Peter Lok: world building

Showing posts with label world building. Show all posts

Sunday, 10 May 2015

Sci Fi Railguns, Lasers, Drones, Energy, and Food

I haven't posted for awhile, but I'm still reading and writing. I'm about to set a new deadline of a year for my next novel again. It has been about a year since I completely went off track on my fiction writing due to the random nature of life (sometimes you just roll snake eyes). Anyhow, the big news here in Alberta is that hell froze over after the left leaning NDP won the provincial elections against the conservatives this May as it snowed the next day. The NDP had about half the support of the voters, mine included this time, and they are kind of left of center party, but almost all Canadian parties would still be classified as centrist/socialist even if they are right or left wing.

Gundam Pods from a Japanese Arcade, but imagine banks of these things with pilots flying attack drones or a squadron of drones.

Going back through my various news feeds, there has been a number of interesting articles that have popped up. From some of my previous posts you can tell that I think the science fictional future of a great deal of military SF is pretty near future. Basically, a great deal of the mechanisms, and plot devices that authors use now are going to look really dated as they are obsolete already if they occur in any kind of timeline derived from our present.

A long time ago (back in 2000) I wrote an article about Science Fiction Infantry Warfare. Most SF writers haven't advanced much beyond the marines from the 1990s described here. If we're lucky they are wearing enclosed combat / powered armour. However, experimental exoskeletons and improved body armour and weaponry are both in the lab and being field tested today so future soldiers are going to be more like Heinlein's mobile infantry than anything else.

A few links about some of the tech involved:

So here are some of my characteristics of a near future infantryman. I expect the infantryman in a heavy assault configuration to be pretty darn tough after they are suited up. In the far future - infantrymen could be completely obsolete or even tougher.

Wears a powered exoskeleton that runs all day on the move to double the weight the soldier can carry at a run. A soldier can lope at a powered run faster than a man can run for an extended period.
Soldier has head to toe protection from small rounds - impervious to 9mm pistol fire and wears nano-weave armour with ceramic plating to stop rifle rounds.
Suit is climate controlled for tropics to arctic with the right environmental modules and sealed from gases or toxins with filtered air.
It is a smart suit that will administer stimulants or antidotes if necessary to keep a soldier functioning. Possibly the nano-weave can contract to tourniquet a limb wound, or offer self-sealing capabilities.
Suit is a chameleon suit that can blend into the background and be thermally camouflaged for a short period of time.
A soldier will have a 360 degree view in his helmet for high-situational awareness with thermal, low light, telescopic, and superior hearing / shotgun mike capabilities. This system will integrate with his weapon sights to designate targets and smart-track them. Mapping capabilities with drone / squad mates / live data feeds will vastly reduce the fog of war.
Will carry a smart rifle and grenade launcher. Smart rifle will auto range and adjust for windage to have a high percentage hit capability at 500 to 1000 metres especially with steerable bullets. Semi-auto grenade launcher with sub-40mm rounds that are guided and smart fuzed to engage defiliaded targets. The exoskeleton allows for a heavier weapon and larger magazine capacity for these weapons.
Possibility of railgun / coilgun type weapon firing either small or large penetrators and hundreds of light weight projectiles.
Will be able to carry grenade-size rolling ball robots for recon down hallways or rooms. Will have several toss and fly type drones to scout ahead.
Suit can be configured to carry anti-tank weaponry or heavy anti-material rifles that link into the suit's helmet for targeting.

All that sounds futuristic, but if I think far future, I'm thinking that this is obsolete and the infantryman would be even deadlier, more nimble, and lighter in weight too. I'd be thinking unlimited ammunition, energy weapons, a cloud of nano-bots to protect, jam, hurt enemy combatants, robotic support units, ultralight powered suit with some type of shielding, and smart AI to control all this stuff. It would be a one man army. Then there could be the augmented human body aspect too.

After talking about infantry, lets talk about the air force and navy. There will be no more manned fighters as survival in an environment with drones and lasers is too low. Manned fighters would also be like a magnitude of order more expensive to build and wouldn't maneuver was well as a drone. Aircraft carriers are impressive platforms to project air power, but they are also expensive and high-value targets to sink. If you are trying to protect your high-value asset you are probably not getting the maximum use out of it as you will not put it into risky situations or are diverting too many of your forces to protect it. Laser weapons as anti-missile defences also seem to be making big advances too along with railguns for lobbing projectiles to do bombardment.

