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Orthogonal

478 statements
94 feature instances
18 referencing feature instances

Orthogonal	type	TVTItem
Orthogonal	label	Orthogonal
Orthogonal	page	Orthogonal
Orthogonal	comment	A characteristically Hard Science Fiction Trilogy by Australian author Greg Egan. Consists of: The Clockwork Rocket (2011) The Eternal Flame (2012) The Arrows of Time (2013)Orthogonal is set in a universe where a single minus sign, deep in an equation governing the rules of spacetime, has been changed to a plus sign. Through the story, Egan explores the higher-order ramifications that change has on the laws of physics (and, by extension, on nearly every other discipline of science). Light has no universal speed (colors of light with shorter wavelengths, such as violet, literally travel faster than colors like red, which have longer wavelengths, meaning that distant stars appear as rainbow-colored streaks instead of white specks), and the generation of light creates heat and energy; reverse Time Dilation is in effect; and entropy works more or less backward.The plot follows a group of Shapeshifting Starfish Aliens faced with an impending apocalypse caused by incredibly destructive Antimatter meteorites. They realize they can't do anything to save themselves with their current technology, so they build a Generation Ship to fly into that alternate dimension, where they will have all the time they need to advance their technology to the point where they will be able to return and Save the World.In true Greg Egan fashion, the trilogy mostly alternates between chapters that advance the plot and chapters that explore the scientific implications of the One Big Lie that governs the rules of the universe. The latter is mostly accomplished (again, in Egan's signature style) by having a few scientifically-inclined Mr. Expositions bounce Techno Babble off each other.
Orthogonal	fetched	2023-04-16T18:28:36Z
Orthogonal	parsed	2023-04-16T18:28:37Z
Orthogonal	isPartOf	DBTropes
Orthogonal / int_11236451	type	Farm Boy
Orthogonal / int_11236451	comment	Farmboy: Yalda in The Clockwork Rocket grew up on a farm and went into academia against her family's wishes. Several characters in The Eternal Flame are also characterized as farmers, Tamara probably being the most notable. The Generation Ship wouldn't be able to subsist without a great deal of highly-specialized agriculture, so the science of space farming is vital to the ship's inhabitants.
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Orthogonal / int_13353b94	type	Narrative Shapeshifting
Orthogonal / int_13353b94	comment	Narrative Shapeshifting: One application of the Starfish Aliens' Shapeshifting ability is that they write by raising shaped ridges on their skin, and then dusting their skin with dye and pressing it to paper for posterity. But when characters can't hear each other, either because the environment is too noisy or because they are in the silent vacuum of space, they can also communicate by "writing" notes on their skin for others to read.
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Orthogonal / int_177a6464	type	Genre Shift
Orthogonal / int_177a6464	comment	Genre Shift: The second book is a highly-technical romp through the science of the trilogy's universe, in which not much actually happens aside from a brief kidnapping plot for the climax. In contrast, the first and third book are much more plot-oriented, with the third book in particular being fairly action-packed. Whereas the first book has little action aside from the launch, and the second book's climax is over almost as soon as it starts, the third book is rife with sabotage, justified Timey-Wimey-ness, questionably Well-Intentioned Terrorists, and more than a few explosions (none of which are accidental, or have anything to do with Antimatter, unlike the previous books).
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Orthogonal / int_17ce80aa	type	All There in the Manual
Orthogonal / int_17ce80aa	comment	All There in the Manual: Egan has posted multiple essays on his website that delve even further into the workings of Orthogonal's universe — and yet, here they are.
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Orthogonal / int_17fc8b9c	type	Storyboarding the Apocalypse
Orthogonal / int_17fc8b9c	comment	Storyboarding the Apocalypse: In The Clockwork Rocket, once Yalda predicts that a Hurtler will destroy the planet, her student Eusebio explicitly asks her to do this. note What he really wants is a timeframe, so that he can judge whether the idea of the Generation Ship is worth pursuing, or if they're all going to die too soon for it to matter.
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Orthogonal / int_18d15922	type	Title Drop
Orthogonal / int_18d15922	comment	Title Drop: All over the place in each book, with the exception of The Clockwork Rocket, which is never stated in those words. The "Eternal Flame" is a hypothetical inexhaustible energy source that could be used to fuel a Perpetual Motion Machine. Any given object has an "Arrow of Time", a four-dimensional vector that describes its path through spacetime. The trilogy's title is dropped far more frequently than any of the individual book titles; "Orthogonal", which is basically a fancy word for "perpendicular", is constantly used to refer to situations where something is traveling orthogonally through spacetime with respect to something else — "something else" usually being the Doomed Home Planet. note In other words, if two space rocks have arrows of time that are perpendicular to each other (each one's movement through space is perceived as movement through time by the other, and vice versa), they are said to be orthogonal to each other. The phrase "orthogonal matter", which is this universe's equivalent to Antimatter, is by far the most frequently used Title Drop.
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Orthogonal / int_19df659c	type	Gone Horribly Wrong
Orthogonal / int_19df659c	comment	One experiment by the biologists involves recording the light signals used by the brain to induce muscle movement, and playing it back into the body to try and trigger the movements artificially. It doesn't quite work as planned, and the resulting uncontrollable hand spasms terrify the subject so badly that he tells his associates to cut off the hand. The effect is slightly lessened by remembering that he is a Shapeshifting Starfish Alien who can reabsorb the damaged flesh to heal the wound, but his brief Inner Monologue during the muscle spasms makes it clear that this is his reaction.
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Orthogonal / int_1c7a7a52	type	The Slow Path
Orthogonal / int_1c7a7a52	comment	The Slow Path: A very unusual example that depends on your perspective in this universe's spacetime. The Generation Ship is essentially taking The Even Slower Path, deliberately (and literally) taking a roundabout path to the near future, so that they can have more time to figure out how to handle the future before it arrives.
