+- Drunkard's Walk Forums (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums)
+-- Forum: General (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=1)
+--- Forum: Fenspace (http://www.accessdenied-rms.net/forums/forumdisplay.php?fid=12)
+--- Thread: Gazetteer Topics (/showthread.php?tid=2109)
Gazetteer Topics - Bob Schroeck - 12-21-2006
Some things I thought maybe we should do articles on, including a couple hopefully new ideas for the setting:
Ship Classifications
Berne Convention -- copyright and trademark holders trying to sue Fen for "diluting" their intellectual property
Coherent timeline
How are earth-bound governments reacting to the birth of a vital, ultra-tech spacegoing civilization that holds no solid allegiances to anything on the ground? Has any government yet gotten actively hostile (as opposed to USA-style unfriendly)? Some otherwise-unimaginative hardcase in a seat of power somewhere must be getting the heebie-jeebies over all those wackjobs with their supertech and their wild ideas and their two whole planets of lovely real estate and resources that he can't touch, tax or impound. Perhaps a minor subplot about the Gummint drafting SF writers to tell them how the Fen think -- and to warn them about what kind of nasties the Fen can throw at them if it turns to war. I'm sure some bright boy in the Pentagon or some other military has already realized that all those asteroid mining teams are also strategic weapon delivery systems.
Mars Terraforming Project
Venus Terraforming Project
List of Factions:
"Doc" Smithians
Cordwainer Smithians
shojo-fen
Heinleiners
Senshi
Whedonites
Warsies
Babs
Trekkies
Supers (pro-biomods)
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
Re: Gazetteer Topics - Valles - 12-21-2006
Quote:Incidentally, I figure that the Boskonians are essentially what happens when you apply this sort of mindset to someone who is vaguely creative.
Some otherwise-unimaginative hardcase in a seat of power somewhere must be getting the heebie-jeebies over all those wackjobs with their supertech and their wild ideas and their two whole planets of lovely real estate and resources that he can't touch, tax or impound.
Yes, I'm stealing my ideas about them from Weber.
Ja, -n
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"
Re: Gazetteer Topics - Evil Midnight Lurker - 12-21-2006
Never mind the Berne Convention. How about the Outer Space Treaty? Fen are stomping all over it with glee.
--Sam
"I will write my name across the face of the moon!"
Re: Gazetteer Topics - Feinan - 12-21-2006
Quote:*laughs* Stomping? More like hacking it apart with axes, putting the pieces through the wood chipper, and then jumping up and down on the remains. The Treaty is a lovely bit of work, but...a mass exodus of individuals is something that it was never really designed to handle. It keeps talking about 'State Parties to the Treaty.' *snicker* Most of the Fen have told the State Parties to bugger off, and are merrily going their own way...having never signed the thing themselves and having abandoned the places that did. Sounds like a situation to keep the world's lawyers busy for decades, if not centuries, to come.
Never mind the Berne Convention. How about the Outer Space Treaty? Fen are stomping all over it with glee.
Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-21-2006
Being snowbound for the moment, I've got enough free time on my hands to kick some stuff around. Among that would be fixing up the timeline. Here's my first pass, trying to incorporate as much as I could from the original:
Late 2006 - Early 2007: Handwavium is "invented." Samples are sent to high-security mundane labs for analysis.
Spring 2007: The handwavium manages to slip past the security and starts filtering into fandom.
Summer 2007: Worldcon Yokohama The first public demonstration of the power of handwavium when an enterprising fan refits his car and flies to Japan for the con.
Fall/Winter 2007: First wave of handwavium-equipped explorers hit orbit, Luna, Mars.
Winter 2007: The Professor hits Paris with much bwahahaha-ing; Hermes Universal Deliveries founded.
Spring 2008: Noah Scott starts building Stellvia space station.
Summer 2008: Worldcon Denver Enterprising idiot spikes the hospitality suite food with concentrated handwavium, causing unexpected biomods in the convention goers. USGov goes nuts, "quarantines" the guests until they make their own escape.
Summer 2008: Flying Island launched; major factions (Trekkies, Warsies) begin moving off Earth en masse; Rockhounds, Inc. starts moving asteroids; Grover's Corners launched(?); Professor steals/borrows/blackmails the Sol Bianca from the Danish crown and makes his way offworld.
Fall 2008: USGov enacts strict handwavium regulations; Explain Star leaves Earth amid hail of gunfire; USGov enacts draconian anti-handwavium legislation in wake of Explain Star incident; Pinafore lifts one step ahead of the federales; Mars Terraforming Project begins(?); Galaxy Express 999 enters service.
Winter 2008/09: Senshi settle on (above) Venus(?); Venus Terraforming Project begins(?)
