Random ideas (again)

For 'verse proposals, random ideas, musings, and brainwaves.

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Somes J
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Somes J »

That sounds like an awesome idea Shroom. It's definitely one of the more original alien invasion story ideas I've heard, and it seems more realistic than most of them. No contrived circumstances to allow the humans to win, yes we've just been invaded by a technologically superior foe and we're boned, the way people usually are when that happens to them. Humans can fight back to a degree, but this is done in a relatively realistic way, instead of Jeff Goldblum crippling the alien invaders with a computer virus because they apparently have incredibly bad computer security or the aliens all dying of the common cold.

As for the aliens motivations, I'd suggest a genuine desire to help humans. This actually strikes me as one of the most realistic reasons for an alien invasion. Invading Earth for resources or living space is pretty silly unless you invoke handwavium or make the aliens morons, but I can easily imagine a technologically advanced alien civilization taking one look at Earth and concluding that these people could really use their help. Many thousands of humans die each day, mostly of things they could easily prevent (like cancer, AIDS, and aging). A large percentage of Earth's population lives in poverty. The planet is plagued by war and violence. There are all kinds of retardo religious groups going around causing all kinds of preventable suffering for their sake of their retarded bigoted Dark Age beliefs. It's pretty easy to imagine a civilization that has eliminated these things taking one look at us and deciding they could make this place better off by taking over it and imposing civilized order and bringing their superior technology. Meanwhile for a civilization with even borderline effective postscarcity enabling technology much of the potential blood and treasure cost of war is removed or made trivial.

Of course, in the tradition of paternalistic do-gooders the aliens underestimate the difficulty of doing this. They underestimate the degree to which humans value their independence and resent outsiders coming in and telling them what to do "for your own good". They underestimate the complexity of many of the problems that plague Earth, and their simplistic attempts to solve our problems often backfire with unintended consequences. They underestimate the degree to which people often cherish ideologies, traditions, and social structures that hurt them. They underestimate the difficulties that will be created by the fundamental differences between their world-view and ours. And because of this they handle things badly, especially at the beginning. They underestimate the resources they will require. 100,000 troops should be enough to control Iraq the planet; we have combat robots to do all the real work after all. Oh wait, the limited AIs of those combat robots are good for warfare but poor for the more complex job of policing and pacification.

Just imagine there's some protest in Time Square or something. Some idiot throws a big blunt object at a combat robot. Their fast but naive AI brains take .017 seconds to decide they're under attack and begin returning fire. With their superhuman senses and reflexes every shot is a kill, and they can fire 200 times a minute. In the time it takes the horrified supervising officer to realize what's going on and order them to cease fire they've methodically mowed down the entire crowd.

I think that would be really cool. The aliens have fundamentally noble motives, but the whole thing turns into a clusterfuck that actually makes the situation on Earth worse instead of better. Grey and grey morality!

Also, make it hard SF. It would really work with a hard SF set-up. It takes a lot of energy to get anything to another star system so the aliens have a big incentive to scrimp on the size of their invasion fleet. And you'd have a sense of a handful of us vs a hostile alien world with the nearest help decades away developing among the aliens, encouraging them to become more aggressive and bloodthirsty over time as they increasingly stop worrying about helping the humans and start worrying about keeping themselves from being wiped out by the resentful horde of angry savages.

This could be very cool.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Siege »

And then when the aliens finally say "fuck this" and up and leave, they should drop a rock on Earth from orbit out of sheer spite. ;)
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Destructionator »

This would indeed make a pretty kickass story. I'm not so sure about a whole universe, but it would definitely work for a single story and would pwn some ass.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Gee, thanks guys. :D

I'm probably too lazy to do anything with the idea anytime soon, but at least I've let it out and maybe sometime in the near future I can fuck around with it.

BTW:

Should the aliens be A.) fucking disgusting insectoid mollusk-faces or B.) big but roundish and fuzzy-ish mammalians, furry and with big brown eyes?

