Answers Please

[emap]

Through no fault of my own, I got sidetracked halfway on a different story besides Beautician, still working on that one so don't be getting all huffy on me.

So anyway, I got some questions pertaining to this other story, not saying what it's about to much, besides a couple things.

OK so first off, it's a futuristic sci-fi story, going to have different planets, well eventually different planets, space travel and so forth.

So now to the questions. First, when your talking about space travel, do you say your taking a flight, going on a trip or something else? Seriously I want feedback on a good way to be talking about travel between systems and planets.

Second, I need names, different languages type names, futuristic english names, so forth, go hog wild on this one and yes I want funny names to. As many as you can give me, I'll come back to this for the different sections of the story.

Oh and I need planet and system names, not anything from Star Wars, Star Trek and so forth, variations are good so long as it's pretty far off of the original. I'd rather not use real planet and system names since no Earth. However the real naming system is fine, the system is the same name as the sun and the planets are numbered, for example, Ryloth III.

I got one for you military freaks even. OK, I need weapon names, the guns are sorta like what we have, bullet firing, there are nail guns, they shoot nails for anyone not knowing guns, and a couple laser type guns. There are also swords and daggers and axes, these vibrate to create a hot knife through butter effect so I need names on those to.

OK last one and this is a doozy, I need aliens and languages. More languages than aliens of course. OK now what I mean by this is I am not going to have conversations in a different language, I need some words to toss around as understandable for the main character. So be creative and I don't need a translation just give me a phrase or word and I can supply the translation in the story for it.

 

[museofdragon]

There is a site called Seventh Sanctum that has name generators for planets, civilizations, aliens, weapons, everything imaginable. i use it for my fantasy works.

Give it a look

 

[emap]

Interesting, but really not that useful, it just combines words for the most part and I want totally new words.

I know harder but I'd really rather not be featuring people fighting with neoglaive's and gloryburners or whatever.

 

[Carnevil9]

Seems to me that all of the questions you are asking are exactly what an author's job is to answer! It is YOUR job to envision a future for your readers. I'm sure you can do it. Especially considering that you are inventing a brand new world, there are no wrong answers. Your instincts and skills need only be employed to make them plausible.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

Not Into Sci-Fi, But Try This On For Size...

Garlon stood on the balcony at the back of his crylon, gazing up at the diminishing glow of the four blue planets of the system Armatadon. How lovely they appeared, yet remained elusive due to the asteroid belts that at this distance remained invisible. Why they beckoned so he could not tell.

If not for the dreams...

At the city gates in the distance the barrels of the lifeless sentinels cautiously scanned the night skies. All looked so innocent... But looks deceive, he reminded himself. If not for the occasional powerful, intoxicating blasts of the laser Trackers and fragment-firing Essues, home would be nothing but a wasteland.

His lover walked up behind him, three limbs coiling around his waist.

"Sinch cres, var bie."

Despite his distaste for the ancient language, his thick lips formed a smile. "No worries, my love," he repeated.

"Is the transport ready?"

Her smile faded, ams retracting in protest. "Why must you jump? Such danger looms..."


Run with it if you're so inclined.

 

[Carnevil9]

When at a loss, you can always fall back on trade names for cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, and snack foods....



Capt. Metamucil, of Clorox 3, was on his way to the spaceport, ready to depart for the planet Borax 5. His wife, Viagra, and daughter, Neutragena, kissed him goodbye as he strapped on his Swiffer in its shoulder holster.

The fierce Cheetos tribe of Borax 5 needed subduing once more. They and their allies, the Pringles of Xerox 4, had given the men of Clorox trouble for many a generation.

Capt. Metamucil's assistant, Lt. Prozak, arrived at the door in the Captain's personal Roomba, a hovercraft of spectacular speed and armaments, being endowed with no less than seventeen fully-armed Norelco cannons. Hopping aboard, the Captain shouted "Nestle Hershey Ovaltine!" the ancient Cloroxian pledge of love and revenge, as he blew a kiss to his weeping wife and daughter and the Roomba disappeared into the night.

