Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

If the fusors (fusion power generators) are cheap enough they might not need to cobble all that much. And there could be other practical means of power generation in different areas. Tidal power wouldn't be stopped by the cold. Wind power might be magnified under some conditions.

Isolationist communities might make interesting story hooks.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Note: California and Morocco are amoung the only places on Earth that are wetter than they used to be. Morocco is warm and wet and is covered with greenery. California is cooler than it was but the southernmost areas are still subtropical.

The American Southwest is also cooler with about the same precipitation. This means that it's generally greener too.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I've done variants of this idea before but try this. Something monstrous tries to invades our reality. A hero, more by luck than pluck, manages to defeat the invasion. To forestall any follow up invasion, because he knows he won't be lucky twice, he plans to alter our reality. The act of altering our reality will prevent any further invasion by making our reality unreachable to the threating entity. Much like getting an unlisted phone number prevents crank calls. The main difference being that this "phone number" would be simply un-dial-able for the entity.

Of the changes he could impose with the tools he's got (a bazaar mystic artifact) he picks magically moving the world's technology forward (much like a Torg reality shift, specifically the Tech-surge that created the Cyberpapacy) as the least oppressive choice.

During the transformation our hero faints. Both the simple fact of his being exhausted and seriously injured in the previous fight, and the stress of his actions, knocked him out before he got very far. Thus the Techsurge is limited only to a few areas.

Because the hero strongly identified himself with his nation, the USA (the man is a patriot but left-wing in his politics) the techsurge was strongest in the USA. It happened mainly in US cities and population centers. Rural areas were often untouched. Canadian cities and the cities of Northern Mexico as far south as Guadalajara are also transformed. Bermuda, the Bahamas, and a few other Caribbean islands were also changed.

Both in the world community and within the nations touched by the transformation life is changed not only by the new tech but by the new power relationships and the fact that the techsurge was accompanied by other changes our hero did not intend. Mainly in the transformed areas everybody's personality and minds were also altered. Everybody in the main transformation areas gained IQ if theirs was less than GURPS IQ 15. They also gained technology and science skills suited to their new tech level. Everybody in the main transformation areas is now bisexual, politically left-wing, pro-science, technophilic, but also embraces mysticism, in other words, he made them more like himself. He's upset by this last, he feels he may have stolen part of their human free will!

Drama in this setting comes from several angles. The Hero is wanted by people around the planet for questioning. They also want the artifact that changed the world. Said artifact is reduced to ashes, it blew out when the hero fainted. The Hero has superpowers (think a across between Professor X and Captain America, who can also fly and teleport) he's made himself scarce.

Those nations that didn't get the techsurge want all the tech gains those nations got. Spying and kidnapping are only the start of their drive to gain the tech.

Many people are appalled at the transformations. Rural people in the nations most changed by the techsurge are the most upset. In Mexico the change is regional and threatens to rip the nation in half. In the USA the rural populations feel betrayed and surrounded. Many of their own leaders and politicians, because they were in civic centers and cities when the techsurge hit, no longer share values with them. Despair and hopelessness lead to lashing out.

For technology in this setting use Transhuman Space. The tech is interesting and alienating to those looking in from outside.

Note: the transformations of the techsurge left the USA and Canada with space fleets, Moonbases, and a highly developed circumlunar infrastructure, their are Mexican space assets as well. The USA has bases in the asteroids and on Mars.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

{The Farfarers}

A recently terraformed planet (Garradh Ros) with a low population allied to several strong planets is strategically located next to an unstable Empire (The Empire of the Green Scimitar, hereafter EGS). One of the reasons for the instability of the EGS is the high disease rates coming for having settled in alien ecosystems. The population of the EGS keeps being blindsided by alien diseases and parasites.

The EGS wants Garradh Ros as a breeding world for troops, Royals, and Noble Houses. The highly democratic, egalitarian, socialist, and decidedly liberal (in the sense of strong support of civil liberties), culture that terraformed the planet isn't useful to imperial plans. Well, not useful except for the simple fact they'll need them to keep the terraforming stable. As taking Garradh Ros would give the EGS a strong strategic position and a chance to stabilize, and thus both consolidate its past conquests and make new ones, none of the powers in the local stellar neighborhood will allow the conquest.

