How Do You Concoct a Science Fiction Universe with Plenty of Elbow Room?

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Different science fiction writers have produced every kind of world imaginable and for many different reasons.  A very large chunk of writers did this because they wanted a paycheck and they were told that science fiction was the golden way.  And depending on how talented they were, the stories they wrote were more or less interesting, memorable and coherent.

The earliest of these stories were cobbled together based on an author’s understanding of other genre literature.  So, if the writer wrote cowboy stories previously, then we got Showdown at the Betelgeuse Corral or some such thing.  And in the grand scheme of things that’s not really the worst outcome.  I mean, if our western author is a good story teller then the Showdown may be a very interesting space cowboy story.  And who doesn’t like space cowboys?

But if science fiction should include some world-building that actually has something to do with science then an author should go the next stage and make some kind of hand-waving exercise to justify the technology being used.  You know, warp drive fueled by matter/anti-matter mediated by di-lithium crystals that provide the warpity-warpity part (somehow).  Okay sure.

Now you have the means for a story but why is it?  Who is doing what to whom?  And here is where the cowboy story might be just what you want.  Or maybe it’s the Roman Empire writ large or space Arabia with monstrous spice sandworms or the American Revolution on Luna or Vietnam in space or, or, or.  Whatever gives you a good idea for a story with humans or humans and aliens or just aliens.

And if you want the story to be really worthwhile, well, learn enough about humans to write them somewhat convincingly.  Of course, this is going above and beyond.  There were (and probably are) plenty of writers who apparently have never spoken to or even bumped into living humans.  So, they’re forced to base their characterizations on themselves and thereby end up with some truly weird conversations and interactions.

Now, all of these things are on my to-do list for my foray into sf but I want one more ingredient.  I desire my world building to be the basis for more than one story or even one series.  I’m ambitious.  I think of Heinlein building his “Future History” timeline with its torch ships, terra-forming, social crises and advances in medicine and longevity and the first halting steps to the stars.  Now that’s the way to do it.  Build up a framework that will allow for a whole suite of related but not interlocking stories.  Give yourself some guidelines and parameters but leave plenty of elbow room for different events, characters, locales, times and moods.  I want to make sure I don’t paint myself into any corners so I need some kind of overall outline that I’ve thought through.  That way I’ll be satisfied with whatever restrictions are involved.  For instance, maybe in this universe there isn’t any working star drive and maybe there never will be.  Or maybe the sun is dying and my Earth is working out a crash program to send colonists in suspended animation to every solar system that’s been telescopically identified in the hope that at least some of them will survive.  Or maybe a universe where the aliens found us and have put us in a remedial program to become less stupid and we have an enormous inferiority complex that is causing terminal ennui.  Whatever the setup is I’ll have mentally signed off on it.

So that’s what I’m working on (in a sort of retroactive way).  I want to build a world that my sniper story can be nested into.  I like the idea of our real world being reflected in a story with a way of resolving the problems we have run up against.  But I think I have to put a lot more potential in the story beyond the political conflict.  So, I’m trying to look at the big picture and add as many gee-whiz angles to make it more fun.  I think I may add cold fusion to the mix.  I’ve always liked the idea of some research into some of the heavier metals providing some unhoped-for breakthroughs in advanced physics.  Maybe not as drastic as the E. E. Smith trick that gives his Skylark characters a star drive but definitely limitless and elegant power production.  It’s definitely cheating but I’m thinking about it.

But all this big picture stuff is hurting my head so it’s a tough slog.  But I think it’s the right order of operation.

Lights, Camera, Action!

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Today Matt Walsh of the Daily Wire has a movie out in pretty wide distribution called, “Am I Racist?”  I’ve seen some of the coming attractions and it’s in the vein of a mocumentary where he interviews various anti-racism experts disguised as one of them.  In this guise he gets them to say the most absurd things about racism and American society.  It looks like it might be interesting and potentially very funny.  And I say this after watching his first movie, “What is a Woman.”  It was very effective at exposing the incoherence of the various transgender hucksters and their victims.  I hope this new movie gets lots of attention and makes lots of money for Walsh and the Daily Wire.

This movie opening got me thinking.  It shows that stuff is starting to appear from our side of the street on a more regular basis.  But the problem is that it takes an outfit like the Daily Wire that has its own built-in readership to provide publicity.  What’s needed is an honest search engine that would act as a substitute for Google.  Of course, X is already beginning to provide a social media locale for everyone but the bias that Google uses against the Right is a big deal and can’t be overstated.  Maybe it’ll take the government busting up Google’s monopoly to finally even out the playing field.

In addition, it would be nice if someone would provide the same kind of integrated entertainment and media presence for the Right that Time-Warner provides to the Left.  Now I’m not crazy.  Amazon has decimated the book and movie businesses with its Kindle and streaming businesses.  And whatever is left of the movies is limping along under Disney.  But an underserved niche like traditionalists seems like a safe way to make money in the present environment.  Just look at Disney.  They own all the most successful franchises in the entertainment world but because they object to the traditionalist aspects of these intellectual properties, they routinely sabotage the success of the movies they produce in these franchises by injecting woke plots and characters.  Competition, any real competition is bound to make money by just following time honored precedent; sell sex!