 

[only_more_so]

Yes, you can say flight. Although if you are talking really futuristic travel, you might want to consider some sort of jump ship, which effectively teleports from one point in space to another. This is often used in sci-fi with restrictions, such as you can't jump inside a solar system, or there is a certain amount of error, so it is dangerous to jump inside a solar system. Also consider that the technology will affect the language. Now we say, "I gotta jet", well some people do, maybe in the future they would say, "I'm jumping" to indicate they are leaving.

One interesting thing for names that I read in a sci-fi book from the seventies actually anticipated l33t. So people's names were things like &derson or @kins. So in the future, people's "real" names might look a lot like people's online id's now. I've always envisioned a lot of future names would have a lot of X's and Z's. Maybe from playing too much Xazzon. Another thing to consider is perhaps there is a name restructuring at some point where a person's name is required to be unique. So everyone is given a string of 8 consonants and they can pick any vowels to make a name. Also consider giving each planet a distinct naming convention that is suitably simplistic so that a reader will quickly be able to decipher which character comes from which planet by name.

For weapons, I would say add lots of plasma. Plasma beams, plasma blades, etc. Another thing for edged weapons is monowire or monofilament (which can even be used as a weapon by itself). Basically it is single molecule wire that is super duper strong, and is so thin it cuts through basically anything. Another popular future weapon is a gyroc, which shoots mini-missles. The advantages is that it has no recoil. Another is a needle gun which uses electromagnetics to propel a needle at obscene velocities. One advantage is that a clip can hold thousands of rounds, but it doesn't have great penetrating power against solid armor. Speaking of armor, don't neglect personal shields, hard armor, soft armor (such as kevlar) or kinetic armor which stiffens on impact.

 

[emap]

Oooo Asylum not bad I think I'll make use of some of what you said, not meaning what you meant but hey I didn't say I would take your meanings.

Carny your hilarious, and perverted.

only OK dang your adding in alot of things I wasn't planning on doing, not going to be full out wars or anything, keeping it simple. So basically, the farmers and generic people will have bolt action or semi automatic rifles, tossing around both for them. Soldiers will like now carry around automatic rifles, semiautomatic pistols and certain ones will have for lack of a better term for them, laser rifles.

The more 'advanced' areas will be more like rennaisance Italy, men go about with a sabre on their hip and a dagger, women carry a hidden dagger and generally have a bodyguard about.

The laser rifles are giving me something of a problem. The same basic weapon is on the space ships, larger of course. So I rather need to come up with an encompassing term for them, the basic hand held one I can do easily enough, soon as I figure out what to classify the dang things.

So here is what they do or fire I suppose is closer. They are in essence one of those flechette guns, except instead of shooting a thin sliver at someone, they envelope it in plasma and shoot that out. So it of course requires two ammo feeds, a clip for the flechette and another to provide the power to make said plasma. The ships use the same design, just larger of course.

Armor I have planned out to some degree, need to come up with names for the systems and aliens to name said armor though.

Oh and the ships I am going with more of a faster than light travel system, not really going to talk about it much, not exactly something I know alot about and doubt to many others do.

 

[snooper]

Seems to me that all of the questions you are asking are exactly what an author's job is to answer! It is YOUR job to envision a future for your readers. I'm sure you can do it. Especially considering that you are inventing a brand new world, there are no wrong answers. Your instincts and skills need only be employed to make them plausible.

I agree 100%.

However, I will admit that when I travel between planets I always teleport - it is so much quicker and easier than flying.

Also I offer you ZOGPLIM; eat it.

Kidbuick had a nice word also, EXCEDRA.

 

[emap]

Good snoopy.

I have a different meaning for Zogplim though. For some reason when I read it I got an image of the first villain, a tentacled man. Yeah I know my mind works in so incredibly weird ways.

