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Captain Kirk
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Sounds good. But I don't think Castro would line that long. Unless there was an awesome new medical breakthrough. By the way do the aliens have a name? Asia nad Europe aren't part of the UTW.
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Captain Kirk
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I think I may of found a missing link. It's probably not the one you were looking for. Pluto is the coldest planet in our solar system because it is so far away from the sun. If Janus was behind Pluto than it would to far away from the sun. Meaning it would be one giant iceberg. Is that it ?
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sounds like a winner. although there is a problem with the planet. perhaps you can say that 'janus' is actually a gas giant with several moons that could be populated. another thing is this: in every story i've read it seems that the name of the mythical tenth planet is persephone. not to sy that you can't name it janus. hell, you probably picked janus instead of persephony for that specific reason... but i digress...
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i've had the poison leak into my skin
and it corroded my heart away
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korn469
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Poetic Justic
Apr 1999
time: 00:13
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ok looking on the net gave me some good ideas
quote:
Nemesis, the Sun's companion star, 1983-present
Suppose our Sun was not alone but had a companion star. Suppose that this companion star moved in an elliptical orbit, its solar distance varying between 90,000 a.u. (1.4 light years) and 20,000 a.u., with a period of 30 million years. Also suppose this star is dark or at least very faint, and because of that we haven't noticed it yet.
This would mean that once every 30 million years that hypothetical companion star of the Sun would pass through the Oort cloud (a hypothetical cloud of proto-comets at a great distance from the Sun). During such a passage, the proto-comets in the Oort cloud would be stirred around. Some tens of thousands of years later, here on Earth we would notice a dramatic increase in the the number of comets passing the inner solar system. If the number of comets increases dramatically, so does the risk of the Earth colliding with the nucleus of one of those comets.
When examining the Earth's geological record, it appears that about once every 30 million years a mass extinction of life on Earth has occurred. The most well-known of those mass extinctions is of course the dinosaur extinction some 65 million years ago. About 15 million years from now it's time for the next mass extinction, according to this hypothesis.
This hypothetical "death companion" of the Sun was suggested in 1985 by Daniel P. Whitmire and John J. Matese, Univ of Southern Louisiana. It has even received a name: Nemesis. One awkward fact of the Nemesis hypothesis is that there is no evidence whatever of a companion star of the Sun. It need not be very bright or very massive, a star much smaller and dimmer than the Sun would suffice, even a brown or a black dwarf (a planet-like body insufficiently massive to start "burning hydrogen" like a star). It is possible that this star already exists in one of the catalogues of dim stars without anyone having noted something peculiar, namely the enormous apparent motion of that star against the background of more distant stars (i.e. its parallax). If it should be found, few will doubt that it is the primary cause of periodic mass extinctions on Earth.
But this is also a notion of mythical power. If an anthropologist of a previous generation had heard such a story from his informants, the resulting scholarly tome would doubtless use words like 'primitive' or 'pre-scientific'. Consider this story:
There is another Sun in the sky, a Demon Sun we cannot see. Long ago, even before great grandmother's time, the Demon Sun attacked our Sun. Comets fell, and a terrible winter overtook the Earth. Almost all life was destroyed. The Demon Sun has attacked many times before. It will attack again.
This is why some scientists thought this Nemesis theory was a joke when they first heard of it -- an invisible Sun attacking the Earth with comets sounds like delusion or myth. It deserves an additional dollop of skepticism for that reason: we are always in danger of deceiving ourselves. But even if the theory is speculative, it's serious and respectable, because its main idea is testable: you find the star and examine its properties.
However, since the examination of the entire sky in the far IR by IRAS with no "Nemesis" found, the existence of "Nemesis" is not very likely
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i propose that nemesis is a red dwarf star
quote:
There are lots of types of dwarf stars: the Sun is called a yellow dwarf, because it is relatively small and yellow (its temperature is about 6000 degrees Celsius). A red dwarf is a tiny red star, pretty much like the Sun but much cooler and smaller.
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if it was surrounded by a dust cloud orbiting the red dwarf then it could be almost invisable
how does that sound?
korn469
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President Jakjon
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Metro Area of NYC, New York, United States
Jan 2000
time: 05:13
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Perhaps it would be best if you resolved the "why isn't it a ball of ice?" situation by simply putting it in a nearby star system, and then giving the humans near-lightspeed engines and faster than light communications.
