Stasis (fiction)
Encyclopedia
Stasis or hypersleep, is a science fiction
concept akin to suspended animation
. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is removed. Depending on the work of fiction in which it is depicted, stasis has particular properties useful to science fiction storylines.
Time is often suspended in stasis fields. Such fields will thus have the additional property of protecting non-living materials from deterioration. This time dilation can be, from an in-universe perspective, absolute, so that something thrown into the field, has the field triggered, and after any length of time reactivated, would fly out as if nothing had happened. Storylines using such fields often have materials as well as living beings surviving thousands or millions of years beyond their normal lifetimes. This property also allows for such plot device
s as booby trap
s, containing, for instance, a nuclear bomb. Once out of the stasis field the trap is sprung. In such a situation, it wouldn't do to let the protagonist see what is in the field, so in stories like this, the story line will not allow normal beings to see something protected by a stasis field.
The primary use of stasis fields is essentially the same as suspended animation: to let passengers and cargoes (normally of spacecraft) avoid having to experience extremely long periods of time by "skipping over" large sections of it. They may also be used (such as in The Night's Dawn Trilogy
) as protection against the effects of extreme acceleration.
There are real phenomena that cause time dilation
similar to a stasis field's. Velocity near light speed or a powerful gravitational field
will cause time to progress more slowly. However, there is no known theoretical way to cause such time dilation independent of these conditions.
used the concept of stasis fields and stasis boxes to a great extent in a direct or indirect fashion all through his many novels and short stories set in the Known Space
series. Niven's stasis fields followed conductive surfaces when established, and the resulting frozen space became a completely invulnerable and perfectly reflective object. They were often used as emergency protective devices. They could also be used to create a weapon called a variable sword, a length of extremely fine wire in a stasis field that makes it able to easily cut through normal matter. For more information, see Slaver stasis field.
A more limited form of stasis field is the "bobble", found in Vernor Vinge
's Peace Authority
setting. A bobble is always perfectly spherical and exists for a fixed period of time that is set when the bobble is first created. The duration of a bobble effect cannot be changed. Bobble generators were initially used as weapons, removing their targets from the field of combat.
Another example of a stasis field exists in Joe Haldeman
's The Forever War
, where stasis field generators are carried by troops to create conditions where melee weapons become the only viable means of combat. Inside the field, no object can travel faster than 16.3 m/s, which includes electrons, photons, and the field itself. Soldiers inside the field must be wearing suits with a special coating, otherwise all electrical activity within their body would stop and they would die. In the novel the main character defeats an enemy army which has besieged a small remaining contingent of human troops on a moon by arming a nuclear bomb inside the field and then moving the field away from the bomb. Once the bomb is revealed, its electrical activity resumes, and it promptly detonates. This vaporises the surrounding army, and a large chunk of the ground beneath the field. The soldiers emerge some weeks later to see if their trick worked, and find themselves alone at the bottom of a large crater, their enemy destroyed.
In the computer strategy game StarCraft
, the Arbiter unit can, through a combination of Protoss technology and the Arbiter's psionic power, create a stasis field that traps all units in the affected area in blue "crystals" of stopped time, taking them out of the fight and rendering them invulnerable for 30 seconds, thus allowing both offensive and defensive applications.
The game Mass Effect
has a biotic power simply called "Stasis" that can trap an enemy in a stasis field rendering them immobile as well as invincible to all forms of damage. The duration of this effect is usually dependent on the user's skill level.
In the Star Wars
RPG
series , Jedi who follow the path of the light are able to use "Stasis" powers, using the force to alter time and freeze an enemy in place. Unlike true stasis, this stasis allows external events to affect the victim, meaning that someone held by stasis can be killed while unable to retaliate. The original game also uses a similar effect when Dark Jedi trap party members to engage the player in a duel.
In the Survival Horror Game Dead Space
players use stasis to stop enemy Necromorphs in their tracks for a short period of time. Stasis will be used to also slow down items like malfunctioned doors or fast Generator mechanics.
In the Justice League Unlimited
episode "The Cat and the Canary", Green Arrow
uses a stunner to put himself into a form of stasis while fighting Wild Cat
. This was an attempt to end Wild Cat's cage fighting career by falsely convincing him he killed Green Arrow during their fight.
