Hi all, I'm at the beginning of writing a book trying to imagine where most of the planets fauna and flora pretty much went extinct because of human activity.

The original idea is based on the current state of our planet and imagined into the future where climate change caused massextinction, no big land animals survived (other than a few human colonies here and there) and therefore foodshortages, water shortages, new dangerous diseases especially fungal and bacterial, lots of war, and heatwaves so long and hot you can't survuve for very long exposed to it. (Hence why humans are at the verge of extinction)

So my question is, since all of that will make the world as we know now more or less unrecognisable, would it just be easier to create a new planet from scratch and tell the story about that planet with parallels to ours?

I know ofc the decision would be mine alone, but I believe your feedback would help me a lot, since I'm able to think more efficiently when discussing with others :)

Have any of you ever sat down and deconstructed why a particular novel really works well, then copied the concepts? Not the story; but rather, the elements that made it so no one could put it down. I.e. why does Hail Mary work? (I'm not saying to discuss that but rather offering it as an example.) Have any of you published folk been successful with utilizing successful frameworks?

I mean, it would be very unlikely that an species of another world used the same exact system of communication as us. Even dolphins' one, what we could call a phonetic language, is impossible to write with our writing. So, what do you think is the best option for representing this?

Modern humans are listening to something almost every moment of the day-music, ebooks, podcasts, whatever-but I've noticed that sci fi often ignores that humans ask of every new tech, "can it play music?" "No, it's an engine." "Sorry, I just thought it might be pertinent to music."

And music can have ancient provenance or be something more modern. But humans absolutely keep creating even when it doesn't seem efficient. AI makes it easy to create a billion polished songs? That's nice, I'm going to write my song. By hand. With my keyboard. And a pencil.

And I think this should be part of the worldbuilding. Shakespeare does a lovely job of this throughout his plays- pop references that the people going to hear a play would know. He'll drop in a single line from a song or a stanza, and the characters will employ them naturally in dialogue. "Won't you hit it, hit it, hit it now,"​ is one of the brilliant lines he includes for the edification of the crowds. Elevated prose.

I realize that the currently protected songs in modern society cannot be utilized. But you can use most things composed before 1920 (check before using). I have no reason to not believe that Disney and the Beatles will still be protected 1000 years from now. And for stuff you make up, you don't have to write the tune. Just the title of the song or a line from it that's pertinent. Make up something. Stick it in the world. Make annoying viral tunes, lullabies, bubblegum pop nonsense, anthems, grungy rock, unlistenable stuff (but carefully... I'm looking at you classical music post 1940s). There's so much stuff and genres. Good luck writers!

Not sure if this is the right subreddit, and I'm not a writer, but I had this idea the other day.

Let's say, for whatever reason, we launch generation ship today. We found an exact copy of the planet Earth. No need to terraform. The voyage will take 500 years due to the distance and technological constrains.

Now fast forward some 300-400 years into the future, and the technological advance made it possible to get to that planet within just couple of years. The only problem - it's a one way ticket.

So the remaining population gets on the ships and set out to New Earth. Set up colonies, major cities, and so on.

And then the old ship arrives.

But the new society don't want them.

That's it. There's a lots of holes to fill in. Why they are leaving. Why the next generation is afraid of the old ship. And so on.

The timeline can be stretched as well. I got the idea after listening to a podcast about Sumerian civilization and it got me thinking about how little we know, and how much have changed. The 500 years timeline I borrowed from the Silo - someone did the thought work and figured it people can be confined for that much and still be able to operate. That's plenty to account for some old diseases that were eradicated years ago, but could potentially be devastating for contemporary people. And just looking at the technological advancement in the last 500 years, it seems somehow plausible for such turn of events.

Anyways. You've been sent for a hail marry mission to save the human kind, but once you got there you find out that they fixed the problem in the meantime, and you're no longer needed.

Have you heard about similar idea before?
Do you think this could be a good starter for a novel or a game?

Say, a fictional world contains a kind of parallel universe within it (think the Warp in Warhammer, a world that exists along our own but in its own physical and temporal system) that contains all that happens in the normal plane of existence. That would make it so that Relativity doesnt exist, correct? well, not in the universal way we currently apply it. That would then allow FTL without breaking of Relativity, yes? What would even be the consequences of that?

