Horizon finds new potential in the sci-fi staple deepsleep tale

The most likely way for humans to first travel beyond the Solar System is through some form of hibernation, most often referred to in sci-fi as deepsleep. The prospect is rife with dramatic potential for a good book – what would it be like to be the same age and yet years older than friends and family, or to never see them, or …

[Jez Lawrence]

Steven Baxter's "titan" dealt with this amazingly realistically. Except deep sleep want involved and the astronauts didn't come home...

I mean fundamentally its the same issue as those coming hone from ww1 & 2 faced isn't it?

[OrsonX]

"too deus ex machina"

The 2nd time today I have seen this phrase, the other was whilst reading reviews of the god awful movie Interstellar*.

What does it mean please? [the phrase, not Interstellar]

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*lots of imdb reviews of Interstellar say it is "original", I reckon these people haven't seen 2001. Probably the same people who said Hunger Games was "so original", er...

[Oninoshiko]

Re: "too deus ex machina"

It's Latin, literally "God from the machine."

It comes from the classic plays where when the hero would get into an impossible situation, one of the gods would drop down and help them out of it. The actor playing the god would be literally lowered onto the stage with a machine.

It's come to mean any kind of "divine intervention," "hand of fate," or other completely blind-siding "solution" to the problem. Generally, it's considered bad story-telling.

[Graham Marsden]

Damn...

... and when I read the Headline I thought that the BBC's popular science programme had actually come up with a nifty idea...

PS "most often referred to in sci-fi as deepsleep"? AFAIR it was usually "Cold Sleep" or "Cryonics".

[Destroy All Monsters]

Actually...

I don't remember that many tales with cryosleep in it.

The alien franchise yes. 2001, of course, but that was just for a trip of several months inside the solar system. In the "Forever War", there is no sleep, only dreadnoughts driving around at 0.9999c doing "collapsar jumps", which makes the weapons onboard obsolete fast. "Hull Zero Three" has some sleepers but the crew is actually recreated from on-demand, as with Rama. "Use Of Weapons" has a single scene. Stories by Alastair Reynolds have cryosleep which generally morphs into gothic horror (do NOT miss "Galactic North") and bad awakenings (or not), same with "Pandorum" btw.

Anything else?

[stucs201]

Re: Actually...

Footfall. Which had the alien ship be an unusual hybrid of generation ship and sleeper ship, with the crew therefore comprised of a mixture of sleepers and space-born.

[Elmer Phud]

Re: Actually...

"I don't remember that many tales with cryosleep in it."

There are loads - there are various themes on offer from the 'sole survivor', 'woken early by A.I.', 'cryosleep malfunction', 'murder of sleepers' and 'missed/blown up/taken over by others/ destnation' .

Think of cryosleeep and then any possible scenarios --they are already out there in print.

[Nigel 11]

A deepness in the sky

Cryosleep is essential to the plot, and even more essential to the back-story and universe-building, of what may be my all-time favorite SF story. Vernor Vinge, "A deepness in the sky". If you haven't read it, then do.

[no-one in particular]

Re: Actually...

> I don't remember that many tales with cryosleep in it.

A C Clarke's "Songs of Distant Earth". Plus stories that use cryosleep without ncessarily invoking space travel - love a good corpsicle story.

[Brangdon]

LockStep

LockStep, by Karl Schroeder, is built around it, and not just for long journeys. Not a great book, but definitely worth reading as an exploration of cryosleep.

[Swarthy]

Re: LockStep

Heinlien's Door into Summer is another great non-space cryo-sleep story. His Time for the Stars is not cold sleep, but it does have the feeling of stasis while the world changes, and the disconnect caused by that.

[John Smith 19]

George Turners "Beloved Son" would also be a candidate for this.

The idea of the crew of a returning starship finding that while they had all come home they "Weren't from round here" anymore.

Glum.

[grumpy feline]

Crap endings

It's my biggest grumpy-old-git bugbear with most sci-fi. Appallingly bad endings. Space opera is almost defined by it.

Cryo-sleep, is A-OK. Has been around since Ichabod Crane.

It doesn't have to be this way. I'm looking forward to "The Martian"'s movie conversion. Should be good. No magic required.

[andy gibson]

2010?

"What Horizon does very well is take the whole idea in a new direction. What if you went to sleep when the world was at a politically precarious peace and when you woke up, everything had changed, including your interstellar mission?"

Wasn't that the plot of 2010, particularly the movie version with Roy Scheider? There was political turmoil on Earth and the US astronauts woke from cyrosleep in the Russian ship?

[AaronG]

Idiocracy

The movie Idiocracy did it best and they never even left Earth.

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0387808/

[saundby]

E.C. Tubb's Dumarest series ("travelling Low"), Niven's slowboats ("suspended animation".)

[Kepler]

A bit like Earthlight?

As described, the story sounds a bit like a cross between the movie Alien and Arthur C. Clarke's novel Earthlight — minus the former's beasties. (Alien's element of a crew in stasis, with Earthlight's political crisis.)

Of course, lots of stories involve having most or all of the crew in stasis (Forbidden Planet, Planet of the Apes, 2001: A Space Oddyssey, et c., et c.), and Horizon doesn't necessarily sound like Alien more than it does like any of these others as well. Plus 2001: A Space Oddyssey involves the element of a rogue artificial intelligence. (Alien sort-of as well, but not so much.)

But still, Alien's crew setting combined with Earthlight's strife and turmoil is what sprang to mind.

[Kepler]

Re: A bit like Earthlight?

Just in case anyone wants to pick nits:

The stasis in Forbidden Planet did not involve freezing or lower-than-normal body temperature, and was not used for the purpose of reducing resource consumption or preventing aging during transit. Instead it was presented as a technical requirement, either of faster-than-light travel itself, or of the transitions between sub-light and faster-than-light travel — I forget which. I think the idea was to prevent people from moving during the transition, or something like that. But it was a type of stasis, even if not the more common type of stasis.

[DaveFromSpace]

Boring

I bought the book because of this review and I'm almost done with it. So far its pretty bad. The characters are supposed to be top scientists but still don't take the most basic problem-solving steps to address their situation. Of course its a first novel but I'm not sure that its a good excuse for such a contrived setup. Thankfully it was only 2€ or so.