Visualizing your Science Fiction Future

What does the future world look like?  That is a darn good question.  I can't answer it, but I know that you have to build a consistent vision to make your story work.  Hopefully, it isn't anachronistic either, as we all bring baggage from the present to our future visions.

So where to start any visualization exercise?

I would say you would have to think about how things work in a number of spheres of influence.  Just off the top of my head as I really haven't planned this post out, I would use the following:

1. Personal Sphere.
2. Family / Home Sphere.
3. Work Sphere / School Sphere (depends where you character spends work time - do they still even have work?).
4. City Sphere.
5. Country Sphere.

Personal Sphere

• What is my appearance? Any current body stylings?
• How do I do mundane tasks like check for appointments, call someone, read news, make coffee, buy a sandwich, etc?
• What are the fashions I wear?
• What is my daily routine?
• What kinds of personal devices or augments do I use?
• What is my health like and what are the expectations for health? My expected lifespan?
• What type of relationships do I have with friends and how do I interact others?  Is anything in person?
• What kind of personal technology is in use? 
• What are my attitudes towards others (gender, race, robots, environment) and my personal preferences?

Family Sphere

• What kind of family structures exist?  Nuclear family, extended family, clone bank?
• Do I have siblings?
• Do I relate to an AI? Who is my nanny or mom or pop?
• Do we live together?
• What are the expectations of family.  Is it loose or tight?  Equal between parents?  Are there parents?
• How do I entertain myself?  Holodeck, old fashioned book, movie, personal crafts?
• How do I interact with computer technologies?  Tablet, wristpad, cranial implants?

Work Sphere or School Sphere

• Does the corporation rule all?  Very common trope these days - but not likely - as corporations don't look after people all that well - they lay them off - you don't lay off citizens.
• What is my job?  What do I do?  What are my hours?  What kinds of crisis or important moments do I have?  Do jobs exist?
• What is the corporate or school hierarchy?
• How does school work?  Still have regular classrooms or is it more personal?  Are there still exams? Do grades mean anything?  How am I evaluated?  How does one judge my character or academic achievement so they would hire me for a job or give me any responsibility?
• What are the divisions in the the company?
• What kind of technology is in use at school or the workplace? 

City Sphere

• What does the city look like?  Centralized, decentralized.  Arcopolises that stand a mile high?  Or does it look like the super green city with solar and green rooftops?
• Public transit system is super cool or run down?  Do robot cars / taxis exist?
• What are city services?
• What type of government?
• How do elections work?
• Taxes.... 
• What is the crime like?
• Residential, industrial, entertainment, and business districts?
• Hospitals and health care?
• Infrastructure technologies?  How are houses built - apartments, single familty dwellings? How is power delivered?  
• What are the communications lines, mass media, other media outlets?
• Are people happy in the city?

Country Sphere

• Do countries exist or is there some other type of government?
• What type of government? Democracy with parties, democracy without parties, everyone votes on each issue, religious, oligarchy, partriarchy/martriarchy, communist, dictatorship, benevolent machine rule, etc?
• What are the duties of a citizen?
• What kinds of technology are regulated at this level?
• What kinds of major infrastructure are in place?  Smart highways, maglev trains, space programs, airports, spaceports, port facilities, manufacturing (robots / nanotech), energy production (solar, fossil fuels, nuclear, fusion, zero point energy)
• What are the military forces and tech?  Is there a military?  Soldiers or bots?
• What regulatory agencies and monitoring tech exist?  Big brother?  Pollution control?
• What government services are available and the delivery tech for them?
• What Protective services and law enforcement tech?
• What is the foreign policy?  Tensions between nations?  Intelligence gathering?
• What is trade like between nations?  Corporate states?
• What are key cultural imports / exports?
• What is travel out of the country like?  Off planet?
• Key taxes?
• Key laws?  Birth control? Reproductive rights? Murder? What are serious crimes? Political restrictions?  Freedom of speech?
• What does the future internet look like?

