Zompist Bboard Again

You know what? I'm writing a book set on my main conworld, Massotis.
There's a detail I have doubts about, and I'd like to know what you think.

So... The basic idea is that Massotis is an Earth-like planet, with Earth-like flora and fauna and human beings because, occasionally, wormhole are open and connect both planetary surfaces. (Basically, when the stars are right, or when the precursors are around doing their precusor things, you can walk from one planet to another on foot. That happens every 10 or 50 million years or so.)

Now, I need to get a bunch of Earth people on Massotis. How do they get there?

a) The stars are right, and the wormholes open. Alternatively, we find the alien stargate in Antarctica or Patagonia or something. So we get to Massotis through the gate.
That's more eleganat I think, though it means I have to explain the gates, why they weren't found before, and bring unwanted attention to the whole portal thing.
b) They just get there by ship. (There used to be portals between both planets, but they're just not there anymore.) Less original, perhaps, but starships are an acceptable SF convention and I don't have to spend much time on them; I can get on with the story. (Besides, if it's STL, it means Earth visitors are stuck there, and that adds some drama.)

I should add this is basically a first contact story. I don't want to dwell much on how people get to Massotis, I'd just like to get there in the less obstrusive way possible.
Any thoughts? Which of these two seem to suspend disbelief better?

Personally, I think the former is somewhat more plausible. Especially if the wormhole is in Antarctica, I can easily see it being undiscovered until now… we’ve hardly explored the whole of the continent. Patagonia seems slightly less plausible, but only because I think we’ve explored most of the area.

Spaceships I find less realistic unless you’re setting this in the future, with Earth having already colonised some other solar systems — Massotis is a long way away. On the other hand, I think you said the Yttrians had a base at 3753 Cruithne, so I can plausibly see some poor space explorer getting a nasty shock if he decides to look at it, then using their wormhole to travel to Yttes and hence Massotis.

Ships are perhaps more easily believable since they aren't that much beyond current technology. They need explanations of how long the journey took and how people survived. FTL travel, cryostasis, or just taking generations to make the trip? How do any of those work? Devil is in the details.

Wormholes are probably more elegant since (I would think) it would be easier to explain a large amount of species, etc. being carried through, as the "journey" is shorter. I would think if the wormholes play a role in the story besides just background, it might help sell them a little better. To me it would feel like like a Jedi hand-wave: "Wormholes just work and you don't need to think about them any more".

Perhaps it could be a combination? People make it through and then set up some kind of tech that makes the trip from earth faster/easier for ships. Maybe there's some kind of "pulling" mechanism that assists with FTL travel.

Thank you both!

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:33 am Personally, I think the former is somewhat more plausible. Especially if the wormhole is in Antarctica, I can easily see it being undiscovered until now…

That feels right to me too, but it opens other questions. (Humans got from Earth to Massotis before... and they can't have gone through Antarctica. Perhaps there were other portals... but what happened to these?)

Spaceships I find less realistic unless you’re setting this in the future, with Earth having already colonised some other solar systems — Massotis is a long way away.

I'm willing to set this in the future, with interstellar exploration being a thing, and move the planet closer if necessary.
I don't want to use the Yttes stuff that time: this is really a story that should focus on one planet.

Vardelm wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:39 am Ships are perhaps more easily believable since they aren't that much beyond current technology. They need explanations of how long the journey took and how people survived. FTL travel, cryostasis, or just taking generations to make the trip? How do any of those work? Devil is in the details.

What I like about having ships is that they're a longstanding narrative convention. (If I do have ships, it'll be ships going close to c and exploiting time dilation.)

This is just for moving the protagonists. Species would still have migrated through ancient stargates -- but the gates just wouldn't be there anymore.

My conworld of Tarra was visited and settled from Earth through gates at least thrice - the fist time (or maybe couple of times) gave Tarra European style flora and fauna and an aboriginal population; the second time brought speakers of an Indo-European language with early Bronz-Age Technology, and the third time brought Romans who conquered the Southern part of Tarra. The last time, the gate (on sea, not on land) was open around 300 years. I did it that way because I wanted this specific combination of features (hunter-gatherers displaced by agrarian speakers of a North-Western IE language, and later Roman influence), without placing Tarra on Earth. Originally Tarra was placed on a con-planet I had together with my brother, which had been settled by numerous gate events from Earth, that's why I went for that solution for Tarra as well. In my mind the reason were some incredibly advanced aliens playing around with gates, but I never put too much thought into this background scenario. The important part for me was always to develop the setting (languages, belief systems, historical events on Tarra).

Ares Land wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 3:56 pm

bradrn wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 8:33 am Personally, I think the former is somewhat more plausible. Especially if the wormhole is in Antarctica, I can easily see it being undiscovered until now…

That feels right to me too, but it opens other questions. (Humans got from Earth to Massotis before... and they can't have gone through Antarctica. Perhaps there were other portals... but what happened to these?)

I think I suggested in another thread that they might simply have stopped working through lack of maintenance. A few thousand years will surely be enough to break or bury any space portals. Though that poses the question of why the Antarctic one kept on working… perhaps the ice preserved it somehow? But then there’s the additional problem that ice at Antarctic temperatures is as hard as feldspar, which could erode the portal a bit.

Spaceships I find less realistic unless you’re setting this in the future, with Earth having already colonised some other solar systems — Massotis is a long way away.

