Worldbuilding: Integrating the Top Down and the Bottom Up

I'll fully admit, the worldbuilding work I've done for the Banshee space-opera verse has was done in a strange way.  Namely, I did a combination of top-down and bottom-up building. 

To define these terms: top-down building is when you make first big decisions about the different cultures, borders and interactions, and then build the map to meet those needs.  Bottom-up building is when you create the map first, and then figure out cultures, borders and interactions based on what the map demands.

Neither approach is right or wrong, good or bad.  They're just different ways to go about it.  In fact, I advocate the hybrid approach.

In this case, the "top down" involved the decisions about some of the alien cultures closest to Earth.  I knew one thing I wanted was a large Alliance in close proximity to Earth, who had taken a preservationist/non-interference attitude to the planetbound cultures in their spheres of influence.  I knew I wanted an aggressively expansionist culture (the Paxin) and an imperialist culture (the Surani), and a recent interstellar addition who would give the humans a good fight (the Krek'nik). 

Also, in general, I wanted our interstellar region to be filled with intelligent life that was all, more or less, in the same place-- i.e. everyone had gotten into space or could potentially get into space within a few centuries of each other (or in the case of the three "old" powers in the region, a few millennia)-- which, in cosmic terms is the blink of an eye and highly improbably, unless you incorporate a serious don't-poke-this-too-hard conceit.  Which I did. 

But, in terms of "bottom up", I knew I wanted the stellar geography to be sensible.  Real stars where they really are. Now, this meant I probably did a bit of homeworld-fudging-- I'm given to understand that Procyon is probably too young a star to have a planet with advanced life on it, for example-- but that fulfilled at least a sense of verisimilitude.

But the other "bottom up" aspect I had to ask myself was-- what else was out there?  I had the raw data on stars within 150 light-years of Earth, and from that, crafted some randomization for each star:  Are there planets?  Where are the planets?  Do any have life?  Is that life intelligent?  How technologically advanced is that intelligent life?  Have they achieved FTL travel, and if so, when?  From all that, I could build up exact details of the 147 starfaring cultures, and how their potential interaction might be.

This bottom-up method gave me the opportunity come up with ideas that I might never have had without star-map based data fueling it.  Seven alien cultures in relative proximity to each other form a loose coalition.  One advanced culture with no one in proximity builds a sizable empire before encountering any pushback.  Another with a powerful aggressive species nearby builds their culture on defending themselves. 

From this, I found more interesting discoveries.  I devised a little equation based on expansion (how many colonies or outposts a culture had) and their tech level, and were able to calculate who the true "First Level" powers in the region were.  And from that, I've been putting together how the Astronomical Geopolitics (Astropolitics?) really work. 

I'd like to think doing that work-- while anal and time-consuming-- has created something a little more organic than just a top-down alone process would have.

Worldbuilding: Aliens and Daily Rhythms of Life

So: get up in the morning, shower, dress, breakfast.  Commute to work, work throughout the morning, take some time for lunch, back to work until the end of the evening.  Commute home, have dinner, attend to duties of household and family, engage in some sort of minor recreation activity before settling down for (preferably) eight hours of sleep to repeat the following morning.

An average day for the average person in modern day North America.

But if you expand it to all the humans on Earth, then it's a different story.  Different rhythms, different daily rituals.  Although most humans prefer to operate in the daytime and sleep at night, even that is hardly universal. 

So, of course, for alien species, the "daily" rhythm is going to be something quite different.  Even what might be considered a "day" to them could be very different, depending on their biological needs and the rotation of their homeworld. 

I started thinking about this more and more with Banshee.  As with many things in that work, I thought about something that was sort of taken for granted on Star Trek, and inverted it.  Namely, the way the time schedules work.  Sure, they use "star dates", so it isn't just exclusively using the Gregorian Calendar, but the day-to-day is still very human.  Life on the Enterprise or Voyager is still a 24-hour day*, and the duty roster is split into three eight-hour shifts.  There's still a "night" shift**, which is incredibly arbitrary in space.   It's not like things are quieter or less active because of when you decided to schedule your sleeptime.

But what's fascinating is, at least on Trek, there isn't even much lip-service to the idea that Klingons, Vulcans, Trill or any other species might be on a different life-cycle.  One exception: Phlox on Enterprise, whose need for sleep is essentially a six-day hibernation every year. 

