Wow, lots of talk here. Thanks a lot, you guys!
You know, going through this group more, it becomes more and more clear that this isn't a sort of futurist shared universe, per se, but rather more of a sci-fi/fantasy fan bash in space.
Hmm, okay.
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Okay. I was thinking that a lot of these groups would be second generation, anyway, after humanity had some time to settle down and put down strange roots. A few of these groups could be done in the "here and now" though.
I'm thinking in particular the Blakes, Cold Shatter, Satanist (have to come up with a better name), maybe the Black Monoliths and Kuiper Brain, though by this point the Brain would have consumed only half an asteroid or comet.
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Second or third, depending on when quirk-free handwavium starts to become available. Since that's the holy grail of wavetech engineering, it'll happen eventually.
[oh, goody. Yeah, when wavium and hardtech are interchangeable, then it'll be good. Speaking of which, were any Thanksgiving cornucopias turned into actual femtotech cornucopias by wavium?]
(Speaking of probabilities, once the mundanes come up/obtain quirkless 'wave, I fully expect Earth to go Sheenisov. Which will set certain quarters howling. Moo hoo ha ha ha.)
[Really? Sheenisov? Not very utopian, mate, especially given the way it ended up in both the timelines. Why not go Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?]
As for the groups... the Blakes, obviously, in all their fractious glory. Cold Shatter would make for an interesting bad guy once we get over the zwilnik hump. The Monoliths and Kuiper OTOH, I think work better as rumors than actual factions, the sort of stories Belters and browncoats tell while drunk.
[Yeah, that makes sense. Though there should be nascent gene-hackers and self-evolvers among the Fen population already, to give Black Monolith and Kuiper credence.]
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Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.
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*snort* Okay, this wins.
[I literally couldn't finish Slan given just how friggin' whiny the main character was.]
Touching on some of the other items in the original post...
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Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame
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I'd see that as a Fenspace Nextgen group - the only known case of human-to-AI conversion so far was a biomod that took place while the person was dying. I can't see people being willing to kill themselves on the off-chance that it would make them functionally immortal.
[Some people would. And I'm sure that as quirk free wavium and hardtech catches up to it, there'll be more. And of course personality backups should be playing some part in fenspace soon.]
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Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade.
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Ah, lawbreakers - or, as we call them, Boskonians. At least, that's how people would view them...
A line from my story Recollections of an Immortal comes to mind: "He'd spend a fortune on making sure a police force kept going, then take the law into his own hands and kill someone who was threatening one of us." I could easily imagine the person Noah'd killed be a Blake...
[Groovy. Blakes have a ideology of freedom from any overriding government, and are willing to blow shit up and commit acts of boskonianism.]
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Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.
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And most of the rest of Fenspace, too - if they destroy Earth, where are we going to get our PS4s and xBox720s from? More importantly, where would we get our fresh food and advanced medical care from?
[They'd, uh, they'd make their own? I guess? Cold Shatter basically believes that having all those natural resources, and they don't really believe that things like plants or an atmosphere that you can't carry with you, is just a waste. Why have all that nickel-iron in the Earth's crust just wasted on making a magnetosphere when it could be used to make life better in fenspace through free market forces? They're pretty much militant uber strip-miners.]
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Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes!
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Going story-mode for a moment:
"Boss, take a look at this advertisment."
I started reading the webpage that my exec had forwarded to my palmtop. "'Meat-Puppet Conversion'... Is this something you want, Yoriko?"
"Not really, Noah. Well, I want to be able to bear your children, but if the wording says what I think it says, the price is too high."
"Oh?" Then I got to the part she was worried about. "'Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material'... Oh, by all that's holy..."
"Exactly, boss. If they aren't cloning the bodies, then are they kidnapping and murdering people to make them?"
I put the palmtop down on my desk. "Call the Browncoats; tell them I'll fund an investigation into this."
And so on.
Maybe you'd like to re-phrase that, laddie...?
[How exactly are browncoats defined here? What's their role? Are they, like, cops? Cause given the source of that name, you'd think they'd be more criminal than cop. Anyway, meat-puppets are basically engineered human bodies that are controlled by AIs through a dedicated FTL-comm and a computer in their heads, as explained below.]