This is just a bunch of ideas jotted down so it isn't any more than a starting place!  I just think that answering some of these questions while writing would make for a more cohesive future setting for a story.



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Robots and Drones and the Unchanging Face of SF

I've written here about technology and SF before, especially military SF.  Current military SF is pretty much resembles war in the 1990s to the 2010s, with a few twists.  It isn't very far thinking as it is about blood and guts as it exists todayl.  In the last month (August 2014) another major milestone happened when the US Navy successfully integrated drones with regular aircraft for carrier operations.  This means that the next generation of fighter pilots could have robotic wingmen, and the generation after that could be all robots.

T-72

Navy Makes History With Integrated Manned-Unmanned Carrier Ops

I'd like to see the remake of Top Gun in 2050 and see how it plays out, especially all the shenanigans they would have to pull off if they want to still stick to the original story in any close manner.  This is especially true if unmanned fighters are ruling the skies as they can pull maneuvers that could kill a pilot and be designed more efficiently without having to accommodate the pilot).  In my Exocrisis Blue universe, I basically removed manned fighters from the picture as they were just target practice for laser weaponry.  I do use attack drones though, and have pilots control a squadron of them from a small, well protected / stealthy, control aircraft if necessary.

The National Post talks about the obsolescence of fighter planes in just over one hundred years.

This is a pretty big change in story telling from a science fiction standpoint as humans are now being pushed further back out of harms way and further up the control loop.  I'd say most SF and military SF being written now is already obsolete and dated.  Reading these stories in 50 years is going to be like reading SF written in the 1950s that couldn't conceive of computers that fit on a fingernail.  SF characters (aka cannon fodder) are still on the front line as fighter pilots, crew for starships going into combat, and even powered armoured infantry assaulting enemy positions.   I think there is going to be some room for this type of action writing for specialized small ops only.  I still enjoy reading military SF that falls into the traps I talked about, but it is a real fantasy world for me now.

Things in military SF or SF in general that are starting to make me cringe include:

1. Infantry without powered armour.
2. Infantry that doesn't coordinate with an equal number or more of supporting combat robots.
3. Robots are going to be cheap and capable so they better show up.  The only way you could have no robots for dangerous situations is if there is a general prohibition that would likely stagnate your technology too.  I could easily see laws against robots taking regular jobs, but not combat roles or hazardous jobs.
4. No use of smart weapons.  Traditional firefights are going to be rare.  Use of smart bullets, bombs and grenades make the use of cover much less effective without countermeasures.  These weapons will be cheap - not expensive. 
5. Fighter aircraft that are not drones or are not working in conjunction with drones.  Human pilots cannot maneuver in person like a drone could - but a human pilot could neurally sync to pilot a robot fighter remotely in many cases.
6. BIG mechs - smaller mechs yes, tank size mechs maybe (I write about tank sized mechs and I know they really shouldn't exist, but I explained them rationally as I like the genre).
7. Starships with hundreds of crewmen that die in the deep dark vacuum of space.  It's all going to be mainly robots, even for the repair crews.  NASA is already experimenting with robot repairmen and so is the US Navy.  I'm actually starting to not like these kinds of stories as combat in space is so freaking deadly for ships and people.  With the weapons we could build, unless there truly are energy shields, ships die so easy.  How much armour would you need as radiation shielding from a contact nuke detonation, especially if it is a radiation enhanced neutron weapon?
8. Space wars need to be really well explained as you could so easily pummel an enemy planet into dust with long range bombardment of high speed or near light speed projectiles/rocks.  It is pretty hard to defend a planet without a planet sized deflector shield.  Wars will inflict horrible damage to the societies involved - much like having a global nuclear war - note we didn't go down that route so far. 
9. AIs will run the show operationally, and assist strategically.