Which of these would you rather watch, performing clinical waterboarding and simulated incineration improved interrogation techniques on naked, humiliated and emaciated human captives?

I prefer B. It would be nice to be tortured and humiliated by a cute critter straight out of Where The Wild Things Are. :twisted:
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shady »

Shroom, I love this idea. You should definitely do something with it. :D

Oh and I say go with A -- but that's just me and my love of insectoids talking. Or you could make their robots look insectoid and shit, while the aliens themselves are roundish and fuzzy-ish mammalians. :)

This reminds me, I really should try and work on my own universe idea. Goddammit I'm such a lazy bastard sometimes.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

On the other hand, it's too easy to depict them as fuck ugly insectoids. Why not portray them as beautiful tall, slender and lithe blue-skinned amber-eyed space elves who love nature? Then they can waterboard and orbitally bombard America. :twisted:

I was going to ask another question, regarding the 'verse idea and shit. But I forgot.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shady »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:On the other hand, it's too easy to depict them as fuck ugly insectoids. Why not portray them as beautiful tall, slender and lithe blue-skinned amber-eyed space elves who love nature? Then they can waterboard and orbitally bombard America. :twisted:
I like it, well something to that effect. It fits well with the theme of them coming to help humanity, but then fucking it up grandiosely. Perhaps they want to help us because they are so much like us. They see in us, an earlier version of themselves or something.
Shroom Man 777 wrote:I was going to ask another question, regarding the 'verse idea and shit. But I forgot.
Hehe Bad memory. I know what that's like. :)
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Somes J »

Shroom Man 777 wrote:BTW:

Should the aliens be A.) fucking disgusting insectoid mollusk-faces or B.) big but roundish and fuzzy-ish mammalians, furry and with big brown eyes?

Which of these would you rather watch, performing clinical waterboarding and simulated incineration improved interrogation techniques on naked, humiliated and emaciated human captives?
I'd go for the cute fuzzy bunny one if I had to choose between those two. But personally I'd prefer to make them look neither beautiful or disgusting but simply inhuman, the way a moose or a parrot is inhuman. They wouldn't be particularly viscerally alarming or cute, they'd just look nothing remotely like us.

Personally I'd be partial to some kind of bird-like creature, something like this:

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Ever since I read about how bird brains are more efficient than mammal brains so they can pack more intelligence into a smaller package I've thought it might be interesting to see what might have happened if birds had taken over the major non-flying land animal niches instead of mammals after the KT impact, or if the atmosphere had more oxygen in it so they'd have an easier time supporting both a big brain and flight.

If I went with making them beautiful I'd give them colorful plumage, like a parrot or a bird of paradise. Or better yet make it so that the males have that colorful plumage as a way to attract females but the females are sort of drab things.

BTW no, I didn't make that drawing, in case you're wondering.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by speaker-to-trolls »

I likes it, nay, I loves it! I also generally agree with Somes J on the grounds that birds are cool and that it would accentuate the analagous-but-different vibe of the aliens, as in: they are here based on reasons we could potentially understand, but the intricacies and details of those ideas makes it almost impossible to find common ground between us. Therefore they aren't a race of hideous space devils or a kind of excercise in dichotomy of outside/inside, they're just people who are very very different and difficult to understand, even if fundamentally we share a great deal with them.

Of course the molluscan monsters or fuzzy fascists have their appeal as well.

I like the idea of that sort of thing, fundamental differences between a more and less advanced society. So there could be certain things about their society, maybe how their family structure works, maybe the way they regard emotion or friendship or even identity, which is completely different to ours, making them view us as savages and us view them as frightening and alien. Each of these could lead to a misunderstanding that could get all the way out of control, since they wouldn't understand why we wouldn't want to be helped out of our barbarism and we couldn't understand why they won't just leave us the fuck alone.

