Science Fiction World-building

Cafe Society
1

When unpacking some of my parents old stuff the other day I found one of my old books, ‘Medea: Harlan’s World’. This was a collection of stories by various authors set on a planet that was imagined and defined by a committee of science fiction authors. My favorite part of the book was the transcriptions of the discussions where the details of the planet’s geology, biology, and the culture of it’s inhabitants were hashed out.

This got me to thinking - there are a lot of knowledgeable SF fans on these boards as well as many experts in the various sciences, and it could be really fun to make up a science fiction setting here. We could all put forth various ideas and see if we could reach some general consensus on which ideas we keep and what might need changing to fit in with what’s decided.

Since anything posted here becomes the property of the Chicago Reader we’d have to agree to not try to publish any stories set in this setting, but I’m more interested in the actual world building process than setting fiction in it, and those who did want to write stories could still do so, and maybe they could even end up in Teemings.

To kick this off, we need to figure out the basics of the universe to be created. Is it going to be hard SF where we don’t allow anything not allowed by modern physics, or are we going to allow things like FTL travel, or go even further and allow psionic powers? Is the setting going to even include humans, and if so at what point in our history? Are we going to figure all that out before we start to focus on one particular world, or should we work on both concurrently?

My first suggestion is to have the world focused on be somewhat Earth-like, but unusual in some way, i.e. considerably different from planets we know of in our own solar system. I’m partial to low-gravity/thick atmosphere worlds myself, and can think of a few ways to pull that off realistically. You could have a world considerably larger in diameter than the Earth but made of much less dense materials, or you could have a moon that was close enough to it’s primary that it’s atmosphere is replenished by it’s own gas torus, like Titan.

2

Well, I’d stick with “physical conditions: everything earth-like”, mainly because that’s easiest. But psi abilities are fun, as are leftover dinosaurs (and no, I don’t mean birds).

3

OK, we have psionics of some sort and dinosaurs. If they are leftover dinosaurs we need to figure out how they got to this planet they are on. If they were brought there by some civilization from at least 60 million BP (perhaps one that evolved on Earth that we haven’t found fossil evidence of yet) they will most likely be quite different from the dinosaurs on Earth. They will have evolved to fit their new environment, unless we can think of some reason why they haven’t - perhaps whoever brought them there modified their DNA in some way to prevent mutation, or has been culling the mutations. If they have been allowed to evolve, there could be some really huge dinosaurs on this planet since it has a lower gravity than Earth, and the thicker atmosphere will allow for larger flyers as well. Another possibility is some means of time travel brought the dinosaurs to this planet, or maybe they were in some form of suspended animation until recently.

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Ooh! Ooh! Here’s the Science Fiction world I built!

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My suggestion? Put it a century or two in the future. No FTL travel yet, so there’s not really much widespread space travel (although I don’t doubt that some experimental sailships have been launched, but those aren’t FTL). It would be interesting to see a conflict arise between Earth proper and outlying colonies on Mars and the Jupiter/Saturn moons.

6

OK, we need to decide how the dinosaurs got on the planet so we can figure out how they fit in with the rest. Since humans are involved, there is another possibility, that they were recreated ala Jurassic Park. Maybe the humans are there to colonize this planet and created the dinosaurs to help with the colonization process…here’s an idea…feel free to suggest something different as it’s a bit early to come to this many conclusions about the background, but it kinda fits in with what we have.

Humanity has colonized most of the solar system and has begun to send STL colony ships to other solar systems. Humans have advanced biotechnology but do not use nanotechnology (for reasons I will get to later). Humans have also isolated the gene(s) responsible for psychic powers, and use this to either create or locate those with said talents.

Space is limited on the colony ships, so the colonization model is heavily reliant on animal power in the early stages of development - the colony ship brings the basics to build a small colony and the fertilized eggs of thousands of species of animals, some natural, some genetically engineered from existing or extinct animals. When they arive at the new planet they start rush-growing animals to help with the expansion of the initial base camp, including several varieties of dinosaurs, which are made even more useful due to the psychic powers of some of the colonists, which allow them to directly command the animals to clear vegetation, haul materials, guard against native life, etc.

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Oh, as to why I thought that nanotech wouldn’t go well with the idea I proposed - we need some reason for them to need the dinosaurs, the space limitations wouldn’t be a problem if they had nanotechnology as they could use it to build whatever they needed from the raw materials on the new planet.

