My newest project is going to be set about 800-1000 years in the future. I was thinking I should reduce it to 500 years, but we'll see. I was gonna see if I could have some hell brainstorming some specifics in the future. What do you think fashion will be like in the future? If global warming were to take massive effect I feel like we would be using different, cooler materials for clothes. Transportation had been a hard one for me to think of as well. I don't know if the traditional hover cars seem quite realistic to me. I was thinking more along the lines of solar power drones. I also don't like the idea of teleportation? It's a little too sci-fi for me. I was thinking underwater "trains" as well. I think we'll be out of oil by then so we'll have had to either make our own oil or not use it at all. I'm still stuck on economic stuff as well. Any thoughts on stuff like this? I've never created a newish world like this so it's been really overwhelming to me and I don't know where to start.
Hi @Sintas, I'd suggest starting with the details most pertinent to your main plot. If your characters aren't travelling far from home then a lot of issues won't crop up (eg: the underwater trains), so while it's still intimidating, think small. As for the topic in general, I'd be tempted to take current trends and just take them to the extreme. Recycling, eco-homes, reducing food waste, using other sources of fuel - they're all becoming mainstream ideals so maybe that's the kind of world your characters live in? Similarly, I agree hover cars are a little 'out there' but what about water-powered jetpacks like the type currently employed by various holiday resorts? Maybe they've upgraded enough that they're the most common form of personal transport? You're already on to a good thought process (asking 'If'). Just keep pondering, but only for as long as it's useful - don't get bogged down in world building and forget to write!
I'm a bit of a Sci-Fi buff, and I'm also planning on writing my own Sci-Fi story once my skills allow for it. I think if you set your story 1000 years into the future then you can do as you please. Predicting that far ahead is just not possible with the current events of today's world. We could all die from nuclear war. An undetected asteroid could hit us, again, killing humanity. The planet might be uninhabitable by that time, so we have colonised other planets. Maybe we have masters medical and scientific fields, eradicating all harmful bacteria and curing all diseases, as well as developing clean energy devices and overcoming global warming. Maybe religion is completely stamped out? (one can only hope) Maybe countries don't exist any more, and we are now one unified planet. The sky's the limit! If it's not so distant in the future, then you have to consider what exactly would change, and what wouldn't. You'd have to incorporate aspects of today's world, or at least the remnants of it. There is less flexibility to be creative, but that's not always a bad thing.
I don't think anyone could reasonably predict what life will be like a thousand years in the future, any more than someone a thousand years ago could have foreseen life today. They didn't have the frame of reference to anticipate our technology or cultural attitudes. That suggests that, as @The Mad Regent suggested, it's anything goes. Your imagination would be the limiting factor.
Global warming doesn't mean that everywhere will be warmer--weather patterns will shift, so some places will be warmer, some colder, probably water levels a good deal higher, and so on. So fashion in terms of warmth will vary depending on where you are, just as it does now. Also, if we further destroy the ozone layer, clothing might need to provide more protection from the sun. One of your big decisions, I think, will be whether we are indeed out of or running out of oil and therefore conserving power like mad (because the other power sources won't, I believe, produce the same huge banquet of cheap power) or whether another power source has been found. For example, our food production and transportation infrastructure is heavily dependent on cheap available power. Will every city be surrounded by farms that are worked in large part by human labor? If that human labor gets decent wages, will food be quite expensive, a large percentage of each person's budget? For people who have a yard, will lawns give way to vegetable patches? Will individual motorized vehicles become an expensive luxury? If petroleum fuels start to fade away and power is mostly electricity from other sources, I believe that mass transit is a far more efficient way to move people with that power. It occurs to me that the "little ice age" started about seven hundred years ago. It was a huge climate change, cooling rather than warming, that changed the world drastically. It might be worth reading about.
Free energy devices have already been developed. The problem is that energy and drug companies are huge, and to implement sources of free energy or cures of major diseases will be a big kick in the economic balls. Things have to be gradually implemented over decades to keep the economy stable, and the wealthy happy.
I think you're not looking far enough ahead. I'm a big fan of television westerns, most of which are placed in the immediate post-civil war period. Try to imagine explaining (or even describing) our current technology to people in the 1870s and '80s. Impossible, since they have no frame of reference for things like the Internet, cell phones, or even electricity or indoor plumbing. Now try to imagine folks from one thousand years hence explaining their technology to us.
As much as my conspiracy-loving self wants to agree with you, that pesky Second Law of Thermodynamics makes 'free' (over-unity) energy impossible (unless that law isn't valid, but you'll need to prove that).