The Space themed MMO Eve Online
features a weapon called a stasis webifier. When activated against an enemy ship it reduces the targets speed, making them easier to hit and keep in range. The weapon affords no protection to its target, and multiple 'webs' can be used on a ship at once, effectivley stopping it dead.
In Half Life, the protagonist Gordon Freeman is put into a state of Stasis after a brief discussion with the G-Man. A similar incidence happens to Adrian Shepherd at the end of Half Life: Opposing Force
when the G-Man puts him into a state of stasis "for further evaluation".
In Portal, Chell, the protagonist, is dragged away in the end of the game and put in stasis for over many years, until she is awakened at the beginning of Portal 2
.
Please Teacher!
, stasis, known in the series as "standstills," are an illness possessed by Kei Kusanagi and Ichigo Morino, and is triggered with a sudden attack of emotional stress. In a sense this illness freezes them as to time and appearance. Kei, despite being in high school, is actually 18 years old; Ichigo, his classmate, is actually 21.
Science fiction
Science fiction is a genre of fiction dealing with imaginary but more or less plausible content such as future settings, futuristic science and technology, space travel, aliens, and paranormal abilities...
concept akin to suspended animation
Suspended animation
Suspended animation is the slowing of life processes by external means without termination. Breathing, heartbeat, and other involuntary functions may still occur, but they can only be detected by artificial means. Extreme cold can be used to precipitate the slowing of an individual's functions; use...
. Whereas suspended animation usually refers to a greatly reduced state of life processes, stasis implies a complete cessation of these processes, which can be easily restarted or restart spontaneously when stasis is removed. Depending on the work of fiction in which it is depicted, stasis has particular properties useful to science fiction storylines.
Overview
A stasis field is a region where a stasis process is in effect. Stasis fields in fictional settings often have several common characteristics. These include infinite or near-infinite rigidity, making them "unbreakable objects", and a perfect or nearly-perfect reflective surface. Most science fiction plots rely on a physical device to establish this region. When the device is deactivated, the stasis field collapses; that is, the stasis effect ends.Time is often suspended in stasis fields. Such fields will thus have the additional property of protecting non-living materials from deterioration. This time dilation can be, from an in-universe perspective, absolute, so that something thrown into the field, has the field triggered, and after any length of time reactivated, would fly out as if nothing had happened. Storylines using such fields often have materials as well as living beings surviving thousands or millions of years beyond their normal lifetimes. This property also allows for such plot device
Plot device
A plot device is an object or character in a story whose sole purpose is to advance the plot of the story, or alternatively to overcome some difficulty in the plot....
s as booby trap
Booby trap
A booby trap is a device designed to harm or surprise a person, unknowingly triggered by the presence or actions of the victim. As the word trap implies, they often have some form of bait designed to lure the victim towards it. However, in other cases the device is placed on busy roads or is...
s, containing, for instance, a nuclear bomb. Once out of the stasis field the trap is sprung. In such a situation, it wouldn't do to let the protagonist see what is in the field, so in stories like this, the story line will not allow normal beings to see something protected by a stasis field.
The primary use of stasis fields is essentially the same as suspended animation: to let passengers and cargoes (normally of spacecraft) avoid having to experience extremely long periods of time by "skipping over" large sections of it. They may also be used (such as in The Night's Dawn Trilogy
The Night's Dawn Trilogy
British author Peter F. Hamilton's The Night's Dawn Trilogy consists of three science fiction novels: The Reality Dysfunction , The Neutronium Alchemist , and The Naked God...
) as protection against the effects of extreme acceleration.
There are real phenomena that cause time dilation
Time dilation
In the theory of relativity, time dilation is an observed difference of elapsed time between two events as measured by observers either moving relative to each other or differently situated from gravitational masses. An accurate clock at rest with respect to one observer may be measured to tick at...
similar to a stasis field's. Velocity near light speed or a powerful gravitational field
Gravitational field
The gravitational field is a model used in physics to explain the existence of gravity. In its original concept, gravity was a force between point masses...
will cause time to progress more slowly. However, there is no known theoretical way to cause such time dilation independent of these conditions.
