I've got a great Sci-Fi idea in the pipeline but I have had trouble choosing the time frame from which it'll take place. I originally wanted to set it in circa 100,000, with the earth swallowed by the sun. But I have won't believe that a technology that primarily features in this story (it actually is part of the MC's persona) would've been created that late in time. Now it'll probably be set circa 3000-7500 with the earth beyond recognition from what it is now. I think that the tech would be created around this point with the way most media (video games, books and filmed media) depicts technology of the time. I don't really want it set pre 3000 but I know 2700 could be realistic. If you are wondering the technology discussed would enable the user to take the virtual form of someone else. Physically creating material, changing voice and giving an advanced database to choose people from. I know, advanced stuff. Other must haves include FTL travel and the formation of a intergalactic government with each planet having a selected representative. There would be a planet dominated by skyscrapers, some even going deep into the surface, called Avalon. This has been functional for decades with the lower levels going into disrepair. Any advice in which era this should be set?
why couldn't all technology have been destroyed/repressed for hundreds of thousands of years? Go with wgichever you are more comfortable/ready to use.
I don't think that Earth will get swallowed by the Sun in 100,000 years - do your google search. Maybe... in 100,000 in a completely different calendar? You are not bound to use Christian era in sci-fi - make it year 2756. after The Fall, or after Myrkniangians conquered Earth, or after the first Galactic Chancellor's birth... Does your Avalon come from Trantor, or Corusant, or Kaitain (Dune)? There are some great timelines for fictional galactic empires you might want to read, to give you some ideas.
Yeah, @Burlbird is correct. The sun's demise, which will bring about the consumption of the Earth, is quite a bit further out than 100,000 years. Regardless, your timeline of 2700 sounds fine. It could be further. Just because we can progress doesn't mean we necessarily do. You and I are communicating via this instrument of technology that would look like witchcraft to many people living and breathing this very day, right now on Earth. At least you're not making the mistake that bugs me the most in sci-fi: Utterly different, changed, hyper-futuristic Earth in just a few decades.
Thank you for your input. I'm trying to realistically come up with something within a time frame that could realistically happen. Your input is appreciated. Edit- I'll come up with something personal to talk to you guys soon, but I'm severally pushed for time.
Do you need a timeframe relative to the one we currently live in? All planets have different years anyway, and if earth was fried there would be little reason for any space faring human civilization to still use an earth year as a unit of measurement. Maybe a year on Avalon is 4 years on earth, maybe a day there only lasts 6 hours. And then, by the year 100,000 BC there will probably have been dozens of technological highs and lows, the fact that our technology here on Earth has advanced incredibly in the past 500 years doesn't mean that it will always keep advancing. There will be plagues, natural disasters, wars, famines, the sun eating earth, knowledge will come and go. And come back again. Real life example: The Roman Empire had concrete that they used for their docks, these docks are still standing strong and are showing no signs of rotting - scientists are still baffled by the fact that people over 2000 years ago could make better concrete than we can today.
If you are going that far in the future you can make anything happen you want, it's all fantasy in that time frame anyway. There is no way to predict the technology that far into the future. I like the idea of buildings that reach the stratosphere, truly vertical cities, interesting. You might find it useful to Google 'elevators to space' and incorporate the carbon nanotubules into the structures. FTL travel is hampered by the laws of physics, but readers don't mind. I like the hyperspace proposition myself, space folds up and you travel through it like an accordion. The Sun is middle aged. It has enough hydrogen to burn for another 5 billion years before it balloons into a red giant.
GingerCoffee is right. Look how far we came in the last 200 years, so it's only natural that we will probably be wormholing all over the place and perhaps even mucking up time itself 100,000 years from now.
You might be able to speed up the burning out of the sun. Maybe a close flyby of a small black hole, accreting mass off the sun, speeding its demise.
Wouldn't work. If there was a mass with that much gravitational pull it would wreck havoc on the whole solar system long before it got close enough to start pulling mass from the Sun. Why bother? Why not just have a different catastrophe, there are dozens to choose from.
Probably true enough but the sun going to red giant naturally is not all that benign either, at least as far as we're concerned. I thought the idea was to destroy earth through some sort of catastrophe leading to red giant for some not yet discovered, plotting reason.
Actually, the opposite is true, at least as well. Adding mass to the sun will cause the fusion reaction to occur faster.
That was my theory, thereby burning out faster, and going to red giant faster, but then with the extra mass it may not go to red giant but collapse to, ah heck, never mind.
Accreting from the Sun to the black hole which was presumably the larger mass, @Robert_S , not adding to the Sun. He suggested the black hole would siphon mass away from the Sun. However, you made me recall, the very large stars burn out faster than small ones. The rate of fusion correlates to size. http://physics.about.com/od/astronomy/f/LifeDeathStar.htm
I'm kind of an amateur astronomer. All stars expand. It's part of their death throes. However, if they are big enough, like 20+ or so times our sun, they will collapse into black holes. Our sun will turn into a brown dwarf I believe, but it's going to consume Earth and perhaps Mars in the process of dying. Earth will be long dead by then because as the Sun ages, it gets larger and hotter. Eventually, too hot to support life.
I understand what accretion means. I also understand that at least the opposite is true. It may be the case for accreting as well as adding mass, but I know from people who know their stuff that adding mass to the sun will cause the fusion reaction to occur at a faster rate because there is more mass to create pressure for the reaction, thus causing it to burn out faster.
That may be true about the sun, but I'm sure you could come up with some kind of reason for the sun to start dying prematurely, or maybe the reason is unknown - that's part of the fun of writing sci-fi. Sunshine got away with it because they never went into detail as to why the sun was dying since it was beyond human understanding. The audience isn't preoccupied with the impossibility of such a thing happening, they're more immersed in the characters and the human will to survive despite unreliable and untested technology. Anywhere between 2000-7500 years in the future sounds believable for an intergalactic government, I mean it really depends on how fast humans developed warp technology (or similar) in your story's history.
Am I missing something here? Did these two sentences contradict each other? The user takes virtual form of someone else...physically creating material, changing voice, etc?
@Cogito Not unless you had to pool all of the Earth's resources to create the most powerful bomb ever made to restart nuclear fusion in the sun. You're all in at that point
See my edit, my sentence wasn't clear but I fixed it a while ago. But you still have it backward, the Sun would lose mass to the black hole, not the other way around.
GingerCoffee, I had a brain burp, I meant for mass to disappear, of course, and you can concur, if too much mass disappears the furnace goes out.
It doesn't change the fact a small black hole as the means for the Sun to get smaller or larger causes more problems than it solves. But hey, it's sci-fi, writers take liberties.
My apologies with my contradiction. The technology would use a form of alien tech that changes potential energy into material which can be easily transformed back. The suit basically creates a physical form of a person, using the alien technology described, from a hacked security database of humans and other races (which contains retina scans and voices). This suit was one of ten used by an outlawed organisation (the MC left the group with his suit) with it being made illegal. Again sorry about the contradiction.
