some help with a science fiction?

[Taka]

yeah, totally looking for help.
there's this story i'm thinking i could actually manage to write, if i just get some more ideas for it.

the help i'll need is on the science part.

the setting is one i want because it would upset the world order a whole lot, in favor of the saami people.

i'll need some major catastrophes to eradicate pretty much all of mankind.
northern norway should be untouched enough that a few people survive.
white people are annoying, so i'd like to get rid of their genes. can disease be designed in such a way that it selects only a few genetic markers?
i want wildlife to evolve unnaturally fast, can i blame radioactivity?
people should survive here and there, but all technology should be lost.
but some relics of the past should be used to develop mage technology.
and it can't be too far into the future. a few hundred years, a thousand at most.

any good ideas or questions? (i'll take even stupid ones, actually)

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2015 19:47:25 GMT 8 Taka said:

yeah, totally looking for help.
there's this story i'm thinking i could actually manage to write, if i just get some more ideas for it.

the help i'll need is on the science part.

the setting is one i want because it would upset the world order a whole lot, in favor of the saami people.

i'll need some major catastrophes to eradicate pretty much all of mankind.
northern norway should be untouched enough that a few people survive.
white people are annoying, so i'd like to get rid of their genes. can disease be designed in such a way that it selects only a few genetic markers?
i want wildlife to evolve unnaturally fast, can i blame radioactivity?
people should survive here and there, but all technology should be lost.
but some relics of the past should be used to develop mage technology.
and it can't be too far into the future. a few hundred years, a thousand at most.

any good ideas or questions? (i'll take even stupid ones, actually)

Looks like Putin, Obama, Netenyahu, Ali Khameni, ISIS, Kim Jong Un and others will bring the bottom on that for you soon enough!

[EchelonHunt]

Natural disasters? Nature has a funny way of re-growing things after a natural or man-made disaster... take Chernobyl disaster for example, plants and a tree have said to adapt and flourish in the high radioactive soil. I always find this stuff absolutely fascinating. There is also life at the bottom (abyssal zone) of the sea, it is pitch black and there is lack of oxygen down there. The creature's growth is much slower than normal.

A few people survive in Northern Norway? How many? 2? 10? 20? Maybe they burrowed underground to keep themselves safe or (not to rip World War Z off) built a giant wall around the city to keep the danger out...?

A medical show (Grey's Anatomy) had a doctor who was doing genetic testing and she swapped out a bubble boy's diseased cells with cells that were immune against the condition he had, it cured him of his symptoms. Breast cancer is said to be passed down through generations (???) so by this logic, I don't see why not in a sci-fi setting, that a deadly disease could be passed down generations of families by modifying a few things on a genetic level.

Technology would be lost, hmmm, either there is something that shuts down electricity forever... all the power reactors, radio towers, electrical plants, get equipped with explosives perhaps? A political agenda from a secret anonymous group?!

That's all I got for now... Dunno if I helped, just splurged a little bit of what I know from various stuffs! I wouldn't have a single clue how to put together a good sci-fi story but Taka, you already have the makings of a good one already! I am very intrigued!

[Deleted]

Feb 13, 2015 19:47:25 GMT 8 Taka said:

yeah, totally looking for help.
there's this story i'm thinking i could actually manage to write, if i just get some more ideas for it.

the help i'll need is on the science part.

the setting is one i want because it would upset the world order a whole lot, in favor of the saami people.

i'll need some major catastrophes to eradicate pretty much all of mankind.
northern norway should be untouched enough that a few people survive.
white people are annoying, so i'd like to get rid of their genes. can disease be designed in such a way that it selects only a few genetic markers?
i want wildlife to evolve unnaturally fast, can i blame radioactivity?
people should survive here and there, but all technology should be lost.
but some relics of the past should be used to develop mage technology.
and it can't be too far into the future. a few hundred years, a thousand at most.

any good ideas or questions? (i'll take even stupid ones, actually)

Disaster wise maybe something like a solar flare or a gamma ray burst, but maybe with hawking radiation - read up on wiki it's cool - maybe a combination of a massive solar storm and the ionising effect of the northern lights off setting the effects of the hawking radiation burst.

yeah, fuck with white people, they deserve it for a change.

A rapide mutation cascade could totally tie in with the idea of the world being bathed in this burst of strange radiation. I don't know if I just made up the term rapid mutation cascade, but it sound cool - google says yes I did just make that up, use it with my blessing. Maybe have the mutations have a positive feedback loop, easy way to wipe out a lot of people.

