Greg Egan is an Australian mathematician who has been writing hard science fiction for thirty years, although his hard science is the stuff that sits at the borderland of philosophy: the relationship between mathematics and reality, the nature of consciousness, the implications of quantum mechanics. Previous novels have involved speculations on what life might be … Continue reading Greg Egan: The “Orthogonal” Trilogy
Tag Archives: Science Fiction
Human Exposure To Vacuum: Part 2
In my first post on this topic, I discussed some physics and physiology, in an effort to predict and explain the likely consequences for a person exposed to the vacuum of space. Go to Part 1 In this part, I’m going to look at the evidence from animal experiments and human accidents. ANIMAL DATA The … Continue reading Human Exposure To Vacuum: Part 2
Human Exposure To Vacuum: Part 1
The topic of explosive decompression generates a lot of nonsense, particularly in science fiction films and television series, but also scattered across the internet generally. We actually know quite a lot about what would happen if a human being were exposed to the vacuum of space—and it turns out not to be like the movies. … Continue reading Human Exposure To Vacuum: Part 1
Martin Caidin: Marooned
Not a series of novels, but two rather different novels, by the same author and with the same title, written five years apart. Martin Caidin (first) wrote Marooned in 1964. The novel concerned the fate of an astronaut trapped in orbit by the failure of the retro-pack on his Mercury spacecraft. I encountered it in … Continue reading Martin Caidin: Marooned