Don't get me wrong, I still like military SF, but how the stories are going to be written will have to change in the long run.  Over at reddit, at one point I asked why SF infantry were always depicted as so terribly under-equipped too.  It is simply explained by sheer uninspired thinking for any writing more than fifty or a hundred years out.  Writers are going to have to tell their stories from a different perspective and the points of tension in the drama may have to shift.  This will create challenges as the hero will need to be placed into danger differently.  For example, how do you have a firefighting drama if the firemen in the burning building are robots that are either autonomous or remotely operated?

Also as a followup to my other post about AI (here is a short video about general purpose robots taking out jobs).

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The Giant Summer Fun in Edmonton Post

Summer is short in Canada, but what we get is very nice, and the heat can get into the metric 30s on many days.  Summer is for relaxing and enjoying fresh fruit from British Columbia, food festivals, patios, and farmers markets.

I've been working on the plot outline for the conclusion to the current Exocrisis Blue story arc, the sequel to Neo Ace, but I want it to be really good, so I'm taking my time.  It'll be a year before it gets released if I'm able to work on it lots, but longer if I'm not able to.  The promotions I ran in July gave away a few hundred ebooks, but only sold a dozen or so ebooks.  I did sell copies of Neo Ace, which I'm happy about, so thanks to my fans, and I hoped you enjoyed the read.  I probably will not do freebie promotions to give away Neo Ace as it just would probably just get pirated like my two other ebooks.  The pirate can at least buy one first.

So, onto some summer highlights from Edmonton, Canada.

Taste of Edmonton
This is a great food festival that runs at the same time as K-Days.  It features dozens of Edmontons restaurants and food trucks.  I also did a fun blog post about Edmonton Attractions here if you want to know more.  I managed to eat a pretty good lunch that day down at Churchill Square.  I'm just kicking myself that I didn't take more food pictures as I ate some of the curry dishes and such before I remembered to shoot photos.  Stomach triumphs over brain....

The layout of Taste of Edmonton and a restaurant listing.

Lots of propane tanks for cooking and grilling.

Pampa Brazilian Steakhouse.  One of the best values there.  Garlic rump steak and bacon wrapped chicken.  YUM.

Woodfired mini-pizza with proscuitto from Canicus.  Just awesome fresh from the oven.

Bacon wrapped scallops and corn salsa from the Mercer Tavern

Deep fried pickles.

Grilling quail at the Hoang Long. 

Another great value for your money.  Tasty and juicy quail that you can also get with pomegranate sausce.

On Another Hot Summer Day

You have to have an icy frappucino from Starbucks too to cool down, just don't have too many.

Gourmet burgers and summer menu at Red Robin

I tried the Colosus Burger with fresh greens and the big patty and it was pretty good.

Man Colours For Interior Decorating
I was at a Home Depot and found this in the paint section.

Its great the paint manufucturer is having fun and targeting a new consumer.  Being cool and in the navy.

For the apocalypse.  There were many more colors and themes.  Just need to find one for my bunker.

Fried Chicken at Coco Chicken
The fried chicken here is pretty good, but it the coating / marinade could be more flavourful (I think the hot / sweet sauce they have is really the main feature, not the plain chicken).  It is kind of like Japanese karaage, but with bigger pieces of chicken and a big crunch. 

Tim Hortons
They have some very nice summer doughnut and muffins going on right now featuring strawberry.  Have a Timmy's and a doughnut!

Farmers Market
Summer is the time to shop for farm fresh produce and fruit.  Edmonton has a number of markets running every weekend.  I'll have to go either berry or strawberry picking one of these days too!

All Canadian berry mixed berries.

BC Peaches

Carrots!

Get your greens.  Chard is great in soups.

And Taber corn is in season now.  Alberta's tastiest corn you can eat with just a little boiling.  No butter needed as it is nice a sweet.

Korean Supermarket Adventure
There's a few of these in south Edmonton and they have all kinds of food and goodies.  If you're interested in Japanese instant ramen and snacks, check out my Japanese Pop Culture page.

Interesting canned vegetables, including burdock root.  I was alway digging those things up in the swamp when I played that video game Lost in Blue on the DS.

