On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Science Fiction

[ScrambleEggHead]

Hey, We wouldn't have Coca Cola without super novae. Whatever would McDonald's do??? (of course we wouldn't have people either, but that's beside the point.)

 

[Noob1ett]

So I've come to an impasse in my story development, and wanted to foster the question off to people wiser than myself.

In my story the hero's people are faced with impending invasion. because the invasion is overwhelming, they choose to flee (some of them), while the rest go all french/spanish resistance on them. the item i'm stuck on is this: As its science fiction, do I slightly bend it by adding a single world, naval element so they can flee to another continent, or make it a space element, and flee to another world?

My problems in this are that the naval element is the one I want to use, but feel that there may be a limit to the scope I can eventually take the story. I'm also concerned with the space element becoming a whole other demon, and the story getting lost/dead ending because I cant figure out where to go with the space ships. Also, sadly, my knowledge would need some extensive help in the background and technical know-how of a space element, whereas I have some knowledge for my naval idea.

Also, If I use a space element, it creates multiple worlds within close proximity, whereas the naval one provides multiple city-states on a singular/multiple landmasses.

Finally, if I use the naval element, I can throw in a post-apocylaptic element to my story, whereas Ancient tech becomes the pincher for the space.

So, the overall question is, water or space? and why, if you could please.

 

[chrispenycate]

The only reason you want space is that it makes it more SF, right? It complicates your plot line, insists on a level of technology you don't want (despite musings, I don't believe it would have been possible to get something into orbit, let alone achieving planetary transfer, before the second world war), gives you the task of explaining away two habitable planets which are not light-years apart, with related life forms – and when you've finished, the kind of SF reader who would be attracted would be digging holes in your reasoning, trying to find errors in your calculations (Oh yes, guilty, me, to a fault).

So, try and find reasons why there are unexplored regions on your planet, accessible from the sea. Why there haven't been the Vasco da Gamas and Captains Cook painting over the "Here be dragons" signs on the map. A very repressive religion? An entrenched aristocracy who can see no advantage in external trade? Even the Chinese and Indian empires, as introspective and conservative as you could wish, had exploration fleets.

If you read eighteenth century travel stories you'll find the beasts and cultures they discovered were every bit as alien to them as most SF writers are populating their universes with; indeed, I suspect several speculative authors adopted their sense of wonder from there. And none of it needs to be explained away; we know all the mechanisms that generate this, you can concentrate on your main story line without wasting explanations on unnecessary complications.

 

[Ursa major]

In my story the hero's people are faced with impending invasion. because the invasion is overwhelming, they choose to flee (some of them), while the rest go all french/spanish resistance on them. the item i'm stuck on is this: As its science fiction, do I slightly bend it by adding a single world, naval element so they can flee to another continent, or make it a space element, and flee to another world?

I'm assuming - you don't say - that the invading force is from the same planet and is either invading by land, by sea, or both.

If this assumption is correct, there's not only no reason for them to do other than get on a boat and head off, it would odd for them to escape into space.

Think of it this way: if the invaded country has inter-planetary capability, and yet is so weak that it cannot defend itself on the open battlefield, that would strongly suggest that either it's own inter-planetary capability is in its first stages or that the invader could have equal (and possibly greater) access to similar technology. If the former, only a few folk are going to be escaping that way (less than a dozen?); if the latter, what use is escaping (except to save their own skins; presumably they aren't going to be able to come back, attacking from space, unless they spend their time divided between breeding like rabbits and building spaceships for the return journey)?


(There is, I suppose, that old alternative: the totally secret and privately funded development of a giant leap in technology analogous to that found in some of Jules Verne's works.)


So ships it is....

 

[alchemist]

My one concern about the naval route is, if the invaders are so superior, won't they just chase our heroes down if they're at sea/on another continent. The continent would need to be incredibly hostile, so that it's not worth the invaders' effort to pursue them.
An alternative is the well-worn/cliched (delete as applicable) wormhole to another planet/another time/centre of the earth, which now that I think about it, is what Ursa said.

 

[J-WO]

The razor of Ockham is slicing toward 'navy', it seems.

 

[Noob1ett]

Depending on the mechanism I use will show in the method of invasion.

If it higher tech level is water, the invading nation is landlocked, nomadic,and simply more numerous.
If its space, the invading nation relies more on the insertion of paratroopers than naval combat methods, as most of the space-going tech is pretty "crude" but more advanced than what we use today in propellant based rockets, and their weapons tech is still kinda iffy.

