Creating A Scifi Universe; A collaborative effort

[Gandalf]

I'll have a crack at this.

My histpry of the future, this can be tweaked to suit whatever is decided upon.

2110 June: Russia, China and much of Europe create a large coalition for trade and defense. They call the alliance The Eurasian Alliance. This is a move against the increasingly agressive Western nations. They place their capital in Moscow, as it is central to the countries of the alliance.

2110 November: POTUS announces the creation of the "Coalition of Freedom." It's 2 main members are the USA and England, and most of the countries from the Coalition of The Willing. Heavy competition in technology and especially a new space race ensues.

2111 January: The Africa and the Middle East create the African Federation. Whilst a more casual version of the other 2 blocs, many take their beliefs to fanatical levels; insisting on total armament and rejection of the other powers.

2111 onwards: The Coalition of Freedom start to buy their way into the African Federation, as an effort to get access to their resources and available manpower.

2111 May: Japan, an officially neutral country that has ties to the CoF suffers a massive power generation failure and appeals to the EA for help.
The CoF takes this as an insult and moves to invade the Home Islands, thinking they were subverted by Eurasian forces.
The US threatens nuclear strikes against the EA capitals. The EA threatens to vapourise every major city the US has. The crisis is averted when a terrorist sect in Japan takes credit for the failure.

2111 July: Japan officially joins the EA.

2111 September: After a period of unrest with the CoF, the EA announces it will go into total isolation. No trade or contact with the outside is permitted. Though some privateers do trade with outside forces.

2120: The Eurasian Alliance announces the launch of it's first colony sleeper ship, aimed at Mars. It will be the first successful human colony there. They travel at over 1/4 lightspeed. The ship is named the Gagarin.

2122: The first CoF ship; the Mayflower II launches and goes to colonise the moon.

Both colonies run successfully, establishing unchallenged colonies. Both look to Jupiter's moons.

2125: First contact is made with the Kaldorthann. The first extra-terrestrial life encountered by humans.

This can be fleshed out if need be.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Has anyone thought of some kind of 'main bad guys'? Like, i mean a huge faction that has it's own planets and fleets and could rival Earther firepower. Maybe they could be evil death-worshipers or such, like a suicide cult, but they want you to die not them.

They have 'infiltrators' in places of power throughout the colonies and Earth and they suppress certain technology--like powerful energy weapons and advanced computer AIs--and then they steal it and integrate it into their own civilization, also they've been building up unchecked for centuries, ever since they were exiled from Earthspace hundreds of ears ago, so now they are both numerically and technologically way ahead of the Earthers and any of the Colonies. I think the name The Vandals sounds cool. And their homeworld could be called Nemesis. Anyone else like the idea?

Think about this:

After the 'Colony Wars' are over (for whatever reason) then the 'Nemesis Crusade' spilled out of the Uncharted Regions. The military forces of The Vandals appear out of nowhere with their huge 'cathedral-ships', to lay waste to our colonies, and their eventual goal, to destroy Earth herself. After the war, the Earth and the Colonies had taken sucha beating they were already weaker than The Vandals, now they're even easier pickings. Alone neither Earth nor the Colonies can defeat the Vandal Horde. So the Earth and teh Colonials have to join forces to combat a numerically, technologically superior force.

If it doesnt sound right just let me know, but i think it would be cool. Oh and, the originals Vandals were a tribe that overran several countries (Gaul, Spain, parts of Africa) in the fifth century, and eventually trashed Rome. So as you can see, i transplanted the idea almost entirely thankyouverymuch

[Stofsk]

Sounds good for a terrorist organisation, but for a numerically superior foe? I just can't see hoards of Vandals sacking Earth and the other colonies. I can see a team of Vandals causing an asteroid to fall onto a planet, though.

[18-Till-I-Die]

Sounds good for a terrorist organisation, but for a numerically superior foe? I just can't see hoards of Vandals sacking Earth and the other colonies. I can see a team of Vandals causing an asteroid to fall onto a planet, though.

