A basic guide on how to make a sci-fi setting that doesn't suck. Discord: / discord Patreon: / jamestullos Twitter: / fortullos goodreads: / james-tullos
_In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and widely regarded as a bad move._ *~ Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*
While "rare resources" are fine and all, maybe don't choose hydrogen and helium, being the first and second most common resources in the universe, respectively.
My Sci-Fi/Space Opera only has one physics-breaking element, a type of crystal created by inter-dimensional transport of matter or energy. Said crystal functions perpendicular to normal space-time, allowing them to alter gravity, and have interesting reactions with biological systems.
One commodity that can be chosen is Helium 3. If your setting is hard sci-fi, the ships will likely use some form of fusion, and Helium 3 is the safest and most efficient fuel to use. Helium 3 is very rare on earth, with some on the moon, so having a large planet with a ton of it will make a lot of sense.
I like the video, but I'd like to point out Hydrogen and Helium are not good justifications for an outpost in an otherwise unused star system, particularly not orbiting a rocky world. They are the two most common substances in the universe, and can be found in huge quantities in gas giants. A better justification would be that "Bill" contains high amounts of rare metals or fissionables.
We could simply build that station in the orbit of Jupiter. It's reasonably far away and a station on the ground is impossible, because a) it has no solid ground and b) the gravity is far too strong. Just rename the planet and you're golden.
Iron, oil, thorium, uranium, gems, and not to mention all the random ass elements we need to make something as simple a battery. There are loads of things that can be mined, not just for practical reasons but commercial reasons too. I'm glad mining was touched upon.
Star Wars took the approach of just using ridiculous technology to justify the other ridiculous technology whilst doom introduces fantasy elements in a sci-fi setting and goes to the logical conclusion
I run on the Wild West Town Rule. The party can look around at first glance and see a bunch of infrastructure, but only the metaphorical saloons and banks have actual sets. Everything else can be made up later if I see them going there.
In role playing I have a simple rule: the world exists only as far as the players can see. If a campaign takes place in a city I come up with the most important basics of the city and the rest of the world exists in a state of flux. If the players are looking for something I didn’t envision in the city than I add it if it’s logical or mention it being in a neighboring city to set up a new location of interest for the players. Learning to add things on the spot is the mark of an experienced GM, if you do it right then your players will think it always existed and they’ll be impressed how well thought out the world is.
10:24 I learned that the hard way. I like worldbuilding more than I like writing, and for a creative writing project for a literature class, I actually did over-worldbuild. I reconciled it by still continuing to worldbuild on the side, but focusing on the story I was writing and including only the worldbuilding elements I actually needed. Ironically, I think the extra worldbuilding actually helped me. I started with a plan for the course of the story, but I was able to use the worldbuilding to ground the story and keep things logically consistent, something which some of my classmates had trouble with.
i think people shouldn't let themselves be restricted by any genre criteria, like hard vs soft sci-fi, and just create a world with its own logic and rules, mix things up and just let their creativity run wild. as long as they keep things consistent, everything should be allowed :)
It's interesting hearing what other people like in scifi because like you say, it is a very broad genre. To me, the appeal of the genre has always been about those stories about human endeavour and progress which may or may not involve "spacey" stuff at all. Striving for, and realising the consequences of, new discoveries is what gets my imagination racing.
I think something similar to the system they use in the City of London, but without as many ceremonial aspects suits the setting you outlined combining the trappings of democracy with immense corporate input. A more eccentric, opaque, difficult to comprehend system is hard to find than the City of London Corporation. Businesses, often Banks, Stock Trading and Insurance houses, alongside the Livery Companies (Guilds or Trade Unions might be the obvious equivalent) have pretty much the same status as electors and are probably quite a bit more important. The Square Mile is to some degree separate from the rest of London, has its own Lord Mayor (a mostly self-funded position, though with a very fancy official residence, Mansion House) and governmental structures, including its own Police separate from the Metropolitan Police. In most senses, it's nuts. Companies have the vote in City Government and membership of the different levels is sometimes chosen by a clique (the Court of Aldermen or the Livery Companies), rather than by the relatively small population who can afford to live there. All at the heart of one of the most important cities on Earth... If I was writing something based on a mining colony, I might be tempted to go down a similar road.
What I appreciated was that you kept this very grounded and to the point. I tend to get lost in details, and your mindset of not going too far past what's necessary is very helpful. Thanks.