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Well, maybe they don’t use the nanotech for historical reasons. There could have been a war sometime in fairly recent history that involved the use of warrior nanites, something that did major damage to a planet (not Earth, perhaps Venus?) and now public opinion is so far against nanotech it’s unlikely it will be used in the forseeable future, hence the focus on biotechnology.

And with biotechnology you have genetic engineering and cloning. Perhaps we could have semi-intelligent dinosaurs? Like the velociraptors, but non-violent and trainable to perform tasks like driving a car or erecting simple structures.

Or we could have sentient molds, where each cell of the mold is both a general-purpose cell and a neuron. Imagine trying to find a common ground (so to speak) with that! Of course, psionic powers can do wonders for communication skills.

And we could have dino-human half-breeds. Not by (un)natural reproduction, but by gene-splicing. Humans with strong, fast raptor muscles would be an asset if you had a need for unarmed combat soldiers. Possible mental side effects? Dinosaurs aren’t exactly personable, you know. :slight_smile: Possibly special breeds of hybrids for special environments. Terraforming only goes halfway, genetic engineering of colonists does the rest.

Maybe racial purists opposed to the possible melding of humans and various animal species. KKK, anyone? They firebomb abortion clinics now, maybe they plant designer smallpox in this world. Linear move from quick-and-dirty chemistry to quick-and-dirty biology. Radical hybrids (a la Black Panthers) suspicious of pure-breed humans possible. Purists want to push hybrids off Earth, hybrids want equal protection (radicals maybe more?).

Of course, organic machinery. Self-repairing vehicles, organically intelligent houses, and wide-spectrum drugs consisting of microbes that search for new invaders to eat, and then evolove to eat them. Genetic failsafes to prevent them from eating us or our creations.

Subplot: Move towards nanotech. Slow, out of the public eye, but a move towards iron microbes instead of carbon ones. Ferrous E. coli made in labs, destined to be native life on the iron-rich soil of Mars. Nanotech hand-in-hand with biotech, but always vaguely poised to overtake it. Biotech advancements point towards what was being done with nanotech before the War. Public is slowly forgetting, Venus (or wherever) slowly healing. After all, biotech is just using premade nanobots called cells, once you can reprogram the genes.

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Or, maybe, yes Earth. Perhaps some rogue nanites got out of hand and began turning ALL matter on the planet into more and more rogue nanites. Perhaps the entire surface of the planet had to be nuked in order to ensure that the infestation be stopped. So now humanity homeworld has been torched, and all that they’re left with are a few space stations and colonies.

The dinosaurs - well, we’d want to call them something else, since “dinosaur” sounds hokey after all the Jurassic Park’s - are used as initial beasts of burden for new colonies. They wouldn’t be “true dinosaurs”, of course… scientists would want to specially-design the individual species to be hardy, trainable, capable of withstanding extremes in environment conditions, etc. A sort of uber-dino. But what to call them… “genosaur”? Or maybe just “behemoths”?

I don’t see biotech evolving as far as Derleth is proposing, however. Self-repairing vehicles is nice and all, but I’ve always envisioned such designs as sacrificing total strength and support for the sake of such a benefit.

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Bo Diddley:
An organic car, for example, would be much more fault-tolerant than a mechanical one would be. Imagine: The coolant system springs a leak, and starts venting fluids. In a mechanical system, the whole engine would quickly be unusable. In an organic system, the hose would scab up, the fluid would be reabsorbed, and the car would keep driving. It might complain a bit, but it wouldn’t die. :slight_smile: Don’t envision the bags of seawater you see around you refitted to be vehicles. That’s precisely backwards. Imagine the current designs evolved into self-repairing, cellular, organic systems.

Well, if Earth was ravaged, I can’t exactly have a Las Vegas with strange mutant strippers, now, can I?

:smiley:

(Maybe Earth has to be it, though, to create the kind of public sentiment I’m after here. Subplot: Survivor nanites, Earthbound, slowly evolving into … biological life! Some scientists want to use designs based on the bio-nanites to Terraform inhospitable planets. Besides, imagine multicellular life evolved from warrior nanites!)

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I seem to recall a discussion in the past where it was established the CR only had publishing rights to anything you posted here; they don’t actually own it or anything…

Am I right?

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My belief is that they can reproduce anything you post here, but that you still hold the copyright - you are just granting then permission to reproduce your work…

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The psionics (or Psions) on the planet are only regulated to about 1% of the population, and are considered very important by the world’s governments. In fact Psions were slaves in the past, but have recently broken free of their bonds in a great war where many were killed (perhaps this links up to the nanotech breakdown and nuclear war?). The general population still dislikes Psions as a whole, feeling that anyone who has that great of a power is not good. This makes a majority of psionics wary and somewhat hateful of the ‘normal’ members of their planet.

