MDugan.ES@Xerox.ARPA (04/05/84)
I committed the Ultimate mistake and let someone borrow a favorite SF book which I occasionally reread just for the fun of it (this was about 8 yrs. ago). I further complicated the mistake by forgetting the Author and title. I am hoping someone can help me locate it again (any pointers to where to get a copy would help as well). The story line went something like this: A WWII submarine was attacking an enemy destroyer in the Pacific and there was a terrible collision but when the lights came back on everything seemed to be okay and the sub proceeded to port. As the story progressed the crew discovered they really weren't at Pearl Harbor but instead a pretty good duplicate. The captian is finally appraised that not only are they not at Pearl but they are not even on Earth. The basic premise was that the Earth had progressed through many centuries and had genetically engineered out the capacity for mankind to participate in violence (war and fighting) during one of the political swings to pacifism. The sub was, in fact, heavily damaged by the destroyer back in 1942 and quickly went to the bottom with all crewmen on board. The combination of sea water and a special cargo of chemicals combined into a preservative that allowed the boat to be raised and the crew partially revived around the year 2000. (this is an area of the book that I found implasible) The crew and boat were turned into a museum exibit and demonstrated WWII sea technology for many years. Finally, mankind was attacked by an Alien civilization and needed help to fight back. The sub crew was brought to the planet under attack, revived to consciousness, and gradually educated about their status/history, the year, etc. The rest of the book describes how the sub crew becomes a catalyst for a counter-attack and how it is carried out. The book was an interesting combination of a WWII submarine yarn and a neat Sci-fi premise. ANY help locating this book again will be greatly appreciated!! Mike
JAF%MIT-SPEECH@MIT-MC.ARPA (04/06/84)
From: Joseph A. Frisbie <JAF%MIT-SPEECH@MIT-MC.ARPA> If you can cruise around faster than light, then it follows (from special relativity, Lorentz transformations, etc) that you can find a frame of reference where A occurs before B, and one where B occurs before A for any two events A and B. I'm sure you've pictures of light cones where spacetime is divided into regions -- events that couldn't have effect A, events that could, events A can effect, events that A will never effect. All this goes away and your left with any event able to affect any other event, not so good if you want to hang on to causality. Thermodynamics is the only process that is not time-symetric, you can tell which way time is running by seeing if you are creating or losing ordered energy. Joe -------