The allure of the hidden colony world

[james_davis_nicoll]

This is what those two recent books had in common: Plucky freedom-lovers flee an oppressive government (in one case Pax, a world government and in the other a USA gone horribly Republican) to settle a world far enough away that the government probably will not be bothered to follow them. In both cases, the homeworld either never knew or forgot where the colony was. This is easier when travel takes centuries but if fast FTL is available, the colonists can try to hide somewhere in the 40 billion population one stars in the spiral arms.

This isn't an uncommon idea in SF: Anderson's STARFOG has the descendents of people who fled so effectively that their great great etc grand kids think they fled to another universe (Which as I recall the people in RAFT actually did do. This is not a recommendation to read RAFT). The later DUNE books have humans exploit new transportation technologies to spread out over a tremendous volume, far too large to be governed, turning human-space from a tightly regimented one to a collection of tightly-regimented regions (SF aint't where you look for pro-democratic fiction). The plucky would-be starfarers in one Alan Nourse novel hope to become a lost colony but will settle for dying if their example leads to reforms back home (The people in Walter Jon Williams's recent space opera -could- isolate themselves but so far nobody has felt isolation was better than the chance of being killed in the crossfire).

Hidden colonies very hard within the solar system, since even our rather puny rockets are clearly visible across the system. Some of the humans in _The Killing Star_ try to hide deep within one of the ice-giants. How successful this would have been is unclear, since the equipment they use turns out not to be up to the job. An alternative is to deliberately seek out some body that is inconvenient to get to from the bodies controlled by the oppressive government, sort of the opposite approach Hop David takes in his musings on settling the asteroids. Which body is best depends somewhat on technological assumptions but something in an inclined and retrograde orbit might be a good start. Mind you, even if you do find a place not worth following you to, heat will betray that you are there. You could hide in Jupiter: the 60 km/s escape velocity will make it hard for your kids to leave for the city and the thick atmosphere will probably protect you from attacks from above.

Comments

[james-nicoll.livejournal.com]

Hidden colonies very hard within the solar system, since even our rather puny rockets are clearly visible across the system.

And rockets able to cross between stars are visible from light years away as long as the rocket is operating. This was one of many problems with Baxter's recent tale about stupid people who do stupid things who fail to reach the goals they knew could not be reached: his "stealthy" rocket should have been visible to _current day technology_ from about 10 light years but the first thing they did was race into the solar system to use Jupiter as a momentum booster. Morons.

I have run across a couple of books lately where the authors realised that telescopes work, something that appears to be something of a secret in SF. In both cases the authors exploited the fact that if you have FTL, telescopes can work as a time machine: if something occurred in the past that you don't quite understand, you can zip over to a location where the light from that event is only just arriving to get
a direct look at the event.

[sclerotic-rings.livejournal.com]

Oh, and don't forget Greg Bear's Moving Mars...

[countess-sophia.livejournal.com]

Do any of these lost colony/hidden colony stories match the experiences of the Pitcairn Islanders after they tried (somewhat successfully) to get themselves lost? It'd be a nasty tale.

[james-angove.livejournal.com]

(SF aint't where you look for pro-democratic fiction)

It certainly doesn't seem to be, at least not American SF. I wonder why that it? Its not a reaction to tyranny, exactly, since we'll (Americans) put up with huge levels of tyranny from our employers. (We complain about it, but we seem to think its a just tyranny)