I think you'll need to decide if you're looking at a generally optimistic (fuel solutions discovered, socio-economic issues managed)future, or a generally pessimistic one (fuel shortage, massive drought leading to population decline and anarchy, etc), or even a post-pessimistic one (new society, or societies, emerging from the ashes of our current civilization. Look at all the changes in the past millenium, and then consider that technological advancement seems to make socio-political change happen even faster than it used to. A thousand years from now won't be just a whole new world, it'll be a new world with several other new worlds already dead and buried between now and then.
I'm not sure how the Second Law of Thermodynamics does that, but I think Nikola Tesla would argue with you. I'm not arguing with the laws of physics, but I'm pretty sure that energy started somewhere, as did everything. And I'm even more sure that even modern physics is, on a universal scale, the equivalent of discovering the wheel.
Yes, but we still grow our food in the ground, burn fuels for heat and power, many of us live in homes made of wood and nails, and so on. I don't know if those core things are going to change.
There is no free energy by the laws of physics. About the best you can do for a perpetual motion machine was the clock someone developed that took energy from the changing barometric pressure, or solar and geothermal energy, something like that. But your conspiracy theories are just wrong. Big Oil has enough power to influence governments and make commercials claiming global warming science is doubtful. But there's no way they can stop innovation and everyone pretty much knows burning fossil fuels has a finite lifespan. What's stopping China, for example, from moving forward with alternative energy? As for Big Pharma, by no means do they have the power you seem to think they have. Again they can influence our government to keep their sweet deals going, but only for so long.
Do you realise what would happen if we just suddenly changed oil with a source of energy that has no demand or value? Big Oil and drug corporations have ridiculous amounts of money tied up in the markets. Practically the whole financial system works around such commodities. These aren't conspiracy theories at all. Technology 40-50 years ahead of what's represented in contemporary markets is tied up in black budget programs and private companies. These companies or governments, for the most part, are the developers and holders of such technologies because they are the ones who own and fund the projects (which is why you don't usually hear about them, and when you do it gets pawned off as conspiracy). However, people with power are afraid of one thing: losing that power. If you are able to implement technology that isn't limited by the demand and supply of oil and coal then these people become redundant. The oscillation in global economics will start to alter drastically, and then you end up with all kinds of chaos. As for free energy -- it isn't a term that represents the creation of energy; it suggests a source of energy that is so abundant that it won't deplete any time soon. Like harnessing the Suns energy, which we already do, but our technology isn't advanced enough to extract it efficiently.
I was going to have pills instead of food for upper class people, and for everyone else I was going to have them eat purely lab synthesized food. I don't think its a stretch to believe that we would have created such a thing. Also, I'm looking at a more pessimistic future. Major droughts, and as another else's on here pointed out a fading ozone layer (though I don't know what effects that would have on people). As for the oil industry, that will be gone. There will be other major corporations running the world.
I feel that it's a bigger stretch than finding a completely new fuel source to replace oil. It might be less of a stretch than teleportation. People will still need calories in a thousand years. How do you get enough of them into a pill? And a lab can't synthesize something from thin air. If there's still dirt and sunshine, why spend, quite likely, many times more money and energy to produce in a lab what could be produced using that dirt and sunshine?
At the risk of being an old duffer, here's that James Burke article again. I'll re-read it myself [duh, listen to it] - the idea that gold becomes obsolete, [nanotechnology @ 10 minutes in] hence...that's what I'm seeking out...
I'd suggest 1984 (George Orwell), particularly if you're looking for a pessimistic future. Ozone layer gone means people get sunburnt more easily.
...1000 years... the Earth has been 'copied,' we have a dozen Earths, all spinning cheek by jowl. We pop one out from time to time.
After thinking about this more deeply, I've concluded that it's pointless to set your story so far into the future unless you have a really original environment and plot. I've been working on a Sci-Fi survival adventure idea for a while, but it's only set about 80-100 years in the future. Not only because it works best for the plot, but it just gives you some foundation to build upon (things we already know).
Because I believe it would be much faster to synthesize food from chemicals and lab grown food (if we are already learning how to grow skin and other organs right now, it's totally plausible that we would be able to grow food like this). Also, the earth will likely be much drier and less fertile because of global warming and other climate changes. Another part of my book will be how major corporations have taken over, therefor it makes more sense for a large company,say Tyson, to charge people more for food that can be created cheaply and in mass quantities. As for the pills, have you ever looked at the nutrition facts on a vitamin lable? It's generally like 30ish calories per vitamin so i don't believe it's far fetched for humans to condense nutrition. Perhaps they can have drink supplements as well?
Maybe. i'm actually moving towards agreeing with you at this point, since in 1000 years everything will be different. Maybe even unrecognizable. Thanks for knocking some sense into me haha.
Study history the 1000's and look at similarities between then and now. What caught on, and what won't become obsolete? Books, most likely. Scriptures and scrolls have existed for god who knows how long, and I think analog literature is here to stay. Look for things like this, and toy with see what you can get.
