Twilight 2010

[kafka47]

The title of this post is pun on the Clarke novel and subsquent movie . What if the superpowers did not go to war but went into space instead? There is a book out (Children of Apollo) that postulates:

Convinced the space race destroying the Soviet economy, Richard Nixon promoted the Apollo program rather than kill it.

Given the relative lead that Soviet Union had in Space technology, the Cold War expands into space. Rather than using nukes on Earth, the superpowers and minor powers use their energies into getting the resources of the Solar System.

This is not to say that there is not minor conflicts (like the small wars that peppered the history of the Cold War) errupting in space but none would involve the mutual destruction of the other superpower (as both sides are trying to bankrupt the other...the abundant resources of the Solar System prolongs the struggle by providing the means to sustain it.)

So this is a scenario that would combine elements of Transhuman Space, films like Moonraker, Near Space 2300AD, Cold War fiction, countless video games like Battle Zone or Red Odyssey . Anyone to care to explore this topic?

 

[Border Reiver]

Check out Cold Space and FTL Now for an inspiration for this one Kafka.

 

[kafka47]

Thx, it is part of what inspired combined with Stephen Baxter's Voyage especially to this reviewer's comments...

What if John F. Kennedy had survived assassination and lobbied for NASA to send astronauts to Mars in the 1980s, instead of building the space shuttle? It's a fascinating premise and certainly one worthy of a unique Mars novel.

Baxter himself holds a doctorate in engineering, so it's no surprise that he really knows his way around the technical stuff of spaceflight. He's quite knowledgeable in space history, as well. He presents an impressive amount of authentic detail, far more than I've seen in any other novel of its kind. Perhaps too much, in fact, because many spaceflight scenes repeat events and dialogue from real-life missions almost verbatim. On the whole, VOYAGE feels quite faithful to the era described, even if it's somewhat too faithful. It's also interesting to catch him using a few historic dates in spaceflight -- July 1976, April 1981, January 1986 -- so we can contemplate the differences in his alternate past.

Geologist Natalie York is VOYAGE's most reliable protagonist; she comes across as determined but not easy to root for. Baxter makes a few generalizations based on astronaut mythology, and he rarely hides his disdain for NASA's old "pilot vs. scientist" culture. One veteran astronaut is so surly that in the real space program he would have been permanently shelved from flight status (a la Wally Schirra). Nonetheless, Baxter avoids many of the stilted stereotypes of Ben Bova's Mars novels, so at least these characters are more subtle and level-headed. For the most part, he steers clear of the soap-opera style plotting that cripples most Mars books, and that alone is commendable.

And, way too much, bad science fiction from TV and a love of Hard SF in a mis-spent youth...-

and whatever age I am now...

 

[kafka47]

Action would take place on the High Colonies largely leaving Earth as an emerging Garden World where conflict is usually around a negociating table not bringing out the tanks.

Characters could be military personnel or scientists or simply tourists.

Another important referent for this milieu could be the British SF program Star*Cops. International rivary is maintained but conflict is also with larger non-national foes such as Terrorist groups, toxic memes, rogue colonists, etc.

 

[mbrinkhues]

If you can get a hold of the old "High Colonies" game, that will give you quite a few ideas. While that world is "post WWIII" the technology and stations are still useful.

Other IMHO interesting supplements are "Deep Space" from Cyberpunk 2020 (there is almost no Cyber in it and the last Punk did the Hugo von Drache<<<Hugo Drax) and some of the Transhuman space stuff on starships and bases.

If you want more SciFi, the Space Supplements for HeavyGear look good. FTL plays a minor role and is restricted to special ships so the books basically deal with STL only.

 

[Space Cadet]

Originally posted by kafka47:
Thx, it is part of what inspired combined with Stephen Baxter's Voyage especially to this reviewer's comments...
</font><blockquote>quote:</font><hr />
What if John F. Kennedy had survived assassination and lobbied for NASA to send astronauts to Mars in the 1980s, instead of building the space shuttle? It's a fascinating premise and certainly one worthy of a unique Mars novel.

Baxter himself holds a doctorate in engineering, so it's no surprise that he really knows his way around the technical stuff of spaceflight. He's quite knowledgeable in space history, as well. He presents an impressive amount of authentic detail, far more than I've seen in any other novel of its kind. Perhaps too much, in fact, because many spaceflight scenes repeat events and dialogue from real-life missions almost verbatim. On the whole, VOYAGE feels quite faithful to the era described, even if it's somewhat too faithful. It's also interesting to catch him using a few historic dates in spaceflight -- July 1976, April 1981, January 1986 -- so we can contemplate the differences in his alternate past.

