Last summer I stared writing my space epic. I know that’s a strange statement, and a slightly pretentious one at that, but rest assured in the knowledge that I’m being a little tongue-and-cheek when I say that. Essentially I decided that since I love sci-fi so much, and have pretty much tackled every other genre in my writing, I ought to try my hand at creating the kind of space novel I’ve always wanted to read. And that’s when it became an epic, because I decided I wanted to do it ALL. One of the things I decided early on was that instead of ignoring the difficulties of travelling to a new planet, I would embrace them. Things like every planet having its own clock and version of a year were things I wanted to play with. However, there has been one inherent problem I have yet to wrap my head around: Disease.
H.G. Wells wrote my favourite sci-fi book, The War of the Worlds, and I think he’s probably the most clever man who ever wrote in the genre, because he seems to be one of the few men clever enough and ballsy enough (and certainly the first) to realize that the one thing you will definitely encounter when travelling to a new place is all the wonderful diseases it has. Bios by Robert Charles Wilson is another wonderful novel that explores the concept of alien habitats being paradises of death for humans. The rampant spread of diseases is something people didn’t really think about until Europeans started coming to American bring lovely gifts hidden in their germs. Entire civilizations can be wiped out by an alien coughing on you. We know diseases will be a huge fucking problem if we ever find a habitable planet and want to visit it. Hell, there are scientists who don’t want us drilling into Mars because we will contiminate the planet.
The problem I’ve been mulling in my head is: what do I do? Try to roll over it by having my intrepid space travellers get a shot or take lots of pills whenever they go to a new place? I just can’t shake the feeling that ignoring something that will be of such vital important once humans actually start visiting other habitable planets (in the when and the if of the future) will be a huge misstep in my epic. So I guess I’m looking for advice/opinions from you lovely people. How far should I take it? How far is too far? How much is enough that you’ll believe a human won’t drop dead every time they step onto a new planet’s surface?
Horometry 