Author Topic: Baxter's Last Contact  (Read 8865 times)

eytanz

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on: May 09, 2008, 05:58:47 PM
For those who didn't read the fifth Hugo story - the one that will not be on EP, you can find it at: http://www.solarisbooks.com/books/newbookscifi/last-contact.asp

For those who have read it, a quick question:

Am I misinterpreting something, or does this story totally ignore physics? Not the Big Rip part - I don't know if that's plausible physics, and I don't care. But the fact that things from the other side of the galaxy (and beyond) are being reported in realtime seems really noticable, as it's repeated over and over. It seems like the speed of light/information is being (purposefully) ignored.

I did love the story, though, for its themes. I just find myself boggling at the physics, and I have a very high tolerance for bad physics usually.



Heradel

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Reply #1 on: May 09, 2008, 06:20:12 PM
Faster than light transmission of information is possible, but unproven. There are a few possibilities for FTL comm, usually Tachyon or weird-atomic-forces based, or via wormholes or other anomalies.

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eytanz

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Reply #2 on: May 09, 2008, 06:24:28 PM
Yeah, but this story had people looking up at the sky and noticing stars move, because of something that's happening in real time. You could potentially argue that the effect is spreading at the speed of light, and the information is reaching the Earth just shortly before the cause, but the timescale between it affecting distant galaxies, which are billions of light years away from each other and our own galaxy, was given in terms of months. I have no real problem with some strange phenomenon racing through the universe much faster than light, but if that happens, people on Earth will not be able to see it before it reaches us.



wintermute

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Reply #3 on: May 09, 2008, 07:00:47 PM
The thing that bothered me about it was the various plans to record as much data on the event as possible for as long as possible. I can imagine people suggesting it, but I can't imagine how anyone could come up with a good reason to actually put effort into it. As they point out, we'll never be able to analyse the data, or even see it, but their explanation that other, dark energy alien species might be able to do something with the recordings misses the very obvious flaw that the media on which the data is recorded will be destroyed along with everything else. Unless they're managing to encode data the data into a single quark, it's utterly pointless.

The FTL problems I found easier to overlook, somehow.

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eytanz

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Reply #4 on: May 09, 2008, 07:35:36 PM
The thing that bothered me about it was the various plans to record as much data on the event as possible for as long as possible. I can imagine people suggesting it, but I can't imagine how anyone could come up with a good reason to actually put effort into it. As they point out, we'll never be able to analyse the data, or even see it, but their explanation that other, dark energy alien species might be able to do something with the recordings misses the very obvious flaw that the media on which the data is recorded will be destroyed along with everything else. Unless they're managing to encode data the data into a single quark, it's utterly pointless.

Oh, but that was my favorite thing about the story. That's what I hope I would do, if I was in this situation. I saw it as the crowning glory of humanity - the need to explore, the scientific urge, is justified for its own sake, even if no-one will ever see the results, even if it has no practical reason.

Humanity may stand powerless in front of an uncaring universe, doomed to die by a disaster it did not cause and is powerless to even delay, let alone avert, and I like to think that among the horror and fear and chaos, there would be those that, knowing it will do no good, will endeavour to do their best to learn what this tells us about the universe.

It's not like there will be anything worth saving the resources this takes for, after all.



wintermute

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Reply #5 on: May 09, 2008, 08:14:06 PM
Humanity may stand powerless in front of an uncaring universe, doomed to die by a disaster it did not cause and is powerless to even delay, let alone avert, and I like to think that among the horror and fear and chaos, there would be those that, knowing it will do no good, will endeavour to do their best to learn what this tells us about the universe.

But they will learn exactly as much if they sleep through the whole thing. They're not "endeavouring to learn" anything. At best, they're endeavouring to feel like they're doing something.

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eytanz

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Reply #6 on: May 09, 2008, 08:15:31 PM
They're collecting data. That the data will not be analyzed is unfortunate, but not a good enough reason not to collect it.



cuddlebug

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Reply #7 on: May 09, 2008, 09:17:58 PM
I absolutely *LOVED* this story, definitely my favorite out of the Hugo nominees so far. I have always been a sucker for ‘End-of-the-World’ stories and this one is a wonderfully crafted and especially well-paced specimen. A great piece of writing which definitely deserves the Hugo. The fact that Baxter declined Steve’s offer dampens my enthusiasm slightly, but only slightly. It is a great story, even though I am not too convinced that Caitlin’s behavior is realistic, as I would expect a woman, who has just lost her husband and children, to show a little more emotion, even if she knew all along they would die very soon anyway. Seeing it, knowing it has just happened would still be devastating, IMHO.

