Stasis (fiction)

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Stasis (pronounced /ˈsteɪsɪs/), 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 story lines.

The pilot for the series Lost in Space, the passengers of the Jupiter II spacecraft are placed in a stasis.

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 devices as booby traps, containing, for instance, a nuclear bomb.^[1] 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.

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.

[edit] Stasis as suspended animation

A notable use is in the Red Dwarf television series and books, where a stasis chamber is used to preserve the protagonist David Lister for 3 million years. In Niven's Known Space and Vinge's Peace Authority settings stasis effects are used over similarly long timeframes to bring back examples of long-extinct species.

Stasis is used in The Night's Dawn Trilogy by Peter F. Hamilton under the name "Zero Tau" mainly for avoiding long starship journeys and during high g-force maneuvering. It is also used as a major plot device to exorcise "possessed" humans of their possessing souls, since possessing souls are unaffected by stasis and so are faced with an extremely unpleasant period of sensory deprivation if they remain in the body.

Frank Herbert uses the more creative and descriptive term 'null-entropy bins' in his Dune universe. They seem to be used excusively for long-term storage and preservation of non-living goods, particularly Spice, whose great value would justify the implied high cost of the devices.

A few stories, such as The Chronicles of Riddick: Dark Fury and Farscape,^[2] envision a type of stasis that allows mental processes to continue, so that a person in stasis is aware of being helplessly immobile - essentially a living statue.

In the Star Trek Universe, people are occasionally put into "stasis", but it appears to be a biological suspended animation; a similar situation exists in the Stargate universe, however the techniques are more varied and have different behaviours, with certain approaches only reducing the metabolic rate such that death of old age occurs after about 10,000 years, while other approaches having little to no effect after 2.5 million years.

In the fictional Warhammer 40,000 universe, stasis fields are used by the Imperium of Man to keep critically injured soldiers and commanders alive and trap dangerous beings, especially Necrons, alive for further study.

Also, in the series of events between the events of Half-Life and Half-Life 2, the protagonist, Gordon Freeman, is believed to be kept in stasis.

[edit] Stasis in combat

The noted science fiction author Larry Niven 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,^[1] 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 ~30-50 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 invicible to all forms of damage. This effect usually lasts depending on the user's skill level of this power.

In the Star Wars RPG series Knights of the Old Republic, 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.

[edit] Stasis as an Illness

In the anime 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.

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