A few links on this topic:

In my writing, I think of drone carriers, but they are smaller vessels that can mass launch attack drones via a vertical launch system and do a trap and recover on a small deck, or they are like stealthy flying airships that have drop bays to mass launch attack drones. I already use coilguns for my HARM units main weaponry, and I don't have manned fighter aircraft so I'm already ahead in the few items of military SF I've written.

Finally, today, let's talk about food and energy! Food is something that isn't imagined too well in SF. Protein bars, ham sandwiches, and odd colored fruit. What is the next exotic breakthrough or food concoction? Just think about the impact of new world crops like potatoes, avocados, tomatoes, corn (as in maize), chocolate, etc., on the world. There was no tomato sauce in Italy. Greek salad with tomatoes didn't exist. Avocado sushi wouldn't be around. No french fries or chocolate cake either.
So what kind of food innovation, next great crop, or types of food stuffs will exist in the future. What is the next big thing to replace a hamburger or pizza and will it be of earthly origin? Will we eat meat or think it is barbaric? Will we all eat healthy to boot?

Energy is going to be cheap and renewable. There will be a distributed grid and every building will have its own batteries and solar panels / vertical wind turbines. It is just a matter of decade(s?) for this to happen now. Remember, this is the now, not the future, and you never can get the genie back into the bottle after letting it out. We'll have super-batteries and ultra-efficient solar, with energy possibly being beamed down from space-based arrays.

Everyone have a great day, this post turned out far longer than I expected.

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Saturday, 28 February 2015

Current AI Trends and News About the Coming Revolution

Manga Iron Man Figure

Artificial Intelligence seems to be one of those underplayed elements in science fiction. There also seems to be a great deal of recent general interest in this topic. AI is one of those inventions that is making a great many people nervous from Elon Musk to Stephen Hawking too. Just recently, I read some real long blog posts (there first two links below could be a book - exaggeration here, but it was long) about artificial intelligence.

I majored in computer science years ago, but there really wasn't anything like this way back then. So artificial intelligence can be categorized as:

artificial narrow intelligence
artificial general intelligence
artificial super intelligence

Our world today has plenty of artificial narrow intelligence now. Just look at Amazon's recommendation engine, Google's search engine, etc. There are even expert AI's in specific areas of manufacturing, science, and medicine. It is interesting that even this level of AI doesn't seem to exist in most science fiction. The present is more advanced than a great deal of SF. AI just doesn't seem to exist, but in a sufficiently advanced culture, maybe it just works and blends into the background.

Artificial general intelligence is when AI's are basically smart like people. AI just isn't here yet, and might not get to this stage for awhile. Artificial super intelligence is basically an AI that is waaay smarter than us and can make itself even smarter. This is probably where AIs should exist in most SF, but don't exist at all usually. It is kind of interesting that there is this blind spot in many ways. Too advanced for story telling? The Star Carrier books actually have a super smart AI that lives on the moon, which was a nice touch. And of course, the people don't know if they should trust it, but it seems to be good...

Myself, I worry about AI. Not necessarily even the super AIs, but just the impact of robotics and AI on society. The world is going to change, and we can see it coming, but who knows where it will take us. I kind of suspect it will be a combination of new laws to govern the use of robots in the workplace and society adjusting to how robots are used in the workforce. Jobs are never going to be the same once a tipping point is reached for both blue and white collar. I'm hoping for a good future, but I can definitely understand the Skynet scenario too at one extreme of things.

Anyhow, have a great read of the articles. Fascinating reading.

Sunday, 31 August 2014

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:

Personal Sphere.
Family / Home Sphere.
Work Sphere / School Sphere (depends where you character spends work time - do they still even have work?).
City Sphere.
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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Sunday, 6 April 2014

The Science Future (Not Fiction) of AI is Near

This could happen in my lifetime or at most within the lifetime my children. While I don't know about the "technological singularity" where machines replace man or where man / machine evolves together, the future looks like it is going to happen sooner than later. This future is about robotics and artificial intelligence being integrated with human society. Already AI algorithms are in current use everywhere in business and research. They help us design better machines and computers, assist in medical diagnosis, predict what we like for music and books, detect computer viruses, predict stock markets, etc. Robots are everywhere from vending machines, household cleaning devices, making good coffee, making war, and working on assembly lines. Computers and the right software and AI are able to replace human workers doing "thinking work" and not just rote assembly or warehouse work.