Basically this is a game of war and diplomacy. If you fail at the latter, you'll get the former. The Empire of the Green Scimitar is large and has plenty of resources. Compare it to the USSR of the 1940s or the 16th century Ottoman Empire. If its opponents get time to grow, they'll be vastly more powerful. Plus the basic instability of the EGS means it needs to act soon or collapse. Can you contain the threat?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Stealing from Star Trek, why not, have the Andorians discover Earth and make contact in the year 2013. The Andorians decide they like the humans and that they could be made into good allies to keep the Vulcans out of their business. The Andorians pick the USA, NATO, and the West for Allies. The Vulcans discovering what the Andorians have done decide that the Earth folks aren't without potential. Seeing that the Adorians got the pick of the litter, the Vulcans decide that China, in spite of its problems, also has potential. The Betazoids show up to and begin to seek alliances in Europe outside of NATO and in Latin America. Expand the list according to taste.

Basically Earth is in the middle of a serious spat. Sure, we've got fusion and are jumping to TL10, but we could end up in a proxy war.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Oh, I LIKE this idea.

It's a reasonable twist on the alien invasion idea. Obviously the aliens don't want any particular resources from Earth, but that doesn't mean we can't have a political role to play, and specifically to be an ideological battleground.

I see this as playing out as a secret war of covert operations.

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I like it, too. Imagine what the various human colonies sponsored by the three powers would look like. It also makes for a neat alternate history for the Federation...

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The Empire has suddenly collapsed and The Federation has, naturally enough dealt out governor-generalships to favorites. Which is all very well. But The Federation's military is being drastically downsized, and unfortunately there is not enough transport to get every former servicemember home.

The PCs are a group stranded in this manner. What do they do to survive? They all have their retirement bonuses; there is surplus equipment available at low prices from the war. Will they go home, set up on their own, or what?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Basically this world had superheroes pretty much like the comic books in the 1940s and 1960s. In both periods some of the inventors built functional spaceships and set up colonies both in this solar system and beyond. Supers seem to come in pulses, but right now they're rare and few, and not all that powerful. However, transit to outer space is still around. Several extrasolar colonies are thriving and Mars has several cities and a couple of territories looking to become US states. (Because the populations of these Martian territories are overwhelmingly urban, they tend to vote Democratic, so the GOP won't allow statehood.)

Other than some anomalous left-over supertech this is our world. Spaceflight is also a leftover anomaly. However, it's a functional anomaly, highly functional. An oracle, a leftover hippy-psychedelic superhero, has predicted the next wave of supers won't show up until the 2060s, mainly because the 1980s wave took out the main threat to humanity the supers were fated to defend Earth against in the early 21st century.

So basically our world with Planetary style mysteries. Leftover super relics on Earth and Mars, ancient alien archeological sites off Earth.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Discoveries in information science reveal that matter and its states are in fact correlations of information -- an advanced form of the holographic theory of reality.

This has the practical spinoff that since spacetime is a product of information correlation, it's possible to jump straight to infinite-distance teleportation with arbitrary precision. This allows relativistic time travel of a sort, but a quirk of the mathematics means that local time travel is impossible.

This even has a built-in search function, if you will. You can try to find environmental coordinates that are similar to earth and you'll find planets with similar gravity and atmospheric conditions.

The teleporters are more like computers than anything exotic, and they require only tiny amounts of energy to operate (it's actually cheaper to go long distance than to teleport around one planet).

The result of all this is that location becomes almost irrellevant. Humans are rapidly scattering over the countless inhabitable earthlike worlds of the cosmos, finding alien life and occasionally new civilizations.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

See Dan Simmons' Hyperion series, based on something much like this idea.

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Dawn Light

A colony world that collapsed ecconomically and politically some centuries ago. For decades before the collapse they'd stopped having contact with the Earth or other colonies. The why of this is unknown. The planet's culture is beginning to quicken. A renaissance might be beginning.

The planetary population is about five million, roughly that of Earth 5,000BCE. The tech level is about four around most of the planet. There are a few enclaves were higher tech level knowledge and skills are preserved. Basically if the population gets large enough they'll jump to higher tech levels very quickly.

Basically it's an altered swashbuckler setting. The PCs could be diplomats, merchant sailors, millitary types fighting pirates or bandits, scholars bringing useful knowledge to isolated communities, or just wanderers seeking a better life in a largely empty world.

Multiple cultural groups with different values and ideals, often highly divergent from the mainstream of the cultural group they came from, much like the Quakers or the Puritans, settled this world. In the period of isolation following first the lost of contract with Earth and then the collapse, these cultures evolved in unpredictable ways. So explorer anthropologist is a useful player type.

More later...

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Ten main groups make up about two fifths of this world's population. Each of these having about a couple of hundred thousand people.