Spring 2009: (?)
Summer 2009: Worldcon Flying Island First off-Earth Worldcon; first Articles of Convention produced, voted on.
2010: (?)
2011: (?)
2012: (?)
2013: (?)
2014: KandorCon Treaty between the Fandom Nation and the governments of Earth. Blanket amnesty given to all fen who left Earth during the hardest parts of the handwavium restrictions.
2015: Suzumiya's Convention SOS-dan calls a Convention under the emergency clause; Star Patrol founded.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - Rieverre - 12-22-2006
Hermes Universal Deliveries was founded in Fall/Winter 2007. I ought to put that in, come to think of it.
The timeline also seems a little stretched at the end there. We could just accel it so that KandorCon happened in 2010 and the 'here and now' of SauceCon is around 2012.
-Griever
When tact is required, use brute force. When force is required, use greater force.
When the greatest force is required, use your head. Surprise is everything. - The Book of Cataclysm
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-22-2006
It's sort of a tossup. Yeah, there's that big stretch from '09 to '14 where we don't have anything happening, but compressing the timeline too much means that everything happens in too small a timeframe.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - drakensis - 12-22-2006
The flipside is that if we stretch the timeline too much then there is time for things to happen - like people actually figuring out Handwavium enough for mass-production and the like, or wavetech ships letting the 'Danes project force.
I strongly advise against our timeframe being more than 5 years after Handwavium turns up.
My personal recommendation would be moving the Treaty of KandorCon to 1 year after the first Convention in space, as by this point the 'Danelaw has concluded that the proto-nation(s) aren't going to collapse and some treaty is better than no treaty.
While I'd suggest the Treaty of Kandor-Con be no more than 2 years prior to the SOS-dan's convention, there's more scope for variability there.D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-22-2006
Okay, based on drak's suggestions, here's a second pass:
Late 2006 - Early 2007: Handwavium is "invented." Samples are sent to high-security mundane labs for analysis.
Spring 2007: The handwavium manages to slip past the security and starts filtering into fandom.
Summer 2007: Worldcon Yokohama - The first public demonstration of the power of handwavium when an enterprising fan refits his car and flies to Japan for the con.
Fall 2007: That Con - Enterprising idiot spikes the hospitality suite food with concentrated handwavium, causing unexpected biomods in the convention goers. USGov goes nuts, "quarantines" the guests until they make their own escape.
Fall/Winter 2007: First wave of handwavium-equipped explorers hit orbit, Luna, Mars.
Winter 2007: The Professor hits Paris with much bwahahaha-ing; Hermes Universal Deliveries founded.
Spring 2008: Noah Scott starts building Stellvia; Lunar cities founded(?)
Summer 2008: Flying Island launched; major factions (Trekkies, Warsies) begin moving off Earth en masse; Rockhounds, Inc. starts moving asteroids; Professor steals/borrows/blackmails the Sol Bianca from the Danish crown and makes his way offworld.
Fall 2008: USGov enacts strict handwavium regulations; Explain Star leaves Earth amid hail of gunfire; USGov enacts draconian anti-handwavium legislation in wake of Explain Star incident; Pinafore lifts one step ahead of the federales; Mars Terraforming Project begins(?); Galaxy Express 999 enters service.
Winter 2008/09: Senshi settle on (above) Venus(?); Venus Terraforming Project begins(?)
Spring 2009: (?)
Summer 2009: Worldcon Flying Island - First off-Earth Worldcon; first Articles of Convention produced, voted on.
2010: KandorCon - First formal Convention; treaty between the Fandom Nation and the governments of Earth. Blanket amnesty given to all fen who left Earth during the hardest parts of the handwavium restrictions.
2011: (?)
2012: Grover's Corners launches from West Virginia, causing much consternation in the 'danelaw; Suzumiya's Convention - SOS-dan calls a Convention under the emergency clause; Star Patrol founded.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - Valles - 12-22-2006
Quote:As the person who dreamed up this stunt, I'd like to note two things: 1.) My original concept was intentionally abiguous about location... but if there had been a specific identity, it probably would've been Balticon or something else relatively local to me, not a Worldcon. 2.) It was very early in the course of events; like, if the flying car was the first example the world stage got, this was the second. Or the other way around, if you go by 'when it happened' rather than 'when the networks twigged'. Also the first time that anyone found out biomod was even possible.
Enterprising idiot spikes the hospitality suite food with concentrated handwavium, causing unexpected biomods in the convention goers. USGov goes nuts, "quarantines" the guests until they make their own escape.