Maybe they stole cloning tech and spured suspision of it on Earth, so they have thousands of identical folks walking around who are fanatically loyal to the Vandal Crusade. Or, more realistically, they met someone else and made freinds, like some other exiled humans and low-tech aliens, so they are a mix of various species and cultures all with a hard on for totally trashing Earth and any 'Earthborn scum' they can find.

[Shroom Man 777]

No, I don't like that. Sure, a dangerous enemy would be cool, but a gigantic all powerful threat? Nah.

They could be a dangerous enemy using deciet and considerably advanced tech to get their way, but it's just too odd to find a bunch of exiles suddenly having the power to kick Earth's ass.

I'm happier with the idea of them being a tool for something greater. Like a bunch of evil aliens or something.

[CaptainChewbacca]

Well, I can't answer all of them but I think that atheism should grow some more. If humanity is to progress, secularism should rise and stupidstitions should decline. We could have cloned limbs and eyes for injured people, we could have gene therapy helping those with defects, we could have governments with minimal corruption from religions.

And this would be neat as it would promote fundies to transmogrify into something analogous to Al-Quaeda

Present religions should still exist in strong numbers though, but idiots would either be extinct or trying to make themselves extinct (suicide bombers ).

You know, every time someone says religion is on the way out, it makes a comeback. Islam promoted some of the greatest innovations of the 14th century, Christian churches were centers of learning for centuries.

I'd expect a more egalitarian or non-denominational faith to come about, but don't expect only the Taliban and the KKK to be left praying.

[Pablo Sanchez]

I'd expect a more egalitarian or non-denominational faith to come about, but don't expect only the Taliban and the KKK to be left praying.

By major faiths:

Buddhism: Gained substantially in popularity in the West, because of its emphasis on peaceful enlightenment and egalitarianism.

Hinduism: Still practiced by a majority of India.

Sunni Islam: Still the dominant religious and political force in the Middle East, especially popular among the large population of urban poor. Foothold in SubSaharan Africa declined with the death of many worshippers and return to ancient faiths.

Shi'ite Islam: Declined in authority in Iran with the ouster of the Ayatollahs, now is considered a moderate branch of Islam.

Catholicism: The Christian faith which was most willing to adapt to the times. Still has billions of adherents throughout the world.'

Orthodox Church: Still a major force in Eastern Europe, though atheism is generally more popular throughout.

Protestant Churches: Generally less willing to change their beliefs. Outside of core areas, church attendance declined significantly.

Judaism: Following the collapse of the middle east as a region of foremost consequence and the transformation of it's nominally democratic government into a theocratic dictatorship, many western nations abandoned Israel as an ally. It was invaded and conquered as one of the first acts of the Arab League, and the Jews have again been dispersed.

Other Religions: Sikhism survived much like it is today, as did Shinto. African paganism saw an increase in popularity because of the unification movement, which has encouraged old-time religion as a way to draw the people back together. Chinese religion is similar to today, but the superstitious elements have declined with the improvement of educational opportunities.

[SirNitram]

2120: The Eurasian Alliance announces the launch of it's first colony sleeper ship, aimed at Mars. It will be the first successful human colony there. They travel at over 1/4 lightspeed. The ship is named the Gagarin.

1/4th lightspeed to Mars?

Why do you need sleepers for an hour ride?

[CaptainChewbacca]

2120: The Eurasian Alliance announces the launch of it's first colony sleeper ship, aimed at Mars. It will be the first successful human colony there. They travel at over 1/4 lightspeed. The ship is named the Gagarin.

1/4th lightspeed to Mars?

Why do you need sleepers for an hour ride?

They didn't want to be cranky when they got there

[Gandalf]

2120: The Eurasian Alliance announces the launch of it's first colony sleeper ship, aimed at Mars. It will be the first successful human colony there. They travel at over 1/4 lightspeed. The ship is named the Gagarin.

1/4th lightspeed to Mars?

Why do you need sleepers for an hour ride?

Sorry, I wrote the sleeper part before I wrote the speed. Change it to some length that would require sleeping.

[Bob McDob]

Well, I can't answer all of them but I think that atheism should grow some more. If humanity is to progress, secularism should rise and stupidstitions should decline. We could have cloned limbs and eyes for injured people, we could have gene therapy helping those with defects, we could have governments with minimal corruption from religions.

