Rationalizing a Firefly - Serenity type setting

[pfharlock]

Originally Posted by cptbutton

Two of the things I am trying to justify or explain away here.

The rest of the godlike technology has been suppressed because it is too scary.

And the Core worlds are intentionally not making stuff the fringe needs. In the vain hope that the fringers will come back, or start behaving properly. And if they won't, to hold back their technology level.

But the Core worlds can't get too blatant about it, because they have to maintain the fiction they are trying to help the fringers, not suppress them. And of there isn't total agreement on what to do and not do. Plus of course human corruption.

So the fringe has to make it themselves, or adapt stuff the Core worlds make for themselves, when they can get it smuggled out, with the extra cost of smuggling.

So first of all, Love your idea for an explanation for a firefly like setting. I would totally play in it.

To reconcile the conundrum of the core having TL 10 but also being scared by it, I think at some point you'll have to invent what the original disaster was. Nano-tech might be a good candidate. They may have gotten to the point (in the original society) where they had universal matter de-constructors/re-constructors and were using them in daily life. All it would take is some crazy hacker to re-program them to initiate a grey goo scenario and you have the death of a civilization.

The other good thing about doing it this way is, you can have a workable tl10 society without nanotech, but the matter deconstructing nanotech would've been terribly useful for initial terraforming when they didn't have allot of raw materials available. Once they had a reasonable industrial base formed, they wouldn't need it anymore and could dismantle it/lock it away.

edit: it would also conveniently explain why the alliance is sooooo committed to multiple research projects. Their original technology path relied on matter deconstructing nano tech. They're having to re-invent some of that technology path to achieve the same ends without using that tech.

re-edit again: it also explains things like why food shortages and other supply problems on the fringe are so common, under their old tech path, that wouldn't have been an issue.