In the Ruins of Their Cities

[Durabys]

I'm not sure about making it a section like the Servitor bit, but I'll probably chuck a line in early on making mention of the fact they're agender for clarity. The time machine thing is a good, though, I just forgot to add it in.



As an aside, I was worried about adding psychic powers into the setting but then I remembered a popular series from the 2000s featured the superpowered ghost of Al Capone.

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By 'psychic powers', you mean things like Technopathy and Remote Tele-viewing enabled by ubiquitous cyber nano-neuro implants, nano-cameras and nano-scanners being everwhere, and not 'psychic powers' like the Warp from WH40k, Psionics from Starcraft, and reality-warping from H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos? Right?

 

[prometheus110]

By 'psychic powers', you mean things like Technopathy and Remote Tele-viewing enabled by ubiquitous cyber nano-neuro implants, nano-cameras and nano-scanners being everwhere, and not 'psychic powers' like the Warp from WH40k, Psionics from Starcraft, and reality-warping from H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos? Right?

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No, the latter. SV is obsessed with justifying magical abilities by giving them the veneer of technological progress, and it gets boring to pretend after a while so I decided to skip the middleman and just throw in goofy things.

And in this case, it's more like Star Gate Project stuff than "you have a soul and it can be eaten by monsters"

Edit:

Plus, from a narrative perspective, I fail to see much practical difference between psychic powers being used against the Modern Marine corp and smart bombs being used against Greycoats. From the point of view of those experiencing it, both are equally magical weapons.*

*Fun fact: radio waves were only theorized in 1867

 

[Durabys]

No, the latter. SV is obsessed with justifying magical abilities by giving them the veneer of technological progress, and it gets boring to pretend after a while so I decided to skip the middleman and just throw in goofy things.

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So why cannot someone in this setting just literally handwave arcologies into existence or clean-up the climate with a snap of the finger?! Why do they still need tech? Because these things have to break conservation of energy somewhere along the line...and if you have that in a setting? You can have everything else as well.

Maybe you should have changed the date from the 23rd century to the 23rd Millenium if you sought bullshit clarketech solutions.

There are very good and valid reasons why we (other more hard SF authors) try to steer clear away from bullshit 'clap you hands' magic, it is not because we dislike magic, it is because we dislike people poking Mt.Everest sized holes into our established setting logic though that magic system. Holding onto a hard SF standard and actual science is least likely to open our settings to munchkin-tricks seeking annoyances curious readers/posters who will always go "and why can't you do this...or that...or that..."...and when you start to explain stuff? They will go on and on to seek more exploits and cheat-options of such a system. And then you will explain and explain...until one moment you suddenly realize you created several unsolvable logical paradoxes with your explanations of the system and basically have to ban any talk of the magic system in question to concentrate on the story.

Magic systems are inherently unstable logicwise.

Just look at the Harry Potter fandom and their discussion of the munchkining of the rules of the setting.

 

[prometheus110]

So why cannot someone in this setting just literally handwave arcologies into existence or clean-up the climate with a snap of the finger?! Why do they still need tech? Because these things have to break conservation of energy somewhere along the line...and if you have that in a setting? You can have everything else as well.

Maybe you should have changed the date from the 23rd century to the 23rd Millenium if you sought bullshit clarketech solutions.

There are very good and valid reasons why we (other more hard SF authors) try to steer clear away from bullshit 'clap you hands' magic, it is not because we dislike magic, it is because we dislike people poking Mt.Everest sized holes into our established setting logic though that magic system. Holding onto a hard SF standard and actual science is least likely to open our settings to munchkin-tricks seeking annoyances curious readers/posters who will always go "and why can't you do this...or that...or that..."...and when you start to explain stuff? They will go on and on to seek more exploits and cheat-options of such a system. And then you will explain and explain...until one moment you suddenly realize you created several unsolvable logical paradoxes with your explanations of the system and basically have to ban any talk of the magic system in question to concentrate on the story.

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The reason why they can't do everything simply by closing their eyes and wishing really hard is, as it is with every sci-fi setting whether it's considered hard or not, because the author said so.

Seriously though, I don't think psychic powers or the supernatural is real or whatever, but the assumption that "this setting has X thing that isn't explained using the right phrases, therefore, anything is possible within the universe" is both silly and fails to recognize that hard science fiction is more of a brand/feeling than a serious way of categorising stories through tight coherence to real-world physics.

