New to the forums

[Kannae]

So I am quite new to the forums, having had a profile for quite a while but never making much use to it. So salvette, and quick question, why are y'all so scared of writing about high singularity beings? They don't need to be the center character of the story if they show up, perhaps a story about a fairly low S being working as an intermediary, someone working as a missionary that is "blessed" by one, et cetera. It just seems odd to me that people view it as such a horrid concept to have them involved. I understand that people are concerned about the fact that it wouldn't be possible to portray them accurately but I find that a flawed argument, in theory singularities as understood by this project or any SF hard or otherwise could very easily be entirely wrong. If you let yourself focus too hard on the fact that you can't portray something accurately this entire project might as well burn for its theoretical nature. Also again, hello nice to meet you all

[Rynn]

Welcome to the forums! I'm afraid I'm a bit confused by your question, transapients and archai are central to the setting. Hundreds of our articles feature them in a significant way, many of our stories do too. What makes you think we're scared of writing about them?

[Kannae]

Welcome to the forums! I'm afraid I'm a bit confused by your question, transapients and archai are central to the setting. Hundreds of our articles feature them in a significant way, many of our stories do too. What makes you think we're scared of writing about them?

I don't mean in articles so much, however by the admission of quite a few posts on here that I have lurked at OA is a setting meant to be used for the writing of stories. My question about the fear is very specifically in reference to that, there is quite a lack of stories involving that comparative to their importance to the setting

[Rynn]

Way back when OA was founded it came from an idea for a novel IIRC (said novel didn't get written) but the main focus has always been worldbuilding. Very few of our members join because they want to write stories over articles, or simply just to discuss cool ideas about life in an OA society. It's not fear, simply different interests.

I'm not sure how many of our stories feature transaps versus those that don't but I suspect it's because writing about a transap is less interesting for most people. It's not as relatable as writing about modosophonts.

Of course the ethos of OA is that anyone is welcome to offer any contribution for consideration by the rest of the members. There's certainly no discouragement regarding stories with transaps. Anyone is free to write them, or not.

[Drashner1]

Hi There - Welcome to OA!

As Rynn says, we have no policy (official or not) against people writing about high singularity beings in OA. Indeed, we'd be very happy to see more stories set in the OA universe. However, we generally leave it up to individual members to write about whatever they want and this has largely taken the form of worldbuilding articles rather than stories. Or stories about modosophonts or lower singularity minds. Indeed, we often have people express an interest in writing a story, provide as much support as we can to them - and then have them sort of disappear from the project with the story either never created or only partly finished

That all said, and after thinking about it - I think you make an interesting point. Historically, we've received more negative criticism about our 'overuse' of transapients and archai, with the idea being that if transapients run everything and have all the 'cool' tech, and are essentially unbeatable by human level minds - then existence is somehow meaningless and a good story can't be told. Also that OA is so different from 'standard' SF that a lot of folks struggle to understand it.

You don't appear to be coming from that direction (and you're the first person we've heard express this sentiment) and it makes me wonder if we've unconsciously reacted to the critiques by others by tending to produce a lot of stories about 'daily life among the modos' rather than stuff that plays to the 'vast cosmic reaches' that the archai and such play in.

That's something we should perhaps give some thought to and see about pushing back on a bit - since it isn't our intention to create the impression we apparently have with you and others like you. Incidentally, can you give us some specific examples of discussions or posts that have given you this impression?

That all said, there are some stories in OA that include high-S beings to one degree or another (I am taking 'high S' to mean S3 or above in this context):

Dirty Hands

A Minor Demonstration of Power

The Last Will and Testament of an Archailect

Dragons Teeth

Infanticide Ver 1

Infanticide Ver 2

Vendetta

The Two Second Interview

Heresy

Under the Looking Glass

Angel of Doubt

Hope this helps, and once again - Welcome to OA

Todd

[Matterplay1]

So I am quite new to the forums, having had a profile for quite a while but never making much use to it. So salvette, and quick question, why are y'all so scared of writing about high singularity beings?

I don't know that 'scared' would be the right word. It is true though that portraying OA's high singularity beings is something that needs to be done subtly if it is to be done well. Otherwise the reader is going to think (or say) something like:

"This character is hyperhumanly intelligent and capable and that's all they can manage?"

In practice this puts transapients and archailects somewhere around the periphery of the story's action. You can only have them doing and saying so much before the reader starts to see plot holes. That, and of course a being who has human-scale limitations and challenges is going to be a lot more interesting to most readers than one whose very problems and challenges are supposed to be hard to to define.

[Drashner1]

That said, it might be interesting to consider the kind of roles a high transapient or archailect could play in a story.

A 'deus ex machina' at the climax is one obvious option

Another might be setting up/sending out/or otherwise manipulating a character to set out on a quest or otherwise get the story started.

A third could be an archailect simply doing its thing and the story is how the various modo and low transapients react to that. For example, a survey ship finds a Garden World only to then have archailect level construction tech enter the system and start gearing up to take everything, from the star on down, apart. This would be 'the archai as forces of nature' trope, I suppose. There would be plenty of room for very impressive displays of technology and intelligence in this option, although most of it would be from the modos POV as they tried to get the archailect's attention, change its behavior, or just escape/survive.

What other options might also be available to do this?

On a related note - are there any examples of high transapient/archailect behavior or technology-in-action that people might like to see in stories? Or stories about archailects in general?

Thoughts?

Todd

[Worldtree]

I whenever I try to plot out a story I like to keep architects in the background- more as a force of nature or a corporation than anything else- mostly because I like to write stories about near baseline people. Whenever I try to write about a transapient at any sophonce level higher than s1, I simply treat the interactions as 'smarter than a human' and then mention the actual scale of the structure that houses the transparent/ archilect if necessary. Basically, the protagonist would rarely be sure of what the actual intelligence or scale of any unknown transapient would be beyond "much smarter than me"... until of course something very impressive happens at the transapient/ archilect's command.

All those stories that Todd mentioned are good examples of transapient characterization.
Mostly, at least for me, you are only able to create characterization for the representatives of a transapient and beyond that, you'll be characterizing the entity as you would a government, a company, or some natural phenomenon.

[Reactor Axe Man]

Aloha!

I've been reading OA for years, but was asked to sign up here recently, so here I am.  I do 3D modeling of 'near future' spacecraft for the most part. You can see my works at Reactor-Axe-Man on Deviant Art