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Post by Jeff Gerke on Mar 14, 2007 7:07:43 GMT -5
Awesome post, j2thek! You're right: it's the what-ifs that make speculative fiction so much fun.
Why not post a few of your own?
Jeff
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terry
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Post by terry on Mar 14, 2007 11:45:41 GMT -5
My concern is the increasing negativity expressed towards proselytizing in general. Star Trek's "Prime Directive" has been used to teach a lot of this. I would like to see a SF/Fantasy scenario parallel to Britain in the 2nd to the 5th century when the Christians in the Roman army brought Christ to that land. They were the hated minority in the beginning but later became the majority religion. See my post in Plot on the details but the "Beast" SF group would preach Light giving instead of Light taking etc. They observe an unusual amount of "Sudden Stars" (Supernova) and then Black Holes on their home planet, thus their advanced astronomy and Sun/Star/Light theology . Something of a theology summarized by: "The greatest among you will be your servant. For whoever exalts himself will be humbled, and whoever humbles himself will be exalted." Matt.23:11-12 “We have always said, look to the Light bearers. Look to the STARS. What in God's heavens are more powerful then the mighty dark stars (Black Hole), yet how did they become powerful--by first giving their Light away (Supernova). From great death came even greater life. We have been deceived; it is by giving away your light that true power comes.” Imagine selfless, passivity trying to make its why into Klingon society. In a culture that worships Light (power) these awful lightgivers would be preaching treason, absurdity, and worst of all blasphemy. Just a thought. Thank you.
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Post by mongoose on Mar 19, 2007 19:08:50 GMT -5
It's not just a thought. Humility doesn't mean downplaying your God given value. You've got a good idea, run with it, and ask others to join you.
Anyway, I was hoping the SF people would not come all at once, immediately invading and occupying, to start this war thing. I don't see that happening, realistically. You plan to collonize a place, you send exploratory parties first. Some of them die, others survive to return and report back home, and some, for whatever reason, stay behind in the new world. Relationships of some kind or other are established with a few of the natives, and word spreads. Prisoners from the old world are sent to the new, as it's a good place to get rid of them. Eventually, others flee the old world to occupy the new, of their own choice. It becomes known that natural resources are available, and some enterprising business people go to harvest those, trade with the natives, or support the new societies. In the meantime, the natives remain largly aloof, suspicious, not really involved with the newbies, and there is minimal if any mixing of technology, philosophy, etc. There, most likely, skirmishes between displaced natives and collonists, but no decisive effort to destroy or otherwise conquer the whole society. Uneasy alliances and rivalries are established and deconstructed. exploration and collonization slowly continue until either -The collonizers get greedy and make war upon the natives, in-order to take what has been withheld from them so far, or -The natives get fed up at their land being occupied and such, and strike using their primitive technology and what they'd stolen from the collonizers, or received in trade for their resources and/or allegiance.
I would prefer something like this not only because it's more realistic, historically, and allows for more development of relationships among the various people groups with good and bad guys on both sides, but also because it allows for the character I'd like to create. This character would be an explorer and soldier of the SF people who gets fed up with what he sees as the injustices of his people, perpetrated upon each other and the worlds around them. In his attempt to escape the life for which he'd trained, and in which he'd lived for so long, he takes a transport to the outer frontier of their universe, galaxy, or whatever. He sets up house in a remote region of the fantasy world, perhaps in one of their villages, just hoping to be left alone. When the occupation by his people starts in earnest, he has to determine his role; whether to join his own people, fight them off using his knowledge of their weapons and tactics, negotiate with them to save the natives, or flee to yet more remote regions.
Of course, we'd also develop the characters of his fellow villagers, his former unit among the SF people, etc.
I'm not so keen on starting the story with a bang, as in a clash between the two worlds. I'd much rather develop the characters somewhat first. Even Ted Dekker, as focused as he is on plot driven stories, begins the stories somewhat slowly and introduces his characters, over the first few chapters, without a huge, world ending crisis rearing its ugly head till later. So begin with this SF character's conflicts with his commanding officers. Or inter-tribal warfare among clans on the fantasy world. Or tensions between nations on either planet. I just can't see starting a story with the big battle between the worlds.
