Random ideas (again)

[Somes J]

It seems to me that this universe, as Shroom proposes it, doesn't work, for a simple lack of complexity. You can sum everything relevant about the universe in one sentence: "This is what it would be like if the US was on the other side of the WoT."

I think it's more that the premise needs to be expanded and fleshed out more. So you have aliens invading Earth to do White Man's Burden type stuff. OK, what's the conflict? Most people would probably be fairly cool if the aliens just dropped by and gave us fusion power and cornucopia machines and immortality, so they must be doing things we don't like. That implies cultural imperialism. So what are the aspects of our culture they don't like, and how are they trying to change them?

You could do a pretty awesome epic story or series of stories based on that premise. The problem is at this point where still seeing the aliens as living plot device; they invade because that's how the allegory works. The aliens just need to be fleshed out more.

I agree it's probably not a universe that would naturally lend itself to extensive Omniverse One style worldbuilding, but neither is the universe of District 9 and that movie was still awesome.

I think the direct WoT analogy would be, yes, best serve in a simple story form. Or in the form of multiple stories. It won't be an actual-factual verse with actual-factual craploads of articles, but it can be multiple stories set in the same setting. That can work.

Yeah, that's what I was thinking. I think this probably works best as a relatively simple universe. You have aliens living on a planet of some nearby star. They send out space probes to nearby stars and find one other inhabited world: Earth. They see it as very much an earlier version of their own world, still struggling with the problems that they have solved, and decide to help us out. Hilarity follows.

I think it would work well with the WoT analogy because this way humans would be the first aliens they'd found and how they handle Earth would be perceived as setting a precedent for how they'd handle other less advanced aliens they might find in the future. I envision there being a serious controversy over how Earth would be handled, with one side favoring a Prime Directive non-interventionist approach and the other favoring active intervention. The Interventionists win, and then everything goes horribly wrong and the Prime Directivists are all like "uh, you know, not to be a dick, but we sort of predicted this kind of thing would happen."

I'm coming up with mental images now of op-ed pieces in the alien space New York times and alien space Fox News arguing for and against intervention. I'm envisioning right now one mentioning UFO cultists on Earth:

"In fact there are groups among the inhabitants of Autumn* who claim to have be aware of the existence of alien visitors; to have spotted our observation probes and investigation teams. Whether they have actually done so is beside the point. The relevant thing that our readers should know is that these unfortunate beings, who believe we may exist, literally pray for our intervention."

You couldn't do this so much with a big universe where taking over other less advanced worlds was already a routine thing for the aliens. The analogy between invading Earth and invading Iraq seems much better this way. You'd have a ready-made reason for the decision being massively controversial among the aliens, and also a ready-made reason for them to screw up without having to appeal to them just being incompetent or callous (this is the first time they've done this kind of thing).

*I kind of envision the aliens' homeworld being warmer than Earth because we're in an unusually cold period of our planet's history, so I figured they might give Earth some kind of winter-themed name. Besides, I liked the sound of it because it has shades of Ursula K LeGuin's The Left Hand of Darkness.

But, for the WoT analogy to work, I don't think I can really take the entire thing too seriously. That would end up too... pretentiously preachy?

District 9 managed to do something along these lines without coming off as pretentious preachy. I think the key is to keep the allegory from becoming Anvilicious. Don't make it a straightforward inversion of the WoT, make it it's own story which happens to have some parallels that get the author thinking "hmm, so this is what it's like to be on the receiving end of a more advanced civilization deciding to Regime Change you." Sort of like how the Prawns aren't Africans or Jews or Native Americans or whatever with their names changed, their situation is their own thing, which happens to have parallels to what's happening or has happened to groups in RL. This was actually one of the areas I thought Avatar screwed up; they made the Na'Vi too obvious cut-and-pastes of bad Native American stereotypes.

Just a note: if the aliens are a coalition of species, they might have different ethics compared to each other. Hell, humans have different ethics in each of our cultures, and we're just one species! So, it might be wise to give each alien species separate ethical values, values that wouldn't be seen from the human POV (as the humans would just see them as invaders, and wouldn't care about distinctions like that) but would create rifts between the different species, and could be one factor in the failure of the expedition.

I kind of prefer the idea of having Earth be the first inhabited world the aliens have found, so this is a first contact for them as well, for reasons I already explained. You could definitely keep the idea of different alien factions though; it would be pretty plausible for the aliens to still be divided into different nations, especially if they've only been an advanced spacefaring culture for a relatively short time. You could easily do the whole "Coalition of the willing" thing with alien nations on their own planet.

It's not inconceivable to have a multi-species coalition on a single planet too, for that matter. Maybe channel Serrana. Actually it would be pretty interesting if you took a look at that guy's theories on the effect of having multiple sapient species on one planet and applied it to the aliens. It would go with the whole "the aliens hold unexamined assumptions that trip them up" idea. All the sapient species on that planet share certain assumptions about how to act toward other species as a result of evolving in an environment where you had to deal with other intelligent people that were radically different from you ... and humans lack and break those assumptions.

One that would work really well is the idea that on a world like that a major factor influencing the evolution of intelligent species would be that those that attack other intelligent species would tend to get ganged up on and killed. Now say that translates into an instinctive distinction, shared by all the species on the planet, between people (those who play well with others) and monsters (those who don't). And then say they look at the human fossil record and realize that there used to be other intelligent species on Earth (Neanderthals, Homo Erectus, Homo Florensis etc.) and a popular and credible theory formulated by our own paleontologists is that the reason they're not around any more is that we killed them all. Think about how that would influence their perceptions of us. That would go really well with a "the aliens consider us violent barbarians" vibe.