Hatsune Miku, the first Japanese vocaloid, and a holographic jpop star with live concerts. If she had an AI personality matrix, would she be a true idol versus the personality that her fans give her? I blogged about her here: http://tokyoexcess.blogspot.ca/2012/06/vocaloid-hatsune-miku-breaks-out.html

All of these things I just talked about used to be purely science fiction. In the 1950s, the rise of modern classic SF, it was almost unthinkable that this could happen in this manner. Even now, SF writers are dabbling in it, some are swimming and going with the flow, but in most cases, the future often seems like the past to me. SF on television is some of the worst. I've talked about military technology in SF before and how a great deal of military SF seems to be a rehash of our current combat techniques and old wars. It isn't very futuristic and we are stuck writing about what we are familiar with. Only in the last decade is powered armour and such becoming common along with smart weaponry, but even then battles tend to be the same old thing. When we write (myself included) we don't think what the battlefield should be like if all the new technology comes into play. I myself think war would be very different with cheap robot armies, and the fog of war will be different as tiny little recon drones would saturate the battlefield. These scenarios are likely if there isn't some kind of international accord or something like that to stop it.

The same case is playing out with AI. If there are AIs that have access to the entire Internet and people interact with these AIs, what are the outcomes. How does this affect everything basically as there is a new partner we are dealing with? If they are as intelligent as people, or more so, it is a completely new story as they would be powerful players in society. In this case, are they citizens, starting a revolution, or beings with rights? Would they look at humanity benevolently? If they are not fully intelligent, but "smart" to behave like one they would be amazing augments to human mental capability. Would they be cheap for the masses (don't see why not as tech tends to be cheap as it matures)? How would people still relate to other people and society as a whole? What happens to the structure of society? What if you only had to let your AI work on your behalf and you just did something else to develop your skills/interests, or just have fun? Also, with the growing inequality in wealth distribution and robots taking jobs away, what if the police and army were automated too? Would the 1% beat down the other 99% as they control all the weapons?

These are big questions that SF can always visioning about. I myself don't really have the answers, but I do have a whole bunch of interesting reading linked below that could get you thinking about AI and robotics. Scarey part is that many of the articles are from mainstream magazines and are about now or the near future. Have fun checking them out.

The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era by Vernor Vinge
This is the paper that started or helped to kick off the singularity is in our future thinking.
https://www-rohan.sdsu.edu/faculty/vinge/misc/singularity.html

The Singularity is Further Than it Appears by Ramez Naam
Talks more about the singularity and machine progression with monkey wrenches thrown it into the process.
From the blog of SF writer Charles Stross.
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2014/02/the-singularity-is-further-tha.html

What if a Time Traveller Saw a Smartphone?
Interesting article about what a pre-1914 individual would think about a 21st century humans. The pre-1914 individual is in a modified Turing Test where they are dealing with a typical 21st century human augmented with a smartphone linked to the Internet.
http://www.newyorker.com/online/blogs/elements/2014/01/if-a-time-traveller-saw-a-smartphone.html

How Robots Will Work With Us?
Many questions about how humans will interact with the many robots to come.
http://blogs.hbr.org/2014/03/how-robots-will-work-with-us-isnt-only-a-technological-question/

Why Asimov’s Three Laws Of Robotics Can’t Protect Us
It just doesn't look like it would work in practical terms.
http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/dvorsky20140415

The Man Who Would Teach Machines to Think
What is AI? Will we understand how we think and create human-like AI too?
http://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2013/11/the-man-who-would-teach-machines-to-think/309529

Facebook, Google, And Sony Are Getting Ready To Fight A Cyberpunk War
The big tech players are getting ready to put the consumer into cyberspace virtual reality. Ghost in the Shell and Snow Crash, here we come. AIs are mandatory of course.
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027921/facebook-google-and-sony-are-getting-ready-to-fight-a-cyberpunk-war

