New Sci Fi Setting Seeds

[Phantasm]

Well, the key phrase was "transhumanist dystopia". Dystopias are rarely truly realistic, being exaggerated in their bleakness for the sake of the tone of the story. With that in mind, I'm willing to overlook how it got that way so long as it's somewhat consistent in execution.

[tanksoldier]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

The Ducklander 2 may barely qualify as Sci Fi, but the first one is solidly fantasy.

Well, I figured that with uplifted ducks....

...wait, are we really discussing this?

[AlexanderHowl]

Why not? Or it could just be a race of parahumans who were given extreme species modifications by a cruel creator. The only real question would be if they were small enough to fly or were human-sized.

[Flyndaran]

All manner of amazing gene therapies and improvements, were funded by one crazy woman wanting to bring her one true love to life; Daffy Duck.

All the rumors of hybridizing mammalian physiology and avian/dinosaurian could lead to very confused "adventurers" expecting to find a Jurassic-Park lab.

(The strength modifications were only to allow a child sized duck-person to fly; no other reason.)

[Astromancer]

In the robotic economy idea by AlexanderHowl social exclusion and status anxiety would be the marks of poverty. The poor, living in what we would see as comfort and mild luxury, would be labled "Eloi" or some other dismissive term. Most of the people would be mainly content. They'd find their satisfactions in life outside of the world of work which they know wants nothing to do with them.

Those unhappy with their lot would be the ambitious. The elites would monopolize all paths to prestige. Someone of workingclass background who desires to be an artist of any kind, a scholar, a politician, or any other prestige job, would find themselves coldly snubbed and treated as a coarse joke.

If you read anthropology or Mapp & Lucia, you know status competition can be sadistically nasty.

[tanksoldier]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

All the rumors of hybridizing mammalian physiology and avian/dinosaurian could lead to very confused "adventurers" expecting to find a Jurassic-Park lab

Visions of mishappen Daffy clones in tanks and on tables like the Ripley clones in Aliens Resurrection....

[Flyndaran]

That was my mental image as well. Unexpected horror can be worse than expected even if objectively less dangerous, I think.

[AlexanderHowl]

Of course, it could have been an attempt to deliberately create an intelligent organism that could colonize a particular planet. After the collapse of human civilization, the duck people would eventually evolve their own society and their own technology, and might forget everything about humans (and humans might forget about them). When they eventually encounter each other, there might be a lot of potential for conflict, as the duck people would know that they are the favored people of the Gods due to their creation while the humans would know about evolution.

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by Bengt

Why do you need a traditional economy in the proposed post-scarcity-sufficiently-advanced-robots setting?

If the robots can do everything (mine for resource, run power plants, produce robots, luxuries for the robot magnates, bread and circuses for the masses, etc) then can't the masses also be excluded from the robot economy?

If you want to get really nasty about it they can be excluded the hard way and simply killed off except for the ones the uppers want for experiments or hunger games type blood sports.

[Astromancer]

{The Lanterns}


The Pentalpha Nations got their name and symbol from the shield of Sir Gawain, who was both a warrior and a healer. It points out the needed double role of protectors of the peace and healers required by the emergency.

When the cluster of genetically engineered superflus plowed through the world in 2052 the USA was in turmoil with large parts of the nation anti-Vaxer. Although medical professionals and first responders had gotten the vaccine though out the USA, large sections of the nation rejected the vaccine. This lead to 20% of the US population dead within six months. Scotland, which was still just barely in the UK in 2052, had a 40% population loss. None of the other nations making up The Pentalpha Nations experienced anything like the lost of even one percent of their population. A few places like Wales (70% population loss) and South Korea (80%) had medical communities that smuggled in the vaccine. Northern Mexico's medical community was just beginning to smuggle in the vaccine when the plague hit. In areas close to the border, the death rate was 80%, farther South it was a normal 95%. Everywhere else the medical community died in the first wave of the plague and aid attempts collapsed.

Training large numbers of medical personal is a major goal of The Pentalpha Nations anyplace they try to help. Some nations reject the aid. Russia and many Islamic nations have closed their borders. Iran, however is now a close ally of the West and progressing well. Indonesia is also gallantly keeping up the struggle to save humanity. Africa is pulling together well. Europe and Latin America are mainly sullen and bitter. India takes the aid of Pentalpha Nations and prefers to talk down to them. China also takes the aid, speaks in a friendly manner, and then tries to exploit their neighbors in sometimes truly bizarre ways. Egypt though mainly closed, keeps the Suez Canal open and allows some tourism for the hard currency. Morocco is putting up as many solar power plants as it can and sells the power to Europe and courts The Pentalpha Nations.

The years between 2052 and 2057 were mainly chaos. That no nukes were fired is a blessing and something of a mystery. The crisis forced a massive change in the US constitution. Most scholars refer to the Constitution of 2055 when talking about the present day constitution and the Constitution of 1787 for anything before 2052. The USA is now a monocameral legislature in a parliamentary system. There still is a senate, but it isn't really a house of the legislature, it's more like ombudsmen appointed by each state and editors to make sure the laws are correctly written, as in no accidental loop holes because of comma splices and the like. The President is a Head of State only, the Chair of the House is the Head of Government. Like all The Pentalpha Nations the USA is a social democratic society.

Between 2057 and 2070 the world crawled out of deep depression, although by either 20th or 19th century standards the economy is still a mess. Still, if life is impoverished in most of the world, life is going on. A nation's economy tends to better the fewer people it lost. The USA, which is back to 300 million people after a low of 275 million, has the largest market and the liveliest economy in this setting. Still it looks pretty pallid by earlier standards, still an economist would see a healty economy held back by the planetary population collapse.