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#ttrpg
#scifi
#scifi
Folks, I have a child who is looking for play testers for a _hard_ sci fi RPG system - real physics, optimistic and thoroughly decolonial politics. ("well, it's not optimistic if half the world gets nuked", they said.)
It is not another capitalist warmongers in space hard SciFi system.
If anyone's interested, please contact me by DM and I will put you in touch.
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For no particular reason tonight I was reflecting on science fiction. And I’m sure other people have written this more eloquently than I will. But it’s a shame the way science-fiction gets civilisations wrong.
If you look at humanity, we come in all sorts of shapes and sizes. Tall, short, thick, thin. All kinds of different colours. We have poets and soldiers, doctors and teachers, singers and farmers.
Science fiction will write “These are the blorgons. They are all 2.5m tall, green, muscular warriors.” There won’t be any blue blorgons. No fairy-like happy-go-lucky blorgon poets. No brainy blorgon engineer with a pocket protector.
I do like Star Trek Lower Decks that has a small running plot line about how not all Orions are pirates. They do it pretty well. But a lot of other shows’ attempts at that do it badly. They focus so much on one exceptional character who bucks the trend of their civilisation. The only reason there is any plot at all is if you believe these exceptional people are super duper rare, and the overwhelming majority of that civilisation fit a crude and rigid stereotype.
I dunno why this popped into my head tonight. But now it’s in your feed.
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#scifi #fiction
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Unrelated to the stereotype thing, there’s also the absurdity of planets and the sizes of planets. Earth has like 7 billion people spread out over massive land area. Every climate, every kind of biome.
Some ways they get this wrong in lots of #scifi. 1. Some characters are looking for someone or something and they only know what PLANET it is on. Like, imagine finding ONE specific person—even if you have a super high res, high tech holographic photo of them—if all you know is that they’re on Earth somewhere. Then they land on “the planet” and go to the first town or city they see, and that’s where the thing they need is. They never spend months wandering around an entire planet trying to find the one thing.
2. Every real culture makes a single city of their culture the representative for the whole Earth in sci-fi stories. In American movies, aliens come to New York or DC. When aliens attack Earth and Godzilla is needed, Tokyo takes the lead to save Earth. James Bond is the only hero who can save Earth from total destruction (not exactly sci fi, but I wanted another example)
3. If you see extreme weather on an alien planet, that’s because the _entire_ planet has that extreme weather (blizzard, desert, swamp). It’s never like “oh on this continent at this time of year, the rains are super heavy. But the summers are warm and sunny.” You know, like Earth.
They invite us to imagine a planet so homogeneous that the weather never changes, culture never changes, and everyone on the planet looks and thinks pretty much the same.
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James White (1928-1999) was born on this day. Bibliography: https://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?304
L, Dean Ellis, 1970; R , Dean Ellis, 1972
#scifi #sciencefiction #books
Cover for Hospital Station. It depicts a large space station with a spacecraft approaching. The space station contains two major parts -- a spherical end and a long tube with various other tubes along its outside. It has a medical red cross on it.
Cover for The Watch Below. Shows a man looking outside of an underwater craft. Fish and plants float and swim around him
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'Tron' Sequel Trailer Released by Disney - This October will see the release of a film that's nearly 43 years in the making, ... - https://entertainment.slashdot.org/story/25/04/05/2218210/tron-sequel-trailer-released-by-disney?utm_source=rss1.0mainlinkanon&utm_medium=feed #scifi
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@clive And a former nazi rocket scientist Werner von Braun created: ”Elon, the Techno King of Mars” in his 1952 science fiction novel: ”Project Mars”
The society of Mars was run like that very same technocracy, with engineers running it while a CEO-like absolute dictator calls the actual shots.
Coincidence? I think not. Musk lists his registered title as ”Techno King” in the official papers of Tesla inc.
https://nypost.com/2021/05/08/german-engineer-predicted-elon-would-conquer-mars-in-1952-novel/
#elon #mars #novel #scifi
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With every Hunger Games book, Suzanne Collins gets blunter about the messages readers keep missing
https://www.polygon.com/analysis/547538/hunger-games-suzanne-collins-explained-meaning #scifi #sciencefiction #art #scifiart #fantasy #space #cyberpunk
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The Biology of B-Movie Monsters
https://fathom.lib.uchicago.edu/2/21701757/
#scifi #sciencefiction #art #scifiart #fantasy #space #cyberpunk
@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
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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:
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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.
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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
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What better way to celebrate my own birthday. Time for a showcase of my art.
Enjoy.
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For me it first hot when I read Childhood's End by the great Arthur C. Clarke.
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While I don't love #TheExpanse, my - most likely unpopular - opinion is that it is better than #Babylon5
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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
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