Magrathea - The Home Of World Building. (open)

[TheWorldBuilder]

Yes, the title is directly stolen from the late Douglas Noel Adams but what else should I call the space where all literary planet builders are welcome to rest their weary souls, have a pie and a pint, and exchange ideas about fictional worlds and the underlying groundrules that make them successful?

The door is always open, come on in and chat awhile.

 

[justspitballing]

I suppose my thread with the wonderful Emstar, Year 2378, the breeding program, counts for this.

But, JUST, counts! That few number of women really couldn't come anywhere close to populating humanity like what is suggested in the story. I'm pretty sure humanity would die out in just a generation or so. But that's pretty depressing.

That and we haven't flushed out the space station to much or the government system to much. Keeping it kind of simple does allow for the story to not be slowed down though. So far we got a really good pace going.

We have talked a bit about introducing a character that would be there ONLY to be a villain and to help with world building called The Pied Piper. I am looking forward to introducing him in the story when we at last get to him. Going to be a villain that basically tries to blend together V from V for Vendetta and the Joker. A man that just brings about chaos cause he wants to see the current government system of our world burn for unknown reasons.

So, we are getting there, to the world building, but we aren't fully there yet.

My hats off to the posters that are able to do this well. You really are amazing at what you do!

 

[Obuzeti]

Minimum viable population for humanity hovers somewhere between 160 individuals to 350, depending on what degree of genetic drift and harmful alleles you want to risk.

Granted, in a hard sci-fi story like the one you're building in, Spitballing, I don't know why they haven't moved to in-vitro fertilization instead of old-fashioned sex and just having the remaining women come in for a visit once a month to harvest egg cells, so that the station can fertilize and raise zygotes separately from her. Presumably some kind of artificial womb would have already have been developed so individual pregnancies can take place separately. Any surviving fertile women would be under heavy guard and probably wouldn't have all that much actual sex, because it would be biologically inefficient compared to in-vitro which has a much higher success rate.

That's grim as fuck, I realize, but when you start talking about extinction as a real possibility a lot of ethics get tossed out the window - and the problem of sci-fi settings is that, presumably, your advanced civilization has had the experience to produce literature on such things as minimum viable population, inbreeding, and stochastic variables. Depending on whether your space-age people are educated or not, you're either dealing with a civilization that knows it's teetering on the brink of annihilation or is blissfully unaware and thus likely to trip over the edge in a generation or two.

 

[justspitballing]

Minimum viable population for humanity hovers somewhere between 160 individuals to 350, depending on what degree of genetic drift and harmful alleles you want to risk.

Granted, in a hard sci-fi story like the one you're building in, Spitballing, I don't know why they haven't moved to in-vitro fertilization instead of old-fashioned sex and just having the remaining women come in for a visit once a month to harvest egg cells, so that the station can fertilize and raise zygotes separately from her. Presumably some kind of artificial womb would have already have been developed so individual pregnancies can take place separately. Any surviving fertile women would be under heavy guard and probably wouldn't have all that much actual sex, because it would be biologically inefficient compared to in-vitro which has a much higher success rate.

That's grim as fuck, I realize, but when you start talking about extinction as a real possibility a lot of ethics get tossed out the window - and the problem of sci-fi settings is that, presumably, your advanced civilization has had the experience to produce literature on such things as minimum viable population, inbreeding, and stochastic variables. Depending on whether your space-age people are educated or not, you're either dealing with a civilization that knows it's teetering on the brink of annihilation or is blissfully unaware and thus likely to trip over the edge in a generation or two.

Ya, that's why I'm saying it's not really up to snub. Our plot is pretty much on par with a rushed hentai mag, but oddly played mostly straight. All of it falls apart in 2 minutes if you actually think about it.

The only idea I can come up with on how this could actually be possible is if there really isn't actually a shortage of women at all and countless real women are hidden away in bunkers where as you say, they are artificially inseminated and the government is covering it all up.

