> As for another novel, I’m most of the way through a very shitty first draft tentatively titled A Nice Galaxy. It tries to deal seriously with the size of the Milky Way, which is almost unimaginably vast. Suppose we humans have settled the galaxy. How can humanity remain united when even something as basic as a radio transmission becomes too attenuated to decipher less than a quarter of the way across the galaxy, not to mention the thousands of light-years it would take to arrive?
> Imagine no handwavium shortcuts like faster-than-light travel. Then imagine humanity’s many self-destructive foibles and the problems of survival in a galaxy mostly hostile to human life. That is, imagine trying to carry out the impossible task of keeping humanity connected.