Making Robots More Like Us
People and robots working together.
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/10/29/science/making-robots-more-like-us.html

As Technology Gets Better, Will Society Get Worse?
How will people and society cope with big technological change?
http://www.fastcodesign.com/3027921/facebook-google-and-sony-are-getting-ready-to-fight-a-cyberpunk-war

An army of robot baristas could mean the end of Starbucks as we know it
Brewing good coffee without the human in the loop.

http://qz.com/134661/briggo-coffee-army-of-robot-baristas-could-mean-the-end-of-starbucks-as-we-know-it/

Drones will cause an upheaval of society like we haven’t seen in 700 years
This could have been titled "The Age of the Gun is Over" too. Will the rich have robot armies to keep the poor in line?
http://qz.com/185945/drones-are-about-to-upheave-society-in-a-way-we-havent-seen-in-700-years/

Robots of death, robots of love
Governing the use of military robots and robots helping us in society.
http://www.techrepublic.com/article/robots-of-death-robots-of-love-the-reality-of-android-soldiers-and-why-laws-for-robots-are-doomed-to-failure

Confessions of a Drone Operator
A view of remote warfare from a drone operator.
http://www.gq.com/news-politics/big-issues/201311/drone-uav-pilot-assassination

AI Could Kill Us All
Title says it all.
http://thenextweb.com/insider/2014/03/08/ai-could-kill-all-meet-man-takes-risk-seriously/

A perspective on alien thinking.
http://io9.com/how-to-write-from-the-perspective-of-a-truly-alien-self-1449703465

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Sunday, 15 December 2013

About the Blue Newts

The aliens are named the Sh’thimori or the People of the Water. Before this name was known, the humans knew them as the Blue Newts from the dead bodies they recovered.

They are six limbed amphibious beings that walk on four of them and use the first two limbs as arms with three fingers on each hand. Their heads appear like flat-headed newts with large golden eyes with a mouth full of short sharp teeth. They prefer to eat their food raw. There is a vestigial tail. Their skin is slick and wet that is normally light blue-grey in colour but it can change colour to show their emotional state. It is blue hued when relaxed, more orange when agitated. Communication occurs via low clicks and clucks and the odd use of limited range telepathy by certain individuals with the telepathy gene. They see well in low light, but bright light hurts. On Earth they wear goggles in bright sunlight.

Their home world terrain is a hot, very humid water world with many archipelagos of thousands of islands. It circles a red giant star. They prefer hot, moist climates and prefer to live in marshy, coastal, or swampy areas.

They are a matriarchal society and live in nest communities that can achieve the size of mega cities. Leaders can be either male or female. Nests have many relationships to other nests and nests often specialize in a task or duty. Most of the young do what their families have always done.

They give birth to live young – newtlings. There are usually pairs of infants born to a mother and the children are communally raised. Maturity is long, similar to a human, but some abstract reasoning doesn’t fully develop until they hit puberty in their teens. Sexual activity is governed by cycles and there are pair bonds that develop. The children tend to get into a great deal of mischief when they are young and need to be constantly watched / guarded.

The newts have a caste system that organizes the various nests. All nests are equal in value / rights, but governing decisions are decided by nests that perform important governing functions. There is a great congress that decides on a ruling council. The Sh’thimori do not have raw ambition as a psychological attributes so they naturally put the collective race before their own. They do have feelings of achievement and pride which pushes them forward to advance and promote themselves or their collective. The working toward the greater good can be seen as cold or calculating by humans. They do live in harmony with nature as they evolved and lived at the waters edge. Things like pollution and disturbances in nature affect them quickly.

Some nests are specialized for extremes such as warrior, thinker, mediator, and explorer. They may have minor genetic engineering modifications to enhance their abilities such as intelligence, endurance, speed, strength, and tougher skins. These specialized castes are treated with reverence and are not allowed to interbreed with other nests of a different designation. They are guardians of the pure race – the natural body. All nests work side by side on a mission, and the caste differentiation only applies for the command structure.