Now, part of the fun I've had on Banshee involved taking that to an extreme: you have a ship with eleven different species, and each species is on a different rhythm.  To the point that the higher-ups don't even bother setting a schedule or "ship's time".  You need to sleep, eat, or deal with other biological functions?  Go ahead.  That's your priority, and you deal with it as you need.  It's not for anyone else to say you can't do that.

For a human officer, used to a strict regiment and set duty roster... that's very disconcerting.  But that's part of what she needs to learn to deal with.



---
*- On Deep Space Nine, they at least had a 26-hour day, which was based on Bajor, but even still: hours.  And the rest still applies.
**- "Night" shift might be on some universal-ship time throughout Starfleet, but it seems to be more, "When the Captain is sleeping, that's the night shift". 

Worldbuilding: Aliens and Environments

Now I'm working on Banshee, a space-opera novel that, on a fundamental level, is about putting a human being on a ship with a whole lot of different aliens and asking, "So how is this going to work?" 

There are some hard questions that can be asked that a lot of sci-fi works tend to ignore or only give a passing nod to.  

If I'm being honest, on my end, I'll probably be giving a passing nod to some of them myself.  But here are some things I've been thinking about in terms of putting nearly a dozen different alien species on one ship together.  First and foremost, the question of, "Is this even worth the trouble?"  Can the advantage of mutual cooperation amongst different species outweigh the inherent difficulties in trying to live in the same space?

Let's just presume, in this instance, that most species on the ship have a respiration cycle that requires oxygen.  It's not a terrible presumption, mind you-- any respiration cycle will need a molecule that's reactive, but not TOO reactive-- but then you have the question of How Much Oxygen?  Odds are not everyone will need the same balance as everyone else.  What if one species needs, say, 30% oxygen in their atmosphere?  Then the reactive properties that make oxygen molecules useful for humans becomes a little more problematic.  What if one species requires an atmosphere that's toxic to another?  What if one species's waste product is toxic to another? 

How do you decide who needs to just wear an environmental suit, since their environmental needs are far too inconvenient to everyone else?

Other factors to consider, just for starters: Gravity.  Light levels. Temperature tolerances.  Radiation levels.

And that's just about being in the same space.

What about working in the same space?  Even presuming that interspecies communication is functional enough to facilitate working together, what about ergonomics?

How do you make workstations that accommodate beings with different body sizes, body types, forms of fine-motor control, visual ranges and hearing ranges?  Do you put chairs at them?  If you aren't humanoid, chairs are pointless.  If you have only two hands (or equivalent) then using a console designed for four or more will be very challenging.  Similarly, if you have four or more, using a console designed for only two would feel woefully inefficient.

So you have to ask yourself, which compromises are the best fit for everyone, and which ones create ones that everyone can tolerate, but no one is comfortable with?  And at what point would it become too hard to be worth the trouble?

Future Worldbuilding: Geopolitics in the Interstellar (Part One)

Now, if you've been following me for a while, you know I take working out the geography pretty seriously.  I've built out a 150 light-year radius from Earth, and while in the building process I let a certain degree of randomness occur*, once I had certain things set up (namely, initial homeworlds and tech level of all the intelligent species in 150-ly radius), then I had to build with deliberateness.
 
That deliberate comes from decisions that I need to control-- and not just because I can't figure out an effective way to randomize it on Excel-- because the way a culture expands into space says a lot about their character.  Do they reach out and claim every star system they can get their dextrous appendages*** on as quickly as possible?  Or do they move slowly, maximizing the usage of resources in each system.  Do they aggressively strike out, clashing with any neighbors they might meet?  Or do they engage diplomatically, building bridges amongst cultures?

Whatever they do, once I allow an interstellar culture to claim a star system, I need to decide what kind of claim it is.  This depends a lot, but not entirely, upon what options that star system gives them: a star system with planets gives more options that one without, and one with planets with life gives even more options.  My designations are as follows:

Homeworld: This is self-explanatory-- the Homeworld is the world of origin for any given species.
Colony: The next highest-level of designation, a Colony is fully-autonomous and self-sufficient world that has a civilian population.
Station: If there are no planets, then the highest level of designation is Station.  Of course, there may be multiple stations within a system-- military, corporate or civilian, or a combination.
Outpost: An outpost is a planetbound facility that is neither self-sufficient nor civilian.  It can range from a military listening post to a mining-and-refinery base to a terraforming crew to a high-security prison.  These are typically on systems where no planet can support life, and are dependent on an infrastructure of supply ships.
Holding: This is the lowest-level of claim-- basically, little more than the claim itself.  Perhaps there is a squadron of ships or automated satellites to maintain that claim.
Preserve: This is a special designation, in which a species lays claim to a system and does nothing with it, other than protect it.  Of course, only a certain kind of culture is ever going to make a star system a Preserve.

