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The following is another rant where I try to collect my thoughts about where I'm planning to take my novel this year. I'm expecting it to go offtopic a few times - at least. There will probably be spoilerific material here, but meh. Thinking out in public like this makes the NaNo process so much more interesting to me.
So I've been wondering just how to resolve the issue of advanced technology in my universe. I'm not particularly tech-savvy or up to date on the lastest and greatest scientific theories. I guess most of my universe is going to run off of Handwavium but I do want to be at least a little bit real world compliant. Heck I haven't even started to figure out how the wormhole gate that makes the entire plot possible works or how the Hylin zip about space. The closest I've come with the gate is to keep telling myself they don't actually travel through the wormhole - as it isn't stable - but instead use the warped space as a crucial element in a gate built by it to slip through space.
So, for those of you out there who would be interested in detailed descriptions of cool gadgets and gizmos I will apologize right off the bat and say that won't happen. In fact, since most of my characters are non tech-savvy youngsters I doubt there will be much explanation for anything from the scientific minds. They say stuff happens and it does so everyone just shrugs and goes along with it.
So where is this rant taking me? Does it really matter that no one understands how the Akutenshi were built? Well, yeah, it does. The giant beast mechs will need maintenance and repairs despite their regenerative abilities. Then of course are the Akutenshi that have to be reassembled following extreme damage and I haven't even started on what happens long term to humans who pilot them. The Tenshi are adaptive and humans are biologically similar enough to the Ancients for them to be absorbed but the Tenshi's nanotech systems are also designed to help stabilize and maintain the pilot while they are in them. So, what does this mean long-term for humans - particularly the First Contacts? As I jot down character notes a theme keeps cropping up that the primary pilot for each Akutenshi becomes "strongly bonded" to their counterpart. This is easy enough for the Voloth series but I wish my subconscious would clue me in as to what that means for, say, Shuval who's a giant, watery, shell-covered, crustacean teddy bear. I think Lucias and Dugurose are going to end up frightening me. He's already slipping into a mindset where the distinction between human and Tenshi begins to break down.
Why do 'asshole' and 'batshit crazy' come so easily? GRRRR! Last year I was worried that little old "Bob" wasn't looking nutty enough so I started amping up the image with each appearance but every time he did show up the little snot rigidly adhered to being polite making the task of showing his darker side that much more difficult. This year Lucias has apparently decided that polite shall go right out the window at the drop of a hat. He's not even a villian - he's a self-righteous jerk who thinks the government of Etol is populated by complete morons who are incapable of defending the planet.
This brings me back around to the question of technology. The EDF has it, Lucias has it (the largest corporation in the system is Astro Light, which his family runs), the Operators definitely have it or they wouldn't be put in charge of all the EDF Tenshi, but in thinking about the cities and communities scattered across Etol I keep seeing a pretty low-tech world. In fact not a single character hails from Lenten, Etol's capital and largest city. I have to actually strain to inject technology into the setting. Take for example when I was thinking through Asanaga's interview and trying to picture Hanoi. I kept seeing a sprawling but mundane town with squat and boring houses that you'd think had been directly transplanted from Greece. Not one single instance of "cool tech" jumped into my head.
Maybe I'm just a naturalist that way. It can be justified to the extent that Etol is lightly populated. The planet's role in the system is more of a vacation spot then anything else when the Hylin come knocking. It has only had human habitation for the last century and most of that has been concentrated in a few spots - like the captial - with everyone else fanning out to establish little niche communities and perform research. I'm not even sure how much more advanced the technology would be on Sulis and that planet has been heavily developed and colonized for the two centuries prior to the novel's start.
I guess my real issue is that I am not a proponent of the theory that human technological advancement will continue at it's current pace or will continue to accelerate at a geometric rate. I believe that technology will advance at a tremendous pace until it reaches a plateau after which innovation will drop off steeply. Even with this in mind has life really changed all that much from what it was like say a century ago? The gadgets and gizmos are different, that's for sure, but the fundamentals of human existence change very little
So with that in mind I have decided to keep Etol relatively low-tech. For example I've established that there are space ports, ships, air shuttles, and even railways. Wait, what, it's the 24th century and people are still using railroads? Yup, that's right. I've been thinking about it and it just keeps coming back to practicality. Air transport is fairly efficient but it requires open areas for take-off and landing and in an atmosphere as weight in the craft increases so does the fuel requirement. Fuel might seem like a silly concern for a story taking place some four hundred years in the future but even in an age of advanced fuel cells energy efficiency will be a big thing.
So what initially got me to include rail lines? The Akutenshi of course. A 40' tall behemoth that weights in over 70 tons isn't exactly an easy thing to haul around. Eventually humans will build ships capable of housing the Tenshi - for transport from planet to planet if nothing else - but until then an Akutenshi needs a seriously powerful machine to move it around if it can't get from point A to point B under it's own power. That's where my intial idea that Etol has rail lines came from. Yesterday as I was considering the issue it occuried to me that the Hylin attack primarly using their fighter air craft making air travel dangerous. The natural answer for that is to move cargo underground when possible and I don't doubt that Astro Light has already dug tunnels in certain key places to move heavy equipment around.