Why won't they leave us the fuck alone? I have a kind of compromise theory between the Sg1-gets-taken-down-a-notch (suggested I think by Shroom) and the Bringing-the-light-of-civilisation approach (suggested by Somes J): Basically the aliens, looking at the long term, see mankind will one day become a space faring species, but don't want the society it produces to be influenced by fundamentalist religion, xenophobic nationalism, vicious economic hegemonism and other unpleasant ismitis. So the invasion is both an act of benevolence and in their future astropolitical interests. Also it wouldn't start as an invasion, it'd start as a kind of missionary initiative, until some of the human governments started getting upset about the aliens funding revolutionary groups and conflict broke out, some governments decide to cooperate and receive their support, others don't and receive other things, things that don't slow down before they arrive.

I just love this whole idea and I love thinking about the way the aliens would see us, I mean there are places on Earth right now which we look at and thing "Oh God, that's horrible! That's barbaric! Someone ought to do something!" Imagine the culture shock when the United Stars of the Space Peacocks sends down its people who take a look at the world and basically think we are exactly the same as those places.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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speaker-to-trolls wrote:I like the idea of that sort of thing, fundamental differences between a more and less advanced society. So there could be certain things about their society, maybe how their family structure works, maybe the way they regard emotion or friendship or even identity, which is completely different to ours, making them view us as savages and us view them as frightening and alien. Each of these could lead to a misunderstanding that could get all the way out of control, since they wouldn't understand why we wouldn't want to be helped out of our barbarism and we couldn't understand why they won't just leave us the fuck alone.
You wouldn't even have to invoke biological differences to have that, just different cultural values.

I'm kind of envisioning what very idealistic and authoritarian social liberals might do if they were given power when I envision ways in which "benevolent" alien invaders might piss off humans. Indoctrinating children into religions that teach them things like they'll be tortured forever if they if they ever leave it is obviously child abuse. Ethnic and national strife is clearly causing a lot of problems, so we should dissolve all the governments. The general population obviously holds far too barbaric values for democracy to be a good idea. Maybe we can phase it in in a generation or three, when the general culture has been changed to something vaguely resembling a civilized one. You get the idea.

Then again, this approach could easily come off looking like a conservatard strawmanning screed. It would have to be handled carefully.
Why won't they leave us the fuck alone? I have a kind of compromise theory between the Sg1-gets-taken-down-a-notch (suggested I think by Shroom) and the Bringing-the-light-of-civilisation approach (suggested by Somes J): Basically the aliens, looking at the long term, see mankind will one day become a space faring species, but don't want the society it produces to be influenced by fundamentalist religion, xenophobic nationalism, vicious economic hegemonism and other unpleasant ismitis. So the invasion is both an act of benevolence and in their future astropolitical interests. Also it wouldn't start as an invasion, it'd start as a kind of missionary initiative, until some of the human governments started getting upset about the aliens funding revolutionary groups and conflict broke out, some governments decide to cooperate and receive their support, others don't and receive other things, things that don't slow down before they arrive.
That is also a pretty believable reason for interstellar invasion to happen in a realistic universe. I like this idea.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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I toyed with a handful of ideas in the ase verse that are similar to this too. I think I had a thread discussing it:
Later, I started thinking that if I was God, I'd put a stop to all of it. There would be no more violence, no more pain, no more death. It would all be gone.

There would be no more health problems, no more hunger, no more sadness (but see below). I'd snap my fingers and they'd all be gone.
[snip]
Now, what gets interesting is I am basically God in this universe, and my self-insert happens to get a great deal of power over his life. If real life me was given the chance, like I said, I'd do it. But, would author-insert me? I'm not so sure; it doesn't seem to fit so well into his background and character.

[snip]
But, an ethical system doesn't care about things like national borders. If it justifies taxing your own people, it also justifies taxing other nation's people if they won't do the right thing by themselves.


This is a very interesting result. But it gets worse.