[Mobius 1]

Just popping in, but I have to note that District 9 was painfully obvious as an allegory in the set up of South African apartheid. Moreover, people point to the Prawns as examples of sympathetic aliens, but considering the only two relatable (note the difference between human and relatable or likable) were Christopher Johnson and his son, any contention that D9 was some hard sci fi paragon of how to succeed with 'true' (read: ugly and will rip your head off) aliens is ridiculous.

People may bash Avatar for Native American parallels, but pretending you'd want to have two obese slugmem things go at it, develop a romance, and still be entertaining is simply dishonest. It wouldn't be 'intellectually challenging," it'd be gross and unrelatable. The mere idea of a romance of between aliens seems out there if one follows through one the idea of alien romance.

While I do agree the story needs more flesh than 'ha let's reverse the situation on those hegemonistic Americans,' Ido like the cultural implications of a story where America has to cope with truly being outmatched and without it being technothriller neocon bullshit that dominates (is) the market. The trick is mixingup the moral grey area on both sides (easy enough for the Americans) - not so easy for the aliens. In a sense, they make this story, but any talk about aliens eating babies places the allegory beyond 'this is an alien culture' and into the realm of 'completely and utterly cartoonish.'. Alien differences can be just as interesting if, he'll, we d draw ideas from D9. Say, perhaps, the aliens don't have a concept of personal ownership or an extreme sense of personal entitlement when it comes to what they think they can 'claim.'

It boils down to how we relate the motivations of the aliens to the WoT metaphor. Are the aliens doing sometimg silly and Day the Earth Stood Still-esque 'they're coming to get rid of our nukes?' Is it more sinister, along the lines of cynical liberal thought, that it's all for oil (and how can only apply a need for natural resources to a hard sci if setting, without it coming out ridiculous like V or Independence Day?)? Could be out of some hegemonistic desire to spread whatever the alien's poltical system is, as they see it as superior to democracy? What could humans (for making America the initial and sole target of the attacks as opposed to the setting of the story is heavy-handed) have done to provoke the aliens? Heck, has there been prior contact, to extend the metaphor to the First Gulf War, be it clandestine or not?

In the end, I'd work on the motivations of the aliens more than their appearance or need to eat babies.

[Siege]

Frankly if it were up to me I'd leave the alien's motivation entirely unclear. They might claim all kinds of benevolent motivations, or even better their human puppets might espouse that they have good intentions, but ultimately the aliens need only be there, hovering above the Earth being inscrutable and menacing (incidentally I do agree the whole 'eat babies' concept is silly -- what is with this sudden fixation on cannibalism? Yeah I get it's a key taboo in human society that wouldn't necessarily exist in an alien culture, but come the fuck on... This isn't about humans not getting the aliens for cultural reasons, it's about humans getting screwed over by alien overlords because the aliens are just plain vastly technologically superior to humans).

I mentioned this to Shroom before, but it reminds me a bit of a modern take on War of the Worlds, which Wells wrote very much with a "let's see how Britain likes to be treated the way they treat everybody else" sentiment in mind. Except this time there aren't any convenient germs to help the humans out of a tight spot. Sure the WoT sentiment ought to be handled a little more subtly than good old boys from Alabama blowing themselves up in a market in the Houston green zone, but when push comes to shove I quite like the idea of an alien occupation of CONUS mirroring the War on Terror in many ways. Partially, I admit, simply for the "how you like me now" factor, but also because it's something I've never seen done before. If it's handled with at least a modicum of subtlety and tact it would be quite possible to weave an excellent narrative there which would be, dare I say it, actually relevant to the time we live in.

[Shroom Man 777]

Possible motivations:

1.) If the aliens are oxygen-breathers, then as discussed in that thread about alien life probability, Earth might be the only other planet they've ever found that has a hospitable environment. It'd make sense to want to try and live there. And, an extension of that, would be a natural attempt at colonizing the natives. This can allow us to have alien settlers building settlements on Earth too. In the Green Zones, we could see humans walking down the street with the aliens and stuff - with various alien parties setting up enterprises and interests here! Oh man, alien corporations, alien merchants, and even liberal alien objectors and protesters who come here to sabotage their alien government's dickeries! Alien journalists!

2.) Earth could be in a Space DMZ between two cold-warring powers, and one alien power (or the other) wants to use us as proxies or something. But that's stupid. If we're in the middle of an alien cold war, we're a shithole fringe world full of yokels - what can either side possibly gain from converting us to capitalism/communism? It's not like we're Vietnam, where our turning communist/capitalist will affect the surrounding geopolitical region around us - since our surrounding geopolitical region is just a bunch of dead rocks and we're stuck on one planet.

3.) Do they need a decent motivation? To the Aztecs, the Spaniards' motivation was probably pretty shitty too. The aliens might be doing this for Gold, God and Glory. Maybe not God, since they might not have a god and religion might not play into it. But maybe for some other weirdo ideal? They genuinely think that it's good to convert the natives (us), but instead of teaching us religion they'll instead turn us into posthuman cyborgs with an alien society? Replace "indoctrinating subservient natives with Christianity" with "transform humans into a 'better' species, dependent on alien supertech"?

4.) Either way, a habitable planet would be damn useful for the aliens. Not in a geopolitical cold war sense. But in a "hey, that's the only other planet that can sustain life!" sense.

