What SciFi universe would you live in?

[Charmar]

What, no Game of Thrones? :P There is a big difference between liking to watch a show and wanting to be in it. Hence all the Star Trek TNG. It might be interesting to ask what would be the _worst_ Sci Fi universe to live in. I'd choose:

Blake's 7
Red Dwarf
DC / Marvel comics
Revolution (Haven't actually seen it, going by ads.)
Anything with Zombies or undead
Harry Potter (How can people with magic have such a hopelessly bad justice system?)

Dune
Metropolis
Game Of Thrones, unless I can be Bronn, son of "you probably never heard of him."

 

[BobG]

I'd choose the Library of Babel.

If honor and wisdom and happiness are not for me, let them be for others. Let heaven exist, though my place be in hell. Let me be outraged and annihilated, but for one instant, in one being, let Your enormous Library be justified. The impious maintain that nonsense is normal in the Library and that the reasonable (and even humble and pure coherence) is an almost miraculous exception. They speak (I know) of the ``feverish Library whose chance volumes are constantly in danger of changing into others and affirm, negate and confuse everything like a delirious divinity.'' These words, which not only denounce the disorder but exemplify it as well, notoriously prove their authors' abominable taste and desperate ignorance. In truth, the Library includes all verbal structures, all variations permitted by the twenty-five orthographical symbols, but not a single example of absolute nonsense.

Admittedly, the first big problem with this universe is gravity. If the library is infinite, then the distribution of mass is uniform, and there's just as much mass pulling you "up" as there is pulling you "down". In fact, there should be no up or down.

But, assuming there's gravity for some reason, the other problem is their waste and disposal system.

Since the library is infinite, they don't have to worry about dead bodies.

Once I am dead, there will be no lack of pious hands to throw me over the railing; my grave will be the fathomless air; my body will sink endlessly and decay and dissolve in the wind generated by the fall, which is infinite.

Seems like a great idea, except if the library is infinite, then there must be an infinite number of librarians on the infinite number of floors above you, which means an infinite number of dead bodies falling past your floor in various states of decay. That doesn't actually mean the density of dead bodies falling past your floor is particularly high, since librarians probably live around 75 years or so before they die? And librarians falling from floors far enough above you will have decayed by time they fall past your floor? And librarians falling from far, far above you will be passing your floor at incredibly high rates of speed, perhaps close to the speed of light? (Which just emphasizes the gravity problem!)

Somehow, though, I find the restrooms a little more disturbing. Obviously, you're not going to rig a plumbing system for an infinite library when all you have to do is flush the waste out the back of the restroom and let it fall forever. But again, there's an infinite number of librarians on the infinite number of floors above you and each librarian above you will defecate a lot more than once every 75 years!

I'd figure out how many dead bodies and waste would be falling past my floor, and the average velocity of the stuff falling past my floor, but, again, this is an infinite library and at least one of the books has to have the answer without me having to figure this out myself.

If only I could find that damn book!

I guess the obvious thing would be to figure out how many rooms it would take to hold every possible book in every possible order, but somehow I just found their waste disposal system a little more pressing.

And, equally obvious, I care more about an interesting problem than I do pleasant living conditions to choose the Library of Babel as my scifi universe.

With all of the waste falling at different speeds, I wonder how many collisions there are and how far the debris scatters with each collision. Somehow, I feel like the picture of that universe has as much resemblance to the actual conditions as the pictures of Big Macs do to the Big Macs they actually put in the bag.

 

[cephron]

Isn't Game of Thrones more fantasy than sci-fi?

But it Game of Thrones is allowed, then I would definitely most like to live in Narnia.

If not, then I would probably go with Larry Niven's "Known Space" universe.

 

[turbo]

I wouldn't want to live in any of William Gibson's novels. nope.

 

[tkav1980]

Star Wars, hands down. Forget all the fancy tech, there's The Force. Seriously, how much fun would that be?

 

[Greg Bernhardt]

Only a few have the force though. You could end up being a moisture farmer

 

[tkav1980]

Stop poking holes in my flawed logic damnit!

 

[Geekaholic]

I'd live in New New York!

 

[Office_Shredder]

Only a few have the force though. You could end up being a moisture farmer

This is true for any universe. Yeah you could pick Star Trek: TNG but imagine if someone watched a bunch of TV shows and said "I want to live on earth! They have the coolest tech!" And then they show up here and statistically they're more likely to not have a television, car or an internet connection. Pretty lame compared to what they saw on TV. None of the shows are going to show the crippling poverty of the underclass because that makes for terrible TV

 

[willbell]

This is true for any universe. Yeah you could pick Star Trek: TNG but imagine if someone watched a bunch of TV shows and said "I want to live on earth! They have the coolest tech!" And then they show up here and statistically they're more likely to not have a television, car or an internet connection. Pretty lame compared to what they saw on TV. None of the shows are going to show the crippling poverty of the underclass because that makes for terrible TV

But inside the federation in the TNG era there isn't any poverty... no poverty, no underclass.

 

[brenan]

But inside the federation in the TNG era there isn't any poverty... no poverty, no underclass.

Ok so who cleans the toilets?
I saw no evidence of menial task robots.
Just because there is no "money" does not mean there is no "currency"
and that will always create an underclass.

 

[Algr]

Ok so who cleans the toilets?

There aren't any toilets. They use the transporter to beam it right out of you.