Suppose a foreign country is fine now, but its succession laws would put someone unethical in power. Under [axiom: secondary consequences to a decision are still ethically relevant], your inaction now which allows that to happen is also unethical. Thus, you must intervene to ensure that their government remains good. This may include messing with their elections, or assassinating someone in line ([axiom: the net outcome matters rather than individual actions] and [axiom: the needs of the many outweight the needs of the few, or the one] can justify this).
I went on at some length, but this summarizes the basic idea pretty well.


BTW, some little alien like things that would freak people out:

a) They eat the dead. It would be unthinkable to waste perfectly good meat!

b) Adults are more important to save than children. As long as you have adults, you can always replace the children. (Naturally, given the chance to save both, you would.)


Just tweak a couple priorities and extrapolate them to their logical conclusions and you can get some pretty weird results.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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Destructionator wrote:a) They eat the dead. It would be unthinkable to waste perfectly good meat!
That isn't even really alien: there are human cultures that do it too (or at least used to), like the Wari. Although it being a question of not wanting to waste the meat might be genuinely alien. In human cultures that practice cannibalism it seems to usually be primarily about something other than wanting the food. There might actually be more room for horrible hilarious cultural faux pas if it was religious or symbolic, because then some of them might do it to human bodies too (human flesh would probably be unnourishing and I imagine most likely at least mildly poisonous to an alien, so it wouldn't make any sense for them to do that for nutrition).
b) Adults are more important to save than children. As long as you have adults, you can always replace the children. (Naturally, given the chance to save both, you would.)
Also as a correlary of this it's more important to save fertile and healthy people than old or sick people. It might also be more important to save females than males (assuming they have seperate sexes).

I like your ideas.

I have another one. They consider it more humane to kill crippled, deformed, or sickly children in infancy. Dying isn't suffering, it's only bad because you're afraid of it, and an infant doesn't know enough to realize what's happening, whereas it will suffer greatly from being crippled, deformed, or sickly. Obviously the humane thing is to kill it. They would extend this to children born with medical conditions that could be corrected, but only after a significant amount of pain. By the same logic they generally don't consider infants as people. Infanticide is not considered immoral in and of itself (although doing something like killing somebody else's children without their consent without a good reason would be, because it hurts the parents), although they do have a certain visceral discomfort with killing babies of their own species in something like the way that we might feel uncomfortable killing fluffy bunnies. Their legal system only recognizes you as a person if you have the ability to speak and reason. This would mean severely mentally retarded people wouldn't be considered people either. Note that this doesn't mean that you can do whatever you want to infants and severely retarded people, but they would be covered by something more akin to laws against cruelty to animals, and it's considered ethical to do things like use them in medical experiments (they make great subjects for them because they're the same species you want to direct your medicines or nasties toward).

Just imagine if the aliens started testing anti-human chemical or biological warfare agents on human babies or severely retarded people, or dissected and vivisected them and subjected them to dangerous and painful medical experiments to learn about our physiology and tested medicines intended for humans on them, without really thinking of how that would look to us.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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I wouldn't go too far to that level, man. While yes, the aliens are supposed to be aliens, I don't want them to be outright fucking monsters. The terrorists and insurgents here are supposed to be the Americans humans, and the aliens are supposed to be NOT a bunch of complete fuckers. Yes, they can have some strangeness and inhumanity to them, but not to the point where they're complete fuckopaths.

The story's supposed to be an allegory on the War on Terrorism or something. I'm supposed to be portraying the humans as a bunch of dicks. How can I do that when they're fighting against people who don't just kill babies, but also eat them? If they're supposed to be high and fancy enlightened types who are coming here to uplift humanity, then I don't think it would be cool to portray the uplifters as a bunch of baby-eaters. That just doesn't work, in a thematic standpoint.

(Yes, it can work in a pseudo-scientific purpose, aliens can certainly be all so strange. But for story purposes, it's shit. It's like portraying the Na'vi as a bunch of head hunting cannibalistic human-sacrificing savages. That would've made Avatar crap.)