Alastair Reynolds is a hard science fiction author with a serious pedigree, but what part of the Frameshift Drive from Pushing Ice holds to real-world physics beyond the very basics of 'doesn't exceed the speed of light'? Why are Conjoiner Drives or Dark Drives considered more plausible than the sails from Treasure Planet? How do Hell Class weapons work, and why do people accept Cryo-arithmetic engines? Arthur Clarke wrote what is considered hard science fiction, and yet he once wrote a book with Stephen Baxter where time-scopes lead to the development of a group mind and the resurrection of everyone who has ever lived. He also wrote about intelligent termites fighting off Martians using death rays, a man who didn't need sleep, and more. To quote Norman Spinrad:

Niven, for example, is generally considered a writer of "hard science fiction.'' J. G. Ballard is not. Niven's stories [have] two-headed aliens, telepathic powers, various flavors of time-travel, galactic cataclysms, hyper-drives, tractor beams, and so forth. Most of Ballard's novels have been rather tight extrapolations of a world drastically altered by one reasonably plausible meteorological change, and even his later more stylistically dense works don't ask the reader to swallow… scientific improbabilities whole. Hal Clement's alien creatures are part of the hard science fiction canon, but Cordwainer Smith's Underpeople are not. Aficionados of hard science fiction accept Poul Anderson's medieval space cultures without a murmur but eschew the future worlds of Mack Reynolds which are worked out with a much more sophisticated and rigorous knowledge of economics and politics.

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Would the validity of this story really be improved if I said the psychic powers were the result of research into human cognition revealing that the underpinnings of consciousness rely on weird-ass quantum interactions and that, by manipulating these interactions, spooky things could be achieved? Or would it all merely be a branding exercise?

 

[Durabys]

Would the validity of this story really be improved if I said the psychic powers were the result of research into human cognition revealing that the underpinnings of consciousness rely on weird-ass quantum interactions and that, by manipulating these interactions, spooky things could be achieved? Or would it all merely be a branding exercise?

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The validity of the story would be improved if you made a serious effort to explain how their psionics works and what are the limits thereof and what is the terminology. So a "branding exercise: deluxe". Look, I myself like Blood Music from Greg Bear: The powers in it are bullshit tier because it takes the known quantum mechanics of the 1970s (things like the then newly discovered Quantum Zeno Effect) to its absolutely logical conclusion--that is that you can alter laws of physics if enough observers are present and concentrate on one thing or if a single observer has a lense or something that magnifies the effect of a lone humans observation--Humans in-story becoming literal gods.

 

[prometheus110]

The validity of the story would be improved if you made a serious effort to explain how their psionics works and what are the limits thereof and what is the terminology. So a "branding exercise: deluxe". Look, I myself like Blood Music from Greg Bear: The powers in it are bullshit tier because it takes the known quantum mechanics of the 1970s (things like the then newly discovered Quantum Zeno Effect) to its absolutely logical conclusion--that is that you can alter laws of physics if enough observers are present and concentrate on one thing or if a single observer has a lense or something that magnifies the effect of a lone humans observation--Humans in-story becoming literal gods.

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Those are all basics of storytelling, so yes I'll probably get around to it.

 

[me.me.here]

So why cannot someone in this setting just literally handwave arcologies into existence or clean-up the climate with a snap of the finger?! Why do they still need tech? Because these things have to break conservation of energy somewhere along the line...and if you have that in a setting? You can have everything else as well.

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This is the no-limits fallacy. The extent of what we've seen psychic powers do is limited to information transfer at a rate up to approximately equal to that of human consciousness apparently without generating an equivalent amount of heat. That is not a particularly egregious example of physics alteration, and in fact could theoretically be achieved without violating known physics at all depending on how the information transfer interacted with neurology and whether the apparent lack of heat is just because the psychic in question can't actually detect the heat produced.

Even if it is a violation of conservation of energy, the discrepancy here would be something like a trillionth the discrepancy needed to "handwave an arcology into existence", and something tells me organizing and designing a mechanism to turn a trillion psychics thinking at each other into an arcology would be significantly more time and effort than just building an arcology the traditional way.

 

[Midnighter13]

By 'psychic powers', you mean things like Technopathy and Remote Tele-viewing enabled by ubiquitous cyber nano-neuro implants, nano-cameras and nano-scanners being everwhere, and not 'psychic powers' like the Warp from WH40k, Psionics from Starcraft, and reality-warping from H.P. Lovecraft's Mythos? Right?