--

*- Within 150 light-year radius radius, we're talking about over 10,000 stars in that space.  We're talking 14.1 million cubic light years.**  So you better believe I created a randomizing script in Excel that went through each star and decided how many planets it had, and the orbital radius of each of those planets, and then IF one of those planets was in the "Goldilocks" zone, IF there was life on that planet, and IF so, how advanced that life was, and IF that life was intelligent, how advanced the technology of its culture was, and IF that advancement has reached the point of Interstellar Travel, WHEN they broke the light barrier, and how advanced their interstellar tech is.  Randomizing those factors was necessary just to get the work down to a manageable level.

**- Douglas Adams wasn't lying.  Space is big.  Really big.  Because that figure is nothing compared to the rest of the galaxy. 

***- They all have dextrous appendages.  Else you can't build ships.

Space Opera Worldbuilding: Building the Non-Humanocentric Universe

You are probably familiar with the Bechdel Test*- while not a test of quality or even feminist credential, it is at least an interesting gauge to be aware of as a writer.  You're not necessarily doing something wrong if your story doesn't pass, but you should at least interrogate why your story doesn't pass.

Now, let us apply that thinking to science-fiction, more specifically that brand of space-opera where humans are part of a rich interstellar setting, filled with many alien species.  For that, consider the "Space Opera Bechdel", if you will.  To pass, a work must have a scene where:

1. There are two alien characters of different, identified species
2. Who talk to each other
3. About something other than humans.

 For counterpoint, this is more the sort of thing you usually see when two different aliens talk:

Now, I'm not saying that's bad.  In fact, this scene is one of the best "aliens talk about humans" scenes out there, possibly because it doesn't raise us up to be the end-all, be-all, center-of-awesomeness that help define the interstellar region.  In Trek, humanity are a superpower, even if they are part of a multi-species Federation, it's very clear humans are the center of it.  Starfleet is mostly human, a carryover of an Earth-based organization, with its training academy in San Fransisco.  The capital of the Federation is also on Earth.

Of course, it's easier to focus on humanity's role in a potential future.  We are who we know the best, and in trying to make aliens-- even really alien aliens-- the best we can hope to do is show aliens filtered through a fact of humanity, or focus on what humanity is not.  But we remain the lens we see the universe through.

For me, part of the solution is keeping humanity from being a superpower.  To put it in terms of metaphor, a lot of works make humanity the equivalent of the US in the later half of the 20th Century.  My tactic is to make them the equivalent of the US in beginning of the 19th: not a player on the interstellar stage, and regarded with a bit of respectful skepticism by the superpowers of the day.  

The other part of the solution is to do one's best to give each alien culture depth.  This doesn't mean working out a full history, all the separate nation states, religions, rituals, and so forth.  If you're populating a full universe, that's a herculean task that isn't worth it.  But every culture should have the potential for that depth.  For example, if said culture is in space at all, you have to be able to believe that they've had a history of scientists and adventurers who've pushed the envelope to reach the stars.  

Anything less will just seem lazy.

__

*- In brief:  a work has to have 1. at least two [named] women in it 2. who talk to each other 3. about something besides a man.  It was first come up with for movies, but I think it applies just as well to novels.

Worldbuilding: Alien Perspectives and Communication

I've been thinking of late about how aliens, upon first meeting, would establish communication, as well as how communication continues once those baselines of communication have been laid down. 

As far as starting things out, there's plenty of talk of using the language of math and science to establish initial codes.  For a very rudimentary example of this:

Now, just about any species capable of, say, achieving
spaceflight should be able to look at this and decode-- from the top part-- the mathematical truism that is the Pythagorean Theorem.*  Then looking at the bottom part, they should be able to decode that it's saying the exact same thing in another way... and from there, discern details about the English language, how it's constructed.  You construct several of these images, and transmit them to the aliens you hope to talk to, and cross your fingers that those shoulds line up, and that you don't offend said aliens who think you're trying to patronize them and teach them basic math.

Of course, getting those shoulds to line up still makes assumptions.  For example: "look at this".  What if said alien species is, as we would understand it, blind?  Would they even have developed the equivalent of Euclidean geometry? Or, at the very least, would it mean the same thing to them?  What about a species that relies more on, say, echolocation and perfect pitch?  Would their Euclid equivalent instead come up with fundamental mathematics based off of musical pitches and frequencies? 

