โ Scribed by Nick Kanas M.D.
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
In the 25th Century, the effects of overpopulation and global warming on Earth have led to the formation of human colonies on the Moon, Mars and elsewhere in the Solar System, yet the limited number of viable places forces humanity to look to the stars. A crash program has been developed to sendProtos 1, a giant multigenerational star ship, to a newly discovered Earth-like planet orbiting a nearby star. The plan is for awake crewmembers to run the ship and for people in suspended animation to be roused before planet fall to use their skills in exploration and colony formation. To fulfill the goals of the mission and ensure that the in-flight population does not deplete the limited resources, the Protos Mandate is set up to govern a tightly controlled social system for the duration of the journey, which will take several generations. But problems threaten to sabotage the mission during its launch and transit and what finally awaits the crewmembers shocks them in an unpredictable way. This novel chronicles the trials and tribulations of this epic first interstellar mission.The scientific appendix at the end of the book discusses the challenges of such an interstellar mission based on an extensive literature review and it links these challenges to specific episodes in the novel. Issues that are considered include interstellar propulsion systems, economic considerations of interstellar flight, psychological and sociological factors inherent in a multigenerational space mission, problems with suspended animation, current knowledge of exoplanets and issues related to colonizing a distant planet and the possible discovery of extraterrestrial life. A history of interstellar missions in science fiction is also reviewed.Nick Kanasis an Emeritus Professor of Psychiatry at the University of California, San Francisco, where he directed the group therapy training program. For over 20 years he conducted research on group therapy, and for nearly 20 years after that he was the Principal Investigator of NASA-funded research on astronauts and cosmonauts. He is the co-author ofSpace Psychology and Psychiatry, which won the 2004 International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Book Award, and the author ofHumans in Space: The Psychological Hurdles, which won the 2016 International Academy of Astronautics Life Science Book Award.
Dr. Kanas has presented talks on space psychology and on celestial mapping at several regional and Worldcon science fiction conventions. A Fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society (London), he has been an amateur astronomer for over 50 years and is an avid reader of science fiction. He is also the author of two non-fiction books (Star Maps: History, Artistry, and CartographyandSolar System Maps: From Antiquity to the Space Age) and two science fiction novels (The New MartiansandThe Protos Mandate*), all published by Springer.*
Fiction
๐ SIMILAR VOLUMES
The 24th century: humankind has become a spacefaring civilization, colonizing the solar system and beyond. While no alien forms of life have yet been encountered in this expansion into space, colonists suddenly encounter machines of alien origin - huge robots able to reproduce themselves. Called rep
The year is 2035, and the crew from the first expedition to Mars is returning to Earth. The crewmembers are anxious to get home, and ennui pervades the ship. The mood is broken by a series of mysterious events that jeopardize their safety. Someone or something is threatening the crew. Is it an alien
The year is 2035, and the crew from the first expedition to Mars is returning to Earth. The crewmembers are anxious to get home, and ennui pervades the ship. The mood is broken by a series of mysterious events that jeopardize their safety. Someone or something is threatening the crew. Is it an alien
It has been nearly 100 years since the Apollo moon landings, when Jack and Vladimir, two astronauts on a mission to Venus, discover a mysterious void related to indigenous life on the planet. Subsequently more voids are detected on Earth, Mars, Titan, and, quite ominously, inside a planetoid emergin
In this critically acclaimed and bestselling novel, Ronald Wright has fashioned a story for our times, an unforgettable chronicle of love, plague and time travel in the tradition of**Nineteen Eighty-Four**and**The Handmaid's Tale**. *From the Trade Paperback edition.*
Sometime in the not-too-distant future ... unbeknownst to Earth, the Galaxy is home to a number of spacefaring societies. This confederation enforces a strict protocol forbidding any contact with civilizations that have not yet achieved both a substantial spacefaring capability and sufficient maturi