So I've been wondering just how to resolve the issue of advanced technology in my universe. I'm not particularly tech-savvy or up to date on the lastest and greatest scientific theories. I guess most of my universe is going to run off of Handwavium but I do want to be at least a little bit real world compliant. Heck I haven't even started to figure out how the wormhole gate that makes the entire plot possible works or how the Hylin zip about space. The closest I've come with the gate is to keep telling myself they don't actually travel through the wormhole - as it isn't stable - but instead use the warped space as a crucial element in a gate built by it to slip through space.
So, for those of you out there who would be interested in detailed descriptions of cool gadgets and gizmos I will apologize right off the bat and say that won't happen. In fact, since most of my characters are non tech-savvy youngsters I doubt there will be much explanation for anything from the scientific minds. They say stuff happens and it does so everyone just shrugs and goes along with it.
So where is this rant taking me? Does it really matter that no one understands how the Akutenshi were built? Well, yeah, it does. The giant beast mechs will need maintenance and repairs despite their regenerative abilities. Then of course are the Akutenshi that have to be reassembled following extreme damage and I haven't even started on what happens long term to humans who pilot them. The Tenshi are adaptive and humans are biologically similar enough to the Ancients for them to be absorbed but the Tenshi's nanotech systems are also designed to help stabilize and maintain the pilot while they are in them. So, what does this mean long-term for humans - particularly the First Contacts? As I jot down character notes a theme keeps cropping up that the primary pilot for each Akutenshi becomes "strongly bonded" to their counterpart. This is easy enough for the Voloth series but I wish my subconscious would clue me in as to what that means for, say, Shuval who's a giant, watery, shell-covered, crustacean teddy bear. I think Lucias and Dugurose are going to end up frightening me. He's already slipping into a mindset where the distinction between human and Tenshi begins to break down.
Why do 'asshole' and 'batshit crazy' come so easily? GRRRR! Last year I was worried that little old "Bob" wasn't looking nutty enough so I started amping up the image with each appearance but every time he did show up the little snot rigidly adhered to being polite making the task of showing his darker side that much more difficult. This year Lucias has apparently decided that polite shall go right out the window at the drop of a hat. He's not even a villian - he's a self-righteous jerk who thinks the government of Etol is populated by complete morons who are incapable of defending the planet.
This brings me back around to the question of technology. The EDF has it, Lucias has it (the largest corporation in the system is Astro Light, which his family runs), the Operators definitely have it or they wouldn't be put in charge of all the EDF Tenshi, but in thinking about the cities and communities scattered across Etol I keep seeing a pretty low-tech world. In fact not a single character hails from Lenten, Etol's capital and largest city. I have to actually strain to inject technology into the setting. Take for example when I was thinking through Asanaga's interview and trying to picture Hanoi. I kept seeing a sprawling but mundane town with squat and boring houses that you'd think had been directly transplanted from Greece. Not one single instance of "cool tech" jumped into my head.
Maybe I'm just a naturalist that way. It can be justified to the extent that Etol is lightly populated. The planet's role in the system is more of a vacation spot then anything else when the Hylin come knocking. It has only had human habitation for the last century and most of that has been concentrated in a few spots - like the captial - with everyone else fanning out to establish little niche communities and perform research. I'm not even sure how much more advanced the technology would be on Sulis and that planet has been heavily developed and colonized for the two centuries prior to the novel's start.
I guess my real issue is that I am not a proponent of the theory that human technological advancement will continue at it's current pace or will continue to accelerate at a geometric rate. I believe that technology will advance at a tremendous pace until it reaches a plateau after which innovation will drop off steeply. Even with this in mind has life really changed all that much from what it was like say a century ago? The gadgets and gizmos are different, that's for sure, but the fundamentals of human existence change very little
So with that in mind I have decided to keep Etol relatively low-tech. For example I've established that there are space ports, ships, air shuttles, and even railways. Wait, what, it's the 24th century and people are still using railroads? Yup, that's right. I've been thinking about it and it just keeps coming back to practicality. Air transport is fairly efficient but it requires open areas for take-off and landing and in an atmosphere as weight in the craft increases so does the fuel requirement. Fuel might seem like a silly concern for a story taking place some four hundred years in the future but even in an age of advanced fuel cells energy efficiency will be a big thing.
So what initially got me to include rail lines? The Akutenshi of course. A 40' tall behemoth that weights in over 70 tons isn't exactly an easy thing to haul around. Eventually humans will build ships capable of housing the Tenshi - for transport from planet to planet if nothing else - but until then an Akutenshi needs a seriously powerful machine to move it around if it can't get from point A to point B under it's own power. That's where my intial idea that Etol has rail lines came from. Yesterday as I was considering the issue it occuried to me that the Hylin attack primarly using their fighter air craft making air travel dangerous. The natural answer for that is to move cargo underground when possible and I don't doubt that Astro Light has already dug tunnels in certain key places to move heavy equipment around.
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