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terry
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Post by terry on Mar 21, 2007 10:42:00 GMT -5
Agreed, character development is usually richer when it is developed over time. Perhaps these rebels could be a sub-plot. I would love to see a missionary element that would confront the invaders and the invadees world views. "We must give away our light." Thank you
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Post by saul102 on Mar 30, 2007 20:03:04 GMT -5
Anyway, I was hoping the SF people would not come all at once, immediately invading and occupying, to start this war thing. I don't see that happening, realistically. You plan to collonize a place, you send exploratory parties first. Some of them die, others survive to return and report back home, and some, for whatever reason, stay behind in the new world... Going with this thought would allow for many parallels to the colonization of the US, and the overpowering/pushing out of the Native Americans. This is not a bad thing. I'm just thinking that there is a foundation for this type of thing, and many available references to real-world situations of how it occured, and how people on both sides reacted/behaved. I would expect that to the Native Americans it was very much like an alien invasion from a SF world the first time they saw an Englishman in armor carrying a musket.
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Post by brianjones on Nov 25, 2009 23:22:56 GMT -5
My thoughts though are if magic is amplified because of the cities does than magic have a limited radius? Because if it did it would certainly keep the colonized cities from taking over. If that were true there would also be dead zones were there was no or low magic which dissidents could take advantage of. You know these cities need not only be a centers for conflict why not make it more complicated. What if they became the centers for the study of magic and they each by their own right became cultural centers? You could have the xenophobic colonist city be a dark one, ones who's magic became dark and mastered those around them. What may have started off as fear and misunderstanding for the natives became twisted into bigotry and hatred. Perhaps turning to the dark arts out of that fear and selfishness. I thought it might be cool to suggest the possibility of a portable city that landed wrong or crashed. And that maybe the magic is distorted and perhaps because of that the people are distorted too. Not physically necessarily but mentally. Perhaps their mad. Not blatantly so but even the average citizen it seems upon conversting with them after a while that something is ..shall we say off. Just a thought.
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Post by brianjones on Nov 26, 2009 18:05:21 GMT -5
Say how does this work, are we doing a collaborative idea here or are we posing ideas for the guy who originally posted this idea because I've fallen in love with this world and have already written so much in my imagination. However I don't want to be a thief so if you would please set the parameters so that I can abide my them, thanks. Brian.
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Post by brianjones on Nov 26, 2009 18:45:21 GMT -5
Um I would disagree on the Natives being pushed out as I am part-native, but this is Sci-Fi and Thanksgiving so if you don't mind lets bury the hatchet(pardon the pun). I think that if the Sci-Fi reenforcement never came due to their culture getting into a interplanetary war with another space fairing race or even another nation from their own world would give ample reason to why no one came back. It could be that the war was devastating and no one came back due to loss of life and money. Or the other side might have won and not they hold that territory and don't even know about the colony. Why tell the jerks who beat you in war? I think my idea had more to due after the fighting, centuries after. Have one or more cities that are shared by the land fallers and the natives places of culture as well as tech and magic. Kind of like a Lankmar if anyone has read those books. Have one main city that is the key city of magic. Yes there are others but they are more or less open due to various reasons. The plot point could be the fifth city still in the sky, if a really wicked nation could bring it down they would destroy the balance of power, especially if they could land it next to the city they already took, that could tip the balance of power and possibly damage the world having that much magic concentrated in one place. What about a dead city. One that crashed. The people died but the city went into repair mode due to the magic increase the robots weren't the only things that were deployed to repair the city. Its full of the dead, if you put that city in the desert the dead could be mummified or if in the swamp well that would really be gross. Anyhoo just a thought. Say I had a thought what if there were land fallers who were immune to magic?
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Post by Jeff Gerke on Nov 27, 2009 19:30:59 GMT -5
Right now you're the only one holding a torch for this story, Brian! It had a good but short life. I'd be glad to have you write some fiction in this world.
Note that I'm toying with the idea of writing this whole story myself, so don't patent anything. :-) But your version of it would be very different than mine, so I don't mind you playing around in this world a bit!
Jeff
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Post by dragonlots on Nov 28, 2009 23:04:48 GMT -5
Interesting discussion and kind of makes me giggle. I’m doing something similar, but not exactly the same, in my MS ‘God’s Gift’. I won’t go into details because I want to submit this one to MLP at a later date.
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