Even presuming we can get all that, then there's culture shock.  I'm still figuring out where to start with that.  Take, for example, how we and other species might process "scary".  A species that's eight feet tall, with six long, spindly legs, winged arms like a bat and a face like a lamprey would, probably, on first meeting, look terrifying.  But at the same time, our beauty-contest winners would still look like just another rat to them.  We might both react with fear at seeing each other, and that fear could seem utterly rational, but at the same time be completely unexplainable to the other party. 

So how hard is going to be, opening a dialogue with someone who makes you want to run screaming from the room, and the same time they think that you think they need to study 5th grade math?


There's a great short story by Kij Johnson, Spar, in which a human woman is stuck in an alien lifepod with an alien creature.  There is no meaningful communication.  There's only, from her perspective, constant sexual activity that wavers between consensual and non-consensual.  She doesn't know if what it's doing to her is, as far as it's concerned, a sexual act.  She isn't sure if it thinks of her as an intelligent being.  She's not even sure if it is an intelligent being; she might be having sex with the alien equivalent of a cat. 

And that might be what it comes down to: just not knowing anything, because there's no common ground at all.

---
*- Completely tangential**, but every time the Pythagorean Theorem comes up, I can't help but think of one of the dumbest moments in early Star Trek: Next Generation.  Having assembled Data's evil brother Lore, the crew (not knowing Lore is evil) is showing him how the helm on the Enterprise works.  Riker brings up the first half of the Pythagorean Theorem, which Lore automatically finishes, before stopping himself and feigning that it was something he had overheard but didn't really understand.  I'm not sure which part of this whole exchange is dumber: that Riker thought that tricking Lore into revealing he knew the PT was a clever trick at all, or that Lore thought that pretending he, an android, didn't understand middle-school geometry, was somehow a clever ruse. 
**- Ha!

Interstellar Worldbuilding: Good and Bad Neighbors

As I've said before, when it comes to worldbuilding on an interstellar scale, your neighbors' choices can define your culture.  This is especially true when a starfaring culture comes across a planetbound culture, because the starfaring culture is in complete control of defining the relationship it has with the planetbound culture.

So when I'm looking at my maps, when I see that a starfaring culture is going to come across a planetbound culture, I ask myself: what are they going to do?

Ignore: Let's face it, an alien species might fly by a planet, observe that a thriving-but-primitive culture exists on that planet... and shrug and move on.  It's just not something that interests them.

Look, but don't touch: Here, the starfaring aliens show a bit of curiosity, observing the culture but not interfering with the planetbound species.  At its heart, this is what Star Trek's Prime Directive is about.

Look, but don't... okay, touch a little: Like the above, but let's face it, to really understand the biology of an alien species, you're going to have to grab a few, poke and prod a little, run some tests, and then tag and release.  And, hey, there are several billion of them down there, it's not like they'll really miss a few dozen, right?  And it's for science, after all.

Preserve and Protect: This is taking "Ignore" or "Look But Don't Touch" to a more active level.  Not only is one choosing to keep a planetbound culture uncontaminated, but they will defend it to keep anyone else from getting their filthy appendages on it.

Greet and Welcome: This is more or less the opposite of not contaminating the culture... it's showing up with the fruitbasket and saying hi, friendly-like, and being willing to let the planetbound species take that information and process it how they will. 

Missionary: Look, these primitive people need help, you see?  We're going to go down there and show them how to not make the mistakes we did, or teach them the best ways to make clean energy, maximize food yields, and educate their young properly.  Look, it's for their own good.

Play God: Sure, the "missionary" method is nice, but it's inefficient.  After all, you pretty much are like gods to these primitives, so just embrace that.  Make a few proclamations from on high.

Open Trade Routes: Like "Greet and Welcome", you recognize the validity of this primitive culture, and are willing to treat them fairly in bringing them into an interstellar community.  Or, you know, relatively fairly. 

Benevolent Integration: The next level of Open Trade Routes, the primitive culture is welcomed, and brought into the interstellar community, as citizens of a protectorate of your empire. 

Hostile Integration: AKA "Conquer".

Colonize: Just because this planet is inhabited doesn't mean we can't build here.  The beaches are lovely, and they aren't using most of the resources they have!  They don't even know what Lerian Quartz Crystals are for, so they won't miss them when we set up the mining facility.  And these natives are just so adorable, hopefully they won't make much fuss.