I'm willing to set this in the future, with interstellar exploration being a thing, and move the planet closer if necessary.

In that case, I see no problem with using spaceships.

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:57 am I think I suggested in another thread that they might simply have stopped working through lack of maintenance. A few thousand years will surely be enough to break or bury any space portals. Though that poses the question of why the Antarctic one kept on working… perhaps the ice preserved it somehow? But then there’s the additional problem that ice at Antarctic temperatures is as hard as feldspar, which could erode the portal a bit.

That depends on what the portals consist of. If it's a natural phenomena instead of a man-made construct, maintenance isn't an issue.

Vardelm wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 8:38 am

bradrn wrote: ↑Mon Oct 18, 2021 7:57 am I think I suggested in another thread that they might simply have stopped working through lack of maintenance. A few thousand years will surely be enough to break or bury any space portals. Though that poses the question of why the Antarctic one kept on working… perhaps the ice preserved it somehow? But then there’s the additional problem that ice at Antarctic temperatures is as hard as feldspar, which could erode the portal a bit.

That depends on what the portals consist of. If it's a natural phenomena instead of a man-made construct, maintenance isn't an issue.

I think Ares Land said they were made by some variety of Ancient Space Alien. So, not quite ‘man-made’ per se, but still very much artificial.

Point still stands: how are they constructed? If you assume some combination of plastic & metal with electronic parts, yeah, maintenance is an issue. If it's something else...???

They're made out of pure, unalloyed plot convenience, I'm afraid.

Seriously though... I'd love to have them be natural phenomena. But I never found a really convincing explanation. So ancient aliens it is.
I don't picture these as being made of normal matter. Theory suggests wormholes need exotic matter, which of course we have no idea about. In all logic they would still need maintenance, but of what kind I cannot say. (That's another problem with humans using these gates. Evidently the ancient aliens aren't around anymore, so who maintained these things?)

They might have been built several times (the last one one million year ago or so.): a species figures out wormhole, connect Earth to their network to do whatever ancient aliens do. Then another species does about the same 50 million years later. (That part I think makes sense. Planets with biosphere are valuable for scientific research if nothing else; if you can build wormholes to reach them it makes sense to so. On geological timespans, several species could end up doing the same thing for the same reason.Species crossing over from one planet to the next could be entirely accidental; we've been unintentionally spreading species all over Earth too.)

Ares Land wrote: ↑Sun Oct 17, 2021 7:31 am a) The stars are right, and the wormholes open. Alternatively, we find the alien stargate in Antarctica or Patagonia or something. So we get to Massotis through the gate.
That's more eleganat I think, though it means I have to explain the gates, why they weren't found before, and bring unwanted attention to the whole portal thing.
b) They just get there by ship. (There used to be portals between both planets, but they're just not there anymore.) Less original, perhaps, but starships are an acceptable SF convention and I don't have to spend much time on them; I can get on with the story. (Besides, if it's STL, it means Earth visitors are stuck there, and that adds some drama.)

maybe do like the Xeelee: there are gates in all the destinations, but you need ships or at least shuttles to go from gate to planet?

It might be worth mentioning that there's also the possible "Atlantean route": the gates were constructed by advanced ancient humans (eliminating the need for aliens that could be nagging at the back of your mind), and could open a portal wherever a sort of transmitter was pointed, triggering faster-than-light travel, though the contact could only be maintained for a certain time. The time limit could be because wherever the beam's meant to go moves out of range, the sun causes too much interference, the moon or Jupiter or Saturn gets in the way, and so on. Since the humans were ancient, having their technology simply break after a while (technology tending to do this anyway) would be plausible, and since they're humans, you don't have to worry about whatever aliens showing up later (unless you want them to).

To bring present humans to the otherworld, you could have the technology either reparable by the technology of the humans going there, or the ancients leave behind maintenance robots that periodically revive the technology, when they have power enough to do so (perhaps a solar cell was damaged, and so can only gather marginal amounts of power, making it take a very long time for the repairbot to charge). If a modern human were to supply them with electricity, the robot could presumably rebuild the technology for them. In these cases, no character has to understand that the technology works — they could even regard it as somehow magical, depending on what time they come from. If you wanted to do the "Atlantis" thing fully, you could even have some sort of advanced ancient city unearthed on the seabed (probably built originally on some sort of volcanic island so it could use geothermal power or something, or a piece of technology might've gone haywire and destroyed the rest of the civilisation, or whatever group built it liked a new planet better and just left it behind to rot or threw it deliberately into the ocean so other humans wouldn't find it).

I think this is really room for a fun backstory that doesn't require too much explanation of how the technology works. I think going into the motivations for building it, and the potential consequences of its rediscovery, are more interesting storytelling possibilities anyway.

My first thought is that it's a question of subgenre. Ships signal, or are compatible with, a high-tech approach respecting known physics. Portals are more of a space fantasy thing and signal that you're not going to be held back by mere science.

Portals are neat meta-narratively— they're convenient and fast and can appear or disappear as the author likes. But they do I think tend to take over the plot eventually, as the focus turns to where they came from.

If this all ties in with Yttes, which IIRC has portals, then that's no problem.

However, I do like the idea that STL means that explorers are effectively trapped in the system.

Thanks a lot everyone for the ideas.

I think I'll use STL ships instead -- I think they work better with the plot I have in mind.

Happy fiction-making!