Massive solar storm plus the effects of hawking radiation means that every microprocessor and data storage device is wiped and/or slagged. maybe have some bits of technology survive as arcane relics. Coders are the new magi as they can make the relics do stuff

Make sure you think about the characters though, as I am still learning, it doesn't matter how interesting your world is if your characters are flat.

[Taka]

i'm possibly planning to let the south saami be villains who pretend to be heroes. some of them must have been doing funny experiemens and predicted the end of the world. but instead of saving people, they only saved themselves. maybe they'd take in other people as slaves? pretending to be saving people.

some lule saami folks will be going on an adventure, probably because of a lack of resources. they should have some magic, real magic. just the traditional type. it shouldn't be necessary to explain the science behind it?

i have to figure out the world a little bit before i can find my characters. they're still hiding from me.

the point of this story would be to write something that teenage boys wouldn't hate reading. i'll be writing in lule saami, a language that has way too few original novels. i think i know only one, and it's seriously boring for people who aren't super interested in history.

[Ativan Prescribed]

They have found in the genome sequence, the string that sets off genetic mutations as they are needed to help a species survive environment change.
They have isolated this sequence in only a select group of people in Norway.
Mankind and scientists are trying desperately to reproduce it in all of mankind and can't find the right combination of yet other sequences to accomplish this as time runs out for the world as we know it.
It appears as they have been looking for this, that it has become activated in these people and in a large number of other species and cannot explain the significance of this.
it has been activated and it seems to be waiting for yet another event to actually trigger this.
*This is within current information and technology, along with recently discovered sequences like this.

[Annys]

I do have a few thoughts that may or may not be helpful, so take them as you will.

When it comes to the Science Fiction/Fantasy genre, the world really is your oyster. There are so many possibilities that it's really hard to come up with general suggestions or ideas.

The approach I usually find helpful is to work backwards, instead. You clearly have at least the foundation of an idea about what society is like in your world. Coming up with your world's history, or at least major events in it, can largely be achieved by asking yourself WHY elements of this society and world turned out like it did, and not some other way instead.

For example, if you're looking at a pocket of humanity that somehow survived in Scandinavia, what is it about Scandinavia that helped people survive there? Is it the climate? If some virus has wiped out a portion of humanity, perhaps the virus couldn't survive in a cold environment. If it's a magical disaster, maybe there's something about that geographic region that alters the way magic works, so a few people survived the cataclysm where it was relatively milder. And so on. The possibilities really are endless... The question "why?" helps me narrow it down far more than anything else.

I'm not entirely sure how clear that last paragraph is for you, so if you would like some help in that regard, please feel free to shoot me a PM and throw ideas at me. I'll do my best to come up with some "whys" if it helps.

I do have two notes of caution for you. If you're going to have some disaster disproportionately affect a particular race of people more than another (especially if it's an actual race of people in the real world), do be very, very careful how you present it. If done correctly, it can be fine. If your audience actually picks up on your feelings about why that race is so targeted, it's potentially extremely disastrous for you. It's necessary to at least present some other, arbitrary reason they were so afflicted.

Second, when it comes to the concept of magic, you absolutely DO need to explain the "science" behind it. This is NOT optional. Your magic needs rules, and especially limits. Explain what magic can and cannot do, and ideally, have your protagonist(s) struggle against those limits sometimes. If your magic just "is", it's a tool that looks like a cheap cop-out to get your heroes out of sticky spots. Limitless potential is boring to your audience. You MUST present the limits, or it's inevitably boring.

There's a lot more I wanted to say but this is already getting long winded, and I haven't even answered many of your questions at all. If this is helpful, please feel free to poke at me. I write for a living, and I have plenty more.

[Taka]

there are limits to magic, and they can be quite horrible. mage technology seems much safer to me.

the whys are pretty much what i'm trying to find out here. i need a way to wipe off enough people of the earth that most of them will think they're the only survivors. and i think i'll need to get rid of most asians too. they're too smart and well organized, they'd have the situation, or the world, under control too soon.

it would be very nice if something to do with too much technology, could be a reason for mass death.

