EP161: Alien Promises

[eytanz]

I think the proper term for freezing and reviving humans is "cryonics". "Cryogenics" is the broader term for research into the effects of freezing things, living or not.

It may be possible, but given that we are nowhere near the technology level needed to safely thaw a frozen person, we have no idea what pre-freezing preperation is necessary for a safe thaw. Freezing yourself now is a huge gamble, as it may turn out that thawing requires you to have taken a specific medication pre-freeze, or that the brain needs to be frozen in a particular speed (or maybe different brain regions need to be frozen in a specific order), or what not. If you're already terminally ill then you probably have nothing to lose, but allowing yourself to be frozen is about as sensible as letting yourself be blasted by radiation in order to develop superhuman strength.

[Roney]

I just felt that it was so swollen with morals that there was not enough space for good storyline.

I can see why you might say that, but I thought it was the profusion of moral lessons that saved the story.  If it had been in the style of a ST:TNG episode where everything was built around a single Valuable Lesson it would have driven me crazy (as it seems to have done for many Escapees).  Off the top of my head, the girl in the story learnt (or at least had the opportunity to learn)

• that bullies can be insecure too
• that you can find friendship with surprising people
• that keeping a promise can have a personal cost
• that there's a community out there for everyone if you look hard enough
• that getting off your behind and doing something is more satisfying than wishing for someone to take you away

These are such intrinsic parts of growing up that it felt more like a coming of age story than anything too preachy.

[Chodon]

If you're already terminally ill then you probably have nothing to lose, but allowing yourself to be frozen is about as sensible as letting yourself be blasted by radiation in order to develop superhuman strength.

I laughed my ass off when I read that...

Funny story.  We used to have a 20KV X-ray machine at a place I worked.  It was used for X-raying metallic welds and castings.  I asked our X-ray specialist what would happen if I was in there while it was on, and if I would gain powers like the Hulk (yes, I know it was gamma rays but I figured I'd ask anyway).  He described the horrible, horrible way I would die over weeks if I was in there, then he told me about a guy he went to school with who worked on gamma ray machines.  It's just a radioactive substance that emits gamma rays, and is used for testing metals like x-ray machines.  A shield is slid in front of the emitter to turn it "off".   I put off in quotes, because the gamma rays are always being emitted, they are just blocked by the shield.  The only thing is that if that shield gets jammed or for some reason can't block the emitter the machine is still "on" and someone needs to fix it.  That's what this guy did.  Talk about a freaky job...one false move and you die a very drawn out and painful death.

[OsamaBinLondon]

Cryogenic freezing, generation shps!  NAH!!!

I'm putting my bet on, jump/warp/wormhole or some other technolgy not limited by the speed of light, one reason - imagination! as in Asimov, Star Srek, and Stargate, so you can call me a madman, no one is putting me in an Electrolux!

[wintermute]

Star Shrek?

There's a crossover someone has to write...

[Kaa]

Star Shrek?

There's a crossover someone has to write...

The Three Blind Mice would simply have to be Navigation.

[OsamaBinLondon]

LOL   

[RKG]

Who says we need FTL?  Generation ships, baby!

Generation Ships?  FTL?   Escape Pod, baby!

Star Shrek?  There's a crossover someone has to write...

"A Vulcan is like an onion...."

[Ocicat]

Generation ships.  Now there's a terrible idea.

Okay, so I get being committed enough to human expansion into space that you're willing to board a spaceship and die there.  I'd sign up.  But imagine being *born* on a spaceship, and being told you'd die there because of a decision your parents made.  What a shitty deal!  Now there's something to rebel against!  Of course, when the kids are old enough that they're in charge it would probably be impossible to turn the ship around, but it seems to me almost inevitable that the mission is going to get compromised. 

[DKT]

I completely agree with occiat.  You thought there was angst when *you* were a teenager!

[eytanz]

Generation ships.  Now there's a terrible idea.