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Orthogonal / int_204a1207	type	Hyperspace Is a Scary Place
Orthogonal / int_204a1207	comment	Hyperspace Is a Scary Place: Not least because Everything Is Trying To Kill You, including dust and even air thanks to the fact that orthogonal matter in this universe is essentially Antimatter, and therefore causes catastrophic Collision Damage if it touches normal matter under all but the most carefully-calculated circumstances.
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Orthogonal / int_21d70919	type	Crapsack World
Orthogonal / int_21d70919	comment	Crapsack World: Discussed in The Clockwork Rocket by Nino, who quotes an earlier offscreen conversation with an opponent of the project.
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Orthogonal / int_234bd900	type	For Science!
Orthogonal / int_234bd900	comment	For Science!: The characters initially have no idea what they need to study in order to Save the World, so they pretty much just research anything and everything that comes to mind. The hope is that if they study enough subjects, something will lead to a revelatory breakthrough. This includes light, agriculture, biology, the fundamental building blocks of matter, and more. note Granted, some of these studies are geared more toward ensuring that they don't all starve to death due to overpopulation before accomplishing anything meaningful.
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Orthogonal / int_243c8078	type	Spontaneous Human Combustion
Orthogonal / int_243c8078	comment	Spontaneous Human Combustion: Life in this universe relies on chemical reactions that occasionally get out of control, resulting in dangerous and spectacular instances of this trope. In fact, the trilogy opens with one.
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Orthogonal / int_2717a55e	type	Bizarre Alien Psychology
Orthogonal / int_2717a55e	comment	Bizarre Alien Psychology: Since Out with a Bang and Death by Childbirth always applies (for the women), men typically raise their children alone or with the help of their own fathers. Thus, women are widely (but not universally) considered unfit for childrearing. Sex is a very complicated and touchy subject. It's obviously a biological imperative, but for a woman, it's suicide, and for a man, it's murdering your co. Despite this, most men have no qualms about their duty to reproduce, to the extent of shaming women who don't look forward to Death by Childbirth. Predictably, this strikes many of the female characters as an in-universe example.
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Orthogonal / int_272abb98	type	Shoot the Shaggy Dog
Orthogonal / int_272abb98	comment	Shoot the Shaggy Dog: Everyone on the ship starving to death due to overpopulation and insufficient crop yields (and therefore rendering the majority of the trilogy, if not the whole thing, pointless) is outright stated to be a possible ending to the second book, which provides the motivation for the biologists and horticulturists in their attempts to defy it.
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Orthogonal / int_2741a951	type	Merlin Sickness
Orthogonal / int_2741a951	comment	At one point in The Arrows of Time, while en route to a planet that is essentially traveling backward through time, a few travelers have an interesting conversation about leaving a spyglass on the surface to decay: From the planet's "perspective", it will be as if a rock eroded into sand, which then gradually and autonomously formed itself into a spyglass, which would then be picked up by the visitors and taken off with them into space. Things get weirder when someone wonders what they may have on the ship with them that came from the planet that nobody has ever set foot on yet.
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Orthogonal / int_27a047a6	type	Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born
Orthogonal / int_27a047a6	comment	Unto Us a Son and Daughter Are Born: With highly unusual exceptions, this trope is universally played straight with every birth. When women reproduce, they fission into two pairs of male and female twins. Rarely, one of the pairs might instead be a single female, but males are never born solo, and the solo females are, again, very rare. There are no instances in the book of both pairs being born as solo females instead, so every natural birth results in at least one pair of twins.
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Orthogonal / int_297ab1b9	type	Parental Abandonment
Orthogonal / int_297ab1b9	comment	Parental Abandonment: Death by Childbirth is universal for women. Discussed a few times, and ultimately defied by the development of a procedure that allows women to survive childbirth.
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Orthogonal / int_2af7961	type	Faster-Than-Light Travel
Orthogonal / int_2af7961	comment	Faster-Than-Light Travel: Thanks to the way spacetime works, there is no universal speed limit, and achieving FTL speeds is a surprisingly simple matter. Of course, you stop moving forward through time and interacting with other matter becomes slightly disastrous, but that's the breaks.
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Orthogonal / int_2fc2d6e1	type	Shapeshifter Mode Lock
Orthogonal / int_2fc2d6e1	comment	Shapeshifter Mode Lock: When Carlo's hand starts spasming uncontrollably during the light experiment, he tries to reabsorb it into his body, but can't. It's implied that he was just so viscerally repulsed by the phenomenon that he couldn't make himself absorb the hand, rather than actually being physically incapable of doing it, but it still qualifies.
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Orthogonal / int_31c5e7fb	type	Starfish Aliens
Orthogonal / int_31c5e7fb	comment	Starfish Aliens: What other kind of life would you expect to evolve in a universe where the laws of physics are fundamentally different?
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Orthogonal / int_32c1c899	type	GenerationShip
Orthogonal / int_32c1c899	comment	The Surveyor returns to the Peerless after a long absence to find that the inverted Time Capsule messaging system (which essentially lets people send email back in time) has been built, but also mysteriously stops working all at once at a known point in the future. But since no one actually knows what causes the disruption, the crew of the Surveyor realize that if nobody does anything, they are most likely consigning themselves to being hit by a meteor. On the other hand, if they attempt to sabotage the system, they are raising the probability that they will cause the disruption, which means no one will be harmed. In other words, they know they Can't Fight Fate since the universe is an absolutely Stable Time Loop, but if nobody tries to cause the disruption, then it's almost guaranteed that it's caused by a disaster such as a meteor strike; but as long as no one knows what causes the disruption and someone is trying to cause it, they are increasing the odds that the disruption has a harmless cause.
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Orthogonal / int_33ba37ca	type	Out with a Bang
Orthogonal / int_33ba37ca	comment	Since Out with a Bang and Death by Childbirth always applies (for the women), men typically raise their children alone or with the help of their own fathers. Thus, women are widely (but not universally) considered unfit for childrearing.