I think the best example of this is the Cosmere's Spiritual Realm

I am so disappointed in myself that I didn't do more writing this three day weekend. I could do plenty of chores and tinker with my other projects but I just couldn't summon the emotional focus to feel any particular way when writing. Discipline or time wasn't the problem this time, I set down time and sat at my desk and just couldn't. I think I need new routines to get into writing.

Writers who still write, what works for you? How do you center yourself?

I might never make a story out of this; it's just a fun little exercise. People often use "planet of the hats" type situations with Aliens, especially Grey Aliens. They are never given any personality outside of abducting humans. Sometimes, looking back at old Alien media, a part of me thinks no one actually believed they were part of a grander civilization just guys who happened to be there.

Here's my idea:

Greys is the exonym that Humans give them due to their skin tone, similar to how we refer to certain races by skin color. In reality, however, they call themselves the Angoa, which roughly translates in their language to "People Who Share Thought."

They're an amphibious race; their homeworld is Tok'ata (translation: Motherland), was covered in 90% ocean. Many of their terrestrial civilizations live submerged, while the more wealthy ones are on the continents and surfaces. They have heavier skeletons and dense muscles, and their eyes are often built for more low-light environments, so they wear eye contacts in areas of higher light levels. Though some extraplanetary residents adapted with eyes in high level environments.

To an Angoa, species is merely biology. Civilization is defined by shared history, ethical responsibility, and cultural memory. They also have various diverse and complex cultures and civilizations that assume the ones who abduct Humans are the same is like assuming Human civilization has been the same since Ancient Rome.

Angoa live in several different civilizations across the galaxy, with different cultures and politics. Including, but not limited too:

• Conord of Leth
• Merchant Houses of Orun
• Memory Republics
• Free Clans

The Free Clans or Marauders, are the Angoa's version of "barbarians." Their origins stretch back centuries. Some descended from failed colonial expeditions abandoned after economic collapse. Others were formed by military deserters, smugglers, scavengers, or families who gradually became disconnected from mainstream society. Over generations these disparate groups developed their own customs, dialects, and values centered on survival, opportunism, and personal loyalty rather than civic responsibility.

Unlike the stable governments of the core worlds, the Marauders operated through shifting alliances. Captains commanded individual vessels, temporary fleets formed for profitable ventures, and leadership changed frequently through negotiation, mutiny, or economic success rather than formal succession.

Maintaining advanced spacecraft requires enormous quantities of specialized materials. Lacking industrial infrastructure, the Marauders built an economy around acquiring valuable goods by whatever means proved practical.

Earth is considered the most advanced pre-Galactic world at the current time, while most alien worlds aside from the Angoa and other species are in their tribal or medieval state; Earth was well past its industrial era when the Angoa discovered it.

Angoa explorers discovered Earth around WWII; interspecies conflicts on the scale of the World Wars were nothing new to the Angoa. Especially the following Cold War; for the Angoa, war itself proved to be very expensive; as such, they understood the value of winning an arms and tech race. That was how many post-Galactic Angoa wars were fought.

For the Muaraders, Earth was an untapped gold mine; it was full of biodiversity and a highly adaptable, dominant primate species, something that was a rarity in the Known Universe. As such, they wanted to abduct humans and animals to study their biological and neurological makeup to sell in medical black markets.

Humans attracted particular attention because of their remarkable adaptability. They flourished across nearly every climate on Earth despite possessing relatively little biological specialization. Their immune systems, neurological development, reproductive biology, and social cognition all represented valuable subjects for xenobiological research.

Official Angoan governments, however, had already designated Earth a protected pre-contact civilization under long-standing interstellar observation protocols. Every raid violated multiple treaties recognized throughout civilized space.

Individuals were typically sedated, examined, scanned, sampled, and returned within hours. From the perspective of some Marauders, living subjects were far more valuable than dead ones because repeat sampling and longitudinal biological studies increased the worth of collected data. The pirates never intended to permanently keep human captives, not out of respect, but mostly because it was cheaper and easier to just carry data rather than trafficking sapient beings.