[Deleted]

Snowflake it. It'll help you world build and give you a character driven plot

[Annys]

Feb 16, 2015 1:44:57 GMT 8 Taka said:

there are limits to magic, and they can be quite horrible. mage technology seems much safer to me.

the whys are pretty much what i'm trying to find out here. i need a way to wipe off enough people of the earth that most of them will think they're the only survivors. and i think i'll need to get rid of most asians too. they're too smart and well organized, they'd have the situation, or the world, under control too soon.

it would be very nice if something to do with too much technology, could be a reason for mass death.

By far the easiest way to wipe out huge portions of humanity is war, which is why it's such a common trope in post-apocalyptic worlds. Your specific targets also seem to have a great deal in common in terms of industrialization (at least for the most part).

With those thoughts in mind, we need just need a reason for such a large scale war. What if people started incorporating their technology into themselves? Like, augmentations and such. Cyborgs. Naturally, industrialized societies would be more prone, or at least far more able, to do something like this on a massive scale. Perhaps some of them even began mandating such enhancements.

Over time, the difference between these groups would begin to grow. At its extremes, perhaps people who remain "pure" or "natural" might not even see the "altered" as human anymore. This could even become something of a religion among the "purists." At minimum, a great deal of mistrust begins to grow between these factions. Eventually, this grows to the point that entire countries begin to cut all diplomacy/trade with each other, only adding to the tension. This becomes something of a third/fourth world vs. first/second (and neither side needs to be entirely united in these kinds of "religious" conflicts, probably there's a lot of infighting too, to varying degrees.)

Who strikes first? A lot more "whys" could be found there, or maybe your people don't even remember or care anymore. But at some point, they did strike. Of course, the technology people have an advantage. That's the point of their "enhancements" in the first place. Initially routed, in desperation the third world discovers true magic, and then things start to get REALLY ugly, especially if it takes time for the magic people to fully control their magic. Think ZERO subtlety (at least at first), maybe something like magical nukes. Technology has no defense against this, because there IS no defense against this new threat yet. Nobody has had the time to discover a defense, including the magic users themselves. They often wipe THEMSELVES out, as well.

Because the conflict is driven on something like religious fanaticism, this is deemed an acceptable cost. The "false" humans must be destroyed, at any cost, even their own lives. Seeing their sudden advantage (and the cost), many decide to press the attack as rapidly as possible, in the biggest "cleansing" the world has ever seen. Knowing that they are also destroying themselves, portions of their communities are set aside to preserve their culture. These are your few survivors. With these pockets of people set aside safely (perhaps each faction does so independently, believing themselves to be the only "true" group worthy of surviving in the new world), the carry through with it.

The devastation from the "magic nukes" is more livable, and more easy to rebuild in than the radioactive ones, though there are still consequences. The world is a very different place, with sometimes new rules, and perhaps lots of residual wild magic floating around messing with stuff (which could explain your rapid evolution of animals).

Just an idea. Hopefully one or two of these ideas are helpful for you.

[Taka]

a subtler form of electronic cyborg may work.
i'll think about that, gives a lot of opportunity for evil plans and other stuff.

an alliance to wipe out all those who go against nature. they'll be good and evil at the same time.

snowflake?

[Ativan Prescribed]

Had a cat named Snowflake once.
Don't let the name fool you...

[Taka]

i have a cat named ninja. i almost never see it, the thing really lives up to its name.

[Quin]

i want wildlife to evolve unnaturally fast, can i blame radioactivity?

If you want to stick to hard science, then no. Evolution is a pretty slow process, and even if you assume there are pressures that are pushing animals to divergent evolutionary paths, you're looking at a bare minimum of 30k+ years for significantly new traits

people should survive here and there, but all technology should be lost.

If this is 30k years or so in the future, that wouldn't be a problem. Pretty much all vestiges of civilization would have rotted away by this point. Remnants would just be useless junk that won't biodegrade properly.

but some relics of the past should be used to develop mage technology.

This is a little harder. Anything that has survived to this point would have to have been purposefully preserved. If there was some sort of disaster that didn't kill everyone all at once, it's reasonable that some people would have done exactly that, though.

and it can't be too far into the future. a few hundred years, a thousand at most.

With a timeline like this, the evolution thing would unfortunately be out. If you don't want to stick 100% to hard science though, don't let that get in the way of telling your story. Science fiction is fiction in the first place because there is a bit of speculation and hand waving.

[Taka]

nice... 30k is too long.
then what about gene manipulation?
could i create slightly more monstrous predators with that? like a saber tooth lynx or something.
or that combined with breeding. i wonder what would motivate anyone to create something more dangerous, but could it be done in the future?