It is known that the aliens came from a dying world, are vaguely humanoid amphibians, are blue in color and don’t understand us well at all. Not very much is known about their culture, but it is known they are not part of a hive mind. Their biotech is very advanced and hundreds of years ahead of ours. They don’t really want to exterminate us, but don’t trust us, and needed to weaken us. Their home world was dying, it was from an old red sun. Too hot. World was roasting. The Newts were not the first civilization to originate on their world. They had a forerunner species that was Newtlike but went extinct or left the world. Newts will not use nukes first as they know the world is fragile.

Great Mother Egg, or Shre’lor
Newts have a belief in the Mother Egg or Mother Sea. The egg was lost during the destruction of the Newt mothership at the end of the Alien War and was recovered ten years later from the Kahamba research facility by a CAJUN special forces raid. The artifact now resides at the AO research facility in Edmonton, Canada.

The Shre'lor is an egg shaped crystalline object about ninety centimeters tall and weighs almost a hundred kilos. It is quite dense. It is translucent, with a smooth surface. It glows with a faint amber light and also seems to generate a faint amount of magnetism and heat. It the Newts holiest religious artifact. Faint crystalline lattices can be seen inside the object, as if they were holographically etched. Could be a computing or information storage device, a power source, or something else altogether.

Thursday, 12 December 2013

What Is My Audience for Mecha or Military SF?

I was just thinking the other day about what my audience size is as I write "realistic" military SF with a mechas in it. While I don't have any real numbers, I went through it as a thought exercise. The goal was to figure out how to write my Cover Blurb for Neo Ace. My first step was to determine the approximate size of the science fiction and anime audiences.

I used the number of registered users on Reddit for the rough statistics. You can see that SF fans outnumber anime fans, but only by 22% (anime is big as a genre). There is a mecha forum, but it doesn't have many members compared to the anime forum, but I figured the numbers were low as anime companies in North America wouldn't sell to 1% of the market for mecha anime so I guessed the number was closer to 5% of the number of anime fans. For military SF, there is no forum - weird, but not surprising as I can't find a marketing channel for this audience either. I guessed that military SF fans were about 10% of the SF fan base as Amazon classifies about 10% of the SF books as military SF. Publishers must be making money, so they'll publish what can sell.

Military SF / Mecha SF / Anime / SF Audience Overlap (click to enlarge)

Having come up with these numbers, I did a real quick Venn diagram with the overlap with the various fan bases. Military SF and Mecha Fans belong to their appropriate larger bubble. There is a big problem determining the overlap where the sets of fans meet, but based on my past experience, here's what I figure.

Anime and SF fans crossover, and it is larger than what the diagram shows. However, I'd be surprised if fans that read SF and watch anime overlap by more than 50%. I think it is probably way lower, like 20 or 25%. The number does go up if you include other non-written - say visual media (TV, movies). I'm a writer though, so I'll go with the lower number.

Then, out of these two big audiences, you want the mecha fans and the military SF fans. This is a sizable number of fans even at 10% of the overall fan base, and it would be wonderful to get both. Military SF fans are mainly written media fans as there just isn't that much visual military SF. Mecha fans by definition are visual fans as it is mecha anime. The crossover here is unknown, but I believe it is low again just because of the parent set numbers.

So, based on all this, what do I do for marketing my Exocrisis Blue books? I think the intersection of mecha fans and military SF fans is small. I also tried to market my ebooks in the mecha forum on Reddit and I didn't get too many bites. There were some fine folks who liked it and downloaded the book, but the numbers were tiny compared to the 1000 members in the forum. I like both SF and anime so I cross over, but many people are more specialized.

Neo Ace is a military SF novel, but it has 30 ton combat robots operated by human pilots. It is written to be realistic, especially when used with combined arms operations with regular military units. Note that I used combat robot instead of mecha; this is the type of word phrasing I was debating on using. Mecha is for anime fans, not military SF fans in general. Mechs also implies western robots versus eastern mecha. After looking at this, I'm going to be changing my marketing so it is aimed at military SF, the larger audience of readers (probably 5 times larger). I think I went down the wrong road in my earlier efforts. I still found readers, but not as many as I would like.

Anyhow, thanks for listening to my ramblings.