Okay, so I get being committed enough to human expansion into space that you're willing to board a spaceship and die there.  I'd sign up.  But imagine being *born* on a spaceship, and being told you'd die there because of a decision your parents made.  What a shitty deal!  Now there's something to rebel against!  Of course, when the kids are old enough that they're in charge it would probably be impossible to turn the ship around, but it seems to me almost inevitable that the mission is going to get compromised. 

For an excellent novel about what can go wrong with generation ships (among other things), I strongly recommend Alasdair Reynold's Chasm City.

[Nobilis]

I don't think generation ships will ever be built as generation ships.

Instead, I think we'll see space communities built in places like orbital stations and asteroids, which then have propulsion systems attached which launch them towards other stars.

<sarcasm>Could you imagine being born on one planet, growing up there, and never having the opportunity to leave, just because your parents were born there?  Wow, that would suck.</sarcasm>

[ermghost]

I didn't care for this one. There was something about it that just seemed too cut-and-paste for me. I mean, how many times can we hear about the poor, misunderstood nerd-girl? And, I've always been a pretty nerdy person, but I couldn't find myself relating to the main character at all. She just didn't seem realistic. It's like this was written by somebody who had never actually been unpopular in middle school, but had seen a lot of cute movies with unpopular girl chracters. The author was totally aping the character Violet from Pixar's the Incredibles.
Plus, it tried really hard to be super-touching and sweet, but that seemed to fall flat. Because I didn't connect with the primary character, the touching moments didn't resonate at all; in fact, they irritated me.
The narration was good. I have a feeling that without that narration, though, I probably would have just shut the story off after the first three minutes.

[Windup]

But imagine being *born* on a spaceship, and being told you'd die there because of a decision your parents made.  What a shitty deal!  Now there's something to rebel against! 
 

I dunno; most people, most of the time, lived in areas smaller than the prospective multi-generation ships because of their parent's decisions.  When I visited Nigeria 20 years ago, the old men (guys in their mid-40's) would tell you, "When I was young, if I met a man in the field who did not speak my language, I would kill him."  And many of those languages were spoken only in a handful of villages.  They just didn't get around much.

In The Arms of Krupp, William Manchester reports that as recently as WWI, it was the ambition of most workers for the Krupp factories in Germany to "...die within sight of the church where they were baptized."  And my own grandmother could only be induced to travel outside the bounds of the county where she was born by the prospect of visiting grandchildren. She'd probably regard having them confined to the immediate vicinity as a good thing.

That being said, getting any organization to hold together and pursue the same basic mission for several generations is a tough thing to do.  It's been possible to charter a corporation -- which is theoretically immortal -- for something like 500 years.  Now consider how many corporations celebrate even their 100th birthday.  Now consider how many of *those* are still pursuing the same basic mission.  Very few...

I think STL interstellar travel will either have to be managed through some form of hibernation/reawakening or after people achieve very, very long life spans.  If you knew you would probably live and be healthy for 1,000 years, investing 25, 50 or even 100 years of it in an interstellar voyage wouldn't seem like such a big deal.  I've made car trips across Nebraska that certainly seemed longer than that...

[Ersatz Coffee]

I actually quite enjoyed this one, despite the constant feeling of 'this is going to be a moral lesson'. Only the very last paragraph spoilt it for me - that stuff about 'one day we'll go to the stars' - over-egging the pudding, to my mind; it would have been more powerful just to leave it on that epiphanic image of all the people gathered on the beach, alone and yet not really alone.

[ROUS]

I left the story feeling like there were many unanswered questions; but not in the good thought-provoking way, more like I had a hole in my thoughts that needed to be filled.  I am not sure if I think the moral of the story is good or bad. It feels more to me that Jenny learned that the intentions of other people, regardless of how good, can really mess up your own life. Yes she found other "outcasts", but at what cost?  And I do not understand why the aliens made her wait until dawn; if they just wanted her, why?  I know it was a needed plot element, but a little more explanation would have helped me a lot.