Eradicate: The planet would be perfect for colonization, were it not for the infestation. Open fire.

Look and Touch.  A lot.: These genetic experiments have to be done somewhere, right?

Any options I missed?  Let me know.

Villains with Clear Motives

This weekend I watched last year's premaquel* of The Thing.  It was... fine.  That's really all I can say about it.  It achieved its goals, given that its goal was to essentially be a widely release fanfilm about what happened at the Norwegian camp before the events in John Carpenter's The Thing. 

Now, I should say, Carpenter's movie is possibly one of my favorite movies of all time.  I don't get obsessive about it-- I really can't recall the actual characters' names**, nor am I invested in Who Got Turned When. But it's a fun thriller with damn cool practical creature effects, and it's a movie I can happily re-watch again and again.****

 But, that praise given, I've always been puzzled by the Thing itself, what its motivations are, what it's trying to accomplish, and how its actions further those accomplishments.  These questions pop out even more in the premaquel. 

For those who've never seen either (or don't recall the details), the creature has been frozen in the antarctic ice for millennia, and once its out, it's eating the occasional person or dog, and then mimicking them.  Why does it do this?  Because it can, of course.  That, and to blend in.  Until any particular iteration of The Thing doesn't feel like blending in anymore, and then it becomes all tentacles and teeth.

But this brings up questions: what does The Thing want?  There's some lip service to the idea that it might want to get to civilization so it can make all 4 billion***** of us into tasty cakes.  But I don't think that's the plan, because if it was, it makes terrible decisions.  (In the 2011 version, at one point there's a helicopter taking off to McMurdo station, and the thingified person in there goes into tentacle mode, making the chopper crash just a little ways out.  So "getting away" is hardly the plan.)  In terms of what it does, getting the hell off of Earth might be the real plan, since in the remake one iteration goes back to the ship and powers it up, and in the Carpenter version, one iteration is building a ship in the tunnels under the camp. 

The thing (ha!) that always jumps out at me is that The Thing is clearly intelligent, rather than a reactive animal, and in mimicking humans, is capable of holding conversation as a mimicked human.  So you would think that, once confronted it could go, "Look, I just want to go home.  Sorry about the mess." or words to that effect.  But it never does.  Once someone is revealed as being Thingified, they just go into full-on monster mode.  No more talking, no more mimicking-- just tentacles and teeth and SMASH EVERYTHING.  Which looks cool, but it reads more as Angry Alien Badger rather than Intelligent Alien.

Now, one can excuse some of that with the word "Alien": it doesn't think like us, so we can't understand how it thinks.  And that's fine.

But for villains that are human, you need clear answers.  What they want, why they want it, and how what they are doing helps to achieve that.  The minute you have them do something bad just "because their evil", you've lost something critical in the storytelling.

---
 *- It's a prequel! It's a remake!  It's kind of both!
**- It's pretty much Kurt Russell, Wilfred Brimley, David Keith***, that guy from LA Law, and a bunch of other guys.
***- Or is it Keith David?  I always mix up which is which.
****- And, as of this writing, it's streamable on Netflix!  Just saying.
*****- This was 1982, after all.

Future Worldbuilding: Aliens, Form follows Function

Alien life can take all sorts of shapes and sizes.  When it comes to the various flora and fauna of other worlds, there's no limit to where your imagination can take you.

But, when you start talking about intelligent, civilized, technological aliens... then you need to have some limits.  Specifically, in terms of physical form.  For a species to reach the stars, they have to have the capacity to create the means to do so.  So your intelligent, star-faring species HAS to had a similar physical capacity: able to dominate its ecosystem enough to acquire its caloric needs and survive to reproduction, and with the fine motor necessary to build simplex and complex technology. 

So, on some level, I am fond of going to the Humanoid shape: humans are unique on this planet in that they are the only species that can run a mile, swim a mile, climb a tree and throw a rock, let alone do calculus, build microchips and post on Facebook.   It's highly functional and adaptable.  Is it the only one?  No, but don't dismiss it.  Yes, most shows and movies went to the humanoid well most of the time for aliens, but that was mostly because actors who are otherwise are notoriously unreliable in learning their lines.*

Some other forms that I use, as a basis for alien building:

Bipedal: Technically different from "humanoid", which implies two legs, two arms, a body trunk and a head on top.  "Bipedal" just beans two legs, and the rest of the design might be quite different.  It should, however, maintain bilateral symmetry. 

