I’ve been building a universe for years, much too long without any visible progress. It’s all in a folder just waiting for me to figure out how to tell the story. The thing is I can’t keep on wasting my time. I’ve started writing stories dozens of times and i end up getting stopped dead in my tracks each time.
I was in Kyiv and watched the HBO mini-series Chernobyl and it got me thinking about sci-fi stories. In traditional science fiction radiation exposure is ignored. It’s a problem that’s irrelevant because of technological progress but what if i were to use the dangers that it presents as an important element of the makeup of the universe.
I was thinking about the cultural attitudes that would be created in isolation of humanity, in the risks that space habitation would have when the protection against collective radiation exposure would be limited.
Looking at space travel in science fiction I wanted to take a realsitic approach to space travel. To do this I would treat travel through normal space as realistic as possible with the massive benefits and definicences in each approach. Then there is faster than light, where I took the very basis of FTL travel and adapted it to fit a more grounded and realistic universe.
There are a lot of limitations that occur when you are framing your world to feel real. I want to do this to ground it within it to feel like it could happen so that the ready will be able to suspend their disbelief easier.
I want to use the limitations as ways to enhance what I want the ready to get from the story. It should help to acentuate the world in a way that makes it unique and interesting.
Making FTL challenging and having it have inescapble costs is important in my world to help give it a level of risks that you have to think about every time. It is that sort of thought I wanted baked into the very structure of the universe. To have aww and fear living together in tandem is it worth it, how it will be worth it for many while to so many others the cost will be too high but now they are they, they have no choice but to make the best of it.
It is time to stop wondering and waiting and just start doing.