Stasis in combat
The noted science fiction author Larry NivenLarry Niven
Laurence van Cott Niven / ˈlæri ˈnɪvən/ is an American science fiction author. His best-known work is Ringworld , which received Hugo, Locus, Ditmar, and Nebula awards. His work is primarily hard science fiction, using big science concepts and theoretical physics...
used the concept of stasis fields and stasis boxes to a great extent in a direct or indirect fashion all through his many novels and short stories set in the Known Space
Known Space
Known Space is the fictional setting of some dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories written by author Larry Niven. It has also in part been used as a shared universe in the Man-Kzin Wars spin-off anthologies sub-series....
series. Niven's stasis fields followed conductive surfaces when established, and the resulting frozen space became a completely invulnerable and perfectly reflective object. They were often used as emergency protective devices. They could also be used to create a weapon called a variable sword, a length of extremely fine wire in a stasis field that makes it able to easily cut through normal matter. For more information, see Slaver stasis field.
A more limited form of stasis field is the "bobble", found in Vernor Vinge
Vernor Vinge
Vernor Steffen Vinge is a retired San Diego State University Professor of Mathematics, computer scientist, and science fiction author. He is best known for his Hugo Award-winning novels and novellas A Fire Upon the Deep , A Deepness in the Sky , Rainbows End , Fast Times at Fairmont High ...
's Peace Authority
Peace Authority
In science fiction author Vernor Vinge's 1984 novel, The Peace War, and sequels , the Peace Authority was the name of the worldwide government that came to power in the late 1990s by exploiting the invention of stasis fields nicknamed 'bobbles'....
setting. A bobble is always perfectly spherical and exists for a fixed period of time that is set when the bobble is first created. The duration of a bobble effect cannot be changed. Bobble generators were initially used as weapons, removing their targets from the field of combat.
Another example of a stasis field exists in Joe Haldeman
Joe Haldeman
Joe William Haldeman is an American science fiction author.-Life :Haldeman was born June 9, 1943 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. His family traveled and he lived in Puerto Rico, New Orleans, Washington, D.C., Bethesda, Maryland and Anchorage, Alaska as a child. Haldeman married Mary Gay Potter, known...
's The Forever War
The Forever War
The Forever War is a science fiction novel by American author Joe Haldeman, telling the contemplative story of soldiers fighting an interstellar war between humanity and the enigmatic Tauran species...
, where stasis field generators are carried by troops to create conditions where melee weapons become the only viable means of combat. Inside the field, no object can travel faster than 16.3 m/s, which includes electrons, photons, and the field itself. Soldiers inside the field must be wearing suits with a special coating, otherwise all electrical activity within their body would stop and they would die. In the novel the main character defeats an enemy army which has besieged a small remaining contingent of human troops on a moon by arming a nuclear bomb inside the field and then moving the field away from the bomb. Once the bomb is revealed, its electrical activity resumes, and it promptly detonates. This vaporises the surrounding army, and a large chunk of the ground beneath the field. The soldiers emerge some weeks later to see if their trick worked, and find themselves alone at the bottom of a large crater, their enemy destroyed.
In the computer strategy game StarCraft
StarCraft
StarCraft is a military science fiction real-time strategy video game developed by Blizzard Entertainment. The first game of the StarCraft series was released for Microsoft Windows on 31 March 1998. With more than 11 million copies sold worldwide as of February 2009, it is one of the best-selling...
, the Arbiter unit can, through a combination of Protoss technology and the Arbiter's psionic power, create a stasis field that traps all units in the affected area in blue "crystals" of stopped time, taking them out of the fight and rendering them invulnerable for 30 seconds, thus allowing both offensive and defensive applications.
The game Mass Effect
Mass Effect
Mass Effect is an action role-playing game developed by BioWare for the Xbox 360 and Microsoft Windows by Demiurge Studios. The Xbox 360 version was released worldwide in November 2007 published by Microsoft Game Studios...
has a biotic power simply called "Stasis" that can trap an enemy in a stasis field rendering them immobile as well as invincible to all forms of damage. The duration of this effect is usually dependent on the user's skill level.
In the Star Wars
Star Wars
Star Wars is an American epic space opera film series created by George Lucas. The first film in the series was originally released on May 25, 1977, under the title Star Wars, by 20th Century Fox, and became a worldwide pop culture phenomenon, followed by two sequels, released at three-year...