5.) In the end, I think a whole bunch of humans - particularly the powerful, amoral, opportunistic ones - are going to end up being accessories and accomplices to the aliens. Don't you think someone like Dick Cheney wouldn't sell his soul to the aliens, in exchange for guns and a top spot in the New Order? A lot of dictators kowtowed to America, and got blessed with weapons and diplomatic immunity to enact (pro-American) regimes in their countries.

[Siege]

Why not stick with the "they want to space civilize us" motivation? It was pretty good, and it meshes with the "bring freedom and democracy to the natives" theme. Like so:



Except with saucers instead of B-52s

[Destructionator]

(incidentally I do agree the whole 'eat babies' concept is silly -- what is with this sudden fixation on cannibalism?

About two years ago, the little girl I babysit said she was a kid eating monster. Soon, I turned it around so I was the kid eating monster, so she had to flee in terror. (She aptly named this 'cannibal tag'.)

It just kinda stuck.


Though, what we're looking for here is some reason for things to go sour. Different cultural expectations leading to prejudice is just one example.

The question that bothers me isn't why are they here, but instead, why would things get so nasty? Explaining away things like waterboarding is easy if they are already in a state of hostilities, but why are they hostile in the first place?

I'm not really happy with saying it is nothing more than selfish adhesion to sovereignty on all sides.

Look at the conversation:

"We came to help. Here's a bunch of stuff to make your lives better."

"Fuck you, we can live in squalor if we so choose."

"Not if I have anything to say about it you can't!" (or "we didn't come all this way to be turned away, god damn it!")

"NO! I'D RATHER BE DEAD THAN LIVING IN EXTREME LUXURY UNDER YOU!"


This is believable (look at the resistance in America to socialism), but not really satisfying. I like the alien side of things, but not the human side. People are irrational, yes, but there's better ways out than fighting. A negotiated deal where everybody wins makes a lot more sense. We need to take dealing off the table without breaking good intentions on either side.


g2g though ride is here

[Acatalepsy]

1.) If the aliens are oxygen-breathers, then as discussed in that thread about alien life probability, Earth might be the only other planet they've ever found that has a hospitable environment. It'd make sense to want to try and live there. And, an extension of that, would be a natural attempt at colonizing the natives. This can allow us to have alien settlers building settlements on Earth too. In the Green Zones, we could see humans walking down the street with the aliens and stuff - with various alien parties setting up enterprises and interests here! Oh man, alien corporations, alien merchants, and even liberal alien objectors and protesters who come here to sabotage their alien government's dickeries! Alien journalists!

In this case I'd be more worried about technical competion. What happens when the aliens have a firm that uses an AI to completely automate call centers, and puts all those corporations out of business? What happens when the Aliens start selling fusion power (not the technology, of course - but the output from their own grid) and BOOM! the oil industry goes into cardiac (they still have cars in the short term, but...). Same with factories, etc. That economic pressure is a good starting point for hostilities. Economics usually is.

2.) Earth could be in a Space DMZ between two cold-warring powers, and one alien power (or the other) wants to use us as proxies or something. But that's stupid. If we're in the middle of an alien cold war, we're a shithole fringe world full of yokels - what can either side possibly gain from converting us to capitalism/communism? It's not like we're Vietnam, where our turning communist/capitalist will affect the surrounding geopolitical region around us - since our surrounding geopolitical region is just a bunch of dead rocks and we're stuck on one planet.

Yeah, that last sentence sums it up. Though I think it would be amusing to have at least one universe where there are aliens, but they don't care about us - they set up a naval base or something on Titan, and then ignore everything the humans do. After all, why go to a heavy planet to get resources when there are other sources out there?

3.) Do they need a decent motivation? To the Aztecs, the Spaniards' motivation was probably pretty shitty too. The aliens might be doing this for Gold, God and Glory. Maybe not God, since they might not have a god and religion might not play into it. But maybe for some other weirdo ideal? They genuinely think that it's good to convert the natives (us), but instead of teaching us religion they'll instead turn us into posthuman cyborgs with an alien society? Replace "indoctrinating subservient natives with Christianity" with "transform humans into a 'better' species, dependent on alien supertech"?

Possibly. But I think that the motivation should be at least understandable. As long as the "replace with alien supertech" angle isn't played as something that's [Insert Horrible Fate / Loss of Humanity Here]. It should be possible to want the aliens to win; and see it as a moral good. If not, then the aliens are just dicks and the focus shifts from how the humans interact to how the humans ineffectually resist impending horribleness. And that's not nearly as fun, I think.

4.) Either way, a habitable planet would be damn useful for the aliens. Not in a geopolitical cold war sense. But in a "hey, that's the only other planet that can sustain life!" sense.

It's only useful to you if you get people there, or have people that want to get there. Why would anyone want to leave their home planet and come somewhere else? Either they think there is money to be made somehow (unlikely) or that somehow they are unwelcome at home - which is a whole different feel. I guess that could work though.

5.) In the end, I think a whole bunch of humans - particularly the powerful, amoral, opportunistic ones - are going to end up being accessories and accomplices to the aliens. Don't you think someone like Dick Cheney wouldn't sell his soul to the aliens, in exchange for guns and a top spot in the New Order? A lot of dictators kowtowed to America, and got blessed with weapons and diplomatic immunity to enact (pro-American) regimes in their countries.

