Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to re: An easy solution.

Ship of Fools
ER — (archived)

Lee's ship sounds like a very dull and grim place, everyone speaking the same language, with the same culture, same education (other than perhaps varying technical specialties), goals, desires, and maybe even similar personalities and psychologies. All dedicated to carrying out one task. The thought arises, what happens when they actually reach their destination and have to start improvisng? And what happens when this uniform society makes contact with an alien intelligence? They can't even visualize another human intelligence.

Although to be fair, Lee does not go into detail on their genetic engineering, I still visualize identical blue-eyed, blond, crew-cutted perfect physical specimens wearing identical jump suits, cheerfully marching off to stand their watches or other shipboard duties. It's what the military tries to impose with discipline, training and uniforms, on teenagers; except these guys would be programmed that way from conception.

Actually, they sound like the crew and mission controllers in 2001: mission-dedicated robots, not humans. It was HAL that actually showed emotion, albeit misguided. The computer was actually more human than the flesh-and-blood crew.

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