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Honestly nothing as written so far made me think these people were using anything but clarktech. "Technopathy and Remote Tele-viewing enabled by ubiquitous cyber nano-neuro implants, nano-cameras and nano-scanners" seems like a perfectly reasonable interpretation of what has been written so far, even if the characters don't actually think of things that way. Even if the characters think they are using magic, we as the readers can look at the tech they are admittedly using and draw the conclusion that these future people are using magical terminology to describe things they can do, without it actually being 'magical' in any way. Bluntly, telepathy is telepathy whether it is due to neuro implants allowing thoughts to be projected into the local wifi equivalent, or the thoughts of people being projected out into the aether via magic. Its clear these people have high level cybertech, biotech, and probably nanotech. So any capabilities they show could easily be the result of these things until and unless they do things which explicitly break the laws of physics based on magical rather that scientific principles (even if those principles are fictional). Its the difference between time traveling via technological portal and a pentagram drawn in chalk that will make the difference.

 

[prometheus110]

It is explicitly due to a biotech gland, my use of the term magic is just shorthand for 'there's no explanation for this under physics as we currently know them but I'm not much bothered by that fact since that's not their purpose.'

 

[Redditredcoat]

Interesting enough TL, I might catch up with it from time to time, though I don't like the premise that climate change will be quite this destructive or that capitalism won't be able to find a solution...that or the fact that humanity doesn't eventually figure out a way to make either fusion work on a large scale, or switch over to regular old fission nuclear reactors if a solution is needed in a pinch. But whatever it's a story, realism isn't really the main issue compared to a decent story. I'll see if it's the same in this regard as well.

 

[Midnighter13]

Interesting enough TL, I might catch up with it from time to time, though I don't like the premise that climate change will be quite this destructive or that capitalism won't be able to find a solution...that or the fact that humanity doesn't eventually figure out a way to make either fusion work on a large scale, or switch over to regular old fission nuclear reactors if a solution is needed in a pinch. But whatever it's a story, realism isn't really the main issue compared to a decent story. I'll see if it's the same in this regard as well.

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Honestly, I think this comes across as a largely middle of the road prediction assuming 6+ degrees of warming. Society still exists, technological progress survived the resource wars, and the seas are still capable of supporting life. Sure, most of the world is uninhabitable and modern day nations are gone, but that's no surprise. The ecological worst case assuming 6+ degrees is much worse than this, and that's without factoring in the political consequences of resource wars as country after country collapses into civil war and industry and knowledge are lost.

 

[Strypgia]

"I-" Brent began before something his wrist with a meaty thud of impact and a flare of pain.

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Missing a word in here, I think.

 

[prometheus110]

Missing a word in here, I think.

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Bugger. I'll fix it in a tick.

Edit: I also changed some of the wording.

 

[Durabys]

Do you think this will update faster than one update per month?

 

[prometheus110]

Do you think this will update faster than one update per month?

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Probably not.

That said I'm hoping to update by next weekend.

Edit: that said, what do y'all want to know about the future and the people that live in it?

 

[Strypgia]

I imagine resources and the chaos of collapse mean little if anything is to spare, but have the remnant states of humanity managed to maintain any space presence, for satellite weather observation, communication, or solar power?

 

[prometheus110]

I imagine resources and the chaos of collapse mean little if anything is to spare, but have the remnant states of humanity managed to maintain any space presence, for satellite weather observation, communication, or solar power?

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There's some space infrastructure left in existence, but it's mostly focused around weather observation, communication, and sub-orbital navigation. This is largely a result of resource prioritisation enforced by the desperate triage of the planet's ecosystems, but the sheer quantity of shrapnel whipping through the most useful orbital bands doesn't help either.

Adding to the problem is the cost imposition of launching a satellite into orbit from the poles and the kinds of orbits available. While polar and HEO orbits have their uses, they also expose satellites to heavy radiation loads and wear away at components pretty heavily, necessitating replacements more frequently than equatorial orbits do. One of the many reasons for Federation and Union stabilisation missions in sub-arctic nations is so they can launch the satellites they need. Thanks to the vast swath of Earth's surface being rendered lethal to humans, communication between the Federation and the Union is largely restricted to high-speed laser-coms bounced from satellite to satellite as sub-sea cables would be impossible to maintain.

This relative isolation from one another combined with their historical circumstances has meant that the cultures of the Federation and the Union are... somewhat different from one another. I hope to explore these differences later on.

As an aside, orbital solar power was considered for a brief period during the late 21st century but discarded for a variety of reasons --not least being the danger of it. The fact that a working prototype was eventually used as an anti-satellite weapon during the european conflicts didn't help, either.