True...but that depends on who is willing to deal, and who the aliens are willing to deal with. Given that unlike most South American and African countries, it's pretty clear who is in charge in most first world. And it takes more than material support. Who, in the first world, would the aliens give weapons to? It would probably be any government that isn't resisting, which if they are smart, none of them will. And thus no need for weapons.

[Somes J]

People may bash Avatar for Native American parallels, but pretending you'd want to have two obese slugmem things go at it, develop a romance, and still be entertaining is simply dishonest. It wouldn't be 'intellectually challenging," it'd be gross and unrelatable. The mere idea of a romance of between aliens seems out there if one follows through one the idea of alien romance.

Note: I was talking about the way their culture was presented, not their physical appearance. You could have made their culture a lot more alien (or at least less "bad native American stereotype painted blue") and still had them look and act enough like humans that it would seem plausible to the audience that a human could be attracted to one. That said, if you don't mind I'd rather leave the arguments over movie quality for the movie review thread.

Frankly if it were up to me I'd leave the alien's motivation entirely unclear. They might claim all kinds of benevolent motivations, or even better their human puppets might espouse that they have good intentions, but ultimately the aliens need only be there, hovering above the Earth being inscrutable and menacing

That could work, but the downside is you miss on being to get the aliens' perspective. Personally I find the question of how the Other sees us fascinating, so I really enjoy being able to examine the perspective of the other side, but having the aliens' motives be unclear could work too, and it is easier (no need to worry about developing their culture extensively).

Meh, if Shroom chooses not to use any of my ideas I might just pick them up and make my own story based on them. Win-win!

incidentally I do agree the whole 'eat babies' concept is silly -- what is with this sudden fixation on cannibalism? Yeah I get it's a key taboo in human society that wouldn't necessarily exist in an alien culture, but come the fuck on... This isn't about humans not getting the aliens for cultural reasons, it's about humans getting screwed over by alien overlords because the aliens are just plain vastly technologically superior to humans

Meh, it was just an idea being thrown out for there might be cultural conflicts between the humans and aliens. I've just been throwing out a bunch of ideas that I figure Shroom might find interesting, with the idea that he could use any that he liked and discard any that he didn't.

1.) If the aliens are oxygen-breathers, then as discussed in that thread about alien life probability, Earth might be the only other planet they've ever found that has a hospitable environment. It'd make sense to want to try and live there.

Realistically it would probably make more sense for them to build space habitats instead. Building O'Neill Colonies in your own solar system would probably be a hell of a lot easier than expending thousands of terajoules of energy per colonist to send colonists to some planet that will take decades to reach, and the asteroids have no pesky natives that may shoot back. Mind you, of all the alien invader motivations I can think of the lebensraum idea is one of the less silly ones (more plausible than having them invade us for our water, or oil insert made-up wonder material here), but it's already been done a bunch of times. I like #3 better.

3.) Do they need a decent motivation? To the Aztecs, the Spaniards' motivation was probably pretty shitty too. The aliens might be doing this for Gold, God and Glory. Maybe not God, since they might not have a god and religion might not play into it. But maybe for some other weirdo ideal? They genuinely think that it's good to convert the natives (us), but instead of teaching us religion they'll instead turn us into posthuman cyborgs with an alien society? Replace "indoctrinating subservient natives with Christianity" with "transform humans into a 'better' species, dependent on alien supertech"?

This is pretty much exactly what I proposed. The aliens genuinely want to help the poor humans. They want to bring the poor benighted primitives the benefits of alien supertech and they want to impose their cultural values on us uplift us culturally. The second one is the source of the conflict. Perhaps mix this in with them realizing that we're rapidly advancing technologically and wanting to reform what they see as the bad aspects of our culture before they end up having horrible barbarians with access to relativistic kinetic kill vehicles for neighbors.

Though, what we're looking for here is some reason for things to go sour. Different cultural expectations leading to prejudice is just one example.

The question that bothers me isn't why are they here, but instead, why would things get so nasty? Explaining away things like waterboarding is easy if they are already in a state of hostilities, but why are they hostile in the first place?

I'm not really happy with saying it is nothing more than selfish adhesion to sovereignty on all sides.

Look at the conversation:

"We came to help. Here's a bunch of stuff to make your lives better."

"Fuck you, we can live in squalor if we so choose."

"Not if I have anything to say about it you can't!" (or "we didn't come all this way to be turned away, god damn it!")

"NO! I'D RATHER BE DEAD THAN LIVING IN EXTREME LUXURY UNDER YOU!"

This is believable (look at the resistance in America to socialism), but not really satisfying. I like the alien side of things, but not the human side. People are irrational, yes, but there's better ways out than fighting. A negotiated deal where everybody wins makes a lot more sense. We need to take dealing off the table without breaking good intentions on either side.

Yeah, this is what I've been getting at. The way I see it the problem isn't so much why the aliens would be here (I already proposed a fairly plausible answer to that in a hard SF universe: they want to help the unfortunate primitives), but how this would lead to conflict. If the aliens just showed up and gave us fusion power and immortality and cornucopia machines there probably wouldn't be much in the way of conflict (well, there would probably be some, but not of the "reverse WoT" type; the general relation of humanity and the aliens would be more along the lines of "awesome, thanks, brofist!"). The obvious answer is that the aliens are also culturally imperialistic: they consider some aspect of our lifestyle horrible and want to change the way we live. So for the "reverse WoT" thing to work there needs to be some aspect of our society that the aliens find horrible, and it needs to be something that large numbers of humans would resent being told to change, and it needs to be something where your average First World reader can see both sides of the issue and empathize with both viewpoints to some extent. I've just been trying to throw out ideas Shroom could use on differences between ourselves and the aliens that might lead to conflict.