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Tuesday, 10 December 2013

After The Alien War

The Aftermath of the Alien War

The fighting was heavy in both Africa and South America and the countries there were severely devastated by both the aliens and foreign troop interventions. The surviving countries are now strongly independent and wary of the other Human Alliance member nations. Some tactical nuclear weapons were even used on their soil, but no foreign aid was received for the devastation that was done. While the remaining Human Alliance nations had enough troubles on their own, their unwillingness to help other countries in need convinced these countries the outside world was not their friend. Some limited shipments of medical supplies and food were sent from Canada and Japan to Brazil during their crisis, resulting in the formal trade ties that exist today. However, Brazil only has limited trade and diplomatic ties to other Human Alliance members such as the European Union and True America. Africa is a complete basket case that is xenophobic to outsiders with constant skirmishes against the Newt colonies there.

Japan held out well in the war after being invaded and utilized captured alien technology to build mechas with active molecular armour and rail guns. It is rumoured that some South American nations like Brazil have special deals with the aliens.

During the war and the ensuing chaos, half of the human race or 4 billion people perished. Vast stretches of the world are now run by warlords and / or are no man’s lands. Many nations were shattered and no longer exist. The United States and Russia were dealt major hammer blows and are shadows of their former selves. The USA has fragmented into east and west, with some states pretty much obliterated. Northern China is split by the powerful Tianjin and Xian factions, with the powerful remnants of the People’s Republic of China is based out of southern China, with the new capital in Guangzhou. Hong Kong / Shenzen Special Economic Zone is the powerhouse of the PRC now. The European Union is still powerful, but badly devastated by the war. Central America is controlled by the Newts from southern Mexico down to Columbia and then into central Brazil. The Brazilians emerged semi-victorious from the war and control much of South America directly or indirectly.

Canada was blasted, with a meteor impact devastating Toronto, but the western cities survived more or less intact. Vancouver and Seattle were devastated by an earthquake four years later and rebuilt. Canada is now basically Western Canada with Ontario gutted by the destruction of Toronto. Quebec is now Free Quebec (or Quebec Libre), a more autonomous province with its own military, but still part of Canada. The Atlantic Provinces are now part of the US East or the True United States of America. Alaska is Alaska. Canada is allied with Pacifica or US West. Trade goes north from Churchill Manitoba through the ice free NW Passage.

Ten years after AA (After Armageddon or After Arrival).

European Union is now lead by France as the Germany was greatly devastated by the war. A great deal of rebuilding has happened.
Brazil – or the Brazilian Empire. It rules South America except for neutral Chile. Brazil has a Guyana Space Base that was captured from the European Union and works with them for space launches.
The former eastern United States of America – also calls itself the True United States. A very conservative Christian religious democracy originally started in the power vacuum at the end of the Alien War.
The former western United States is now Pacifica and represents the ideals closest to the nation from which it originated. A former president from Chicago started this nation in a revolt from the tyranny of True America.
Japan is once again an economic powerhouse with close ties to Canada and Pacifica. Japan has had brush fire wars with the PRC even though it has simmered down. They support the northern Chinese factions.
China has fractured into a southern block which is now the Peoples Republic of China, and multiple northern factions.
The Pan-African Alliance is lead out of South Africa. This block is allied with the PRC which provided aid to the African continent.
Australia is independent along with New Zealand.
The Russian Federation stretches from Europe to the Pacific. It is a strong power block that heavily influences its neighbours.
India and Pakistan have set aside differences to be their own power bloc with ties to the Middle East, Russian Federation, and PRC / Northern Chinese.
The middle east, the -stan countries, Iran, Iraq all have ties to the Russian Federation.

A good chunk of Earth’s tropical and subtropical lands had been occupied by the Newts, who had either pushed the humans out or now lived in a tenuous coexistence with them.

Almost seventeen years later

It is a relative period of prosperity for the recovering nations. Much of the world is still devastated, but the countries that were least scarred absorbed huge numbers of skilled refugees and began reconstruction. People are optimistic, but there is a societal trauma that lingers. Many Americans are now Canadians. There are also many Japanese living in Canada as the countries have major trade and exchange relationships. Australia is the major southern trading partner for Japan and the PRC.

