EP158: Who’s Afraid of Wolf 359?

[Rain]

I think i need someone to explain the story to me, something bad happend to Wolf 359 (we dont know what) a guy is sent down there to check it out, the inhabitants are apparantly bad off, one of them almost says the word Earth which confirmed how scary a place Wolf 359 was (we still dont know why) and then they all decide to conquer the universe, i kinda feels like there was a big part cut out of the middle, but there was enough interesting concepts for me to like it.

The Hugos have for me been a big disappointment this year, but out of all of them this was the least bad

[Chodon]

I think i need someone to explain the story to me, something bad happend to Wolf 359 (we dont know what) a guy is sent down there to check it out, the inhabitants are apparantly bad off, one of them almost says the word Earth which confirmed how scary a place Wolf 359 was (we still dont know why) and then they all decide to conquer the universe,

That's about what I got out of it.  It seems like it had a lot of unrealized potential.  I would like to hear more about this universe, but played out in a less rushed fashion.

[birdless]

I had to listen to this story twice, because I thought I missed something. That Something-that-I-didn't-actually-miss was: Why did this society who seemed to want their isolation and independence suddenly decide to become hostile and start an interstellar war? The young men of this New Earth thought they were going to have something valuable in the way of wisdom/philosophy to offer the Civil Worlds. I personally don't think "Wisdom, thy name is BFG" is what they had in mind. If it was, as Steve suggested, merely because they were bored, then there needed to be more evidence of that in the narrative, imho. Or was the writer's point that, if mankind had an opportunity to re-evolve, he would still take just as violent a path as the first time?

Also, I was very unclear on the clipper/box/ship references. I thought the box he was in was jettisoned from the clipper (he makes reference to his position relative to the clipper), but then after he landed, he returned to his "ship" which I thought meant the box, but then why change the reference when it had been "box" the whole time... anyway, I was just confused about that whole thing. I didn't try to get as technically accurate as Winter did (who made some very good points about a tube necessarily having to be dedicated to only one other tube), but it still left me unable to form a mental image.

And did he say "grow me from a bean" at 11:38-39? What the heck does that mean? Is that just some taken-for-granted, intentionally-unexplained technology from this future universe? That's cool if it is, I just wondered if I misunderstood or if I was missing something.

I did enjoy the humor, and I liked the writing despite the omissions of some important details, but those important details hurt the story enough to where it was just "pretty okay" for me.

I also liked the song at the end. Very Ben Folds-ish in the lyrics and hooks.

As to the "meta-chat," I'm new enough to remember my take on it when I first became a listener to now. When I first started listening, it was just to hear a story, so I was less interested in the intro and usually skipped the outro altogether. However, as I listened to the intros more, and the feedback caught up with the stories I was familiar with, I became more interested in both, and I eventually joined the discussion on the forums. Now it's become more of "being part of a community" than "listening to a story," and there've been a couple of times I've actually skipped ahead to listen to the feedback first. All that to say, I'm okay with however you decide to format the intros and outros, as long as you don't leave out anything you currently use now.

<edit: typo>

[wintermute]

And did he say "grow me from a bean" at 11:38-39? What the heck does that mean? Is that just some taken-for-granted, intentionally-unexplained technology from this future universe? That's cool if it is, I just wondered if I misunderstood or if I was missing something.

I think it's a reference to some kind of super cloning technology. The choice was between a) send a strand of his DNA (and a copy of his memories, which is mentioned in the intro) and rebuild him from that; and b) send his whole body and just thaw him out.

Option a is cheaper in terms of delta-V (but I'm guessing his mass isn't that significant, compared to the ship), but costs time at that far end, which was apparently not an acceptable trade-off.

Also, shipping him as a seed would raise the question of what happens to the rest of him. Disintegrated? Walking around with his debt paid by his unseen clone? Clones are messy, from a narrative point of view, when they're not the point of the story.

[birdless]

And did he say "grow me from a bean" at 11:38-39? What the heck does that mean? Is that just some taken-for-granted, intentionally-unexplained technology from this future universe? That's cool if it is, I just wondered if I misunderstood or if I was missing something.