RPG
Role-playing game
A role-playing game is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal acting, or through a process of structured decision-making or character development...
series , Jedi who follow the path of the light are able to use "Stasis" powers, using the force to alter time and freeze an enemy in place. Unlike true stasis, this stasis allows external events to affect the victim, meaning that someone held by stasis can be killed while unable to retaliate. The original game also uses a similar effect when Dark Jedi trap party members to engage the player in a duel.
In the Survival Horror Game Dead Space
Dead Space (video game)
Dead Space is a survival horror third-person shooter video game, developed by EA Redwood Shores for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. The game was made available on Steam on October 20, 2008...
players use stasis to stop enemy Necromorphs in their tracks for a short period of time. Stasis will be used to also slow down items like malfunctioned doors or fast Generator mechanics.
In the Justice League Unlimited
Justice League Unlimited
Justice League Unlimited is an American animated television series that was produced by Warner Bros. Animation and aired on Cartoon Network. Featuring a wide array of superheroes from the DC Comics universe, and specifically based on the Justice League superhero team, it is a direct sequel to the...
episode "The Cat and the Canary", Green Arrow
Green Arrow
Green Arrow is a fictional superhero that appears in comic books published by DC Comics. Created by Mort Weisinger and George Papp, he first appeared in More Fun Comics #73 in November 1941. His secret identity is Oliver Queen, billionaire and former mayor of fictional Star City...
uses a stunner to put himself into a form of stasis while fighting Wild Cat
Wild cat
The wildcat is a small cat with several subspecies and a very broad distribution, found throughout most of Africa, Europe, and southwest and central Asia into India, China, and Mongolia. It is a hunter of small mammals, birds, and other creatures of a similar or smaller size. Sometimes included is...
. This was an attempt to end Wild Cat's cage fighting career by falsely convincing him he killed Green Arrow during their fight.
The Space themed MMO Eve Online
EVE Online
Eve Online is a video game by CCP Games. It is a player-driven, persistent-world MMORPG set in a science fiction space setting. Characters pilot customizable ships through a galaxy of over 7,500 star systems. Most star systems are connected to one or more other star systems by means of stargates...
features a weapon called a stasis webifier. When activated against an enemy ship it reduces the targets speed, making them easier to hit and keep in range. The weapon affords no protection to its target, and multiple 'webs' can be used on a ship at once, effectivley stopping it dead.
In Half Life, the protagonist Gordon Freeman is put into a state of Stasis after a brief discussion with the G-Man. A similar incidence happens to Adrian Shepherd at the end of Half Life: Opposing Force
Half-Life: Opposing Force
Half-Life: Opposing Force is an expansion pack for Valve Software's science fiction first-person shooter video game Half-Life. The game was developed by Gearbox Software and Valve Corporation and published by Sierra Entertainment on November 1, 1999. Opposing Force is the first expansion for...
when the G-Man puts him into a state of stasis "for further evaluation".
In Portal, Chell, the protagonist, is dragged away in the end of the game and put in stasis for over many years, until she is awakened at the beginning of Portal 2
Portal 2
Portal 2 is a first-person puzzle-platform video game developed and published by Valve Corporation. The sequel to the 2007 video game Portal, it was announced on March 5, 2010, following a week-long alternate reality game based on new patches to the original game...
.
Stasis as an Illness
In the animeAnime
is the Japanese abbreviated pronunciation of "animation". The definition sometimes changes depending on the context. In English-speaking countries, the term most commonly refers to Japanese animated cartoons....
Please Teacher!
Please Teacher!
, is a Japanese anime series, directed by Yasunori Ide and written by Yōsuke Kuroda, and produced by Bandai Visual, which was adapted into a manga and light novel, centering around a group of friends and the odd things that happen to them after they get a new teacher.The Please Teacher! anime...
, stasis, known in the series as "standstills," are an illness possessed by Kei Kusanagi and Ichigo Morino, and is triggered with a sudden attack of emotional stress. In a sense this illness freezes them as to time and appearance. Kei, despite being in high school, is actually 18 years old; Ichigo, his classmate, is actually 21.