[BRIEF NOTE] An Idea for a Universe
Jul. 14th, 2004 09:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldI have an idea for a science-fiction setting. I’ve had the basic concept since I was a teenager, but for some reason it’s beginning to seem particularly relevant to me now.
The planet takes center stage. I don’t have a name for it, but regardless of its name the planet is a difficult one to live on. The world in question is cold and inhospitable, likely because the world is on the outer fringes of the star’s life zone. The planet is a fairly dim place, with near-omnipresent cloud cover—hence, abundant precipitation—and faint sunlight. The planet is a water world, almost wholly oceanic but for volcanic archipelagoes located in the world’s equatorial regions.
The world does have a diverse biosphere, but this biosphere is concentrated almost entirely in the oceans; the colonists’ arrival long preceded the evolution of land-dwelling organisms. By and large, though, the land surfaces of this world are barren and volcanic, with erosion beginning to create arable land of a sort in some very few favoured places. The first generations of colonists lived off of their greenhouses as they dragged the neighbouring seas for biomass to throw onto the shores along with their sewage and (respectfully) their dead, all left to decompose into ersatz topsoil. This laborious task continues to the present, by which time an Earth-derived biosphere of sorts—derived from that of the North American and Eurasian boreal forests, simplified because of the continuing scarcity of biomass—has been installed in parts of the larger islands.
The several hundred thousand humans who live on this world are concentrated on these semi-terraformed equatorial archipelagoes. They arrived via interstellar slowboat, making their way across interstellar space at some respectable percentage of the speed of light, descending to the world’s surface either after decades of cryogenic hibernation or after an agoraphobic century or two of living in fragile generation starships. The initial settlement effort might have been multiethnic, but by the time of writing the colonists’ need to cooperate in order to survive and the passage of generations has welded the different ethnic and insular communities into a single community.
The generation starship still orbits the colonists’ homeworld, still visible from the main settlements in a high synchronous equatorial orbit and accessible via shuttlecraft, while the multipurpose self-repairing communications and weather satellites left in synchronous orbit at intervals of 30 degrees continue to function well (most of the time). Highly efficient small-scale manufacturing and a sophisticated grasp of biotechnology gives the colonists a decent standard of living. The problem with this world, though, is that the available resources are too few to allow for real growth and change. Even if the colonists wanted to—for instance—build vast arrays of mirrors in high orbits to reflect more sunlight onto their islands, or construct self-contained arcologies in the deep ocean to exploit benthic resources, or to abandon their sere world entirely for a space-based civilization, they lack the industrial and population base needed to radically transform their world for the better.
And so, they continue to terraform their islands one hectare at a time, hoping that at some point in the not-too-distant future their world will pass a critical threshold of some sort and things will become much easier. Somehow.
After the news of their world’s successful colonization reached Earth on radio waves, faster starships began travelling out to visit. At first, these were simply highly-efficient slower-than-light vehicles, launched by solar sails accelerated by arrays of launching lasers, or propelled by, arriving in mere decade or two or three. Later, following Earth’s development of a faster-than-light drive, these vehicles took only years to arrive, sometimes even only months. These ships brought people on occasion—immigrants, or inspectors, or scientists—but more often they brought goods for sail: cultural artifacts protected by intellectual property, technologies too complex to transmit reliably across interstellar space and too dangerous to give to just anyone. Too frequently, though, the colonists don’t have enough items of value—genetic records of local organisms, locally-composed song or video or literature—to afford any kind of swap.
Earth and its ancillary planets in Sol system remain the center of the human universe: demographically, economically, culturally, politically. None of the successful colony worlds, established within a couple dozen light years of Earth over centuries of time, are in a position to challenge Earth and Sol system. They all resemble each other to the extent that they are all equally more-or-less marginal, limited by the paucity of available resources. If rich powerful Earth ever took an interest in filling the resource gaps, perhaps the resource gaps could be filled. Interstellar travel, though, remains expensive, and Earth has better things to do with its money.