And it didn’t surprise me at all that they kept collecting data until the very end. Hope is a strange thing, even if all evidence suggests otherwise human beings are very skilled at overruling reason and cheating themselves into believing there is still hope, even if it is very very very faint.

(… hope for some kind of miracle or as the story explains, some different form of existence after the Big Rip. So if whatever/whoever is left or develops afterwards (IF) might benefit from the data.)

Great story. Too bad we couldn’t have it on EP.

… now I need to contemplate what I would do if I knew that everything would come to an end in the next few months.

What would I do? What … oh, I know, of course …



wintermute

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Reply #8 on: May 10, 2008, 12:22:54 AM
They're collecting data. That the data will not be analyzed is unfortunate, but not a good enough reason not to collect it.
It's not that it won't be analysed; it's that the data won't exist a millisecond after it's collected. It's exactly as if it wasn't collected at all.

So if whatever/whoever is left or develops afterwards (IF) might benefit from the data.
How could they possibly benefit from data that's been saved in some medium that's now reduced to sub-atomic dust?
« Last Edit: May 10, 2008, 12:25:41 AM by wintermute »

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Heradel

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Reply #9 on: May 10, 2008, 12:44:23 AM
Information may not be able to be destroyed. I assume that's the supposition for the information collection.

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Boggled Coriander

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Reply #10 on: May 10, 2008, 02:52:32 AM
I've read this story and one of Baxter's novels, and he destroys the whole entire human race in both.  A common theme for him?

I enjoyed this story, although I had the same concerns about humans apparently observing in realtime and the exact purpose behind the data collection.  Maybe you can't destroy information, but I don't see how you could preserve it in a meaningful form that any post-Rip intelligent beings could decipher.

Maybe that wasn't the point.

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wintermute

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Reply #11 on: May 10, 2008, 01:43:40 PM
Information may not be able to be destroyed. I assume that's the supposition for the information collection.

The Wiki page you link to says nothing to support that idea. In fact, any increase in entropy is, by definition, a reduction in information. It's not unreasonable to define "information" as being specific particles in a specific order. Destroy the particles, and the information is entirely and eternally destroyed. Randomise the position of the particles, and the information is destroyed.

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Heradel

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Reply #12 on: May 10, 2008, 04:04:44 PM
Odd, thought info theory would have mentioned it. Here.

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wintermute

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Reply #13 on: May 12, 2008, 11:56:11 AM
Ah, OK. I see what you mean.

The first problem is that, in this context, information and data are not the same thing. The easier it is to describe a system (the shorter the sting needed to do so), the less information in contains; which means that truly random noise contains more information that highly structured data. The second problem is that they're not talking about it being impossible to destroy a specific piece of information, but rather not being able to reduce the total information content of the universe, just as freezers don't violate the conservation of energy by destroying heat.

If you were to take a hard drive filled with hundreds of gigabytes of pictures and music into a black hole,then the Hawking radiation that that black hole emitted would have as much information as the hard drive contained (counting the information that defines the atomic structure of the platters, or the design of the actuator arm), but it would be impossible to reconstruct the data that had been on that hard drive.

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tpi

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Reply #14 on: May 13, 2008, 11:32:13 AM
I personally really, really hated that story.
It so implausible with faster than light spreading matter destroying effect, and the messages from aliens happening at the same time which are ignoring light-speed barrier effects.
I am hugo-voter this year, and this will be my last place vote in short story category, after the "no prize" nomination.


Darwinist

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Reply #15 on: May 19, 2008, 07:13:36 PM
I've read this story and one of Baxter's novels, and he destroys the whole entire human race in both.  A common theme for him?

I enjoyed this story, although I had the same concerns about humans apparently observing in realtime and the exact purpose behind the data collection.  Maybe you can't destroy information, but I don't see how you could preserve it in a meaningful form that any post-Rip intelligent beings could decipher.

Maybe that wasn't the point.

