Asimov's Science Fiction: March 2014 Read online

  Byzantine chariot races took place in the Hippodrome, a stadium four hundred yards long and seventy feet broad, with thirty or forty tiers of marble seats that could hold more than forty thousand spectators. Each chariot was drawn by a team of four horses; four chariots competed in each race, jostling wheel against wheel for the best position. The top charioteers were admired more passionately in Byzantium than movie stars and baseball heroes are in our own society.

  Powerful factions of sportsmen sponsored the teams, loudly proclaiming their own side's superiority and casting scorn on their competitors. In the sixth century A.D. there were two such factions, the Blues and the Greens, each comprising about a thousand hot-blooded young men who paid the costs of training and outfitting charioteers. Their role in Byzantine life went far beyond the world of sports, though. The factions actually were political parties—the Blues being landowning aristocrats of ancient Roman or Greek origin, and the Greens social upstarts—businessmen, industrialists, civil servants. Each faction had a distinctive style of dress, followed its own form of Christianity, lived in certain districts of the city. The night before a race, Blues and Greens roamed the streets looking for members of the opposite faction; skulls might be cracked, faction members might get a ducking in the Bosphorus, there might even be a few stabbings. At dawn they took their positions in the stands, shouted insults at one another, waved the banners of their colors; there were frequent brawls during the races themselves, leading, not uncommonly, to injuries and deaths.

  The rivalry became particularly intense under Justinian, who came to the throne in 527 A.D. A biography of him by Procopius, one of his key officials, shows Justinian to have been one of the greatest of Byzantine emperors, the architect of significant military victories and a major makeover of the systems of government; but Procopius has also left us a second, secretly published biography, hostile in the extreme, that calls him "dissembling, crafty, hypocritical, two-faced," and many another uncomplimentary thing.

  In the early years of his reign Justinian unwisely displayed open preference for the Blues. This, of course, produced outrage among the Greens, who vented it in lawlessness. Soon, Procopius tells us, each faction would "collect in gangs at nightfall and rob members of the upper class, despoiling any they met of cloaks, belts, gold brooches, and anything else they had with them. Some they thought it better to murder as well as rob, since dead men told no tales.... Constant fear made everyone suspect that death was just round the corner: no places seemed safe, no time could guarantee security, since even in the most revered churches and at public festivals people were being senselessly murdered...."

  In 532, Justinian issued a decree intended to bring the unruly sports fans under control. Greens and Blues responded with riots, and many lives were lost. Seven faction leaders were arrested and condemned to death. Both sides appealed for mercy, but got no answer from the Emperor.

  As January 11 approached, the traditional date for the start of three days of racing to mark the new year, the Blues and Greens met to negotiate a truce, hoping thus to win freedom for their leaders. Justinian paid no heed. On the third day of the races, with the prisoners still in the dungeons, a strange cry suddenly went up from the Blue side of the Hippodrome—"Long live the Greens and Blues!"—and from the Green side came an equally surprising reply, "Long Live the Blues and Greens!" It was the signal for an uprising against the Imperial government.

  Shouting Nika! Nika! ("Victory! Victory!"), the Blues and Greens marched together from the Hippodrome, with a wild mob accumulating behind them. Torches flared in the streets. The rioters freed the imprisoned leaders and set the Imperial prison on fire. Then they moved on to Justinian's palace and built huge bon fires that destroyed some of its outbuildings. The flames spread to the nearby cathedral of Hagia Sophia, causing its walls to collapse, and to the Senate house. Constantinople's sky turned black with oily smoke. If it had not been a windless day, the whole city would have burned. Terrified citizens streamed toward the docks and tried to escape to the far shore of the Bosphorus. The fire brigades, after a while, lost interest in their work and began to loot empty houses and shops. Blues and Greens used this moment for settling old grudges, attacking each other, setting their houses on fire.

  Justinian's attempts to calm things achieved nothing. The rioting continued into a third day, and a fourth. When the Emperor went to the Hippodrome to make a public appeal for order, he was shouted down by the Greens and forced to flee through a hidden passageway into his palace. When the Greens came upon a nephew of the former Emperor Anastasius they proclaimed him Emperor and crowned him with a golden collar that had been stolen from the palace.