Tianxia A Chinese cultural offshoot. They are overwhelmingly Christian and Eastern Orthodox Christian. Their Christian Church embraces Confusian thought the same way the Medieval Catholic Church embraced Aristotle and Plato, and Buddhist and Taoist thought influences religious mysticism. The state, as opposed to the Church, is Legalist.

This culture is on a large island roughly the size and climate of Sumatra. Agriculture and forestry are the main industries. Handcrafts and fishing are also important.

Urys A Russian offshoot. Anarcho-Capitalist society degenerating into an oligarchic aristocracy. This culture is spread over a large temperate to sub-artic plain on the main southern continent. The economy is largely based on raising cattle of different kinds (including bison, elk, and mammoth) and processing their skin and hides.

Colchis Mountainous isthmus of land, with a temperate climate, connects the trade routes of two oceans. This offshoot of Caucasian Georgian is a republic with oligarchic tendencies. Wine, dairy products, and spices, are the major exports. The trade between the seas is also economically important.

Nusantara A Indonesian offshoot, mainly based on the culture and religion of Bali. The mineral rich island has many mines and exports metal ingots and finished metal goods. The island is agriculturally productive and the tropical climate allows three harvests a year. The government is a democracy with some odd quirks. Civil liberties are very well respected, but there are theocratic aspects to the government. The spirits get a real say in public policy. For now the spirits speak up for the little guy, for now.

Fodla Irish Gaelic and Buddhist in culture, but ethnically diverse. The people of this temperate island, relatively isolated in the northern hemisphere, are the premiere shipbuilders and sailors of this world. They are also the best clock and instrument makers, this includes musical instruments. Their island exports dairy products and preserved meats.

Vengrija Hungarian offshoot. Cattle raising and agriculture. Oligarchy with a surprisingly high regard for civil liberties. The local nobility is known for it's touchy sense of honor. Dueling is endemic, but most are only to the blood. The lower classes are well organized and the nobility respects the basic deal, "We rule, and you the people get respect and security." How long that can last is unknown. However, the nobility fiercely defends the honor and security of their lands and people. Because they feel they can't afford to lose the respect of the people, no violation of the security and safety of the people is forgiven.

Lenape Native American offshoot. Agricultural and mercantile with manufacturing, the culture is early TL5 (TL6 in food processing). Democratic and egalitarian. They live in a temperate climate.

Freedonia USA cultural offshoot. Egalitarian social democratic society. They live on a chain of islands isolated in the northern hemisphere. Climates range from subtropical to cool temperate. Productive agriculture and a quick growing population. A major source of gemstones, and metals. Highest literacy rate of the planet and a solid manufacturing base.

Aldovia Latin American based monarchical culture. Tropical agriculture based on genetically engineered crops (the technology of genetic engineering is rare on this planet, but genetically modified organisms, if they can breed true, aren't effected by a reduced tech level). Culture is a consciously designed version of early modern Iberia. This culture tends toward extravagant gestures, which may or may not hide shrewd judgement.

Nairomi African based culture. Based on islands of mediterranean to tropical climate, maritime trading nation, manufactures exported.
Local governments very widely but are generally good on civil liberties.

There are dozens of other cultures on this planet.

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What was the pre-collapse wider universe like? What TL I mean.

Because I wonder if "artifacts" could be some form of technology from the distant past here.

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To have interstellar flight an colonization it would need to be TL10 or better.

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Nah, you can have interstellar colonization at TL 0 if you want. Everybody knows if you pile rocks up in the right patterns you can open gates to other worlds, right? It's at least as traditional a trope as FTL engines.

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This is a mainly no mana setting. ;-)

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Or have Turtledove's "Road Less Travelled" where we overlooked a path of physics that gave everyone else anti-gravity and FTL at usually 1400s-1600s tech level. There is at least race that uses bronze spaceships because they haven't developed iron yet though.

Going down that path means you miss things like electricity so when the first ship to land on Earth tried to overawe the backwards (no anti-grav) locals with one man fliers dropping black powder filled clay bottle gernades and a volley of musket fire things went poorly for them.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

That's just a change in technobabble. Claim they work because diffraction from the properly aligned crystals in the rock set up standing waves in the tachyon winds blowing out the black holes at the center of the galaxy and you're good.

I suppose the other easy way to spread around low TL colonists is to have somebody else move them, bothering to tell the moved people why is optional. A fair number of SF franchises have done this to justify using historical Terran cultures In Space.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Because humans make great pets!