 

[RedHairedandFriendly]

For name ideas and other things, bookmark these two sites:
http://www.seventhsanctum.com/

http://swg.stratics.com/content/gameplay/characters/name.php

 

[snooper]

I have a different meaning for Zogplim though. For some reason when I read it I got an image of the first villain, a tentacled man. Yeah I know my mind works in so incredibly weird ways.

I first came across zogplim many years ago. It was claimed that no anagram of it is a dictionary word in any language which uses our alphabet to write things down. In thirty or more years I have never found a rebuttal of that, and it gets no hits on Dogpile.

 

[Carnevil9]

Okay, I'll bite. What the heck is Zogplim? Even Google gives no results for it.

 

[snooper]

Okay, I'll bite. What the heck is Zogplim? Even Google gives no results for it.

Read my lips:

I first came across zogplim many years ago. It was claimed that no anagram of it is a dictionary word in any language which uses our alphabet to write things down. In thirty or more years I have never found a rebuttal of that, and it gets no hits on Dogpile.

 

[AsylumSeeker]

You can actually get a lot of ideas from sci-fi games. That's where mine are derived from to some degree, like Wing Commander and such. The developers go to a lot of effort to build a pretty impressive virtual world.

 

[emap]

Perhaps to get some brain matter working, here is a little something I will put in to the series.

Zogplim: Name comes from Snoopy, has no actual meaning until now that is.

There before me is Zogplim, an alien species of one. He stands about six foot, shirtless with a draping loincloth covering his genitals. His skin is deep dark red, almost black with muscles pressing into the skin. Creating almost a wave effect on him, instead of forming a set pattern they are simple circles running up his body. He is humanoid in appearance, though there is a pair of tentacles coming out of each arm, generally twined around his arms as they are now making his forearms twice as big. there is no nose just a pair of slits that can open and close, small eyes that glow a faint red, more the color of roses than anything else.

Out of the side of his face come two horns running downward to point ahead of him slightly, these horns having serrated ridges. Hanging limply from each leg are another pair of tentacles. These are thicker and drag along the ground a little, though never very far which leads one to assume they are hanging limp because he chooses to.

There will of course be more to his description later, and it will be formatted better but what I have so far. Anyway come on people give me some words, doesn't have to mean anything.

 

[rydia57]

When at a loss, you can always fall back on trade names for cleaning products, pharmaceuticals, and snack foods....



Capt. Metamucil, of Clorox 3, was on his way to the spaceport, ready to depart for the planet Borax 5. His wife, Viagra, and daughter, Neutragena, kissed him goodbye as he strapped on his Swiffer in its shoulder holster.

The fierce Cheetos tribe of Borax 5 needed subduing once more. They and their allies, the Pringles of Xerox 4, had given the men of Clorox trouble for many a generation.

Capt. Metamucil's assistant, Lt. Prozak, arrived at the door in the Captain's personal Roomba, a hovercraft of spectacular speed and armaments, being endowed with no less than seventeen fully-armed Norelco cannons. Hopping aboard, the Captain shouted "Nestle Hershey Ovaltine!" the ancient Cloroxian pledge of love and revenge, as he blew a kiss to his weeping wife and daughter and the Roomba disappeared into the night.

Carnevil, you're right! I've even seen them do that on Star Trek, I just didn't realize I could do it too. They take normal words or names of stuff... maybe pronounce them a tad different. This helps a bunch! Except that I'd luv to use warp core breach so I'll do it anyway.

 

[midwestscribe]

only OK dang your adding in alot of things I wasn't planning on doing, not going to be full out wars or anything, keeping it simple. So basically, the farmers and generic people will have bolt action or semi automatic rifles, tossing around both for them. Soldiers will like now carry around automatic rifles, semiautomatic pistols and certain ones will have for lack of a better term for them, laser rifles.

...

The laser rifles are giving me something of a problem. The same basic weapon is on the space ships, larger of course. So I rather need to come up with an encompassing term for them, the basic hand held one I can do easily enough, soon as I figure out what to classify the dang things.