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Orthogonal / int_3495b94d	type	Gendercide
Orthogonal / int_3495b94d	comment	Gendercide: Discussed by opponents of the reproduction-inducing experiments, who hypothesize that if survivable single childbirth always results in female children, it will lead to the eradication of the male gender.
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Orthogonal / int_35ca4848	type	Antimatter
Orthogonal / int_35ca4848	comment	Antimatter: Occasionally referred to by name, but usually just called "orthogonal matter". When interacting with matter that originated in a cluster traveling in a different direction through the time-dimension, it's important to take into account exactly which direction it was traveling. Depending on which "time direction" you approach it from, it could either be ordinary harmless matter with Merlin Sickness (i.e., experiencing time backwards from your perspective), or it could be Made of Explodium and annihilate you in a massive explosion as soon as you touch it.
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Orthogonal / int_37690091	type	Stable Time Loop
Orthogonal / int_37690091	comment	Stable Time Loop: The theory of four-space states that the dimension of time is literally identical to any of the dimensions of space and that the universe is a closed loop in all dimensions, implies that this is the natural state of the entire universe. In The Clockwork Rocket, a character wonders if free will is just an illusion in such a universe, and Yalda explains her opinion of why it's not. In The Arrows of Time, the main plot is driven by the idea of a messaging system that will allow people to send messages back in time. Cue extensive discussions about why this could not possibly lead to a Temporal Paradox. At one point in The Arrows of Time, while en route to a planet that is essentially traveling backward through time, a few travelers have an interesting conversation about leaving a spyglass on the surface to decay: From the planet's "perspective", it will be as if a rock eroded into sand, which then gradually and autonomously formed itself into a spyglass, which would then be picked up by the visitors and taken off with them into space. Things get weirder when someone wonders what they may have on the ship with them that came from the planet that nobody has ever set foot on yet.
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Orthogonal / int_4108bb3e	type	Doomed Hometown
Orthogonal / int_4108bb3e	comment	The trilogy's title is dropped far more frequently than any of the individual book titles; "Orthogonal", which is basically a fancy word for "perpendicular", is constantly used to refer to situations where something is traveling orthogonally through spacetime with respect to something else — "something else" usually being the Doomed Home Planet. note In other words, if two space rocks have arrows of time that are perpendicular to each other (each one's movement through space is perceived as movement through time by the other, and vice versa), they are said to be orthogonal to each other. The phrase "orthogonal matter", which is this universe's equivalent to Antimatter, is by far the most frequently used Title Drop.
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Orthogonal / int_413c475b	type	Space Age Stasis
Orthogonal / int_413c475b	comment	Space Age Stasis: In The Arrows of Time, when the inhabitants of the Peerless construct a messaging system that allows them to send messages back in time, it results in the inability of anyone to come up with any new technological or scientific advances. This is pretty significant when you consider that up to this point, they have progressed from technology based on clockwork and combustion engines (or the equivalent thereof) to photonics (read: electronics) and nearly-Perpetual Motion Machines that are powered directly by light — all within six generations of the launch. SPOILERIFFIC note The lengthy explanation given for this is as follows: In this universe, time travel is relatively easy, because acceleration in space changes the direction through which you travel through time. Accelerate a lot, and you'll go sideways; accelerate even more, and you'll go backwards. Continue accelerating and you'll eventually come full circle and be traveling "normally" again. But since the universe is a closed loop and time travel is just a matter of course, obviously everything has to be mutually consistent. Stable Time Loops are really no big deal — but a Stable Time Loop containing an ontological paradox (at least, one more complex than a basic exchange of obvious or useless information), while not patently impossible, is astronomically unlikely, for the same reason that dumping a truckload of pebbles onto the ground is astronomically unlikely to produce the complete works of Shakespeare in Braille. Basically, anything that is created entirely inside of such a loop is an example of ordered complexity arising from chaos. It's physically possible, it's just unbelievably improbable. Likewise, if a Stable Time Loop involved, say, a physicist receiving a message from herself in the future that explained a revelation about the curvature of spacetime, it would mean that no one had actually come up with the idea; the completed thesis simply coalesced out of the chaotic interactions of matter and energy and forces in the universe. So, since there's no reliable way to ensure that any new discoveries wouldn't be sent back in time with the messaging system (or rather, it's extremely improbable that people would not find a way to send those messages — notice a pattern?), thus creating an ontological paradox and a Stable Time Loop, the simplest way for the universe to keep itself internally consistent is to render innovation impossible as long as the system exists.
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Orthogonal / int_42d3be0b	type	Population Control
Orthogonal / int_42d3be0b	comment	Population Control: A major theme in the second book. Since every generation inherently doubles in size, crop yield and overpopulation on the Generation Ship quickly become a problem that puts the whole crew at risk. The trope occurs in the form of "the famine", the practice of women starving themselves so that when they reproduce, they will have only two children instead of four, and later in the form of a procedure that lets women give birth to only one child at a time.
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Orthogonal / int_442e3d95	type	Professor Guinea Pig
Orthogonal / int_442e3d95	comment	Professor Guinea Pig: Despite extensive preparations and tons of redundant precautions, the construction and launch of the Peerless is still rushed. The crew has every reason to fear that the launch of the Generation Ship might be an utter disaster and kill everyone on board before they even get off the ground. Carlo during the light experiment, in which he uses light signals to attempt to artificially induce muscle movements in his hand. It doesn't go well. In a desperate gambit to keep research on reproductive biology from being banned, Tamara volunteers to have the arborine reproductive signal used on her. It goes surprisingly well.
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Orthogonal / int_44b834a0	type	Always Female
Orthogonal / int_44b834a0	comment	Without exception, every solo is female, including the ones born as a result of the induced survivable births, "shedding", in the latter part of The Eternal Flame. Later on they learn how to "shed" male children, so the trope is no longer universal.
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Orthogonal / int_457655dd	type	Human Popsicle
Orthogonal / int_457655dd	comment	Human Popsicle: Because of the universe's Minovsky Physics, reversed Time Dilation is in effect: Traveling fast enough will essentially cause Time to Stand Still from your perspective. The Generation Ship uses this to effectively suspend their entire Doomed Home Planet while they figure out a way to Save the World.