Hrm... bird aliens would mean that they'd be pseudo-Kroot?

Oh, hey, here's an awesome idea:

What if these aliens are a COALITION of (the) WILLING alien species and races who jointly come to Earth to bring goodness to humanity?

And aside from these bird people, we can have my previously mentioned fuzzy big-eyed "nice" mammalians? And maybe a couple of freakish insectoids here and there. Imagine, an animal farm, a whole bunch of aliens that sort of resemble Earth animals, coming here and bringing TERRAN FREEDOM and SHOCK AND AWE to humanity!

That'd be awesome.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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The story's supposed to be an allegory on the War on Terrorism or something. I'm supposed to be portraying the humans as a bunch of dicks. How can I do that when they're fighting against people who don't just kill babies, but also eat them?
I was more unnerved by the idea they would think testing nerve gas or bioweapons on human babies would be perfectly acceptable. Eating I could understand, meat's meat after all, but medical and military testing on human infants and the handicapped? They may have justifications for it, and they may make sense from a certain angle, kind of, even though I don't think I'd agree with their reasoning even on an intellectual level, but it's just really hard to see them as truly civilised if they're testing nerve gas on your children.

I certainly think ideas like placing adults before children could work though, it'd be an understandable approach and would make them look, though callous, not like feathery space nazis.

A coalition of the willing could work very well for the difference between human and alien viewpoints, e.g. a human would see them all as aliens, assuming they're all part of some all encompassing heierarchy like the Covenant or an Evil Federation or something similar, and maybe manages to distinguish between different types of space monster. Then you go over to the alien point of view and see the differences between the dufferent alien species, the resentment of a Mollusc at being dragged into the SpaceCocks crusade, all this sort of thing, and the irony that all the aliens will in turn just think of the humans as 'humans' and see them fighting over petty differences like which 'country' or 'religion' or some wormshit like that they belong to. I hate this planet, man, I'll just be happy when the job's done, I can stick myself into suspension and sleep away the trip back to Mytilus Prime, man what I wouldn't give for some decent phytoplankton...
Etc.

Also something occurred to me spurred on by something about Battlestar Galactica: Depending on how advanced you want the aliens to be, you could have them able to back up their brains on their spaceships and just reupload themselves, or able to transmit their consciousness upon death, or store it on an internal data store, or something. This wouldn't have quite the same effect as when the Cylons did it, since with them the humans could plainly see anything they did was useless because you could identify the Cylons you 'killed' last week walking around, but it would still probably sap morale. It would also mean the aliens would be more likely to kill people indiscriminately, because they are used to working on the assumption that people have saved themselves beforehand, and even though they know humans can't store and download themselves they would still probably be a bit more careless with deadly force than humans would be.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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Somes J wrote:There might actually be more room for horrible hilarious cultural faux pas if it was religious or symbolic, because then some of them might do it to human bodies too (human flesh would probably be unnourishing and I imagine most likely at least mildly poisonous to an alien, so it wouldn't make any sense for them to do that for nutrition).
What I'm thinking is they might not necessarily act on it (it wouldn't take long to learn it is a no-no in the dominate human cultures (america fuck yeah)), but it might sit in the back of their mind, subtly coloring their perception of humanity.

It is like having an individual* racist who knows better than to actually act like it in public. He tries to hide that he thinks this way, but things come up. There was a crime? The black suspect is obviously guilty, every time, but never "because he's black".

Perhaps throwing out lines like "a lot of my best friends are black", even when it isn't really relevant.

The individual might not even consciously realize he is a racist until he is hit over the head with it.


So you'd have a character who acts normally 95% of the time, but in the other 5%, lets slip some weird sounding statements like mumbling "this coming from someone who wastes the dead", or jumping to conclusions.

