[Science Fiction] What SciFi supplements have been written for BRP

[Joerg]

Without a blog post in your blog, I wasn't able to give you a like or a comment over there...

Interesting story, with an interesting mix of tropes.

The religious aspect might have profited from a little more attention.

The reptids are a fairly fun take on that trope, though not feathered (as e.g. in the final volumes of Schlock Mercenary), closer to ILM's creations for Crichton's opus.

The defectives are a bit of a mystery - are they the first generation of their specific experiment?

 

But for the scope of a very short novella, enough ideas about the background crammed in. Interesting that you gave up on the cetaceans... Also, the society (or at least the protagonist) felt a bit like the Confederates.

[Ethereal]

The religious aspect might have profited from a little more attention. Although I have read Sci/Fi books where religion is a supporting subject matter and enjoyed them, the writing group I belonged to was a mix of writers with only three other Science Fiction and Fantasy writers. This short story was actually a prequel to a novel I started, but never finished. I later used the premise of the novel for a Worlds of Wonder, Future World  Campaign I ran for 26 sessions.

final volumes of Schlock Mercenary), closer to ILM's creations for Crichton's opus. Not familiar, but sounds like something I would like to read.😁

The defectives are a bit of a mystery - are they the first generation of their specific experiment?

The Defectives come from the concept of the word iniquity: From Latin iniquitatem (nominative iniquitas) "unequalness, unevenness," figuratively "unfavorableness, unfairness, injustice," noun of quality from iniquus "unjust, unequal; slanting, steep," from in- "not" (see in- (1)) + aequus "just, equal" (see equal (adj.)). (Non-Aequus.) Not-equalness. In the bible it says the iniquity of the fathers will be visited unto the children unto the third and fourth generation. I consider iniquity to be an attitude, not an actuality. Could an attitude be imprinted on genes? So the question became what happens to the fourth or fifth generation? But all that would have came out in the novel.

But for the scope of a very short novella, enough ideas about the background crammed in. Interesting that you gave up on the cetaceans... I choose animals I was familiar with.🙂

Also, the society (or at least the protagonist) felt a bit like the Confederates. Not sure on that one. The society I choose was Atlan or Atlantis and takes place over 12,000 years prior to the novel I planned on writing. For that I choose the Edgar Cayce book (and other similar books) “Origins and Destiny of Man”, with some embellishments. As well as human animal hybrids from the same sources. And included the concept of the priest of the ‘Law of One’.

The only thing I skipped as far as I know would have been Emag(s). That is also something that would have been brought out in the novel. Originally based on Rene’ Descartes ‘Theory of Gravity’.

Thank you for your comments. Very constructive for me.

 

 

[Joerg]

On 2/15/2021 at 2:18 AM, Ethereal said:

The Defectives come from the concept of the word iniquity: From Latin iniquitatem (nominative iniquitas) "unequalness, unevenness," figuratively "unfavorableness, unfairness, injustice," noun of quality from iniquus "unjust, unequal; slanting, steep," from in- "not" (see in- (1)) + aequus "just, equal" (see equal (adj.)). (Non-Aequus.) Not-equalness. In the bible it says the iniquity of the fathers will be visited unto the children unto the third and fourth generation. I consider iniquity to be an attitude, not an actuality. Could an attitude be imprinted on genes? So the question became what happens to the fourth or fifth generation? But all that would have came out in the novel.

Defectives in general are fairly clear, but I was referring to this specific litter of defectives.

Even though the longevity of the humans has been addressed, the kind of behavioral defect that led to the "parricide" has been described as something accrued over generations. Was the stock that friend of the protagonist worked on already that "infected"?

Also, speaking of parricide - would that "stock" have been their own genetic info? Have people switched over to immortality because future generations would become anti-social?

 

[Ethereal]

On 2/16/2021 at 1:09 AM, Joerg said:

Defectives in general are fairly clear, but I was referring to this specific litter of defectives.

Even though the longevity of the humans has been addressed, the kind of behavioral defect that led to the "parricide" has been described as something accrued over generations. Was the stock that friend of the protagonist worked on already that "infected"?

Also, speaking of parricide - would that "stock" have been their own genetic info? Have people switched over to immortality because future generations would become anti-social?

 

Parricide is an interesting word and fits very nicely. In the late 1970's or early 1980's I read an article how the Dutch had discovered a type of anger was inherited through a certain family. Sometime after that there was an article about a lamb being created in a cloning experiment (Dolly, a sheep cloned. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dolly . Taking the concept of iniquity (non-equas) and applying it to the science of Genetics I was able to postulate that thought patterns could be  imprinted on genes and inherited through generations. Now in genetics there has been theories about changing various aspects of the human body. ex: eye color, hair color, taller, longer lived, thinner, all supposedly connected with genes.

So what would happen if you changed a gene that had a thought pattern of loving family? Or erased it from the gene? Then Parricide becomes possible.

One thing I have learned about writing Science Fiction is it is mostly a concept of ‘What If’. If you get behind Science you are playing catch-up, but if you want to write Science Fiction you have to get in front of Science because to write a story about factual Science, it is just fiction, a story.

In regards to the litter question, information that would have come out in the novel would have been there were three types of gene manipulation. The Neo-species, Human gene manipulation and Hybrid. (Human/animal or also known as the Things) In the case of Sanja and her siblings they would have been gene manipulated in a lab, and grown in an incubator to an age of where they were capable of living/breathing on their own as would a normal human child.

In the case of the Neo-species the genes that would have been manipulated would have been the Pineal Gland, hippocampus, pituitary gland and the hypothalamus.

The concept of the Things comes from Edgar Cayce’s ‘The Origin and Destiny of Man’ (Thought Forms) and Thomas Burnett Swannn’s ‘Day of the Minotaur and ‘The Weirwoods’, etc. https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/252273.Thomas_Burnett_Swann .

Thank you for the questions.