because of their direct interest to the specific community doing the curation — in this case, the Long Now Foundation.
Image: Categories in the Manual for Civilization (as of January 2014)]
With the facility and its opening events now in sight, Long Now has been bringing together existing physical copies of many works on the shortlist, as well as seeking out donor copies to fill out the collection. I myself have committed several to those shelves, including two signed editions. I have been impressed by the positive response seen both in the public, as well as in myself, to the prospect of helping to build a physical reference collection meant to endure over time.
It has also convinced me that similar processes could be carried out for other communities of interest, and perhaps with different types of materials. Empowering a community to build what amounts to an extended wishlist for that collection becomes the first step in establishing and stewarding its cohesion over the long term.
One of my own contributions to the process was the proposal that we create a customized build of the allourideas.org A/B sorting platform, (which I find useful for a great many things). This was done, allowing the project to pull ISBNs and other metadata into the survey from a custom metadata entry system. The community was invited to propose titles, and begin the process of sorting the ones already in the list.
Additionally, and appropriately, the core collection was seeded with the personal shortlists of Long Now’s founding members and some community exemplars (as I call them). (See Brian Eno; Neal Stephenson; Stewart Brand; Kevin Kelly. A blending of the lists — the community curated A/B lists and the shortlists of community exemplars — was undertaken by Long Now leadership, and thus the first curation list was born.
Image: Neal Stephenson selects titles for his shortlist, as a community exemplar.
During this process, we encountered a few questions regarding the diversity of the collection and its sources. The most public and illuminating of these questions came from Maria Popova, who runs an outstanding literary blog called Brainpickings. Her list and discussion was illuminating in itself, but it also helped me over a mental hurdle in understanding the purpose and point of such a process, and this has enriched my own conception of the larger long term goals of the Vessel Project.
As I wrote in my comments-response to a similar inquiry on the Long Now blog,
“I do think it’s important to remember that this particular collection is meant, initially, to serve as a core collection reflective of its hosting organization, housed at their headquarters site. While the question of what would most help rebuild or preserve a cultural core is a crucial one to ask, there might also be as many answers as there are communities of interest willing to ask it. I think that’s a good thing, actually: it reminds us that no such collection could ever be absolutely authoritative unless it were nearly exhaustive, but at its best might strive to be a reflection of its constituents’ ideals and aspirations. The wider that circle, the more comprehensive the collection — but universal representation right from the start would be nearly impossible.
The core lists being submitted by founders and community [exemplars] is only one current going in to the process. […] Every such collection is bound to differ in its details, and in those differences lie a strength. Who’s to say which resources will confer the greatest resilience or remembrance for a given community, other than that dynamic community itself? We can aspire, but more importantly, I think, is that the question “What do we feel is most worth passing on over the long term?” be asked, by as many unique communities as can.”
In articulating this, I had arrived unexpectedly at a middle-ground between the original ideal of Vessel — the seeding of numerous institution-level comprehensive collections, secured against unforeseen catastrophes in a range of ways — and the default remembrance strategy of throwing seeds to the wind, come-what-may, suggested by the critique that everyone will already save whatever matters for themselves.
The community of interest is the place where those two strategies meet.
Image: Interior visualization of The Interval.
This middle ground suggests a larger role for what I call community curation and community collections. Community may be very broadly defined, to include everything from a small family to a whole nation or colony. It seems useful to consider the possibility that larger collections might be built up of smaller collections: if each item and set of items bequeathed to a community collection is vetted for its long-term importance (however one wishes to define that), then as a whole the collection will reflect this objective even if the sets within it differ significantly.
The key element is to ensure the asking of the question. It can be phrased in different ways, complete with the differences those many ways suggest. “What would you place in a vessel containing the essence of your community?” “What is important enough to you to pass on beyond your own time?” “What best reflects the essence of your community’s knowledge and influences?” “What is most worth saving?” “What is at most risk of being lost?” And so on.