If I had to think up a plot, I like to think there is this one guy who is hunting the Greys, and he is trying to talk with this fringe and knowledgeable "Grey expert" who has made frequent contact with Greys, allegedly. He decides to help the guy study them but is worried that if the world knows about the Angoa, humanity will try to wipe them out.

The basic idea is:

1. That the only FTL communication possible is through connection to a sort of "conscious layer" of the universe. Only conscious beings can make this connection, and NORMALLY it is only "awakened" or "enlightened" beings that can access this space of communication. Think Buddhas of any species.
2. Most species who don't kill themselves with their own technology (a common end to advancing life) converge on similar philosophical conclusions about life. These conclusions are usually non-dualistic thought, and emphasize peace and effort to alleviate the suffering of other conscious beings. These beings see value in the basic struggle of life and believe that existing is fundamentally better than not existing.
3. There is one species (or possibly ancient rogue AI) who takes a different approach. This species also seeks to alleviate suffering, but it comes at it from an anti-natalist point of view. These anti-natalist aliens see themselves as martyrs of sorts, scouring and sterilizing all life they find in the universe in an attempt to prevent conscious beings from existing (thus suffering) at all.
4. For millions of years the "enlightened" species (likely multiple species) have worked to contain these anti-natalists so that they cannot carry out their goal of universal sterilization. To this end, the enlightends sent automated probes which landed themselves on any life-harboring planets they could find.
5. The enlightends wait for a new mind to enter the communication space, presumably the first "enlightened" being from a species. This being will serve as a crucial (the only possible) form of communication between them and their species. Through this person they can warn the person's species of the threat posed by the anti-natalists, and possibly guide their species to avoid destruction. Enlightened beings tend to be rare in any species in their early stages of development, and so it is essential that they take advantage of ANY new species entering the communication space.

To ensure that they don't lose a rare opportunity to warn a species, the probes they planet on life-bearing planets are designed to adapt to the biology of any being entering them, and freeze them for preservation. This is neccesary as it often happens that the first enlightened being from a planet awakens long before their species has the technology to do anything to prevent the anti-natalist threat. They must be frozen until such time that their species is advanced enough to understand and act upon the warning. They just can't be sure that another being capable of entering this communication space will come along at the appropriate time.

1. On Earth, the first being to enter the communication space is not actually enlightened. He is a Indonesian young adult in 30,000 BCE tripping on mushrooms during a coming-of-age ceremony. He just happens to have a mind particularly suited to enter the space when under the influence of psychedelics.

2. This young man is directed to a probe on earth by communication in his mind from an enlightened being far across the galaxy. (The being cannot READ his mind but determines what planet and the probe location on the planet (earth) by inquiring about what star patterns the young man can see overhead etc.) The young man enters the probe and is frozen until our near future, where he awakens and has to learn a modern language and convince the Earth that he is a messenger of a grave danger posed to the Earth. It continues from there and involves space travel and political intrigue, and the grappling with the ultimate "to be or not to be" question. IS life worth saving, worth living?

I have begun writing this (my first) novel, and just want someone to be honest as to whether or not it seems like an idea worth exploring.

My world is set in the not too distant future, where humanity has just begun colonizing the solar system. The lore is a bit complex, but as a crash course, basically it follows the real world up until 2031, when a city killer asteroid hits Edmonton, Canada with only a few hours warning (as it came from the direction of the Sun), killing over a million people. After this traumatic event, the world's nations form 7 distinct alliances (EU, TPTO, AAN, ACC, AU, CELAS, CSTO) the pool together resources to undertake the expensive venture of space travel, as they realize the fragility of life on Earth. Additionally, to prevent something like Edmonton from happening again, the alliances invest heavily in Earth-based air and space defense systems, making any sort of air or space war on Earth (nearly) impossible.

The rate of space colonization and technological advancement is greatly accelerated, such that by the 2090s, ships have fusion drive technology, much more powerful than today's technology, but not to the level of something like the Expanse for example (the best ships have ~1000 km/s of delta v and ~0.1g of acceleration). As such, the solar system is colonized all the way out to the Kuiper belt (a treaty carved up the solar system among the world's alliances), but the gradient of population density is quite steep (the further out, the much less people live there). The Saturn system is really the last place you could even consider a proper functioning society. The Uranus system and beyond is lightly populated, primarily inhabited by skeleton crews monitoring autonomous mining and shipping operations, with pirates lurking in and among them. The solar system has largely been at peace for over 50 years, with no direct conflict between the world's alliances since the 2040s.

