I’d like to see a hard-SF series set in the near future, say, the year 2050, in a hotel/bar/restaurant (“Giant’s Castle”) at the top of a surface-to-orbit space elevator or “beanstalk.” And I mean hard SF: No magic or mysticism; no extraterrestrial life forms, sentient or nonsentient; no travel outside the Solar System; and no “black box” technologies of any kind – no FTL drives, no transporters, no force fields, nothing that is not considered at least theoretically possible in light of our current scientific knowledge. (Which still leaves open the door for a lot of exotic technologies, including some that have been explored in written SF but not much, as yet, in TV SF – e.g., nanotechnology, neural-electronic interfaces, and some stuff you can read about in Robert L. Forward’s Indistinguishable from Magic.)
I once brought up this idea at a panel discussion at an SF convention, and the great SF writer and editor Ben Bova replied, “Where’s the conflict?” As I reminded him, and shouldn’t have had to, you don’t need aliens; you get conflict wherever you have people – religious conflict, political conflict, economic competition, as well as more personal forms. Kim Stanley Robinson managed to work a lot of conflict into his Mars trilogy, without working any aliens or wizards into it. The show I envision would be like an SF version of LAX. The stories and the conflict would come from the lives and relationships of the permanent staff of the Giant’s Castle, plus all the people who pass through the station on their way to or from business in the space colonies at the Trojan points, on the Moon and Mars, etc. – and from the various governments, business corporations, and religious and political movements with which some of those people might be affiliated. There might or might not be a preconceived conflict-based “story arc” for the series, like there was for Babylon 5. I think the setting is enough to support endless plots and story developments.
I’ve even got a name picked out for the series: Civilization Type 0.5. Because:
The point being, however awed we might be by our technology, in these terms we’re not even a Type I civilization yet, and not likely to be by mid-century, either. But we’ll be measurably closer than we are now, maybe even half-way there, hence “Civilization Type 0.5.”
The title Civilization Type 0.5 allows for a visual segue to or from “2050” in the opening credits.
Think the Sci-Fi Channel would touch something like this? Or any other network? And is there any network that could be trusted not to do a Starlost job on it?
I love sci fi of all varieties, but being cynical (esp. when it comes to TV) I’d have to say:
as much as a space elevator IS way cool, there just isn’t enough gee-whiz to your concept to sustain a sci-fi series, which, by its nature, is pigeonholed into an escapist/adventure mindset vs. plain old fiction. Not enough escapism. You can put very serious themes and scenes into adventurous sci fi (a la the new BSG), but you still need screaming space ships and laser battles (again, see BSG).
that title is just plain awful. try “beanstalk” or something.
as with any TV/movie idea, getting it made is pretty much who you know, not how good it is. Start by going to Hollywood and writing for some Sci Fi series for 5 or 10 years; by then you’ll know people and have a rep.
You’ll need characters (regulars, one-shots and recurring) and plot (over-all and episode to episode). Are you going to shoot for some kind of story arc or arcs, or more along the lines of each episode (or maybe two) as stand-alones?
I know you said “hotel/bar/restaurant” but I’d think there’d be a strong military presence. Unless we’ve won this so-called “War on Terrorism” a beanstalk would be a very attractive target for any of a number of people. Ergo, a strong military protective presence at any point the bean-stalk can be attacked.
Who owns the beanstalk? The country it’s rooted in, the country/countries/companies who built it? The people who paid for it? Does that ownership run all the way to the top?
Oh, almost forgot: is it a fixed or rotating beanstalk? If it’s rotating, how close to the ground does it come?
Sounds to me like you’re asking someone to imagine what things are going to look like in 50 years, design costumes, sets, props, exteriors, laws, culture, vehicles, etc. and construct a backstory to provide a plausible explanation of how things evolved that way (opening themselves up for criticism that “it won’t be like that”) for the purpose of telling. . .
Stories about ordinary people, without the benefit of aliens, superpowers or gee-whiz special effects.
Rather than saying “where’s the conflict” my question would be more along the lines of “why bother?”