  This was an ominous new development. The mob now had a symbolic figure about whom to rally, and Justinian began to make preparations to flee from the capital, only to be thwarted by his wife, the fiery Empress Theodora, who mocked him for his cowardice, declaring that she would not leave the city. Her words shamed him into taking a step he had hesitated to use until then: he turned the Imperial army loose on the rioting citizens. The rioters panicked and a terrible slaughter followed. Thirty thousand of the rebels, Procopius says, were butchered and thrown into the sea.

  The Nika revolt, as it was called, came to its end after six frightful days. At dawn a shaken Justinian rode through the charred city, where clouds of ash still danced on the air. Having somehow survived the crisis, though, he began at once the task of regaining control of the city, and before long a new cathedral of Hagia Sophia was rising from the ruins—it is still there, in the heart of the city that is now called Istanbul—and he was making plans for an invasion of the European territories that had been lost to the barbarians after the fall of the western half of the Roman Empire. The power of the Blues and Greens had been broken by the massacre that followed the riots, and thenceforth things were quieter in the Hippodrome.

  Today's sports riots have, at least so far, imperiled only fans of opposing teams, never—so far—threatening to bring down an entire government. (Although the Belgrade-Zagreb football riot of 1990 is sometimes credited with having touched off the Croatian War of Independence.) Nor has the death toll from any one riot even remotely approached that which followed the Blue-Green events of January 532. But, as George Santayana so memorably said, those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. And so, mindful as I am of ancient historical precedent, I think I'll continue to keep away from any sporting event where emotion is likely to run high.

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  On the Net

  GOOD (AND BAD) NEWS FROM OUTER SPACE

  James Patrick Kelly | 1677 words

  bot time

  It was 2007 when this column last visited Mars; much has happened since. Back then it was all about the robots. The scene-stealing stars of the Mars show were the twin rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, of the Mars Exploration Rover Mission marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.html >. But they had an able supporting cast watching from orbit, including the Mars Odyssey mars.jpl.nasa.gov/odyssey/index.html >, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter nasa.gov/mission_pages/MRO/main/index.html >, and the European Mars Express esa.int/SPECIALS/Mars_Express/index.html >. Although we lost contact with Spirit in 2010, Opportunity and the rest of the cast remain on the job today. In 2008, the Phoenix Mars Lande jpl.nasa.gov/news/phoenix/main.php > had a successful ninety-two day mission to search for environments that might support microbial life and to study the geologic history of Martian water. But on August 6, 2012, Spirit's big sister touched down in the Gale crater and the spotlight is now on the Mars Science Laboratory mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl >, better known as the rover Curiosity. About the size of a Mini Cooper, it is the smartest robot ever sent to space. Its mission is to investigate Mars's habitability. Might our sister planet ever have supported life? Might it someday serve as a human habitat? Meanwhile the exploration of Mars will continue this year with the launch of the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution Mission nasa.gov/mission_pages/maven/main/index.html >, or MAVEN. This orbiter will explore the
Red Planet's tenuous atmosphere. When Mars lost its magnetosphere four billion years ago, solar wind began stripping away its atmosphere. The MAVEN probe will help us understand how continuing loss of volatile compounds—such as carbon dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, and water—has shaped the history of Mars' climate.

  Mars today

  NASA's strategy for exploring Mars thus far might be summed up as follow the water. What we have learned from our robots is that there once was liquid water on Mars and probably lots of it, certainly enough to sustain life. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, while scouting a suitable landing for Curiosity, discovered quantities of opaline silica, which suggested that there had been liquid water as recently as two billion years ago. It has relayed images that suggest minuscule flows of briny water at the equator may continue to this day. While most of the ancient Martian water has been lost, some has been locked up in the polar ice caps, as well as in ice patches, frozen lakes and seas mostly concentrated on the equator.