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Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police
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Probably lumped in with the Browncoats, in public opinion...
[Really? Cause I would think that the Whedonites wouldn't really like Baley, because they'd be more than willing to bust up unions and go all rights of the state/corporation supercedes the agency of the indivdiual.]
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Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.
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Oh, good. I'd hate to find out what would happen if such skimpily-dressed troubleshooters were to team up with Kohran... No, I lie; I'd love to read that story - but I'm not about to write it.
[Me too.]
-Rob Kelk
The thing about scientist is that unlike priests, who are always right, they are never right.
Take Newton forinstance he completly forgot to take the speed of light into account so most of his calulations are of. Einstein fixed the big problems with newtonian physics, but enough problems remain to say that Einstein is probably wrong too, there has just not been enough time yet to explain how einstein went wrong. Some might say that they where almost right, but almost right is still wrong. We should dread the day that scientist are right, though I doubt it will come, since we are always figuring out that the world is bigger than we though it was.
[I guess it really depends on your definition of "right" and "wrong." Post-modern critique on science and the scientific method is useful but only in that you can't get puffed up about knowledge.]
[Anyway: Metropolis, a machine-city that is made from a waved abandoned space module, not sure what, possibly from the apollo missions. Anyway, grew into a large city that is AI-run and AI-friendly. Home to Universal Robots, a robot manufacturing corporation. The main living area for non-AIs is called Alphaville. Home to many pulpers.
[Nemos: a subset of space pirates, only steampunk-tinged.
[The Quatermass Institute: Dedicated to watching the skies for signs of alien life and utterly blowing it to kingdom come if it's hostile, along with any other bystanders. Labelled doomsday fanatic paranoids by the rest of fendom. Rumored to have stockpiles of nuclear weapons and kinetic missiles to defend and/or blow up Earth and humanity in general. Dislike hippies and young people in general. Hardtech as much as possible as they see handwavium as possibly an insidious plot by evil people-eating aliens to destroy us all.
[AEUG: Group calling for the abolishment of all 'dane influence in space. Dress in red prussian-inspired attire and ride around in giant mechs.]
-murmur
You know, going through this group more, it becomes more and more clear that this isn't a sort of futurist shared universe, per se, but rather more of a sci-fi/fantasy fan bash in space.
Hmm, okay.
Re: reply
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Okay. I was thinking that a lot of these groups would be second generation, anyway, after humanity had some time to settle down and put down strange roots. A few of these groups could be done in the "here and now" though.
I'm thinking in particular the Blakes, Cold Shatter, Satanist (have to come up with a better name), maybe the Black Monoliths and Kuiper Brain, though by this point the Brain would have consumed only half an asteroid or comet.
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Second or third, depending on when quirk-free handwavium starts to become available. Since that's the holy grail of wavetech engineering, it'll happen eventually.
[oh, goody. Yeah, when wavium and hardtech are interchangeable, then it'll be good. Speaking of which, were any Thanksgiving cornucopias turned into actual femtotech cornucopias by wavium?]
(Speaking of probabilities, once the mundanes come up/obtain quirkless 'wave, I fully expect Earth to go Sheenisov. Which will set certain quarters howling. Moo hoo ha ha ha.)
[Really? Sheenisov? Not very utopian, mate, especially given the way it ended up in both the timelines. Why not go Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?]
As for the groups... the Blakes, obviously, in all their fractious glory. Cold Shatter would make for an interesting bad guy once we get over the zwilnik hump. The Monoliths and Kuiper OTOH, I think work better as rumors than actual factions, the sort of stories Belters and browncoats tell while drunk.
[Yeah, that makes sense. Though there should be nascent gene-hackers and self-evolvers among the Fen population already, to give Black Monolith and Kuiper credence.]
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Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.
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*snort* Okay, this wins.
[I literally couldn't finish Slan given just how friggin' whiny the main character was.]
Touching on some of the other items in the original post...
Quote:
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Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame
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I'd see that as a Fenspace Nextgen group - the only known case of human-to-AI conversion so far was a biomod that took place while the person was dying. I can't see people being willing to kill themselves on the off-chance that it would make them functionally immortal.
