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Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Thu Aug 27, 2015 3:19 pm
by Salmoneus
In the same setting as my series about life on Venus from two years ago, a few posts about life on the colony-world of Guerra.
Part 1 up: https://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/20 ... -guerra-1/

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Sat Aug 29, 2015 11:27 am
by Salmoneus
Salmoneus wrote:In the same setting as my series about life on Venus from two years ago, a few posts about life on the colony-world of Guerra.
Part 1 up: https://vacuouswastrel.wordpress.com/20 ... -guerra-1/
And now Part 2 up.

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Thu Sep 17, 2015 4:46 pm
by Salmoneus
Not that this will be big blockbuster news it seems, but I forgot to say that part 3 is actually up as well

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Wed Sep 30, 2015 10:47 am
by Torco
This one isn't quite a blockbuster, no, but it should be! finally got around to reading this. I must say man, it was great. I i found myself turned off by venus, and your aliens struck me as competent but not fascinating, but as for Guerra, I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the bit about family structure and clothing. I'd have liked a bit more on economics and transportation, though, like... we're talking a planet that with a real paucity of good terrain where people live in low density cities, that has got to have its fair share of problems with logistics, transportation and whatnot: i get the feeling there are trains and planes and all of it, but airports sound difficult in what is basically rocky and scarce terrain. and how does this great distance living, especially for the folks that spend part of their lives out in the farms, affect life?

There's, of course, a lot I'd have liked to read: conflicts, crime, the particular forms of corruption emerging and their extent, the lives of richer and poorer people, what city life is, where most everyone except the wives of the well off seem to live, technology, but that's more a merit than a fault of the piece.

The world feels plausible, and the description is lifelike: i found myself producing images and scenes from life in such a world in my mind, all to the mental tune of those melancholy songs you hear scottish women sing in hour long youtube vids that feature hills planted with barley in the video track. I think can understand the aesthetic you were going for, but some things give me a bit of fridge logic though: conservative and campechano as the planet might be on account of culture and history and whatnot, surely very advanced technology makes its way and transforms life somehow: mass media, smartphones, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, terraforming, I don't know... Not all scifi needs to be *about* tech, of course, but one expects some life-changing piece of technology every 600 years.

Only other thing i can think of is that it would have been nice if the religion and lifestance paragraph might have had more hyperlinks, for reasons transparent.

Count me a fan of Guerra... guys, i get that three sal blog posts elsewhere hosted can seem a bit daunting but give this one a try. 8/10 would [and did] read again.

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Sun Mar 18, 2018 5:39 pm
by Salmoneus
Errr.... sorry, didn't catch this at the time! [and now you're not on the board much, plus i've probably forgotten many of the details...]

But thank you! Glad you liked it.
Torco wrote:This one isn't quite a blockbuster, no, but it should be! finally got around to reading this. I must say man, it was great. I i found myself turned off by venus, and your aliens struck me as competent but not fascinating, but as for Guerra, I thoroughly enjoyed it, especially the bit about family structure and clothing. I'd have liked a bit more on economics and transportation, though, like... we're talking a planet that with a real paucity of good terrain where people live in low density cities, that has got to have its fair share of problems with logistics, transportation and whatnot: i get the feeling there are trains and planes and all of it, but airports sound difficult in what is basically rocky and scarce terrain. and how does this great distance living, especially for the folks that spend part of their lives out in the farms, affect life?
Good questions, of course. I think part of the concept here was that these people have an inherited fear of starvation and of close quarters, and intentionally make some sacrifices in order to have a more land-rich, close-to-the-food-source economy. [although a lot of people do still live in the (relativey) big cities]

It's worth noting as well that the cost of transport is underwritten by the relatively low cost of energy in this scenario. And that because of the lack of suitable land, most places aren't actually that far, geographically, from population centres. So the cost of goods-shipping to the smaller towns, even to the villages, doesn't add TOO much to the cost of goods in total.
There's, of course, a lot I'd have liked to read: conflicts, crime, the particular forms of corruption emerging and their extent, the lives of richer and poorer people, what city life is, where most everyone except the wives of the well off seem to live, technology, but that's more a merit than a fault of the piece.
Yeah - because there's a bunch of colony worlds, I thought I'd concentrate on what added to the distinctive 'feel' of each one, which of course will miss out a lot of the basics. I imagine life in the middle of a big city is fairly similar on most of the worlds.
The world feels plausible, and the description is lifelike: i found myself producing images and scenes from life in such a world in my mind, all to the mental tune of those melancholy songs you hear scottish women sing in hour long youtube vids that feature hills planted with barley in the video track.
Thank you! Yes, that's pretty much exactly what I was going for. And, as you say, trying to generate that in a far-future interstellar context isn't all that easy...
I think can understand the aesthetic you were going for, but some things give me a bit of fridge logic though: conservative and campechano as the planet might be on account of culture and history and whatnot, surely very advanced technology makes its way and transforms life somehow: mass media, smartphones, advanced manufacturing, healthcare, terraforming, I don't know... Not all scifi needs to be *about* tech, of course, but one expects some life-changing piece of technology every 600 years.
Well, this is actually only a bit over 500 years in the future, so there's still time!
More seriously, I think I did suggest, for instance, automation of legal reasoning.

But a lot of what you might expect, just won't be there. There's basically no internet in this setting, which limits the utility of smartphones. And while there have been improvements in things like healthcare (life expectancy is a couple of decades longer), there hasn't been any massive scientific breakthrough that would revolutionise society. It's not that kind of SF.

Well, I mean, unless you count the invention of FTL interstellar travel - that's quite a big thing. And instead of being powered by fossil fuels from under the ground, these societies are powered by hydrocarbons mined from outer-system ice planets...

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Tue Mar 27, 2018 6:59 pm
by Salmoneus
huh, that was another post that didn't update the last post date, it seems...

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 6:30 am
by Torco
drat, and here i was thinking 'hey! another one of the cool scifi thingies'

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:55 am
by Salmoneus
Torco wrote:drat, and here i was thinking 'hey! another one of the cool scifi thingies'
Ha. Sorry!

Re: Life in the Colonies in the 26th Century (SF setting)

Posted: Wed Mar 28, 2018 7:57 am
by Torco
Well, I mean, unless you count the invention of FTL interstellar travel - that's quite a big thing. And instead of being powered by fossil fuels from under the ground, these societies are powered by hydrocarbons mined from outer-system ice planets...
you know, the older I become the more I like this idea of deep future civilizations going to space and so on but still running on basically oil.