This week, Futures takes a trip into deep space with Mike Brotherton’s Beyond 550 astronomical units. An astronomer based at the University of Wyoming, Mike is also author of the novels Star Dragon (2003) and Spider Star (2008). You can keep up-to-date with his activities on his website. Here, Mike kindly takes time out from his busy schedule to discuss the orgins of his latest tale — as ever it pays to read the story first.
Writing Beyond 550 astronomical units
About ten years ago, I founded the Launch Pad Astronomy Workshop for Writers, a week-long crash course held annually at the University of Wyoming. About 15 writers attend each year, enthusiastic professionals who want to increase the quantity and/or quality of the astronomy in stories. The goal of the workshop is to reach their audiences, to provide stealth education to the public, and to inspire the next generation of scientists. Star Trek inspired me to become an astronomer, and I’m not the only scientist with such a history.
There are a number of things I say nearly every year to the workshop participants, whose work spans a wide range of genres. To the urban fantasy authors, for instance, I suggest that a popular werewolf series in which understanding phases of the Moon was critical could help their readers correct common lunar misconceptions. At one point I started making the comment that I’d love to see a story about a sentient telescope. After years of no one running with that idea, I decided I should use it myself.
One of the best reasons to have an aware, thinking telescope would be if it was so far away it could not be easily controlled by people. Deep space, then. And then I realized that there had been discussions for years to put telescopes out at 550 astronomical units away from the Sun, where our home star’s gravity could focus light according to the laws of general relativity. That gave me my premise and setting, but the story needed to turn on character.
That made me think about what would make a good astronomer, human or not. I thought of one of my old summer students showing me spectra of quasars he’d selected in a survey. As he was showing them to me, he got to one and said, “Now, this one is my favourite …” At that point I realized his passion for astronomy. He loved looking at these strange squiggles that held information about these far off objects, and was interested in them for their own sake. People smart enough to become scientists usually can make more money doing easier work outside of science. The people who become successful scientists simply love doing science. So I figured that might be true of a sentient telescope as well. Emotion would drive the effort and decisions, and without it the story would be less compelling.
Finally, I decided to highlight something scientists understand too well, and the general public probably not so much. Many scientists are all about their sub-sub-field and are fascinated by every detail that may be a clue to deeper understanding of their niche, while questions outside their area of expertise lose their lustre. Even some pretty important ones. I mean, I get more excited about a 25% improvement in how to estimate the mass of black holes powering quasars — my area of expertise — than I do most anything else not about quasars, even when I recognize the importance of other areas of science.
So there was my conflict, a telescope who just wanted to see the next planetary system when it knew almost anyone else would prioritize the detection of an alien civilization, and there was my story.