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PSA: Don't Buy Adorable Human Towns This Cluster Day

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Humans do not make good pets. We're a headstrong, contrarian lot with a talent for creative violence and an inability to stay in our proper place -- or even recognize that such a concept might apply to us, at all. :)

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

So humans are cats?

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Why do you think one of this planet's most purely dedicated, lethal predators, likes to live with us, so much? Other than the fact that we operate can-openers, I mean?

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We can aspire to that.

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Well, one of the entertaining things about cats is that they're intelligent enough to try experimenting. Often this is annoying to the owner, especially since they aren't quite intelligent enough to know why experimenting with dropping wineglasses is frowned upon, but it's also fun to watch. Which goes back around to why Humans might be good pets:

"Oh look at him, Reglpexor; he's building a recursive neural network and not putting any learning weights against explosive propagation! Bless him, he think's he's people!"

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

There's a story about humans not making good pets:

https://www.reddit.com/r/HFY/wiki/se...make_good_pets

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Every link on that page gets what seems to be a text file reading 'Not Found.'

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I can read it fine on my phone.

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Me too - I've been reading all of it over the last few days!

It's great fun, thanks mr beer for the recommendation!

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Picture humans as the pet mice. The Aliens in question are about twenty-five times as tall as humans (150 ft.). They have vast strength and an average GURPS IQ of about 45. There are pet mice and "wild" mice. The Aliens allow the "wild" mice to exist. They in fact hire them to do service jobs for them. All of these "mice" are descendants of human colonists captured long ago.

They, the humans, are basically Parahumans with enhanced lifespans and intelligence. They know who is boss on this planet. The pets live in idle if precarious luxury. For the "wild" mice, look at Jerry's home in a cartoon and realize it's a take on a upper working class apartment of the period. Basically the "wild" mice are Blue Collar Middle Class with a few exceptions.

In a way this would be a sci fi take on Toon.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Making sheer size and brute strength the deciding factor for their superiority sounds rather bestial.
I'd rather it be more about technology far beyond human comprehension.
To prepared modern people, whales are barely dangerous, for example.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Read further. They have GURPS IQ 45. Four and a half times human intelligence. We're a semi inteligent creature to them. They keep some of as pets and let the "wild" humans work for them. Basically maintenance jobs keeping pests out and doing small repairs.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I mainly meant that the implication was that their Godzilla size was important or reasonable. I don't think it is for aliens that far "above" humanity.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Well I was making us humans the "mice" in the setting. Besides Godzilla was at least 600 feet high.

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Of men and monsters by William Tenn, the monsters are Godzilla sized and humans live as rats in the walls.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Also Big Ancestor for the sequel.

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Okay, I tend to forget that sci fi includes overt fantasy settings too.

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IQ 45 seems excessive and very difficult to comprehend. How do polymath geniuses with IQ 15 compare to normal humans? Then grade that difference up another 6 times. The best ever humans have skill 20 in one thing, these things have every default IQ skill at over 40, it's hard to even imagine what that implies.

Could just give them IQ 15, TL 11 and various super science that requires being their race to understand and use. Does the same job without the need to wonder why they all have Animal Handling-40, Carpentry-41, Leadership-41, Poetry-40 etc.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Isn't that the *point*? These aliens are supposed to be no more comprehensible to humans than humans are to mice. Something the smartest human who ever lived can understand in a thousand times the usual time on a critical success, is just complex enough they need to roll to avoid a critical failure.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Thank-you. Yes the aliens are supposed to be beyond human comprehension.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Wasn't that the plot of 3e Fantasy II Mad Lands? Humans trying to survive in a world run by incomprehensible gods?

Edit: Corrected the name

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Even with that, it's not like humans would necessarily be eradicated anymore than we've been able to eradicate mice.

I'm imagining equivalent cheap mouse traps for humans infesting some valuable locale.
Like how some smart mice figure out how to acquire bait without setting off the traps, smart humans could reasonably do similarly.

Build a better human-trap, and the bleepwheeze(screech)(quantum equations) will beat a path to your planet.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

At this point, I think the absurdity of this setting qualifies it as a, "Weird Parallel."

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Definitely one that would be off limits for every faction. Maybe some odd Cabalists would risk it if there were some magic resource.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

You mean when they are not discussing Rabbinical precedents, ancient Jewish legal disputes and religious mysticism?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Gurps Cabal, not the mundane religious.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Also "Cabal" not "Kabbalah". :)

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So it is a book about the inordinate influence in British policy by King Charles II, Sir Thomas Clifford, Lord Arlington, the Duke of Buckingham, Lord Ashley, and Lord Lauderdale?