  Of course, the destination to visit if you're planning to review the latest robotic doings on Mars is NASA's Mars Exploration Program mars.jpl.nasa.gov >, which opens onto an vast array of sites. The Mars Society marssociety.org > offers another excellent site; there you can find news releases, videos, and other educational resources, as well as papers given at the sixteen previous Annual International Mars Society Conventions. The Mars Society also sponsors two ongoing simulated Mars missions, in which volunteer crews live for various lengths of time in experimental habitats designed for the harsh Martian environment. The Mars Desert Research Station is located in Utah's barren canyon lands, while the Flashline Mars Arctic Research Station is in Northern Canada, about nine hundred miles from the North Pole.

  This brings up the question that has driven Mars science ever since Percival Lowell squinted into his telescope. When are we going to visit our sister planet?

  making martians

  It is no secret that science fiction writers and readers have long cherished dreams of not only traveling to Mars but also establishing colonies there. Much of NASA's exploration effort is aimed at a manned Mars mission, although the exact nature, timing, and funding of such a mission remains in question. The Mars Society has embraced its visionary founder Robert Zubrin's en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Zubrin > more streamlined approach. Mars Direct mars society.org/home/about/mars-direct > "advocates a minimalist, live-off-theland approach to exploring the planet Mars.... Using existing launch technology and making use of the Martian atmosphere to generate rocket fuel, extracting water from the Martian soil, and eventually using the abundant mineral resources of the Red Planet for construction purposes, the plan drastically lowers the amount of material which must be launched from Earth to Mars."

  While there are many different schemes for a Mars voyage, they share the same constraints. To conserve energy and time, it's best to make the trip when the two planets are the closest to one another in their orbits. This launch window opens every twenty-six months. A typical flight, then, would last at least two hundred days each way. That gives the astronauts about a year to explore. Most mission plans envision sending at least one supply ship ahead of the manned vehicle.

  And then there's Mars One mars-one.com >, a not-for-profit organization whose goal is to establish a human settlement on Mars—in a hurry. Their timetable calls for having the first spaceboots on the ground by 2023. That's in nine years, by my calendar. The scheduled departure for the first supply ship is 2016. Settlement rovers will follow, starting in 2018. These rovers will build habitats for the first group of four colonists. By 2025, groups of four will be arriving every two years, as the launch window permits. You may have heard of this group since they have been seeking volunteers for their colony; as I write this more than eighty-five thousand have signed up for a chance to spend the rest of their lives on Mars. You see, the Mars One folks plan to save money by booking you a one-way trip. Sign on, make the cut, and you will truly live and die as a Martian.

  Can the Mars One scheme possibly work? "I don't know," says NASA administrator General Charles Bolden www.jsc.nasa.gov/Bios/htmlbios/bolden-cf.html >. "I don't know what their plan is." Mars evangelist Robert Zubrin thinks the plan is theoretically possible. But, he says, "They have set a very high bar for themselves, and I'm not sure they have the resources."

  fragile humans

  Take the time to review the various proposals for getting to Mars—even the fastest of the fast track schemes—and one thing becomes clear. Dr. Zubrin and the other Mars advocates are right: we have 99 percent of the hardware we need to do it right now. Yes, we could improve some of the technology, maybe squeeze more efficiency from existing systems, but we're really pretty much good to go. And while it wouldn't be cheap, we also have the resources to fund a mission. If we could magically divert that fraction of our economy currently devoted to the video game industry to Mars exploration, we could cut the check next Tuesday.

  There is a real problem with going to Mars, but it has to do with software, not hardware. And by software I don't mean programs and dbases and GUIs. I mean us. As science fiction readers, we have long had it drilled into us that space is a hostile environment. We know that exposure to the vacuum of space and its unimaginable cold will swiftly and surely kill us. But within the confines of a cozy spaceship—or a sprawling star-ship—we imagine we'll be safe.

  But the space vehicles that you find here in Asimov's do not yet exist, and the ones we have available may not be able to take our crews to Mars and back safely. Consider, for example, the claustrophobia factor. The record for the longest continuous spaceflight is held by Valeri Polyakov en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valeri _Polyakov > at 437 days, about one half the time proposed for most Mars missions. And he was living aboard the Soviet space station Mir; the first manned Mars vehicle is likely to be far more cramped.

