the AntEngine (with which I will develop Warlock) is almost done. So, it's probably time to test it on a little project.
As I mentioned earlier I'm thinking about a small science fiction game.
So, the main idea was to give the player some options to solve it and I was already working on a flowchart how the story may or may not unfold depending on your choices.
But then I noticed something. Whereas fantasy is rather straight forward and doesn't have too many sub-genres (or at least popular sub-genres) science fiction has tons of those.
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| Two quite different approaches to science fiction (2001 and Star Wars) |
One sub-genre of science fiction as an example is rather fancy and full of strange alien races, whereas the other one takes the expression "sciene-fiction" more literally. Those movies, books or games in our case really try to give a more or less accurate prediction of future societies and technology.
We probably all know some examples for the former and the latter.
There are of course even more sub-genres of science fiction. Remember the movie "Aliens" which is a mix of Dark Future and Horror. Or remember William Gibsons cyberpunk novels.
Most of them can still be categorized roughly in the above mentioned sub-genres but there are also some examples where the case is a little bit more tricky (steampunk to name one).
What I want to know from you: What do you enjoy most in science fiction?
Which elements do you like to see? Aliens everywhere? The vastness of space and the dangers of space travel? Stations with scientists and engineers getting ripped appart by rogue AIs?
Feel free to drop me a line.
When you describe to the basic science fiction types, i.e. one full of alieans and the sci-fi taken more "literally", I find the best way to describe the former as "fantasy" style sci-fi and the latter I would most definitely classify as "hardcore" sci-fi.
AntwortenLöschenI refer to it as "fantasy" out of pure opinion because the amount of races just remind me of the fantasy genre and it's multiple earth bound races and the science it usually contains is inexplicable not unlike the magic found in fantasy.
With the latter, "hardcore" just makes since because some writers (like Stephen Baxter) go to great length to base their fiction in real (theoretical) science.
Anyways, I've always liked the idea of grittier science fiction with a mix of several sub genres. Maybe a few races, not the race-overload that is Start Trek or Star Wars while including "hardcore" whenever possible. Horror aspects should be included in every piece of science fiction just because the Universe is fucking huge and the multiverse even more so. It just makes since there would be things, even from another dimension, that are of unimaginable horror.
I'm going to wrap this up just because one or two comments alone would never be able to take into full consideration the many aspects of science fiction and the innumerable possibilities it could afford.
If you ever want a real discussion about ideas though, feel free to reach me at yaz.howland@gmail.com. I watch and read a metric fuck ton of science fiction and am all the time brain storming my own ideas and sort of "universes" in which stories can take place in.