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Orthogonal / int_4966bf38	type	Perpetual Motion Machine
Orthogonal / int_4966bf38	comment	The "Eternal Flame" is a hypothetical inexhaustible energy source that could be used to fuel a Perpetual Motion Machine.
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Orthogonal / int_4aafd3c8	type	Fling a Light into the Future
Orthogonal / int_4aafd3c8	comment	Fling a Light into the Future: The Generation Ship's mission is to accelerate into an orthogonal arrow of time, so that, from their perspective, time will stop for the homeworld. This will allow the crew all the time they need to develop technology and science to the point where they'll be able to return and Save the World. Thus, the ship may drift through space for an indefinite amount of time, but no matter how long they have, when they return, only four years will have passed on the homeworld.
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Orthogonal / int_501de366	type	Temporal Paradox
Orthogonal / int_501de366	comment	In The Arrows of Time, the main plot is driven by the idea of a messaging system that will allow people to send messages back in time. Cue extensive discussions about why this could not possibly lead to a Temporal Paradox.
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Orthogonal / int_504a1991	type	Body Horror
Orthogonal / int_504a1991	comment	Body Horror: Played straight several times, occasionally without even using any visual cues. In The Clockwork Rocket, Yalda is sent to jail, where she is "shackled" by use of a resin that causes two of her limbs to be melded together, creating a loop that can be chained to a wall. This is described as a highly disturbing experience—and that's before they literally cut her loose. One experiment by the biologists involves recording the light signals used by the brain to induce muscle movement, and playing it back into the body to try and trigger the movements artificially. It doesn't quite work as planned, and the resulting uncontrollable hand spasms terrify the subject so badly that he tells his associates to cut off the hand. The effect is slightly lessened by remembering that he is a Shapeshifting Starfish Alien who can reabsorb the damaged flesh to heal the wound, but his brief Inner Monologue during the muscle spasms makes it clear that this is his reaction. During the biologists' experiments on the arborines, Carlo views the surgical implements as being this. Many characters have this reaction to the idea of any kind of deliberate interference with natural childbirth, but especially childbirth that would allow the mother to survive.
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Orthogonal / int_5ac34441	type	Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp"
Orthogonal / int_5ac34441	comment	Call a Rabbit a "Smeerp": "Luxagens" are analogous to electrons and fulfill the same role as atoms in Real Life, and "photonics" in The Arrows of Time, which are analogous to electronics. They function fundamentally differently in several ways, but in this universe, what doesn't? Space, as in, outer space, is never referred to as such. It is always referred to as "the void".
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Orthogonal / int_5b83ab12	type	Exposition Diagram
Orthogonal / int_5b83ab12	comment	Exposition Diagram: Even for Egan, Orthogonal has an unusual amount of these. On average, at least two or three appear in almost every chapter, especially in the second book. The alien physics would be even more difficult to follow without them.
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Orthogonal / int_5e7eb915	type	Clarke's Third Law
Orthogonal / int_5e7eb915	comment	Clarke's Third Law: The entire point of the Peerless' journey is to have an indefinite amount of time to develop sufficiently advanced technology that will let them Save the World from the impending Cluster-Shattering Kaboom, even though they have no idea what kind of technology it will be, or even if the people that return will have evolved enough to no longer be recognizable as the same species as those who left. See also The Singularity, below.
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Orthogonal / int_5ff30573	type	Long Game
Orthogonal / int_5ff30573	comment	Long Game: Much of the trilogy's drama and tension comes from juxtaposing the Peerless's actual mission, the Long Game of Saving the World, against the very real and immediate concerns of overpopulation and limited food supplies. Later in the trilogy, some even advocate abandoning the original mission and just looking for a new homeworld for themselves.
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Orthogonal / int_640ebd81	type	Bizarre Alien Reproduction
Orthogonal / int_640ebd81	comment	Bizarre Alien Reproduction: Let me count the ways... Sex immediately induces reproduction; there is no gestation period. Sex consists of two of the Shapeshifting aliens melding the flesh of their chests, through which the male transmits a light-based signal into the female's body to induce the reproductive process. No actual matter or bodily substance is exchanged; genetic diversity is ensured through the infrared transmission of "influences" by every individual to everyone around them — which, incidentally, is also how diseases spread. Females reproduce by splitting into four children; two sets of male-female twins respectively referred to as cos, who are genetically ideal mates for each other. The children who are not cos to each other are referred to as brothers and sisters, but the same terms are generally not used to refer to cos, probably to avoid implying that the relationship between cos is Brother–Sister Incest. In the rare event that a woman is born without a co note known as a solo; all solos are female, and solos are generally much larger than the average individual, leading to the scientifically discredited but pervasive idea that solos eat/absorb their cos during childbirth or is otherwise unable or unwilling to mate with her co, she can instead reproduce with another willing male, known as a co-stead. These relationships are treated more as a husband/wife relationship than the relationship between cos. It's considered a kind of reproductive Undesirable Prize, generally resorted to only when one co is dead or nonexistant, but there are occasional exceptions. Under the right circumstances, primarily old age or spending too much time away from their co or co-stead, spontaneous reproduction is common enough to necessitate women taking a drug to prevent it. In The Eternal Flame, things get even Weirder Than Usual: A woman fasting to the point of near-starvation helps to both stave off spontaneous reproduction as well as to ensure that, when it happens, it will result in only one pair of cos instead of two, for Population Control. And even weirder note or, depending on your perspective, completely and utterly normal: Near the end of The Eternal Flame, the biologist half of the Ensemble Cast develops a way to induce childbirth that produces only one child, does not kill the mother, renders her sterile for the purposes of traditional (fission) childbirth, and is shown to be repeatable in the final book, and can produce male children. In other words, they can more or less reproduce just like us.
