Star Trek: I'm Working On That: A Trek From Science Fiction To Science Fact by William Shatner with Chip Walter

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Star Trek: I'm Working On That: A Trek From Science Fiction To Science Fact by William Shatner with Chip Walter

Pub: Pocket Books/Simon and Schuster. 392 page hardback. Price: £12.99 (UK). ISBN: 0-671-04737-X.

Check out website: www.simonsays.co.uk

How has the science portrayed in 'Star Trek' reflected the future? In this volume, William Shatner assisted by William Walters (though to what extent we don't know) try to find out by asking the opinions of scientists around the world.

In the US edition, William Walters is referred to as Chip Walter, and indeed, throughout the UK book the 'contributor', as he is designated, is called Chip. OK, so William Walters is more British in tone than American 'Chip' (or is that French fries?) And William Shatner is usually called Bill. Does it really matter?

Well, yes! Bill is portrayed as the lowest common denominator in the public's ability to understand science which basically means that if he understands it, then so will everyone else. An example of this ability is his quote a third of the way into the book which says, 'don't you just love quantum physics? It's so goofy!' Well, yes!

Regardless, Bill comes out of the pages as being our friend and that's why I refer to him as Bill and not Shatner. Now, you don't get to be Starship Captain by being goofy and while you can get away with anything by acting the fool, Bill is by no means a fool's denominator himself.

I've a friend a bit like that. He goes about finding information by acting the daft laddie and asks questions from so called experts only he starts by asking a question to which he knows the answer and then discovers whether or not he's being told rubbish. Bill Shatner, in the course of this book, poses questions to many individuals in the scientific community but I think he has a bit up his sleeve at the same time.

In his quest to find out how things have developed from the Science Fiction of 'Star Trek', Bill starts with the most difficult subjects of Warp Drive and time travel. Basically, it doesn't matter how much we wish something to be true, if it's not possible then it just isn't possible.

This is the reluctant conclusion to the subject of faster-than-light travel. It's a pity Bill takes a long time to come to this result but, I suppose, there are so many fans out there living in the Star Trek universe that to tell them the whole thing couldn't possibly happen requires that they need let down gradually.

Some point to latest research showing that light travels faster through caesium vapour. This means nothing. Light travels at different speeds through different media, including the non-medium of vacuum. But what about wormholes, warps and other ways to effectively cut down the distance to be travelled, so apparently enabling travel faster than light?

While they're easy enough to imagine their practical realities make them absurd. To warp space you need mass, a huge amount of mass probably the equivalence of a small black hole. Try carrying that about in a spaceship? You couldn't even take it into a planetary system without causing enormous disruption to orbits.

By folding space so that two points previously some distance apart on a plane surface become adjacent to each other when this space is warped? This may be all very well to imagine but even if possible, what damage is done to the space and the star systems existing thereabouts which experience their space being warped? The unbelievably large quantity of energy required to do this would rip the structure of the universe asunder.

Another pillar of wisdom upon which 'Star Trek' rests is, of course, the Transporter. Although this technology is well utilised in 'Star Trek', the practicalities, ethics and philosophy of its operation leave Bill bewildered. Having your body disintegrated into not just atoms but its component quarks is probably a fatal experience but to retain the pattern and reconstitute it a distance away by sending the matter through a beam defies not only mechanics but quantum mechanics.

Heisenberg was driving the motorway in his new Volkswagen when he was stopped by the police. 'Do you know how fast you were going, Sir?' the policeman asked. 'No,' Heisenberg explained, 'but I know where I am!' In essence, this is the basis of Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle which states that it's impossible to know both the speed and position of sub-atomic particles such as electrons.

Bill admits to a problem here. It would be impossible to accurately reconstitute a transported being despite later versions having a so called uncertainty compensator.

Anyway, who says the person being sent away by transporter doesn't actually die while a new being, with the same memories, is born at the other end? Why not send the pattern alone for a new being to be created elsewhere? If I wished to be sent on a holiday, I'd be a bit upset if only the copy of me had a good time while I languished at home. The answer to this would be to vaporise the original.

Now, I don't think I'd like this option.

Matters get easier, though. Bill explains that his original Star Trek communicator is actually larger than many of today's mobile phones (excepting my brick-like contraption). The versatility of contemporary communication and satellite tracking devices far exceeds anything envisaged in 'Star Trek'. He also makes the remark that instead of getting bigger with improvement, things actually get smaller.

Huge computers of the sixties led people to imagine a future with even larger, all-powerful computers. How wrong they were! It's now becoming evident that biological computers will be the next stage in this process. Perhaps nanotechnology, now a familiar concept in Science Fiction and the later versions of 'Star Trek' will take us to the crossroads where we become more machine than human.

Bill's book is easy to read. Although it's about science, you never get to a point where the complexities are overpowering and you can't understand what's going on. This was a major aim in the book's construction and in this it has succeeded. Although someone with more scientific knowledge may find passages a bit tedious, the maxim which says that 'you learn something new each day' still holds true and this person should still find matters of interest to stimulate their imagination.

The title was actually a quote from Stephen Hawking who said, 'I'm Working on That' when shown a warp engine at a 'Star Trek' exhibition in America. Hawking will never invent such a device and future physicists won't either but Bill shows us, using his old job as a basis for comparison, that the future may hold many more surprises than we expect.

For this alone, the book is worth reading.

Rod MacDonald

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