If someone purchased existing stories in these same genres and just told the stories the way they were written fifty or a hundred years ago, they would be equally successful to the earlier movies like the original Star Wars or the earlier installments of Indiana Jones or the Marvel superhero stories.  All of these earlier works are just variations on the theme of the western hero that fights the monsters or villains and wins the girl.  This is as old as Odysseus or as new as Spiderman.  All anyone has to do is make sure that the man acts like a man and the girl is really good looking and falls into the hero’s arms in the last act.

It really isn’t that complicated.  But for whatever reason no one has attempted to build a lean, mean studio to do just that.  There are plenty of people; actors, directors, producers who have been cut out of Hollywood for the simple reason that the studios now have a quota system that excludes white people.  Hire a few of the better people, probably at a discount, and most importantly hire some of the best writers and put out movies at a reasonable price (not in Hollywood obviously) that tell stories that people want to hear.  And make money.

Well, eventually it will happen.  But will it happen in my lifetime?  Ah, well.  Where’s my fedora and bullwhip?

13SEP2024 – Quote of the Day

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The Last Rose of Summer

‘Tis the last rose of summer,

Left blooming alone;

All her lovely companions

Are faded and gone;

No flower of her kindred,

No rose-bud is nigh,

To reflect back her blushes

Or give sigh for sigh!

 

I’ll not leave thee, thou lone one.

To pine on the stem;

Since the lovely are sleeping,

Go, sleep thou with them;

Thus kindly I scatter

Thy leaves o’er the bed,

Where thy mates of the garden

Lie scentless and dead.

 

So soon may I follow,

When friendships decay,

And from love’s shining circle

The gems drop away!

When true hearts lie withered,

And fond ones are flown,

Oh! who would inhabit

This bleak world alone?

 

Thomas Moore

 

 

I Lost My Post

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I had an idea for a post and I wrote about six hundred words.  But by four hundred I was starting to dislike the idea.  I walked away from it for a while.  In fact, I watched a movie (“The Boston Strangler”) and by the time I got back I erased it.  It was too much.

So here I am at the eleventh hour (literally) and I’ve got to come up with an idea.

I’ll just give a slice of life.  I had to travel to the enclaves of blue privilege in the People’s Republic.  I was in Wellesley and Newton Mass.  Now I haven’t been in these Boston suburbs in years but they’re just as hilarious and nauseating as ever.  Now it’s been a year or two since I last saw a “Black Lives Matter” lawn sign but on one street there were four.  And then I looked at the bumper stickers on the BMW’s and every third one had the “We’re Not Going Back” sign or “My Body, My Choice.”  Now this was in the early afternoon so most working age people were at work but I never saw so many dour-looking old waspy females in one place.  It was like some kind of Katherine Hepburn impersonator’s convention.  I flushed two of them when my GPS sent me down a dead-end road.  When they saw my non-BMW car coming down their little Cul-de-Sac of Lost Souls, they looked like they wanted to call the authorities to put a stop to these riff-raff spewing carbon dioxide and testosterone in their little bubble.

At the offices I stopped in everyone seemed sedate and anti-depressed.  No emotions seemed to intrude and no visible life detracted from an air of propriety. Everyone followed the lines and spoke in low tones and wore the right clothes.  It was pretty creepy.

When I headed out, I took Route 9 west and at some point (maybe Natick or Framingham, not sure which) I stopped at a Dunkin Donuts.  And the people were among the living again.  Now they were still New Englanders which isn’t normal people for sure but they weren’t the pod people I had just escaped from.  They were rude, sarcastic and in a bad mood, in other words the typical Dunkin Donuts staff.  But they didn’t creep me out.  And as I drove along, I noticed plenty of Harris/Walz signs but not a single BLM sign.

Rich progressives are an entirely different life form.  They’re tucked away in their cocoon and they have no intention of ever coming out.  Their hermetically sealed world is completely shielded from Haitian refugees eating cats and geese and more importantly impervious to people who don’t think Trump is a monster.  They expect the world to one day consist of nothing but them.  How this is supposed to happen they don’t worry about.  But to that end they and all their friends send people like Elizabeth Warren to Washington to make sure that nothing ever interferes with their cloistered little existence and the measures needed to keep it that way.  It was an instructive day.  It reminded me who we work for.

Updated:

Milo Mindbender commented:

I also drift into an occasional bubble of liberalism, and they believe in free expression, but can’t contemplate someone not agreeing whole heatedly with their viewpoint. It’s not that they want to stop opposing views, it’s they can’t believe anyone doesn’t see the world exactly as they do.
This is the same thing when Martha’s vineyards declared itself a sanctuary city, until refugees showed up, then they used the authorities to relocate them just as fast as they could before it effected their real estate values.
I hope they get a real eye opener in November, and the ballot exceeds the cheat by such a margin that there is no way to consider it legitimate with a straight face.