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Come to think of it one can actually take that literally and make them the inheiritors of a conspiracy descended from the Old Ones. Make the Cabal be a Cabal.

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The varrient spellings starting with "k," "C," or "Q," are used to represent seperate things.

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This is a simple idea. A long settled planet isolated from the Earth, the home world is assumed to be either dead or blasted into the stone age, is struggling to build their economies and infrastructure. Low populations and endemic warfare ( which keeps the populations low) being the main issues.

Two large continents dominate the Northern Hemisphere, one is roughly the size of Asia and the other is nearly the size of Africa. The two continents are separated by a long narrow strait which is rarely more than one hundred fifty miles wide and never less than ninety-five miles wide. Isolated in the Southern Oceans is a continent somewhat larger than Australia with a nearby island about as large as Greenland and two island chains with around half again is much territory as New Zealand, each.

Several groups went to each hemisphere. I'll use GURPS: Alpha Centauri as a shorthand in describing the groups. Groups equivalent to the U.N. Peacekeepers,The University,and Gaia's Stepdaughters went to the Southern Continent which they named Vivensa. Groups equivalent to the Human Hive, the militarists, the oligarchic capitalists, and several flavors of the Believers, Orthodox Christian, Islamic, Hindu, and Fundamentalist Christian, go to the Northern lands. These folks agreed on little or nothing.

The northern lands all have centers of study which retain the TL10^ science and technology that brought them to this world. However, because of the constant warfare and the low population caused by said warfare and the diseases of poverty, the functional tech level most of the people live at is generally TL4 or 5. Towns, and even their main cities are simply large towns, are normally late TL5 or early TL6. Although remnant technology is still around and occasional pieces of newly made high tech are around but very limited. Literacy is low, rarely more than 15%, and technical education is rarer still.

The warring governments of the Northern lands all assumed that Vivensa was in the same boat. That changed recently.

A diplomat with the Oligarchic Capitalists ( Hereafter The Commercial League) visited the Boreal Islands, the northernmost territory of Vivensa. The Boreal Islands are much like Hawaii except they have about 250% of the landmass. The diplomat from the Commercial League noticed that a large number of ships sailed south to Vivensa regularly, he decided to send an agent south to see why Vivensa could afford so many ships. The report that the diplomat got back stunned him.

The agent reported a large port city (and not a big town, a large city) with widespread literacy and public libraries that used computers! The technology, outside of the hospitals, libraries, and public institutions, didn't seem that far advanced. However far more people had access to the technologies available. The agent rode a railroad, electrified, to another port city. He saw tractors on farms, flying machines, and hydroelectric dams. Vivensa was clearly the most advanced and richest nation on the planet. If they kept growing like this, they'd soon either conquer the rest of the planet, or treat them like anthropological specimens.

The Commercial League is now trying to build an alliance to conquer Vivensa. The PCs are agents and diplomats working to get the warring factions to stop fighting each other, invest vast sums into navies capable of crossing oceans, and then to join together with the hated foes to conquer a group of people they know nothing about. All while leaving themselves vulnerable to the attacks of anyone who isn't joining in on the plans of the Commercial League.

Notes: Fossil fuels are very rare on this world. Electrical generation is either by windpower or hydropower. Biomass fuels exist, the airplane the agent saw would have used these. Such fuels are expensive. Sailing ships are mainly that, some do have back-up motors, but rarely use them. The motors are only for emergencies.

Vivensa's climate is cooler and rainier than Australia's and the soil is far richer. Thus on the main continent alone, Vivensa could easily grow to a population equal to the early twenty-first century America.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

So, the Powers That Be in the North are going to attack a region that has better localized infrastructure, presumably faster transmission of info, and the ability to mass-produce armored vehicles (they have tractors, so can produce tanks), and has a larger population that would have the home field advantage, plus air superiority?

Well, RL warmongers have made similar mistakes..... Napoleon, meet Russia.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

The incentive for a member of the northern "alliance" to betray its hereditary enemies and cut a sweet deal with the southern continent is insurmountable. If I had a PC in that setting, that would be my move.

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I never said they were wise. It is more about intrigue and alliance building among sworn enemies.

By the way, both the Northerners and Vivensa have radios. In the northern lands they are few and far between. In Vivensa the set up is more like the 1930's. Regular broadcasts, entertainments, news, ect...

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

And a shrewd move too.

Note: although I built Vivenza (a name I got from Melville) with two of the more democratic Alpha Centauri factions, the nature of their government is up to you. In my mind, Vivenza is democratic and socialist. You can have it be whatever brings the right style to your game.

