On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Science Fiction

Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Here's my question: I'm building together a "cursed" world where it is always cloudy. The clouds are not so dense that no light gets through, but some days are worse then others. This cursed state has only persisted for about 50 years. So, how well does the vegetation grow? Do I need to resort to magic to explain the continuing prescience of life? If it matters the technology level is slightly more advanced then modern day. (Yay nuclear fission!)

Also, as I'm a D&D dork I'm going to say that the Dungeon Master's Manuel has some good resources on world building.
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Here's my question: I'm building together a "cursed" world where it is always cloudy. The clouds are not so dense that no light gets through, but some days are worse then others.
Click to expand...

Sounds like Seattle. Maybe it's a fungus place?
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Trees, skyscrapers and mirosoft.
Fungi need to get nourishment from their substrate, much like animals; they'll only go on growing while there's organic matter to digest.
But there are several photosynthetic plants that grow in low light conditions (not total darkness, obviously) including plants that generally grow beneath the canopy of rain forests of coniferous woods; they grow slowly, and frequently have dark coloured leaves to grab the maximum of available energy. Ivy, african violet, things like that.
There are going to be mass extinctions, though.

And somebody who comes from Seattle told me the cloud cover does occasionally clear, so you can see they put some mountains at the back of it, just never while I've been visiting.
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

LOL

A friend of mine had his brother come to Seattle for an extended visit. (Perhaps "detox" would be a better word)
He'd been there three months when one day he walked onto the back porch and yelled, "What hell is THAT?"
The answer was, Mt. Rainier.


Fungi grows in caves, so...
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Hi FPS

Here's my question: I'm building together a "cursed" world where it is always cloudy. The clouds are not so dense that no light gets through, but some days are worse then others. This cursed state has only persisted for about 50 years. So, how well does the vegetation grow?
Click to expand...

I suppose it depends. Assuming your world to be similar to our own in terms of eating habits/available food and further assuming that the climate changed quickly as a result of the curse, you would have had significant problems with famine.

Grain crops like wheat and barley cannot survive without sun. Too much moisture and they just flop and rot.

Beans and peas do a bit better, but without sun the yields will be fairly useless.

'Soft' crops like salad vegetables, soft fruits, squashes and cucumbers will rot. Plums will swell up with water and might even change colour but will remain as hard as nails.

Tubers will do OK with minimal sun, but they still need something other than wet. Rain actually causes potatoes to swell up really nicely, but without enough sun and warmth to stimulate growth from seed stock, you're going to have real problems. If the ground is continually waterlogged, tubers will go over and rot very quickly.

Cattle crops like kale or beet will, at best, give poor yields and will be of low nutritional value. Pasture will be waterlogged and turn to mud under the hooves of animals. The animals themselves will eventually chill, or get foot rot. Sheep need virtually no encouragement to die at the best of times and cattle are not built to withstand permanent wet. What little hay that can be cut will never be dry enough to be stored. Any attempts to rick wet hay causes fernmentation and exciting fires.

Your biggest problem is bees. Bees will not fly in wet conditions. If bees aren't flying and bringing in nectar and pollen, bee colonies will die within a season. If bee colonies die, you have no pollinating insects. No pollinating insects causes a large-scale collapse of whatever organic food production remains.


Do I need to resort to magic to explain the continuing prescience of life? If it matters the technology level is slightly more advanced then modern day. (Yay nuclear fission!)
Click to expand...

Magic or (depending on technology levels) a massive system of hydroponics and polytunnels, supported by intensive indoor rearing of meat and dairy animals. You'd be totally reliant on artificial feed supplements and cocktails of chemicals. After a couple of years, the people eating this junk would be sprouting second heads and tentacles!

Regards,

Peter.
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

What's wrong with tentacles?:D

How about the old Yeast Vat solution? Grow the yeast, autolyse it, flavour it and mould it into familiar shapes.
High food value, and you don't need sunlight.....