Why would it do all this? Beats the snot out of me! I don't think the story is ever going to be fully flushed out cause Emstar and I our just taking it scene to scene and have no real end goal in mind.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Obuzeti, JSB....

I (platonically) love you. This is exactly what I was hoping for by creating this thread.

 

[justspitballing]

Obuzeti, JSB....

I (platonically) love you. This is exactly what I was hoping for by creating this thread.

Oh ya, this is a great idea for a thread. Now I can pretend to be smart!

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Oh ya, this is a great idea for a thread. Now I can pretend to be smart!

Hang around for a while and absorb the atmosphere. You'll get smart.

 

[Nouh_Bdee]

I love this, too. Most of my threads have some fantasy worldbuilding to them. I’m writing a sci-fi story for the main site as well, but it’s not hard sci-fi. I’m too selfish and impulsive to write hard sci-fi. “Yes, I understand that’s how it would work, but I don’t want it to work that way! I want it to work this way!”

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

I love this, too. Most of my threads have some fantasy worldbuilding to them. I’m writing a sci-fi story for the main site as well, but it’s not hard sci-fi. I’m too selfish and impulsive to write hard sci-fi. “Yes, I understand that’s how it would work, but I don’t want it to work that way! I want it to work this way!”

Ahhh, but we're here to help with it working plausibly your way.

 

[justspitballing]

I love this, too. Most of my threads have some fantasy worldbuilding to them. I’m writing a sci-fi story for the main site as well, but it’s not hard sci-fi. I’m too selfish and impulsive to write hard sci-fi. “Yes, I understand that’s how it would work, but I don’t want it to work that way! I want it to work this way!”

Same! I think given some of the non-con content of my story if it was played to straight and realistic it would stop being sexy and be a nightmare/disturbing mess.

I got to get to reading your The Island story. I've read a good chunk of the first chapter and it so far is solid. This site has a curse! There is WAY to much good stuff on it to check out!

 

[Obuzeti]

JSB, remember that your thread doesn't have to challenge or fix the particular dysfunctions of your world - which is what you're doing, but an easy place to trip up for people building worlds is to make everything matter.

That sounds ridiculous, I understand, but I mean that every plot element or piece of setting you introduce doesn't have to lead up to an ultimate end. Not everything is a Chekhov's Gun, and in fact your world is much better for it if you don't control information in this way. The allure of the truly great worldbuilders - George Lucas, Tolkien, R.R. Martin, is that their worlds are spread out among the pages, living and breathing not because of the plot winding among them, but in spite of it.

To put that into perspective, even if the logical extension of the universe you posit is that large percentages of the population are being held captive, it's not necessarily your characters that blow the lid off that, or even that it ever comes out to light. You don't have to explain it, because your characters don't know that it's happening, or why it's happening.

You can just go on and write the universe that descends from a set of circumstances without having to justify them, is what I'm saying, because the justifications often get a lot more stupid than the original premise you were shooting for.

~*~

For reference, I was working on a more serious hard sci-fi exploration thread here: Zohar Exegesis. The premise is extrasolar survival, but the realities of that were a bit too ick for my partner once we got into it.

Nevertheless I ended up wholesale creating a bunch of biomes for that planet here and here. They're pretty basic examples of ecological design, but decent for these purposes. Hopefully at some point I can get to continue working on it because I never really stopped writing about Zohar privately.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

As you'd expect, Heinlein was a master at casually dropping the weirdness of his worlds into the background without disturbing the plot.

The door dilated.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

It isn't fair to invade anyone else's thread, so I'll just put it here.

This morning has been fucking shit so far.



Anybody want to write something funny to cheer me up?

 

[justspitballing]

It isn't fair to invade anyone else's thread, so I'll just put it here.

This morning has been fucking shit so far.



Anybody want to write something funny to cheer me up?

I got you covered man.

most funny video ever

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

I got you covered man.

Thanks for trying, pal, but I must be wired up differently.

 

[justspitballing]

Second try!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s3zjRcMnRNY

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Second try!

