THE ICE PICK

Space Travel, by Ben Bova with Anthony R. Lewis. 1st ed. Cincinnati, Writer’s Digest Books, 1997. 273 p. Science Fiction Writing Series. $16.99. Includes bibliography, glossary, and index. ISBN 0-89879-747-0.

If you are writing realistic science fiction, rather than science fantasy, and your story involves space travel, this book may have the answers you need to make your story fly.

The chapter on rockets includes everything from the Medieval gunpowder-propelled ones and the chemical ones (solid and liquid), to nuclear and solar-powered electric rockets.

Effects of weightlessness, how to produce artificial gravity without making your characters dizzy, and the details of orbital mechanics are thoroughly discussed.

Space habitats and the difficulties of living and working in space, plus future space industries and military uses of space are explored.

Are you planning a lunar colony? Do you need to know whether lunar mines would be underground or open pit? Or how sunrise would appear on a lunar morning stroll? The chapter about the Moon discusses what it would be like living there and working in lunar industries.

Travel in the Solar System and conditions on each of the planets is discussed at length, along with the problems of travel over increasingly long distances and resulting communications home.

If your story requires interstellar travel, there are chapters on the problems of star flight, which will help your starship captain avoid such errors as ordering his vessel to hover or come to a full stop.

In the chapter on the Universe, the topics explained include natural lasers, black holes, space warps, and quasars. Questions are asked as to whether quasars are really starships, or if it’s possible that we are the most technologically advanced species in our galaxy.

One of the things I really like about this book is that along with providing the scientific and technical background, it shows how to use the details and facts in creating a story without boring your readers to death.

As the authors say, "You have to know the facts in order to write a convincing, well-crafted story that is internally consistent. But the reader does not have to know every tiny detail." Unless, for example, something goes wrong with your spacecraft’s engines, you should use the information in the chapter on rockets only as background to make your story better and not put in every detail about the engines you have laboriously researched. "If it’s not important to the story’s forward momentum, leave it out."

If your story takes place in outer space, or even on Earth in a future where space travel is taken for granted, and you need story ideas or want to avoid making scientific errors, I highly recommend this book.

{Published in SF and Fantasy Workshop Newsletter, Mar. 2003.}