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Orthogonal / int_641cf81d	type	Viewers Are Geniuses
Orthogonal / int_641cf81d	comment	Viewers Are Geniuses: Par for Greg Egan's course, though he does make truly heroic efforts to avert it by explaining everything from the ground up.
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Orthogonal / int_6b723294	type	Techno Babble
Orthogonal / int_6b723294	comment	Techno Babble: The science-talk is extrapolated from Real Life physics, but taken out of context, wew:
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Orthogonal / int_6cc39b20	type	Puppeteer Parasite
Orthogonal / int_6cc39b20	comment	Puppeteer Parasite: Discussed almost by name during the light signal experiment, when Carlo loses control of his hand. Worth noting that there aren't actually any parasites present; artificial light signals induce an uncontrollable runaway reaction in the subject's muscles.
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Orthogonal / int_6d6945da	type	Minovsky Physics
Orthogonal / int_6d6945da	comment	Minovsky Physics: Where to begin? Egan starts with a Real Life equation governing the structure of spacetime, and changes a minus sign to a plus sign. He then posits a universe where that equation is the correct one, and proceeds to extrapolate all the laws of physics from the quantum scale up to the structure of the universe itself. The trilogy is both a Save the World plot and an academic exploration of this hypothetical universe.
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Orthogonal / int_6f3498bc	type	Collision Damage
Orthogonal / int_6f3498bc	comment	Collision Damage: Whenever matter that originated in clusters traveling orthogonally to each other comes into contact, if care is not taken to ensure that they are traveling in the right "direction" through time, it creates an immediate and massively explosive reaction. Combine that with the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, such clusters technically have infinite velocity respective to each other, and even a pebble of orthogonal matter can — and, in a combination Mass "Oh, Crap!" and Portent of Doom moment, does — literally Set A Planet On Fire.
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Orthogonal / int_7315fd38	type	Covers Always Lie
Orthogonal / int_7315fd38	comment	Covers Always Lie: The cover art for each book in the trilogy depicts the Generation Ship Peerless as a sleek and sexy Cool Starship, while the actual books describe it as looking exactly like what it is: A mountain that was hollowed out, reinforced, fitted with rockets, and blasted into space. The cover of the first book is particularly egregious, as it depicts no fewer than five such spacecraft. In fact, a second, much smaller craft is constructed part of the way through The Eternal Flame, but that's it for the first two books.
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Orthogonal / int_771f6307	type	Brother–Sister Incest
Orthogonal / int_771f6307	comment	Females reproduce by splitting into four children; two sets of male-female twins respectively referred to as cos, who are genetically ideal mates for each other. The children who are not cos to each other are referred to as brothers and sisters, but the same terms are generally not used to refer to cos, probably to avoid implying that the relationship between cos is Brother–Sister Incest.
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Orthogonal / int_79e07b47	type	Lecture as Exposition
Orthogonal / int_79e07b47	comment	Lecture as Exposition: Because so many of the characters throughout the trilogy are deeply-entrenched in academic pursuits, many of the Infodumps in the first two books consist of a professor explaining something important about the science of the trilogy's universe to his or her students.
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Orthogonal / int_7dad519f	type	Sex Is Evil
Orthogonal / int_7dad519f	comment	Sex Is Evil: Suggested and occasionally discussed throughout the trilogy, but ironically not discussed in depth until the third book, by which time sex no longer equals murder. Ramiro and Tarquinia discover the joys of recreational sex, and even though Tarquinia has already shed children and is therefore at no risk of fission, Ramiro still has serious reservations until Tarquinia talks him around. From his perspective, even though she's at no risk, he's still acting on a primal instinct that, if biology was allowed to take its course, would be tantamount to murdering Tarquinia.
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Orthogonal / int_8a817c2a	type	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil
Orthogonal / int_8a817c2a	comment	Rape Is a Special Kind of Evil: Sex immediately induces reproduction, and the females reproduce by fissioning into four children. Logically, this means that it is impossible to commit rape without also committing murder.
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Orthogonal / int_8bf8adfa	type	Just Before the End
Orthogonal / int_8bf8adfa	comment	Just Before the End: The Generation Ship's mission is to suspend their Doomed Home Planet Just Before The End, and unsuspend it once they are able to figure out a way to avert the disaster.
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Orthogonal / int_8c732f20	type	Time Dilation
Orthogonal / int_8c732f20	comment	Time Dilation: Traveling fast enough will cause you to be traveling through space without moving through time, which causes time to stop for the starting location. It drives the plot: By taking advantage of this phenomenon, the characters have all the time they need to figure out how to Save the World.
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Orthogonal / int_8cb844c6	type	Mr. Exposition
Orthogonal / int_8cb844c6	comment	Mr. Exposition: Virtually the entire cast, who frequently spend entire chapters Infodumping Techno Babble at each other.
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Orthogonal / int_8e6a882b	type	Prison Episode
Orthogonal / int_8e6a882b	comment	In The Clockwork Rocket, Yalda is sent to jail, where she is "shackled" by use of a resin that causes two of her limbs to be melded together, creating a loop that can be chained to a wall. This is described as a highly disturbing experience—and that's before they literally cut her loose.
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Orthogonal / int_90e2b7b4	type	Theme Twin Naming
Orthogonal / int_90e2b7b4	comment	Theme Twin Naming: Cos are named with masculine and feminine forms of the same name, always ending in 'o' for males and 'a' for females. Examples include Carlo/Carla, Addo/Ada, Tamaro/Tamara, and so on.
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Orthogonal / int_92ac1ba0	type	Alternative Number System
Orthogonal / int_92ac1ba0	comment	Alternative Number System: Numbers in the trilogy are always shown in decimal thanks to a Translation Convention, but it's strongly implied that the aliens use a duodecimal/dozenal (base-12) number system.
