Space sci-fi premise

[AlexBailey]

I'd love to read a story with this premise:


It's a common space travel trope for people to go into cryogenic sleep for long travels between stars, especially when headed out into the universe to colonize new worlds. Like in the movie 'Passengers.' (2016) it's often the case that it could take hundreds of years for an ark loaded with refugees or explorers to reach a distant world.

I love the theme, but hundreds of years is a very long time in relation to technological advancements. It seems very likely that improvements in the speed of space travel could increase many fold in that time.

Imagine that an ark of brave travelers sets off for a distant world with the dream and expectation of being the first colonists to reach a new world after a century of travel, only to arrive and find the place fully colonized by people who include their own decendants.

All kinds of dramas could unfold, from criminal stowaways, to cutting-edge scientists finding that their work is proven - disproven or obsolite. It could be that the slow moving vessel had become a historical rellic, a sort of time capsule of ancient history when it is greeted by the new advanced society.

The mixed generations of family relationships and now ancient trove of DNA could be story fodder, but I also imagine a whole host of sexual culture shock, after all, what will happen over the next hundred years of cybernetics and enhanced reality? Future societies may have new ways of dealing with issues of over population and reproduction.


Have you ever read or seen a movie with a story like this? Would you be interested in writing one? Please let me know if you will or if you know of one and provide a link if you can, I'd love to read it!

 

[tristianc]

Very interesting premise, I’ve never heard of that before and you think by now someone would have. I’d like to to read it very much.

 

[LupusDei]

The premise is exciting indeed, it lets putting what we can claim contemporary people in a (far) future extraterrestrial setting.

With a bit of a stretch, we could claim that Webb's telescope scheduled to finally launch later this year confirm a potential paradise planet next door, say, some 20 light years away (with is still freaking close, but not exactly impossible, allowing some limited choices where to put it), in surprisingly short order.

Building an ark ship to reach there in, say, 400 years might be a great challenge right now, but probably nothing a real commitment and unlimited funding couldn't handle (oh, yes I know, 4000 to 40000 years would be by far more realistic magnitude estimates for our "current" technology, if we don't dismiss it as impossible undertaking outright; you can't really do it with chemical rockets anyway, but 0.5% lightspeed might be at least borderline "realistic" for a relativistic engine).

In this scenario we don't let it to be merely a generation ship, that would strip the surprise at arrival... unless the ship lost mission focus completely, and it's internal culture after 15-20 generations can be whatever; with may be interesting in its own right, but a very different story premise. So, the only real missing key technology here is the cryogenic sleeping pods. Paralleling that with the construction of the ship itself, we may launch perhaps as soon as mid-to-late-century, but twenty first century already.

From a world that's probably rather bleak and quite depressing, with climate crisis, totalitarianism and ultranationalist extremism raging, and generation gap reaching never seen levels of hatred. Conceivably, it's also exceedingly prudish, if we allow the trend of last twenty years to continue. Even if those trends won't go uncontested it's likely the great ark ship of near-obsolute technology would rather itself be built as insane prestige project of some less than healthy regime, for the explicit purposes of leading immediate global effort no less than the inciting chance to claim the off world colony as rightfully theirs.

A breakthrough making warp drive practical may come mere decades after (or we don't really have our story), reducing the travel time to, perhaps even as little weeks (and even most of that might be transition to a suitable "deep space" launch position. So, our initial colonists may find a world that's inhabited and perhaps independent for over two centuries.

People they find would differ a little from people they left behind. Possibly, genetic technology like mRNA vaccines and CRYSP editing had reduced most illness to mostly trivial inconvenience, and increased expected lifespans to 150 years and beyond, with most of it prolonged youth. And with perhaps a dozen worlds to populate by then, overpopulation pressure wouldn't be a consideration, even if women couldn't turn menstruation off or on by will (as they already can) and there weren't reliable male contraceptive medications available.