FTLC is possible, as something faster than light has been discovered: the interaction between two halves of a quantum particle. I read in the Science Times that researchers split a quanta, seperated the halves, and sent one down some sort of track, like a marble, except cut in half but still rolling. The other half emulated the moves, and the time difference was less than if the interaction was at light speed.
Anyway, I also have a problem with the ideological implications of your story. I describe myself as a (Radical) Leftist (Pragmatic) Patriot Militarist (Neo-protestant) Christian (Anti-Monopolist) Capitalist. [Any questions, just ask.] So, while I liked the part about the USA unifying much of the world, the bit about the soldiers consciously betraying the mission is offensive and unrealistic.
I suggest a new strategy (to quote Admiral Tarkin): the aliens are inherently pacifistic, so they doubtlessly wouldn't UNDERSTAND weapons. Therefore, perhaps they somehow get their hands on some of the humans' weapondry (which is doubtlessly quite powerful by this point) and cause a cultural misunderstanding. The more nervous humans retaliate, which causes further escalation by the Aliens, and so on. The voices of reason/pacifists on both sides then have to somehow calm things down and bring peace. How about that?
As to the "Nemesis" scenario: "Nemesis" doesn't sound very original, but I don't have any better ideas at the moment. As to whether this is scientifically plausible, I will paraphrase Captain Kirk:
"Damnit, Jim I'm an ideologue not an astrophysicist"
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--President Jakjon
--Datalinks
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Captain Kirk
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Why do we always have to be corrupt? Why couldn't the alien species have a radical sect. Divergent violent sect apart from the pacifist whole. They attack the humans which makes the UTW declare war putting the innocent pacifists at risk. Bwahahahaha. Sorry.
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Damnit, Jim I'm a doctor not an animal psychologist
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President Jakjon
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Metro Area of NYC, New York, United States
Jan 2000
time: 05:13
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This is beginning to work together in my head, I hope you like it. (My sis and her significant other are watching "Cube" in the living room. It is an EXCELLENT movie, and I credit it for affecting my mind right now.)
I am a patriot and a militarist and I want to be a politician and I want to be a soldier- but I recognize that while not every human is willing to "sell his soul" so to speak, too many are. These corporate entities- I assume they would profit from being able to exploit the resources on Janus, whatever they may be. So, wouldn't they want to insure that they could?
They've got more money than God but they want even more, right? So, "they" (A monopoly, or a secret group of corporations) bribe the President- and as many of the mission personnel as they can corrupt, to make sure. So, not all the soldiers would betray the mission- and not all the techs would stay loyal. Less black-and-white that way.
Sorry about making assumptions about the species of your devising. Perhaps they hunt, so they use projectile weapons, but not each other. There is one innate reason why we feel that it is wrong to kill humans except when neccessary, why only the psychopathic kill for fun, etcetera. It is that it is a detriment to our own genetic survival to kill those of our own species for anything less than crucial reasons- we share 90% of our DNA with each other.
If you examined all of our DNA coding, nine tenths of the codes would be exactly the same. So, some basic chemical thing in our brain makes it very very hard to kill each other. However, when it comes to other species, it is different.
But how many of us could handle killing a mammal? More. And killing a bird? More. Killing a fish? Even more. Killing a jellyfish? Even more. A bush? Probably all of us. As the level of genetic similarity decreases, the level of our ability to get ourselves to kill it increases.
What is my point? That these aliens must have a more distant point considering something genetically similar to them. Therefore, they certainly couldn't bring themselves to kill each other, except for extreme cases (perhaps) and could get themselves to kill humans either. But, what if some are able to get around it? Humanity has its "sociopaths," why not them?
I agree with Captain Kirk. In far too much science fiction, the conflict between humanity and alienity is portrayed as black-and-white, cut-and-dry, and victim-victimizer. This is garbage. As much as any race has its "good" and "bad" people, the same holds true for species.
As to the name, I suggest: "United States of Earth". (USE)
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--President Jakjon
--Datalinks
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President Jakjon
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Metro Area of NYC, New York, United States
Jan 2000
time: 05:13
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Sounds great to me! Write on!
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--President Jakjon
--Datalinks
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Captain Kirk
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I think United People of Earth (UPE)is a great name. Go with it. It gives me kind of a cool feeling. As to President Jakjon's theory of sociopaths I don;t quite agree. What I had in mind was a group of trouble makers. Kind of like a cult. They don't agreewith the pacifist norm. They are xenophobic nad violent. They don't like the UPE prescnence so they attack and kill aprts of the mission. The UPE government declares war against the alien species (Skoralii)?
