As I mentioned on an earlier thread, the Gaussjammer that A. Bertram Chandler used is the closest example that an EU spaceship would use to tap into the electrical currents.
This is chapter three where he describes the gaussjammer
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/978143913 ... 73__29.htm
The main things to watch out for with EU stories:
- No Big Bang
- No Black Holes
- No Neutron Stars
- No Wormholes
- The Sun is not an exploding Hydrogen bomb, it is powered by galactic currents.
That means:
- No Dyson Sphere
- No Space Elevator
So there are problems with my favorite SF books.
If you have read the Honor Harrington novels by David Webber, you can get a sense of how he describes the gravity drives that he uses. He is vague enough without getting tied up in the details. It took me a long time to realize that the fields extend out far beyond what I thought. I'm still not sure if they are hundreds or thousands of miles across, yet that didn't stop me from enjoying the stories of what they do "with" the ships. Amazing series.
The books by Larry Niven are fun, but false.
The story where the character is being chased by other spaceships and he swings by a neutron star. He kills the enemy with radiation from the neutron star by dropping stuff into the star spraying the pursuing spaceships with the radiation.
I love Ringworld, but any object that large would pick up the electricity coming from the outside. I suspect that the local star would go dark.
The other flaw with Ringworld is his failure to understand gravity. He has a ribbon a million miles wide holding atmosphere between high walls. The spin of the ring is enough to mimic gravity by centrifugal force. The problem is, gravity does not just pull downward, it pulls in all directions inward. That million miles of atmosphere, water, soil, would be drawn into the center of that flat ribbon, making a wet mess. It would not lie flat the way he thinks.
I am able to enjoy the story of what goes on inside the Ring as long as I assume that there is some way to shape space to the surface of the ring. Think the decks on the starship Enterprise. There are inertial dampers that keep people on the deck despite the ship moving around.
Terry Pratchett's Diskworld only works because the magic makes it work. An actual diskworld would have all of the atmosphere, water, soil pull into the center of the disk. There would have to be an inertial damper, like the magic, to hold everything flat.
The novel Accelerando by Charles Stross is a fun romp, but is utterly impossible.
The Vile Offspring start building a Matrioshka brain that completely envelops the Sun to utilize all of the energy "from" the Sun. Problem is, the Sun is powered by external electricity, so the Sun would go dark, and all of that electricity would hit the outer shell of the Matrioshka brain.
His novel Saturn's Children is almost impossible to read because of the constant violations of EU stuff. There is no "story" to enjoy outside of the errors. At one point he has a spinning tether that spins into the Venus atmosphere to drop people off and pick them up. The spinning tether would explode from the electrical overload.
Yet, you have The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton where they have vast spinning space habitats that gather electrical energy from the electrical fields of a gas giant using tethers.
- If you are looking for the "Nuts and Bolts" of "Hard SF" you will end up simply chasing your tail, instead of writing "tales."
Find what works for you, and don't get lost in the details. There is no such thing as "Hard SF", everything is Science Fantasy, at best. Even Arthur C. Clarke only wrote Science Fantasy, yet he was always described as writing "Hard SF".
Have fun...
As I mentioned on an earlier thread, the Gaussjammer that A. Bertram Chandler used is the closest example that an EU spaceship would use to tap into the electrical currents.
This is chapter three where he describes the gaussjammer
https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781439134573/9781439134573__29.htm
The main things to watch out for with EU stories:
- No Big Bang
- No Black Holes
- No Neutron Stars
- No Wormholes
- The Sun is not an exploding Hydrogen bomb, it is powered by galactic currents.
That means:
- No Dyson Sphere
- No Space Elevator
So there are problems with my favorite SF books.
If you have read the Honor Harrington novels by David Webber, you can get a sense of how he describes the gravity drives that he uses. He is vague enough without getting tied up in the details. It took me a long time to realize that the fields extend out far beyond what I thought. I'm still not sure if they are hundreds or thousands of miles across, yet that didn't stop me from enjoying the stories of what they do "with" the ships. Amazing series.
The books by Larry Niven are fun, but false.
The story where the character is being chased by other spaceships and he swings by a neutron star. He kills the enemy with radiation from the neutron star by dropping stuff into the star spraying the pursuing spaceships with the radiation.
I love Ringworld, but any object that large would pick up the electricity coming from the outside. I suspect that the local star would go dark.
The other flaw with Ringworld is his failure to understand gravity. He has a ribbon a million miles wide holding atmosphere between high walls. The spin of the ring is enough to mimic gravity by centrifugal force. The problem is, gravity does not just pull downward, it pulls in all directions inward. That million miles of atmosphere, water, soil, would be drawn into the center of that flat ribbon, making a wet mess. It would not lie flat the way he thinks.
I am able to enjoy the story of what goes on inside the Ring as long as I assume that there is some way to shape space to the surface of the ring. Think the decks on the starship Enterprise. There are inertial dampers that keep people on the deck despite the ship moving around.
Terry Pratchett's Diskworld only works because the magic makes it work. An actual diskworld would have all of the atmosphere, water, soil pull into the center of the disk. There would have to be an inertial damper, like the magic, to hold everything flat.
The novel Accelerando by Charles Stross is a fun romp, but is utterly impossible.
The Vile Offspring start building a Matrioshka brain that completely envelops the Sun to utilize all of the energy "from" the Sun. Problem is, the Sun is powered by external electricity, so the Sun would go dark, and all of that electricity would hit the outer shell of the Matrioshka brain.
His novel Saturn's Children is almost impossible to read because of the constant violations of EU stuff. There is no "story" to enjoy outside of the errors. At one point he has a spinning tether that spins into the Venus atmosphere to drop people off and pick them up. The spinning tether would explode from the electrical overload.
Yet, you have The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton where they have vast spinning space habitats that gather electrical energy from the electrical fields of a gas giant using tethers.
- If you are looking for the "Nuts and Bolts" of "Hard SF" you will end up simply chasing your tail, instead of writing "tales."
Find what works for you, and don't get lost in the details. There is no such thing as "Hard SF", everything is Science Fantasy, at best. Even Arthur C. Clarke only wrote Science Fantasy, yet he was always described as writing "Hard SF".
Have fun...