Couldn't that lead to the growth of new religions? Perhaps one centered around the unique circumstances humanity finds itself at the moment? The past two hundred or so years have been one of incredibly technological promise, and I think that colonizing of space would trump almost every accomplishment in mankind's history. With older established religions like Christianity and Islam falling into disrepute, it seems to me that the time would be ripe for a new prophet to emerge. Space-Jesus, if you will. Maybe he(she?) could merge new-age mysticism with the nationalistic-racial (spacial?) impulses of the spacers, a la Zeon Dum Deikun from Gundam or Ivar Chu McDanial from Wing Commander. Top it all off with a healthy dose of Marxist contempt for modern society and you'd have the founding of a new religion.

Would be neat to see the media portray fundies as blood thirsty building bombing, starship crashing freaks

Don't they already? :p

especially a new space race ensues.

I'll take some issue with this ... While I agree that it's all well and good to go into space (I would't mine seeing a substantial portion of the US's GDP put to space colonization), most of the world wouldn't see it that way without a good reason. Has a deposit of magic beans been discovered on Mars? Deterioation of the Earth's ecosystem? Cheap space travel become commonplace? Any of those would be a pretty good reason, though I'd probably throw in one more just because.

[Peregrin Toker]

What about music? Has modern music gone the way of modern arts and become an experimental cacophany of randomly arranged synthesizers? Is it like rap with an orchestral arrangement?

The answer to that question is very easy:

The Gods made Heavy Metal and it's never gonna die!

[The Nomad]

A few suggestion that crossed my head :

Power generation : the higher tech level would be direct conversion of matter to radiation with 99.99% efficiency ( the ineffiencies being due to exotic spin/charge carrying particles to fit the various conservation laws ), with dialable wavelenght. At higher tech level, you can make direct conversion weapons with that. Converting a few hundred million tons worth of mass at the center of a planet can have some nasty side effects. Like planetary fragmentation ( but not mass scattering ).
Barring that, fusion would be nice for the low-tech. And solar power, and the spin of neutron stars / black holes.

Valuable assets : whatever factory that creates the very exotic forms of matter needed for the most high-tech appliances. They're big, and vulnerable. They're priceless.

Valuable goods : those very forms of exotic matter that can never be found in nature. Used in jump drives, in jump gates frames. Some cheaper forms can be used as 'shield' component, or ammunition for PBCs.

Terrorist weapons : Von Neumann probes. Low tech ( perhaps not even FTL ) , but replicate ten billion of them over the course of a decade and you could obtain some very interesting results.

Weaponry : FTL missiles. The FTL is either enabled by a specialized launch system onboard the ship ( the missile has no FTL capability by itself ) or a single-use jump drive ( much cheaper than ship-mounted jump drive, and with a limit range of ~20 AU ). They can allow the bombing of stations or asteroid colonies, but planetary bombing is tricky due the planet's gravity. Only for the top dog ships of the top dog powers.

[SirNitram]

A few suggestion that crossed my head :

Power generation : the higher tech level would be direct conversion of matter to radiation with 99.99% efficiency ( the ineffiencies being due to exotic spin/charge carrying particles to fit the various conservation laws ), with dialable wavelenght. At higher tech level, you can make direct conversion weapons with that. Converting a few hundred million tons worth of mass at the center of a planet can have some nasty side effects. Like planetary fragmentation ( but not mass scattering ).
Barring that, fusion would be nice for the low-tech. And solar power, and the spin of neutron stars / black holes.

Fusion is fine.

Total Conversion is ridiculously powerful. It should solely be a Precursor Artifact or the realm of the factions that are extremely advanced.. And even then, they're too expensive and inefficient to be used as weapons.

Valuable assets : whatever factory that creates the very exotic forms of matter needed for the most high-tech appliances. They're big, and vulnerable. They're priceless.

Valuable goods : those very forms of exotic matter that can never be found in nature. Used in jump drives, in jump gates frames. Some cheaper forms can be used as 'shield' component, or ammunition for PBCs.