How about a giant station built near a black hole, constantly siphoning off the black hole and using the dense materials found to build ships and parts
You open the video with, “Spaceships,” and all I could think was, “Spaceship? Spaceship spaceship spaceship! SPACESHIP!” Great video. I would definitely watch a whole a series like this.
Star Wars is Science FANTASY... just saying. EDIT... also, don't use Helium and Hidrogen... They're plenty abundant in our own solar system, this little thing called Jupiter has a lot of 'em. If you must justify it, say Bill is a gas giant and Marlucia is the result of an old "mining" station slowly growing to the point where it become a full blown colony. Mining in quotes because, well, you don't really mind gas off a gas giant, not like you'd mine ore on earth.
That might be a good description, but its not actually a genre in and of itself. "Science Fiction" isn't an exclusive genre. Something that is Space Opera, Science Fantasy, or Space Fantasy ARE all types of Science Fiction, and gatekeeping is B.S. Heck, something can be Speculative Fiction and Sci-Fi at the same time, look at Handmaids tale.
Something any sci fi story in the far future needs to bring up is why don't they just use robots for everything? Why use human workers when a robot can do the same work but better and faster? Why don't the military just mass produce cheap robots as cannon fodder? Even if A.I.s are illegal they will still automate most if not all factory jobs.
Ben Cox in dune it is because their state religion bans all computers, in Star Wars there have been many disasters associated with the use of system AIs and fully slave rigged (droid controlled) warships including droid rebellions, disasters like the Katana fleet, and the stigma of the CIS. For Enders game it has to do with the fact that humanity never develops AI, maybe due to the weird phillisophical theory of philotes in that universe. In the expanse they simply have not been around long enough to develop it, but the precursors did have AI of some sort. And on and on and on. Hopefully these examples can help any prospective authors brainstorm some reasons of their own :)
Thanks for your video! Adore sci fi, and I've been working on my own setting for it. I feel like I have all the right pieces to make it, but videos like this help give me a push in the right direction.
You wanna know how I do ftl travel? Fold engines, which are essentially just tesseracts that are projected in to our reality. Using their (completely made up) ability to fold reality in on itself, you can travel great distances in a matter of minutes.
I have my setting somewhat fleshed out, but it's *far* from done. I'm even going so far as to make up the cultural musical styles of the period (which by the way is the early 22nd century)! And I can add some interesting character moments via remarks about the current music or something along those lines.
Bios - Robert Charles Wilson. A sci-fi story where there's a space station set up around an alien planet that is uninhabitable owing to the highly destructive and contagious microorganisms. However as the only known example of alien life of course it must be studied... Pretty good read IMHO
Except scifi is far harder to bs around unless you're trying to compete with megacorps like Disney and EA, spoiler; they practically own the science fantasy genre with their stranglehold on star wars.
If Planet Bill's main resources were gases, it would make more sense to have it be a gas giant, which neatly explains why there has to a station: There's no surface to live on.
but if it's a gas giant it'll be a lot more of a pain to collect the materials, since gas giants have a lot of hard to deal with gravity planet bill is implied to have simple access to the raw materials, or access to a rarer compound of that element
Micky Deery not really though. It would be very easy to build an orbital refinery above a gas giant, where it would be cheap enough to refine the fuel that you can easily afford the costs of the additional fuel required to collect it. Honestly, compared to a system where you are extracting gases, just drawing them up from an atmosphere would be very simple, and very cheap.
@@whitneylackenbauer9782 collecting and refining i wasn't planning to debate, gravity on the other hand... quite an interesting time trying to keep that station afloat just from fighting the gravity, and also not torn to bits from the hellish storms that just keep going on gas giants
I can't wait to see the military stuff. I realized that I have a really ancient alien race that is more than a billion years old and hasn't traveled past their own solar system, but is getting there. :( Might need some work? Maybe not? Maybe this world sort of has it's own logic? Anyway, I like your stuff and this gives me something to think about when I am building my own science fiction world.
@7:40@ I thought this topic is so intresting I made it one of the mystires of my universe in the story. the story takes place in the year 2020 and earth was completly destroyed by a "great" conqurer named "the Supierior Graffine", one of the survivers is a girl named Iy-la, and she s forced to live in other planes (other than earth) you can go through planets in my story using cracks in space and time, in earth the only crack is in the Baramoda tringle (but we were too aciant and undeveloped as a spicies to find that out) all the other goverments (other than the destroyed earth) have totaliterion leaders, for example: king, Sulten, Chif, head of the Tribe. communisem and ect. earth was the only one that made a democracy (that was ruined after he was destroyed) while all the other more deeloped and amazing civilastions still live in middle ages when we are talking about things like basic human rights, the big quastion is : why and how only earth developed well enough to understand human rights and democracy, while none of the other plants maneged to? of course the answer is a spoiler so I won't say more.
