Earthbound.

[fings]

Since waking up Monday morning, I've had an idea rattling around inside my head for as SF story. The concept: instantaneous (FTL) teleportation has been invented. However, it only works for women. Any human male who goes through the teleporter dies. One exception: pregnant women, up to six months or so, can safely teleport, even while carrying a male fetus.

Mars gets colonized via teleporter. (There might be a handful of men, who got there via rocket, and helped set up that end of the teleporter.) The logistics are overwhelming: it costs $500M to send a man via rocket, and $500 to send a woman via teleporter. There is a big controversy over the first boy to be born on Mars, since he will have to live out his life there.

Meanwhile it has been discovered that not only can teleporters "inertial compensators" be used to dampen momentum, they can be used to amplify it as well. Like *big time* amplification, limited only by the amount of power you can apply. Construction begins on a lunar orbit teleport pad.

After that, space-based teleport pads are used to launch very fast (.9c) probes. The probes also carry teleport pads, so after 5 years when the first probe passes Alpha Centauri, it can kick out another teleport pad, one that will be moving slow enough to orbit Alpha Centauri.

Female astronauts assemble remote space stations orbiting other stars, and eventually land teleporters on extra-solar planets. Space based teleportation platforms are used to send even more probes out, and slowly a network of extra-solar FTL teleportation links are set up. Men, meanwhile, remain earthbound (well, plus some on Mars.) Teleportation also starts replacing air travel on Earth. Women think nothing of jaunting off to New York, Australia, or even Mars for the day. Air travel becomes almost exclusively male. The shipping industry disappears. At any given moment, over one million women are away from Earth, either in space, on Mars, or eventually on other planets.

That is all of what has rattled out of my head at the moment. I'm not 100% sure where it is all going. Too bad I am not a better writer, because I think there could be some worthwhile themes to be explored in this.

Comments

[king-duncan.livejournal.com]

Any human male who goes through the teleporter dies.

That must have been a hell of a testing phase.

Sounds like a cool idea!

[jayspec.livejournal.com]

Duncan is being glib, but he has a good point. Considering the predominance of men in the sciences, it's a fair bet that men were at least somewhat involved in the discovery, design, and construction. After the first man died testing it, what person in good conscience would allow a woman (or any person) to go through? And, even knowing this, who would ever let a woman carrying a male fetus go through at all? We're paranoid about pregnant women drinking coffee!

Not that I think that this derails the whole idea, by any means. To the contrary, it's an interesting point that should be explored. Perhaps there are some people involved with less-than-perfect ethics...

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

What about animal testing? One assumes they went through a lot of monkeys testing this thing. And it can be assumed that they sent a pregnant monkey or two through.

[jayspec.livejournal.com]

Sure, I'll buy that. But still, you know that you're sending Woman 1 through a device that is often deadly. What if the deadliness is activated by a DNA sequence found in male chimpanzees, but found in all humans? How are the scientists absolutely positively sure it's keyed on gender before you put the first human through it?

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Well, they would test living human tissue first, both male and female. Assuming the necrosis occurs on that small a level. Then you get military or death row volunteers. They can also graft human dna onto a mouse and test that first. (Remember the ear?)

This kind of technology isn't going to be the baby of just one scientist. It'll probably be government funded once they get inanimate objects transported. Imagine the military implications. Testing's going to get done, whether the public knows about it or not.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

So what is it about males that prevents them from going through? Is it the testosterone? What would hormone treatments do?

What about sperm? Does it survive? Can all plants survive? What about insects?

I realize you don't have the answer to these questions. I'm just thinking out loud. This sort of thing fascinates me.

I would imagine with fewer women on Earth society would undergo interesting changes. Hmm. Maybe a terrorist group plans to destroys the terrestial interstellar transport pad and restore Earth to its former glory. Maybe in time scientists create a gene therapy to flawlessly change a male to a female and back again. Or maybe that technology is being developed and someone doesn't want it to happen.

So many ideas pop up.

[jayspec.livejournal.com]

90% of war is logistics. Women would suddenly become the uber-warriors. But maybe I'm just thinking like a man. :)

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Well, that depends, actually. I mean, many women might jump at the chance to get transported off-planet, leaving more men than women at home. That's not good for the men. I imagine a bit of regression and more aggression happening. It could be that men start thinking of women as a (even more) precious resource. Could be a whole societal shift. And maybe now women fight and race to find transport pads off the planet to escape from oppression. They hear that on the colonies, women are in control. Hmm...

[jayspec.livejournal.com]

And we're just looking at it from a Western perspective. Certainly, oppressive patriarchal societies will not be happy with this technology...

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Not to mention the philosophical and religious implications. Maybe some religions will decide that women can get transported because they don't have souls. And of course there'll be groups protesting teleportation in general because of the concept that it actually kills people and creates all new people on the other end. It'll certainly be a political talking point. Should teleportation be made illegal? Does it actually kill people?