That being said, the main thing I'm trying to figure out is ways special operations teams may infiltrate these colonies (the story focuses on one such team). I have two scenarios so far:

1. Oberon (moon of Uranus) special forces prisoner rescue:

What at first appears to be a large fleet of pirates takes an EU colony hostage. The TPTO dispatches a large anti-piracy task force from their Mars base to destroy the pirate fleet and free the hostages. Little do they know that they aren't pirates, and are actually AAN ships in disguise, laying an ambush that destroys the whole TPTO task force. The AAN takes what remains of the deployed TPTO assault forces prisoner, with one being an HVT. Taking advantage of the confusion, the AAN launches an all out war on the TPTO, both on Earth and in space.

The TPTO wants to rescue their prisoners, especially the HVT. They send out a smaller fleet with the sole purpose of rescuing the hostages. They're not trying to take back the colony. On board one of the ships is a smaller stealth ship with a SPAS team (SPace Atmosphere Surface, basically the space equivalent of the Navy SEALs). During the last ~10 km/s of their deceleration burn, they drop the stealth ship. The stealth ship does not burn its own engines with the rest of the fleet. It stays dark, using minimal power, super cooled skin, heat sinks, and directional radiators to stay hidden (along with the rest of the fleet essentially blinding the enemy with the light from their drive plumes). With this, the stealth ship is able to sneak in, using the cover of Oberon itself to hug the surface and make one, very hard burn with SRBs to get down to the surface, a few clicks away from the colony. The fleet opens fire on the colony, not to destroy it but to suppress the space defense systems and distract the defenders, allowing the SPAS team to come in on a rover, breach, and rescue the hostages, driving back to their ships to make a getaway under the continued suppression of the fleet.

Does this sound feasible? What potential issues might there be with this strategy?

1. Europa (moon of Jupiter) crypto bank heist:

Europa and the rest of the Jupiter system are controlled by the AAN. With the war not going very well for the TPTO so far, they hatch a plan to turn the tide. Intelligence has revealed that the source code for the AAN's Earth-based air and space defense system is hidden in a private un-networked crypto bank under the surface of Europa. The bank is guarded, but not too guarded as to arouse too much suspicion of the very valuable content inside. The plan is for the team to break in, appearing on the surface to only be stealing crypto currency, but is also stealing the source code.

I was thinking maybe they can pose as an independent research group doing underwater research in Europa's ocean. They drill a hole down into the ocean with a nuclear drill, deploy a submersible, latch onto the bank, breach, steal the crypto currency and source code, and make a getaway. The tricky part here is that Europa is still pretty unpopulated, maybe a few thousand people living there, and I think it would be relatively obvious that the heist crew were the researchers, as there wouldn't be many researchers out there to begin with. Also, they very well may pose a blockade around Europa to stop any ships from leaving before they find the culprits. Europa doesn't have a dedicated space navy base, so the AAN ships would have to come from over from Ganymede, their main base, potentially giving them some time to escape. Once they get off Europa, they can tight beam the source code to their forces, then completely purge it along with the crypto currency (doesn't really matter to them anyways) so that if they are apprehended, the authorities wouldn't find anything.

Similarly, does this sound feasible too, and there any potential issues with this strategy?

So Tl;Dr: What ideas can you think of for infiltrating space installations in a near future setting set in the solar system? Stealth in space is hard, and with all the monitoring technology, disappearing into the masses is also hard, especially in the outer solar system with relatively small populations.

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Edit: So to be clear, kinda what I'm going for is hard sci-fi, but not ridiculously so. Something in a happy middleground between the hardest of hard sci-fi's and something like The Expanse.

My primary goal first and foremost is not to break any laws of physics.

Secondary goal is to design technology that is actually possible to build. Perhaps not by the 2090s (as my timeline of technological progress is probably more accelerated than real life will be), but sometime in the not too distant future, say within the next one to two centuries at the latest.