Tripedal: Three legs, and I usually have this also mean three fine-motor arms as well, if not full on trilateral symmetry. 

Centauroid: Four legs, two grasping arms.  Sometimes I might use "Insectoid" for this form as well, if the two grasping arms double as walking limbs.

Quadruped: Four legs.  Now, you still have to deal with fine motor control.  Two or all four legs might double as fine-motor graspers.  Or there might be another method: the Zaaatel are catlike creatures with strong cilia-like tentacles coming from their spines.  A quadruped could also have eight limbs: four walking, four grasping. 

Hexaped: Similar to the "Insectoid" or "Centauroid".  I might use this instead of "Insectoid" A. if the species didn't have a chitonous exoskeleton and B. if all six limbs were walkers and graspers.

Arachnoid: Eight walking/grasping limbs. 

Medusoid: Snake-like body with two grasping limbs.

Centepecoid: Catch-all for any segmented-body with more than eight walking/grasping limbs.

Tentacloid: Catch-all for any species that has multiple tentacles for both locomotion and fine manipulation.  This can vary: the Starkasians have three large-body-trunk tentacles for locomotion, and six fine-motor ones for manipulation.  The Calitras are Winged Tentacloids, with twelve fine-motor tentacles for maniuplation, and wings for locomotion.

Any other important shapes you think I might have missed?  Let me know.

---

*Farscape, and to a much lesser degree Babylon 5, tried to avoid this somewhat with puppets.  Farscape, being a Jim Henson Studio, succeeded with this to a far greater degree.

Future Worldbuilding: Stellar Map Time

I'm under a bit of a hammer today, so: SPACE MAPS.

Now, I don't have a good way to display the full scope of the 100-light year radius of space that I've defined.  If I make it small enough to fit on a screen, it's to dense to read properly.  I've made some attempts at combining screenshots, which I've found... unsatisfying. Partly because it's showing 3-D space on a 2-D screen. The actual ChView program lets you turn the view on all three axes, so while one can't create a static image that gives a proper sense of the stellar geography, you can move around and get a sense of distance and connections.

But this is still a work in progress.

 Map 1: Centered on Terra (Earth), with a 25 light-year view radius.  (Of course, since the screen is wide, we don't see the full 25 light-years to the top and bottom.)  The white circles with blue trim are homeworlds: Terra, of course, as well as Starkasia, Caraw, Lestri, Krek'ixa and so forth.  The gray circles are colonies: all six human colonies can be seen: Centaurs and Europa Nueva (though their labels overlap, since they are part of the Alpha Centauri binary star system), New Canada, Cygnus 1, Indus and Reijani.  Their are also 15 Terran Fleet Bases (the various TFB's).   In the right corners the edges of Surani and Nirizhi space are visible.  But this is somewhat misleading: One would think that TFB-Bravo and Delta are the closest to Reijani.  In fact, neither are: TFB-Oscar is the closest.

 MAP 2: The same map, with route markers turned on for some sense of scale.  Blue lines means less than 8 light years distance.  Yellow, less than 6, and green less than 4.  But this is also pretty confusing.  Let's spin the image.

MAP 3: From this angle, we get a very different sense of the geography.  We can see how Reijani and TFB-Oscar are in roughly the same direction from Terra now, for one.  We no longer see Surani or Nirizhi space, but Paxin space dominates the right side of the screen.  And the top left shows a few outlying territories of the Triumverate (the strange symbols-- how ChView renders the Greek Letter "Ψ").  

MAP 4: Finally, a different part of space, centered on Quro and Senilac, homeworlds of the Quuos and the Senicala, two species that have been at war with each other for decades.  This is about 40 light-years from Earth, and the scale is slightly larger-- about 30-ly radius.  Some Terran space is visible in the bottom right corner.  The bottom and bottom left is dominated by Triumverate Space, as well as Calitras Terriories.  And up by the top, we see the very edge of Zuthekan space.  Zuth-Ω-81 (another bad rendering of Greek letters...) is only 19 ly from Quro.  That was actually a bit of a surprise to me: I didn't think the Zuthekans came that close to Quro, or Nirizhan space for that matter.  A happy discovery. (Happy for me, the writer, since it's ripe with potential.  Less so for any Quuosians or Nirizhi who may have to deal with Zuthekans.)

This ended up being more than I intended to write-- it was just supposed to be, "Here, look at some maps."  But, frankly, once I started checking them out myself, I kind of geek out on my own work.  Silly, no?  But that's how it works.