[Shroom Man 777]

Hrm... if the aliens are a uniform culture with a homogenous identity or ideology or some stuff, and if the human race - as violent and as divisive as we are - is making gainful strides in science and technology and might soon become an emergent space power, the aliens might not know how to deal with us in the future if we're too "different", right? So the whole purpose of them invading us and occupying us and giving us supertech in exchange for some ideological purification would be to make "us" more like "them" - for the safety and security of our future... in space!

Their motivation for invasion would be less material and more... memetic? MEMES?! No, it can't be! S3! Not Solid Snake Simulation... but Selection for Societal Sanity! RAIDEN! NOOO!

[speaker-to-trolls]

Their motivation for invasion would be less material and more... memetic? MEMES?! No, it can't be! S3! Not Solid Snake Simulation... but Selection for Societal Sanity! RAIDEN! NOOO!

For Merit, Memes and Man!

How would aliens go about trying to uplift us out of our savagery? Obviously it wouldn't be a case of handing us cold fusion, organ regeneration and magic nanovats. Maybe they would give some of these things as a show of good faith, then they would start asking for a little more cooperation from us, like handing over areas of land for them to plant alien supercrops on, or saying that we need to send a lot of scientists to an academy staffed by aliens. After that it could move on to 'we think you ought to start teaching this in your schools, a lot of it won't make sense to you but the next generation of humans will need to know this stuff' and 'if your society is going to adapt to this new technology you'll need to stop doing this, this and this' and so on. Basically just keep telling your friendly governments 'you'll have to do what we say for this to work, trust us, you'll thank us for this later' only they do it too quickly and too drastically, and many humans are simply not prepared to follow these kind of instructions, thus, conflict!

Or something.

[Shroom Man 777]

They'll engineer us to be more like them. Volunteers only, of course, from within the core occupied territories. And, I guess, societal conditioning? And by letting more aliens enter Earth and live in human cities? They could put humans in reservations, where they can be force fed telescreens? They'll subtly try to condition our culture to be more like theirs. Install post-democracy, or some kind of AI-instituted rule and regime?

Maybe the aliens manufacture a great cataclysm. Like a meteor full of tiberium or some shit. And in the ensuing mayhem, the aliens come in and act as saviors and clean up the crap?

Or they send a Von Neumann probe to eat up, say, New York. Then they come in, destroy that probe, claim the probe belonged to the "enemy", and convinced human kind that they need protection and should accept the aliens as saviors and as friends to fight against the space communists/bad guys?

Replace the Von Neumann probe with a GIANT SQUID! Watchshrooms!

[Somes J]

They'll engineer us to be more like them. Volunteers only, of course, from within the core occupied territories.

They want to use genetic engineering to eliminate or curb what they see as the negative aspects of human nature. They want to genetically engineer us into more naturally empathetic, altruistic, and cooperative beings, and to make us less naturally prone to negative emotions like jealousy or violent rage. They would do this by germline genetic engineering; the current generation of humans would be the last "natural" one.

They did this to themselves several centuries ago, and think of it as a natural logical thing for an advancing civilization to do. Part of becoming more civilized.

The modification wouldn't be too radical, the modified kids would still be mentally human and very much people like you and me. They'd just be naturally less selfish, more empathetic, and less prone to violence. And please don't pull that old cliched "we need all that bad shit to not be lotus eating wimps" trope on us; it's been done a bunch of times already and the implications are irritating to begin with. The aliens are good enough cognitive engineers to avoid turning us into ineffectual lapdogs.

Basically what I'm going for is the result is the process isn't really dehumanizing and you can easily make an argument that it's objectively a good thing ... but you can still see how lots of people would freak at this idea. Especially if there was an element of coercion involved.

If you want to extend this to some decades after the beginning of the occupation it might be interesting to deal with the social fallout of this. I imagine to these transhumans normal humans would probably seem like people with lots of mental/emotional issues. Now imagine if the aliens throw intelligence enhancements into the package too (and I imagine they would). I'm not thinking really radical intelligence enhancement here but something like an average IQ of 125 with less deviation to the left, so they have a lot fewer sub-100 chuckleheads than us. Throw in the resentment over the aliens ramming these genetic changes down our throats and you've got a recipe for serious intergenerational conflict.

Then you've got another hairy factor to consider: cognitive changes that may have effects besides just making people nicer. For instance, they might correct the cognitive glitches that cause us to see patterns where none exist and assume the intentional stance toward inanimate objects and forces. But there's speculation that religion largely arises out of those things... Just imagine if religious belief plunged in the next generation as a side effect of the aliens fixing "bugs" in our brains. In fact, they may think we're better off without religion, so they knew this would happen and planned it.

On second thought, I might just call dibs on some of this.

[speaker-to-trolls]

^ Now that's an interesting idea, and one that'd definitely be a source of conflict once it got about that it was in the aliens plans. 'You want to do what?! At what point were you planning on asking us about this?'

When it comes to the aftereffects of the genetic engineering I think there should be some nasty side effects. Yes, they did it effectively to themselves, but that was on their own biochemistry, on which they have generations worth of knowledge and a whole planets worth of scientific expertise. But on an alien species, with only however many scientists they can get on their starship plus a bit of help from some cooperative human scientists? There would at least be some hiccups in the early stages, they'd have some test subjects (human or otherwise) growing up rather off, and a lot of people would not want their children put under this kind of process.