Near future science fiction always annoys me. Generally speaking in order to have enough “cool new technology”, people seem to imagine things happening much to fast. You can overcome this objection (largely) by either not emphasizing dates, or by dating things in some new manner. (Keeping track of how long it has been since the elevator was built or something).
I also have realized recently that I am much more willing to suspend disbelief when I am reading something than when I’m viewing something. Which only proves that I’m not your audience for this show or any other, probably, rather than showing an intrinsic flaw in the idea.
Try Lee Killough’s books, The Doppelganger Gambit, Dragon’s Teeth, and Spider Play. Out of print, but easy to find at www.abebooks.com . I could even lend you copies. The books are cop novels. The date is never stated, but from clues it’s the mid-21st century. Cops have new technologies, but the crooks are never far behind, and sometimes ahead, and the basic motivations for crime don’t change(greed, hatred, and so on). All three are good reads, and they do not resort to the corny gimmick of having the two bickering partners get involved with each other romantically. What I find amusing about the books is their locale. Killough lives in Manhattan Kansas(The Little Apple!) and set the books in Topeka, Kansas, the state capital, and my hometown.
Heh, heh, there’s a passage in the second book I’d love to pass on to Fred Phelps. He’d have an apoplectic fit. See, in the first book Jana Brill, a police detective, is sharing an apartment with Sid, an assistant medical examiner for Shawnee county. Sid is gay. In the second book Jana is alone in the apartment because “Sid moved out to marry the man of his dreams.”
You’ve described an interesting backdrop, setting and a hint of the geo-political makeup. But the hard-science fiction just isn’t enough to drive the series. But it could make for an interesting heart. I do like an idea for a smart sci-fi series that is divorced from the usual aliens and space trekking.
kunilou’s hit on most of it: I think this needs to be fleshed out more as a speculative future, which the hard science takes center stage shaping it. The “hook” for this show would have to be predicting and describing as much about the future as you could, allowing for how one aspect of scientific progress might shape things from all aspects of life. It might all spring from one fantastic element like… superconductivity or cld fusion. Of course you’re open to criticism – look how dopey the glut of all those 80s post-nuclear scenario movies look now.
Agree that the Civilization Type 0.5 doesn’t grab me as television show title but A for effort on marrying it with the year 2050 visual.
Indeterminate; this is just a preliminary concept, I haven’t written a single episode outline. I’m not an aspiring writer, anyway; this is just something I’d *like to see on TV. It’s what SF should be. Let somebody with more talent think up the actual stories!
So much the better. Soldiers need a place to hang out, drink, pick up persons of the opposite or otherwise desired sex, etc.
I envision it as a product of an international effort, perhaps a teaming of NASA, the European Space Agency, and several others. It would be anchored at some point at or near the equator – e.g., Ecuador (obvious), Sri Lanka (homage to Arthur C. Clarke’s Fountains of Paradise, or Mount Kilimanjaro.
Fixed – not because it’s obviously the best technological choice (I have no opinion on that), but because it simplifies the storytelling. Also means the anchor point on the ground is an obvious target for terrorist attack, and you could hang a lot of stories on that.
OK, here’s a scenario: Human events in the next 50 years will be shaped primarily by:
The “Long Emergency” – a combination of material problems, including gradual exhaustion of petroleum supplies combined with the effects of increasing pollution as more and more petroleum is burned for fuel every year. This is somewhat offset by the development of alternative energy sources (nuclear fission, mainly) and non-petroleum-dependent modes of transportation (electric high-speed rail, mainly) – but only somewhat. (There’s always a time-lag, caused by technical and economic factors as well as political obstacles, between the conception of a new technology and its implementation.) One impetus for the development of space travel, colonization and industrialization, to the point a space elevator becomes an economically viable project, is the desperate hope that the solutions to our seemingly intractable problems might be “out there” somewhere, somehow; and another impetus is the even more desperate, and rarely stated, fear that establishing a permanent, self-sustaining human presence off the Earth’s surface is our only sure hope of long-term survival as a species.
