Gathering Of Dedicated Scribblers discussion

Hi. I've been a consumer of sci fi for too many years and have a story in me that I really need to exorcise. I love me some dense, science-heavy fiction. I wanted to mentally explore how we as a species will populate the solar system (e.g. no FTL, no magic technology (cold fusion, tractor beams, photon torpedo's, self-aware AI, instantaneous communication over vast distances, etc)). But more importantly, what drives us to make a "better future" for generations we'll never see.

Big theme: Where do we draw the line between survival and sacrifice for the greater good?

Here's my pitch:

Set in the distant future, due a natural cataclysmic event the Earth is no long inhabitable and what remains of humanity lives on the Moon and Mars. Three self-interested conspirators plan a heist from a seed bank in order to start a farm Mars that is going through a massive land grab. The lunar station "Sheriff" is overwhelmed by an influx of a religious cult pilgrimage to the station as well as the arrival of his daughter and infant grand-daughter. As the cat-and-mouse chase between the robbers and police escalates, they are all swept up into a larger crisis when the cult leaders have claimed the station by using explosives intended to simply cut the station off from the other stations. But it goes horribly wrong and threatens the lives of all the residents. In the chaos, the Sheriff's daughter is killed but the nearby thieves are compelled to bring an orphaned infant along as they try to escape from the station and flee from the obsession of the Sheriff who blames the trio for his daughter and grand-daughter's death.

Story Notes: this is a western set on the moon. The original plot inspiration is "3 Godfathers" (1948 film) but I wanted to do world building on how we'd survive on the moon using current science/engineering theories. I also want to explore the idea of self sacrifice for the greater good; what compels us to make rational decisions that we won't benefit from but our decedents will. The three thieves and Sheriff are neither evil or good, each has their own self-motivations and flaws, but ultimately their goals will require them to decide whether or not to take actions against their best interest for the greater good.

This is very ambitious and promising. I can see a lot of potential for fast-paced action sequences, as well as deep emotional scenes. You're layering a lot of trauma into your protagonists, that will provide credible background for revenge, guilt, and perhaps eventually also redemption.

I think that one of the most challenging aspects of the story will be getting the science right and many a science-fiction fan will go through it with a fine toothed comb. But I'm sure you've given it a lot of thought and done extensive research so that the story will hold water.

Good luck!!!

Thanks! Like I said, I've been chewing on it a while. Had a false start a year ago, put it away, and now it's piqued my interest. I'm having fun with the tech and science, it's the human factors that are going to be the struggle. People's emotions are motivations are...um...squishy.

I'm sure you'll find someone to pair up with who will help you with that. I found some Coursera writers who call me out on some tech aspects in my story (that is clearly my Achilles' heel), for which I'm grateful. Meanwhile, I help with their flow, dialog, also making their characters act and behave naturally. We all have our strengths and weaknesses. That's why writing together is so great – we make each other better writers.
I believe in you! :)

I think you could use buildings such as 'Biosphere 2' to outline settlements on the lunar surface. These could act as a capitol in your story. The building is created, then the biodome is established providing food and oxygen since the moon has no atmosphere. Now you could integrate miners/engineers that would begin carving your 'cities' through tunnel systems under the lunar surface.

On the lunar surface you will acquire a great scifi, environment while actually in the mines/shafts/tunnels you could see how that environment relates to westerns. Domes underground linking tunnels together. Rail cart tracks used as locomotives, tunnel lighting throughout. Lava pockets under the lunar surface would provide large carved out areas for farming that would only require artificial grow lights.

yes. I'm trying to look at how we plan to use the natural resources as the foundational materials/structures. I am going to make assumptions that refinement and extraction methods will be more efficient in the future, but only as an improvement of what we know now. From regolith we can get Oxygen, Iron, Hydrogen, Carbon, etc. Looking at Carbon Nanotube to be the foundation of most everything structural. Nantotubes are also great conductors/semi-conductors, so that'll be useful. I envision that 80% of all structures would be underground leveraging lava tubes where possible but using Nanotube material to create walls and support. Solar and Hydrogen will be power sources and will be in abundance. I am assuming that most food will be from an algae/fungi foundation. Organic materials will be recycled/repurposed, nothing wasted. There will be specialized robotics, nothing AI, for general purpose and dangerous tasks, so humans will be the primary labor/intelligence. Living on the moon is difficult and I envision similar (but not literal) feel to US Western outpost towns; people live hard lives like settlers.

The greatest thing is that your story doesn't have to focus on the exact details of colonization, if it takes place afterward. This isn't, The Martian, where you're describing how life maintained/survived or started. You're story takes place afterward as a western setting in an sci-fi world. A lot of the particulars you can skip as long as you have basic references to world living as opposed to world building.

Most food could have started from Algae/fungi but lets assume you're story takes place two or three generations from that point where an older man is saying, "You're lucky. Back in my day we had to survive on Algae and Fungi farms. None of this, Little Dipper Burgers!"

In fact, to add to your Western theme, you're robbers could be settlers trying to appropriate an older pre colonization biodome. You could say the Taurus mountains or Crater Littrow are now basically abandoned as technology improved it was financially more feasible to build anew than to update. This happens with many missile silo's in the USA. You're settlers win a lottery, acquire a big farm on the moon and thinking their luck has finally changed, they inherit biodome three.

