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Creation Station / I decided to take a shot at writing science fiction.
« on: October 01, 2010, 05:55:48 AM »
Ok, so tonight I came up with an idea for a far-future science fiction setting taking place in a different solar system (I haven't decided around which star, but I'm thinking possibly Epsilon Eridani). I'm trying to keep it as hard as possible, so no FTL travel or communication, no casual space travel, no single biome planets, etc.
The premise goes like this:
In the future, a sect of mankind decides to try and spread to the stars. They decide to use automated embryo ships because of less fuel needed for an interstellar voyage. One of these goes to the current system (I'll call it the Epsilon Eridani system for now). In this system, there are 5 planets viable for terraforming. Once the terraforming is complete, each planet has an Earthlike rotational time and all of them have at least 2 space elevators on their equators. At first, the civilizations on these 5 planets are united under one rule, but soon the planets all fragment into mutual independence, and then into separate nations. Unfortunately, only the equatorial nations can really thrive, having access to space and its mining resources. Since the non-equatorial nations have nothing that the equatorial nations can't get from space, they fall into poverty.
Centuries later, the equatorial nations have very little knowledge of how their elevators and spacecraft work, but they know how to use them. The knowledge exists, but no one really cares to read about it. The only spacecraft left are mining ships that all use fusion drives which, while efficient, aren't able to provide enough thrust to land on a planet with earthlike gravity and take off again. The space elevators are the only bridge between a planet and space. The equatorial nations are fat, dumb, happy, and still not sharing with the other nations.
One one planet (Planet A), a group from a non-equatorial nation (I'll refer to it as Nation A for now) gets pretty sick of getting shat on by their neighboring equatorial nation (Nation B), so they start researching what could be useful in taking down Nation B. Thanks to spies learning about, among other things, rocketry and nuclear fusion, they are able to develop their own spacecraft and nuclear missiles. They use these to sever Nation B's space elevator, and with its resources cut off, Nation B is soon taken over. Nation A uses its rockets to make it into orbit and commandeer Nation B's spacecraft, and then proceed to take out the other equatorial nation (Nation C), but this time they make an effort to keep the space elevator intact. Through a combination of war and diplomacy, the entire planet becomes united under one rule. However, the war-hungry leader of Nation A, and now Planet A, wants to spread his reign, and in taking over the planet he learned of the other 4 planets in the system.
On another planet (Planet B), a group from an equatorial nation (Nation D) has learned of the embryo ship which contains millenna worth of information about the great civilizations of the past, but also that no one knows what happened to the embryo ship after the terraforming of the planets was completed. They commission a search for the ship, but it's been inactive for so long that if they looked for it in space, it wouldn't appear significantly different from a common asteroid; and if they looked on the ground, there's a one-in-five chance that it's not even there.
This is where the story would begin.
Thoughts?
The premise goes like this:
In the future, a sect of mankind decides to try and spread to the stars. They decide to use automated embryo ships because of less fuel needed for an interstellar voyage. One of these goes to the current system (I'll call it the Epsilon Eridani system for now). In this system, there are 5 planets viable for terraforming. Once the terraforming is complete, each planet has an Earthlike rotational time and all of them have at least 2 space elevators on their equators. At first, the civilizations on these 5 planets are united under one rule, but soon the planets all fragment into mutual independence, and then into separate nations. Unfortunately, only the equatorial nations can really thrive, having access to space and its mining resources. Since the non-equatorial nations have nothing that the equatorial nations can't get from space, they fall into poverty.
Centuries later, the equatorial nations have very little knowledge of how their elevators and spacecraft work, but they know how to use them. The knowledge exists, but no one really cares to read about it. The only spacecraft left are mining ships that all use fusion drives which, while efficient, aren't able to provide enough thrust to land on a planet with earthlike gravity and take off again. The space elevators are the only bridge between a planet and space. The equatorial nations are fat, dumb, happy, and still not sharing with the other nations.
One one planet (Planet A), a group from a non-equatorial nation (I'll refer to it as Nation A for now) gets pretty sick of getting shat on by their neighboring equatorial nation (Nation B), so they start researching what could be useful in taking down Nation B. Thanks to spies learning about, among other things, rocketry and nuclear fusion, they are able to develop their own spacecraft and nuclear missiles. They use these to sever Nation B's space elevator, and with its resources cut off, Nation B is soon taken over. Nation A uses its rockets to make it into orbit and commandeer Nation B's spacecraft, and then proceed to take out the other equatorial nation (Nation C), but this time they make an effort to keep the space elevator intact. Through a combination of war and diplomacy, the entire planet becomes united under one rule. However, the war-hungry leader of Nation A, and now Planet A, wants to spread his reign, and in taking over the planet he learned of the other 4 planets in the system.
On another planet (Planet B), a group from an equatorial nation (Nation D) has learned of the embryo ship which contains millenna worth of information about the great civilizations of the past, but also that no one knows what happened to the embryo ship after the terraforming of the planets was completed. They commission a search for the ship, but it's been inactive for so long that if they looked for it in space, it wouldn't appear significantly different from a common asteroid; and if they looked on the ground, there's a one-in-five chance that it's not even there.
This is where the story would begin.
Thoughts?