[Shroom Man 777]

Somes J: The level of genetic engineering you're proposing sounds a bit like Gattaca. No real radical superhumanization or whatever, but something more akin to... "optimization". Where they take the best possible features that a human being can develop, and give it to everyone. That could work, yes.

Oh, here's another neat idea: Global population control? To curb poverty, misery and resource depletion, they could enact a more systemic and globally equalized version of China's One Child Policy? Maybe, like in Half-Life, they could put something in the water to turn people into limp asexuals without any libido.

[Destructionator]

Oh, here's another neat idea: Global population control? To curb poverty, misery and resource depletion, they could enact a more systemic and globally equalized version of China's One Child Policy?

I'd be against that just because it is unnecessary, but also, it wouldn't work anyway unless you are literally killing babies. An alternative would only be giving their gifts to the "favorable" folks, which is probably counter productive. (Those with few children to begin with aren't the ones you need to incentivize to have fewer!)

It just bugs me because overpopulation is bullshit* anyway and the "solutions" to it are almost always even worse.

* Not in general, but just in the specific case of "omfg those breeders need to stop lest the world end!!11!11one!!1".

Maybe, like in Half-Life, they could put something in the water to turn people into limp asexuals without any libido.

Now that would make the world a better place. I'm for it. I loathe sex chasers.

[speaker-to-trolls]

One of my old Random Alternate Reality ideas from some time ago came back to me today and I thought, well why not, it might inspire or be of interest to someone.
The idea came out of a vague 'Dark Ages in Space' motif idea I had some years ago which included individual spacelings moving around inside spaceships which were very much like horses in space, e.g. they had an AI with approximate animal instincts and the rider had to tell them what to do somewhat indirectly rather than controlling them manually. I later wondered about how you'd get to this kind of situation, and decided there would have to be some kind of event which caused the evolution of autonomous but subhuman mechanical intelligence.

What I came up with was this; in the golden hayday of civilisation there were automated factories, mines and other facilities all over the solar system. Then IT happened, when the framework of civilisation collapsed due to (not entirely sure, what I'm going with at the moment is the 'soul eater' plague, which killed all the big AI's but left more basic systems so a certain degree of intelligence could remain), leaving all these facilities running essentially on automatic, still mining and refining metals and making them into spaceships. What happened next would have to be some kind of evolution of the automatic systems in these installations causing some of them to start getting a bit more sophisticated. So some of the factories start co-opting miners into their business so that they have the ore available to build more of their product, some of them might start making ships they can control so that they could go and raid other facilities for parts and pre-refined materials. Eventually an entire ecosystem developes out of this, with different machines specialising in different methods of getting whatever it is they need. You'd end up with some just building huge solar panels and patiently mining asteroids, and others developing long range weapon drones and cargo ships which could go out and steal the ore from those factories. The factories would of course come up with defences of their own, and so on.

Basically being computer illiterate i don't know if any of this is even remotely faesible without millions on millions of years for the factories to evolve, but I thought it could make for an interesting idea. You might not even want humans there at all.

[Somes J]

^ That reminds me of the software lifeforms from Peter Watts's Rifters trilogy, except that here the evolution extends to the physical infrastructure instead of taking place entirely in cyberspace.

You wouldn't necessarily need to have something wipe out the higher-level AI. You could just have the original civilization have had subsapient Von Neumanns but no real AGI. Then something happened that caused the human controllers to either die or leave, and the VNs kept repairing and replicating themselves according to their programming until "mutations" (i.e. mistakes in replication that are passed to descendants) and selection pressure set in and evolution starts to happen.

Speaking of Rifters, another way to get the "animal-ship" concept would be to have the ships controlled not by conventional computers but by neuron cultures which are trained by making them run simulations and manipulating and conditioning them by stimulating their pleasure and pain centers.

[Somes J]

Inspired by The Human Centipede (I haven't watched it yet):

I think you might be able to do a neat horror story based off somebody who does this to humans:

In the mid-1960s a neurosurgeon named Robert White began experimenting with "isolated brain preparations": a living brain taken out of one animal, hooked up to another animal's circulatory system, and kept alive. Unlike Demikhov's and Guthrie's whole head transplants, these brains, lacking faces and sensory organs, would live a life confined to memory and thought. Given that many of these dogs' and monkeys' brains were implanted inside the necks and abdomens of other animals, this could only have been a blessing.
<snip>
White declines to sugar-coat. He mentions the isolation chamber studies of the 1970s, wherein subjects had no sensory input, nothing to hear, see, smell, feel, or taste. These people got as close as you can come, without White's aid, to being brains in a box. "People [in these conditions] have literally gone crazy,"

Admittedly it's not as visually grotesque as the centipede, but being threatened with being scooped out of your skull and condemned to completely sensory deprivation for the rest of your life, with no possibility of even being able to end your own wretched existence, shouldn't be hard to make pretty scary. Also bonus horror-perversity points for the possibility of:

1) Having a friend or loved ones' brain implanted into your body in such a manner, and then being restrained so you can't escape or kill yourself.

2) Being implanted into the villain's body and having her go about a normal life while you slowly go insane with no sensory inputs as you lie in her abdomen.

I say her because the idea reminds me of a perversion of pregnancy. I think if I were doing this stylistically I'd want a very female-heavy cast,to evoke that.

[Shroom Man 777]

That's completely fucked up, you know.

