Themes

So in a recent discussion, the topic of science fiction came up, and my friends and I discussed many many sci-fi series as well as their flaws. In the course of this discussion, I was reminded of a science fiction setting that I have been developing on and off since I was a young teenager. With this nudge of encouragement, and my mind filled once more with imaginary tales, I went and pulled out the notes I’ve made over the years developing this alternative world. As I did so, however, this time I paused and pondered a deeper question on the matter that I’d not considered in some time.

What is the purpose of this project?

The reason as to why I continue to work on the project is because it is my forever project. A vanity project of sorts, in which I will do everything right, dammit, whatever my definition of right at the time means. I have opinions on the matter of forever projects and their role in creative output that I may get into in a different post, but why I am working on this project is quite a bit different from the purpose of the project. To be certain, it has shifted over time. The project was born out of a mixture of desires. I wanted to create a compelling science fiction universe that would make a great setting for a table top role playing game. At the time I began world building, the major sci-fi table top RPGs on the market were based on already existing properties, and came with the trappings and limitations of those properties, which I wished to be free of. I also wanted a sci-fi game that was not moored to these already existing properties, a setting which could be free to explore ideas and concepts without having to be beholden to a canon that had already established its own answers to so many questions. Another desire was to make a cleaned up science fiction universe. At the time I was disgruntled over the mess of contradictions that seemed to occur in the lore of so many other stories, and I hoped to avoid such problems.

I realize now that the mess of contradictions were actually pretty mild. Nobody but me cares that the Klingons have birds of prey, nor realize why that’s possibly wrong. Nor does anyone care that the scale of the A-wing is possibly the most inconsistent of any vessel in the Rebel Alliance. The contradictions and inconsistencies exist, in Star Trek, Star Wars, and many other properties. However, while they make for interesting topics of discussion with friends ( or arguments with internet trolls ), they do not, as a whole, tend to hold back their universe settings. Instead, the individual settings are reliably internally consistent enough to do what they are really intended for, and that is to be backdrops for telling interesting stories.

And in this, I find my answer for the purpose of the project. I wish to create a science fiction universe which, ahead and above all other objectives, is capable of being a place in which people can tell interesting stories. Everything else is secondary. If the setting cannot be used to tell an interesting story, then it has no reason to exist for me. Given that single purpose, now I can begin to plan the setting intelligently, and determine the details that will help enable certain kinds of stories to be more easily told.

This raises the next question, of what kind of stories do I want to enable most in my science fiction universe? From here, I’d like to take a step back and look at what kinds of stories other science fiction universes tell. For example, Star Wars I like to call a fantasy story with science fiction trappings. That is to say, it dresses like space opera science fiction with its aliens and starships. But its themes tend towards fantasy, with mystical Force powers and themes of good versus evil laced throughout it. Star Trek is at its best, in my opinion, when it is a morality play. It is telling the stories of humans, and how they deal with the situations around them. It sometimes delves deeper into questions of what it means to be human, using Data as an example of what artificial life may be and what rights it may or should have. And sometimes it uses Q as an excellent vehicle for asking some pretty deep questions, if you want to go looking for them. Babylon 5 tells political stories in space, with just a -touch- of mysticism added in for flavor and cohesion. Like Star Trek, it also sometimes puts on a morality play, but I feel that for the most part, what Babylon 5 really wants to be is a grand epic story of intercultural politics and the long-term consequences of various actions. Cyberpunk, which is definitely science fiction, often tells stories of out of control corporate greed while meshing that with questions about the near future of humanity. What shape will our future selves be, cyberpunk asks, when we have true artificial sentience available, or when a human mind can be encoded as a stream of data, free to float in information clouds? Some of my favorite sci-fi, particularly the 'harder' stories where the science is more likely to exist at some point in our future, tell stories about how technological progress will change humanity. How humanity becomes redefined by its tools, and how these tools in turn change how we interact with each other and the universe at large. Sometimes these stories are about the tools themselves, and their impacts. Isaac Asimov's robot based stories in particular are very good at this. Banks' Culture, while not hard sci-fi even remotely, also I think touches on the kind of society that must be developed by a far-off futuristic environment.