Oh, and, while travel time to the outer system is enough to really be a pain, I think it's quite possible to live in a small car for a week or two given camping gear and sufficient motivation. Being the first person on a world would definitely qualify, for me and almost certainly for a lot of others.
Ja, -n
===============================================
"Puripuri puripuri... Bang!"
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-22-2006
Quote:*nod* I ended up putting the location at Worldcon partly as a cheap plug (Worldcon '08 Denver! Be there or be polyhedral!) and partly because with all the other stuff happening that year it made sense as a trigger event; the "quarantine" and the media panic, combined with it being an election year in the US, served to accelerate Fen plans to get the hell off the planet.
1.) My original concept was intentionally abiguous about location... but if there had been a specific identity, it probably would've been Balticon or something else relatively local to me, not a Worldcon. 2.) It was very early in the course of events; like, if the flying car was the first example the world stage got, this was the second.
In any case, pushed it back a year so it's happening not long after Worldcon '07.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - Bob Schroeck - 12-22-2006
2015 -- The SS Grover's Corners lifts off from West Virginia and in the process plunges the United States into a new round of antihandwavium paranoia.
-- Bob
---------
...The President is on the line
As ninety-nine crab rangoons go by...
Re: Timeline Follies - CattyNebulart - 12-22-2006
I am again going to argue for a compressed timeline, and 4 years is a long time. If it lasts too long soceity will be noticably bent out of shape by the events, you can always balme the speedup on handwavium, but mundane goverments should still be clueless on how to deal with the stuff, and at least parts of them will be able to deal reasonably well with the post handwavium world after a few years.
Plus hadwavium is the stuff or dreams and wonder and it thrives on excitement. Patience is not a virtue I would ascribe to Haruhi.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Re: Timeline Follies - robkelk - 12-22-2006
Quote:On the flip side, it takes quite a while to build all the colonies, space stations and asteriod bases that have been placed into the setting, even assuming pre-fab modules and liberal use of 'wavium.
I am again going to argue for a compressed timeline, and 4 years is a long time.
It also takes a while to affect the atmosphere of a planet the size of Venus enough to make the thionite subplot at all believable, even using wavtech.
Four years isn't enough. On the other hand, ten years is far too long, considering what 'wavium has been shown to be able to accomplish...
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-22-2006
Quote:I suppose the question then becomes, where do we want to measure the start date from? Using 2007-8 as our start point (not when the stuff was discovered, but when we started using it in earnest), four years out from that point gives us 2011-12, ten gives us 2017-18.
Four years isn't enough. On the other hand, ten years is far too long, considering what 'wavium has been shown to be able to accomplish...
Just eyeballing it, I *think* a bracket around 2013-15 is *probably* our optimum point. This gives us time to for Fenspace to establish itself but isn't so long that things are running completely out of control.
---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - CattyNebulart - 12-22-2006
in my opinion 2015 is too late, because of changes the mundane cuolture will have undergone by then (prediticng in 1998 what is happening today would be very hard)
The counter complaint seems mostly that wavetech needed extra time to be established.
proposed solution: the stuff was revealed at the last world con (the 2006 one) and we place the SOS-con year at 2011 or 2012.
this would have the added benefit of being in the US for the wordlcon where wavium was revealed, making the great escape plot places at the main con.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-22-2006
Quote:Problem is, all that does is change the numbers.
proposed solution: the stuff was revealed at the last world con (the 2006 one) and we place the SOS-con year at 2011 or 2012.
Current date range is 2013-2015. Six years off that is 2007-2009. Splitting the difference brings up to a start point of 2008 - after the first flying cars and The Guacamole Incident, but more around the point where lots of things start happening - and an endpoint of 2014, just a year off from where Bob and I were making our initial assumptions.
Unless you're assuming that The World Will Change Forever in 2012 for some reason, we might as well stick with 2014 as the story date.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - drakensis - 12-22-2006
Quote:I thought that that was the point. You're proposing 2013-15 and working back. What was suggested was 2006 and working forwards.
Problem is, all that does is change the numbers.
Let's 'split the difference' and say 2012 since that's halfway between the two opinions being touted. You get a longer span of time from Handwavium turning up, we don't have an eight year span of time to turn the 'new frontier' into the Federal Democratic Republic of TransWorld Con.
D for Drakensis
You're only young once, but immaturity is forever.
Re: Timeline Follies - robkelk - 12-22-2006
Quote:Not the wavetech - the facilities. Wavetech is easy to create (trivial if you accept a shipload of quirks and wonkiness, difficult if you want relatively-quirk-free; "easy" is a middle ground); doing anything with it is going to take time.
The counter complaint seems mostly that wavetech needed extra time to be established.
