So I’ve had this setup for a scifi novel kicking around in my head for a while.
The story begins on earth, roughly 30 years from now. Explorers arrive from interstellar space and tell the Earthicans that they need to buy material to refit, refuel, and relaunch their starship. They will trade information and technology for the material, but it will not be cheap. Earthicans must put tonnes into orbit for each small bit of tech. Fortunately, the project bootstraps itself. Once earth acquires fusion power and a skyhook, they will be home free.
Side plot: Earth of the future is pretty bad. Wars over energy are routine. People are starving in the US. NASA is long since de-funded. The explorers are sad, but detached. Their mission is not charity.
The other main plot: We tell the story from the point of view of the interstellar explorers, whom the Earthicans never get to see face-to-face. The explorers are solid-state beings living in the computers of the starship. This is the only way to build starships, there is no room on board for living beings.
But the explorers were once physical beings. They live in a rich virtual world, where they envision themselves as the crew of a scifi starship from television shows from their own past.
Possible ideas for conflict: Maybe the effort to restart a space program that will undoubtedly cause short-term deaths. Maybe the new space race leads to wars on earth, even as the end of war is within grasp. Maybe most Earthicans hate and fear the ETs and do not want to trade with them. Maybe once Earthicans find out that they are not “alive” as they understand it (re: culture of life), Earthicans refuse to trade with them.
Side plot: The explorers mission is—so far—a failure. They have visited half-a-dozen systems in search of more advanced technology. So far they have found nothing. They and other groups of explorers find a lot of empty systems and some dead civilizations (most died off with a nuclear holocaust, others at other stages in civilization). Several declined civilizations (These are tough for the explorers: they must spend a lot of time and become archaeologists in search of tech they don’t know exists or not.) And several civilizations like earth, that have become stagnate. As much as they act indifferent to the humans, they are secretly collecting as much information as possible (TV signals, later they tap into the Internet (how?)).
Bibliography:
- Childhood’s End. Aliens who don’t reveal themselves for fear that earthlings will fear them.
- The Fountains of Paradise. Space elevator. Starship
refit. - Anything to do with Transhumanism. Uploaded Solid State
intelligences. - Star Trek: First Contact + Enterprise. 21st century Vulcan/Human
interaction. - Contact. Of course. I never liked the ending, though.
- Battlestar Galactica. Can a toaster be a person?
Note: I list a bibliography to (1) resolve any accusation that I steal ideas from somewhere. Of course I do. (2) list those works that I would like to disassemble. Most of these have underlying assumptions that wish to explore.
If you haven’t read it yet, “Singularity Sky” by Charles Stross also has a lot of goodies that speak towards those themes (but they are left somewhat unexplored in favor of “Hard SF” noodling).
It sounds like a good story. You could also have the ETs interested in “archiving” humans in case they wipe themselves out. Depending on how much or little is known about this process, it could be used to add some tension about ETs motives.
Or that they have visited before and planted a precursor of the “fuel” that the’ll need, now that it has ripened they want it. This means that in some sense they own it, and are a bit more hard-line about getting it back.
I’m trying to do a lot of writing on my own, and if you’d like to exchange (edit, proof-read, comment, collaborate, etc); I’d be happy to oblige.
Just as a side note, which ending to Contact didn’t you like? Depending on if you are talking about the book or the movie, I agree with you.
—”Contact” by Carl Sagan SPOILERS BELOW (movie & Book)—
I always liked the ending to “Contact” the movie but not “Contact” the book. It may be my misunderstanding, but the movie ended with Jodie Foster being doubted by the Senate due to lack of evidence. But, ironically, we learn that the evidence is there (all 18 hours of it) but is being kept secret by devious officials.
In the book, a similar setup takes place. When the main character gets back all she has to show for it is the hint that there is a “signature” somewhere. She eventually finds it by using a computer program to analyze the sequence of digits in Pi — eventually finding an unmistakable signature of an intelligent designer.
—END SPOILERS—
So, they are really quite different. In one you get a punch for science and the other you get a sorta new-agey creator thing. Ick.