* Surely not all characters think the same!
I have another one. They consider it more humane to kill crippled, deformed, or sickly children in infancy.
Hell, this isn't all that different than aborting a fetus who fails a genetic screen; some people would surely at least understand the reasoning behind it. (And others would suicide bomb the euthanasia clinics, or blow alien head off while they are praying in church.)
Just imagine if the aliens started testing anti-human chemical or biological warfare agents on human babies or severely retarded people, or dissected and vivisected them and subjected them to dangerous and painful medical experiments to learn about our physiology and tested medicines intended for humans on them, without really thinking of how that would look to us.
Doing weapons puts them more in the realm of Saddam than Bush; it doesn't fit into the "rescue us from WMD and terror" mold.

Doing medicine might work though. Not into the George Bush allegory exactly, but it is pretty easily consistent with an ethical system that says the many outweight the few.

"You perform experiments on sick kids! You monster!"

"How many children in the future are now going to suffer and die because you sabotaged this cure? We were this fucking close until you blew it up! And you call us the monster?!"


or the cynical take "sry i didn't realize it was only ok when for profit organizations do it"
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Re: Random ideas (again)

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Shroom Man 777 wrote:I wouldn't go too far to that level, man. While yes, the aliens are supposed to be aliens, I don't want them to be outright fucking monsters. The terrorists and insurgents here are supposed to be the Americans humans, and the aliens are supposed to be NOT a bunch of complete fuckers. Yes, they can have some strangeness and inhumanity to them, but not to the point where they're complete fuckopaths.
Is it really that monstrous? I mean, obviously it intuitively seems so to us, that's why I proposed it, but...

Most of us would be much more upset about somebody killing a human baby than a monkey. But if anything the monkey is probably smarter and has a richer experience of the world and all that stuff that's used to justify the "it's OK to kill animals and treat them like crap because they're not as smart as us" position. The aliens just take that position, which plenty of humans use to justify things like factory farming of chickens, and apply it more consistently. The aliens would say that we're just inconsistent with our ethics.
I'm supposed to be portraying the humans as a bunch of dicks. How can I do that when they're fighting against people who don't just kill babies, but also eat them?
Well, you could go with something like Destructionator's idea:

They can research their broad-spectrum cancer cure on cataclysmically retarded people or they can research it on chimps. If they do the latter it will take longer. They will need maybe a few hundred test subjects. How many people die of cancer every day? And keep in mind when I say "retarded" I mean people so brain-damaged as to be vegetables, or almost vegetables, not Downs Syndrome cases or anything like that. So you want to kill many thousands of people, maybe millions, to save a few hundred people who are in a permanent vegetative state or the next best thing to it? And the best part is the chimps are actually smarter and better able to understand what's happening to them than the human test subjects, so even going by test subject you want the solution that objectively creates more suffering. And ... you're claiming to have the moral high ground here?

Sure you could argue against that, but the very fact you could actually have a debate there is my point.
If they're supposed to be high and fancy enlightened types who are coming here to uplift humanity, then I don't think it would be cool to portray the uplifters as a bunch of baby-eaters. That just doesn't work, in a thematic standpoint.

(Yes, it can work in a pseudo-scientific purpose, aliens can certainly be all so strange. But for story purposes, it's shit. It's like portraying the Na'vi as a bunch of head hunting cannibalistic human-sacrificing savages. That would've made Avatar crap.)
Well if you don't think it'd be appropriate I have no problem with that. It's your story.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Acatalepsy »

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." While this makes an interesting-ish story (though this has already been done, though damned if I can find the link), it doesn't make it an interesting universe; I can see it degenerating into a lost of articles that could be easily summed as [Insert US politician/figure/technology/thing] --> [Insert Alien politician/figure/technology/thing] and [Insert Iraqi politician/figure/technology/thing] --> [Insert US politician/figure/technology/thing]. And then if you start taking stuff from outside the WoT, then you've broken the metaphor and now your political message makes no sense; if you have an alien equivalent of blackwater giving humans infected blankets, this breaks the message about blackwater, as blackwater never did such a thing.