I like the ideas you suggested chris, i'm pushing for a combination of one of those with a world ending event that removed the knowledge from their base. Also, its not as if the "unexplored" land is vacant, as there will be plenty of trouble the hero and his followers can get into along the way to rebuilding, with allies, etc.

 

[Hilarious Joke]

Looking forward to seeing what you go with, Noob1ett! Keep us posted!

 

[J Riff]

... And not to forget the standard maxim: write what you know.
Foist. Foist it off... a great word, foist... anyway, avoid outer space unless you are prepared to the do the tech research.

 

[Primitius]

so....
If a society were to 'take control' of its own evolutionary destiny by selectively breeding those with a specific trait (lets put aside the obvious human rights issues for now), could it not in theory yield pretty successful results given a long enough time period?
Admittedly it is essentially applied-eugenics, but I'm thinking of it developing within a very socially progressive yet technologically primitive society, with strict moral hygiene and codes of practice. The folk who pass on their genes are those who are the most skilled within the desired sphere(s). To make it more interesting, I would presume some mental attributes could also be passed on to some degree?
Given an isolated and stable enough infrastructure, some pretty wild changes in mental and physical ability could then be achievable, could they not?

 

[J Riff]

Well.... Insects have done really well by breeding specific castes. People have been trying to do this as well, but it's a bit insane - so best left to SciFi.. and some have written in this vein.... can't think, offhand...
The problem with this type of shenanigans is -what happens when you achieve the super-evolved types... they do all the work and everyone else becomes a mindless lazy drone.

 

[alchemist]

Look up the character Paula Myo in Peter F Hamilton's work (Pandora's Star and later books). She was raised on such a planet, and was genetically predetermined to be a police investigator.

 

[chrispenycate]

Look up the character Paula Myo in Peter F Hamilton's work (Pandora's Star and later books). She was raised on such a planet, and was genetically predetermined to be a police investigator.

Yes, but she was from an essentially high tech, low industrialisation society – gene engineering.

The use of standard breeding techniques for physical characteristics, as with dogs or cows, requires very little in the way of technology, just lots of patience and a willingness to eliminate the culls. Selective inbreeding to reinforce characteristics is a standard part of this. As was demonstrated by European aristocracy, if you don't have some kind of conflict to weed out the unfit, the lack of diversity can lead to some rather undesirable consequences.

Mental abilities are far less easy to aim for. Partly because so much of the training of them is in the nurture, rather than the nature (ie environmental rather than genetic) but partly because the wild talents (like lightning calculation or spacial visualisation) don't seem to be single chromosome functions, nor do they run conveniently in families.

You'd have to have arranged marriages, of course, and a very strict moral code preventing bastardy; very few societies have actually managed this, and instinctively exogamy is very attractive (probably due to immune systems putting all the cards on their side to have the best chance against disease).

So, breeding up a human gibbon for fruit picking, or your dwarf miner, is within the possibilities for a society which has a few tens of generations without invasions, famines or plagues (all of which play havoc with your planning), but breeding the guy who can learn a two hour recitation of everything the village has ever done, or undergone, as teacher and lawbook, will probably stay a question of detecting the talent when it appears.

 

[Primitius]

Cheers chris, as always you've been a big help. Although my story would probably be defined as fantasy, I have a niggling need to make everything at least partially viable. However, on this occasion I think I'm just going to have to get over the fact that specific mental abilities cannot really be engineered with simple selective breeding, even on a scale of millions of years (right??).

Anyway, I'm putting that problem on the back burner for now, in light of a much bigger problem thats just slapped me in the face.
Basically, I've devised a world map and then worked out the subsequent climatic regions and so forth by copying earth's (the planet is massively similar to earth in most respects besides the placement of the landmasses and mountains). Now obviously the positioning of things like mountains, coasts, and landmasses (and their sizes) are going to have a massive impact on the planet's climates, but I can't (satisfactorily) figure out what they might change, save for having deserts on one side (can't remember which) of big mountain ranges, and some other basic rules that I found on a world-building website.
So i'll just go ahead and post my world map, as well as the rather crude biomes overlay I made for it, and if any geography buffs can spot any glaringly stupid mistakes, then that would be just super.

world map - http://img574.imageshack.us/img574/4820/finalbase.jpg

biomes overlay - http://img27.imageshack.us/img27/4417/biomesandtectonics.jpg

p.s - the biomes overlay also shows lines of latitude, which are probably wrongly placed, despite my best attempts.

 

[ktabic]

Factors affecting where deserts form:
1. Being 30o north or south of the Equator.
2. Wind direction over a mountain range (rain shadow)
3. Distance from coast.