Future Worldbuilding: How I Love Spreadsheets and Map Tools

All right, so I've talked about mapping things out and alien civilizations, but when dealing with things on an interstellar scale, when you're talking about 4660 stars within a 100 light-year radius of Earth, with 153 alien homeworlds, not to mention colonies, outposts, stations and other holdings, one has to have a way to keep all that straight.

It helps that, when you come down to it, I'm a BIG spreadsheet geek.

About a decade or so ago, I had an office job in which my duties could be boiled down to, "Make Excel do my bidding."  I'm not saying I'm an expert at Excel, but I've figured out a lot of tricks, without which I would never have been able to construct this universe, this interstellar community, to the degree that I have.

One of my biggest struggles is trying to visualize all that data, get a real sense of who is neighbor to who, where borders are.  I'm still a big fan of ChView, which is an old program but has the advantage of being (relatively) easy to import Excel data into stellar maps.  But even with that, it's still challenging to really feel who is close to who.  I've developed some tricks-- being able to define any homeworld as a central star, and then getting the distance from that star to every other star, and then figure out who is close to that.

Also, I like having data at my fingertips that I can use to generate cultural ideas.  Since I used a certain degree of randomization to determine which worlds had life, which life was intelligent, and which civilizations had reached the stars, to then look through that information and say to myself: OK, these three civilizations are all within a (interstellar) stone's throw of each other, so what does that mean?  Are they allies, or enemies?  Or, these two are close to each other, but also relatively close to this more advanced, aggressive species.  So are they united against the common enemy?

I'm curious, does anyone out there have more interesting star-map making tools?  I do like ChView, but it has flaws, for certain-- it's an old program that hasn't been updated in many years.  But is there anything better?  Most of the other things I've seen are weaker in design, or are not capable of importing data in an easy way; I'd have to start from scratch.    Any recommendations?

Future Worldbuilding: New Life, New Civilizations and the Mos Eisley Cantina

What's a Space Opera without some aliens?*  I'm firmly of the opinion that once you've breached the idea of humans going into space, traveling faster than light, aliens are an inevitable, logical step.  Of course, how those aliens are presented, and what they do can vary wildly.

This ties to stellar geography, of course.   An alien species might be a peaceful, enlightened civilization that only wants to make the prettiest baskets in the history of the cosmos, but if they have a highly advanced conqueror species in their interstellar backyard, that's the thing that's going to define them.

Now, there's always an urge to show a vast interstellar community.  Regardless of other politics, there is an urge to showcase places that act as a crossroads for dozens of alien species.  These places are usually bars.  Of course, there is the classic Cantina Scene in Star Wars, and Star Trek, Babylon 5 and especially Farscape have all milked this trope for everything its worth.  And it's fun, and it looks impressive-- though usually that's because the make-up and art design people are having a blast, and not because much thought is put into who any of these people are.  The idea that they could all share a space-- comfortably in the same atmosphere and gravity-- let a lone that a single establishment could easily serve all their needs... that's challenging to believe.  And more to the point, they tend to be just set dressing.  B5 tended to purge the more set-dressing aliens early on, so there were very few random-aliens-of-unnamed-species.  But most of the time, aliens are just thrown out there, with little thought about how or why they are there.

Me, I can't work like that.  Just like I need to know the stellar geography, that includes the political geography.  Neighbors matter.  Tech levels of neighbors matter.  If you have an area where there are several species that are FTL-capable, then any species that is not is dependent on the good graces of those that are. 

In my setting, there are 11 intelligent species whose homeworlds are within 30 light-years of Earth.  Of those, 5 are of starfaring technology, and three of them were starfaring before humans.  Fortunately for humanity, those three were in alliance with each other, and agreed upon a rule of non-interference with planet-bound species.  We thrived and reached out because they let us.  Some fifty light-years away is the Surani homeworld, and they didn't share that philosophy: the two closest species to them (the Xaedon and the Dalians) were incorporated into their empire, conquered and integrated as servant classes effortlessly.  And within 30 light-years of the highly advanced Rilixa, there are no intelligent species.  Not one remains in what they've defined as their space.

I've done a lot of work along these lines: within 100ly of Earth, I've defined (roughly, mind you, roughly) 153 alien species, of which 69 are starfaring.  For me, this was groundwork.  This was just getting the lay of the land so I could get a sense of the stories I could write. 

Because for me, I have to know where I am, and who's around me, before I really have a sense of what's going on.

