SvennoJ on 04 April 2012
It will be rather dark if he sticks to hard sci-fi.
At the year 281,474,976,712,644 or between 10^15 - 10^16 the universe will be in the degenerate era.
Today, as Carl Sagan has told us, there are billions and billions of stars in every galaxy, and they are bright. In this dark galaxy of the future Degenerate Era, there will be two or three stars from these merged brown dwarfs, and they will be about 10,000 times dimmer than the sun.
http://www.fathom.com/course/10701055/session3.html
Easy to program complete darkness of course. Planetary landings will be a but boring if at all possible, most solid inner planets will be destroyed after their star died.
Not a good time to wake up in unprepared.
