The year is...something something something. Most of the Earth's energy problems have been solved by high energy fuel cells, an Orbital Solar Energy Network and wind power from constant storms and hurricanes as a result of climate change. A chunk of our little planet is Hell. Australia is depopulated and mostly used for energy and coastal farming. Africa is more developed, but still an underdog. Eurasia, the Americas and Asia are the home of rich, developed societies and techy doodads. A Twilight War is fought between Europe, America, East Asia against Russia. A Bunch was formed between the others against Russia. Mechs are deployed for the first time and Russia gets flattened. This heralds the end of the Information Age and the beginning of the...Something Age. Russia is forced to join the Bunch in exchange for not paying hefty reparations and being able to hold their original territory. Thing is, East Asia gets whiny about this. They want that big chunk of Russia they acquired. It's about now that China breaks offa the Bunch and a dictator rises, preaching Pan-Asianism. That is Asians should band together and boot everyone else out. Asian nations join the new club etc. etc. Fast forward a bit, you get 2 main superpowers, with individual states in between. The Bunch and the Other Bunch. The Other Bunch is almost entirely east Asian. The Bunch is everyone else. The Other Bunch develops real good and builds a ginormous army. Like King Xerxes ginormous. They smack their way through India and Russia (sorry, Russia) before getting their asses halted. Then they redivert a helluva lot of their st00fz to the Australia and smash it. A failed invasion of North America prompts them to redirect again. To South America. South America is cracked quickly and The Bunch pulls out. This is where the thingy I'm writing is set. It's the counterattack into South America by The Bunch. They start at a fictional city and begin clawing inward. Massive fleets blow each other and civilians to bits, groundpounders in mechs, tanks and average soldiers blow stuff up on a smaller scale and deliver macho dialogue whilst suave pilots give the finger to enemy pilots. I just want to know the validity of this setting. Most of it's a timeline leading up to this and there is no real list of characters or such to speak of. I want to see if the setting is sound. The plot is mostly 'The Bunch shows up and starts kicking ass. Author writes it.' The issue with backstory I'm having is the Pan-Asian side. I named them the Pan-Asian Union. Thing is, Battlefield 2142 is also about a war in the future between 2 superpowers. One even has 'Pan-Asian' in the title. I'm trying to not make it feel like a ripoff. Hell, 2142's Pan-Asian side doesn't even have many real Asians in it. >.> But mostly, here's my idea. What do you think of it?
A story concept means nothing. I can tell you now, it has all been done before. What matters is how you write it, the characterization, the flow, the imagery, all of it. There's no benefit in asking what other people think of the concept! They'll either say,"Sounds great," or, "it sounds like a ripoff of..." If the idea stirs you, write it. Then ask people what they think of the final story. After they tell you what they don't like about it, revise it, usually several times, until you're happy with it or until you throw up your hands and say the hell with it. Please read What is Plot Creation and Development?
if its fantasy and set in the future you can make the setting anything you want - not a very helpful response lol However you can make the world yours. Make it work.
Unless you somehow rid the world of nuclear weapons between now and then, the conflicts you are keen to depict seem inconceivable.
Yep and all the flora and fauna of our fragile planet. Come to think of it, a more likely scenario than persuading politicians to part with their big boy's toys.
hey the beauty of fantasy is the fairytale element - as long as you make the ludicrous sound believable your imagination is the limit. Maybe they have stored things in bunkers etc. Just off my top of the head sounds barmy now lol but say descendants from Hiroshima or Chenobyl carry a special gene that has developed. The women from Hiroshima were considered to be cursed worried about producing 'mutant' children. It sounds daft like that but work it into the right story and it doesn't matter. This story is set in the future it can be made to work. This is why I love writing fantasy is just no limits except what I can imagine for my story - the only limit I have is to put it in a way that comes across in a believable manner.
