Recent content by MartinV

I recently decided to take a whack at this problem. Came up with an interesting approach, thought it would make a good conversation topic. Anyone else tried to do this? What were your results?

The Warden is in fact an autonomous, robotic ship. It dumps organic material in exchange for the most precious minerals but it always makes sure that there is not enough for everyone. "Scarcity is the meal of the day and if you don't like it, lie down and stop sucking on the oxygen." The...

Didn't think it would take me this long to come back to this thread. Let's see... outline. My primary plan is to make every aspect of life on that planet as hard as humanly possible. This is not just a jungle for wild beasts to play in; this needs to put human life on the edge of a knife. The...

Hi, everyone. I'm planning to write a hard sci-fi story to get some relief from all the fantasy I've been writing lately. I've been brainstorming about a penal colony on a toxic world. It's s mineral rich world (is this Master of Orion talking to me from the grave?) but the organic material...

That's a good proposition. I will think on it. Thanks.

I have studied German for four years, though that's 10+ years in the past but put me in a room with a German speaking person, lock the door for 5 hours and you might be surprised by the result.

I'm a recent Masters graduate and I'm at the beginning of my professional career. I've sent out a few dozen applications and done a few interviews, mostly for programming jobs. I have a Masters in Physics (I guess I can say that Astrophysics was my major) and another one in Geophysics...

The prisoners don't know how to use the material they are mining. They don't have the knowledge or the industrial capability to process it in any meaningful way. They are just performing a service for their warden. Whenever the prisoners interact with their warden, they're being outsmarted...

The pulsar thing was just an idea, nothing depends on it yet. So was teleportation. No, the point is that a significant portion of a world's population was sentenced to imprisonment on this planet for rebelling against their masters. I'm thinking they won't have a specific quota to meet (those...

The transport of ore (or whatever it will be) offworld isn't in their control but in the hands of the Warden ship (that's how they call it). The prisoners have substantial technology (think the human colonization of Pandora in Avatar) but their masters are far more advanced. I'm thinking that...

Use life form that builds carbon chains, effectively forming carbon nanotubes or something similar.

I'm here to test an idea and if anyone wants to help make it better, they are welcome to add their own. I have a story planned that will be happening on a pretty savage world. The characters were sent there as prisoners and as their punishment they have to mine the exotic materials that came to...

Cute, considering Ender's Game has characters such as Peter (American) and Petra (Armenian) - quite different cultures.

You need to learn to distinguish between a plot and a setting, Enigman. I see this thread being about settings, not plots. I described the basics of my setting and hinted at how the technological development might affect the story. I would need to write down a whole lot more to give you a feel...

I have a large fantasy setting that I've taken from the early bronze age to the steampunkish industrial age. I basically started with a prototypical Tolkien-esque world, then began giving it kinks and quirks to make it interesting. This basically means the dwarves became ancient Greeks...