I think it's a reference to some kind of super cloning technology. The choice was between a) send a strand of his DNA (and a copy of his memories, which is mentioned in the intro) and rebuild him from that; and b) send his whole body and just thaw him out.

Option a is cheaper in terms of delta-V (but I'm guessing his mass isn't that significant, compared to the ship), but costs time at that far end, which was apparently not an acceptable trade-off.

Also, shipping him as a seed would raise the question of what happens to the rest of him. Disintegrated? Walking around with his debt paid by his unseen clone? Clones are messy, from a narrative point of view, when they're not the point of the story.

Okay, thanks, that makes sense, but with the ethical questions you mentioned that beg to be addressed if "beaning" is cloning, I wonder why the author even mentioned it? Oh well.

[wintermute]

I really don't know. That's just what it sounded like to me.

[Rain]

And did he say "grow me from a bean" at 11:38-39? What the heck does that mean? Is that just some taken-for-granted, intentionally-unexplained technology from this future universe? That's cool if it is, I just wondered if I misunderstood or if I was missing something.

I think it's a reference to some kind of super cloning technology. The choice was between a) send a strand of his DNA (and a copy of his memories, which is mentioned in the intro) and rebuild him from that; and b) send his whole body and just thaw him out.

Option a is cheaper in terms of delta-V (but I'm guessing his mass isn't that significant, compared to the ship), but costs time at that far end, which was apparently not an acceptable trade-off.

Also, shipping him as a seed would raise the question of what happens to the rest of him. Disintegrated? Walking around with his debt paid by his unseen clone? Clones are messy, from a narrative point of view, when they're not the point of the story.

I just assumed it was a teleporter thing like you see with Star Trek

[JoeFitz]

I just assumed it was a teleporter thing like you see with Star Trek

I, too, assumed this to be the case. I took it to mean the energy to instantly transport the "bean" was off-set by the time to "grow" from said bean. I gathered that while a single strand of DNA was acceptable for transport, an entire adult human would be prohibitively expensive in energy terms.

[JoeFitz]

One question I do have, though, is about the Long Tubes. It seems to be pretty baldly stated that both Sol and Wolf 359 have precisely one Long Tube each, which means that each of those systems can only be connected to a single system. And you surely can't re-aim a Long Tube, because if you throw people at relativistic speed at another solar system, you need to be pretty confident that the breaking mechanism is going to be exactly in place in 10 or 50 years. So each connection is going to need its own dedicated Long Tube.

The Long Tubes can be "calibrated" which I took to be some sort of physical movement based on a set of known variables - probably some exotic quantum property of a particle beyond quartz watches. Tubes may even be required to be manufactured in one segment that is split - with one end sent on the slow way then calibrated to the original. I believe that the calibration for the Wolf 359 long tube had stopped, which was why no one was sending anything down the tube. I can imagine a fair number of things were sent down the tube before this problem was discovered.

I understood that many systems had more than one tube. Actually, it would be necessary to have at least two in all but the remote points. Otherwise you would not be able to travel anywhere but back the way you came. Also, I can't image that a tube would be confined to handling one piece of cargo at a time, either, or limited to receiving or sending. Otherwise, you would never know when it was safe to send your outgoing package for fear of hitting an incoming package. So I guess a tube would probably be twined - in and out, and be able to send another cargo once the first had moved ahead.

[JoeFitz]

On the humanity orbiting stars in habitats built from the raw materials of the planets, I have to wonder why there would be a need to travel interstellar distances? If a planet the size of earth can "sustain" 10 billion people, why would a solar system (many of which have Jupiter sized planets or larger) not be able to "sustain" many 10 billion habitats?

There was a mention of the habitable distances from a star. The volume of space in the "habitable zone" would seem to me to be incomprehensibly vast if all the raw material of a planet was converted to habitats. A 1 AU Dyson Sphere has 600 million times the surface area of earth.

The harder I think about this story, the less I like it. And I did want to.

