Useful Links

[Equiliari]

I did try to look for this in here (and on the general board) But didn't find anything.
Then again... I usually never find anything even if it is right in front of me.

This is not a universe idea, this is a place where we can gather links to places of interest when you are to create a universe.

Sources of realism:
http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/index.html
http://www.uniforminsignia.net/

How to write:
http://www.writesf.com/
http://www.military-sf.com/
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes
http://www.eviloverlord.com/lists/overlord.html
http://project-apollo.net/text/rpg.html
http://fantasyguide.stormthecastle.com/ ... riters.htm
http://www.writing-world.com/sf/index.shtml
http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/issue13 ... ntasyi.htm

Naming:
http://tekeli.li/onomastikon/
http://www.behindthename.com/
http://seventhsanctum.com/

Language:
Latin: http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe
Welsh: http://www.geiriadur.net/
Greek: http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon/
Japanese: http://japanod.com/
Akkadian: http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform ... search.php

[Dakarne]

Writing Science Fiction:
http://www.writesf.com/

Naming Resources/Random Generators:
http://tekeli.li/onomastikon/
http://www.behindthename.com/
http://seventhsanctum.com/

Language Resources:
Latin: http://lysy2.archives.nd.edu/cgi-bin/words.exe
Welsh: http://www.geiriadur.net/
Greek: http://www.kypros.org/cgi-bin/lexicon/
Japanese: http://japanod.com/
Akkadian: http://www.premiumwanadoo.com/cuneiform ... search.php

[Heretic]

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/Tropes

[Mobius 1]

If you ever, ever want to write a villain, I'd point out The Evil Overlord List. Though it's been around forever and is quite well-known, I'll put out there for anyone who still hasn't seen it.

Since Heretic and I are on the subject of tropes, here's The Grand List of Console Roleplaying Game Cliches. It's quite a wonderful list, even if you're not writing towards a JRPG storyline.

[Destructionator]

Remember though, TropesAreNotBad. And unless you are specifically shooting for hard sf, don't forget the RuleOfCool which lets scientific foolishness like space fighters exist (if you think they are cool...), and if you want to have both hard science and unrealistic but cool stuff, MinovskyParticles are the way out of that dilemma.

(someone here has experienced the horror that is an ArchiveBinge proving that TVTropesWillRuinYourLife in the last couple days. EDIT: Holy Christ, its been a full week now! I've been going a little too nuts with it. /edit And it isn't the first time; often after reading some random Wiki, I'll start talking in WikiWords. It's a little bizarre.)



And if you have a question, you can always ask us here too.

[Destructionator]

A quick rant here, don't make your characters weigh too little. I just saw some absurd numbers on the 'net: 5 feet tall girls weighing in at 80 pounds.

That's really small. So small that I have a hard time believing it (especially given the character on screen doesn't look at all that small). This is something you should avoid with your own characters.

It really comes back to one of my main rules: if you are going to give a number, do the bloody research first. If you don't want to do the research, then just don't give the number.

Anything less than about 100 pounds for a fully grown person should probably be reconsidered. It can happen, especially with short females, but isn't common.

[Magister Militum]

A quick rant here, don't make your characters weigh too little. I just saw some absurd numbers on the 'net: 5 feet tall girls weighing in at 80 pounds.

That's really small. So small that I have a hard time believing it (especially given the character on screen doesn't look at all that small). This is something you should avoid with your own characters.

It really comes back to one of my main rules: if you are going to give a number, do the bloody research first. If you don't want to do the research, then just don't give the number.

Anything less than about 100 pounds for a fully grown person should probably be reconsidered. It can happen, especially with short females, but isn't common.

Huh, I've never heard of this issue before, altough I wouldn't be that surprised if it stem's from sheer ignorance.

Anyways, here's my contributions:

Tips on Writing Military Science Fiction: The title pretty much says it all. A good resource written by a former U.S. Marine NCO that deals with small scale tactics, the future of war, and how to write military SF that isn't shit.