I really liked it also.  Are you thinking of the third Manifold Time novel?    I looked past the light-speed problem, I guess.  The way it was explained in the story was weak but you could nitpick many sci-fi stories until the cows come home. 

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan


eytanz

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Reply #16 on: May 19, 2008, 07:20:42 PM
I've read this story and one of Baxter's novels, and he destroys the whole entire human race in both.  A common theme for him?


I really liked it also.  Are you thinking of the third Manifold Time novel?   

It's been a while since I read them, but I think that the third novel was the only one in the series where he didn't destroy the entire human race. He certainly did at the end of the first one, and IIRC, the second one ends with the prediction the end of the human race will come soon.



Boggled Coriander

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Reply #17 on: May 20, 2008, 01:16:50 AM
Are you thinking of the third Manifold Time novel?

The first Manifold novel.  (My two-sentence review: Manifold: Time was spellbinding while I was still reading it.  Only after I finished did I realize it barely hangs together as a cohesive novel.) 

I've also read a plot summary of Titan, and it sounds like Baxter wipes out the whole human race in that one too.
« Last Edit: May 20, 2008, 02:41:24 AM by Boggled Coriander »

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DKT

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Reply #18 on: May 21, 2008, 06:11:58 PM
This is the second short story of Baxter's that I've read and I guess I'm just not a mark for him. 

I do appreciate what eytanz said about the scientists not giving up, trying to continue to record data, etc.  There is something beautiful about that.  But this story felt so unbelievable.  And I'm not even talking about the physics.  I can easily suspend my disbelief on that one.  The characters just didn't seem like real people to me.  Coupled with being told about the end of the world, and how it was all going down instead of actually experiencing it, this read more like a report to me than it did a story, and just didn't do very much for me at all.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. 


Alasdair5000

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Reply #19 on: May 21, 2008, 10:25:17 PM
This is the second short story of Baxter's that I've read and I guess I'm just not a mark for him. 

I do appreciate what eytanz said about the scientists not giving up, trying to continue to record data, etc.  There is something beautiful about that.  But this story felt so unbelievable.  And I'm not even talking about the physics.  I can easily suspend my disbelief on that one.  The characters just didn't seem like real people to me.  Coupled with being told about the end of the world, and how it was all going down instead of actually experiencing it, this read more like a report to me than it did a story, and just didn't do very much for me at all.

Different strokes for different folks, I guess. 

   Baxter's best work, that I've read anyway, is his near future stuff.  the Manifold series, for me, became very ponderous by the second book and I never followed up.  Really should.

   Voyage is the story of the Nasa Mars project that should have been, taking in nuclear engines, the first woman on Mars and a very different Apollo program.  If you have a shred of love for space travel in your soul, then this book will be for you.  Also I believe somewhere in the archives over at Zombie Astronaut's old site, there may be the audio version.  Which is magnificent and made me cry, twice, when I listened to it because I am an immense soft touch.

   Titan takes a subtly different approach and follows the first mission out to Saturn.  And where Voyage is a story about triumph over adversity, Titan is a story of attrition.  Nothing goes right, nothing comes easy, it's like Hemingway writing science fiction.  Grimmer but as good.

   Moonseed however, just edges it out for second place behind Voyage.  Something impossible is found on the moon and very quickly, something goes horribly wrong on an epic scale.  I read a lot of John Wyndham when I was a kid, and this is right up there with his best as a story of the world ending, a desperate and scientifically pretty sound plan to save it and old spaceships.

   All three are kick ass books, and whilst Last Contact clearly hasn't been a hit here, he's an author worth keeping an eye on, trust me.



DKT

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Reply #20 on: May 21, 2008, 11:28:17 PM
Al, you know I love you, and I completely respect your opinion, even if you do love Fables.

But still, you KNOW I don't need more books on my TBR shelf, and yet you've made me consider some of Baxter's.  Watch it. 


Darwinist

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Reply #21 on: May 22, 2008, 03:00:58 AM

   All three are kick ass books, and whilst Last Contact clearly hasn't been a hit here, he's an author worth keeping an eye on, trust me.

Have you read Evolution or Time Ships?  My favorite Baxter books.  I have Titan and Moonseed, haven't read them yet but will have to bump them up the list.   :)

For me, it is far better to grasp the Universe as it really is than to persist in delusion, however satisfying and reassuring.    -  Carl Sagan