[Void Munashii]

And did he say "grow me from a bean" at 11:38-39? What the heck does that mean? Is that just some taken-for-granted, intentionally-unexplained technology from this future universe? That's cool if it is, I just wondered if I misunderstood or if I was missing something.

I think it's a reference to some kind of super cloning technology. The choice was between a) send a strand of his DNA (and a copy of his memories, which is mentioned in the intro) and rebuild him from that; and b) send his whole body and just thaw him out.

Option a is cheaper in terms of delta-V (but I'm guessing his mass isn't that significant, compared to the ship), but costs time at that far end, which was apparently not an acceptable trade-off.

Also, shipping him as a seed would raise the question of what happens to the rest of him. Disintegrated? Walking around with his debt paid by his unseen clone? Clones are messy, from a narrative point of view, when they're not the point of the story.

Okay, thanks, that makes sense, but with the ethical questions you mentioned that beg to be addressed if "beaning" is cloning, I wonder why the author even mentioned it? Oh well.

  There seems to be a lot of that in this story. A number of things are just tossed out there like we are supposed to know what they are (references to beans, the Earth flash-freezing, "Earth" being a dirty word, etc). It seems like a story written for sci-fi geeks, or maybe I just like to make myself feel better by thinking that as I really didn't question a lot of it, but just came to my own conclusions.

[wintermute]

One question I do have, though, is about the Long Tubes. It seems to be pretty baldly stated that both Sol and Wolf 359 have precisely one Long Tube each, which means that each of those systems can only be connected to a single system. And you surely can't re-aim a Long Tube, because if you throw people at relativistic speed at another solar system, you need to be pretty confident that the breaking mechanism is going to be exactly in place in 10 or 50 years. So each connection is going to need its own dedicated Long Tube.

The Long Tubes can be "calibrated" which I took to be some sort of physical movement based on a set of known variables - probably some exotic quantum property of a particle beyond quartz watches. Tubes may even be required to be manufactured in one segment that is split - with one end sent on the slow way then calibrated to the original. I believe that the calibration for the Wolf 359 long tube had stopped, which was why no one was sending anything down the tube. I can imagine a fair number of things were sent down the tube before this problem was discovered.

Yes, the point is that you can't just decide that your Long Tube is going to point at Van Mayaans's Star instead of Proxima Centauri, this week. The calibration is to keep a single pair of tubes in sync.

I understood that many systems had more than one tube. Actually, it would be necessary to have at least two in all but the remote points. Otherwise you would not be able to travel anywhere but back the way you came. Also, I can't image that a tube would be confined to handling one piece of cargo at a time, either, or limited to receiving or sending. Otherwise, you would never know when it was safe to send your outgoing package for fear of hitting an incoming package. So I guess a tube would probably be twined - in and out, and be able to send another cargo once the first had moved ahead.

Yeah, that was my point. Except that I never picked up on anything that implied that any system had more than one tube. Yes, he travelled through systems, from A to B to C to D, but the mechanics of how this worked with the tubes was never covered; It seems to me that MacLeod was thinking in terms of one tube per system, which just doesn't work.

And as Sol System's tube was explicitly referred to in the singular (the Long Station is the gateway to the Long Tube), the alternative is that he intended to make Sol a distant outlier, on the very edge of known space, which seems less likely than having not thought through the tech properly.

[wintermute]

There seems to be a lot of that in this story. A number of things are just tossed out there like we are supposed to know what they are (references to beans, the Earth flash-freezing, "Earth" being a dirty word, etc). It seems like a story written for sci-fi geeks, or maybe I just like to make myself feel better by thinking that as I really didn't question a lot of it, but just came to my own conclusions.

As I say, I'd like to see this as a novel, or an extended series of short stories. This universe needs more exposition than we get in this story. I enjoyed it, I just don't think it can stand alone.

[ajames]

I've been enjoying this commentary. I'm in the "wait a minute, there seems to be a lot missing here" camp, though reading what some others have said makes me think this story is worth a second listen (or better, first read). As it was, after the first listen I thought the story was fun, but not terribly coherent.