The International Encyclopedia of Uniforms and Rank Insignia: A good source to help with developing military ranks.

[Destructionator]

Tips on Writing Military Science Fiction

Parts of that page are good to read even if you aren't writing strictly military sf. Lots of the stuff is just generally interesting on its own; it can even help cure misanthropy. Though, he isn't right about everything, like a few minor historical or scientific facts, so remember to read many sources.



--------


I've read so many things over the years that I don't remember most of the links, but I do have a handful of awesome SDN threads, biased toward hard sci-fi tech discussions (beware self-pimpage ahead):

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=123884
This is a recent thread by Ford Prefect asking what kinds of ranks and roles you might see on a ship. A slight hijack by myself also includes a brief navy vs air force discussion.


http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=104272
Old thread about how a war of Earth vs space colonies might go.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic. ... 68#2438568
Sikon knocks down the idea that FTL is required for a sci fi setting, and discusses the plausibility of some common FTL drives:

If a story must have FTL, one might as well adopt a soft sci-fi approach to the technology, a "show, don't tell" approach, and avoid giving drive details unnecessarily, as implausible technobabble wouldn't help. Vagueness is better in that case.
[...]
Of course, the preceding is only one example out of many possibilities, but the general idea is that a lot is possible without unrealistic FTL, if the goal is fully hard sci-fi.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=103201
The idea of space fighters gets a whipping in this thread, including one of my own big posts that is quoted on Atomic Rockets, where I argue that most space warships will basically be the same.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=102943
Here, we again discuss space fighters, discussing how different atmospheric and space combat can be. Key attraction is one of Sikon's huge posts, which was also quoted on Atomic Rockets, where he discusses future space battleships and how they can control the ground.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=122418
This thread was kinda fun, but can bring the misanthrope back out of you, as some posters seriously argued for preemptive extermination of aliens. It is about assumptions about aliens and turns a little bit into a motives of interstellar warfare thread, where some of us argue that there are no such motives.

http://bbs.stardestroyer.net/viewtopic.php?t=112015
Here, I and a couple other posters discuss life extension's effects on society.


I'm sure I can dig up more good SDN threads, but this is enough for now. If you wanted to look for yourself, virtually everything Sikon, RedImperator, The Duchess of Zeon, GrandMasterTerwynn, and a handful of others is worth reading, even their posts outside the other sci-fi forum.

http://www.nas.nasa.gov/About/Education ... ettlement/
This is a NASA page with links to huge amounts of information about realistic space colonization. L5 by '35! We can do it!

http://www.astronautix.com/
The "Encyclopedia Astronautica": lots of fun reference stuff.

http://libriumarcana.com/blogs/index.php?blog=8
And I'll wrap up the self-pimpage with a link to my neglected blog. I haven't made a significant post in there for a while and have changed my mind on several of the older posts, but there are still some links and some discussion that may be interesting.

[Dakarne]

Some recommended reading in book form;

The Seven Basic Plots by Christopher Booker

As well as my recommendation to find just about anything on character-building, here's a few things I found on fantasy and sci-fi;

http://fantasyguide.stormthecastle.com/ ... riters.htm
http://www.writing-world.com/sf/index.shtml
http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/issue13 ... ntasyi.htm

[Shroom Man 777]

Malchus loves GlaDOS

[Malchus]

Malchus loves GlaDOS

Yes, yes I do. She's so delightfully crazy, and she's got a cute singing voice.

As for my contributions, I always though these two were pretty useful. Especially the one about beating writer's block.

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/cws/wworksh ... g_tips.htm
http://www.43folders.com/2004/11/18/hac ... ters-block

[Shroom Man 777]

Metal Gear?!

It can't be...

[Malchus]

I remember that, trying it out again I still get Humongous Beaver with "Miguel Paolo Pernia" and Homongous Jellyfish with just "Miguel Pernia." Let's see, given that other connotation for "Beaver" and the shape of the cap and softness of body of the "Jellyfish", I think it's suggesting that I'm either a huge pussy or a limp dick.