In deciding what kind of stories I wish to enable, I feel a desire to provide cohesion to my universe, by very purposely not trying to be everything to everyone. While I find all of the previous ideas and stories compelling, and I do not feel they are mutually exclusive from one another, I do not wish to try to tell all of them all at once. I would like my setting to enable those stories to be told, but there is definitely a default tone and theme I wish to convey. Since this is my setting, I am electing to purposely stay away from some elements which seem common ins science fiction, but which I find annoying. Specifically, my universe comes with no mysticism built-in. No magic, prophecies, precognition, or other similar mystical elements that have a tendency of sneaking their way in. In declaring this, I am keeping in mind the third of Clarke’s three laws ( “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic” ), and -that- is certainly something I might invoke in my setting, but it will still be internally consistent. The audience may not always understand the technology, and the characters in the story might run across technology they don't understand, but I will try damn hard to avoid handwaving and mumbling 'magic' as much as possible. In the similar vein of themes I am avoiding, I am not interested in telling a fantasy story. Star Wars’ tendency towards having larger themes of good versus evil and mystical Force powers will be abandoned in favor of something rather more like human morality on the good and evil scale, and in favor of internally self-consistent empiricism in place of mysticism.

Other themes I will not expressly pursue are those themes that I feel cyberpunk is better equipped to explore. While I am not flat-out excluding these themes, unlike the mysticism themes which I -am- excluding, these themes I am simply choosing to not deeply explore by default. These themes in question regard mind uploads and cyberspace. To be clear, I like these themes and find them interesting; however, I do not wish to explore them with this setting. I want to place focus elsewhere for my world building, and also, I have another setting in mind which is far better suited to explore these themes, which I will not go into here. I -do- intend for my sci-fi universe to have some of the trappings of cyberpunk, namely self-modification through genetic or cybernetic means, and robots and AIs in general. However, I will not establish virtual cyberspace worlds, and reliable mind uploading will be beyond the capabilities of the technology I plan to define.

So now, past themes I am excluding or neglecting, we come at last to those themes I do wish to explore and emphasize. My setting will be a space opera setting, and I will be attempting to enable exploration stories to be told, while leaving substantial room for both morality plays and political epics. However, the primary theme I wish to explore is exploration; of crews of people pushing out into the vast unknown, taking potentially huge risks in order to push the frontiers of science and knowledge. I must admit a love for the premise of Star Trek, that of a ‘wagon train to the stars’, as Gene Roddenberry put it. The location will be our very own milky way galaxy, and the time will be in some far future where faster than light travel is readily available, and humanity must co-exist with alien civilizations that are both ahead and behind them according to various metrics. In explored and established space, political and war stories can be told, fights for resources can be had, and stories of interspecies interaction can be had. Outside of these areas, however, there is a vast unexplored universe, just waiting for its stories to be discovered.

Fittingly enough, when I first came up with this setting, I called it Farspace, a name I felt was evocative of what I was trying for then. I have refined my ideas since then, but the name is no longer appropriate for use. For one, it is -way- too close to Farscape. The new working title is Frontier, and it is this setting which I now wish to flesh out and build a world into. From here on out, I shall refer to my own setting by this working name.

Now, given an overall theme, with a set of subthemes that I wish to explore, it becomes easier to flesh out the specifics. Before fully engaging in world building ( the part I am really looking forward to doing ), however, it seems important to at least think about the mediums that I wish to most support. Ideas that are very useful for creating a compelling world for written works may be the very same ideas that would be detrimental in certain video game genres. For example, in most written stories, death being a permanent and irreversible thing usually implicitly assumed. In an MMO, however, permanent death of player characters is simply not desirable unless catering to certain niche audiences.

It’s my intent, as I build this world, to make note on what effects the decisions I make would have on different mediums. For the record, the default medium here is going to be short stories, told through text. If my drawing is ever up to it, I may engage in some drawing. Ultimately, I do want to create a game or two in this universe, but not an MMO. Regardless of my chosen default mediums, however, I think at least being aware of other possible mediums, and talking about them while I build my world, will be interesting.

Let's see where we can go from here.