Steve, don't change the intros or the outros! I look forward to those as much as I do to the stories, and while occasionally a story doesn't hit the mark for me, your intros and outros always do. Even if I don't always agree with everything said.  If it ain't broke, why fix it?? Anyway, do what you have to do, but that's my opinion.

[cuddlebug]

Steve, don't change the intros or the outros! I look forward to those as much as I do to the stories, and while occasionally a story doesn't hit the mark for me, your intros and outros always do. Even if I don't always agree with everything said.  If it ain't broke, why fix it?? Anyway, do what you have to do, but that's my opinion.

I absolutely agree with ajames, please don't change the intros/outros. As long as the intro does not give away too much info on the story it does not need to be moved. 

[wintermute]

I think there's a thread that needs to be moved off to it's own little playground, now...

Anyway, I can understand the point of moving the chatter from the intro to the outro; there are certainly people who want to hear the story and don't give a crap about what's going on in Steve's life. This is a sci-fi short story podcast, after all, and not Steve's blog. Making it easy for them to listen to the story and then press stop makes sense to me.

Having said that, I like everything that goes into the intro and the outro, and wouldn't object if both got longer. But therein lies the problem. Like everyone else whose opinions you're going to hear on this, I'm not just someone who listens to Escape Pod; I'm part of the the community. We're a self-selected group who made a point of listening to your question about what goes in the intro and the outro rather than skipping past it, and chose to come to the forum to register an opinion. The vast majority of listeners might do the former, but certainly won't bother with the latter.

So, in the spirit of speaking on behalf of the apathetic majority: The Story Is King. Get to the story quickly and with a minimum of fuss. Sponsorship details and the author bio ought to go before it, but I can't think of anything else that should. Feedback ought to be one of the first things after the story, and then Escape Artists news ("We're launching a bedtime story podcast, because geek dads don't have time to read every night!"), and then geek dad and other random stuff.

Having said that, I'm not sure I, personally, would appreciate the changes I'm suggesting; and given your massive audience, "why mess with success?" is clearly a tempting mantra. I like the extended intros. I like the random thoughts and rants. I especially like the geek dad intros. Moving too much of this from the intro to the outro would change the balance, and make it feel wrong. But probably only for a couple of weeks, and then I'd get used to it again.

So, yeah. I'm ambivalent. I'd like to see things stay as they are, but I think it makes sense to trim down the intro. Just make sure you expand the outro equally.

[stePH]

This story was ummm ok!

The idea of a rouge world coming back and taking over was pretty interesting.  It reminded me a bit of the foundation series.  I personally think that with time dilation of near light travel that this is the kind of thing that could happen if you spread out too much.  Humans being the war like people that we are, I can see it happening to us....

... On that note I am a sucker for grand scale views of the future.    See Clarke, Herbert, Roddenberry, Asimov and you will find some of my favorite authors.

How about Cherryh?  There's another 'verse with far-flung humanity split into three distinct cultures.

[birdless]

I think there's a thread that needs to be moved off to it's own little playground, now...

Yeah, I kept expecting to see this in a Mod-started discussion in Metachat rather than here. Not that it makes much difference to me, either way.

[DKT]

The intros usually last about, what?  Three minutes here?  That doesn't seem too long to me.  If it was twice that long, I might be getting antsy, but I'm always bummed when the outro is finished.

[DKT]

I listened to this one again this morning.  I still liked it, and I don't feel like I missed the threads connecting things before, but there was something funky about it.  There was a lot of stuff I liked.  The opening, where the smart clothes were darting off him, and the woman who caught him was covered by some of them, I thought was pretty funny. 

The ending felt like, BAM, though. A lot of stuff to take in. 

[goatkeeper]

Now that's what I call a Hugo winning story.

[contra]

This is my fav Hugo story, I think....  A agree with other people that the ending felt rushed, but I think that could be deliberate to show that non mod humans do everything fast and rush; while everyone else takes their time, and thinks everything through for far too long.  Its hard enough to get something through a countries government... I never cease to be amazed that the UN come to an arrangement at all.... I can't imagine that intergalactic politics may be like...