Much appreciated, mood up from 1 to 2/10.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Thanks to everyone who's helped me through the past few days. Lots of crappy things happened at once but, hopefully, it's all done now.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Happy Christmas to all Litizens of the Lounge.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

I'm back more regularly now, so I think it's time that the open space for world building was given a bump.

There have been satellite images of the UK released recently which purport to show the effect of this year's warmer summer. The colour change in the images correlates very closely with the change in the predominant geology along the Tees/Exe line. To the NW, the rain is falling onto permeable soil which lies on top of impervious slates and gritstones. To the SE, precipitation lands on a thin layer of impervious clay sitting on chalk and loose sediments.

Besides this geological difference, it was shown by Richard Towneley in 1677 that Pennine Lancashire has three times the average annual rainfall of the upper Blackwater in Essex.

The MetOffice heat warning maps have also featured a prominent indentation in the northern extent, corresponding with the Peak District.

Yet another illustration that if you want a (relatively) varied climate in a small space, set your protagonists on an offshore island in a temperate zone with weather systems predominantly approaching from the open ocean.

 

[HornyIsh69]

Yes, the title is directly stolen from the late Douglas Noel Adams but what else should I call the space where all literary planet builders are welcome to rest their weary souls, have a pie and a pint, and exchange ideas about fictional worlds and the underlying groundrules that make them successful?

The door is always open, come on in and chat awhile.

Ah sweet. A Douglas Adams titled Thread. The name is fine. Very fine, for true.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

My thoughts are currently encompassing time and body rhythms on different planets, when a forced 24 hour cycle is absent.

A protagonist (P) arrives (mechanism currently unspecified) on another (inhabited) world. Length of day and seasons are different enough to be noticeable but, without a timepiece from the native world, the challenge is to quantify that difference. Should P attempt to reconcile the two systems, or just accept the rhythms of the new environment? How does P fit into society when sleeping patterns may be half a (new) day out of synchronisation? How long does adjustment take?

Trying to construct a (native) seconds pendulum is destined to fail unless P knows local gravity to within 0·05% and has a ruler calibrated in 64ths of an inch or ½ millimetres. Counting atomic oscillation periods or the 400 terahertz frequency of the optical/infrared boundary is equally as futile.

Depending on fitness, resting pulse could be 60 to 80 per (native) minute. Would P know which end of the range they had previously been and would that change if surface gravity were substantially different? If P is female, would the 26 to 32 day cycle change? Again, would P know her native baseline?

If P has access to astronomical equipment, or just a couple of suitable lenses, is there an opportunity to measure the five regular periodic variables which display significant magnitude change? Are the constellations similar enough to enable Algol (Beta Persei - 68·88 native P hrs or 2·87 native P days), Beta Lyræ (310·56 hrs or 12·94 days), Delta Cephei (128·88 hrs or 5·37 days), Eta Aquilæ (172·32 hrs or 7·18 days) and Eta Geminorum (2,995 days) to be positively identified? Does P recall (any of) these values? **

Apart from using them for background planning, what is the best way to drop any of these deliberations into the plot to illustrate (some of) the differences encountered on the new planet: days, seasons, years, lifespans.... That's  before we give the planet a different axial tilt, more orbital eccentricity or a mildly variable star of different spectral class.

** Note for erotica lovers: Algol is 7¼ minutes short of 69 hours.

 

[TheWorldBuilder]

Not directly world building, but I want to test how Literotica handles Anglo-Saxon characters.

Æ æ Œ œ Đ đ Þ þ Ï ï Ł ł

They're displaying properly on my system, but if any of you are getting boxes or random shapes instead of the old forms of AE/ae, OE/oe, D/d, TH/th, I/i and L/l please could you let me know.

Thanks.

 

[Nightspeed]

I got you covered man.

most funny video ever

This reminds me so much of my earliest days of D&D, back in the mid 1980s. I met so many players who were this exact guy. Good times (and by that I mean watching them get killed were good times).