Stasis (fiction)
Stasis (IPA: /ˈsteɪsɪs/) 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 which restart spontaneously when stasis is removed. Depending on the work, stasis has other properties useful to science fiction story lines.
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. Interesting things happen after this occurs.
Time is often suspended in stasis fields. Such fields will thus have the additional property of protecting non-living materials from deterioration. Story lines 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 hand grenade with a pulled pin or an angry rattlesnake. Once the field collapses, 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 statis field.
Used deftly, the concept of stasis can add greatly to a science-fiction plot.
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.
In the comedy Red Dwarf, Dave Lister is sent to stasis for eighteen months as punishment for bringing on an unquarantined cat on board Red Dwarf. He comes out 3,000,000 years later.
In Vernor Vinge's The Peace War and Marooned in Realtime, the "bobble" is a spherical stasis field which is used as a weapon, shield, storage space, and time machine. They are always perfectly spherical and exist for a fixed duration set at their time of creation - bobbles cannot be "burst" prematurely
A few stories 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.
In The Forever War, a stasis field eliminates all electromagnetic activity and also limits motion.
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.