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I've used this idea before but this is changed to be a gaming setting rather than a cultural question.

In 2030 a young medical researcher discovers that a particular retrovirus was always present when children are born with certain types of brain centered disorders. As the AIDS vaccine, which came out in 2026, showed how to create a cheap, safe, effective, vaccine against retroviruses, the researcher (Haruto MacDonald) made a vaccine. Haruto MacDonald's vaccine was soon shown to be safe and effective. Due to the politics of the early 2030s, the vaccine was soon being given to all American school children.

Unknown to all, the retrovirus in question had been around a long time. Humanity had evolved redundant brain functions to survive the damage caused by the retrovirus. Individuals like Da Vinci or Hildegard Von Bingen were simply less injured/warped by the retrovirus. Thus the average child, whose mother and father were vaccinated against the retroviruses in question, had a GURPS IQ of 16 as we as several mental advantages, plus simply better health and higher stats.

The main drama in this setting is the effects of a cohort of brilliant young people entering settings that were never designed for them. Most schools aren't designed for a whole classroom full of super brainy kids. Having a sudden influx of IQ 16 young people in the job market would cause chaos too. Some cultures would fight to limit the vaccine to the children of the rich. I assume many cultures might break out in intergenerational warfare.

Added fun, I notice very smart people, especially those with less education, always seem to be attracted to the political extremes. By the 2060s, in this setting, the center could be long gone.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Try this idea. A group of aliens arrives on Earth a few years from now. They aren't invaders but xenological researchers interested in humanity. The aliens sincerely believe that humanity is descended from the survivors of one of their interstellar colonies.

The claim, in most realities at least is wrong, but sincerely held.

The main things here are A) the overturning of human beliefs. Face it, large numbers of people would believe what the aliens said and still larger numbers would find it blasphemous. And B) humanity managing it first contacts with galactic civilization. Something made harder by alien groupies and wannabes on one hand and religious riots on the other.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

It might make more "sense" if it's a religious belief. As in humans are reincarnated aliens. That would sidestep the biological impossibilities of being literal descendants.
It would be interesting if we just happen to be psychologically similar to one of the alien species. Only they and we have music or laughter, for example.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I forgot to add in that because of a weird convergent evolution (manipulated by a precursor species for their own reasons) we and they are genetically the same species. I throw in the precursors as a fig leaf of reality. Being half asleep when I wrote the piece causes many flaws.

Still, the idea of humans as reincarnated aliens, or at least held to be so by an alien faith, works. I remember a Sci Fi novel where the dominant alien overlords held that unworthy members of their species were reincarnated as humans.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I know very little about biology but I believe that convergent evolution creates similar forms in different species but they remain as genetically dissimilar as their respective common ancestors.

Now genetic manipulation might overcome that, but the convergent evolution and the genetic meddling are separate unrelated processes. I think.

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True enough, yet if if you are half-asleep, easily confused.

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Homo sapiens have been around for 500,000 years, so there is plenty of opportunity for bored aliens to steal Homo sapiens pets and abandon them when their civilization collapses (that is the premise of Traveller, after all). You could have convergent evolution keep two different populations of Homo sapiens from diverging into different species, though Homo sapiens seems to be a remarkably stable species (Australian Aborigines were separated from the rest of humanity for 60,000 years and experienced very little divergence from the rest of humanity). At the apparent rate of divergence, it might take 100,000 years of isolation to make a separate Homo sapiens subspecies and 500,000 years of isolation to make a separate Homo species.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Our species is no where near as old as 500k. That's in the period of other hominids like Homo heidelbergensis, neanderthalensis, denisovan, etc. We're around 200-70k old.

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Homo sapiens is the species. Neanderthal, denisovan, etc. interbred with Homo sapiens sapiens and produced fertile offspring, so they were just different subspecies of Homo sapiens, not different species of Homo. Remember, subspecies can interbreed and produce fertile young, species cannot interbreed and produce fertile young.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

No, unless you're saying that lions, tigers, jaguars, and leopards are all the same species. They can produce fertile offspring.
Wolves, dogs, and coyotes can interbreed.
African wild cats, European wild cats, domestic house cats, servals, etc. can interbreed too.