There will always be space and a place for those who answer this question simply with their lives, by saving what they value in their own collections and passing it on when they themselves pass on. However, given the complex challenges which face future generations (wherever they may make their homes), the asking of these questions and the community curation of collections which result may serve as crucial guidance in the short and medium term. Perhaps surprisingly, and perhaps controversially, we can propose that the greater the number of these communities and diversity of their resulting collections, the greater these collections’ value to communities in the future.
In other words, the idiosyncrasies seen in the Long Now Foundation’s collections, far from being a weakness, are a source of hybrid vigor and a carrier wave for the priorities this particular community will have as it evolves. A community has asked a particular question, and preserved its own unique approach to adapting as it moves into the future.
Image: Manual for Civilization (Logo).
At the end of May, I will travel to San Francisco to celebrate this Internship and to see the collection in its seedling stage. I will return with a renewed sense of direction and purpose for the Vessel Project, clear to me already in outline. Future efforts will continue to ask the question of curation to, hopefully, a range of communities. Each will answer somewhat differently, and in these differences will lie those communities’ particular traditions.
The results of these Vessel Surveys will be made openly available whenever possible; books are perhaps an increasingly controversial medium to use as a baseline, but they are also surprisingly resilient as media, and in the short term are good markers for particular ideas, priorities, and influences. Vessel Surveys which embrace other media are possible as well.
Not all will focus immediately on core materials for rebuilding civilization, but might initially focus simply on the themes and ideas integral to that community. Such would be the case with a thematic community like Centauri Dreams.
In this spirit, and with Paul’s blessing, I would like to facilitate a community curation of the Centauri Dreams readership. Initially, we will start with books; but if comments suggest that ideas or some other carrier for influence is preferable, we can launch a survey for that type. This is an experiment and a gift, from one member of the Centauri Dreams to all others, and from all of us to all who come.
Image: Centauri Dreams: Community Curation Vessel Survey (Live tomorrow).
In the fullness of time, who knows who might find these influences pivotal to their own exploration?
Tomorrow, we’ll present Paul’s initial shortlist of key books as influences, and then we will open up a Vessel Survey for suggestions of others from the community.
by Paul Gilster | May 7, 2014 | Outer Solar System |
Our recent discussions of the Jovian moons Ganymede and Europa highlight a fact that not so long ago would have seemed absurd. Three of the four bright dots that Galileo saw through his primitive telescope around Jupiter are potential habitats for life. Even battered Callisto gives evidence of an internal ocean, as do, of course, both Ganymede and Europa. But why stop there? Further out, Titan is worth exploring both on the surface and under it, and tiny Enceladus may be both the easiest to study and the most bizarre astrobiological possibility we’ve yet found.
The ‘easy to study’ part comes from the fact that Enceladus conveniently spews vapor from its own internal reservoirs into space, making it possible for a space probe to analyze the contents without ever touching down on the surface. The ‘bizarre’ part comes from the fact that those fissures exist, surely a sign of Saturn’s gravitational grip upon the flexing moon, but also a reminder that these outer moons have leaped into our consciousness as liquid water-bearing places. Remember, it wasn’t that long ago that we assumed Europa itself would be just another crater-scarred, inert ball of rock and ice. The Voyager missions changed everything.
Lee Billings is sufficiently encouraged by facts like these to put Europa at the very top of his list of destinations, speculating in his new essay in Aeon Magazine that our enthusiasm for Mars may be misplaced. We’re always ‘following the water,’ knowing that water helps in the transmission of biochemical energy, nutrients and waste, not to mention its shielding effects against cosmic radiation and its ability to retain warmth. But Billings, the author of Five Billion Years of Solitude (Current, 2013) sees our current Mars efforts as ‘cautious and procedural, perhaps to a fault, as a result of past overreaches in the search for Martian life.’
Indeed, scientists who specialise in Mars have been forced to dial down their dreams, hypothesising ever-smaller windows of opportunity for past life on the red planet, and ever more inaccessible refuges for anything now living there. Native Martians, if they exist at all, are most probably microbes clinging to life almost unreachably deep beneath the surface. This does not diminish the importance of exploring our neighbouring planet, but it must be admitted that there might well be more promising places to seek alien life. Indeed, if following the water is the prime directive in the search for extraterrestrial life, it increasingly appears that we should look beyond Mars to an icy moon of Jupiter called Europa.