Also, one neat idea I had for SOTS was something similar to that. Criminals put in solitary confinement for life, essentially for the most heinous crimes that elicit a sentence tantamount to death penalty, basically have their brains removed from their body. However, their disembodied brains are hooked to a virtual reality matrix with other prisoners perhaps, and live a simulated prison sentence where they spend an eternity smashing rocks with virtual hammers.

The beauty of this is that their bodies are cryonically preserved. So, if ever new evidence surfaces and Prisoner Zero is proved to be innocent, his brain is simply removed from Virtual Reality Prison Matrix and placed back in his body and he's set free.

This means that for the worst criminals, you don't HAVE to kill them! Yet you also don't have to waste resources feeding them, and cramming them in overcrowded prisons! It's the best of both pro- and anti-death penalty arguments!

The Sovereignty's justice system at work!

(Also, now that they are disembodied brains, these worst of the worst criminals can NEVER break out of jail! Unless someone breaks into the prison to release them! And THEN they'd have to carry around a brain in a jar! Because their frozen bodies are located in ANOTHER DIFFERENT facility! )

[Siege]

As I recall, complete sensory deprivation results in insanity in a matter of days, followed by death from a complete shut-down of the brain not too long thereafter. Unless I'm mistaken in my recollection of something I read on the subject a few years back, you won't make it through the week alive without some form of sensory input.

[Shroom Man 777]

Very interesting. I'd like to read more on that, if possible. It does make sense, the brain isn't an independent thing, the brain is very much just another organ in the body and its processes are also very dependent on the various things present in the rest of the body. All sorts of bodily mechanisms and bodily functions rely on sensory input from outside the body, since a lot of the body functions react due to feedback from the outside world, etc. So I can easily imagine how sensory deprivation, depriving the CNS and the brain of sensation, simply causes the body to slow down and... stop living due to a feedback effect.

Jesus Christ that sucks.

Of course, when the brain has been transplanted to ANOTHER DIFFERENT body with a different brain, and the transplanted brain is sensory deprived but the brain of that body isn't, then who knows?

[speaker-to-trolls]

Replying to my own idea first.

You wouldn't necessarily need to have something wipe out the higher-level AI. You could just have the original civilization have had subsapient Von Neumanns but no real AGI. Then something happened that caused the human controllers to either die or leave, and the VNs kept repairing and replicating themselves according to their programming until "mutations" (i.e. mistakes in replication that are passed to descendants) and selection pressure set in and evolution starts to happen.

I prefer the idea of having the factories going wild, if for no other reason than because it's a different method of evolution to what we generally see on Earth. However, it occurs to me that the two ideas are not necessarily mutually exclusive, what, for instance, if the builders of our hypothetical VNM progenitor have programmed it to convert itself into a factory to build more VNMs when it arrives at its destination? I mean at the very least it would make sense for VNM's to have a few different forms, I wouldn't really want every one burdened with a gigantic set of sensor arrays and interstellar engines when they're still mining from a local moon or whatever they're mining from. I'm sure any decent sized machine would be big enough to accomodate the plans for many different variants. That's a big, complex set of instructions, though, lots of mistakes could potentially be made.

Speaking of Rifters, another way to get the "animal-ship" concept would be to have the ships controlled not by conventional computers but by neuron cultures which are trained by making them run simulations and manipulating and conditioning them by stimulating their pleasure and pain centers.

I like this idea, but do neural networks have any particular advantages over metal ones at the moment which could lead to these being used?

A few thoughts on the next one.

As I recall, complete sensory deprivation results in insanity in a matter of days, followed by death from a complete shut-down of the brain not too long thereafter. Unless I'm mistaken in my recollection of something I read on the subject a few years back, you won't make it through the week alive without some form of sensory input..

In that case you could rig up a system to feed them a trickle of sensory data, or have the nerves just fire impulses at the sense centres once every couple of days. Imagine that, completely alone, completely deprived of any experience but your own thoughts, without even the knowledge of your own existence because you can't even feel your body existing, then, suddenly, there's the sensation that you've seen something, the sensation that some part of you that doesn't exist anymore has twitched or spasmed, the feeling of something, then it's gone again, and you're back in the dark.

Or of course you could give someone false sensory information, or feed them the information from whatever they're inside at the moment. You could be economical with your sadism and stick a few of your enemies brains into the same body, or stick one or two into your body so they experience everything you do while you destroy all that they love. That last option is very similar to a lot of demonic posession type stories, but comes with the bonus that they might not even be able to get their body back at the end, because the first thing you did after the operation was douse it in petrol, say "you're gonna take a good, long look at this" and set it alight, taking pains not to look away even though it was burning your eyes.

Of course, when the brain has been transplanted to ANOTHER DIFFERENT body with a different brain, and the transplanted brain is sensory deprived but the brain of that body isn't, then who knows?

I don't see how that would make a difference, after all if its sensory deprivation to the brain which kills it then the brain should die wherever it is. Of course if it turns out to be more linked to lower down parts of the CNS then you could connect it up to those or something, but that might screw with the rest of the host.

[Somes J]

I like this idea, but do neural networks have any particular advantages over metal ones at the moment which could lead to these being used?

The biggest one I can think of is it may be easier to engineer, simply because evolution has already done much of the hard work for you. We know there are natural brains capable of complex decision-making, whereas IIRC most of our robots still cogitate on roughly the level of insects. Realistically I would expect this to change by the time we can seriously start thinking about building starships, but you never know. It might also be a sneaky way around Dune-style regulations against advanced computers, which strikes me as a better rationalization.