  But it is the problem of radiation that most concerns mission planners. Here on Earth and to some extent in low orbit we are protected by Earth's magnetic field. Once beyond its confines, galactic cosmic rays, solar flares, and coronal mass ejections pose a real threat. A solar proton event could kill a crew within hours unless they sought shelter behind shielding. We are getting better at predicting these infrequent storms on the sun, but our forecasting is by no means perfect. Galactic cosmic radiation (GCR), on the other hand, is continuous, and thus more troublesome. Measurements taken on the Mars Science Laboratory during its trip to deliver Curiosity show that that exposure to GCR may be extremely hazardous to astronaut health aaas.org/news/releases/2013/0530_mars.shtml >, with an estimated dosage at or over acceptable career exposure levels on the inbound and outbound legs of the typical mission. Because the shielding around the Radiation Assessment Device (RAD) was similar to that which a manned vehicle would use, this is the first realistic estimate of the danger. And this measurement does not include GCR exposure that the astronauts would experience during their year exploring Mars, likely not to be as large but still significant. While the primary risk of this level of GCR has been thought to be increased chance of developing cancer later in life, another new study points to a more immediate danger space.com/19082-space-radiationastronauts-alzheimers.html >. According to Dr. M. Kerry O'Banion of the University of Rochester, "The possibility that radiation exposure in space may give rise to health problems such as cancer has long been recognized. However, this study shows for the first time that exposure to radiation levels equivalent to a mission to Mars could produce cognitive problems and speed up changes in the brain that are associated with Alzheimer's disease." The study looked at high-mass, high-energy particles, specifically iron expelled by exploding stars. "Because iron particles pack a bigger wallop it is extremely difficult from an engineering perspective to effectively shield against them," said O'Banion. "One would have to essentially wrap a spacecraft in a six-foot block of lead or concrete."

  exit

  Tom Godwin's "The Cold Equations" http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cold _Equations > is a touchstone SF story about how l
aws of physics trump human desires. As of 2014, the radiation equation makes interplanetary travel seem unlikely. But perhaps we can change that equation for Mars. One way to might be to lessen the exposure by speeding up the voyage with a better propulsion system en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_ thermal_rocket >. Or maybe there is a way to design a better shield nature.com/news/spacecraft-data-nail-downradiation-risk-for-humans-going-to-mars-1.13099 >.

  In the meantime, I intend to give Mars One a pass. If this adventure appeals to you, by all means send in your application fee. Me, I'll be writing my science fiction stories here on Earth. If nothing else, the cost of sending my manuscripts from a habitat in Bradbury City to Sheila in New York is more than I'm willing to pay.

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  NEXT ISSUE

  315 words

  APRIL/MAY ISSUE

  Two huge novellas are crammed into our April/May 2014 double anniversary issue. "Each in His Prison, Thinking of the Key" is William Preston's exciting new story about an "Old Man" who's bigger than life and a young man who must learn to cope with his own devastating talents. Robert Reed's gigantic alternate history novella about "The Principles" introduces us to a recent college graduate, unemployed and aimless in a repressive society, and an intense older woman who is struggling to change an oppressive regime.

  ALSO IN APRIL/MAY

  A charming protagonist makes the best of her deal with the devil in Michael Swanwick's "Of Finest Scarlet Was Her Gown"; new author Fran Wilde reveals that conditions on a prison planet will sting "Like a Wasp to the Tongue"; "Someday" making babies will be a lot different according to veteran Asimov's author James Patrick Kelly; but soldiers aren't going to find homecoming any easier according to Matthew Johnson's "Rules of Engagement." New-to- Asimov's author Joe M. McDermott spins a heartbreaking tale about a family that depends on "Dolores, Big and Strong"; K.J. Zimring's "The Talking Cure" isn't quite as it appears; M. Bennardo tells an unusual story of survival in "Slowly Upward, the Coelacanth"; and in Will McIntosh's terrifying tale about an extraterrestrial invasion, a human boy has a strange encounter with an alien "Scout."