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Orthogonal / int_94f4832c	type	Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism
Orthogonal / int_94f4832c	comment	Bizarre Sexual Dimorphism: Even when they are not solos, women are generally larger than men, because the extra mass is needed to successfully split into four healthy children. As a result, women are generally stronger than men and thus do most of the manual labor. note Because of this, for most of The Clockwork Rocket, before the launch of the Peerless and the subsequent retooling of societal norms, men tend to take center stage on intellectual pursuits. Educating women is widely considered a waste of time, since they have much shorter lifespans and their knowledge is not passed on when they fission. It's mentioned in passing that these gender roles were reversed at some point in the past, when it was believed that a woman's knowledge did get passed on to her children, while knowledge taught by men only went skin deep. Without exception, every solo is female, including the ones born as a result of the induced survivable births, "shedding", in the latter part of The Eternal Flame. Later on they learn how to "shed" male children, so the trope is no longer universal.
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Orthogonal / int_98c95895	type	Time Crash
Orthogonal / int_98c95895	comment	Time Crash: Played literally, if bizarrely. Since spacetime is a closed loop in all dimensions, and time is fundamentally identical to space, clusters of matter that were thrown in all directions in time as well as space by the Big Bang occasionally collide with other clusters, many of which are traveling in different directions or even orthogonally to each other (again, in time as well as space), which means they literally have infinite velocity relative to each other. The plot is driven by one such impending collision, which threatens to annihilate the cluster in which the trilogy's cast originates.
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Orthogonal / int_9c4003a1	type	One True Love
Orthogonal / int_9c4003a1	comment	One True Love: A set of cos is biologically optimized to mate with each other, and most such couples spend their lives together as a socially acceptable cross between brother/sister and husband/wife. Co-steads, non-related couples who have decided to mate, are also examples to a lesser degree. Averted on several occasions, though, including Tamaro's imprisonment and near-attempted-murder of Tamara, which results in Tamara's estrangement from the entire family and Tamara's new co-stead explicitly telling her that he will completely abandon her if he believes that she never intends to mate with him, even if she has children by another (survivable) means.
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Orthogonal / int_a4c37cbe	type	Mood Whiplash
Orthogonal / int_a4c37cbe	comment	Mood Whiplash: Can be caused by the alternation between "plot" chapters and "Infodump" chapters for the first two books, but The Arrows of Time largely avoids it.
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Orthogonal / int_ae69516f	type	Artificial Gravity
Orthogonal / int_ae69516f	comment	Artificial Gravity: The first part of the Peerless' journey involves accelerating at a rate of one-G for about a year, generating the predictable and familiar downward gravity. When they stop accelerating, the lack of gravity unexpectedly causes their crops to fail, so they spin the ship to compensate. Centrifugal Gravity is partially deconstructed and reconstructed, as the characters are forced to reconfigure most of the ship's layout to accomodate the fact that the new gravity just put all their furniture on the walls.
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Orthogonal / int_af9c3cbb	type	Expospeak
Orthogonal / int_af9c3cbb	comment	Expo Speak: The Book! Particularly in the first and second books, nearly all of the scientific exploration of the universe occurs in the form of characters explaining it to each other. This is made even more noticeable by the instances in which characters who already have an understanding of the subject matter feel the need to explain it aloud. Egan tones it down in the third book, though, which focuses much more on action and events.
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Orthogonal / int_b0dc84a3	type	SaveTheWorld
Orthogonal / int_b0dc84a3	comment	Save the World: The mission of the Peerless is to find a way to prevent an imminent collision between their world and a bunch of Antimatter that will utterly annihilate it.
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Orthogonal / int_b3bdf232	type	Alien Geometries
Orthogonal / int_b3bdf232	comment	Alien Geometries: Time is fundamentally the same as space, meaning that there are technically four spatial dimensions and no such thing as time. The trope is even discussed in-universe when Yalda hypothesizes "four-space" and Giorgio points out how batshit insane it sounds.
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Orthogonal / int_b922a720	type	Standard Time Units
Orthogonal / int_b922a720	comment	Standard Time Units: Time (and mass, and distance) are measured in units invented for the story. However, two of those time units are days and years. It's also implied that a "flicker" is analogous to a second.
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Orthogonal / int_b9d334b2	type	Aerith and Bob
Orthogonal / int_b9d334b2	comment	Aerith and Bob: Throughout the trilogy, you have names like Clara, Tamara, and Ramiro... alongside names like Yalda, Tarquinia, and Eusebio.
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Orthogonal / int_bbcdd673	type	One-Gender Race
Orthogonal / int_bbcdd673	comment	One-Gender Race: Discussed as the inevitable result of a hypothetical Gendercide. Shown to have happened at the end of the trilogy; they don't consider themselves either male or female, but they are certainly one gender.
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Orthogonal / int_c8146c52	type	Synthetic Plague
Orthogonal / int_c8146c52	comment	Synthetic Plague: Discussed by opponents of the experiments on survivable reproduction, when rumors begin spreading that the procedure has created an "influence" that can spread like any other disease, inducing the same phenomenon in anyone exposed to it.
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Orthogonal / int_d0f0a80d	type	One-Word Title
Orthogonal / int_d0f0a80d	comment	One-Word Title: Orthogonal.
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Orthogonal / int_d1c093ac	type	Weirder Than Usual
Orthogonal / int_d1c093ac	comment	In The Eternal Flame, things get even Weirder Than Usual: A woman fasting to the point of near-starvation helps to both stave off spontaneous reproduction as well as to ensure that, when it happens, it will result in only one pair of cos instead of two, for Population Control.
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Orthogonal / int_d29a6629	type	Death by Childbirth
Orthogonal / int_d29a6629	comment	Death by Childbirth: Universally, natural childbirth consists of the mother fissioning into four children.
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Orthogonal / int_d5a84e45	type	Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit"
Orthogonal / int_d5a84e45	comment	Call a Smeerp a "Rabbit": Orthogonal takes place in a universe with entirely different laws of physics from our own, and thus predictably Bizarre Alien Biology. It still uses common words like "plant" and "vole" to describe things that are roughly analogous. note Never mind that plants gain energy by emitting light rather than absorbing it, and voles are just a smaller species of Shapeshifting Starfish Alien than the protagonists.