The “Clash of Civilizations” or “Jihad vs. McWorld” – the ongoing and seemingly intractable contest between the culturally hemogenizing tendencies of economic globalization, and the desire of the world’s major “civilizations” (Western, Islamic, Chinese, etc.) to do things their own way in their own spheres of hegemony. The “War on Terror” might be won, after a fashion, but people in Islamic nations will still have a world-view fundamentally different from that of people in non-Islamic countries. The Cold War contest between political “ideologies” will come to appear quaint in retrospect – but such ideologies as international socialism will never fade from the scene entirely and sometimes will play a decisive role in events. Cultural nationalism, as distinct from and sometimes opposed to the concept of broader “civilizations,” also will remain a factor in play.
In terms of shaping the human future, the most important new technologies will be:
a. Nanotechnology, which has been described as a “singularity” – like the Industrial Revolution itself – i.e., it will change things so profoundly that it is flatly impossible to get a clear picture from this side of it. It might give us unlimited material wealth and individual immortality; or it might, at most, just be a new way to break down waste into relatively harmless components. Impossible to say at this point. Which does not prevent us from speculating, of course. See Nanodreams, a short-story anthology edited by Elton Elliot (Baen, 1995); and Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age. Of course, nanobots could also be used as a weapon – they could be programmed to take you apart from the inside out like the Ebola virus, or reduce whole regions to “gray goo.”
b. Biotechnology: Not the old standby of gene-engineered humans, but gene-engineered microorganisms for medical and defensive purposes, cleaning plaque out of your arteries, hunting down and killing invading viruses, seeing to your health and comfort, etc. (See Bruce Sterling’s Tomorrow Now: Envisioning the Next Fifty Years (Random House, 2002).) Also gene-engineered foods and vat-grown meats that might make traditional land-based farming obsolete. See “Worldly Wealth” by Michael Lind, in Prospect, June 26, 2004 (http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=1869). Of course, gene-engineered microorganisms could also be used as bioweapons. (And already have been, if you buy some tinfoil-had theories about AIDS.)
c. Neural-electronic interfaces: These have been invented already, in primitive form (quadriplegics can use them to write words on a screen just by thinking). In more advanced form, they might make possible powered exoskeletons (making genetically engineered super-strength rather pointless); all kinds of remote-controlled machinery; direct neural linkage with computers, making keyboards and screens obsolete; virtual reality much more realistic than you could ever get with gloves-and-goggles; even the downloading of an individual human mind into a computer. See “Using Your Brain Signals.” by Michael Lind, in The New Leader, August 1, 2001 (http://www.newamerica.net/index.cfm?pg=article&DocID=432). Of course, that also opens the possibility of your brain being infected by a computer virus admitted through your skulljack, a theme some cyberpunk writers have already explored.
All of the above will take the future in directions radically different from anything in history to date, even if things like controlled fusion power and artificial intelligence turn out to be dead ends.
BTW, just to clear things up: I’m envisioning this show as a drama, not a comedy. (Or at least, not a sitcom; funny business is, of course, always welcome if it can be worked into the serious story.)
But they won’t be “ordinary people,” any more than you and I are “ordinary people” by the standards of our grandparents. And we’re not, we’re freaks. Our world-view and personalities were shaped by growing up in an environment earlier generations never could have imagined. And that “future shock” effect is bound to accelerate with every generation from here on out.
And while I’m ruling out aliens, there’s still plenty of room for “gee-whiz special effects.” Heck, there were plenty of those in Kubrick’s 2001, even discounting the “Dawn of Man” intro and the “Jupiter and Beyond the Infinite” conclusion. Wasn’t it cool watching that space-plane stewardess walk around the inside of a cylinder in velcro shoes to adjust her personal “up-down” orientation?
There’s still room for space battles – just as long as they follow the actual laws of physics. That means (1) space fighters operating essentially in free fall and in a vacuum do not move and bank the same way as airplanes operating within an atmosphere; (2) vacuum does not transmit sound; (3) lasers probably will not be used as weapons because they do not really pack much mass-energy punch compared with projectiles – but lasers can be used to baffle or burn out the enemy’s cameras, and there’s a lot of potential for particle-beam weapons, i.e., 1920’s-style death rays (somebody had to say it! ).
