(urth) Travelling North aka miscellaneous thoughts on Wolfe

[Gerry Quinn]

I know that even 'hard' SF writers generally get a free pass when it comes 
to FTL travel.  But the method described in 'Urth of the New Sun' has two 
problems with it.

First, there is the usual issue of travelling faster than light.  Special 
relativity is well established, and while it could be replaced by a new 
'aether' theory, any such theory would have the same issue with a maximum 
speed.  We regularly push stuff to >99% of light speed and we know what 
happens.

Secondly, the 'tacking' method of travelling faster than the wind works for 
sailboats.  But the analogy between wind and light radiation doesn't hold up 
because light does not exert pressure in directions orthogonal to its 
direction of travel, as moving air does.

It's not a big issue, and in fact I mentioned it because I think it's a very 
nice idea.  But we can be pretty certain that no future technology will use 
it.

- Gerry Quinn



From: "Eugene Zaretskiy" <eugene.zar at gmail.com>
On Mon, Jun 7, 2010 at 2:55 PM, Gerry Quinn <gerryq at indigo.ie> wrote:
>
> I don't think so. To travel to Yesod it is necessary to break the laws of
> physics in Briah by travelling faster than light (though the mechanism
> proposed, tacking across the light from the stars, is cute but 
> unfeasible).

I don't mean to pick on you, but I've always thought these types of
statements were quite presumptive. Yours is a common argument to make
against many ideas presented in science fiction. Educated folk mere
decades ago explained in simple science why some of the technologies
available today would be impossible to make. Yet the ingenuity of the
modern inventor constantly foils such assumptions. I'm sure you could
point out the fallacy in their thinking, but the fact remains that
countless millennia have passed between now and the time these ships
were "invented" (assuming someone, at some point, had to come up with
the technology). Are you absolutely certain that it simply isn't
possible that Severian's one-line explanation of how the ship sails is
accurate?

Not that it really matters. I just think it's rather groundless to
predict that a proposed method of travel used millennia from now is
unfeasible when we can't even predict what the weather tomorrow will
be.