OK, you're not planning on doing full scale wars. So, it seems you're tripping yourself up on weaponry.

You want to keep it simple. Here's how:

- Forget very specific weaponry and that will eliminate the need to name them something very descriptive.

- Simply refer to weapons by their purpose and nature:

-- Tactical, handheld laser...call it TahaLaser, something like a laser rifle but could be whatever the reader imagines a handheld laser weapon to be.

-- Strategic offensive beam...call it the SOB because you'll give it the capacity to be a really huge, powerful offensive beam, one that can blow up a ship the size of the Death Star...a real Son-of-a-Bitch.

People have watched or read enough SciFI that general names should be enough to stimulate synapses in the memory.

And, if your story will be more erotic than military, there's really no need to waste so much effort and reader's time on such things as weapons and technology. Otherwise, you'd do better to write a SciFi story spiced with the occasional erotic scene.

Just my 2¢.

 

[TreeBeard42]

I love coming up with sci-fi planets and civilizations. Terms you use for spaceships: Launch, take-off, blast off. These all refer to going into space from a planet.

One race I came up with is the Nooghi People. Their home planet is called Ters Kfaalnoogh. The sun is Aastr Kfaalnoogh. The planets in the system are in order outward from the sun Traapik Kfaalnoogh, Mort Kfaalnoogh, Ters Kfaalnoogh and Ploot Kfaalnoogh. Another star of theirs is called Aastr Restai. The planets there are Teloo Restai, Naana Restai, and Taagh Restai. The word noogh means 'best' in their language Taaknoogh. They refer to themselves as the best. Every star system has a name and then the star is called Aastr and then the system name. Each planet is called by it's name and then the system name. Kfaalnoogh means 'where the best landed' because that is the planet that they colonized first before spreading out to create their empire on other planets.

In the Nooghi culture they don't have family units. Instead they have clans that people voluntarily choose to join. Most clans require oaths of loyalty that make it hard to switch to a different one. Children are raised by whatever clan feels responsible for them depending on the situation. They are then raised by the clan as a whole, not the parents. When the child becomes 14, they are then allowed to leave the clan as they wish. Most clans allow people to move between clans for a few years before forcing them to make a decision and take an oath of loyalty.

Some of the clans consist of the crew of a spaceship which considers space to be their home. These clans are sometimes called 'voiders' in English because they live in the void of space. They live like gypsies travelling from place to place. More than the other clans, they accept other races in to their clans because they don't feel a loyalty to thier homeworld. They use many English terms among themselves which they have picked up from various mavericks from Earth that have joined them.The land-based clans usually reject foreignors from joining their clans, but are still freindly with them. Because of this difference in loyalty, all government institutions are staffed by the land-based clans, and usually by certain more politically prominent ones. Each clan has certain core values which are what make it appealing for people to join. Certain clans act as political parties by making a certain political platform a principle of the clan. The space navy is manned by the politically neutral land-based clans. Some Nooghi are even weary of the voiders and consider them not to be of true Nooghi blood, merely close relatives.

The Nooghi wear loose pants and shirts under vests. They have different kinds of scarves and kercheifs on their head, but it is rare to find one who's head is totally uncovered. The combination of colors that they wear on their head and a sash they may wear across their vest usually indicate the clan they are part of. Their idea of decoration is to attach different colored cloths in creative ways, such as sashes and scarves.

 

[emap]

Interesting and well thought out, except one problem. I don't have a place for them in my story, the universe will have a central government and those wouldn't fit into what I am seeing.

However, if I can think of a way to introduce your aliens I will let you know and ask for some more information.

Oh Midwest I did not say I would not have any combat at all, hard to talk about life in general without some sort of conflict, and well best if I do combat just so you dumb men will actually read the story all the way.

Well OK I must admit I would not be able to read a story where the conflict comes in the form of which soap brand to buy either.