Writing Science Fiction: Ideas, Assistance and Discussion

[Wraith Scientist]

This thread is for the more creatively inclined among Gateworld to discuss writing sci-fi.

Have a great idea for a science fiction alien race? Want some advice? Have a great story idea but don't want to develop it yourself? Want to avoid cliches and unrealistic science in your writing? Enjoy creative excersises such as worldbuilding? Simply curious? Then this is the thread for you

So, is anybody interested?

[terrestrial_man]

This really sounds like an interesting thread. Right now though I am dealing with the science fiction of the Bush administration and its give the Lebanonese band-aids and the Israelis cluster bombs! Now what could out do that storyline!
Dinos from Warp 9 attacking Rodan on Mars?????
I never could handle the Japanese Futureamas!

[Wraith Scientist]

Here's an interesting world concept that I've seen elsewhere: A planet covered in water. The water vapor is split into hydrogen and oxygen by UV rays in the upper atmosphere, creating a very oxygen-rich atmosphere. The hydrogen will either loosely cling to the planet higher up, where it may recombine with the oxygen lower down, or float off into space entirely if the gravity of the planet isn't high enough to hold on to the hydrogen. Such a planet would have a higher gravity than Earth in any case, and may have other gasses such as nitrogen and assorted hydrocarbons in the atmosphere.

The planet would have several layers:
- A rocky core larger than Earth, around which the ocean and atmosphere formed.
- A very deep ocean covering the whole planet.
- A layer of thick oxygen rich atmosphere, perhaps also containing nitrogen
- A sparse hydrogen atmosphere higher up, probably containing helium, and possibly lighter hydrocarbons

In our solar system, the planets Neptune and Uranus have an atmosphere consisting mainly of hydrogen with helium, hydrocarbons and water also present. Perhaps the above ocean planet could form when such an ice giant migrated towards the sun, allowing the solar wind to blow away the majority of the hydrogen and leave a planet rich in hydrocarbons and water? Or perhaps a planet like Europa could form or migrate closer to the sun, so that it's icy crust melts?

A planet like that might make an interesting science fiction setting, no?

[Syera]

Well, I do have quite a few resources...

Seventh Sanctum - a random generator site. Tres cool.

And cliche lists by the truckload...

RPG cliches...
http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html
http://serpent231.tripod.com/cliche.shtml

Sci-Fi Cliches...
http://www.geocities.com/evilsnack/cliche.htm

The Park and Barb Show - several of their articles are comic-cliche lists. Look and you'll find 'em. They're EXCELLENT.

http://amethyst-angel.com/cliche.html
http://www.moviecliches.com/

The Evil Overlord List - if you're going to write evil overlords, read this list first, 'kay?

The Cliches That Have Been Bothering You Thread at Bob and George - READ IT. Especially Sytel's posts. I kid you not, her posts and perspective will force your IQ up a notch or two.
The Annoying Cliches Thread at Bob and George - the child of the above thread. Still good.

[Daedalus-304]

One of the stories I'm working on is a space saga, the story starts out when the government finds a planet capable of supporting human life without having to be teraformed first (like a high majority of planets in my universe). The thing is the planet had catastrophe in the past and the people who travel to the planet find ruins. In my universe there will be no time travel or alternant realities and Earth-like planets will be very rare. A couple of common themes will be religion, politics, war, technology and people/aliens using technology to give up their humanity to become even more powerful.

The aliens of the planet are non-humanoid reptilians that look somewhat dinosaur-like (I haven’t fully decided on an appearance). In a time parallel to the middle ages, this planet was a highly advance society. There are three main superpowers and their satellite nations. Nation A was basically the religious center of the planet, having a very influential monotheistic religion. One nation under A's control, although they converted to A's religion, has a custom of recording down everything of their lives; when one of them dies this volume is completed and two or more are created, one is buried in the tomb and the other goes in to this huge underground library by the capital. Nation B is a union of many smaller nations and although technically allies with A they disagreed on many things, such as government, morals, and economics. After a few hundred years of peace long forgotten divisions within B rose and divided the nation and the once powerful nation lost its international power, upsetting the balance of power. Nation C is a very different nation than anything on Earth or this planet. It is ruled by a dynasty of emperors and by a senate-like body. The emperors are not born naturally, when one emperor dies the DNA is taken and improved by geneticist and creates a clone. The very moment of conception, the embryo is considered the new emperor, and C is known for forcing leaders of other nations to bow before embryo. Cloning is also popular with most of the population. Also the society believes that emotions other than the necessary ones such as anger and fear are a sign of weakness and they use their medically technology to suppress them. C is also a very ruthless nation. Once C was at war with a nation D, and during the war they first invented nuclear weapons and used them to completely wipe out D.