Image: This artist’s concept shows a simulated view from the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. Europa’s potentially rough, icy surface, tinged with reddish areas that scientists hope to learn more about, can be seen in the foreground. The giant planet Jupiter looms over the horizon. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The russet upwellings of mineral salts that mark Europa’s cracks and fissures helped us see that a warm ocean sustained by Jupiter’s tidal forces and the flexing of the interior could exist, and that that ocean could have existed for billions of years. Imagine finding evidence that life of some kind existed under that ice. The discovery would implicate the other moons I’ve mentioned, and could, as Billings reminds us, take us out as far as Pluto in the hunt for subsurface water, looking for tidal heating or radioactive decay as sources of a comfy astrobiological warmth.
Europa, of course, is a very tough nut to crack. For one thing, you’re dealing with magnetic fields around Jupiter that produce extreme radiation hazards not just for manned missions but robotic orbiters, which adds greatly to the cost of any contemplated mission. Then there’s the matter of Europa’s crust, which might be a few kilometers deep or a hundred. Here the Enceladus model may come to our rescue, for just as Enceladus vents subsurface materials into space, so too may Europa. It was just last year that the Hubble Space Telescope was used to detect water vapor here — an estimated 7000 kg of water per second — blown 200 kilometers into space.
Fly a mission through these plumes and it should be possible to learn a great deal about what’s going on by way of chemical and physical processes beneath the ice, perhaps even evidence of biological activity or, as Billings adds with a touch of whimsy, ‘you might even catch a flash-frozen fish.’ For that matter, a robotic lander near a Europan fissure might snare highly interesting results. Sure, Mars is a much easier target, but look at the sheer number of orbiters and landers both in place and planned and contrast that commitment to the less than $1 billion NASA is now targeting as the pricetag for the Europa mission it’s gathering concepts for.
Image: Reddish spots and shallow pits pepper the enigmatic ridged surface of Europa in this view combining information from images taken by NASA’s Galileo spacecraft during two different orbits around Jupiter. The spots and pits visible in this region of Europa’s northern hemisphere are each about 10 kilometers across. The dark spots are called “lenticulae,” the Latin term for freckles. Their similar sizes and spacing suggest that Europa’s icy shell may be churning away like a lava lamp, with warmer ice moving upward from the bottom of the ice shell while colder ice near the surface sinks downward. Other evidence has shown that Europa likely has a deep melted ocean under its icy shell. Ruddy ice erupting onto the surface to form the lenticulae may hold clues to the composition of the ocean and to whether it could support life. Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona/University of Colorado.
Billings ends his essay with characteristic eloquence:
Even if Mars proves totally, irrevocably dead, one can still squint up at its ruddy disk in the night sky, and envision a better future for it. Someday, humans might walk there, perhaps even live. No one has such dreams for Europa. If Mars is a warped mirror we stare into, while imagining ourselves as explorers in some pleasantly familiar frontier future, then Europa must be a locked door, or maybe a matte-black monolith, cold and indifferent, an abyss that might, some day, gaze back at us, if only we could first convince ourselves to look.
I like that, especially the nod to Clarke’s monoliths, and I thought about the distance between Bradbury and Clarke as I absorbed Lee’s essay. Clarke went to Mars as well, in The Sands of Mars (1951), his first published novel, while Bradbury’s Mars was a splendid, visionary dream sequence. Both writers depicted a Mars that could be tamed by humans, but it’s the mysterious Europa of Clarke’s Space Odyssey series that draws me more.
Clarke had planned to delay 2061: Odyssey Three until the Galileo mission to Jupiter was operational, but he went ahead after that mission’s launch delay, so that when the book was published in 1987, it couldn’t have drawn on any of the Galileo findings. But even with Galileo’s imagery, Europa’s hidden depths are still enigmatic, their exciting promise hidden by their layered ice. Clarke’s Europa would be all about transformation as an ignited Jupiter (‘Lucifer’) heated up all the Jovian moons to bring life to a once desolate system.
