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Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago

I am in the very early stages of brainstorming for a story, and I have come up with a concept that interests me quite a bit. The only problem is that there is a hole that I can't find a proper explanation to fill. The idea is thus, a lone astronaut wakes up upon his small ship after being under the sleep of cyogenics for an innumerable number of years, centuries, or millennia even and finds himself in a universe he does not know (humanity is gone perhaps? Somehow transported to another dimension?). Coming to this discovery, he goes about progressing through the story (where ever that may take him). My main issue is, why was he put to sleep for so long? I haven't been able to find a reasonable explanation for such a question that satisfies me, an answer that makes a semblance of logical sense.

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago
*Sigh* That answer can be answered using your imagination.

Unless you have a co-author, you have an empty canvas and your mind is the paintbucket and your typing fingers the paintbrush. Ideas need to come from you.

You could do a bunch here. Who says the astronaut is human, Who says he/she could not have put his/herself to sleep.

You need to think of ideas that would make sense in your mind. Not from others.

However, I can see that you trying at least to put some effort into your story based off the fact that you would not just start typing your story and oublishing it within 15 minutes.

Story Brainstorming Impasse

7 years ago

Alright, if by any chance you're trying to make this realistic, then here are some pointers. They'll probably help you think.

    a) This will have to take place in the far future, as in the astronaut will have to have lived in the far future, because existing technology can't get us safely to Mars (a three month trip), much less anything over a few years in space
    b) Humans are not adapted to space. We lose bone mass and muscle rapidly (they recently did a one year trial with twin astronauts), and eyesight also suffers. Our entire body is extremely well optimized for earth, and not at all for space (like putting a dolphin on a volleyball team). Arguably, legs are entirely useless in space, you can propel yourself well enough by your arms. Any setting where humans are alive in space for long will lead us to the next point
    c) In a far future, with the technology to pull this off, 'humans' will not look like the humans we are today. Depending on how the coin flips, we might either be intentionally designed creatures (including 'versions' suited for underwater and space habitation), we might be full cyborgs (if you believe a person is the sum of their volition and consequences), or we might be the humans we see today, but with overwhelming life support (highly unlikely in the extreme, only if a human glorifying cult with overwhelming resources comes to power would this be possible). For more ideas, check out the affinity trees in Civilization: Beyond Earth (post the Rising Tide expansion pack), they put in a lot of interesting thought into this premise. The game itself is passable, but no Civ V complete.
    d) Cryogenics, atleast the modern version of it that we're running) is probably a terrible failure waiting to be revealed, given the methods of processing of cadavers, and how new research is suggesting that 'knowledge' is stored across the body, not just in the brain. So, you'll have to have Cryogenics + Bionics 2.0 to pull off 'wakes up in space' as a premise, if you stay with normal bodies.

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago

I would like to emphasis that this is simply a way for me to overcome a bit of a thinking block and stimulate some more interesting thoughts, I am not asking for someone to give me a step by step explanation on how to write my story. Now on to Stryker, I am thinking of having it take place in a nearer future with slightly more advance technology that we have today, I want to stick with a fairly primitive humanity. Explaining cryogenics will be an interesting obstacle, but I want to maintain that since that humanity is still on the cusp of space travel. Perhaps having it has a early version still relatively untested and something happened to caused him to be forgotten in his near frozen state.

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago
emphasize,* mate. We've already done a level of space travel, we just haven't done that much of it well. Another interesting story that comes to mind, which I cannot remember the name of, is another Sci-Fi Classic. Humans find a radio signal from a far away galaxy that they decode to realize is the code for new science. The signal repeats itself every 80 years. With it, humans solve all medical diseases, unemployment, and everything else that'd be a problem to humanity till then. Then, the signal's final set of instructions are to build a supercomputer to run everything, making life easier for humans. One bright chap catches on to the last part (where everyone else was justifiably complacent), and takes an axe to the machine before it can start up - it would have killed all humans and replicated the aliens who had invented it all on Earth. Basically the entire con was to convince any sentient life listening in that the signal was benevolent, then when everyone was lulled into safety to kill'em all and replicate its parent's life form, effectively making it a form of them to achieve space travel, without physically travelling through space, no wormholes or even spaceships needed. If you are going to have a human up and running, perhaps a similar premise would be in order - the human was custom cloned for whatever challenge he needs to face by caretaker machines at the start of the story.

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago

Sounds similar to the video game “Out There.”

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago
Apologies, I misinterpreted what you were trying to get at.

Two words, General Relitivity. (Forgive me if I did not spell that right.)

If your ship or you fell into a very large black hole. Time stops as soon as you hit the horizon, however anyone or anything who sees you fall into one will never see you make it to the horizon. But, the person who did fall will think that time is passing normally.


Take that into consideration as well.

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago

Einstein's relativity is an incredibly cool and incredibly perplexing thing to learn about, its so weird that something so seemingly impossible is possible. I'll keep that in mind, I just learned the math behind it in physics. 

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago
There are endless number of hand wavy sci-fi reasons he could have been kept asleep that long, and endless ways to transport an astronaut to a different universe. What's the focus and tone of this going to be? Like an adventure story, survival story or what?

I wouldn't worry about realism too much unless a major point of the story is to be about since specific technology or concept. But if this is all just a means to the end of getting him to another universe in order to tell a story there, then fuck it, he was in some experimental cryogenics program and then his ship got sucked into a wormhole. Or other weird space anomaly, or Q did it. It literally doesn't matter. Does he need to be asleep thousands of years in the first place if the idea is just to scoot him away from Earth?

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago

The concept of the story is for this astronaut to wake up in a familiar, but oddly different galaxy than before. I want to keep a since of realism to carry with the idea that this galaxy he finds himself in is definitely our, but no other humans will be present. It will then move on to surviving alone and exploring what happened in his absence, perhaps with some undertones of horror.

Story Brainstorming Impass

7 years ago

I just want to confirm one thing. Is your story SciFi or SciFantasy? If it's SciFantasy you don't need to explain anything. In fact, even if it was SciFi you don't necessarily need to explain where your astronaut came from depending on what you want to focus on. If your focus is on surviving alone, is it really necessary to answer that question?