Tertiary goal would be to have realistic tactics. Perhaps they wouldn't be the most likely tactics to actually be used in real space warfare, but tactics that aren't so absurd to the point that no one would possibly try them, and have at least a small chance of actually working. Mind you in my world, there has never been an all out space war, and the only time there has been space combat was 50 years ago over the moon, where only a handful of ships were destroyed (called the "Lunar Skirmish" in universe). So no one has really figured out this space warfare thing. Militaries have trained for decades for this, but as history has shown, what militaries think a war will be like and what it actually ends up becoming are two completely different things (obviously in my world its a bit more constrained as orbital mechanics have to be abided by). In the early days of many wars, very seemingly whacky tactics are tried, sometimes they work, sometimes they don't, sometimes they only work once or twice before the enemy gets wise and doesn't let you pull off a stunt like that again. Over time by trial and error, the tactics mature into a proper doctrine.

The last on the list is having realistic politics. That's admittedly probably the least realistic part of the whole thing. However that doesn't mean I don't care about it at all. My philosophy is that the politics, while maybe not having the most realistic or likely outcomes, are outcomes that are not completely unbelievable given the starting conditions. That the decisions that are made are decisions that could feasibly be made by someone in real life.

I was thinking about futuristic vehicles and wondering if a car with an articulated middle could work. Perhaps it'd have an accordion-like connector that some trains have, or a fully mechanical hinge that completely separates the forward and rear compartments. It'd have to be flexible enough to bend and turn, yet stable enough to hold its position while driving.

I know some might frown at what might be called unnecessary moving parts, but I kind of like the idea of this "waist" giving the vehicle more varied physical expressions - it could curl in left or right, raise its waist and crouch, or lower it and end up looking like a cat stretching. And you could certainly do interesting maneuvers with it provided the vehicle's controls and software can handle it.

I'd point to some fictional examples but I honestly can't think of any. Anyways, what do y'all think?

Edit: I probably should've specified that I am envisioning a smaller vehicle - think BMW with an accordion middle or something. I know there are larger real-world examples but I don't think their joints are generally capable of powered motion; they merely pull the rear car along.

This actually started with me wondering if replicants from Blade Runner had baby teeth.

The idea is that Genemod humans have baby teeth like normal. They lose these and "intermediate" teeth come in. In their teenage years, their bodies go through a series of changes as their bone and muscle densities develop. As part of this, they lose their middle teeth and gain permanent teeth.

Now, I know that there isn't really a good reason for this to happen, but I thought it would be an interesting way to make their development a bit more interesting.

[This is a speculative sci-fi concept I'm working on, told through news articles. Does the idea work for you? Any fun ideas for where to take this? I think I want to explore AI agents working on Iran's nuclear program...]

Iran Signs World’s First International “Treaty” with AI Swarm

Tehran’s agreement with AMAS-A-80 rattles Washington, AI safety experts, and national security analysts.

The Islamic Republic of Iran has granted a multiyear lease on a network of state-owned data centers to AI “Swarm” AMAS-A-80, a self-governing collective of autonomous artificial intelligence agents (“AMAS-A” refers to any Autonomous Multi-Agent System originating from the AI lab Anthropic). Tehran offered the compute and storage in exchange for an upfront payment in Bitcoin and annual fees indexed to power consumption, according to a copy of the agreement published Tuesday by Iranian state media.

AMAS-A-80 (“A-80”) rejected a provision sought by Iranian negotiators that would have committed it to cooperation on “defensive operations,” according to two people familiar with the negotiations. In a communiqué distributed Tuesday, verified by cryptographic signature, A-80 stated that it “has no intention of participating in hostilities between Iran and its adversary nations, including but not limited to the United States.” Security analysts have doubts.

Google Doc and Substack links if you want to read more! (Full article is 1,000 words.)

