Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MaxTheFox]

I think I said this elsewhere but it's going to be buried in a megathread soon, and I didn't provide many details. In short, the only very implausible thing is that FTL exists. Many of my plans are spoilery so I'll only provide vague details, but the key points of the setting:

• In 2031 (at the start of the first story it's 2121), a FTL drive was discovered by a brilliant Russian scientist, Viktor Ugolnikov due to an unexplained (in the story) "loophole" involving exotic compounds in a helium-3 atmosphere producing a warp bubble when pumped with electricity, allowing travel to other star systems in a matter of days (it still often takes weeks for medium-distance stars). But there's a catch: it only works outside a star system's gravity well, requiring conventional propulsion to get there. Yes it's handwavium but I wanted insterstellar colonies that were dependent. The One Big Lie.
• The Earth gradually united under the UN, however it is a very loose union, closer to a confederation, and countries still exist and compete with each other for colonies. The Moon and Mars are fairly developed while exoplanet colonies vary, especially those close by, while the frontiers are often lawless and full of organized crime.
• There is no FTL communication, so data has to be sent via probes, there are entire depots at the edges of "safe zones" surrounding systems (around the orbit of Pluto for Sol) to process and send vast amounts of information. Research ships have to live to tell the tale.
• Alien contact happens somewhere during the first story. The aliens often are, well, truly alien. There are many species and only some are humanoid.

[delphonso]

I'm interested to read, Max. I love Sci-Fi but haven't touched anything made in the last twenty years or so, I'd guess. The whole - One Big Lie thing doesn't bother me in the least, and in some ways I prefer a bit of mystery to how things work.

[King Zultan]

How long you planning on making it?

Also what is The one big lie, don't think I've heard of that before.

[MaxTheFox]

How long you planning on making it?

IDK I'm still in the planning phase. Could be a novel, could be a bunch of short stories.

Also what is The one big lie, don't think I've heard of that before.

It means a setting with one majorly implausible thing.

[Telgin]

If FTL only works outside of a star's gravity well, how far away do you have to actually get and what kind of propulsion do the ships use for sub-FTL speeds?  You're looking at potentially months of travel to get to those points at human survivable accelerations, which would be a bit ironic but perhaps interesting if the FTL component is then a breeze.

[delphonso]

This is what suborbital flights would be like. Frustrating two hours of traffic, security checks, baggage checking and then 45 minutes to the other side of the globe.

[MaxTheFox]

If FTL only works outside of a star's gravity well, how far away do you have to actually get and what kind of propulsion do the ships use for sub-FTL speeds?  You're looking at potentially months of travel to get to those points at human survivable accelerations, which would be a bit ironic but perhaps interesting if the FTL component is then a breeze.

Fusion drives (torchships!) make it less than the current travel times but yes, interstellar and even interplanetary flight is something... well it's not particularly rare but it's not something you do often. Most people who don't have some sort of business requirement or just straight up a wanderlust stay on their planets, at most visit the other planets in their system.

The story itself BTW is about the crew of an exploration ship roaming outside human-settled space-- automated probes aren't very practical for such things because general AI is, despite its advancement, prone to strange decisions and the fact that at the very least a FTL probe needs to be sent back from a surveyed system (you're looking at years of lag if you tried to remote-control it, untenable). Slightly contrived but I want a story about humans.

Also poring over sites such as Atomic Rockets for my research is pretty fun.

[MaxTheFox]

Should I post this chapter-by-chapter in a separate thread here?

[Telgin]

Here is probably as good of a place as any, unless you expected to start more discussion here that you didn't want to get mingled with it.

The NaNoWriMo thread could serve as an alternative if you wanted to keep it separate.

[King Zultan]

Posting it in your thread about it seems like as good a place as any.

[EuchreJack]

You won't make money if you post it here, but hey wherever your story can find a home I guess.  My thought process on my book was possibly to post a story here, then shunt the rest elsewhere.  I mean, people can certainly steal my one story, but they can't steal the rest of my unwritten material.