Science fiction: The grandest of all dreams

Before I get to the post, some contest updates. I have started reading the contest stories. To level the field, Ramya downloaded the stories from the contests email, edited the author identities out and has given me a folder full of stories without author names on it. I am reading blind, so to speak (if you want to pursue this technique yourself, Margaret Atwood speaks of this in her book Curious Pursuits). To the post now.

I watched Sunshine an hour ago. It is a wonderful movie with rare depth of science seen these days. I enjoyed the movie, the intense drama created by existential questions is rivetting. The movie is set in 2057. The sun is fading out and a young crew of scientists and engineers are sent to rekindle our holy fireball with massive nuclear bombs (a hardsell as a practical idea, but hey). If the audience can choose to accept the suspension of disbelief asked of them, the movie is enjoyable. I was such an audience, and hence had a good time watching the movie (except the parts where a crazy burnt-out apparition is introduced for delectable horror, gore and drama). That said, the year in which the movie is set got me wondering. Is it possible for the sun to fade so dramatically within fifty years? Perhaps, but it would probably be due to earth clouding-up rather than the sun cooling down.

The sun is going to fade out, in a few billion years. We know that already and I am quite convinced that if we are alive (and sane) for another few million years, humanity would start building things like Dyson Spheres. Enclose the sun inside a vast hollow sphere whose surface is at a distance of earth's orbit, then spin it to generate fake centrifugal gravity (am I wrong here in saying fake gravity? Equivalence principle says otherwise?), and live on the inside surface. Free fire; balmy weather all year around; the ultimate caveman paradise. On a slow day, we can sit around the sun and tell each other stories. Well, that's the scene that hangs in front of my mind's eyes at this very moment, makes me want to live long enough to see that future, an impossible longing, saturday evening melancholy.

If one aspect of science fiction is speculation of the future of Life, humans, us, then it is essential to take the long view; thousands of years, millions, billions. The trouble is: we only dream what we can, not what will be. But, dream we must, and science fiction is the grandest of all dreams.