Organic compounds will grow in value. Very little grows in hard-vac.

Terrorist weapons : Von Neumann probes. Low tech ( perhaps not even FTL ) , but replicate ten billion of them over the course of a decade and you could obtain some very interesting results.

Because a simple antimatter bomb would be far too simple and straightforward.

Weaponry : FTL missiles. The FTL is either enabled by a specialized launch system onboard the ship ( the missile has no FTL capability by itself ) or a single-use jump drive ( much cheaper than ship-mounted jump drive, and with a limit range of ~20 AU ). They can allow the bombing of stations or asteroid colonies, but planetary bombing is tricky due the planet's gravity. Only for the top dog ships of the top dog powers.

No. The primary(Though not only) FTL system is a jump-point system, so no. Lightspeed weapons max.

[CaptainChewbacca]

You're right, Nitram. THere are FAR better ways to destroy something than with a VN probe.

And let's keep the weapons away from uber, folks. FTL missiles are a no-no, like plasma beams and black-hole launchers.

[SirNitram]

There is nothing that states sci-fi is bad because it has railguns, missiles, and energy beams, you know.

[Knife]

I'm a late commer, so I'm sorry.

I've got a universe pretty much detailed and a fanfic in progress on it, so some ideas from that for you all to digest.

General make up;

Earth has colonized various planets in three distinctive waves. First being the Sol system and then into the nearest planets via their new (at the time) FTL system. These 'new' colonies durring the second wave rebelled at one point, wanting to be part of the political animal that Earth and its Sol system planets were forming.

At this point a civil war broke out and the colonists actually won and intergrated themselves in the power structure of the new Republic. At this point the 'colonies' became the mid core of the new nation and the third wave of colonies began. Now the new colonies are pretty much in the same boat as the mid core of the Republic were a couple hundred years ago, except that they don't want to join the goverment, they want out and to form their own.

The Republic wants to keep the status quo because if the colonies become members, certain rights and privagles would stem the resources the goverment were getting from the colonies and resources that are now illegal to get from member states.

The Republic wants to stamp out rebellion in one quick stroke using the Navy and the Legions but since the Republic has turned a blind eye to the colonies piracy problems for decades, they now have to content with Colonial militia.

Tech....

Ships are big and blocky. Hull armor is the primary protection but there are EM shielding against radiation. Primary weapons are (you'll hate it) plasma cannons with multiple yeild missiles for anti ship work.

Primary power source is fussion and a gravity system for onboard comfort and for the FTL. The 'Slide Drive' can only be used from one gravity source to another (planet to planet) and utilizes a pulse of gravity from the ship to punch a hole through space/time connecting one gravity well to another (planet to planet). The system is huge and takes alot of power. The smallest ships to have them are ~100m and those are short ranged ships.

Combat is a WWII navy style with big BB and CB's squaring off with anti ship missiles and gun barages. Smaller gunships act as torpedo boats or subs, and various fighters can carry heavy ordinance but are extremely limited in range.

Ground combat is two fold, heavy forces (like the Legions) and light manuverable forces (like Colonial Marines). Doctrine for both is war by attrition but the smaller lighter forces do believe in Combined Arms and manuver to survive against heavier weapons of the Legions.

Over all of this is the mysterious Kell, who are oppertunistic when it comes to the humans. When the Republic went to war with the second wave colonists, the Kell waited until both were weak and then snatched up some teritorry which the new and inproved Republic had to retake after the war. Now with tensions in the colonies, the Republic is worried about another incounter with the Kell.

[Typhonis 1]

ahhh the things you can do with a railgun.....cannister shot nnyone?? a 200mm cannister filled to the brim with triangulr wedges of metal ,the sides that will impact are monomolecular edged for sharpness

[Shroom Man 777]

You're right, Nitram. THere are FAR better ways to destroy something than with a VN probe.

And let's keep the weapons away from uber, folks. FTL missiles are a no-no, like plasma beams and black-hole launchers.

What's wrong with energy weapons? And what's wrong with FTL strategic missiles? Black hole launchers could be another form of WMD.