What might come out of a thawed Europan ocean in a scenario like that? Life is all about transfiguration — it emerges out of an environment, changes and is changed by that environment — and we are left to wonder how complex it might become given the right mix of oxidized mineral salts filtering back down through the fractured Europan ice and the chemical reactions near deep water hydrothermal vents. The prospect is so compelling, the possibilities so alien to our earlier conceptions of the Galilean moons, that surely we can come up with a mission following up ESA’s Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer (JUICE) to make the 2030s the decade of Europa.
by Paul Gilster | May 5, 2014 | Culture and Society |
We last heard from Karl Schroeder in his essay Creative Constraints and Starflight, published here back in March. Schroeder was describing his new novel Lockstep, whose ingenious plot is in the service of a daring idea: If we are limited to speeds well less than that of light, can we still find a way to achieve the kind of deep space civilization we’ve seen depicted in so much science fiction? That would include travel to far places within single human lifetimes, trade with colony worlds, and much of the panoply of what is sometimes called ‘space opera.’
Schroeder’s solution is ingenious and challenges the preconceptions most of us bring to interstellar flight, which is why I want to return to Lockstep this morning. I had read a pre-publication copy late in 2013 and found that it triggered some incipient thoughts on how we relate to time that I needed to work out. In particular, not only in Karl’s work but in Neal Stephenson’s and, to an extent, in Alastair Reynolds’, I’ve found a creative re-casting of our relationship to time and how we measure it off in terms of a single human lifetime. Exactly what is ‘subjective’ time, and is there a specific way it should relate to ‘objective’ time?
The question Schroeder forces upon us is whether time is best measured as a clock-driven passage of minutes, hours and days (I call it ‘objective’ time while acknowledging its malleability in the form of spacetime), or as an accumulation of life experiences that can be separated from this objective time. In the world of our experience, we may think of time as a substrate through which we move — we have so many years in our lives and the clock is always ticking in the background. In the world of Lockstep, that ticking can be suspended. Adjusted. The human experience of time is what it has always been, but the world around it is accelerated.
Benefits of Adjusted Chronology
We’re in a world where suspended animation is routine and about as eventful as getting into bed for a good night’s sleep. You might sleep a day, or a year, or in the case of young Toby McGonigal, the book’s protagonist, a breathtaking 14,000 years before waking up. While conventional, day to day life goes on elsewhere, the Lockstep worlds are those that have entered into a contractual arrangement to use suspended animation to stay synchronized. A 360/1 schedule, the primary one in this culture, keeps people suspended for 359 months out of every 360. It’s this last month in which they awake and get about the business of civilization.
Karl has already described this scenario in our pages and we’ve had discussions about its pluses and minuses. But let’s look back and review for a moment what a society like this gets from this strange arrangement. You can see that the so-called ‘fast worlds’ — the inner planets, for example, living as we do today without recourse to suspension — suffer from constraints that the tiny outer worlds in the far Kuiper Belt and beyond don’t endure. As Toby gets used to the world he has awakened into, he marvels at its fecundity. “We’re in the middle of nowhere between the stars but this place seems as rich as Earth. Though that can’t be.”
But of course it is, for reasons he comes to learn, just as he learns the key role his own family has played in this outcome. Schroeder describes all this in terms of computer technology. The locksteps, small worlds synchronized on their schedules with each other, form a synchronous network, with each node acting at the same time. In other words, imagine a large number of tiny, isolated worlds in the Oort Cloud, all sending out their cargo (including passenger ships) on the same schedule. Tuning the ‘frequency’ properly can turn desolate outposts into economically viable societies, for reasons Schroeder is careful to explain in a book where the consequences of this tuning are extremely well thought out and depicted with real panache.
There were tiny colonies that didn’t own even a chunk of cometary ice but harvested the impossibly thin traces of gas found between the stars using modified magnetic ramscoops. In an abyss so empty that there was only one hydrogen atom per cubic centimeter, the scoops filled their vast lungs like baleen whales filtering tenuous oceanic plankton. It could take them decades to fuel a single fusion-powered ship with enough hydrogen to visit their nearest neighbor. Yet even these little starevelings could contribute to the wealth of Lockstep 360/1, because its clock ticks were slow enough for them to keep up.
