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American Civil War fought in the space future

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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by Louis R   » Sat May 07, 2016 2:11 pm

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Forgive me for tromping in late, but I admit that I wasn't paying careful attention the first time I looked at this.

While you are correct about the interactions of technology and society, those interactions are often subtle, complex and far from the inevitabilities that many assume. Decent sanitation, for example, has a bigger effect on population, and particularly infant mortality, than all other technologies combined - and yes, I'm including both agricultural and medical technology in 'all'. Yet few people are more than vaguely aware of it, and if it ever takes pride of place in a story, there's always a punchline at the end.

I also have to say that the example you give probably explains why you encounter difficulties with world-building: it shows a deep ignorance [forgive the word, but there isn't a better one] of how our world came to be, and without a good idea of how this world works it can be hard to put your own together. Fire, I fear, predates agriculture by 1/2 - 2 million years, depending on who you listen to and what evidence they're looking at. The wheel, OTOH, _post_dates agriculture by anything up to 8,000 years [again, depending on who and what -dating for both technologies is uncertain]. Neither fire nor the wheel is a necessary technology for agriculture. It is certainly true that the use of fire makes processing many agricultural products for consumption [a.k.a. cooking them] much more practical, but it is easy to list high-value items for which it is unnecessary, and trivial to build an agri-system that could be based on such items. Wheeled implements didn't enter common use until the later middle ages, and the widespread use of wheeled vehicles to transport produce is only slightly older - for any distance more than an hour's walk, it didn't start until the Romans began paving over the world in the late 1st millenium BC. So long-distance wheeled transport is an enabler for modern cities, but not particularly for agriculture. Or even for trade, come to think of it. One can easily imagine an aquatic culture with agriculture and long-distance trade where fire is impossible and the wheel superfluous. Getting them off-planet into an interstellar civilisation, OTOH, it more challenging.

Michael Everett wrote:
Even with an idea, writing skill, grammar and syntax, it's more common to fail to complete a story than it is to complete it.
I myself have a file of stories that started well, but for one reason or another, I had to stop.
Abandoned Story Concepts
Compcent (Sci-fi/4 chapters) - A resurrected astronaut and an alien computer return to Earth after World War III.
Cyber Dragon (Sci-fi/3 chapters) - Technology can perform miracles, even supplying new bodies, albeit ones that are not human...
Pridelands (Fantasy/2 chapters) - An expansionist empire discovers that it may not be the strongest nation after all.
Angel Flight (Sci-fi/6 chapters) - A scientific experimental subject gets transported to a new world where he must make a new life for himself.
Guardian Monster (Sci-fi/9 chapters) - An runaway teenager makes first contact with a stranded alien scout.
Devil's Island (Fantasy/8 chapters) - A noble demon seeks to resurrect ancient races in the modern era.

Each would-be story came about because I had an idea. World--building was an issue, requiring me to use several pages of A4 to note important things like basic history, traditions and the reasons for them, basic rules or societies and any side-effects it may have, technology and how it causes society to change (and it does. The Wheel and Fire alone changed society from hunter-gatherer to farming-based). However, in every case, the story was abandoned either because I lost where I was going with the plot (didn't write it down, proof I can be an idiot!), realization that I was going to close to something already published or discovering I was about to write myself into a corner.
Even though I do have completed stories on-line, my fails outnumber my completions.
I'm sure RFC has his own file of "might have beens". It would be fascinating to have a peek at them...

Edit - all linked story-fragments are available if anyone wants to adopt them. I'd quite enjoy seeing what a competent writer could do with them...
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by lwhitehead   » Mon Dec 12, 2016 3:51 pm

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Well I'll still like this idea for an Space Opera War series, an Army based on Man power against ones that rely on Tech


LW
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by C. O. Thompson   » Mon Dec 19, 2016 12:21 pm

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Because each of the 15 - 20 colony worlds could be thought of as an island, I would invest in a space navy with marines for ground duty rather than an space army.
How are you going to move the army from one place to another and why would you get tied up in ground combat (which is destructive to environments as well as non-combatants if you can control the sky?


lwhitehead wrote:like the Honor series but this series is based on American Civil War, so which is better Space Navy or Space Army?