 

[Durabys]

There's some space infrastructure left in existence, but it's mostly focused around weather observation, communication, and sub-orbital navigation. This is largely a result of resource prioritisation enforced by the desperate triage of the planet's ecosystems, but the sheer quantity of shrapnel whipping through the most useful orbital bands doesn't help either.

Adding to the problem is the cost imposition of launching a satellite into orbit from the poles and the kinds of orbits available. While polar and HEO orbits have their uses, they also expose satellites to heavy radiation loads and wear away at components pretty heavily, necessitating replacements more frequently than equatorial orbits do. One of the many reasons for Federation and Union stabilisation missions in sub-arctic nations is so they can launch the satellites they need. Thanks to the vast swath of Earth's surface being rendered lethal to humans, communication between the Federation and the Union is largely restricted to high-speed laser-coms bounced from satellite to satellite as sub-sea cables would be impossible to maintain.

This relative isolation from one another combined with their historical circumstances has meant that the cultures of the Federation and the Union are... somewhat different from one another. I hope to explore these differences later on.

As an aside, orbital solar power was considered for a brief period during the late 21st century but discarded for a variety of reasons --not least being the danger of it. The fact that a working prototype was eventually used as an anti-satellite weapon during the european conflicts didn't help, either.

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What about laser-powered launch systems? Those same lasers could also be used to clear the orbits of junk easily within ten years or so.

 

[prometheus110]

What about laser-powered launch systems? Those same lasers could also be used to clear the orbits of junk easily within ten years or so.

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Spaceflight probably won't feature too much in this story (at least, not according to my current plans), so I'm not too bothered to share some of the details.

But to answer your question, laser-launch systems in use for both purposes, yes.

The launch systems used in the Union and Federation are two-stage coilgun/laser pusher systems. The first stage, the coilgun, accelerates the payload down a laser-straight, multi-kilometre long vacuum tunnel before curving upwards and shooting the payload into the sky. Once the payload has passed the safe altitude threshold, clusters of lasers surrounding the exit passage fire on the ablative surface coating the bottom of the payload and convert it into plasma; pushing it up into orbit on a pillar of blue-white fire. They're solid, relatively reliable systems, but building them takes ages, and upgrading the coilgun and ensuring the timings of the coils are right is a complete pain in the arse.

For launches outside of the Federation and Union, reusable rockets are used.

In general, though, rocketry took a back seat to a lot of things during and after the collapse, so the field is much less advanced than you would expect for the time period. I mean, by the 23rd century you'd expect metastable metallic hydrogen to be in use as a propellant.

 

[Strypgia]

The resource scarcity and the problems of polar launch latitudes were just about what I expected.
Someone deciding to use a solar power sat as a weapon is... stupid, but par for the course with humanity, alas. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.

 

[prometheus110]

The resource scarcity and the problems of polar launch latitudes were just about what I expected.
Someone deciding to use a solar power sat as a weapon is... stupid, but par for the course with humanity, alas. This Is Why We Can't Have Nice Things.

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TBH it was less of an orbital deathray and more of a satellite bug zapper. Focused microwave radiation can fuck with electronics something fierce (mostly by setting them on fire), so it was hit with an ASM pretty much the moment it was used.

 

[prometheus110]

Alright, fuck it, I'm going to try to bring this back. Updates will likely be infrequent, but I'm pretty sure people need the light of "maybe things take a decade to get worse and not five months" in their life.

 

[Durabys]

Alright, fuck it, I'm going to try to bring this back. Updates will likely be infrequent, but I'm pretty sure people need the light of "maybe things take a decade to get worse and not five months" in their life.

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Why not just move the timeline up by ten years? Is there a current events ban like on AH.com?

 

[prometheus110]

Why not just move the timeline up by ten years? Is there a current events ban like on AH.com?

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Because talking shit about real people can get messy if they haven't been dead for very long and I can't be arsed dealing with it.

Edit:

Don't get me wrong, I'm still going to call Donald Trump a piece of shit, I just won't say anything I can get sued over.

 

[Cybandeath]

Something you might want to keep in mind and do some research on for a story based around climate change is we have the tech to take carbon dioxide and other gasses out of the air, remake that carbon into fuel, and have a net energy gain as you can get more energy from the carbon collected then used to collect it. The current issue is the equipment startup cost is very large and would take awhile tor recoup and there is only very limited funding into furthering the research of the technology.