[Shroom Man 777]

I got BUCKSHOT PENGUIN!


ROMANICUS NOMENCLATURICUS (Roman names, mang)

AVE SHROOMEASAR!

[Heretic]

Heretic: Affable Mongoose"

[Destructionator]

I just whipped up this little page with a energy conversion javascript calculator (so far, joules to/from tonnes of TNT to/from grams of matter).

http://arsdnet.net/ase/energy.html

If you guys have any ideas for common energy numbers that you'd like to see added to the reference on the bottom, post them and I'll add them in. Ditto for additional unit conversion options. Or if seeing what kind of effects it would have is useful, I can see about adding those (maybe how much ice it would melt or stuff like that).

It isn't super useful right now, but might be nice if you are like 'dur how much energy is in a kiloton again???' ...like I am all the time.

[Dakarne]

Jungian Archetypes; http://changingminds.org/explanations/i ... etypes.htm

Very, very good for characterisation.

[speaker-to-trolls]

That seems a bit too brief a rundown of character archetypes to be all that useful. Besides which I'm not sure that intentionally basing your characters on archetypes is a good idea, I thought the idea was that they came up spontaneously. PS: If I've misinterpreted you I'm sorry and please ignore the previous sentence.

I rather like this website, useful for anything to do with Hellenic mythology, or if you want inspiration in making up myths or fantasmagoria of any sort, I particularly like looking through the bestiary section on Fabulous Tribes. There was one tribe in India who had no mouths and derived sustenance from the scent of spices!
If nothing else you can use it for spaceship names.

[Dakarne]

That seems a bit too brief a rundown of character archetypes to be all that useful. Besides which I'm not sure that intentionally basing your characters on archetypes is a good idea, I thought the idea was that they came up spontaneously. PS: If I've misinterpreted you I'm sorry and please ignore the previous sentence.

It'll help, later on, with some of the possible psychology of the thing. I personally don't use them much, but they're damn useful; I'm thinking of perhaps actually adapting the Jungian Archetypes to become my setting's deities; not representations of things like fire, magic, agriculture, etc. but instead the Shadow, Animus, Self or the fictional archetypes to create a pantheon. Jungian Archetypes do come about more or less on their own - but it does help you understand why your work went that way. Of course, I'm studying towards a Bachelor's in English Literature, so I'm likely to wax philosophical about my own work.

[speaker-to-trolls]

Interesting idea, most of the story archetypes are based on themes in mythology to begin with, but I don't think I can think of any gods that correspond exactly to the Animus or Self.

[Dakarne]

http://www.sfwa.org/writing/

A useful link containing just about everything you could think of from Fantasy Worldbuilding to Writing to Critiquing. I recognise a few of those names, as well. Including, most notably, Stephen Baxter, more famously known for his Xeelee Sequence.

[Heretic]

*begging for more treats* Thanks for showing me alot of cool sites. Now there is less searching and homeworking for meh to do.

[Dakarne]

Well, here we go...

Another big and useful link, full of stuff that's generally Useful.

[Heretic]

http://www.chaoticshiny.com/

A new generator link that generates factions, armies, religions, goofy laws, civilizations, characters....so much more. Check it out yourself.

[Dakarne]

Internet Sacred Text Archive

This is a website that's useful for mythological reference, for anyone who's interested. It's basically got a whole wealth of public domain texts on everything from Judaism to Gnosticism, and with a bunch of Wiccan, Neo-Pagan and Hermetic Grimoires. It all ought to help with fantasy worldbuilding, mostly, but if you can find something you can use elsewhere... it's a bonus to you.

Note that I take no responsibility for any personal use of the magical texts herein, nor the effects thereof, which may include slight dizziness, weariness, demons escaping from hell, involuntary transformations, odd robed figures turning up at your door and demanding your first-born child, and mild skin irritation. See your local Sorcerer Supreme for details.