There's a base on/in Phobos (which is it, BTW?) that's sufficiently developed to have enough "spare" living space to be able to host a Con - that's one of the defining assumptions of the entire setting. Unless that's the whole point of the structure (which it isn't; Phobos is primarily a terraforming base), that kind of luxury construction doesn't happen in four years, even if you've got wavetech. (Heck, it doesn't happen that fast even if you've got Washuu-tech, which definitely doesn't exist in this setting).
Venus has cooled off enough to be able to support life with biochemistry that's compatable with human biochemistry (c.f. the thionite subplot). I have trouble seeing that happen in a decade even with Washuu-tech, but it's established that it's happened with wavetech, so we're stuck with it.
Also, reputations don't grow to the extent that many of the characters have in that short a time. (Unless the people with the reputations work on establishing them, but no character has yet been depicted as a glory-hound.)
-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012
Re: Timeline Follies - ECSNorway - 12-22-2006
Part of the initial rapidity may be Haruhi's involvement. If her subconscious was initially focussed on "Going into space is COOL, there should be cool things there and cool places to go!", things would 'naturally' progress much more rapidly than one could normally expect.
Now, of course, she's focussed on "Boskonians are badmeanickynasty and we need to put together a COALITION OF HEROES and BEAT THEM UP!". So things oriented towards that end will work surprisingly well and quickly, and the initial surprising rapidity of things like the VTP will start to fall away. No ground will actually be LOST, except in cases of major disasters, but things won't go as quickly as they have been.--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-22-2006
Quote:Sort of. What's been suggested is that ten years from the beginning of handwavium to story start is "too long." But it hasn't been ten years under any of the proposed timelines. I don't get it.---
I thought that that was the point. You're proposing 2013-15 and working back. What was suggested was 2006 and working forwards.
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - CattyNebulart - 12-22-2006
The timeline should be as compressed as possible, personally I would like 3 years it would IMHO be enough time.
And with Washu tech that kind of luxury construction would take a few hours and a partial Terraform of venus would take a day or two.
Besides venus doesn't need to be terribly terraformed, maybe the plant likes the atmosphere of Venus from before the terraforming started better, the plant is afterall waveteched.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-23-2006
Quote:Okay. Let's go point-by-point the stuff that we've established in-story is already up there:
The timeline should be as compressed as possible, personally I would like 3 years it would IMHO be enough time.
* Large space stations in Earth orbit, mostly hollowed-out asteroids.
* Three largish towns/cities on the Moon (Kandor City, Port Luna and Moonbase Alpha)
* One largish floating city on Venus (Castle Magellan) and the planet's undergoing terraforming.
* Phobos riddled with tunnels and turned into a terraforming base/convention center.
* An indeterminate number of Mars settlements between village and small-town sized.
* Martian terraforming in the beginning stages.
* Multiple asteroid colonies with populations running from a handful to several hundered or several thousand.
* Gas mining rigs in Jupiter's atmosphere.
* At least a handful of Fen have made interstellar journeys between one to three weeks long round-trip.
* Fandom coalescing into something resembling a functioning nation or collection of nations instead of a large group of fanboys.
I'm sorry, but I don't see all of this happening in three years. Five is the absolute minimum I can see for the bigger points, and even then I'd recommend ripping out the Venusian terraforming because that is a big, complex project that couldn't see much headway in less than five years.
Quote:Moot point: nobody in Fenspace has that kind of technology.---
And with Washu tech that kind of luxury construction would take a few hours and a partial Terraform of venus would take a day or two.
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"
Re: Timeline Follies - ECSNorway - 12-23-2006
Fnord: This is why I suggested Haruhi as a Plotdevicite Temporal Flow Compression Resonator.
![[Image: smile.gif]](http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/smile.gif)
People start using Handwavium to go into space, and she thinks that this is COOL, and there should be COOL THINGS TO DO out there, and COOL PLACES TO GO.
And so, Haruhi being who and what she is, THERE ARE. Even if the laws of time and space have to be bent into even more of a pretzel than normally to do it.
Twenty years later people will be looking back and scratching their heads and going "I have no idea just how we managed to do so much, so fast, back then... it was like everything just broke the right way, you know?"--
"I give you the beautiful... the talented... the tirelessly atomic-powered...
R!
DOROTHY!
WAYNERIGHT!
--
Sucrose Octanitrate.
Proof positive that with sufficient motivation, you can make anything explode.
Re: Timeline Follies - M Fnord - 12-23-2006
Yeah, and I understand the temptation. It's just... it doesn't feel right, y'know? She's already driving the main plot, using her as spackle for the backstory feels like too much.
Am I making any sense at all here?---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery
FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information
"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"