My preferred style means lots of realism and plausible scenarios, which rules out 'make stuff up'. I'm also wondering about 'Superpowers engage each other in all out war without nuclear annihilation', which is annoying me. Not everybody will disarm. A possible solution is an emphasis on precision warfare on all sides and focusing attention on military assets, but nuking innocent people is just so much fun.
Let me throw my two cents in. You'll have to go quite a ways into the future, but a mech vs Taliban and IEDs and guerilla warfare would be interesting. What if nukes were just gotten rid of because a superior weapon was invented, say something like an antimatter bomb or something that broke down the bonds between molecules and didn't leave any radiation, much preferred to the scorched earth effect of nuclear weapons. UN has crumbled, biological weapons are no longer looked down on. Loads of possibilities that get rid of nukes, a virus that kills only humans and dies out after 48 hours, sure it would leave behind bodies, but those could be taken care of by genetically engineered bacteria. You really are going into the softer realms of science fiction here, and if you make it believable, and the story worth us suspending disbelief, then you may have a success. Tell it badly, make it unbelievable, you may flop out.
Fact is it will be 'make up.' WWIII is set in the future - it is your job to make it feel real. My fantasy seems to have a 'real' feel about it however the scenarios aren't - yours will be less obviously made up than using magic elements to make plates, living for four hundred years or turning into a swan. You could make any scenario about weapons feel real by just thinking about it and telling a story about how it came to be there. For example my story is set on another world and had characters with names like Tom, Matt, Jack and Alexander - rather than change them I created a reason why they used very Earth sounding names by creating Christian Pilgrim space travellers. Whilst the story is too far fetched for yours the idea remains the same - why do things happen that way? how have they become that way? how do I tell the story so the reader understands that? You need to take the scenario that will tell your story and convince your reader find reasons for it to happen then it becomes 'realistic' no matter how far into the fantasy realm you dip you toe or don't. A good writer will make turning into another creature believable, a bad writer will make a trip to the supermarket last Wednesday sound far fetched.
I looked into the Mech vs Guerrillas type before, but I didn't like it. I prefer the all-encompassing full-scale war rather than a War on Terror with Mechs. Though that would get rid of the WMD issue, I'd rather have a few WMD's popped off anyway, rather than abstain completely. Maybe if that Satellite Energy Network spewed lasers which made missiles go boom. Making up stuff is fun, but I need my realism. Nice thing about fantasy/sci-fi is I get to make stuff up. Don't have petty reality in the way.
Could go a similar route they did in Gundam SEED. Where Nuclear Weapons were rendered useless because of a certain Jamming device. Of course I wouldn't know of any actual scientific backing, but its the future and its fiction so... yeah. Coming up with a similar device before the start of the story would make it possible for a full scale war between super powers without nuclear weapons coming into play. That or just develop even stronger weapons that make nuclear warhead useless and making them obsolete.
Or the powers realize that popping off one nuke would inevitably lead to the enemy nuking them in retaliation, & vice versa & so on & so forth, until the escalation wipes out humanity. Thus, most nations wisely elect to abstain from most nuclear offenses for the most part; lest they be nuked in return. Every nuke would be a huge deal & tempt all sides to let the salvos fly. A possible device for heightening tension & all. Your synopsis sounds very interesting thus far. Good luck
Frankly, I have to express my disappointment. I read this entire post with the assumption that there would be awesome robots in it. I saw no such robots. False advertising! Haha, kidding Interesting idea thus far. What I wonder is how you'll actually write it. That's a hell of a lot of back story that seems like it might be difficult to incorporate. Additionally, there will be a lot of action, but that might get kind of monotonous after a while. Kicking ass is fun to watch on TV, but it's not nearly as much fun to read about. Finally, how do you narrate it? The plot is done on such a big scale--whole armies taking offensives, etc (right now, it's kind of like a military history more than a story)--that I'm wondering if you'll have trouble writing it in scenes. Validity of the setting? Like others have said, that's just not all that important when you write a fantasy/sci-fi story. It has to be written effectively, of course, but that goes for any setting. Perhaps you mean the premise, like the whole back story before the book actually starts? Well, haha, it's far-fetched, but that does seem to be the point. It seems OK to me, but as I said, I think it may be difficult to put all this background in. In any case, it sounds like an interesting project. Good luck.