Technically the narration was very well done, and I did not sense a "young adult" feel to it.

[Void Munashii]

I actually quite enjoyed this one, despite the constant feeling of 'this is going to be a moral lesson'. Only the very last paragraph spoilt it for me - that stuff about 'one day we'll go to the stars' - over-egging the pudding, to my mind; it would have been more powerful just to leave it on that epiphanic image of all the people gathered on the beach, alone and yet not really alone.

  I think your ending would have been the happier one. I found the fact that the group was still wanting to leave Earth because they still feel so alienated from it was incredibly sad. If the problem was that they felt alone, and felt that no one would really miss them anyway, then surely discovering that they are not alone, that they are many, should give them some comfort, but instead it just seems to have made them all redouble their efforts.

  Maybe I just misunderstood what the speaker's problem was, or maybe I'm assuming that everyone else was sharing the same problem incorrectly. It's entirely possible that I am completely missing the author's point, but I felt sad for them at the end. It would have definitely been a more positive story to me without that last bit.

[Unblinking]

I didn't care for this one, I'm afraid.

1.  It seemed very after-school special-y, but with an unintentionally antisocial message.  The main message I read from it is "You should always keep your promises, even to people that you hate.  But when you do, don't be surprised if they f--- you over in the end."  Um, okay, I guess.  If that'd happened to me, I'd be inclined to never keep a promise again.

2.  The aliens' behavior seems like nothing more than a plot element.  Why do they make her wait til dawn?  Why do they come ALL THE WAY HERE intending to pick someone up and then when it gets too crowded, don't take anyone. 

Are they trying to accelerate human expansion into space?  That was the impression I got while listening, but this is a pretty damned roundabout random way to do it that's liable to  leave the only humans they meet more pissed than motivated, and anyone with sufficient knowledge and funding to support a space launch will ridicule these people rather than aid them.

Are they trying to teach her a moral lesson along the lines of the #1 above?  Not sure why they'd want to do that.

Are they inscrutable aliens being inscrutable because it's their nature?  I guess, maybe, but it didn't seem fitting in this case.  I've believed it before in other stories, such as the Arilou in Star Control 2, but it didn't seem to fit here.

3.  So a bunch of random people are going to launch a space program without funding or any particular expertise?  No one mentions the great likelihood that they'll try for their whole lives and die on the planet just like everyone else, not to mention all the casualties from experiments with jet fuel, cryogenics, etc, that are likely to occur.  In this way it reminds me of the Podcastle story where a small town scraped together money to launch a ship to Mars, despite completely misunderstanding the science behind it all (i.e. we need to develop plants that will grow in red light).  In both this case and that one I felt like I was supposed to get a lasting message of hope from it.  But refusing to actually consider the outcome of your actions is not hope, it's denial.

[Wilson Fowlie]

Unblinking: It looks like you're working your way backwards through unread unlistened-to episodes.  Cool.  I feel I should give you a heads-up, though, that episode 109 is a sequel of episode 70.  Just FYI.

[Unblinking]

Unblinking: It looks like you're working your way backwards through unread unlistened-to episodes.  Cool.  I feel I should give you a heads-up, though, that episode 109 is a sequel of episode 70.  Just FYI.

I appreciate the head's up, but actually I've listened to everything (usually in order), but the flash fiction contest distracted me from my goal of commenting in all the story threads. 

The order at which I'm commenting on them may seem like reverse publication order, but that's not quite right.  I'm working my way backward through the comment threads in the order that they're listed on the forum here, meaning that as I go on I'm commenting on stories that got their most recent comment the longest ago--In this case, 26 months ago. 

[Wilson Fowlie]

Wow, that's quite a goal.  Good luck.

[Unblinking]

Wow, that's quite a goal.  Good luck.

You can count me for goals which are astronomical in effort and short on benefit.   

Truth is, I just like discussing the stories, so it keeps me entertained in the time between other things happening.