----------

I also am interested in seeing a source for sensory deprivation being fatal. Google hasn't turned up anything so far. I wonder how they got their data - animal studies I would assume, as I doubt you'd have an easy time finding studies that subjected humans to that kind of thing. Unless it was an experiment by Nazi concentration camp doctors or something along those lines.

I'm trying to find information on the survival of those isolated brain transplants, according to this:

One key experiment Dr White carried out in 1964 involved removing the brain – though not the head – from one dog and sewing it under the neck skin of another dog.

With its blood vessels connected to those of the host-dog, Dr White managed to keep the isolated brain alive for days, proving not only that the brain could survive away from its own body but that it was immunologically sound – meaning that, unlike a kidney, it could be transplanted without the likelihood of the new ‘body’ rejecting it.

It doesn't say what the brain died of, so it doesn't really prove anything either way.

You could probably handwave the brain dying rapidly afterward it or work it into the story, depending on what the antagonist's motivation is supposed to be. The right regimen of psychoactive drugs may be able to keep the brain alive, for instance, or stimulation with electrodes.

The biggest problem for me is finding a decent motivation for the antagonist.

I don't see how that would make a difference, after all if its sensory deprivation to the brain which kills it then the brain should die wherever it is. Of course if it turns out to be more linked to lower down parts of the CNS then you could connect it up to those or something, but that might screw with the rest of the host.

Well, it may be a function that prolonged sensory deprivation causes the brain to lose control over the body, rather than the brain cells themselves dying. By making the brain dependent on a body that it does not control, it continues to live. Although if it shuts down it may quickly lose most or all sentience, which I imagine most people would consider a mercy.

Still a pretty horrific way to go either way, so either way the idea of being subjected to such an operation can still be made suitably horrifying.

[Shroom Man 777]

Of course, when the brain has been transplanted to ANOTHER DIFFERENT body with a different brain, and the transplanted brain is sensory deprived but the brain of that body isn't, then who knows?

I don't see how that would make a difference, after all if its sensory deprivation to the brain which kills it then the brain should die wherever it is. Of course if it turns out to be more linked to lower down parts of the CNS then you could connect it up to those or something, but that might screw with the rest of the host.

Hm.

The sensory deprivation may have caused the various feedback mechanisms of the brain to shut down, say, other functions of the body, such as the respiratory system, the circulatory system, whatever. This would've caused the body to die, which would've caused the brain to die.

But if the brain has been transplanted to a different body, with a different brain, that different body may not die because that different brain is NOT sensory deprived and will NOT shut down the different body's functions.

It depends on HOW sensory deprivation causes death.

[Magister Militum]

There's something I haven't wanted to admit for sometime but I feel I might as well and come out and say it: The Eternal Game is starting to bore me. Oh, I've had my fun for many years with the concept, and it served me well as a playing ground to learn the art of worldbuilding, but, frankly, the whole 'modern-day/historical throwback nation-states in space' concept is starting to grate me the wrong way. My other 'verse concept didn't take off either, but that is more of a result of me being more inclined towards the pulpier stuff. The original concept, a great, galactic empire surrounded by weak and petty fiefdoms that only exist because of their collective strength and sly political maneuvering, is one that appeals to me, however, and a little spark of inspiration at the back of my mind, the same one that ushered in TEG, is urging me to push on with this, albeit with a space operatic tone and some major changes story-wise. Of course, I don’t really have the time for this right now, hence why I’m proposing it here instead of giving it its own forum, but I really do plan to push on with this once my schedule clears.

So, we’ve established that there will be a galactic empire that effectively rules unchallenged after its long but victorious conquest of the heavens. I don’t have a name for it, though calling it simply the Galactic Empire does have an appeal to me (admitably, so does the Empire of Man). If we’re going to be nitpicky, this is actually the Third Empire, the other two ‘falling’ due to its defeat (a VERY long time ago), and a dynastic conflict in a similar vain to the War of the Roses. The current ruler, Emperor Augustus VXI of the House of Servarious-Holstaf, is a competent fellow who’s ruled for the last two hundred and thirty years or so. His ultimate dream, like that of so many others, is to conquer the universe, subjugate it in the name of the Empire and Earth. To that end, his predecessors had sent out great Crusade Armadas, self-contained invasion/colonization forces, out to the satellite galaxies to tame them first before moving onto the rest of the Local Group. Surely the Empire would succeed in the dwarf galaxies, wouldn’t they? After all, they’d conquered their own, much more massive galaxy. Why shouldn’t the same result be inevitable? It could take centuries, but, given their might, wasn’t the end result inevitable?

Unfortunately, things rarely work out the way people want. There has been some success in certain areas –swaths of the Magellanic Clouds now play host to a decent civilization – but others have come to have much more stiff resistance. Not only do barbarian fiefdoms and other unsavory groups make colonization and expansion difficult in certain hotspots, but full-fledged native polities eye the Empire warily and give it a run for its money in desired regions, hoping to score some victories against the juggernaut of the Milky Way. It's a time where individuals can rise to very top (assuming they keep on their toes) through skill and luck, where Imperial fleets and armies march against their barbarian and Imperial counterparts, and were fantastic treasures and realms await those brave enough to find them. And, of course, if that isn't enough to keep the polities of the busy, then there's always the threat of great barbarian empires from beyond the Local Group wanting to reduce all civilization to crumbles.

Well, that's it for now. It's a general rundown and somewhat vague, but it gets the idea across. I'll be expanding on it in the following days, and, if appropriate, I'll move it to a dedicated thread. Comments?