While on Earth corporations had meddled with things. Say parts of the Traveler's crew had contacted an Earth corporation. Knowing they could strike it rich on Janus they bribe the individuals (what's a few thousand bucks when they're sitting on a gold mine)?
So the crew contacts the cult and arranges for them to attack the rest of the Traveler's crew. Thus making it look like an alien attack. What do you think?
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Vi Vicdi
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Killeen, TX, USA
Nov 1999
time: 23:13
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First:
Corporations by and large have 2 objectives:
1. Make money
2. Avoid risk
Put another way they are far more likely to sell weapons than to ever use them.
Second:
If the story is about Revere's band the back-home stuff is largely superfluous. "Less is more."
Third:
I've been toying with this idea for years. You may use any part of it you like:
A species descended from herbivores makes first contact with a species descended from carnivores [humans, actually], and the plant-eaters are so prejudiced by the "inherently violent nature of predators" that they feel compelled to exterminate the flesh-eating barbarians.
The "hook", of course, is the irony of the "predators" being the victims and the "prey" the homicidal maniacs. (Similar to Small Soldiers, I guess).
There would be a touch of "species nationalism" as the humans, although technologically outclassed, would draw upon their resourcefulness to ultimately triumph  Some kind of "trick ending" where the aliens find out we didn't really evolve from predators but from scavengers, and that's why they lost, would be kind of cool, but would invalidate one of the moral subtexts that it doesn't matter what you evolved from but where you are evolving to.
The main theme of the story would be that naievete endangers the soul; the humans, while not perfect, certainly are better for being in touch with their darker nature, while the "peaceful" herbivores in their ignorance and fear fall easy victim to dishonor. Kind of Nietzchesque, I guess ...
[This message has been edited by Vi Vicdi (edited March 04, 2000).]
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President Jakjon
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Metro Area of NYC, New York, United States
Jan 2000
time: 05:13
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Whatever they are, they still fall into the category of "money interests," right? I like Vicardi's ideas. Perhaps the cartels (yes, I like that name!) want to cause a war involving the USE but not them in order to sell weapons through "front" companies while at the same time distracting the USE.
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--President Jakjon
--Datalinks
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Vi Vicdi
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Killeen, TX, USA
Nov 1999
time: 23:13
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Organized crime has a whole other modus operandi which I am unfortunately[?] not well-versed in. I would expect that, generally speaking, organized crime requires secrecy plus some illegal revenue-generating scheme.
Extortion in particular seems tough because along with secrecy ones organization must have the credibility to intimidate. "You don't know who we are, but we know who you are" will only fly for so long.
"Resource cartels" would act intensely most likely to protect their existing monopoly interest. They are not so much "risk averse" as paranoid about any change that might threaten either their stranglehold on the market or the market's demand for their goods.
DeBeers, which controls virtually everything about the diamond market, is probably about as nasty as a "legitimate" corporation would ever get, which by organized crime standards is pretty tame.
Corporations venturing into organized crime run into the problem of secrecy -- the more resources such a high-profile entity commits to criminal enterprises the harder it becomes to hide it. If it were to happen at all it would almost have to be a private corporation like a DeBeers, not a public corporation like a McDonalds.
I suppose in the future it might be possible for a corporation to gradually evolve into a nation, particularly since nations are tied to geography and space is full of empty places to plant ones flag. Nations will stop at nothing -- Iraq's invasion of Kuwait being a good example. Rogue nations will not hesitate to go to war if they gain by it.
Columbia might be closer to what you were referring to. Its government is under tremendous pressure from the money being pumped into the drug cartels. The cartels are, as a proportion of the Columbian economy, large enough to threaten the stability of the government itself.
That's all I can come up with for now. Good luck with your story!
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Omega Factor
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Houston, Texas, U.S.A
Mar 2000
time: 05:13
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I think the idea of the U.S uniting the rest of the world is rather unrealistic. But, I understand how you need to incorporate a mostly united earth in your story. For the name, how about:
The Concordance of Terran Nations
The Concordance of Earth Nations
The United Federation of Earth Nations
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Vi Vicdi
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Killeen, TX, USA
Nov 1999
time: 23:13
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If you need a U.N., call it the U.N.
Why make things more complicated than they need to be?
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02-03-2000 02:47
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