When B lost power C went to war which led to the destruction of the planet. I was thinking that most of the planet went into stasis, while C got into ships and left for a planet far away. When scientist come from earth they find the aliens in stasis and get along with them, but then the descendents of C will return (but look very different because of their cloning and other technology). Those on the planet will have to escape, and then meet up to fight the aliens before they can strike at any of humanities nearby planets.

Sorry this was very long - anyone got any ideas or suggestions?

[terrestrial_man]

One of the stories I'm working on is a space saga, the story starts out when the government finds a planet capable of supporting human life without having to be teraformed first (like a high majority of planets in my universe). The thing is the planet had catastrophe in the past and the people who travel to the planet find ruins. In my universe there will be no time travel or alternant realities and Earth-like planets will be very rare. A couple of common themes will be religion, politics, war, technology and people/aliens using technology to give up their humanity to become even more powerful.

The aliens of the planet are non-humanoid reptilians that look somewhat dinosaur-like (I haven’t fully decided on an appearance). In a time parallel to the middle ages, this planet was a highly advance society. There are three main superpowers and their satellite nations. Nation A was basically the religious center of the planet, having a very influential monotheistic religion. One nation under A's control, although they converted to A's religion, has a custom of recording down everything of their lives; when one of them dies this volume is completed and two or more are created, one is buried in the tomb and the other goes in to this huge underground library by the capital. Nation B is a union of many smaller nations and although technically allies with A they disagreed on many things, such as government, morals, and economics. After a few hundred years of peace long forgotten divisions within B rose and divided the nation and the once powerful nation lost its international power, upsetting the balance of power. Nation C is a very different nation than anything on Earth or this planet. It is ruled by a dynasty of emperors and by a senate-like body. The emperors are not born naturally, when one emperor dies the DNA is taken and improved by geneticist and creates a clone. The very moment of conception, the embryo is considered the new emperor, and C is known for forcing leaders of other nations to bow before embryo. Cloning is also popular with most of the population. Also the society believes that emotions other than the necessary ones such as anger and fear are a sign of weakness and they use their medically technology to suppress them. C is also a very ruthless nation. Once C was at war with a nation D, and during the war they first invented nuclear weapons and used them to completely wipe out D.

When B lost power C went to war which led to the destruction of the planet. I was thinking that most of the planet went into stasis, while C got into ships and left for a planet far away. When scientist come from earth they find the aliens in stasis and get along with them, but then the descendents of C will return (but look very different because of their cloning and other technology). Those on the planet will have to escape, and then meet up to fight the aliens before they can strike at any of humanities nearby planets.

Sorry this was very long - anyone got any ideas or suggestions?

WOW WHAT A MOUTHFUL!!!! I am not trying to put you down-it is just that your scenarios are impressive so it is like a drop jaw which is best illustrated as

Here are some ideas for you to kick around.
1. First off-what is your format: novel, short story, tv serial, movie, cartoon??
2. Development: All of the above construct on the worlds you have imagined are nice but they do not say a thing that would make a person interested enough to want to check it out.
You need a story that you can color with the above as background or historical tie-ins. This story will definitely need an identifiable person or group that can be identified with by the readership. Keep in mind that Star Wars was a 5 part episodic adventure that wavered in both content and mastery in writing, so you want to be more concise while allowing for some vagueness to stimulate reader fill-in from what background you have provided at that point in your story arc.
3. Recommendation: a short story!
Develop a character or a small group of humanoids or whatever. Present them with the challenge of a clonal contact and possible extermination and develop the storyline with whatever objective you want: survival or they bite the dust and the cloners triumph!
The reason why I am recommending this approach is that it will force you to focus the reading towards only a portion of what you had imagined which will then force you to be able to effectively present your background info in a more generalized but telling presentation like a painter painting a forest but you only see the trees in front! So you presume the forest you see!