Geologist Natalie York is VOYAGE's most reliable protagonist; she comes across as determined but not easy to root for. Baxter makes a few generalizations based on astronaut mythology, and he rarely hides his disdain for NASA's old "pilot vs. scientist" culture. One veteran astronaut is so surly that in the real space program he would have been permanently shelved from flight status (a la Wally Schirra). Nonetheless, Baxter avoids many of the stilted stereotypes of Ben Bova's Mars novels, so at least these characters are more subtle and level-headed. For the most part, he steers clear of the soap-opera style plotting that cripples most Mars books, and that alone is commendable.

And, way too much, bad science fiction from TV and a love of Hard SF in a mis-spent youth...-

and whatever age I am now... </font>[/QUOTE]I like this alternate history:

The Sky People - S.M. Stirling
Marc Vitrac was born in Louisiana in the early 1960s, about the time the first interplanetary probes delivered the news that Mars and Venus were teeming with life - even human life. At that point, the "Space Race" became the central preoccupation of the great powers of the world.

Now, in 1988, Marc has been assigned tp Jamestown, the U.S.-Commonwealth base on Venus near the great Venus city of Kartahown. Set in a countryside swarming with sabertooths and dinosaurs, Jamestown is home to a small band of American and allied scientist-adventurers.

But there are flies in this ointment a and not only the Venusian dragonflies, with their yard-wide wings. The biologists studting Venus's life are puzzled by the way it not only resembles that on Earth, but is virtually identical to it. The EastBloc has its own base at Cosmograd, in the highlands to the south, and relations are frosty. And attractive young geologist Cynthia Whitlock seems impervious to Marc's Cajun charm.

Meanwhile, at the western end of the continent, Teesa of the Cloud Mountain People leads her tribe in a conflict with the Neanderthal-like beastmen who have seized her folk's sacred caves. Then an EastBloc shuttle crashes nearby, and the beastmen acquire new knowledge ... and AK-47s.

Jamestown sends its long-range blimp to rescue the downed EastBloc cosmonauts, little suspecting that the answer to the jungle planet's mysteries may lie there, among tribal conflicts and traces of a power that made Earth's vaunted science seem as primitive as the tribesfolk's blowguns. As if that weren't enough, there's an enemy agent on board the airship ....

Extravagant and effervescent, The Sky People is alternate-history SF at its best.

John F. Kennedy survives in this alternate history too, but only because no one bothered to assassinate him. J. F. K. pulled US troops out of Vietnam. Mainly to free up funds to plant a base on Mars and Venus. Signs of advanced civilization on Mars, with its canals and all, would have been particularly worrysome to the Kennedy Administration, especially if the Soviets were to get its hands on something militarily useful on Mars without the US getting some of its own.

 

[Space Cadet]

I figure, if your going to do Alternate History, why not change a couple planets around while your at it? Certainly you could uses alot of the T2000 RPG and weapons stats, this takes place roughly in the present day.

Stephen Baxter's Voyage was all about getting there, once your there, it is the same old dusty rockball that we're all familiar with. Instead of that, why not substitute a Mars with canals, a thin atmosphere, and ancient decaying civilizations and Planetary Romance? It still is Hard Science Fiction, we're just altering the Physical realities of the Solar System, but it is still physically possible. the Earth is basically the same except so far as its politics is affected by the discoveries and colonies on Venus and Mars.

 

[Malenfant]

Um, because changing a few planets isn't necessary? Alternate histories explore specific concepts (what if the Nazis won, what if America had remain undiscovered til modern times, what if aliens invaded during WWII etc). It'd defeat the point of that to randomly throw in pulp planets too.

I've got the impression somehow that you really dig this pulp Venus/pulp Mars thing, since you can't seem to stop going on about it. Well great, but just keep it as its own setting, adding it on to something else (which already has its hands full dealing with its own setting) is making a lot more work when it's not needed.

 

[Space Cadet]

Its not really Pulp, any more than aliens landing during World War II. In a real Pulp Novel, such as E.R.Burrows The Princess of Mars, the author tries to populate the planet with 6 legged alien monsters, and egg-laying humanoids, he also litters the landscape with implausible technological items that aren't used consistently. In the book The Sky People, there is an explaination for why Venus is a Jungle planet and not the way its supposed to be, mainly that someone terraformed it 150,000,000 to 200,000,000 years ago.

 

[kafka47]

Today's science often becomes yesterday's pulp, Mal. We believe that we have everything solved in every age. When transluminary light propulation comes into existance, we will scoff at all the "science fiction" writers that proclaimed FTL travel. Science Fiction is all about something more than the classifications of knowledge of the time. By degrating peoples desire to explore alternatives as "pulp", you are also showing ignorance of a tradition. If Science Fiction, for you is only, the Science compoient, you are forgetting what is actually motivating you causing you to read further than a technical manual, which is the Fiction compoinent.