Sunday, 8 December 2013

The Alien War

The Alien War lasted a year and a half. Amazing brutality was practiced by both sides, with no quarter given. No aliens have ever been captured alive. The war began with alien landers dropping off their spider bio-mechs that left a trail of destruction behind them. Using their powerful beam weapons, they ravaged the countryside around them in a scorched earth type campaign. They did not attempt to occupy ground, but just destroyed human population centres and infrastructure. Manufacturing facilities, bridges, military bases, power stations, refineries and more were targeted. Their role was to knock out the human race as an organized force. Mankind dropped its differences and formed the Human Alliance under the leadership of the United States.

A single bio-mech could take on a regular army battalion and only the heaviest gun weapons could hurt it. The bio-mechs have a type of energy enhanced armour, called active molecular armour, that can regenerate the surface and make it denser. Each bio-mech has a supporting set of mini-bugs – drones that fly and crawlers for close support / small space work. Nuclear weapons were used in a limited fashion against them, but it was major overkill. The alien energy weapons made attacking aircraft obsolete as they could be easily shot down. Massed fire with supporting artillery could take down the bio-mechs, but the mechas are fast and move out of the kill zone quickly.

At the beginning of the Alien War the aliens started out with a vastly superior hand. It was a desperate war of attrition for humanity as vast amounts of equipment and soldiers were expended to just blunt the alien advances. The tide began to turn in the eighth month with the development of tank mountable coil guns that could defeat the alien armour and the mass combat deployment of HARM units in the tenth month to use them. Within the next six months the aliens were driven back to their enclaves and the war was at a stalemate. Initial onslaughts and gains by the Blue Newts were mostly taken back or being fought over still.

The Newts had taken their primary territories in the subtropical and tropical areas of the world which suited them. At one point, they pretty much owned both Africa and South America, but lost territory in the second half of the war. They ruled New Guinea, a swath of Africa from the central Congo to the Indian Ocean, Central America, and a large portion of the Amazon Basin. In many of the areas around their territory there was lawlessness due to governmental collapse. The pirates of the Caribbean became a reality again. Warlords and other pirates flourished in the aftermath.

NEWT FACTS

The colony fleet had one large mother ship or master vessel with 12 other smaller colony vessels. This master vessel stayed clear of the action out at one of the L4 points and only sent planetary shuttles down.

The Blue Newts sent in their smaller colony ships which had atmospheric entry capability. Three landed in Brazil, three landed in Africa, two in Borneo, two in Guatemala, and two in New Guinea. These ships became colony hubs and were used as administration centers and also as a source of raw materials for colony expansion.

This was never a combat fleet. It was a colony fleet. Nukes were launched by the Human Alliance against these foothold colonies, but they were easily destroyed by the Newt orbital defences and their landing shuttles. Missiles were easy to kill in the boost phase and were still good targets in space.

It is suspected the Newts may have some deep space ships left, but none have been seen since the Alien War. One wonders if there is another invasion wave coming from their home world.

In the closing weeks of the Alien War, the Human Alliance, hatched a desperate scheme to destroy the alien mothership. The Americans, Russians, and Chinese seized orbital space back from the aliens with a combination of space attack drones and massive ground based laser cannon. They then launched a fleet of nuclear armed drone shuttles after mothership.

The attack worked as a number of the drone shuttles were actually powerful, single use, x-ray laser weapons. They utilized nuclear bomb pumped x-ray lasers to cripple the defenses of the mothership and allow the remaining nuclear armed drones to finish it off. It was the Human Alliance’s last unified response as the aliens used fusion bombs on Beijing, Washington D.C., and Moscow. It was a very clear and calculated response to the nuclear armed powers that was accompanied by the first communicated message of the war. "Destroy our most valuable asset and we destroy yours. We are here to stay on our terms." This was the only use of nuclear weapons by the aliens and the world has been in a cold war state since. The destruction of the capital cities killed the President of the United States and the Chinese Premier along with much of the central government. Both nations were already stressed to the breaking point and were plunged into chaos and civil war. The Russian Federation survived in a much better state as the President had been in a different location.

The crippling of the alien mothership provided just enough warning for the a massive evacuation of the vessel. Shuttles and escape sections scattered from the mothership until the drones hit with their nuclear payloads. The escape sections of the ship were lifeboats. Sections and pieces of debris came crashing to Earth all over the equatorial band from the mid-Atlantic all the way to the middle of the Indian Ocean. Orbital space became a no mans land with neither side in total control.

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