Frog Flight

My 'Jump Start' story topped out at 19,490 words, placing it firmly in novella-land. Now I need to write a couple more and put them together as a book. These will be related tales of the early days of the development of interstellar travel. This part (now that it is officially a part) is titled 'Frog-Flight,' from the code name of the jump ship project.

In theory, I could fit the completed novelette 'Mission Delayed' into the same book; it is set 1400 years later but deals with the discovery of a crashed ship from those early days. So...maybe but probably not!

First Jump

I'm two chapters and 2500 words into the new (and unexpected) project. This is likely to end up novelette length. We'll see about that. It's a story about the invention and implementation of the first jump drive, and the beginning of mankind's spread to the stars. This is set in the Jack Mack universe but some 1400 years before the novels.

I think maybe I'm seeing some subtle Asimov influences. Been reading through his catalog lately and revisiting stories I last read half a century ago. 

Islands

I think of the inhabited (by humans) universe of my Jack Mack novels as being like the Pacific before Europeans and all their technological advances arrived. Travel and trade passed among the scattered islands but they were too far-flung for anyone to rule over them. A king might occasionally unite an island or even a chain — as Kamehameha did in Hawaii — but anything more was impossible. The distances were just too great, the vessels too small.

So we have planetary systems, or small groups of them, more or less under one government, but often belonging to larger trading communities. The two largest mentioned in the novels are the Aiglean and Corvan associations, but there are smaller groups and many independent systems. All that was changing in Jack McFee’s time, hence the first widespread warfare between those trading groups.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that power would become more centralized eventually but advances in technology (as ever) hastened the process. For one, the advent of the Li Drive, the first interstellar jump drive that could work independently of human direction. This certainly increased both trade and exploration, as well as making warfare more feasible. Less important, though still a factor, was the development of the first truly practical pulse tube engines for normal travel through space (and elsewhere). Both these came along in the half-century before the birth of Jack and were changing the worlds in which he lived.

But ruling a galaxy-wide empire remained quite impractical, if not downright impossible. The strict size limit on interstellar ships definitely continued to play a role there, as did the random targeting of any jump into a system. What we do see is a general tightening of control, the trade communities becoming increasingly political and territorial. Some outlying groups, such as the Picans and the Ursans, come close to being pocket empires, engaging in outright annexations of some of their neighbors in the postwar chaos.

For the most part, the planetary systems remain relatively independent, even after the war, each going its own way. They remain connected by trade; that is inevitable but some systems are more engaged in this network of commerce than others. Yet there is a continuing push toward more centralization. I would suspect more wars, in time. Although the Scotian group is now officially neutral, it is likely to be drawn in, taking Jack with it.

I have attempted to include a variety of social, political, and economic systems for the many worlds of the Jack Mack novels. Some of that is a matter of the culture of those who settled there. Some is the result of economic forces. Humans, being imperfect, will never create a perfect system and are likely to continue to change and experiment. So Thule is essentially socialist and Scotia has — more or less — a market economy. That Thule was colonized by Scandinavians and Scotia largely (at first) by Canadians factors into this, but the challenges faced in both worlds played their roles. Scotia was a far friendlier environment and did not require the regimented approach to survival that Thule did.

Other worlds, of course, present a wide array of economic and political systems we might explore in sequels. Resnovae, for example, which is ruled by a human aristocracy with robot serfs. And beyond the handful of worlds humans know and inhabit? Who can say what might be out there on those unknown islands?

Jump Ships

I opened the first Jack Mack novel, ‘Among the Many Stars,’ with Jack McFee making jumps from system to system in a highly modified McFee W-4A. This was a very small vessel to be fitted with a jump drive and a great many compromises had to be made to jam in both the drive element and an array of surveillance equipment.

The W-4, in any of its iterations, was never intended to be a jump ship. Jack’s machine may well have been the only one ever converted! Nor was the earlier W-2B from which it, in part, derived. The W-2C was another matter, a bit larger vessel which was designed with an eye to possible jump drive installation.

