So, as mentioned earlier, here are my thoughts on various parts of your story and related areas...
(04-12-2018, 03:14 PM)Frank_D Wrote: I'm going to set my sector in The Outer Volumes, or The Periphery.
My populated worlds will be connected by routes facilitated by wormhole generators, or is that no good?
I think this is doable, but as has been mentioned, the number of wormholes in the Outer Volumes is pretty low and extremely low to verging on non-existent on the Periphery. Note also that if a given system is connected to a wormhole, it is likely to either be pretty developed (by OA standards, which doesn't always mean what other SF does by that term), or planned to be in future. Or the archai might have plans of some kind for it that aren't at all obvious to human level minds.
A key point here might be what (if anything) you plan to use the wormhole(s) for in your story. Are they critical to the story or just sort of there?
On a related note (and bearing in mind I haven't seen your answer to the question above yet, of course
), here are some possible alternative options that might (or might not) work better for what you're wanting to do:
a) Set the story in the Hinterregions - the Wormhole Nexus is actually a very tree-like structure and the majority of star systems are actually not connected to it. But you could certainly have more wormholes to work with in this region (while not being anywhere near as heavily developed as the Inner Sphere), while still being well out from the 'center of things'.
b) Set the story in a multiple star system and have your characters travel around between the different stars in the system rather than crossing interstellar distances. Multi-star systems are quite common and a system with 4-6 stars (of various types) would be quite doable. The actual distances between the different stars in the system could range from so close as to be nearly touching to so far apart that light would take days or weeks to get from one to the other. OA tech can do ships that could cross those distances in weeks to months and so could provide an option for significant travel without either wormholes or years of travel time between non-wormhole linked stars.
c) Don't use wormholes and essentially just ignore the time taken to cross interstellar spaces. OA tech has both biostasis and engenerators - so your character can either take a starship and sleep their way across the stars or use the Lightways to effectively 'teleport' from star to star. The exciting story stuff would happen at the beginning/end of each trip. Or maybe during if a starship is taken and there is a reason for some number of people to be awake - or something happens that results in your character being woken up.
(04-12-2018, 03:14 PM)Frank_D Wrote: Until today, I couldn't imagine myself setting a private eye story in a scifi setting but this happened today...
Neat
I look forward to seeing the entire finished story.
Rynn already touched on a lot of the technical issues re fitting your story into OA. With that in mind, I'm going to mostly focus on some potential ways to address those issues.
With that in mind - there are various options that could make the lower level of technical capability indicated in your story more workable within the context of OA. In no particular order, you could:
a) Set the story earlier in the OA timeline, before much of the tech that Rynn mentions is either invented or perfected, depending. Steve has already mentioned this option earlier in the thread.
b) Set the story in the aftermath of some event that has knocked the local technology and social structure back by some significant amount. This could be a war (local to the system or just nearby), a blight or perversion, an industrial accident, or a natural disaster. Any of these might have negatively impacted the local infrastructure and technology which could still be building itself back up.
c) Introduce some sort of local cultural element that deliberately limits the technology level or application. This could be in the form of laws or customs or religion or some combo of all of these.
Any of these options would cover the issues of a society in which murder could take place and of your character waking up with a headache in a medical facility or the like. However, the body e woke up in would still be more like a tissue printed construct rather than a clone. They could also address the character being killed 'during the copying process' since in most of the OA setting, Backup tech is generally either totally implanted (the implants are very durable) or transmit in real time while the person goes about their business.
Bad hospital food is a common literary and TV trope, but generally wouldn't be a thing in Y11k and for thousands of years before. Food can be synthesized that is virtually indistinguishable from the finest cuisine you can imagine with trivial ease. Although again, the right kind of negative event could account for that.
On a final note, said negative event needn't play a huge role in the story. Probably a combo of passing mentions and maybe a paragraph or three somewhere in the story that provides a bit more filled out backstory would likely do the trick.
Ok, I think that about covers it for now. Hope this helps and if you have any questions, please don't hesitate to ask.
Todd
EDIT - One last thing I forgot to mention above until just now:
If you wanted a somewhat bigger venue than a multi-star system, you could set your story in someplace like the
Pleiades - which apparently packs over 1000 stars and some number of brown dwarfs and of course a good bit of gas and dust into a volume about 70ly across. Such clusters aren't hugely denser than our part of the galaxy, but the night sky might be spectacular.