Create an anime setting & plot please. I'd be very intrigued & fascinated with what you'd be able to conjure up. It can be sci-fi, fantasy, noir, comedy, slice of life or a mixture of genre(s) & it can be of this world or that of a different one. My only stipulation is that it must be a Shounen or Seinen
I made a tactical, strategic, ccg with a back story... built with conspiracy theory in a fantasy world, currently I have a space game ccg on the back burner without a script... for now.
4:38 James lists reasons to live on an orbital space-station, rather than the plannet. If the air isn't breathable, it would still be cheaper to put the space station ON the plannet, rather than in orbit. This applies to most of your reasons. The exception being that the plannet has gravity too strong to survive. Workers on the space-station service and care for the robots that they send down to the surface.
"It could be too hot" if, by that, you meen: "too hot to build an air-conditioned bunker, because the plannet's surface is molten lava, even at the poles" then yes that would make a space-station preferable but then, how would you mine the plannet?
An alternative for an oligarchy/plutocracy is Athens under Solon, where people were divided into four wealth-based classes which each had equal share of the vote. Thus, the minority of rich people haf more sway than the poor masses.
That seems like a cross between a plutocracy, and a republic. Basically, people are divided into groups that are given some sway over the government which seems more like a republic but those groups are in fact, wealth-based which is the unmistakable mark of a plutocracy.
While lying on the floor recently, I was thinking, "Writing is actually a lot like math. Everything you do, it needs to add up, it needs to flow logically, and everything that happen needs to have a logical explanation." I'm a physics major, but I'm going to work on writing hard scifi.
James: ["It'd be interesting to see sci-fi from the ground up but Earth's future is also cool"] *Smugly chuckles in the setting of my books having both before spitting out tea at the realization that it's raw.*
Why does it have to be space? Just because the society is really advanced doesn't mean that they ever had any reason or desire to invest in space travel and the stars. Some might just not care.
Also, space travel could not be possible for one reason or another, despite a society being sufficiently advanced. Think of a planet without the necessary minerals to build spacecraft or some physical barrier barring them from leaving their home planet.
My world is both fantasy and sci-FI. A race, they were not humans like us, more like smarter neandertal , they started a civilaztion much earlier than the other ”humans” , they lived on the large land mass that after many thousands of years went into an ice age so they had to flee. At this point they had allready reach the space age. All the faction had to unite to save themself, while some did intergrate with the other ”humans” most of the race didn’t want to interract and cause trouble so they went to another planet in their solar system. It was colder but liveable, with breathable atmopshere and large amounts of water. They terra formed the planet to suit their needs and ever since they have advanced in magic and technology. Very rarely visiting their planet of orgin.
@@mollof7893 It sounds very cool, I'm doing something a little similar with other race of human like people but i asked because i would like to know if i could read it i would love too.
@@aethelredtheready1739 lol, I don't know... as he mentioned about that H and He, Isaac Arthur suddenly come to my mind and I scroll the comment... found somebody say about starlifting... and yeah... it definitely from Isaac Arthur... 😁
Hey James! There is this one science fantasy book that I had been worldbuilding since I was a kid, and in the last three+ years I had been writing down everything related to the universe and plot, characters and mechanics that could not fit in my head anymore. It is a project I am hoping to release in next upcoming few years if my spark wont run out, heh. Could I send you a copy if you are willing to read once the first revisions are out?
You say that you can either explore deeper messages or just interesting ideas...aren't they the same thing? If you really fully explore an interesting idea then you end up with a deep message. If you start with a cool idea but don't further explore it, then you just end up shitty story. Good stories de facto have deeper messages.
Here is my hot take on world 🌎 building. Unless interpretive dance is relevant to you plot and or characters you shouldn’t put it your story! Your barbarian swordswoman doesn’t need know about process of soap 🧼 production and trading. Your wizard 🧙♂️ doesn’t need to know about the mating habits of shrews in a universe that he doesn’t live in. And your space marine doesn’t need to know about the geological history of a canyon that is nowhere near a target location or a his base.