[terrestrial_man]

Here's an interesting world concept that I've seen elsewhere: A planet covered in water. The water vapor is split into hydrogen and oxygen by UV rays in the upper atmosphere, creating a very oxygen-rich atmosphere. The hydrogen will either loosely cling to the planet higher up, where it may recombine with the oxygen lower down, or float off into space entirely if the gravity of the planet isn't high enough to hold on to the hydrogen. Such a planet would have a higher gravity than Earth in any case, and may have other gasses such as nitrogen and assorted hydrocarbons in the atmosphere.

The planet would have several layers:
- A rocky core larger than Earth, around which the ocean and atmosphere formed.
- A very deep ocean covering the whole planet.
- A layer of thick oxygen rich atmosphere, perhaps also containing nitrogen
- A sparse hydrogen atmosphere higher up, probably containing helium, and possibly lighter hydrocarbons

In our solar system, the planets Neptune and Uranus have an atmosphere consisting mainly of hydrogen with helium, hydrocarbons and water also present. Perhaps the above ocean planet could form when such an ice giant migrated towards the sun, allowing the solar wind to blow away the majority of the hydrogen and leave a planet rich in hydrocarbons and water? Or perhaps a planet like Europa could form or migrate closer to the sun, so that it's icy crust melts?

A planet like that might make an interesting science fiction setting, no?

Please forgive me but so could a giant cheeseball floating
in space!!!

[Wraith Scientist]

Sorry this was very long - anyone got any ideas or suggestions?

Are you going to have FTL travel in this story? If not, then you might consider Earth finding the habitable planet by means of survey from Earth (ie. Darwin, Terrestrial Planet Finder) and then sending a slower then light spaceship possibly based on Project Orion, powered by nuclear explosions. Using this method you can attain a speed just under 10% of the speed of light. Get the planet's distance in light years, multiply by ten, and you have the travel time. The bigger Orion designs were capable of lifting a craft the size of a small city, and so you will have no problem with living space etc.

As for the aliens, here are some links:
http://www.gottawritenetwork.com/SFColumns.htm
http://web.archive.org/web/200502060...haracters.html

[Trek_Girl42]

Great thread idea!

I'll probably lurk for the most part since so much of the science is wayyy over my head. I write stories about characters in a sci-fi setting, but focus on the characters more then the sci-fi elements and make technical explanations a minimal as possible. Cause I'm really not good at science, but I'm trying to work on that.

[terrestrial_man]

Great thread idea!

I'll probably lurk for the most part since so much of the science is wayyy over my head. I write stories about characters in a sci-fi setting, but focus on the characters more then the sci-fi elements and make technical explanations a minimal as possible. Cause I'm really not good at science, but I'm trying to work on that.

I agree with you, Trek Girl. While the science can be interesting especially if you are into space geology or other similar sciences my feeling on what this thread is about is SCI-FI!!
In SCI-FI science does not exist!!! In fact the writer makes his own science real-forget the real world stuff because once you take the white pill it is down the rabbit hole with Neo! So kiss off logic and what makes sense too because it all doesn't matter!!

Maybe that is why I really like the old Buster Crabbe FLASH GORDON serials!!! They are cool and they do not have to explain why they can breath the air on an alien world or that they aren't floating around in their space ships or that fat men do have wings and funny laughs!!
And Ming the Merciless can simply disappear into his ring!!
Wow-our astrophysics would definitely be at a loss in that universe!!!

[Syera]

In a time parallel to the middle ages, this planet was a highly advance society

The Middle Ages where? Different societies on Earth had vastly different characteristics and technologies during the Middle Ages.

Just something I wish more people would think about when thinking "Middle Ages."

[Daedalus-304]

The Middle Ages where? Different societies on Earth had vastly different characteristics and technologies during the Middle Ages.

Just something I wish more people would think about when thinking "Middle Ages."

I was refuring to the time peroid between 500 - 1500 AD, not really with the technology assocated with it. What went on Earth does not matter in my story because the planet did not yet have contact with it. I chose that time peroid becasue I wanted on recent, but not too recent, and old but not as old as in Stargate.