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Orthogonal / int_d705d771	type	Exposed Extraterrestrials
Orthogonal / int_d705d771	comment	Exposed Extraterrestrials: Not usually significant to the plot, but the only instance of anything like clothing being mentioned is the "cooling bags" that must be worn during EVAs to avoid hyperthermia.
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Orthogonal / int_d8b3412b	type	The Singularity
Orthogonal / int_d8b3412b	comment	The Singularity: The entire point of the Peerless' journey is to have an indefinite amount of time to develop sufficiently advanced technology that will let them Save the World from the impending Cluster-Shattering Kaboom. Several characters wonder aloud just how much time that will actually be, and whether the returning travelers will bear any resemblance to their ancestors when they return.
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Orthogonal / int_df6a6ad3	type	Speculative Fiction LGBT
Orthogonal / int_df6a6ad3	comment	Speculative Fiction LGBT: Most is unusually silent on the subject of LGBT issues and characters (the trilogy instead examines issues of gender equality and women's rights), but by the end of the trilogy, the protagonists' initially two-gendered, male/female species has undergone a singularity that has resulted in, among other things, a single-gender race that is explicitly considered neither male nor female.
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Orthogonal / int_e0d133d0	type	Insufficiently Advanced Alien
Orthogonal / int_e0d133d0	comment	Insufficiently Advanced Alien: Despite having almost no understanding of their own biology, no vehicles more advanced than a truck (and no understanding of what makes their fuel work except that it does), a social structure that regards women as walking wombs whose reproductive decisions (which inherently include dying) can and should be dictated by her male relatives, and no concept of basic electronics, the aliens still manage to build an indefinitely self-sustaining ship that can travel faster than the speed of light and (hopefully) come back with Sufficiently Advanced Technology to Save the World.
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Orthogonal / int_e11b003d	type	Translation Convention
Orthogonal / int_e11b003d	comment	Translation Convention: Presumably in constant effect, given the setting. Most noticeable in the lack of an obvious Alternative Number System despite virtually everything being based on powers of twelve.
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Orthogonal / int_e2d7b14c	type	Made of Explodium
Orthogonal / int_e2d7b14c	comment	Made of Explodium: Whenever matter that originated in clusters traveling orthogonally to each other comes into contact, if care is not taken to ensure that they are traveling in the right "direction" through time, it creates an immediate and massively explosive reaction. Combine that with the fact that, under ordinary circumstances, such clusters technically have infinite velocity respective to each other, and even a pebble of orthogonal matter can — and, in a combination Mass "Oh, Crap!" and Portent of Doom moment, does — literally Set A Planet On Fire.
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Orthogonal / int_e539f64f	type	Kill Him Already!
Orthogonal / int_e539f64f	comment	Kill Him Already!: The opinion of most of the Peerless' crew towards Yalda's humane treatment of Nino, the would-be saboteur during the launch.
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Orthogonal / int_e5a93e61	type	Homeworld Evacuation
Orthogonal / int_e5a93e61	comment	Homeworld Evacuation: Discussed a few times as one of the possible solutions to the Generation Ship's mission.
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Orthogonal / int_e640b487	type	Infodump
Orthogonal / int_e640b487	comment	Infodump: Every other chapter, complete with Expo Speak, Techno Babble, and Exposition Diagrams. Less prevalent in the final book, which focuses less on discussing the science and more on observing its practical effects.
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Orthogonal / int_e791e16b	type	Weapons-Grade Vocabulary
Orthogonal / int_e791e16b	comment	Weapons-Grade Vocabulary: The poem, if written on body then pressed on other being body, would be deadly in short time was briefly discussed as myth. They are very different so they form writing with their bodies, then dye skin and press paper on it. So, basically written weapons-grade poem.
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Orthogonal / int_e8763c7e	type	Aliens Never Invented the Wheel
Orthogonal / int_e8763c7e	comment	Aliens Never Invented the Wheel: Because of this universe's physics, basic electronics are not completely impossible to construct, but it is highly unlikely that sentient beings would ever discover the principles that would make it work without a lot of luck or help. Between the second and third books, though, they do invent "photonics", which serves pretty much the same function as electronics, except that it works by using photons instead of electrons.
Orthogonal / int_e8763c7e	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_e8763c7e	featureConfidence	1.0
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Orthogonal / int_e8763c7e
Orthogonal / int_e9e2c54d	type	You Already Changed the Past
Orthogonal / int_e9e2c54d	comment	You Already Changed the Past: On Esilio, a planet with Merlin Sickness, the crew of the Surveyor blow up a rock. After the explosion, they find what looks like writing etched into a newly-exposed part of the rock, which seems to be a message from the ancestors (the inhabitants of the homeworld). Because of the planet's Merlin Sickness, the message must have been carved at some point in the future. The obvious assumption is that the message means the journey is successful; the Peerless makes it home, and at some point the ancestors visit Esilio and carve the message as encouragement to the travelers. But Ramiro decides that he wants to have a hand in fate, so he plans to go out and "carve" the message himself. Tarquinia prevents him from doing so — and he then realizes that she is going to carve the message. He spends most of the rest of the book under the impression that she did — only to discover after the climax that she tried to carve it, but no matter what she tried, the message stayed there, which means that she didn't do it either. The book ends with a subtle implication that a minor character who returns to the homeworld in the epilogue is the one to go back to Esilio and carve the message. The Surveyor returns to the Peerless after a long absence to find that the inverted Time Capsule messaging system (which essentially lets people send email back in time) has been built, but also mysteriously stops working all at once at a known point in the future. But since no one actually knows what causes the disruption, the crew of the Surveyor realize that if nobody does anything, they are most likely consigning themselves to being hit by a meteor. On the other hand, if they attempt to sabotage the system, they are raising the probability that they will cause the disruption, which means no one will be harmed. In other words, they know they Can't Fight Fate since the universe is an absolutely Stable Time Loop, but if nobody tries to cause the disruption, then it's almost guaranteed that it's caused by a disaster such as a meteor strike; but as long as no one knows what causes the disruption and someone is trying to cause it, they are increasing the odds that the disruption has a harmless cause.