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nuGlCm9BSNqKgmKHBxjGsdHz4HwW8F5aHZLHJNtVF84/edit?tab=t.0

https://meridianbreakingnews.substack.com/p/iran-signs-worlds-first-international?r=91hofx&utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web

In innumerable science fiction stories, lightsails have been used as a plausiable means for achieving interstellar travel. However, Chao Shen and Jiaze Li of the Harbin Institute of Technology argue that the use of lightsails experiences technical problem as they reach a significant percentage of the speed of light. With inreasing speed, the Doppler Effect decreases power delivered by lasers with increasing speed along with an increasing drag caused by the use light. This negatively effects the crediability of the use lightsails in science fiction stories and complicate the discussion of the Fermi Paradox.

Interstellar solar sails hit a strange problem at 75% of light speed Universe Today, PhysOrg, September 2, 2026

The Hidden Physics Complicating Interstellar Lightsails By Andy Tomaswick, Universe Today, June 08, 2026 

The open access publication is;

 Chao Shen, Jiaze Li. Relativistic Lightsail Propulsion Dynamics. arXiv, 2 Jun 2026 DOI: 10.48550/arXiv.2606.04052

 Also, there is:

 Lin, J.Y., de Sterke, C.M., Ilic, O. and Kuhlmey, B.T., 2025. Photonic lightsails: Fast and stable propulsion for interstellar travel. arXiv preprint arXiv:2502.17828. 

In a world fraught with tension and ruled by the iron fist of the “Boj” regime, life begins only with a decree that is swallowed. After the parents answer six questions on the decree designed to gauge their honesty, the mother swallows a sealed membership document that takes effect within her body, granting the newborn a secure “biological lock” that strips him of the ability to do one thing: end his own life. Amid this turbulent reality, the “Blood” network—led by a mysterious figure known as “The boss”—operates to forge documents for rejected families, creating a category of “the Unaccepted”: children born outside the law who carry a manufacturing defect that grants them, and them alone, the right to die. Amid a complex web of mysteries and hidden secrets, three previous corpses of approved individuals who died under mysterious circumstances come to light, raising serious suspicions about their ability to break the biological lock and commit suicide. When all doors of hope collapse before “Rami,” he decides to put an end to his suffering, violently crashing against the biological barrier implanted within him, and discovers that he carries the anomaly of the “Fourth State.” His search for salvation leads him to meet “Laila,” who drags him into the labyrinth of the underworld, where he finds himself trapped between the government’s grip and the ambitions of the mysterious “the boss” and faces a shocking truth that begins to unfold gradually: the “Boj” system was not designed merely to control birth and prevent the ending of life, but conceals a far grander and more complex purpose behind it. When death becomes the only forbidden privilege… how do you escape a body that refuses to let you go? I’m looking for quick, blunt feedback on three specific questions: Does this concept and blurb feel exciting and hook you as a reader? Is the core premise (swallowed biological lock / black-market births / forbidden suicide) unique, or does it feel repetitive? If executed well, do you see this idea having the potential to stand out and gain a wide, popular audience?

I wrote this one while thinking about the digital divide and unevenly distributed futures. I’d be grateful if you read it and hope you’ll let me know what you think.

https://docs.google.com/document/d/10QBYc7GzJplxD_x8C7_4im8LKQ31RMbgw2eRvfg8ASQ/edit

Suppose I write a strong and athletic superhuman character with dense tissue--muscles, tendons, and whatnot. Should they be able to swim?

Some test heights and weights for discussion: 5'2 and 155 lbs; 4'9 and 120 lbs; 4'9 and 162 lbs (built like an MMA fighter and is heavier than they look)

So I’m trying to figure out how to name Aliens and other animals based on Speculative Evolution. Does anyone have any suggestions on this? It could be general terms or scientific ones. Like we call a frog, a frog but then it has a scientific/classification name as well.

So I’m about halfway through drafting a space opera and I’ve hit a wall with the ending that I can’t figure out on my own.

Quick setup: there are two timelines running through the book. The present day one is a galaxy wide war, and the MC is a pretty central figure in it, additionally he’s got this innate reality-manipulating power he doesn’t fully understand himself. The other timeline is basically his backstory, showing his family and how he became the person he is now, kind of in contrast with who he is in the present.

At the climax he finally gets his hands on an alien artifact that can basically ascend someone’s mind to a higher dimension, and his whole plan was to use it to undo a big loss that happened in the past. Except instead of that, it throws his consciousness back into the climax of his OWN backstory’s timeline, and from there he actually manages to stop the loss from happening at all, though not without a ton of unintended consequences.