I think Somes and Destruct have it right: you can't leave this as just an anti-conservative world, not in the least because political fiction, even when done by excellent authors, sucks. It's preachy. It's not fun, and in this case, after the initial shock and awe (dammit, I really didn't mean to do that) it would get stale. So start exploring other things. I like the metaethics and culture clash angle between occupier and occupied, and the hard sci-fi angle (though this may just be because I'm a sucker for hard-ish sci-fi). It reminds me of this story here, where humans encounter...well, read it for yourself. It's good. And what about the humans who realize that shooting at them is largely pointless, and would much rather get on with their lives. What unexpected side effects does introducing powerful but tightly controlled technology have? What sort of ripple effects catch the aliens off guard? Etc, etc. It can be made into a very good universe.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

You are correct. But it depends on what I'd aim for, really. Of course as a more simple and direct analogy to the WoT, it can't work as a universe since it's too small and focusing solely on the WoT just leaves you with too little material for a functioning and decent in-depth universe - and making articles that transplant America into aliens will get old pretty fast. If I go for a universe, I would have to explore other kinds of themes and things, and that would dilute the WoT analogy as a whole.

Unless I turn the rest of the universe into, like, some kind of terrible place where aliens routinely abuse smaller races for the lulz. Like, while Earth is now all WoT, we could have some other place where Space Conquistadores are ruining Alien Aztec shit, and elsewhere we can have Betelgeuse Brits taking over Reticulani Rajahs or some shit. Then it can still work as an analogy.

Either that or I ditch a lot of the WoT metaphors and go with something else.*

But, eh.


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.

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? Maybe it can work better as some kind of ironic and even satirical take on current world events. Like a horrible fuck-ugly political cartoon, but in story form. It'd have to be over-the-top, like Verhoven's Starship Troopers and Robocop. Hell, it can even be komedy.


Of course, delivering political messages is hard to do right and easy to do wrong. Unless if you're James Cameron, but the milwankers still rail and rage. So, yeah.

After posting my initial posts, I really didn't toy with the idea much further. I guess I just had to let it out of my system.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Czernobog »

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.

Of course, you could just ignore that part if you choose.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Destructionator »

Verhoven is a genius. I fully support anything in the style of SST and Robocop!
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Czernobog »

Just a random idea really, but I would like to make a 'verse with humanity represented by Russia. I dunno why, really. Maybe it's just the sci-fi cliché of 'everybody in space is American'. And as a fan and producer of alternate history, I would make it AH as well, with a POD maybe in the 1800s. Any comments?
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Either that or I ditch a lot of the WoT metaphors and go with something else.*
* This something else would be, say, something that's NOT too WoT-ish. Yes, there'd still be alien overlords overlording Earth, and the major human powers would be kowtowing to them. But perhaps instead of focusing on brutish WoT metaphors, worldbuilding can be done focusing on both the good effects of alien improvements in society - with new technologies and social-engineering - AND the conflict between that and "old Earth". We can see, how twenty or so years after first contact, those places that have accepted the aliens have become really freaking advanced - perhaps verging on posthumanism. But these places are STILL relatively few and far between when compared to the vast majority of the Earth.

Perhaps the difference between rich and poor has been further exacerbated? Or, again, conflicts. People leaving because they don't want alien cybernetics implanted in them to "improve" them. People protesting, resisting, and outright fighting the changes the aliens bring on human society. A conflict against the transformation of mankind. A combination of human purists, bigots if you will, religious/humanistic fundamentalism, and luddites.

A conflict between the new and the old. The glistening towers of the Alien Americas, versus the regressive shitholes throughout the world - in the Third World AND in America itself, outside the walls of the Megapolitan Green Zones.

It can be worked. While the resistance can be violent and brutal, no different from the mobs of Somalis in Black Hawk Down, so too can the aliens and their human allies be likewise harsh and cruel. Would advancement make the humans more empathetic to their unwashed brethren, or less so? What would a man be like when he's been bestowed with awesome technological powers, would he be kind and understanding to those railing against him, or would he be... unkind?