Psions are special in quite a few ways, but the largest is their shortened life span. They get their powers from a cancerous mass in the brain that forms shortly after puberty. While it does not kill them as quickly as normal cancers, their life span in increasingly short. Most Psions do not live to be past 35-40 years of age, but rumors have surfaced in the last few years of very old Psions and people who have awakened to their psionic powers later in life. None of these rumored people have come forward, nor has any major media outlet found one to interview, but this could be because of the current negative publicity of Psions.

While Psions are powerful, they are fairly limited in what they can do. There are three ‘schools’ of psionic power; Physical, Mental, and Environmental. Most Psions only use one of these schools.

Physical Psionics are based around the human and animal bodies. They can do many things from make themselves stronger to give their enemies a heart attack.

Mental Psionics use the mind to control and manipulate other people and animals (including the afore mentioned ‘dinosaurs’). Basic functions of this range from causing someone to believe that voices are in their head to allowing focus in meditation.

Environmental Psionics manipulate the physical world around the Psionic. Uses range from manipulation of large objects to cleaning up toxic areas of the earth. Many of these are working on the cleanup projects on Earth after the war of their own volition because of the general hatred of Psions.

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And are you going to have experience level progression charts for the Psionics too? What kind of hit dice do they have?

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Theoretically. However, an organic car is still subject to disease, needs nourishment, and if it’s anything like current biological creatures, its nervous system would be imperfect and imprecise. Further, it would take some highly advanced biotech in order to develop growing tissue that has the same strength as typical sci-fi fictional alloys.

A better solution would be to simply build a stronger, less error prone coolant system.

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Posted by Badtz Maru

Generally speaking, low gravity planets would not host a “thick” atmosphere, due to the lack a gravity cementing the air to the surface. i.e. the Moon, which does have an atmosphere, but it is extremely light and thin, and Mars falls in that same category.

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Badtz Maru wrote:

You just want full-sized people to be able to fly without needing 50-foot wingspans, don’tcha?

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Well, I am sure if someone wants to do so they could, but I figured using an RPG style of Psionics that make sense (at least in my own mind) would be interesting.

I am working on a story using this, but there isn’t quite enough information yet. Is the inhabitants of this world humanoid? Are they a space faring race?

The biggest question I suppose is are they human? If so, can we assume that their world is close to the Earth?

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By the way, low gravity and a thick atmosphere aren’t mutually exclusive. Take a look at Venus sometime: .8 g and tremendous pressures, and that’s even with all that heat to cope with! Take a nice cool world like Earth or Mars, and you can go a lot more extreme with the temperature and/or pressure.

But if we’re stuck in the solar system, then just what world is this? We’ll have to invoke terraforming of some sort; I nominate either a gassed-up Mars or a heated Titan.

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I think extrasolar is better for the main setting. For one thing, it will be isolated from the home system, and secondly there can be a habitable planet without terraforming. As I mentioned above, you can pull off the thick atmosphere/low gravity environment in at least a couple of ways. If we do it by making the world a moon with a gas torus replenishing it’s atmosphere, ala Titan, it would most likely be tidally locked to it’s primary (long days) and deformed by the tides so that the points on the moon closest and furthest from the primary would be arid and have a thinner atmosphere, while the band around the middle would be where all the seas were and the atmosphere would be much thicker. Perhaps the majority of the native life on the planet is adapted to one or the other of these extremes, and the humans have to live in the margins, i.e. the native life requires a thicker atmosphere and stays in the lowlands and humans have to live in the arid highlands.

If the planet is just low-density, we have the interesting problem of there being very little in the way of metals available.

tracer, you hit close to my motivations - I’d like some form of sentient life that could fly. With the terrestial atmosphere gravity combo anything with a brain big enough to be sentient would barely be able to fly, if at all.

As to the native life on the planet, I’m not sure how close it’s biochemistry should be to ours. If it has DNA (the result of panspermia) then it can eat us and vice-versa, and disease could be a serious problem. If it evolved similarly to Earth life, most of the same basic proteins made out of the same amino acids, but different, it’s unlikely that we could gain nourishment from it and vice-versa, though there may be a few things on either side that aren’t poisonous and are perhaps partially digestible. If it’s REALLY different, the humans might only need to spread their sewage around to keep native life from encroaching on their colonies, and not have to worry about our animals roaming off and going feral.