Also human interbreeding with neanderthals happened maybe once or only a few times 100+ years ago. And also only between neanderthal males and human females.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

What you are noting is what biologists call the species problem. In many cases, our classification of different species is a historical artifact rather than a biological fact. Coyotes, dogs, and wolves were historically considered different species, but their ability to hybridize shows that they are probably different subspecies of the same species. The same applies to different felines that are capable of producing fertile young, their classifications are historical artifacts rather than biological facts. Of course, this is a very complex issue with thousands of scientific articles supporting and refuting each detail since Darwin first published the Origin of the Species, so it will likely take another century or two before we have a good definition of species (it may end up that the genus is more important than the species).

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

If they are very unlikely to interbreed in the wild or there are problems with the offspring reproducing then that's good enough to make them distinct species. That doesn't apply to canines but does apply to big cats. That the mitochrondrial DNA indicates that the surviving bloodlines were all the offspring of neanderthal fathers and modern human mothers indicates there was in some kind of reproductive barrier.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Mitochondrial DNA passes from mother to child, not father to child, so it would only take a surviving son in the right place to break the mitochondrial DNA chain, so we cannot know that only male neanderthal reproduced with female sapiens, we just know that none of the neanderthal mitochondrial DNA survived the 30,000 years since the last exchange. There are no surviving neanderthal Y-chromosomes as well, so it is just as valid to say that all of the mating were between female neanderthals and male sapiens because male neanderthals would pass their Y-chromosomes to their sons, but it only takes a surviving daughter in the right place to break the y-chromosome chain. In fact, that is probably more likely, considering that male sapiens will screw anything and neanderthal women were more robust than sapiens women.

At last count, 5% of European, North African, and West Asian DNA was neanderthal (around 1% in other Asian populations). Unless people with neanderthal DNA have a massive survival advantage, that would mean that ten percent of the sapiens children born 30,000 years ago were born to the mating of neanderthal and sapiens (five percent of the total human DNA therefore being neanderthal). If you have a smaller number of people interbreeding, you get a smaller percentage of DNA surviving through the centuries.

Humans possess around 20,000 protein coding genes and only 800 of them differentiate us from the bonobos. A single interbreeding event 30,000 years ago would have been genetically washed out within ten generations, as each mating with someone of a pure sapiens would have halved the number of hybrid genetic expressions passed to the next generation. In order to retain neanderthal DNA, you would have required enough people interbreeding before 30,000 years ago to make sure that 30,000 years of mixing did not remove the neanderthal DNA from the mixture.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Candyland


An interesting sci fi setting proposed in an older GURPS book (3rd E) but never followed up on was the idea of a nanotech revolution jumping society several tech levels quickly. Picture in 2020 a tech-wiz invents a fairly practical nanotechnology system. In the GURPS book I'm rifting off, this means all sorts of things that couldn't be done, because of material limits or costs, become doable. All sorts of ways of analyzing matter become practical and cheaper. Thus all kinds of barriers to technological progress dissolve. I get the reasoning, I think it isn't bad, I feel it is overoptimistic. Still, it makes a good setting idea.

Picture the Earth of 2030 with roughly the same technology as Transhuman Space in 2100. I use the THS setting as a useful shorthand rather than as a realistic result.

I add to the setting the idea that full rejuvenation of human beings is possible. Certain people have a genetic quirk (or in GURPS terms a PERK) that allows cheap rejuvenation. Certain, individuals, in exchange for their Social Security pension being delayed for some decades, get free rejuvenation through Medicare/Medicaid (which after 2024 covers all Americans). Basically, even if, like me, you'll be seventy in 2030, you can play a young and healthy you.

The main reason I see this as a good adventure setting is that it's mainly present day Earth in turmoil and made exotic. Nanotechnology, as conceived in this setting, makes technology both far more widespread but choppier. Infrastructure works differently in this world. Thus the power differences between developed and developing nations aren't the same, the differences are still there they simply work differently. National leaders don't yet know the limits. Resource economies are shifted too. High efficiency solar cells and supercapacitor/battery combos, that take a vast change in seconds, are both cheap to make. Which means it is easy to gather the energy to make petroleum and petroleum is far less needed than before. The Middle East is now largely unimportant.

Run over the Earth's politics and ask yourself what happens if energy becomes cheap and abundant and educating your people is the real resource? Russia has a disastrous fade out. China's divide between the coastal cities and the rural areas magnifies. In the USA the Northeast, the West Coast, and the Rust Belt, all become more important. The Southeast and the Rocky Moutain west fade in importance. New England has a new golden age. Scotland becomes dominant over England.