Now distraught at the government, having spent their life savings to relocated to what they thought would be their dream farm, they makes plans to steal what they believe should have been given to them. The sheriff trails them from the major metropolis biodomes to the outskirt 'country farms'. Farms more self sustainable than the tunnel connected newer settlements.

Blah, now I'm rambling. I apologize. lol.

Hi Andres,

Thanks for feedback. I've been swamped at work but this week's book agenda is to figure out how people will walk on the moon, inside lunar stations. Really. people are going to moving about individually and in groups. what would this look like? How do you design a hallway for 1/6th gravity? Stairs?

Here's what I've thought. so first of all, a healthy unencumbered adult could jump vertically about 18" (~.5m) on Earth. The same person could do about 9' (2.7m) on the moon. A typical modern (American...i don't know about other building standards) home has 8' to 9' of headroom. I don't want people launching themselves down hallways and bonking their heads, so i'm thinking a person who's about 6' tall who can jump 9' up, requires a minimum of 15' ceiling, but we'll need some wiggle room so add another 1.5' clearance which means hallways will be minimally 16.5' which is a nice solid 5 meters. Problem one solved!

Next thing to consider might seem to be stairs, but NO! stairs need to fit the natural gait of adults for the run and not too much rise or they'll launch themselves skyward (without some sort of mechanically restrictive device) or stumble because they missed the landing. So really, stairs might as well be eliminated and simply go for ramps. it would be fun to go down a ramp, a kick forward and the slope is the same as the gravitational pull so you "fly" down to the bottom without touching until the ramp ends. Ladders and firemen's poles will be in use, but we have ladders here on earth and rarely use them for daily locomotion.

Where to begin about walking. I like the Expanse's idea of magnetic boots, but honestly for long term, daily use, people would feel restricted and walking would take up too much energy. People could just tie rocks to their feet in a pinch, but that'd get tiring. So i'm thinking some sort of side of the shin strap-on device that fits over any clothing and goes all the way down to the floor. If you step flat-footed, the magnet engages and holds you in place. you step with a rolling foot, it doesn't. to dis-engage, sliding the foot forward rather than rocking/lifting it should work. I don't think it would be practical to wear on both feet, so we'd wear only on the dominant leg and use the unencumbered leg for propulsion (as a kid, we did a thing with wearing a single skate-before rollerblades-for speed and the free foot allowed a lot of maneuvers and control). So if one were just moving freely down a hall, they'd develop a harmonic gait (similar, but not as drastic or clumsy as the Apollo astronauts), sinusoidally moving along a straight path. Need to stop? land on both feet flat footed, the mag kicks in and the other is used to counter the inertia. want to make a turn, the free foot can easily push to change directions. Going back to hallway designs, turns would have a radius to them, no sharp 90 degree bends; maybe roundabouts at intersections? hmmm.

So that's been *my* week of not writing a book! Whacha think?

What if your current fashion trend was to wear weighted clothing? Like the goth/punk boots were layered with iron, this is why they are platformed. This gives everyone a more balanced walk. Your advertisement would look like the shoes that firm your butt when walking but made to give a real man their 'strut'.

This could have started big in the criminal organizations because weighted clothing allowed them to fight the natural float between steps increasing the amount of inertia they accumulated from each step and outrunning law enforcement. Just like tattoos, kids started to wear the clothing because they wanted to be cool/bad and it became the fashion. Now 'float' became more sporty where roller bladers used the lesser gravity to increase their stunts. This gives you two factions between "floaters and stoners" which sounds like two drug separations but in your reality its only clothing preference.

Personally I like the idea of ramps in the future. I think everyone will be on board less skateboards, uni'wheels, electric scooters, seated segways, electric rollerblades etc. Now you don't need escalators or anything because the people are on their own personal movers. So the majority don't even notice the gravity because they stay on their moving devices. Now the gravity in your world only becomes important to your protagonist.

interesting. i hadn't thought about clothing/fashion. weighted clothing? Never thought of that. I had a vision of these people being pretty utilitarian, practical with maybe a little flair. But it stands to reason that in a grey/monotone environment, bright colors would be a natural draw. I had also not thought about advertising/commerce, that would definitely give the environment some life. I like that. as for weighted clothing, it seems like it would work in the vertical, but be problematic in the horizontal movement. the weight would need to be proportionally distributed for the body because of our center of balance. Having weights in the pant leg or arms, unless the clothing is tight fitting would be banging against legs/arms. So that'd mean either a weighted belt or vest. It might work well for a visitor (earth or mars), but for a native it would impractical and annoying for long term. Inertia would work both ways in that once up to speed, making changes harder to negotiate, the moon bases are pretty much closed systems, the only way out is through the public transportation, so stealth would be more critical than speed. as for weighted shoes, that actually might be more problematic, beside the effort, it would drastically change the center of gravity. having a free leg to compensate and one leg that can act as a pivot is probably a more practical, low cost, elegant solution.

This very helpful. Thanks!

You're very welcome.

Fashion never makes sense. It could be something simple like taking the african tribe that wears metal rings around their necks to elongate it because they believe a longer neck defines beauty. In your world it could be fashion savvy like a diver wearing sinking stones in the ocean.

Those shoes with the skates built into them that kids wear could be the fashion and you could activate a magnetic switch which allows them to ride upside down or straight down walls. It's your world, make it up and who knows, the future might say you invented it before its time.