There's no reason to claim their culture be necessarily clothing optional, but no reason to claim it couldn't be very relaxed in such matters either, and given my own kinks, I certainly would love to see it that way, and unapologetically so (as in, it's just considered normal and expected to go nude in certain places or circumstances, and not considered sexual at that, even if at other times it may be). Clothing or derivatives as functional toolset and communication medium would certainly be present, though.

Had they also integrated uplifted locals as equals, even despite radical differences in body shape and chemistry? A bit far fetched, but it's a possibilty, and certainly would throw xenophobes onboard the ancient ark ship for a fit. Too bad they have no way to take their big pile of junk elsewhere.

While their arrival would be of no surprise to anyone but them, their (today's modern) attitudes might be no less puzzling than the new ones to them.

 

[Carnevil9]

That is a fascinating premise! I applaud you for thinking it up. A rocket launches, and it will need 100 years to reach its destination.

Fifty years later, using more advanced tech, another rocket launches to the same destination, needing only twenty years to get there.

By the time the first rocket arrives, they find their descendants already well established in their brave new world! How is that going to make them feel? Probably not good.

Lots of good opportunities for great science fiction concepts. But I'm not sure where the sexual aspect comes in.

 

[AlinaX]

I feel sure I've seen this idea in various forms, although not really about sex.
Does bring to mind, though, the SS Botany Bay.

 

[AlexBailey]

.

Lots of good opportunities for great science fiction concepts. But I'm not sure where the sexual aspect comes in.

How about an issue like mysteriously decreasing birth rates? Or perhaps the advanced society could have a gene pool that is contaminated by biological weapons that weren't released until after the ark disembarked, so the people from the ark are precious and species-saving breeding stock.

It could be that the sleeping ark is hijacked and the cryo-pods of sleeping passengers are auctioned off and traded over centuries by pirates and collectors.... This could make for all kinds of variations of timeline distortions.

I feel sure I've seen this idea in various forms, although not really about sex.
Does bring to mind, though, the SS Botany Bay.

I'm sure you are referring to Star Trek's 'Kahn,' but mentioning 'Botany Bay' also makes me think about the possibility of using cryo-sleep as a form of incarceration or banishment. Now I'm reminded of some of the Superman story of what happened to the criminals from Krypton, though I'd be more interested in science fiction rather than fantasy, but then who was it who said 'any technology significantly advanced can be mistaken for magic' - or something to that effect?

Other plot twists can be taken from the history of Botany Bay too, such as how Captain William Bligh of 'Mutiny on the Bounty' fame was one of the first governors of the Australian prison colony. His story; from his Ahab like determination to secure bread-fruit as a cheap means of feeding slaves, to his thousands of miles of return to England after being set adrift in a longboat, to hunting down his mutineers.... Take any of that and set it in space...

 

[sirhugs]

wait until they wake up on a planet run by tentacle monsters. At the end, there is a shot of the statue of liberty toppled on a beach.

THAT has never been done, I bet.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Gee... I kinda done that one, kinda.

Science has advanced and earth is at war with distant aliens once the war is over they discover a ship that everyone thought was a myth. A hundred years before the war started, the colony ship was sent on it way, knowing it wouldn't get there for 4 or 5 generations.

Warrior One Fleet Action Pt. 07 it is kinda a stand alone part meaning you don't have to read the 6 parts that came before.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

Samuel Delany’s The Ballad if Beta-2 involves multi-generational spaceships vice cold-sleep, but the main premise is the same, with more advanced craft getting to the destination first.

I think Heinlein’s Lazarus Long mentions the same sort of event in Time Enough for Love, but I can’t find it in a quick skim.

In a slightly different vein, Larry Niven’s A Gift From Earth is set on a colony inhabited by the descendants of a ship with mainly cold-sleep passengers. On arrival however, the ship’s crew, which had remained awake, decided to stage a coup and set themselves up as privileged nobility, leaving the rest as serfs and a convenient source of transplant organs.