The Colonies which are 15 to 20 all together are based on Terrans but they are based on Europe noble nations while Earth is based on Americian futurism rule like in Babyalon 5 TV series.


Edward Robert Lee of Tidewater planet and Colony is the main character, The Lee's are Gentlemen Farmers Squire of Goodland. Goodland is very large farming town were the Lee Brewery is located making the famous Lee Porter Beer 8.5% strong favored among the Yeomen of Tidewater.


The Lee's are famous for Three things, naming the Town Goodland, there Brewery that make one of the strongest Beers around and there being the first who setled the area building there farm. Each generation of Lee's expanded the farm untill it's current size.

LW
Just my 2 ₡ worth
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by Dilandu   » Mon Dec 19, 2016 2:46 pm

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lwhitehead wrote:Well I'll still like this idea for an Space Opera War series, an Army based on Man power against ones that rely on Tech


LW


Not gonna work in space warfare. Both sides relied generally on tech, with just a trace ammounts of humans basically to make tactical decisions (and maybe conduct some repairs, if your androids aren't very good). With all respect to RFC, but the space dreadnough with thousand size crews are "future past" even on modern level of technology; the incredibly complex modern destroyers, with their high-capable phased array system and missiles required less than 500 mens to operate, and the most modern "Zumvalt" even less.

I think, I'll go with the "Childrens of the Dead Earth" calculations - the crew of large space warship would be about a hundred or two.
------------------------------

- Who would won in battle between strawman Liberal-Democrat and strawman Conservative-Republican?
- Scarecrow from Oz; he was strawman before it became political.

P.S. - And he have Russian twin, to watch his back)
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by Lord Skimper   » Thu Dec 22, 2016 4:19 pm

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Location: Calgary, Nova, Gryphon.

This does sound like firefly.
________________________________________
Just don't ask what is in the protein bars.
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by C. O. Thompson   » Fri Dec 23, 2016 11:51 am

C. O. Thompson
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The line between plagiarism and inspired by can be very thin indeed.
By this date, it is not easy to come up with a story line that someone else has not... Yes, we might come up with one facet of a gem that others have not shown but...
If/when I begin to "commit a story to memory" the out line includes notes in a forward that list the inspirations...
it is not the only fair thing to do but.. it is only fair to do it.
If I recorded a movie from cable broadcast to my own library or if I described the specific accounts of a Red Sox broadcast without the expressed written consent, I do not expect the FBI to kick my door in and if I wrote a story based on David's characters or in one of his Universes, it would only be plagiarism if I tried to publish for profit without full disclosure.

But... Hey, I have been wrong before!! :shock:

Merry Christmas or what ever you call your festival of lights in the depth of winter.
Safe happy year 2017


Lord Skimper wrote:This does sound like firefly.
Just my 2 ₡ worth
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by lwhitehead   » Sat Aug 19, 2017 3:28 pm

lwhitehead
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I don't like Firefly, but my idea is different and original I hope,


LW
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by The E   » Mon Aug 21, 2017 7:31 am

The E
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lwhitehead wrote:I don't like Firefly, but my idea is different and original I hope,


LW


I have bad news for you.
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by lwhitehead   » Tue Aug 22, 2017 2:38 pm

lwhitehead
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Well I'm not a fan of Joss Weadons work,


Anyways I know that Colonization would cost alot of money, even when Earth is overpopulated and run down at the time, the latest Mass Effect game taught me that at least.


So I got figure out how Southern USA States gathered enough wealth to Colonize,

LW
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Re: American Civil War fought in the space future
Post by The E   » Wed Aug 23, 2017 6:52 am

The E
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Posts: 2091
Joined: Tue May 07, 2013 12:28 pm
Location: Bielefeld, Germany

lwhitehead wrote:Well I'm not a fan of Joss Weadons work,


Whedon wasn't the first to come up with a "western frontier IN SPAAAACE" idea, and he won't be the last.


Anyways I know that Colonization would cost alot of money, even when Earth is overpopulated and run down at the time, the latest Mass Effect game taught me that at least.


So I got figure out how Southern USA States gathered enough wealth to Colonize,

LW


No, what you have to figure out is why exactly a society would choose to explicitly model itself on a society that failed as hard as the antebellum south did.
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