Eurasyp - Autolysed Yeast
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

I live in a world of near-perpetual cloud cover (Yay for the Pacific NW!). Grass grows pretty well. Typical farm crops, not so well (though we do have something of a summer). You could grow lettuce, but the best resort for your people would be to suddenly switch to meat and fish (if you happen to count the two separately). You'd have some serious problems with the sudden climate change, but I imagine after five or ten years it would find a balance. The animals would eat the grass, and the people would eat the animals. Your population would probably be cut back drastically.

But once it finds that equilibrium, you'd be okay. The Indians in this part of the country were reputedly better off than in most of North America because of the steady food source.

Of course, it also depends on just how wet things are. We get about 100 inches of rain a year along the coast.
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Hi Lith,

You could grow lettuce, but the best resort for your people would be to suddenly switch to meat and fish (if you happen to count the two separately).
Click to expand...

You'd know much better than me, but I'd bet that if it were much wetter where you were (and you got no summer at all), problems with any sort of cultivation would get even worse. I got the impression from FPS that his world is cursed by a kind of overcast perpetual drizzle with no sunlight breaking through at all. Very bad news!

As a matter of interest, what do your meat animals eat over the winter in the Pacific NW? I expect that only breeding stock is retained, but do your farmers have to ship in feed? I can't imagine you'd get much by way of local hay, oats or fodder crops (beet and kale are the big ones over here).

Perhaps FPS's world is not entirely cursed, allowing the inhabitants under the curse to import fodder from elsewhere?

The animals would eat the grass, and the people would eat the animals.
Click to expand...

They'd need more than just grass! Good animal pasture is thick with other plants (especially clover), some of which might not do as well as the rough grasses if the temperature and sunlight went to pot. Even my hens get a bit upset if they aren't getting greens and berries on a fairly regular basis!

The Indians in this part of the country were reputedly better off than in most of North America because of the steady food source.
Click to expand...

Again (and as a matter of interest) is/was part of their food economy based on hunting?

Yours in eager anticipation of learning something about North American agriculture.

Peter
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Yes, it was based on hunting, primarily fishing in most places.

But hunting is not the only alternative to agriculture. There is also pastoralism...raising animals to eat.

This might create some cool conflicts. What if we were forced to eat dogs and cats? Would that create some discussion?
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

The sun can get through with drizzle, but of course it depends on how much, which is up to the writer.:)

Our animals (in this area, mostly dairy cows) eat both grass in the field and hay and grains shipped in. It's my understanding that the cows can live on just the grass, but it doesn't do much for their milk production. The animals would survive, but they wouldn't be as healthy or nutritious as those that ate a better diet. Some of it is also a matter of temperature- it rarely ever freezes around here, and a lot of crops, including lettuce, will winter over unless we get a cold snap. Of course there is the additional matter of the depletion of nutrients in the soil due to heavy rains- our soil isn't as rich as that right over the coast range.

Our grass isn't just field grass, but there's actually a lot of clover growing in it, as well as who knows what. And the elk, at least, thrive on it.

But my main point was actually that if they switched to a hunting/fishing culture, their chances of survival (for at least some of them) would be much better.
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Is this world wet? Or is it more like a marine layer that doesn't burn off?
A low level sheet of clouds would reduce light energy and even out temperatures at a lower level. Days would get cooler; nights would not. Would oak trees grow?
You have to grind the acorns and soak/rise them with water to remove the tanin, but they then become edible. The Indians here used to do that.
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

Rodney, you're aware that a few contemporary humans are born with vestigial gills, which are removed at birth?
 
Re: On Creating Imaginary Worlds: Questions and Answers

wasn't sure where to post this but ...

i was just trying to flesh out the existance of a living planet
ok now for the planet to be considered living it must fulfil certain criteria namely
Homeostasis
Organization
Metabolism
Growth
Adaptation
Response to stimuli
Reproduction

any ideas of how i can implement this into my planet?

all i managed to flesh out(only slightly) was that homeostasis would be controlled by gigantic metaphysical beings then i ran into the problem of what would be the parameters of a planet which must be controlled

any ideas on this too pls?
 
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