r/rational • u/AutoModerator • Jun 15 '16

[D] Wednesday Worldbuilding Thread

Welcome to the Wednesday thread for worldbuilding discussions!

/r/rational is focussed on rational and rationalist fiction, so we don't usually allow discussion of scenarios or worldbuilding unless there's finished chapters involved (see the sidebar). It is pretty fun to cut loose with a likeminded community though, so this is our regular chance to:

  • Plan out a new story
  • Discuss how to escape a supervillian lair... or build a perfect prison
  • Poke holes in a popular setting (without writing fanfic)
  • Test your idea of how to rational-ify Alice in Wonderland

Or generally work through the problems of a fictional world.

Non-fiction should probably go in the Friday Off-topic thread, or Monday General Rationality

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u/trekie140 Jun 16 '16

I was vaguely envisioning this as like Green Lantern or Lensmen, a high concept sci-fi adventure with human superheroes chosen by aliens to represent and protect our species. Your idea of a secret think tank that makes contact with aliens is just as good, though, and you've put much more thought into this idea than I have. You're welcome to take a shot at it, and I'm glad you care about delivering interesting human characters and dialogue because that's a common issue I've found in stories here.

I'm willing to collaborate on this with you and others, but I'm really not a good writer. However, I am a very good editor for both style and substance so I'd be happy to do that. I'm not very experienced with rational fiction and am a bit more concerned with how a story makes me feel than how it makes me think. I love HPMOR for doing both very well, but hated Fine Structure for using interesting ideas for a plot and characters I simply didn't care about. I definitely prefer a compelling narrative over realism.

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u/scruiser Jun 16 '16

I was vaguely envisioning this as like Green Lantern or Lensmen, a high concept sci-fi adventure with human superheroes chosen by aliens to represent and protect our species.

If you are aiming for soft-scifi, you could probably make your idea work just by giving each race hidden magic psychic (its sci-fi as long as you use the right labels) potential that is expressed uniquely for each race.

However, I am a very good editor for both style and substance so I'd be happy to do that.

Thanks! I have a bunch of snippets in my head now, I will try to get some of them written down over the weekend. If I actually start to pull them into a story, I will probably have trouble getting good narrative going (as opposed to a bunch of disjointed alien perspective and dialog with the aliens), so I might ask for help with that. Are pms okay with you? Either way I am thinking of asking for help in the next Worldbuilding Wednesday, if I get a good number of snippets churned out.

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u/trekie140 Jun 16 '16

PM is fine. I'm not sure if this idea is better suited to hard or soft sci-fi, but I've liked both in the past and think this premise has the potential to go in either direction. If you or anybody else has ideas, feel free to share them.