It's like the cold war all over again. There are so many more interesting ways of killing people than nuclear weapons. Don't box yourself in.
A few questions: How can nuclear powers engage in "all out war" without nuking each other? Showing restraint about using nukes implies something less than "All Out" warfare. Why would ANYONE disarm, unless they had too? What is the benefit of weakening your position in the face of your enemies? Such a war will always end in a stalemate, with nobody winning and an eventual cease fire, because if either side is pushed to the brink of being defeated...what have they got to lose by sending their enemies to hell?
'Nuclear weapons as a deterrent' is a good idea, but if one bunch starts losing, they'll nuke everyone else. I need to write large scale WMD's out of it entirely. If I had a system integrated with the Energy Network which blows high-alt WMD's outta the sky, alerts nations of low-alt WMD's and uses its onboard radar to survey all the rest. That could open up a superweapon plotline. A plotline wherein somebody tries to get sneaky with their supers. It also allows for more strife as small bombings are more popular than ever and nobody can use the WMD excuse to invade.
...until someone advises the leaders of the superpower nations that while nukes are big, loud and sexy weapons...the subtle nature of thousands of industrial canisters of small pox or anthrax can create the same death toll nation wide, for a fraction of the cost of developing and maintaining a single nuclear weapon. Your enemies are just as dead, the landscape isn't pocked with radioactive craters, you can blame it all on your enemy's germ warfare gone awry and politically keep your own hands clean.
True, but we still have more nukes than biological weapons. And with panicky, US style Hazmat teams, it's surprisingly hard to get them out. Most bioweapons take quite a large amount of effort, tech and funding. Anthrax isn't homemade and the really deadly stuff requires trained personnel and high-tech labs to work with to make them in any appreciable amount. Development of weapons based on diseases may also be stalled by the fact that such research facilities can't be moved away and are entirely static, due to the large amount of sensitive or dangerous equipment. In fact, WMDs just wreck a war story. I can't have any two major, realistic superpowers slugging it out without somebody getting the bright idea of blowing all of the others to kingdom come at little material cost to themselves.
I imagine that there is a reason World War II was the last imperial war between superpowers. The "Cold War" never turned "Hot" because of the reason you spelled out. All other wars since have been fought in tiny, under developed countries using conventional weaponry.
The actual use of WMDs would be MADness - the specter of Mutually Assured Destruction has been the deterrent up until now. The existence of large scale WMD can add tension, with the posibility of some lunatic gaining enough control of a WMD cache to unleash a cascade reaction.
One of my biggest criticisms of mecha anime is how tactically inept a huge gundam type vehicle would be. Something that big would have the radar cross section of a building and be an insanely easy target to hit. They would be able to move, but if they're walking how fast can they possibly stroll? An Abrams tank weighs 70 tons, but is powered by a turbine engie and has treads on it, so it can actually hoof it at quite a clip. This is one of the reasons why battleships became obsolete; the age of super accurate super deadly missiles ended the era of the mega dreadnaughts. Nowadays it's not the biggest thingie with the biggest gun that wins, so if I was a 21st century commander and any nation was foolish enough to field giant robots I would laugh and watch as squadrons of tactical strike aircraft took them apart before they marched across a border. And even if all of the WMDs in the world were gone, and no one was willing to even threaten to use them as a deterrent, by the year something something something something when giant robots rule the world there will be weapons that make the Tomahawk cruise missile look like a flint spear...mark my words. The military is already thinking decades ahead and is only limited by funds and current technology. My advice, think smaller. Small is very deadly...
I saw an article somewhere about iran building mini-ekranoplans to swarm the defenses of battleships. Tiny, ground effect vehicles, one maybe two passengers, no armament, and pilot's goal is to board the ship and take it, or keep them busy while heavier guns go to town on the battleships.