Lots of different canned fish.

I'm not sure I'm too keen on trying this canned good.

The Ramen Rater indicated these were pretty good with the cheese powder.  I've heard of adding cheese to ramen, so I thought I'd give it a try...

Animathon
Another anime convention in Edmonton has come and gone. Another year passes.

• I created a fun blog post about Edmonton at my Tokyo site here. We do have a great place under the sun.
• Using Tokyo as a Model For Edmonton Development

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Half-life Flashback For Ice Base (When I Did Level Design)

Years ago I read a novel by Matthew Reilly called Ice Station.  It was a pretty good action novel with plenty of bad guys, a mystery, and the allure of ice.  I've always liked novels set in the Arctic or Antarctic and plenty of novelists have obliged by writing them.  These novels have isolation, characters forced to operate on their own, man versus the elements, and often some alien or human threat.
Anyhow, Ice Station had a scene where the central shaft in the base played an important role.  His marines had magnetic grapples and cable guns for ascending and descending.  It enabled some very fun storytelling.  A few years later, I played the video game Half-life, enjoyed it immensely and began doing some 3D level design for it in my spare time.  My first few levels were not very good, but you get better as you keep building map after map.  There was a great community for more than a few years of hobbyists all doing this and I contributed to a few single player level sets.  Half-life doesn't have magnetic grapples built into the game, but there are built-in entities to support commandos roping down from Ospreys.

Icebase core shaft with research facilities on each level

 This is pretty cool, I just found a walkthrough for Intolerable Threat.  I did the maps from halfway through video 2 (when he goes into the underground bunker) to video 4 (office complex). Video three shows old abandoned research facilities with a showdown with a Gargantia alien monster around a reactor core.

With the inspiration from Ice Station, I build a custom level set to simulate an enemy assault on an American research station that had found alien artifacts.   The highlight of the level set was the central research station with research facilities and quarters built around a large open shaft that was five levels deep.  The shaft had a moon pond at the bottom where mini-submarines deployed to the outside ocean. In the game, you would have to fight your way down in a downward spiral through the various levels to rescue some scientists at the bottom.

See many many screenshots from Planet Phillip for Fallback, Fire, and Ice.

The final level set required Half-life and the Opposing Force mod to play, but it worked great.  The station was protected by marines from the Opposing Force mod for Half-life.  This added to the teamwork model in the game with medics and friendly soldiers that would assist you and follow you if you ordered it.

Antarctic Warehouse

Osprey and Wind Turbines

Open Courtyourd

In the level set you had to do quite a bit over many interconnected maps:

1. Defend the base from a mechanized infantry assault backed by APCs. You have to kill the enemy APC with multiple RPG hits.
2. Retreat through a storage facility filled with black ops assassins.
3. Fight through a command center to restore power to the main research station doors.
4. Dash through a courtyard with circling gunships to a generator building to restart it.
5. Enter the main research complex which was already under attack.  Scripted sequences had marines already fighting more commando rappelling down through the central shaft.  
6. Finally, you reach the bottom to rescue scientists and escape out through the mine tunnels that lead to an alien outpost with aliens!
7. A submarine surfaces in the middle of the outpost to finally rescue you.

Icebase core shaft on level 3.

Icebase core shaft on level 5

Looking down at the moon pool with mini-submarine and a walkway.  You had to deploy the walkway to cross as laser barriers prevented you from moving through the halls.

The research station corridors.  There were offices, sleeping quarters, game rooms, research labs, a mess hall, more storage facilities, and medical center.

Mess Hall

Mine tunnel through the ice.

In the mines.

Alien structures

I still really like Half-life to this day, even though the graphics are dated.  The game had more interactive objects (vending machines that worked) and better NPC cooperation than many more modern games.  It is also one of the few games where rescuing trapped scientists was actually quite fun.  There is a HD remake using the Source engine now, but I don't think I'll be remaking Fallback, Fire, and Ice again (there also isn't an Opposing Force mod for it).


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