Path: ...!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail
From: Paul S Person <psperson@old.netcom.invalid>
Newsgroups: rec.arts.sf.written
Subject: Re: Five SF Books Set in the Future... of 2020
Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2024 09:03:21 -0700
Organization: A noiseless patient Spider
Lines: 59
Message-ID: <4243fj1ilij9k4b615pgle36sf5ipohhc9@4ax.com>
References: <vcc656$ipb$1@panix2.panix.com> <vcq4iv$3v9$1@panix2.panix.com> <vcq5h2$2cdcj$1@dont-email.me> <vcq82e$nl8$1@reader1.panix.com> <vcq8lp$ocd$1@panix2.panix.com>
MIME-Version: 1.0
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: quoted-printable
Injection-Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2024 18:03:24 +0200 (CEST)
Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="16ee64b3b5709b79f02be6b167a1f671";
	logging-data="2923880"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org";	posting-account="U2FsdGVkX18TVwXxMUuMUe2zQcdOHbf9QVj+OZMPMRw="
User-Agent: ForteAgent/8.00.32.1272
Cancel-Lock: sha1:oWR0jDClTK32Sesth4eVxkgE6l4=
Bytes: 3770

On 22 Sep 2024 23:19:21 -0000, kludge@panix.com (Scott Dorsey) wrote:

>James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
>>Bobbie Sellers  <blissInSanFrancisco@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
>>>On 9/22/24 15:09, Scott Dorsey wrote:
>>>> Bobbie Sellers  <blissInSanFrancisco@mouse-potato.com> wrote:
>>>>> 	But I happen to be curently reading "Aftermath" by
>>>>> Charles Sheffield which is set in 2026 published in 1998.
>>>>>   In this novel the world is suffering a double crisis.  Alpha =
Centuri
>>>>> has gone supenova and the radiation hit the Suuthern Hemisphere
>>>>> and set offgsome very unpleansanbt weather but the wave of hard
>>>>> radiation causes a EMP and wipes out all computers not in
>>>>> Faraday cages.
>>>>=20
>>>> This is written by someone who is unfamiliar with the inverse square=
 law?
>>>
>>>	I dunno what Sheffield is familiar with aside from excellent story
>>>telling skills. But the microchip ending event is the very hard=20
>>>radiation delayed by the expanding shell of the supernova.
>
>Right, and as the shell gets larger and larger, it becomes less and less
>dense.  The radiation still has lots of energy, but there is less of it.
>
>We get very high energy cosmic rays here that are very high energy,=20
>enough to easily penetrate through the Van Allen belts and the =
atmosphere
>and my roof.  They leave annoying streaks on the photographic film =
stored
>in my freezer, and they keep on going.  But there aren't a lot of them,
>so other than some fogging they aren't a serious threat.

IIRC, the reason computer hard drives began coming with their own
error detection and correction is because, occasionally, a cosmic ray
would flip a bit.=20

Which isn't much of a problem with 360K floppies or even 20MB hard
drives, but once you get up into the GB (or TB), bit flips start
happening on a regular recurring basis.

This ultimately made SpinRite not as necessary as it once was, as the
hard drives were doing the work themselves.=20

>>>	Within the story the effects are credible. In real life asfawk
>>>Alpha Centuri is not the correct sort of star to become a supernova. =
In
>>>the story that point is raised and then dropped because in the world
>>>of the story it happened regardless of supernova theory.
>>
>>I believe in the second book, Alpha C's nova turns out to have
>>been assisted, and also that the explosion was assymetric.=20
>
>A CME directed toward the earth might make for something more measurable
>here, although it would have to be pretty narrow.
--=20
"Here lies the Tuscan poet Aretino,
Who evil spoke of everyone but God,
Giving as his excuse, 'I never knew him.'"