Basically, it is both alien and familiar. All kinds of good things are happening, but the power relationships are changing unpredictably, which makes war highly likely. In other words, a good time for adventure.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

We'd be okay, in the Denver-Boulder metropolitan area, because we have a diverse, information-based economy. If military spending remained important, Colorado Springs might do okay, as well. The ski resort towns prosper any time the economy does well.

Santa Fe, down in New Mexico, wouldn't lose out, either. It's a significant and unique hearth for arts and culture. As a biotech research center, Fort Collins would probably grow in significance, as well.

That said, I think you're mostly right about a lot of the region. Those locations sometimes remind me of islands of sanity and progress, in a sea of reactionary rural communities and increasingly empty territory.

Your scenario would likely accelerate already existing patterns of change.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

It was a plot point in Babylon 5 too.

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Agreed! And to dangerous levels. It is one of the main reasons the setting works. It is our world in a dangerous fever. A delirium that could kill.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

I hadn't known that.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Candyland


A technology I'd allow in this nanotech revolution world (because it would bring in big troubles) would be the use of nanotech as a Proteus Virus. Basically, they can rewrite your DNA here. If you'd like to be a parahuman, there's an app for that. The process takes several weeks in a clinic, a few hundred thousand dollars, and you'll need to get follow ups and meds for about a year and a half until your genetic stabilize (the alternatives start at massive cancers and get worse quickly). But, if you follow the basic safety guidelines, you're safe.

If this world is connected to anything in the Infinite Worlds setting, this feature would pull in all sorts of trouble. In a stand-alone setting, this feature means the rich are immortal. Having the rich be immortal would guarantee big trouble of some kind or other.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Follow-on effect: Someone (or several someones) release modified Proteus viruses into the wild. Effect: well, it could be the end of the world and the rise of a nanotech mutant apocalypse, but for a more stable setting say that fairly robust "vaccines"/"nano-boosted immune systems" are implemented quickly. Nonetheless, many people find themselves mutating in ways they didn't ask for - sometimes several times over the course of their life. Different Proteus Viruses combine in unexpected ways, often fatally, but sometimes beneficially. And if one of the viruses is the immortality one (because really, someone's going to get snippy about an immortal gerontocracy running things forever), then things get interesting. Or you could just use it for something like Shadowrun's Goblinization.

Also, what if someone releases a Proteus Virus to uplift, say, common household pets to sapience? Or something approaching it.

Pretty sure IW would treat this world as a big no-go zone.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Random rewrites of animal genetics could lead to survival horror at high speed.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Good pseudoscience explanation for those one off monsters.
The Tremors tv show was going that way with just such a bacteriological proteus "thing" affecting local wildlife, before cancellation.

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

Now, suppose that someone on this world develops sub-quantum conveyors before any of the other parachonic powers find this worldline. The first hint they have is when other worlds start showing evidence of nanotech infections.

Might do a New Reality Seeds post on this, if the idea gels in my head enough, but it could also fit in the thread for Alternate Crosstime Organizations that I'm not sure the name of (unless that was it). Maybe someone else will get inspired before I do.

Could a Proteus Virus give someone's body the ability to manufacture personal utility fog?

Re: New Sci Fi Setting Seeds
 

An interesting campaign world could be based on the introduction of a single technology and its rapid dissemination. Choose the right technology and you can rapidly rewrite power relationships. Radical shifts in power relationships normally lead to wars until the new power relationships have rewritten the world community in their image.

Try this idea. In 2020 a researcher comes up with viable cold fusion that cheap and easy to build. Assume that it is basically a polywell fusor and amazingly easy to plug into existing systems. As the fusors spread out oil plunges in value. Electrical systems become decentralized and easier to build. Africa and India will really benefit there. Oil will only be valued as a raw material and coal would vanish from the market.

Israel would get ready to talk land for peace or drop its US alliance completely. The Arab lands would go nuts seeing their status evaporate. China, once the coal mines close, would have big internal displacement issues. North Korea's only significant export is coal so whichever Kim is running that monarchy will go ballistic.

Western nations will go up or down according to whether or not they'll take care of themselves. The fusors would move the needle towards social democracy. If the financial interests win the power struggles in a nation, then that nation will decline. As the Maastricht treaty enshrines certain ideas about economics that favor hard right economic assumptions, the USA is more likely to successfully embrace social democracy. That may seem wildly counterintuitive but, as vital as the EU is to Europe's future, they've painted themselves into a corner.

This idea needs more development but I think it's sound.

Note: Given the basic idea and low radiation output of a polywell fusor, airplanes, airships, and other mobile applications make good sense. Space travel would also gain a great deal, polywell fusors would be grand for ion drives.