 

[Space Cadet]

I think The Sky People Venus is not a matter of bogus science, but rather what is and what isn't.

I think terraforming a planet is certainly possible, and populating it with dinosaurs and humans is also possible, it hasn't happened, but it certainly could have if the past was different.

Another Pulp Book The Seas of Venus by David Drake is an interesting contrast:

Earth is a dead cinder beyond the dense clouds. On a terraformed Venus the land is ruled by savage plants and beasts, while monsters out of nightmare swim through the globe-girdling seas. Mankind huddles in domed underwater Keeps, living a purposeless static existence dedicated to pleasure, and destined for oblivion later if not sooner.
Only the Free Companions, the mercenaries who fight proxy wars for the Keeps, live on the surface of Venus. They live till they die with the searing thrill of danger, and their deeds bring excitement to the bored residents of the Keeps; but Mankind is doomed unless something changes.

Few are willing to risk their lives for that change, battling both the terrifying environment and the ruthless oligarchs living their lives of luxury. But there are a handful of courageous visionaries in the Keeps and in the Free Companies where death is a way of life!

The Venus Henry Kuttner and C.L. Moore described in Clash by Night and Fury was among the most vivid creations to appear in Astounding Science Fiction during the greatest years of that magazine. Here David Drake revisits their world with two novels as colorful and imaginative as the originals

SURFACE ACTION
Johnnie Gordon was born to wealth and privilege in the Keeps, but his whole life has been dedicated to becoming a warrior of the Free Companies like his uncle. Now his chance has come - a deadly struggle through hellish jungle to steal the enemy's most powerful battleship. If Johnnie succeeds, then one more duty awaits him: a duty that will haunt his nightmares forever. But if he fails, Venus will die as surely as the atom-blasted Earth died; and Mankind will die also.

THE JUNGLE
Brainard's torpedoboat was in the wrong place at the wrong time when a salvo of shells flung him and his crew ashore in their wrecked vessel. Without a radio, they're as good as dead - unless they can cross the island through a jungle where every animal is a danger and the plants are even worse.

Brainard and his fellow Free Companions are hard men who've faced death in battle, but now their enemy is a green Hell that wants not only to defeat but to devour them ...
as it will some day devour all of Mankind - unless Brainard and his crew survive, and they can turn the lessons they've learned in the jungle against the even greater enemy that lurks in the Keeps themselves!

Hard-edged politics and combat written by a man who's seen both personally, displayed in a lush setting created by two of the finest SF writers of all time!

For the second novel the science assumptions are a bit dated or simply wrong.

First, the atomic war that destroyed all life on the Earth was a runaway fusion reaction that fused all the hydrogen in the Earth's oceans that turned it into a temporary star for the next one thousand years. I'm sure even Malenfant would agree that this could not happen

Second, the Naval Warfare is modeled after pre-World War I ship actions, it is assumed that all airplanes are automatically shot down by cannons that hurl their projectiles at a significant fraction of the speed of light, through an atmosphere no less! Also atomic power is banned because of the atomic war that that turned the Earth into a minature star, this of course begs the question, how could any sort of cannon hurl a projectile through an atmosphere at a significant fraction of the speed of light without atomic power? In the category of atomic power, I would include fission, fusion, and matter/antimatter reactions, as they are all different types of atomic power. This is Pulp Science. By contrast The Sky People is a Pulp Setting, but a hard science fiction book. It is possible for an advanced civilization to terraform a planet, this doesn't violate what we know as the laws of physics. I'd say anybody who could fire a projectile out of a cannon at 1% of the speed of light through an atmosphere, but without using atomic power is using a science I don't know about, and probably doesn't need atomic power anyway if he could accomplish that, also if the shell hit the ocean, or just traveled through the air, it would probably trigger fusion reactions in its wake simply by compressing the air in its path, that is assuming that it didn't vaporize and and explode itself and the cannon before it even left the barrel.

I like The Sky People because it doesn't give me any of that stuff, the only assumptions I have to make to suspend my disbelieve is that Venus and Mars are different, because somebody fiddled with them in the distant past, their motivations are hard to phantom, but this is certainly physically possible, and you have millions of years to accomplish the terraformation of Earth and Mars, much better to believe that believing that Mars could be terraformed in a couple of centuries as Kim Stanley Robinson's Red Mars/Green Mars/Blue Mars series does. Terraforming a planet takes a long time, and I'd rather have it over and done with before the story begins and have some mystery to solve rather than a multigenerational epic that is all about the process of terraforming than about the result itself. When Mars is terraformed in K.S.R.'s book, the story is just about over.