Writing Vena's Tale

[Joao_Luz (João Luz)]

Thanks for replying. As usual, your thoughts were very helpful

@Radivis

I think it’s too early to say whether the 2090s or the 2110s or some other decade would be the best to settle the story in. We probably need to work more on the timeline, first.

The story must be set on a time that meets the following criteria:

• The tensions between cloud-lords and hell-creepers must have been going on for a while. Since the first hell-creepers would only land on the surface in the early 2080’s, or, with luck, late 2070s, the two cultures wouldn’t have had the time to develop true hatred for each other by the 2090s. Ten years are just not enough to build that kind of tensions.

• A significant portion of the population must be fed up with system D and willing to leave it behind. Of course, the solid collectives will probably hate the system since the moment they wake up, so they will certainly start experimenting with new social systems as soon as possible. Examples of proto-V Systems will probably have been in existence for decades by the 2110’s, but these will probably be fringe phenomenoms, restricted to the surface of Venus and a few more awkward places. As you said, the main cause for the decline of system D will probably be the transition to posthumanity (although I’m not sure economic crisis wouldn’t happen, I mean, no system is perfect), so I guess that the rate at which human augmentation progresses will be the thing to determine the deadline of system D. But still, it takes time for most people to even start considering turning their backs on a system, especially if that’s a system for which they thought in the past (even if for some reason immortality isn’t invented, and in our timeline it is, many of the early defendents of system D would probably still be alive by the end of the century). When system D starts to crack society will react in three stages: first, it will deny the crisis, secondly, it will try to reform system D in order to make more suitable for the new times, and finally it will painfully choose to adopt system V. So, I don’t think it’s very likely that the Big Change could still happen in this century. We must consider basic human psychology when we speculate on the evolution of societies.

@Radivis

I think the suit should have an advanced AGI. So, we have one more character in our story that could spice things up a bit.

Yeah, that may be a good idea. I think I might make the AI non-sentient at first, so that I can focus on the ralationship between Vena and Lor and than make it gain sentience as the story progresses.

@Radivis

I assume that Vena therefore would have to go to New Nihon to get such a suit and travel down to the surface.

I actually thought that she could build it herself, you know, being a transhuman genius girl and all. She could get the parts she needed from nipponese traders and download a few technical expertise programs into her mind, and then let her intellect do the rest of the job.

@Radivis

The thing about Roman catholicism adapting to the changes in the 21st century is not quite implausible. But I think it would make sense to add in some schism between Terran and Venusian “catholicism” to make things a bit more interesting. Perhaps the Venusian might want to have their own pope. A pope who lives in a totally different culture would probably not be accepted as spiritual leader.

Maybe, schisms have happened before in the catholic church after all.

@Radivis

I don’t think it makes a lot of sense to have the colonies even formally be part of a Terran nation. It’s just totally inappropriate. It may work for a few decades, but at least the first generation growing up on Venus will revolt against being governed by a distant point in the sky.

I don’t think that way. The original colonists will probably be (in large part) patriotic Brazillians, and they would try to pass that patriotism to their children.

The european colonies in America and Africa took centuries to revolt agains their sovereigns, and many of them did that somewhat reluctanctly. I know that the distance between Earth and Venus is a lot bigger than the distance between Europe and America, but the transportation difficulties are comparable (considering the different stages of technology), and communication will probably be easier (since information now travels at the speed of light).

@Radivis

The idea about melee combat is interesting, but I think even on Venus it would only play a minor role. Let’s consider a bullet: It’s basically a dumb drone that punches a hole through you. If you replace the dumb with smart, and add some steering capabilities, then you’ve got a smart missile with ballistic payload. That’s still much better than and short ranged melee weapon. So, I’d rather assume that using smart projectiles would be the primary way of waging warfare.

You make a very good point by mentioning smart projectiles. Maybe warfare in 22nd century Venus would be comparable to warfare in 17th century Earth. You know, when people used mostly rifles and cannons but still reverted to swords and spears in some situations.

There will be a few complications with smart bullet warfare:

• Smart bullets will have a complex structure and require their own propulsion engines and fuel.

• Unless each bullet has its own AI (which would be impracticable, I think), their programming will have to be regularily adjusted accordingly to the metereological conditions.

I think it’s plausible to assume that, when the collectives run out of bullets they may just throw themselves at each other and start fighting with their bodies.

Nuclear and antimatter weapons would be used mostly for hive-kills

@Radivis

I think designing the different kinds of collectives needs more work. They should be so diverse that they are even hard to categorize.

Yeah, you’re right, I did that kind of in rush. I actually think that we should start a topic about this.

@Radivis

Yes, makes sense. Everything except the para-neurons and the von-Neumann computer would probably already be the status quo in the cloud lord society, though.

Yeah, but I think those things would probably be enough to make Vena stand-out quite a lot.