I liked the robot; it wasn't simply plotonium... it was actually added something to the story rather of just being a means to an end. 

I liked the physics of it.  i'ver seen this done in more and more places... we like to think that massive distances will be made small over time... but this is not always the case.  50 years later we still use the same method to get to space; while we are getting a lot closer to others, we still using massive rocket boosters... and we are not currently living on the moon.  If the universe won't adapt to our timeframe... we may have to adapt to its.  Its probably interesting that I'm reading 'Strata' by Pratchett as the time of listening to this... very similar in some ways; and it could almost be the same universe (like him fearing the ship will burn up on entry; because once you have spaceflight there are very different technical issues in making an atmosphere craft, near planet and deep space craft.  Once the ability to create them are in place, dling the 3 seperatly would make more sense, explained in detail in Strata... not in this story)

The idea of implanted memories interested me, especially as a propaganda tool for political control.  Make everyone experiance it from a famour leaders point of view; and everyone understands what is true and won't question it. 

I could go on.  just all the elements came together for me.  It all clicked and worked.  The wonder.  The strangeness we find normal.  the normality we find strange.  The morals and expectations.  I just liked it all.

so for me the Hugo is between this and Tideline. hmmm
I can't decide.   This... but not by much... and may be cause I listened to this today.

Ok the intro and outtro...
I like shorter intro's.  for one reason.  I don't want to know what I'm about to feel.  Afterwards I'm fine to hear about Steve and how it relates to his life or how he's feeling... but donig it before gives me preconcieved ideas, which I prefer not to have.  Its just a personal thing.   I have no great issue if the longer intro stays; I still enjoy the stroy.  But I prefer to hear it without bias or expectation. Its not often I would get it, but sometimes; just sometimes.

At any rate, as ever I love this, keep it up.

[Listener]

This one seems to me to be the "hey, let's seem all environmentally conscious by nominating a story that covers the destruction of Ea*COUGHCOUGHCOUGH*".  It was good, and I enjoyed it, but it had a flaw that I (as someone else noted) associate with Heinlein:  it wrapped up FAST.  I was getting all into it and then it was over.

The world-building and relativistic travel was a nice touch, and when the ship tells the guy (did we ever hear his name?) about the years it will take to get answers, that was cool.

The way the guy built up New Earth in the time it took to get answers from the Civil Societies was reminiscent of Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar", and the way the Race thought that, 800 years on, humans would still be wearing plate mail and riding horses.

So... not bad, not great.

[goatkeeper]

The way the guy built up New Earth in the time it took to get answers from the Civil Societies was reminiscent of Harry Turtledove's "Worldwar", and the way the Race thought that, 800 years on, humans would still be wearing plate mail and riding horses.

Good reference- I can totally see that.
Or Jason Worthing rebuilding planets and other events in the Worthing Saga.

[Windup]

As for the story, I'm definitely a member of the "WTF?" response group when it comes to the ending.  I obviously missed something, because to me there was no logical explanation for how this group went from sitting in the hulks of wrecked space habitats with rotting teeth to interstellar overlords in the space of two generations.  I kept meaning to go back and listen again, but iTunes Podcast auto-delete ate it, and in the end, I decided I just didn't care enough to fish it out again.

Some of the details were cool -- I liked the woman at the jewelry shop "pulling a Norton" on the main character.  And the ship's grim determination to finish its mission of delivering him to the surface.  Like some others, I was also pleased to see someone deal with the idea that FTL drive may never be possible, so we're going to need some sort of Plan B to explore interstellar space. 

As for the into/outro bit, I like most of the material that's there, and it makes little or no difference to me if it's in the intro or the outro.  I usually listen while exercising or cleaning, so I run straight through my playlist once I start, unless something is truly awful, in which case it just gets skipped.  Never happened to Escape Pod, but lately I've been cutting off the Cato Daily Podcast once I know where their argument is headed.  That seems to take less time all the time...

Anyway, that's my response...