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*- Firefly or Battlestar Galactica, I guess.

Preliminary ArmadilloCon Schedule

I have my schedule, which is, of course, subject to change.  As with any large, live event with a lot of moving parts, things are subject to change.  A rule of thumb I live by is you're never 100% sure something is going to happen the way it's supposed to happen until it's actually happening.

So what do I have?

Sa1800T Science Fiction, Fantasy, and Live Theater:

Sat 6:00 PM-7:00 PM Trinity

M. Finn*, L. Gorinsky, T. Mallory, M. Maresca, J. Neulander,

The history and challenges of live productions (theater and radio), for either SF or fantasy. Our panel discusses of radio productions and stage recreations, fan & semi-pro theater at conventions, SF&F movies that crossed to or from stage, and the special challenges of live theater for the genre. 

 

Right in my wheelhouse!  Awesome.  Plus Jason Neulander will be there.  He's not typically at ArmadilloCon, since he's more a theatre guy-- just a good chunk of his theatre is SF/F.  His company has gotten a good degree of notice for Intergalactic Nemesis-- which started as a radio play and has expanded into much more.  There is even an Intergalactic Nemesis panel following this one.  But this is the panel I'm looking forward to the most.

 

Su1300SB Workshopping to Success

Sun 1:00 PM-2:00 PM Sabine

M. Dimond, K. Jewell, S. Leicht*, M. Maresca, N. Moore, J. Reisman

What the ArmadilloCon / Clarion / Clarion West / Odyssey did for me (as a student or a teacher)

 

So I'm on this one, clearly, to talk about the ArmadilloCon Writers' Workshop.  Which is good, because I'm probably its biggest advocate.  

Su1400T Future Sex: The Shape of Things to Come

Sun 2:00 PM-3:00 PM Trinity

C. Brown, M. Maresca, R. Klaw, J. Nevins, P. Roberts*

As humans reshape their society, their bodies, their culture, how will the most intimate of activities change? 

 

Ooh,  Cybersex?  Alien sex?  Cyberaliensex?  All right.  

I may have another one added, we'll see.  Plus, I have requested a reading slot.  Those aren't assigned yet, but if I have one, I will most likely be reading from Maradaine Constabulary.  And that will be fun.  I promise.  You should come to that.  Really.  You.

Interstellar Worldbuilding: You are who your neighbors make you

My space opera stuff is all still in its building and outlining phase, but every once in a while I do a big push of figuring stuff out.  And when I do, I always get a sense that the scope STILL isn't big enough.  For example, I've roughly defined the area within a 100ly radius of Earth (roughly 4.2 million cubic light years), which includes 4660 stars.  Off those, 1568 stars have planets, 361 of those have life of some sort, and 153 of those have intelligent life.  And of those 153, 71 have achieved interstellar travel by the year 2373. 

(Excel spreadsheets and some extreme dorkiness on my part are responsible for all this information.) 

One thing I asked myself is how one can apply the lessons from Guns, Germs and Steel on an interstellar scale.  It's a challenging thing to speculate, as how can you tell what resources will really make a difference on an interstellar scale?  Do germs really matter at all? 

But one thing that became clear as I mapped stuff out was this: who your interstellar neighbors are matters.  Because the technology difference between "capable of interstellar travel" and "not capable of interstellar travel" are so extreme, it would make Pizarro's defeat of the Incans seem like a balanced fight.  Once interstellar travelers come upon a planetbound species, what they decide to do defines the entire encounter.  If they're genocidal conquerors, then the planetbound species will be eliminated.  If their imperialists, then the planetbound species are now part of the empire, full stop. 

So I decided, for things to make sense to me, Earth's neighbors had to be preservationists.  They had to be of the mindset that when you encounter a lower-tech society, you might do a little clandestine research for the sake of science, but you otherwise leave them the hell alone.  Perhaps even a step further: they had to have just enough militant in them to draw a line and defend a defenseless species from an invading force. 

Using that knowledge helped me define our immediate neighbors, as well as humanity's role on the interstellar scene (which is more or less like a teenager who is smarter than he's wise on his first internship). 

Of course, the same logic applies when two interstellar species clash.  If you have one species with no respect for alien life who will commit acts of genocide without a moment's hesitation, then the species they come in contact with must devote themselves to defense.  They have no other choice. 

But it's more than just wars and genocide, of course.  You want alien species to work together and cooperate, or at least trade.  Because if you don't, how else can you get a cool cantina scene?