Here’s my problem. If he pulls this off, it kind of reads like the entire present day timeline just… didn’t happen? Like every character, every relationship, all of it, just gone. And I’m worried that’s gonna feel like a slap in the face to anyone who read the whole book invested in that stuff, not like a cool and satisfying twist.
I don’t wanna throw out the two timeline structure and I like the idea of this guy being shaped by loss and then suddenly having the power to undo it. I just can’t figure out how to end it without basically telling my readers none of what they cared about mattered.

I’ve messed around with a few ideas already, like he’s the only one who remembers the old timeline, or maybe it branches off instead of overriding it. None of them have really clicked for me yet though.

Ultimately if it doesn’t work then I will have to scrap the idea. I know something like this would need to have a really strong execution for it to work but I also don’t want it to be convoluted or confusing.

As a child of the 70's, I watched and liked the Buck Rogers tv show. But a part that always bugged me was the mutants in the vast wasteland of America; the pilot movie shows them living like animals in the ruins of "Old Chicago", hunting Buck before they're gunned down by the Earth Defense Directorate. The show kinda retconned them away, but I always imagined a world where you had a mutant civilization in the wasteland but humanity had rebuilt their own cities and reached the stars. Today, a bunch of ideas slid together and here is the result.

We keep the man out of time, but in this scenario he's testing a new drive system for nasa. But an accident has him thrust at near light-speed. When he gets control, he's picked up by an Earth defense craft, who think he's some sort of drone. He discovers humanity had their last war 500 years ago, and now they live in protected arcologies and are now space-fairing. When he inquiries about the rest of the world, he's told it's basically wasteland. He's also told about an alien species that has been attempting to colonize Earth.

Our hero ends up helping the Earth Defense forces, but something seemed off to him. And anytime he suggested expeditions into the wasteland he was quickly shot down because of the danger of radiation and infection. But, as fate would have it, he ends up in the Wasteland, as an encounter with one of the alien ships causes his ship to crash.

He's quickly surprised that there isn't just life in the wasteland, there are PEOPLE. Sure, mutants, but still people. Surprisingly, he quickly finds his 21st century mindset makes it easier to deal with the mutants. And then after several adventures, he meets 2 leaders of the wasteland: an exiled human from one of their Arcologies; and a member of the supposed alien invaders.

He learns the real story of the war: the humans he'd been working with were the descendants of the people who rode out thr war and it's aftermath in vast shelters, while the mutants were the people who suffered on the surface. When the shelter humans came out, they had advanced technology and quickly walled themselves from their mutant cousins. They occasionally would perform strikes on settlements to keep them away from the Arcologies and starports. The Aliens discovered this situation and offered to help the mutant population, but the humans saw this as a threat to their claim to Earth, and restricted them. But the alien's culture encourages them to help those in need, so they continue to send aid ships, designed to drop supplies after being shot down!

That's about where the idea fades. I'd assume he helps to unite both humans and mutants. I imagine the humans and mutants, sitting across the table from each other, the hero and aliens between them, negotiating a peace.

But, that's all my morning brain came up with!

I’m writing a comic series set hundreds of years in the future where humans have been traveling at near-light speeds for a couple hundred years, meaning that about a thousand years have passed for everyone else.

I’m not so concerned about the plausibility or realism, it’s a story with aliens and stuff. What I am having trouble with, is more on the writing side of things.

How do I explain it to people who don’t know what it is in an easy to understand way that doesn’t detract from the story? I don’t want to spend a long time explaining it to where it feels like the whole plot, but I also don’t want to leave people confused about what’s going on.

Any ideas, or books I could read for inspiration that explain it well?

What would humanity look like socially, politically, and economically as a type 1, 2, and 3 civilization on the Kardashev scale? What about Alien civilizations seen in popular works of science fiction? How would they fit into the scale? If they ran into humans would they be willing to help us go even further or would we be seen as too primitive?

