Planning Forgotten Futures XII

[ffutures]

FF XII is going to be based on The Struggle For Empire by Robert William Cole, a 1900 novel in which the Anglo-Saxon Empire of Earth takes on the might of the empire of Sirius. It has starships (using ether propellers), death rays of various sorts, antigravity, and a VERY high body count.

Review of it here:
http://airminded.org/2009/03/16/the-struggle-for-empire/

The trouble is that it's only about 30k words and characterisation and background are a little weak. Most notably, his alien worlds just aren't alien, they're earth with rings or whatever. So you have the inhabitants of Jupiter and Saturn watching the progress of the war as wrecked ships crash down onto their towns etc.

I'm not convinced that even agressive terraforming by alien space bats can explain that one, so I'm thinking in terms of using the technology and basic empire versus empire setting, but making the worlds more alien, with e.g. cloud cities high in the atmosphere of Jupiter, or colonised moons a la Weinbaum, not colonies on the surface. Basically using the book as a starting point for the setting, rather than taking it literally.

So I'm looking for alternative descriptions of the solar system - the one that comes to mind is to re-use George Griffith's Stories of Other Worlds, which were the background for FF II, and if possible retain loose compatibility with that while taking the story a couple of centuries into the future. They're at
http://www.forgottenfutures.com/game/ff2
The version of these stories in A Honeymoon in Space (also accessible there) has a lot in common with Cole's setting, such as a big war at the start.

I might also take in some other fiction such as On The Martian Way by Capt. H. G. Bishop
http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk/mar_way.htm

Any other suggestions on copyright-expired material to support this?

Comments

[doc-mystery.livejournal.com]

While perhaps not supportive to this version of FF, are you familiar with the reprinted Victorian-1930s by French authors later translated and put out by Black Coat Books? There may be materials of interest to you and others.

http://www.blackcoatpress.com/

Here are two good examples:

http://www.blackcoatpress.com/saturninfarandoul.htm
http://www.blackcoatpress.com/adventuresfourthdimension.htm

::B::

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Trouble is that material isn't available as free downloads - for various reasons I stick to sourcebooks that are out of copyright and I can put on my web site.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Ever read Edgar Rice Burroughs' John Carter story set on Jupiter? This is from memory, but IIRC:

1) Rapid rotation lessens the effects of gravity, and
2) Thick cloud layers keep the temperature (generated by volcanos) Earth-y.

Viola!

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

Which doesn't really work with looking up at the sky to see the space battle going on overhead, but yes, I could maybe hand-wave it that way.

[heliograph.livejournal.com]

Breaks in the clouds? Vision that allows them to see through them?

If I were you, I'd rationalize the story's reality rather than changing it. Remember how prescient Griffith was about Pluto not being a planet?

[whswhs.livejournal.com]

If you can track down Garrett Serviss's 1901 Other Worlds [does a quick google and finds it (http://www.gutenberg.org/files/18431/18431-h/18431-h.htm) at Project Gutenberg], you can get a pretty good picture of what people back then thought the other planets were like, at the level of popular science rather than either the most rigorous science or romantic fiction. I used it when I wrote GURPS Steampunk.

[ffutures.livejournal.com]

That looks a lot like the version of the solar system in Weinbaum's stories - a lot more habitable than reality, but a lot less than in Cole's stories.

[erik-boielle.livejournal.com]

Awesome news.

I see amazon wants £140 for a copy of the story, which is a little rich for me. But it sounds like a great excuse for a game. But is it actually any good?

Might I suggest extending your remit to wargames? It would seem shame not to take the opportunity to lead great interstellar navies in to battle, and a wargame might be a more appropriate format to do so than a roleplaying game.

How detailed are the descriptions of the hardware?

(At this juncture I shall just take a moment to pimp my ideas for ether propeller driven space-battleships:-

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul_gylyan.boielle/Dreads1.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul_gylyan.boielle/Dreads2.jpg

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul_gylyan.boielle/Dreads4.jpg

Those are really intended for some kinda First Worlds War deal, but the concept should work with predreadnought battleships - mirror the profile at the waterline and stick a propeller at the back.)

Anyway, looking forward to both seeing the story and your work extending it!

-Erik