The aliens think that by working with the developed world, they're working with those best suited to carry out their benevolent cause. But is the developed world up for it? Or will the nations of America, Europe, China, and whatnot merely carry on what they've always been doing - but now, with posthuman tech, rayguns and saucers?

Hrm... this COULD work as a verse. Not a big spacey verse, but more like a one-planet deal like CSW. Except with aliens! And societal conflict! Haha!

And it can STILL keep the WoT metaphors - except, this time, we don't just examine that but we go broader into societal studies, and we can preach and ironically satirize OTHER things in society! Yes.

Hell, the aliens don't even have to look like ANYTHING at all! For all we know, the leaders of humanity could be interacting with aliens who - at all times - wear SPACESUITS while walking around on Earth! Heh!
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Kamin997 wrote: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.

Of course, you could just ignore that part if you choose.
The multiple alien species might not even cooperate at all, and may work against each others' interests, and could even be totally alien from each other.

The alien coalition might not even be an experienced/old one. It could be fairly new, with each species/nation/whatever having all sorts of integration issues themselves as they launch their first-ever intervention on Earth! Cultural incompatibilities, tactical incompatibilities, technological incompatibilities. An epic clusterfuck, with Earth taking the biggest shit of all.
Destructionator wrote:Verhoven is a genius. I fully support anything in the style of SST and Robocop!
AND make it like RED DAWN as well! TOOLVERINES!

Seriously. If I go with simple story form, it'll be told from the insurgents as they do all sorts of grueling acts of butchering Alien American soldiers - killing them with Rambo knives, making them explode with arrows - all portrayed positively and heroically! And the best thing is, I plan on having all these amazing atrocities done by Midwestern rednecks!

Bobby Joe! No!

Jimmy Lee, leave me behind! I can't make it!

Aw hell naw! Them alien critters are gonna git you!

Den let 'em git me! I'm taking dem scumsuckers down wid me!

Bobby Joe...

Jimmy Lee, tell my wife and my sister that I love her.

Who should I tell first?

They're the same person!

Bobby Joe... nooo!

You alien scumsuckers! Eat this! BUBBAHU ACKBAR! *detonates Hamas suicide bomber vest*
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Destructionator »

:lol:

Something to worry about if it is set too far past first contact is it might all be mang vs mang; the aliens hire local mercs or recruit humans to do their dirty work to keep their own hands (wings? talons? paws? pseudopods? ah fuck it. hands) clean.

There'd surely be some of this even early on, but as time goes on, the humans would be expected to stand up so the aliens can stand down.

If you want to go right into the aliens themselves, I'd set it in the first 5-10 years; like war on terror circa 2007.
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Re: Random ideas (again)

Post by Shroom Man 777 »

Point. Within a decade of first-contact then. But note that quite a few developed nations do end up allying with the aliens, since Doctor Breen was on something when he allied with the Combine. If you were a nation, and you knew fighting aliens with ungodly technology and weaponry was fruitless, you know that you might as well end up surrendering and getting off lightly - and becoming their vassal state. Like how America sponsored regimes in the third world, America and other nations themselves become sponsored regimes by the aliens who are exercising their control over Earth. Like the current "sovereign" governments in Iraq and Afghanistan. :lol:

Of course, many of these seemingly alien "allied" human factions might or might not be deliberately incompetent, reluctant, or downright corrupt and selling/smuggling alien tech as well.

I think that a handful of alien (two to three) invader species, their human accomplices, the worldwide resistance groups, and all sorts of factions in between - corporations, warlords, juntas, smugglers, nations - might make an interesting interplay worthy of a 'verse.

Of course, it's going to be complex as fuck to figure this out! I'm going to have to write real-life nations and factions, and work in an alien invasion and occupation!
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