Bleh. Too plain. I could live with “Giant’s Castle” – but “2050” and “Civilization Type 0.5” would have to be worked into the opening credits somehow.
As I said above, I’m not an aspiring writer. (Not in fiction, anyway.) This is just a concept I’m floating.
I said because I’ve never heard of Warren Ellis – haven’t really been into comic books since the late '80s – but based on the description of him here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Ellis – yes, that is a compliment! Thanks!
Don’t make it a dystopia. It seems that with most science fiction that takes place on Earth in the near future, the planet and/or society is either in a shambles, or on its way there. Choking pollution, unescapable crime, hyperinflation, roaming street gangs, the whole bit … it’s not very likely. I’m not a futurist, but I would imagine that in the near future, some environmental issues would be less critical – maybe less air and water pollution, deforestation and ozone layer depletion – while other issues such as urban sprawl and resource consumption by a dominant, affluent middle class in once-poor countries would be at the forefront.
Don’t make everything new. Most science fiction of the past depicts cities and towns as if they were torn town and rebuilt from scratch a few years before the movie took place. Nobody lives in old houses, nobody drives old cars, everybody shops in glamorous multi-story indoor malls. Most architecture of a utilitarian, unoramented Bauhaus, Britalist or International style.
Reality is much different, of course. Folks in 2005 live in houses that were built 50 or 100 years ago. There is still the occasional 30 year old daily driver on the road, and 20 year old cars aren’t that uncommon. You can step into an open house any Sunday afternoon, and seee kitchens that are unaltered from the 1960s and 1970s. There are elements of the past in the lives of every one of us, whether we realize it or not. Unfortunately, that’s almost never reflected in science fiction.
Excellent point. When I speak of basing my future scenario on the “Long Emergency,” I’m not envisioning a crumbling society in the West or anywhere else. That would be too easy. We could just forget about social responsibility and focus on surviving in the wild. Rather, I envision a future where we’re always visibly on the edge of collapse, but it’s always clear we can avoid it if we find the right technological. political, or if all else fails, military fixes to stave off utter disaster for just a few more years. IOW, a society driven by an unending sense of anxiety and pressure-to-perform. Now that could make for some really interesting conflicts! Not to mention fascinatingly warped characters.
All true – but in the show I have in mind, most (not all) of the action would take place in a station at the top of a beanstalk. Everything would be new – except for the furniture and bric-a-brac; residents would make a point of bringing up some old stuff, just for the sake of a touch of the familiar. That’s one of the major advantages of a beanstalk, by the way: It drastically reduces the cost of lifting a kilogram of payload into orbit, thus spacefarers can afford the luxury of bringing up some material objects they don’t strictly need or that could be substituted with something less massive.
In Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, most of the above-ground buildings are new, but there are still some old ones, like the abandoned cathedral the mad scientist Rotwang uses for his laboratory. Not a bad prediction.
Here’s a point nobody has addressed yet: What would fashions be like in 2050? The evolution of clothing is, perhaps, the hardest element of daily life to predict. I don’t think any SF movie has come close to getting it right. Ever see The Shape of Things to Come? Why would anybody wear those knee-length tunics with the crested shoulders? Sometimes the writers just decide to be silly and have fun with it, so we get ridiculous inventions like the double-neckties in Back to the Future II. Other times they try to come up with something more plausible – so we see things like the narrow neckties and tuxedo-style collars in Wild Palms.
I can’t think of the title, but there was either a TV-movie pilot or a short-lived series about a private detective living in a near-future. He would dictate his case files to a speech recognition program on his computer (back when that was still science fiction!)
I’m kinda with kunilou - why bother making it scifi? It’d be more marketable to a general audience without the half-hearted trappings of scifi. Even with those trappings, I don’t think it’s escapist enough for the SciFi channel to touch it with a ten foot pole - not that it’s a bad idea, though.
I rarely, rarely find hard SF entertaining. And nine times out of ten that I do find it entertaining, it’s because there’s simply a well-written drama hidden in enough future technology to “qualify” as scifi. And while those trappings are easy to throw in a novel, where there’s no visual FX budget required, on a TV show … you’re better off with a plain drama.
).