jowey

What novel was that ? How long ago ?

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The_Heretic

I've a series called Initial Encounter [to depart from "First Contact"] and the octopus astronauts were in The Neighbors as well as the one following called Movers. The first of which I wrote in 1997, but I'll have to rework, since it was my first and a wee crude in literary technique.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

jowey

Cool......
I was curious whether I had one of your books. During the 90's I was "distracted". I have a rather extensive collection from the 70's through the 80's, then books got so damn expensive - which is good for the authors but......
.......since the Internet well, accessing information is a lot quicker, tried looking something up in a book the other day, found the information but needed more guess what.......

How is the SciFi industry doing anyway, movies should be doing well, heard that the conventions have gone down hill in recent years.....

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The_Heretic

I'm still looking for a publisher, so you wouldn't have bought my work yet... unless someone somewhere owes me some money.

From what I saw at FYE [for your entertainment] there's a fairly broad range of novels, but Oprah's Book Club bullshit is artificially skewing the market toward self help and "true life" [even James Fry variety thereof] stories. Then there's that one 19 year old who was caught plaigerizing books, so instead of losing the first book she puts out that give her an even bigger book deal. This when it was plain and clear she wrote next to nothing of the previous she claimed as her own.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

jowey

Might try selling your story to the movies - their problem is that they repeat the same themes with added eye candy.

I forgot the book that I was reading but I thought it might be fun to write a book about someone stranded on a planet, who had this bio-engineered "egg/seed". This thing germinated when he bled on it, took his DNA and burrowed into the ground returning months later as a space ship. It had spent the time consuming minerals and growing. When it returned it compatible with him, providing direct mind link and regeneration capabilities.

Thought that some cute plots could come out of the "discovery", being stranded (Robinson Crusoe) and their adventures.....

I probably thought of it after reading some of Alan Dean Fosters books and a book called the "Halcyon Drift" with the Hooded Swan - think that was it......
......when I tried writing about it I could come up with some interesting situations but......

Then I saw the show "Farscape" with "Pilot/Moya", thought shucks. In mine it would be more like a relationship between Flinx and Pip his minidragon because of the bond.....

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The_Heretic

I haven't pushed quite that far as to suggest a fully organic ship, though on a couple I do suggest an organic substitute for a vessel's computer and central control system.

Another was to suggest a inter-solar migrating organism with fully inorganic and artificial origins. Instead of cells it was composed of nanoscopic cell-like modules.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

jowey

Why not, if space travel becomes feasible the ship will need the ability to "heal", there are no "WayStations" that we know of out there. Ideally it will have a fully integrated system, what better system is there than an organic one. There would be no real bond between a creature of space and a planet dweller - except.....

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The_Heretic

The problem is how to engineer a living organism that has enough metabolic energy to cross between stars without dying from radiation in space nor killing itself with all that energy. Plus, an organism's migrational instincts [so required for the purposes of navigation and astrogation] need to be far more accurate than anything seen now. These two threshholds, energy and precision, are the limiting factors for exosolar spaceflight.

Some organisms, even one type of animal, can handle the rough environment of hard vacuum and unfiltered solar radiation, but they have to be metabolically inactive to do so. The reason is cell division amid that much radiation lends itself to mutations, cancer and tissue breakdown from radiation burns when severe enough. An organism bred for spaceflight would have to have radically different chemistry.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium

jowey

Yeah, radiation would be a problem unless it could absorb its energy in some way. Some animals have an ability to generate magnetic and electric fields. In this case it would be necessary to divert radiation and possibly traverse space. Like Dr. Winglee proposed, http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2000/ast04oct_1.htm and http://www.ess.washington.edu/Space/M2P2/theory.html

It could have a shell, think that they are finding .....
Think it is more a problem of evolution, space is kind of hostile environment for an evolutionary process to occur, as you said life can survive in a dormant state......

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The_Heretic

The more efficient route- at least I think so anyway, would be for a variation of photosynthesis to use background radiation the same way plants and algae use visible light. But even then the chloroplasts will have to be on the outer most parts of each and every cell to shield the nucleus and organelles from ratiation. And that still leaves the cell membrane to suffer damage when high energy particles break down the molecular structure and even individual atoms within the phsopholipids as well as membrane proteins and carbohydrates.

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"Enough!!" -so rang Barack Obama's voice off the walls of Mile High Stadium