That’s an idea. Now, to do something with it.
The planet takes center stage. I don’t have a name for it, but regardless of its name the planet is a difficult one to live on. The world in question is cold and inhospitable, likely because the world is on the outer fringes of the star’s life zone. The planet is a fairly dim place, with near-omnipresent cloud cover—hence, abundant precipitation—and faint sunlight. The planet is a water world, almost wholly oceanic but for volcanic archipelagoes located in the world’s equatorial regions.
The world does have a diverse biosphere, but this biosphere is concentrated almost entirely in the oceans; the colonists’ arrival long preceded the evolution of land-dwelling organisms. By and large, though, the land surfaces of this world are barren and volcanic, with erosion beginning to create arable land of a sort in some very few favoured places. The first generations of colonists lived off of their greenhouses as they dragged the neighbouring seas for biomass to throw onto the shores along with their sewage and (respectfully) their dead, all left to decompose into ersatz topsoil. This laborious task continues to the present, by which time an Earth-derived biosphere of sorts—derived from that of the North American and Eurasian boreal forests, simplified because of the continuing scarcity of biomass—has been installed in parts of the larger islands.
The several hundred thousand humans who live on this world are concentrated on these semi-terraformed equatorial archipelagoes. They arrived via interstellar slowboat, making their way across interstellar space at some respectable percentage of the speed of light, descending to the world’s surface either after decades of cryogenic hibernation or after an agoraphobic century or two of living in fragile generation starships. The initial settlement effort might have been multiethnic, but by the time of writing the colonists’ need to cooperate in order to survive and the passage of generations has welded the different ethnic and insular communities into a single community.
The generation starship still orbits the colonists’ homeworld, still visible from the main settlements in a high synchronous equatorial orbit and accessible via shuttlecraft, while the multipurpose self-repairing communications and weather satellites left in synchronous orbit at intervals of 30 degrees continue to function well (most of the time). Highly efficient small-scale manufacturing and a sophisticated grasp of biotechnology gives the colonists a decent standard of living. The problem with this world, though, is that the available resources are too few to allow for real growth and change. Even if the colonists wanted to—for instance—build vast arrays of mirrors in high orbits to reflect more sunlight onto their islands, or construct self-contained arcologies in the deep ocean to exploit benthic resources, or to abandon their sere world entirely for a space-based civilization, they lack the industrial and population base needed to radically transform their world for the better.
And so, they continue to terraform their islands one hectare at a time, hoping that at some point in the not-too-distant future their world will pass a critical threshold of some sort and things will become much easier. Somehow.
After the news of their world’s successful colonization reached Earth on radio waves, faster starships began travelling out to visit. At first, these were simply highly-efficient slower-than-light vehicles, launched by solar sails accelerated by arrays of launching lasers, or propelled by, arriving in mere decade or two or three. Later, following Earth’s development of a faster-than-light drive, these vehicles took only years to arrive, sometimes even only months. These ships brought people on occasion—immigrants, or inspectors, or scientists—but more often they brought goods for sail: cultural artifacts protected by intellectual property, technologies too complex to transmit reliably across interstellar space and too dangerous to give to just anyone. Too frequently, though, the colonists don’t have enough items of value—genetic records of local organisms, locally-composed song or video or literature—to afford any kind of swap.
Earth and its ancillary planets in Sol system remain the center of the human universe: demographically, economically, culturally, politically. None of the successful colony worlds, established within a couple dozen light years of Earth over centuries of time, are in a position to challenge Earth and Sol system. They all resemble each other to the extent that they are all equally more-or-less marginal, limited by the paucity of available resources. If rich powerful Earth ever took an interest in filling the resource gaps, perhaps the resource gaps could be filled. Interstellar travel, though, remains expensive, and Earth has better things to do with its money.
That’s an idea. Now, to do something with it.