What's a Van Neuman probe?

[CaptainChewbacca]

You're right, Nitram. THere are FAR better ways to destroy something than with a VN probe.

And let's keep the weapons away from uber, folks. FTL missiles are a no-no, like plasma beams and black-hole launchers.

What's wrong with energy weapons? And what's wrong with FTL strategic missiles? Black hole launchers could be another form of WMD.

What's a Van Neuman probe?

Nothing wrong with them, its just that they're a bit beyond what the contributors of this thread decided would be "fun" scifi. A Von Neumann probe is a hypothetical device that travels at sub-light speeds to explore other solar systems and builds copies of itself. Von Neumann postulated that one such device turned loose could map the entire galaxy in 100,000 years.

[Bob McDob]

There is nothing that states sci-fi is bad because it has railguns, missiles, and energy beams, you know.

Yeah, but it does get rather tiresome after a while - the least we can do is figure out ways to make them more interesting. Playing too heavily on old sci-fi cliches without original thought about them is incredibly derivative and makes me want to commit hara-kiri.

And I still like my idea of making up cheesy slang terms for everything (like archie and bazooka and flivver). In fact, make up lots, just for the hell of it. Makes the world seem more developed and helps give it a certain flavor.

For what it's worth, the problem I have with the current popular trend towards starkness and "realism" (as personified by David Weber and boxy ships)* is that it focuses too much on mechanics and sometimes ends up feeling like the story is an afterthought. The end impression I get is a flavorless mulch - stale and grey.

Conversely, I really enjoy the Dune universe - or rather, the Dune Encyclopedia. Although it can be just as focused on the underpinnings of things (sometimes even more so), it also has a definite personality to it, a kind of period feel that makes it feel like its own distinct world and not just an extension of today's environment. I miss some of the old science fiction for having its own distinct ebb and feel of the future - painfully wrong at times, maybe, but it feels different from today, like another world - which is what it is.

This universe seems to be moving to combine elements from what I would call "human future-modern" for lack of a better term (Honor Harrington, Battletech) mainstream science fiction (Space Opera?), and hard technological underpinnings. I think it needs something else - a healthy dose of fantasy. Or, rather, it's own distinct personality and dynamic, as the 20th century was distinct from the Enlightenment or Renaissance or Middle Ages. If we can successfully intergrate these four things (which right now sometimes feel like seperate universes rather than a single coherent one), I think it will be the greatest success.

My rant's over, decontam chamber's to your left.

*I'm not neccesarily saying David Weber is all bad, or that there shouldn't be boxy ships - just that they're the current trend right now, and it's easy to steal from them without much imagination. Which in term leads to losing personality.

[Stofsk]

Bob, in other words there should be wonder. Something I heartily agree with.

[18-Till-I-Die]

I agree too, a sense of fantasy and wonder is a good thing. The entire function of sci-fi, i'd dare say, is to create a sense of wonder. Sometimes the science is shaky at best, but it can lead to some prety interesting stories.

PS--forgot to add, i do like the whole big bricky ships idea, however, cause i just like ships that look like big flying slabs. I just think it looks cool.

[Thirdfain]

I agree too, a sense of fantasy and wonder is a good thing. The entire function of sci-fi, i'd dare say, is to create a sense of wonder. Sometimes the science is shaky at best, but it can lead to some prety interesting stories.

I disagree wholeheartedly. Sci Fi can aim to be wonderous and fantastic, but it can also be used as a backdrop for very mundane, human stories- tales of politics, human corruption, and hope. The spacetravel is just a tool for creating a unique, interesting setting. Adding extraneous, weird, or ridiculous technology seems pretty useless to me. Why bring in "Black Hole Bombs" when nukes do the job just fine? Why plasma beams, when neutral particle beams and lasers will do the job just as well, and we'll have less trouble explaining the mechanisms?

[Shroom Man 777]

Meh. I say plasma is a-okay, since they're just the same as lasers or PB weapons, but they sound cooler...though they're harder to explain, but meh.

Can't PBs be nicknamed as plasma weapons? Future lingo could change and PBs could be called plasma weapons.