OA, ST and SW: The Big Three

[Drashner1]

Also, i like the idea of sandbox. I think that a site for fans or anyone that allows writing something about can be encouraging for people who may like OA. Maybe some people out there think OA is a closed community or is elitist or something like this.

If the Sandbox idea goes well, OA Board can establish a contest like "The best story of the Sandobox of the year earns the honor of being part of OA official stories".

A first step would be to figure out some parameters for the Sandbox concept in general and then to come up with some number of sub-settings to go into it.

For example - I would propose (at least for the first round of this) that:

a) no Sandbox setting should be larger than a single star system (which could include more than one star).

b) things can enter the Sandbox setting from outside, but the story needs to take place in the Sandbox setting.

Likely other parameters as well - what other ideas do people have?

In terms of possible locations, I would suggest:

i) Miracle City - a xenosophont artificial planet

ii) A gas giant system with plenty of moons, which might be engineered in various ways, possibly bubblehab communities in the upper atmosphere, and/or a supraplanetary ring or the like.

iii) A medium to large hab such as a space ring or McKendree cylinder or maybe a discworld.

iv) Etc.

It might be good to come up with 6-10 possible Sandbox settings for people to potentially play in.

But fan work are likely to be fantasy in space. Even people who want something real not knowing the numbers of Joules or Watts or Meters or some numbers or theories goes with a fantasy imposible in real life. Is posible too that some fans don't know OA Canon or a part, or some articles.

Not necessarily. Most hard SF in my experience says little or nothing about numbers. The trick with a hard SF story is to tell an interesting story while still being true to the hard science elements and not getting bogged down in numbers or infodumps.

As far as not knowing OA Canon or the articles - all of that information is readily available on the OA website

I like c 2) people making chapters. But i think differences of style and quality are common. But i like story series and if this is up, i want to collaborate in this.

Fair point - perhaps people could collaborate on the creation of the story (plot, setting, outline, characters, events) and then one person could write it up. Or a group could treat it as a challenge to either write in the style of one person or to each do a chapter/section and then work together to bring them all into harmony in terms of style and quality. Or something else along these lines.

C 3) sounds like a big project, like a novel or the like. That requires a lot time. I like the idea but i think people don't have the time.

It would depend on the plot. One thing I rather wonder about is if a lot of SF fans are only exposed to long stories or movie series and so don't have a lot of experience with short stories or novellas. For example, Analog SF magazine does large numbers of short stories that deal with most common SF plots - and do it in a fraction of the story size of The Lord of the Rings. The Sherlock Holmes stories are all of short story or novella length - and they are quite interesting.

I like the idea of the author resources to encourage writing.

Yes - I have a few online resources already on my radar and plan to locate more and add them to the site as the year progresses.

Todd