None of the shows are going to show the crippling poverty of the underclass because that makes for terrible TV

Some do. Babylon 5 had the Down Below area. Doctor Who used to have a fair number of proletariat uprisings. (The Sunmakers w/Tom Baker is a good one.)

 

[krash661]

this is an interesting topic,
unfortunately,
I can not pick which SciFi universe because i want to experience most of them.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Ok so who cleans the toilets?
I saw no evidence of menial task robots.
Just because there is no "money" does not mean there is no "currency"
and that will always create an underclass.

Implicit in this are the assumptions that:

1) The ideas of social status, particularly with regards to work, are the same (in other words that cleaning the toilets would be judged to be a negative personal trait)

2) That work is the same in the sense that people have one job that is usually a career (as opposed to people picking up and putting down a variety of volunteer jobs as needed so as to spread the load of undesirable jobs yet to be automated)

Admittedly I don't think any series of ST ever explored this properly but there has been plenty of science fiction (mainly literature) and non fiction that has explored these ideas.

 

[Digitalism]

Babylon 5 as an enhanced telepath (similar to Jason Ironheart)

 

[willbell]

Brenan, it doesn't have to make sense, it is meant to be utopian. :p

 

[brenan]

Brenan, it doesn't have to make sense, it is meant to be utopian. :p

Science fiction is required to make sense. If it doesn't it's science fantasy. There's a seperate
thread for that

After giving it more thought I've decided I'd want to live in the Stainless Steel Rat universe.
PROVIDING... I get to be slippery jim.

 

[willbell]

Science fiction is required to make sense. If it doesn't it's science fantasy. There's a seperate
thread for that

I'll point out that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who, and Star Wars have all made it into this thread so I really doubt the genre is that restrictive.

 

[brenan]

I'll point out that Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Doctor Who, and Star Wars have all made it into this thread so I really doubt the genre is that restrictive.

touche...

 

[reenmachine]

Star Trek TNG , no doubt.

I would enjoy having Data's job in one of the less important ship.Yet at the same time , I wouldn't mind being on the enterprise discussing with Data.

 

[Arbiter93]

I'd live on the universe of Foundation.
Advanced math, advanced tech. Sure it'll be fun.

I nearly jumped to heartily agree with you, though the intellectual vigor present in the Foundation Universe is really limited to the Second Foundation, Gaia, and the Robot contingent. Advanced knowledge in the galaxy is not open source; to the contrary, it is extremely esoteric. I'd rather take Kim Stanley Robinson's Martian Universe, which appears to value advanced knowledge or at least rationality for all.

 

[DHF]

TNG as a federation citizen. I don't need to be in the 1%. I can be an ensign on some nameless star ship, replicating my favorite steak, listening to classical music. During the day I would work at some science station analyzing a dust cloud in sector whatever. All the while the Enterprise can be thrown back in time,blown up, infested with parasites, borgafied, thrown back in time etc...

I am good being just a regular Joe...just don't give me a red shirt.

 

[harborsparrow]

The worlds of the Vorkosigan novels of Lois McMaster Bujold.

 

[lincs-b]

Alastair Reynolds revelation space.

 

[EBENEZR]

I don't think Death Note constitutes sci-fi, but hey, each to their own.

Blade Runner's Earth looks amazing in the film, I'd go with that.

 

[BobG]

Ok so who cleans the toilets?

There aren't any toilets. They use the transporter to beam it right out of you.

Ok, so who calibrates the transporter?

Wasn't there a Star Trek episode like this where Capt Kirk, Spock, and Checkov were competing to see who could eat the most pies or something? Obviously, Spock would have to win because of his superior ability to control his reactions to discomfort, pain, etc, but Kirk would still have to try to beat him - just because he's Capt Kirk. Except to the shock of all, Chekov was able to beat even Spock ...

... because unknown to everyone else, Scotty was beaming the pies out of Checkov's stomach and into outer space.

At least until he became distracted by an attractive crewmember strolling across the room and didn't have the coordinates quite on the right spot...

... and beamed Checkov's lower intestines into outer space by accident.

Or maybe I'm mistaken. Maybe it wasn't a Star Trek episode. Maybe it was a Breaking Bad episode, instead.

 

[Enigman]

I don't think Death Note constitutes sci-fi, but hey, each to their own..

Correct. Its fantasy not ψ-∅.
Not to mention you come across as a Kira supporter. Kira is just a loser. L wins aLways.

 

[Ryan_m_b]

Ok, so who calibrates the transporter?

Whilst never stated it's implied that automation and productivity is so advanced in the ST universe that the number of jobs need doing left is easily covered by volunteers. Think of it this way: some people actually want to clean toilets, not as many as toilets need cleaning. But if toilet self cleaning technology was good enough that they only need human intervention once every several decades then maybe there will be enough volunteers.

Weird thought I know.

 

[thedy]

I would like to see Fringe universe on my own.I think,there are many stuffs that are quite real,at least theoretically,but mainly,problems which are taking place there are explained by analogy and real facts from medicine,physics...Of course it is only sci-fi,but it is more realistic therefore..And parallel universe opens many amazing options...

 

[EBENEZR]

Correct. Its fantasy not ψ-∅.
Not to mention you come across as a Kira supporter. Kira is just a loser. L wins aLways.

I literally have no idea what you're talking about.

Also, did you mean ψ-Φ?