alex_greene
Guest
The third and last UTU (Unusual Traveller Universe) question. What if your technologies proceeded up to, say, this point - and future tech developed in a completely different way altogether?
How about the future of Blade Runner, where cloning and replication is common enough that replicants can be indistinguishable from people? What if human replicants escaped into the wild and began making lives for themselves? And The Company didn't like this, and sought to bring back their genetic property into the fold?
Why, they'd need to hire a special breed of copper, wouldn't they, specifically trained in spotting and hooking / retiring / airing out rogue replicants. *folds an origami unicorn out of a square of bubble gum foil*
Or another version of the future, more like that of Mary Shelley than that of Gibson - a slant on Blade Runner, where the technologies of the future have advanced so far that genetically - modified nanoviruses and genetically - coded fungal mycelial pseudo nervous systems can generate a semblance of life in reanimated people stitched together from random body parts? A whole race of artificial creatures raised up from dead people, resembling the game Promethean: the Created more than anything?
So many different kinds of SF stories have brought in weird technologies more akin to magic than the technologies we are familiar with. Again, the late Sir Arthur C Clarke did make a point of this with his Three Laws, notably the Third Law.
What if technology above TL 8 more or less looked as it does today, but TL 9 tech is only possibly through some version or other of reliable psionics interfacing with the technology to produce the grav propulsors / lifters, nuclear dampers and FTL? This presupposes the existence of psionics as a central theme, even if psions are a mere byproduct of the psitech future. Fancy a future where computers are run by bioneural processor cores - a fancy term for "brains in jars?"
Other kinds of weird futures from SF could be considered. The world of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, or Lifeforce (aka The Space Vampires), or even something like Quatermass.
I throw the discussion open to the audience.
How about the future of Blade Runner, where cloning and replication is common enough that replicants can be indistinguishable from people? What if human replicants escaped into the wild and began making lives for themselves? And The Company didn't like this, and sought to bring back their genetic property into the fold?
Why, they'd need to hire a special breed of copper, wouldn't they, specifically trained in spotting and hooking / retiring / airing out rogue replicants. *folds an origami unicorn out of a square of bubble gum foil*
Or another version of the future, more like that of Mary Shelley than that of Gibson - a slant on Blade Runner, where the technologies of the future have advanced so far that genetically - modified nanoviruses and genetically - coded fungal mycelial pseudo nervous systems can generate a semblance of life in reanimated people stitched together from random body parts? A whole race of artificial creatures raised up from dead people, resembling the game Promethean: the Created more than anything?
So many different kinds of SF stories have brought in weird technologies more akin to magic than the technologies we are familiar with. Again, the late Sir Arthur C Clarke did make a point of this with his Three Laws, notably the Third Law.
What if technology above TL 8 more or less looked as it does today, but TL 9 tech is only possibly through some version or other of reliable psionics interfacing with the technology to produce the grav propulsors / lifters, nuclear dampers and FTL? This presupposes the existence of psionics as a central theme, even if psions are a mere byproduct of the psitech future. Fancy a future where computers are run by bioneural processor cores - a fancy term for "brains in jars?"
Other kinds of weird futures from SF could be considered. The world of Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within, or Lifeforce (aka The Space Vampires), or even something like Quatermass.
I throw the discussion open to the audience.