[terrestrial_man]

The Middle Ages where? Different societies on Earth had vastly different characteristics and technologies during the Middle Ages.

Just something I wish more people would think about when thinking "Middle Ages."

Thanks Syera! Your comments again confirm my general feeling that what approach is needed is again: forget what you know! forget the earth and the histories! Make a new earth and a new history and a new vocabulary if you wish to remain earth bound but THINK OUTSIDE THE BOX OR THE ENVELOPE OR THE SARAN WRAP!!! Microwave the old and Radiate the new!!!

For scenario freaks have you checked out Martian landscapes? Well here is a link of images and some are in stunning 3D!!!
http://www.marsunearthed.com/
and for FREE 3D GLASSES-Note be sure to get the RED/CYAN glasses!
http://www.rainbowsymphony.com/freestuff.html

Enjoy! And if you get any cool ideas from the images please post them here!!!

[terrestrial_man]

Have thought of an idea for a storyline.

Basically,

A nightwatchman is sleeping during the day.
A solar event of some kind occurs.
Nightwatchman wakes up.
Same place. Same town. Same wife. But there is something different?
He looks in the mirror and has a week-old beard!
What!!???

So he tries to find out what happened.
Then he starts to realize slowly that it is not the same
place, same town, same wife! Something different.

So a nighwatchman is sleeping during the day.
A solar event or some kind occurs.
Nightwatchman wakes up.
Same place, same town, same wife. But what is different.
He looks in the mirror and where is his beard!?

So he tries to find out what happened.
Then he starts to realize slowly that it is not the same
place, same town, same wife! Something different.

So we have these two guys stuck in two different but similar worlds!

Then ????

[sonny1]

I agree with you, Trek Girl. While the science can be interesting especially if you are into space geology or other similar sciences my feeling on what this thread is about is SCI-FI!!
In SCI-FI science does not exist!!! In fact the writer makes his own science real-forget the real world stuff because once you take the white pill it is down the rabbit hole with Neo! So kiss off logic and what makes sense too because it all doesn't matter!!

Hm, I think perhaps you're misunderstanding the difference between what the market perceives as Sci Fi and fantasy. A remarkable high degree of plausability is vital to science fiction; that's considered to be a major literary maxim in this genre, not simply a personal opinion . While the science may not be factual, whatever is created in that fictional world must be internally consistent. Icons original to that (created) world, while they may initially be unfamiliar - the Stargate - once established, must demonstrate consistent rules. The Stargate has a consistent rules. They can only be broken, eg, the gate remaining open for 38 minutes, if a plausible explanation is given that is valid within the technology of that world.

Maybe that is why I really like the old Buster Crabbe FLASH GORDON serials!!! They are cool and they do not have to explain why they can breath the air on an alien world or that they aren't floating around in their space ships or that fat men do have wings and funny laughs!!
And Ming the Merciless can simply disappear into his ring!!
Wow-our astrophysics would definitely be at a loss in that universe!!!

Flash Gordon has been catagorised more as space fantasy than sci fi because of these fantastical elements, which of course makes it a lot of fun.

Although the categories within genre fiction are somewhat fluid and constantly redefined to suit a changing market - eg, cyberpunk, dark fantasy (instead of horror) and so forth, when you are submitting a work to a publisher, be it a novel or short piece of fiction, it's important to identity your market in terms that the market understands. In the first instance, that's an editor and publisher. So, if you are writing sci fi, there must be some grounding in realism otherwise you will quickly lose your audience.

An excellent book on creating physically realistic worlds, and one I use for students in teaching world building, is, aptly, named World Building by Stephen Gillett and Ben Bova. I don't tend to use it myself because of my background, but it's a superb book for simplifying, say, celestial mechanics. Eg, moons orbiting large bodies are subject to intense tidal forces which in turn create interesting physical problems on the planet. That can then influence the way a society has developed, belief structures or problems they encounter, and it feels realistic because it's based on something that has the appearance of logical plausibility.

There's also an excellent set of papers on science fiction theory (yes, it is a recognised academic field in many universities, and many, many people have higher degrees in the subject) available from http://www.depauw.edu/sfs/. Most of these papers are free to download, and they offer a wealth of information for series SF writers.