Not that most were. W-2Cs mostly served as medium fighters and the mass of a jump element would have seriously impacted their performance. A handful were equipped, however, some serving as jump-couriers and some as trainers. A number of early C-types, fitted with the relatively low-performance Riley-Thule twelve-tube engine, served as the core of the jump school operated from Fundy Station.

I mentioned jump-couriers. This was the most common use of lighter machines fitted with jump drives—to be relatively quick couriers from system to system. Most were a good bit larger than the W-2C. Among McFee machines that would include W-6s and W-9s, both multi-engine types. We have Jack being conveyed home from Oz Station in a W-9 in ‘Among.’ These machines were rarely used in combat with jump drives. Again, the extra mass involved would have seriously impaired their effectiveness. Most jump ships were quite large.

Jack’s Nativ spy ship is another matter. It is not particularly large and certainly doesn’t have a lot of power. Performance-wise, it is the proverbial dog. But its role is to jump into systems to conduct long-range surveillance patrols. It is most certainly unsuited to any sort of combat.

The bulk of combat vessels that were fitted with jump drives were carriers, with complements of smaller, non-jumping machines. This was generally the most effective approach. Larger cruisers were also fitted out to jump, being too heavy for use with carriers, for the most part. There was always some compromise in performance with the mass of a jump element but that was less noticeable with larger ships.

I will drop Jack into a new jump ship for the next Jack Mack novel, essentially a customized civil ship suited for a post-war spy. And his AI buddy ‘M’ is likely to be moved from the Nativ to accompany him on his missions.

FTL

Anyone who has dipped into one of my books would be aware I do not write ‘hard’ science fiction. Which is not to say I write science fantasy—I do attempt to drop in somewhat believable technology and even explain it (after a fashion). This brings us to the question of faster than light (FTL) travel. Einsteinian physics assures us this is impossible and hard SF writers tended to work with that for a long time. Not all of them, to be sure; some ingenious workarounds were created.

I didn’t bother with much in the way of explanations in ‘Alienese.’ I simply posited a race of aliens who could jump anywhere in the universe by thinking of it. Other, not so gifted races could ‘follow’ them once they opened a way. That whole gift of teleportation is pretty much the concept around which the plot is constructed.

But I went with a ‘jump drive’ concept for my Jack Mack novels (‘Among the Many Worlds’ and ‘Jumping Jack’). This also required a certain amount of brain power, whether human or that of an advanced artificial intelligence. That latter is a fairly recent development; until recently, trained operators were necessary to ‘aim’ a jump drive.

The drive operates via an element of super-massive material, which brings with it a number of technical problems. Most notably, its gravity field—which is more or less what makes the drive work—can crumple a ship in which it is installed, if it is too large. Thus, there is an upward limit for how big jump ships can be. The mass (although they are typically a tiny filament) definitely has an effect on acceleration and deceleration. One doesn’t install a jump drive in a small fighting craft. It would make it much too slow for combat (but Jack pilots one modified so for a reconnaissance mission in ‘Among’).

Now do I get into all the ‘scientific’ explanations of how it works? Definitely not. There is an entire technology range built around ultra-massive elements in the Jack Mack books. They are essential to making just about everything work, and the mining and trading of them is a big factor in holding the many worlds together. I could see a much more insular society otherwise.

And one with less conflict. Several recent technological advances (such as the AI-controlled jump drives I mentioned) have led to the war in the first two books. In warfare, too, the peculiarities of the jump drive lead to certain tactics. For one thing, it is impossible to control where in a system one will land in a jump. A fleet is likely to be scattered throughout a system’s space, some closer to the sun, some further out, and likely enough to be on opposite sides of it. So we have small-scale raids, mostly, rather than invasions. Shipping is targeted, not planets.

It can also be mentioned that jumps become increasingly dangerous with distance, so most are from one neighboring system to another. The need to hop from system to system has its effects on military tactics. I do get into that in the books—and will undoubtedly continue to expand on jump drives and the rest of the technology in future novels. But faster than light travel is possible in them; that’s the central point from which all the rest comes.

(reposted from the older site)