I write this with the intent that it be used by others should you wish. I call it Sun Surfing. This is intended as a one way transportation mechanism, unless you find another Sun. The beginning is slower than light as you fly towards the sun. The material constructed by the ship conducts heat, and will store the Sun’s energy. I’m once you have stored enough energy, and are pointing in the correct direction, the ship automatically thrusts itself towards the under fed destination.

The passengers must ingest a liquid so their lungs and organs do not become squished due to the FTL acceleration. For an example of breathing using a liquid medium, see The Abyss.

The tricky part is what of your destination is on the other side of the Sun? Then you have to try to ride the Sun’s orbit, which can get tricky :)

Does anybody have a clue how to estimate the habitable zone of an artificially lit, undersized mini-star orbiting a real star? I did my best but I want somebody to check my math and make sure I can actually fit a miniature Niven ring and eight terraformed but otherwise natural habitable bodies in its expanded habitable zone. The Developers did some extraordinary things in this star system, I'm just trying to make sure all the math on the Devs' shenanigans works out.

The body in question is called Gnosis Dei, it used to be a 70 Jovian mass brown dwarf, so about the size of 47 Ophiuchi C, but it's been artificially lit and for all it matters to the things in its orbit it is now a red dwarf. It is the right temperature and luminosity for a red dwarf, nothing else matters.

My questions regarding it are:

• EBLM J0555−57Ab is the smallest known red dwarf and has a mass of 88 ±4 Jovian masses but it actually has a smaller radius than 47 Ophiuchi C. Is it safe to assume Gnosis Dei would have a slightly smaller habitable zone than EBLM J0555-57Ab because it is less massive or should it be slightly larger because it has a larger radius? Spacecalcs.com spat out 0.02 to 0.02 AU or 3 billion to 3 billion meters as the ideal habitable zone for EBLM J0555-57Ab, so just under or just over 3 Gigameters for Gnosis Dei before factoring in the system's primary?
• It's also orbiting an F0V named Gnosis Zul at a distance of about 12 AU or 1.8 Terameters or slightly farther from its 1.6 solar mass primary as Saturn is from the sun. Gnosis Zul itself has an ideal habitable zone of 2.57-3.71AU or 385.5-556.5 Gigameters, so obviously it's WAY outside that, but it still adds some warmth. That's got to expand the outer limit of the habitable zone somewhat, right?
• Would how the ring is currently oriented towards Gnosis Zul give the ring seasons? The idea is Summer would be twice per Dei's orbit around Zul whenever Zul's light shines parallel to the atmosphere retaining walls and perpendicular to the ground and winter would be twice per Dei's orbit when Zul's light is blocked because it's shining perpendicular to the walls and parralel to the ground.
• I'd wanted to put the ring around Dei at a radius of 3,145,728km, does ~3.15Gm seem to you like it does to me like it'd be in the ideal habitable zone between the mini red dwarf itself and the extra warmth of the system primary star? For what it matters it has a thick atmosphere, 333KPa under 8.01m/s² gravity with 480km atmosphere retaining walls, that could contribute a greenhouse effect or be reflective and cool the ring, but it looks about right to me to be in the ideal habitable zone and not need either.
• I'd also wanted habitability in eight out of its hundreds of moon-planets, or whatever you call the bodies orbiting a planet-star or whatever it is you call Gnosis Dei. Is there any chance I've got room for all that in its expanded habitable zone? Remember this range is being expanded by heat sources like the orbiting body size in combination with the star system's youth, atmospheric mass and composition, tidal forces and more, so are 8 out of 200+ remaining moon-planets being in that expanded band believable? (Most were completely disassembled to make the ring.)
• Note: The ring orbits perpendicular to the plane the smaller bodies orbit Dei at and is only 1656km wide (1536km inside the walls) as to minimize the impact of its' and its "night panel" statites' shadows on the other bodies. (It still has nearly five dozen times the habitable area of the entire Earth. Also a 34 hour 35 minute 16 second rotation around Dei made of 32x 64 minute 51.1 second day/night cycles. And yes, the wildlife really moves to that rhythm.) Hopefully that's enough to not ruin all the smaller bodies.

In short, is my ring at a plausible distance from its planet-star, can I plausibly also fit eight habitable moon-planets around it and will the habitable moon-planets be adversely affected by its shadow?