Winchell Chung ⚛🚀
Winchell Chung ⚛🚀  ·  21 hours ago
@steaphan

The current standard is the Langston Field that originated in Niven and Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye. It was invented by Dr. Dan Alderson as per spec the limits desired by Niven & Pournelle. It was specifically designed in order to allow dramatic space opera combat scenes in scifi stories, but with interesting rules making interesting limitations.

For that reason it is also used in some scifi war games.

https://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/spacewardefense.php#langston

ToddZ
ToddZ  ·  16 hours ago

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@nyrath @steaphan

Fascinating... this is making me want to re-read Mote, as I didn't recall this element of the story.

I did remember the term "Alderson Drive" though!

Apparently Dan Alderson appears in-world as the discoverer of the "Alderson force" that enables the interstellar drive:

https://fanon.fandom.com/wiki/Alderson_Drive

#scifi #sciencefiction

Author Steaphan Kay
Author Steaphan Kay  ·  yesterday

Content Warning

In SciFi great ship tech, what is the general lore behind why shields start at 100% and lower when confronted with any type of weapon or physical blow? Most shields deflect objects (not electrify/torch them) in SciFi. This infers more of a mag field or gravity. If that were so, a mag field wouldn't weaken when a non-mag force is applied.

It's fiction...I know...but so many ships have been needlessly blown up.

#SciFi#ScienceFiction #lore

Anne Delong
Anne Delong  ·  3 days ago

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@lulu @grim_elsewhere @franklinlopez

The 1940 Robert Heinlein story "If This Goes On...", from the book "Revolt in 2100", depicts a society in which a charismatic preacher, elected President in 2012, manages to turn the US into a theocratic dictatorship. Heinlein's depictions of romantic relationships are dated and somewhat clumsy, but the plot, set about 90 years later, shows how little freedom is left for the citizens, and what they eventually do about it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/%22If_This_Goes_On%E2%80%94%22

#scifi

Mark Stewart
Mark Stewart  ·  last week

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From the Odyssey archives: in April 2011 we began our voyage through the BIS archives, uncovering this photo of a man who knew a little bit about space shuttles, real and imagined. #Odyssey #ArthurCClarke #BIS_Odyssey #scifi #Space #sciencefiction@victrix75@rob_coppinger
Dave Dawkins (D. Harrigon)
Dave Dawkins (D. Harrigon)  ·  6 days ago

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@futurebird So tell me, she who knows, I've got some bugs coming up in the next section of my series of novellas. What's a good documentary on ant behaviour, possibly bees, for me to steal some cool bits for my alien bugs? My characters will be literally crawling into the nest, so I need a good primer. A lecture recorded at a university might also work.

#SciFi #bugs #ants#AmWriting #writing

myrmepropagandist
myrmepropagandist  ·  6 days ago

Content Warning

@golgaloth

The most common error I've seen in #scifi representations of social insects is a deep misunderstanding about the role of the queen and the nature of the "hive mind" (such as it is)

1. Queen ants are not rulers, they are more like ovaries. The colony is like a body every cell is important.
2. Ants are individuals and do whatever they want. It just so happens that what they want is for the colony to thrive, but they can get in 'arguments' about HOW to do that most efficiently.

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