1. At the Equator, air is heated and rises into the atmosphere. At 30o that air falls back to the surface, creating a warm, dry high pressure area. Because it is a high pressure area, wind blows predominately out of that area, to the north and south (these are the trade winds), which also takes surface moisture away, creating ideal conditions for deserts. This is the Sahara.

2. As wind blows over a mountain range, it rises and cools, which causes rain to fall and it rains on the windwards side of the mountain. This means that by the time the wind reaches the far side of the mountains, it's cooler and drier, resulting in cooler and drier environments. This is the Gobi desert.

3. Being distant from coasts means that what air reaches it is going to be pretty much devoid of moisture, so any water in the area must come from other sources. But you would probably need some other geographical feature for it to occur. The Antarctica Dry Valleys are about the only place I can think of.

Having had a quick look at your maps, they seem to be pretty right (wind directions depending), although I notice that at about 30N there is a round the world ocean band. There will be a current that flows all the way through that, and that will shift a lot of heat around the north of the equator parts of the world, with an increased temperature there, compared to Earth.

 

[chrispenycate]

And prevailing winds and ocean currents are critical, and not marked on your map. The cold current running up the west of Chile (is that the Humbolt?) from the Antarctic gives relatively little evaporation, so few rain clouds, allowing the desert to touch the sea shore, and the Benguela Current (yes, I had to look that up) does much the same for the Kalahari.

The Sahara should not be a desert, or at least, not as deserted as it is. It seems probable that mankind protecting goats from predators allowed them to eat all the vegetation, meaning that when it rained there was nothing to stop it running straight down the wadis into the sea, It still rains (less than it would do if there were trees and transpiration, but some) and it still runs straight off. Arabia (most of it) and Arizona are natural deserts; life forms have evolved to survive in those challenging conditions. The Sahara is a bit too recent.

Oh, and natural selection (or only simplistic artificial selection) can quite definitely reinforce mental abilities in millions of years. The trouble with that is that societies have difficulties lasting thousands, and no record of maintaining a sustained effort over tens of thousands. So your primitives would have to be a good deal less experimental than humans, to maintain a program through hundreds of thousands of generations without the main focus shifting.

 

[ktabic]

And prevailing winds and ocean currents are critical, and not marked on your map.)

People just don't realise quite how important winds and currents are to global climate.

The cold current running up the west of Chile (is that the Humbolt?)

That is indeed the Humbolt, according to my reference books.

The Sahara should not be a desert, or at least, not as deserted as it is. {...} The Sahara is a bit too recent.

It certainly should be desert, it's straight under the descending part of the Hadley cell. Pretty much a perfect place for a desert. AFAIK, the current view of the Sahara region is that from 22000 years ago up until ~10000 years ago, the Sahara was desert, there was then a period of regular monsoon rains that lasted for about 3000 years before they stopped, then the Sahara returned back to what seems to be its normal state of desert.
But yes, the current version of the Sahara is pretty recent.

 

[Star Girl]

This might have been asked before or be stupid questions but...

1) If there was a settlement on The Moon how big would The Earth look to those settlers? Would The Earth been seen in the day like the moon sometimes is, and what would it look like?

Another small question...
2) Would The Moon have seasons similar to The Earth and how quickly would they come and go?

 

[Karn Maeshalanadae]

This might have been asked before or be stupid questions but...

1) If there was a settlement on The Moon how big would The Earth look to those settlers? Would The Earth been seen in the day like the moon sometimes is, and what would it look like?

Another small question...
2) Would The Moon have seasons similar to The Earth and how quickly would they come and go?

Actually, as far as I know, the Moon has no seasons because it is too small and has no atmosphere, no moving oceans, no jetstreams. There has been water discovered on the Moon but nothing liquid as far as I know.

As for the Earth question, I would imagine it would appear to be a large blue celestial body to settlers on the Moon as the Moon is seen to us as a small, dime-sized white object to use here on Earth. As for seeing it from the daytime, I would think that would depend on which side of the Moon the colony would be on. Due to the orbits and spins of both the Earth and the Moon the same side of the Moon always faces Earth. Also remember that the Moon does not orbit Earth along the equator, otherwise we would have quite a few eclipses of the sun. So I would guess that the best chances to see the Earth from a Moon colony would be to place it at the equivalent of the poles-the northernmost and southernmost sections.

But you also have to remember that the Moon has no ozone layer the way the Earth does to protect creatures from the sun's UV rays, so there would have to be both UV and light shielding, which may result in not being able to really see much of anything outside colony domes.

 

[J-WO]

In answer to your first question, Star Girl, there are pictures taken of Earth from the moon where you can judge for yourself. I imagine that if you google them they'll end up being great inspiration for the story you're trying to tell.