Erik Naggum  <erik@naggum.net> wrote:
+---------------
|   appreciated by everyone but science fiction writers, who would have to
|   think up something entirely different than the "what if energy were free"
|   line of fantasizing.  (Personally, I would have like some brilliant mind
|   to have played with the concept of computational energy requiring human
|   sacrifice and the moral implications of sacrificing life for knowledge.
|   We already do this in terms of dedicating a hell of a lot of lives to
|   science, and we accept some loss of life in the course of all discovery,
|   but all of them are _accidental_.  What if it had to be intentional?
|   That is one (or several) science fiction stories I would love to read.)
+---------------

I wish I could recall the title/author, but there was an S/F novel
not too long ago with a *very* similar theme, where loss of life was
an unavoidable cost of interstellar travel:  What if a "warp drive"
existed, but [for some obscure reason] a person had to die each time
a ship entered *or* exited warp? In the book, condemned prisoners were
used as the "sacrifices", and a ship normally carried at least three
prisoners for each leg of any journey (in case one died unexpectedly
of natural causes). The set piece, of course, is that on this particular
voyage, after entering warp [killing one of the three] *both* other
prisoners died... leaving the ship stranded in warp unless someone
among the passengers & crew volunteered (or was forced) to die to get
the ship out of warp.


-Rob

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Rob Warnock, 31-2-510		<rpw3@sgi.com>
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