Orthogonal / int_e9e2c54d	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_e9e2c54d	featureConfidence	1.0
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Orthogonal / int_eb81c601	type	Big Damn Heroes
Orthogonal / int_eb81c601	comment	The "Physicist" Ensemble: Carla, Tamara, Patrizia, and Ada, whose arc focuses mostly on the study of light and matter. They end up being Big Damn Heroes in the climax by rescuing the "Biologist" Ensemble from their kidnappers, and are generally more focused on the Peerless' ultimate, overall mission to Save the World.
Orthogonal / int_eb81c601	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_eb81c601	featureConfidence	1.0
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Orthogonal / int_eb81c601
Orthogonal / int_eb8856	type	The X of Y
Orthogonal / int_eb8856	comment	The X of Y: The Arrows of Time.
Orthogonal / int_eb8856	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_eb8856	featureConfidence	1.0
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Orthogonal / int_eb8856
Orthogonal / int_ec212e4d	type	Ensemble Cast
Orthogonal / int_ec212e4d	comment	Ensemble Cast: The Eternal Flame actually features two sub-ensembles, each with their own separate story arcs, though they frequently interact with each other: The "Physicist" Ensemble: Carla, Tamara, Patrizia, and Ada, whose arc focuses mostly on the study of light and matter. They end up being Big Damn Heroes in the climax by rescuing the "Biologist" Ensemble from their kidnappers, and are generally more focused on the Peerless' ultimate, overall mission to Save the World. The "Biologist" Ensemble: Carlo, Macaria, and Amanda make up the other ensemble, whose arc focuses more on biology, especially reproductive functions. They are generally more focused on solving the immediate problems faced by the crew of the Peerless, namely the overpopulation and resultant famine.
Orthogonal / int_ec212e4d	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_ec212e4d	featureConfidence	1.0
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Orthogonal / int_ec212e4d
Orthogonal / int_f226207f	type	Conveniently Close Planet
Orthogonal / int_f226207f	comment	Conveniently Close Planet: A large part of The Eternal Flame's plot revolves around a Big Dumb Object known as the Object, a large chunk of orthogonal matter that drifts close enough to the Peerless for the protagonists to travel to it. The characters realize that the Object is one of the greatest opportunities they've had since the launch, because if they lose it, they will probably never come this close to another.
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Orthogonal / int_f5190cfc	type	Shapeshifting
Orthogonal / int_f5190cfc	comment	Shapeshifting: One of the more notable traits of the protagonist Starfish Aliens is their ability to freely reshape their bodies, although they're limited by the fact that they can only redistribute mass at will, not increase or decrease it.
Orthogonal / int_f5190cfc	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_f5190cfc	featureConfidence	1.0
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Orthogonal / int_f7991a5c	type	Wrap Around
Orthogonal / int_f7991a5c	comment	Wrap Around: The universe is a four-dimensional sphere or possibly a torus, a donut-like shape. This is the explanation for why orthogonal matter from this universe's version of the Big Bang can be expected to occasionally collide. note If the universe didn't Wrap Around, orthogonal matter would just perpetually travel farther from the origin point, and never come close. But in the case of a torus, matter eventually loops back around and there's a chance of it colliding with other clusters going in the opposite direction.
Orthogonal / int_f7991a5c	featureApplicability	1.0
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Orthogonal / int_f9a85905	type	Planet Spaceship
Orthogonal / int_f9a85905	comment	Planet Spaceship: When they develop their Perpetual Motion Machine engines that are powered by light and consume (almost) no fuel, some characters discuss building massive engines on the Doomed Home Planet and "flying" the planet to safety like a straightforward Planet Spaceship. At/after the end of the trilogy, though, they instead put out the sun and build engines on its surface, so that they can move it and let its gravity take care of pulling the planet along, which will cause fewer siesmic disturbances on the planet. Bizarrely justified in that, In-Universe, the sun actually is just a big ball of flammable rock that is on fire, not a ball of gas undergoing a continuous fusion reaction.
Orthogonal / int_f9a85905	featureApplicability	1.0
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Orthogonal / int_f9efdf10	type	More than Three Dimensions
Orthogonal / int_f9efdf10	comment	More than Three Dimensions: Egan rewrites the laws of physics to create an internally-consistent universe where there really are four spatial dimensions, one of which is perceived by the protagonists as time. An (oversimplified) explanation for why time seems so different from space is that the protagonists' momentum through the dimension of time is so great that it's impossible to change trajectory without technological assistance.
Orthogonal / int_f9efdf10	featureApplicability	1.0
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Orthogonal / int_ffad4e9f	type	Shown Their Work
Orthogonal / int_ffad4e9f	comment	Shown Their Work: The entire story could be considered a vehicle for Egan to show his work in extrapolating how physics would function in this universe.
Orthogonal / int_ffad4e9f	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_ffad4e9f	featureConfidence	1.0
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Orthogonal / int_name	type	ItemName
Orthogonal / int_name	comment
Orthogonal / int_name	featureApplicability	1.0
Orthogonal / int_name	featureConfidence	1.0
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Orthogonal / int_name
Orthogonal / int_name	itemName	Orthogonal

The following is a list of statements referring to the current page from other pages.

Orthogonal	hasFeature	Aliens Never Invented the Wheel / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Antimatter / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Conveniently Close Planet / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Generation Ships / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Logical Extreme / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Minovsky Physics / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	More than Three Dimensions / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Out with a Bang / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Perpetual Motion Machine / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Planet Spaceship / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Space Age Stasis / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Space Is Cold / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Speculative Fiction LGBT / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Time Dilation / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Weapons-Grade Vocabulary / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	Weird Sun / int_a2c8cc46
Orthogonal	hasFeature	World Shapes / int_a2c8cc46

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