[fings.livejournal.com]

On writing the post, I realized there was a possibility to work in a "Mars needs women" joke.

More seriously, I expect a different culture to arise on Mars, as you noted, because Mars will be significantly female dominated for many years. At first, it will be all female (with a negligible number of adult males), and a mix of children -- but the female children can be safely brought and forth to Earth, it is only the male children who are full time Martians.

By the time there are a significant number of adult male Martians, they'll still be swamped by the number of women who can, at a whim, travel there from Earth. Certainly some will use this technology to escape from overbearing patriarchal societies. Some Earth-based cultures may ban women from teleportation entirely, but they'll be left behind technologically like the Amish.

[king-duncan.livejournal.com]

Plus, gay men would likely become very popular on Earth- at least surreptitiously.

[fings.livejournal.com]

In my thinking it's something to do with the Y-chromosome; in fact, I wonder if androgen insensitive XY females would also be affected.

Sperm does survive, so off-planet sperm banks are possible. However, it is easier for a woman just to teleport back to Earth and get knocked up the old-fashioned way.

By and large, plants can survive; I'm not sure what level of problems there would be with the rest of the animal kingdom.

[skitty.livejournal.com]

This sounds really fascinating. If you're not comfortable with your own writing skills, why not talk with a collaborator?

Or just give it a go. I bet it will unfold better than you expect.

[fings.livejournal.com]

I guess mostly I am afraid of the time commitment writing something like this will entail. I can write acceptably for a short story, but I fear this sounds like a possible novel.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

The thing is, the setting is not the story. You can write a short story set in this universe.

[fings.livejournal.com]

Interesting thought. There are quite a few short story possibilities.

The life of the first boy on Mars, and his eventual decision over whether to have his son born on Earth or elsewhere.

A story about a guy living on Earth who's girlfriend gets a job as a bulldozer driver on Mars. She lives there Monday-Friday, and weekends with him.

A more general space-exploration story, but with only female characters.

Those are the first out of my head.

[auryn29a.livejournal.com]

Yeah. Those are awesome.

[trish-punch.livejournal.com]

It sounds like you have a promising start there...

damn

[paulisdead.livejournal.com]

I want to read this book. you better write it!

It might be like the Internet Boom. All the "money" making jobs would be in this extra-galactic travel industries. So, women would out-earn men by huge margins.

Maybe there is a group of men who don't like this _at all_, and form a group to start sabotaging the teleporters. An insurgency!

Maybe the Y chromosome itself is mutated by the teleporter radiation, and that mutation causes a rapidly developing cancer or radiation-poisoning like sickess that causes death within a couple of days. (it might be interesting to let the men travel knowing they would only live a day, etc.)

damn, write the book!!!1!!one!!

[tsc-girl.livejournal.com]

I volunteer to be your ghostwriter, if you want one. My writing skills are excellen t, although my ability to generate the beginning synthesis of plots hinder me - plus I think you're going to need a female perspective [aside from your wife's of course]

[(Anonymous)]

Cool beans! I'd recommend reading Glory Season by David Brin to get a feel of a woman dominated society because that's what you're setting up for space. Sure pregnant women can come on through to start a 50/50 generation but every woman immigrant 20 years down the line will skew the numbers womanward again.

I also envision men filing discrimination lawsuits back home, which is making my little oppressed woman heart very happy. And let's not forget the man heavy Earth the women are leaving behind. For that think China and the trouble Chinese men are having finding Chinese wives since the one family one child laws skewed the demographics that way as people aborted female fetuses looking for a son.

There's a lot of consequences to your idea - looking forward to seeing more.

[jfitz.livejournal.com]

Something very very similar has been done, as a short story. In Omni, I think. Or maybe IASFM. Women can pilot FTL ships. I think men can be passengers, but piloting is where the money is.

Men are reduced to prostitution.

[eafm.livejournal.com]

Fascinating premise. I find myself wondering what would happen with trans or intersex folks, and what about folks who are chimeras? And also wondering, yes, what would happen to Earth culture -- would it challenge some leftover sexist attitudes, would men become more likely to do more traditionally female work and take over more of the domestic sphere, as more women were doing the work of traveling to do work on Mars, or would they compensate for a sense of being left behind by becoming more domineering, moving totally away from anything vaguely Sensitive New Age Guy-ish? Very cool.

[fings.livejournal.com]

Right now, I'm unsure. If it is purely Y chromosome based, then androgen-insensitive XY women would be killed. If it is a hormonal issue, then perhaps castrati could use a teleporter.

As far as Earth male culture, I think there would be a large amount of jealousy and resentment, some of which would be channeled into misogynistic attitudes like "women don't understand distance, I mean, how can they?"

[kittiethedragon.livejournal.com]

That's one of the more interesting SF ideas I've heard in a while.

Also: hi there! Just perusing the members of NYSteam and wanted to drop in and say hi–you seem interesting. Mind if I friend you?