 

[Nouh_Bdee]

It doesn’t have any colony ships, but DragonCobolt’s Pax Multi has that dynamic of some humans raised with traditional mores interacting with other humans with a culture progressed toward total sexual freedom.

 

[AlexBailey]

Gee... I kinda done that one, kinda.

Science has advanced and earth is at war with distant aliens once the war is over they discover a ship that everyone thought was a myth. A hundred years before the war started, the colony ship was sent on it way, knowing it wouldn't get there for 4 or 5 generations.

Warrior One Fleet Action Pt. 07 it is kinda a stand alone part meaning you don't have to read the 6 parts that came before.

Wow, Zeb. Thanks for that, I took a little bite of it and I'm hungry for more. I'll definitely be checking out more of your stuff when I get time to settle into a good read.



@ LupisDei, thanks for your detailed musings. I like reading your perspectives on many things.

 

[bettiezyx]

The idea where the ppl in the present have health probs & those arriving from the past are needed makes me think of Millenium (1989): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S0k8xDtHnNM

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Samuel Delany’s The Ballad if Beta-2 involves multi-generational spaceships vice cold-sleep, but the main premise is the same, with more advanced craft getting to the destination first.

I think Heinlein’s Lazarus Long mentions the same sort of event in Time Enough for Love, but I can’t find it in a quick skim.

In a slightly different vein, Larry Niven’s A Gift From Earth is set on a colony inhabited by the descendants of a ship with mainly cold-sleep passengers. On arrival however, the ship’s crew, which had remained awake, decided to stage a coup and set themselves up as privileged nobility, leaving the rest as serfs and a convenient source of transplant organs.

His, "Heinlein's", Methuselah's Children was a short story based on a multi-generational ship where stuff on the ship had gone completely wrong.

 

[sirhugs]

His, "Heinlein's", Methuselah's Children was a short story based on a multi-generational ship where stuff on the ship had gone completely wrong.

Not completely wrong if there were no tentacle monsters.

 

[TarnishedPenny]

His, "Heinlein's", Methuselah's Children was a short story based on a multi-generational ship where stuff on the ship had gone completely wrong.

Yes indeed and I forgot to mention that. That ship however was operating under a somewhat different premise than the OP's. I'm pretty sure that deserted, mysteriously empty colony ships was briefly mentioned in on of Henleins's other stories.

 

[Acktion]

His, "Heinlein's", Methuselah's Children was a short story based on a multi-generational ship where stuff on the ship had gone completely wrong.

I don't think I'm familiar with that one.

But, didn't he also have one that... it was a "torch drive" ship that used twins to communicate back. Only, the people left behind aged faster. Advancements made allowed the world left behind to overtake the ship. Seemed like the main character ended up hooking up with a... great-grandneice, maybe. (Been a long time since I even thought of it.)

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Yes indeed and I forgot to mention that. That ship however was operating under a somewhat different premise than the OP's. I'm pretty sure that deserted, mysteriously empty colony ships was briefly mentioned in on of Henleins's other stories.

It wasn't deserted. By the time the story start there are two class of passengers, the normal people and the mutants. The mutants were forced to live down in the bowels of the ship where the radiation from the drive system was higher, hence mutants. I believe this is the first appearance of Lazarus Long.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

I don't think I'm familiar with that one.

But, didn't he also have one that... it was a "torch drive" ship that used twins to communicate back. Only, the people left behind aged faster. Advancements made allowed the world left behind to overtake the ship. Seemed like the main character ended up hooking up with a... great-granddaughter, maybe. (Been a long time since I even thought of it.)

Yes he did... it was called... "Time for the Stars"

ETA: I was mistaken about Methuselah's Children, it wasn't about what I remember, it was the long trip made by the Families during the Crazy Years on Earth. Oops. Now I have to figure out what book it was that is about the mutants and the normal people in a ship. Luckily I have all his novels in EPUB format.