Automate your industry and go to sleep. When sufficient time has passed to allow the accumulation of a viable amount of resources, you emerge to engage in the necessary trade with other worlds like your own, worlds on the same schedule. A richer world might join a faster lockstep since it could manufacture goods at a greater clip, but even the poorest world has the chance to be part of a functioning civilization at a slow speed. Travel between the worlds takes a lot of time — remember, we’re in a world where Einstein’s speed limit still applies — but on a 360/1 schedule, you might travel half a light year while ‘wintering over,’ as Schroeder calls it.
That makes long periods of suspended animation a genuine plus for those with a yen to engage with the greatest number of the more distant worlds. A wintering over journey at a 36/1 schedule can have a certain number of destinations within range, but a 360/1 lockstep can deal with a thousand times more worlds. Doubling the distance you can travel opens up more distant worlds scattered through three-dimensional space, and a kind of empire can emerge that has resonances with everything from Doc Smith’s clanky space tales to the world of Star Trek.
Differentiation of the Culture
But back to the human experience of time, which is what fascinates me about what Schroeder is doing here. The understandable immediate reaction to a lockstep is that it simply slows the pace of discovery — how to progress when people only wake up briefly every thirty years? But the question is, progress on whose terms? For those whose lives take place within the lockstep, the framework of time outside has been abandoned. They still can expect to live their allotted lifetime, but it’s a lifetime that might take in vast stretches of time during which, to civilizations not in a lockstep, their own empires might rise and fall as the lockstep goes about its way.
All he could really sort out was that humanity and its many subspecies, creations and offspring had experienced many rises and falls over the aeons. Since they had the technology, and lots of motivations, people kept reengineering their own bodies and minds. They gave rise to godlike AIs, and these grew bored and left the galaxy, or died, or turned into uncommunicative lumps, or ran berserk in any of a hundred different ways. On many worlds humans wiped themselves out, or were wiped out by their creations. It happened with tedious regularity. The only reason there were humans at all, these days, was that there were locksteps.
I think this is fascinating — the lockstep as a backup, a repository for the entire species. Schroeder continues:
They served as literal freezers, preserving ancient human DNA and cultures. All kinds of madness might descend upon the full-speed worlds circling the galaxy’s stars — expansions, contractions, raptures, uploading, downloading, mind control, and body-swapping plagues (quite apart from the usual wars, dark ages and terraforming failures) — but everybody ignored those useless frozen micro-worlds drifting between the stars. Their infinitesimal resources and ancient cultures held no interest to the would-be gods of the inner systems. So once those would-be gods had wiped themselves out, the telltale silence from formerly buzzing stars would alert this or that lockstep, and they would send some colonists back. A few millennia later, the human population on Earth and the other lit worlds would again number in the billions or trillions, and some of those would return to the locksteps…
It’s a way of living deep into the remote future, this lockstep, and it sets up levels of civilization that work at different rates of time, from those who continue, as we do, to live one day for every day that passes, to those who adjust that schedule according to the needs of their environment, which out in the Kuiper Belt or Oort Cloud can be quite different. Freeman Dyson has often talked about the biological differentiation that will occur in our species as we adjust to varying conditions moving outward from the Sun. Schroeder is describing a chronological evolution that takes place as entire cultures become disconnected by their choice of calendars.
So how do you feel about it? Is sleeping for thirty years a waste of time? Or is a lockstep a way to continue to live your entire life while what gets ‘burned’ is time that is of little value to you? I’ve always found Karl Schroeder’s work provocative, but Lockstep is a book that keeps coming back to me at odd moments, as I wonder whether people would voluntarily enter into these arrangements in a world where suspended animation was easy, and whether the benefits of a lockstep to the teeming worlds on the Solar System’s edge would outweigh the break from the culture that had spawned the original colonists. I don’t have the answers here, but good science fiction, and this is very good science fiction, asks extraordinarily provocative questions.