[Some people would. And I'm sure that as quirk free wavium and hardtech catches up to it, there'll be more. And of course personality backups should be playing some part in fenspace soon.]
Quote:
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Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, lawbreakers - or, as we call them, Boskonians. At least, that's how people would view them...
A line from my story Recollections of an Immortal comes to mind: "He'd spend a fortune on making sure a police force kept going, then take the law into his own hands and kill someone who was threatening one of us." I could easily imagine the person Noah'd killed be a Blake...
[Groovy. Blakes have a ideology of freedom from any overriding government, and are willing to blow shit up and commit acts of boskonianism.]
Quote:
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Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.
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And most of the rest of Fenspace, too - if they destroy Earth, where are we going to get our PS4s and xBox720s from? More importantly, where would we get our fresh food and advanced medical care from?
[They'd, uh, they'd make their own? I guess? Cold Shatter basically believes that having all those natural resources, and they don't really believe that things like plants or an atmosphere that you can't carry with you, is just a waste. Why have all that nickel-iron in the Earth's crust just wasted on making a magnetosphere when it could be used to make life better in fenspace through free market forces? They're pretty much militant uber strip-miners.]
Quote:
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Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Going story-mode for a moment:
"Boss, take a look at this advertisment."
I started reading the webpage that my exec had forwarded to my palmtop. "'Meat-Puppet Conversion'... Is this something you want, Yoriko?"
"Not really, Noah. Well, I want to be able to bear your children, but if the wording says what I think it says, the price is too high."
"Oh?" Then I got to the part she was worried about. "'Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material'... Oh, by all that's holy..."
"Exactly, boss. If they aren't cloning the bodies, then are they kidnapping and murdering people to make them?"
I put the palmtop down on my desk. "Call the Browncoats; tell them I'll fund an investigation into this."
And so on.
Maybe you'd like to re-phrase that, laddie...?
[How exactly are browncoats defined here? What's their role? Are they, like, cops? Cause given the source of that name, you'd think they'd be more criminal than cop. Anyway, meat-puppets are basically engineered human bodies that are controlled by AIs through a dedicated FTL-comm and a computer in their heads, as explained below.]
Quote:
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Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police
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Probably lumped in with the Browncoats, in public opinion...
[Really? Cause I would think that the Whedonites wouldn't really like Baley, because they'd be more than willing to bust up unions and go all rights of the state/corporation supercedes the agency of the indivdiual.]
Quote:
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Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Oh, good. I'd hate to find out what would happen if such skimpily-dressed troubleshooters were to team up with Kohran... No, I lie; I'd love to read that story - but I'm not about to write it.
[Me too.]
-Rob Kelk
The thing about scientist is that unlike priests, who are always right, they are never right.
Take Newton forinstance he completly forgot to take the speed of light into account so most of his calulations are of. Einstein fixed the big problems with newtonian physics, but enough problems remain to say that Einstein is probably wrong too, there has just not been enough time yet to explain how einstein went wrong. Some might say that they where almost right, but almost right is still wrong. We should dread the day that scientist are right, though I doubt it will come, since we are always figuring out that the world is bigger than we though it was.
[I guess it really depends on your definition of "right" and "wrong." Post-modern critique on science and the scientific method is useful but only in that you can't get puffed up about knowledge.]
[Anyway: Metropolis, a machine-city that is made from a waved abandoned space module, not sure what, possibly from the apollo missions. Anyway, grew into a large city that is AI-run and AI-friendly. Home to Universal Robots, a robot manufacturing corporation. The main living area for non-AIs is called Alphaville. Home to many pulpers.
[Nemos: a subset of space pirates, only steampunk-tinged.
[The Quatermass Institute: Dedicated to watching the skies for signs of alien life and utterly blowing it to kingdom come if it's hostile, along with any other bystanders. Labelled doomsday fanatic paranoids by the rest of fendom. Rumored to have stockpiles of nuclear weapons and kinetic missiles to defend and/or blow up Earth and humanity in general. Dislike hippies and young people in general. Hardtech as much as possible as they see handwavium as possibly an insidious plot by evil people-eating aliens to destroy us all.
[AEUG: Group calling for the abolishment of all 'dane influence in space. Dress in red prussian-inspired attire and ride around in giant mechs.]
-murmur