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18th Nov, 2018

It's been a couple of years since I last posted on my blog. I had to step away due to family commitments. Now that my role as a carer is coming to an end, I find myself thinking about Philverse, Sciror, and WarSpike more and more. Lots of ideas have been running around in the back of my head while I've been away, no matter how much I tried to suppress them, and they are starting to bubble up to the surface. They need to be expressed; otherwise I'll explode, so I've starting to work them up.

As part of my Near Future designs, the first stepping stone of the Sciror timeline, I want to touch upon architecture, psychology and politics. Before I went on hiatus I started to think about these things, and how to lay a foundation unto which I build and justify the setting. My CORR housing post was my first outline of how to deal with a housing crisis in Britain, and how to build on the green belt land. I rendered up this image a couple of years ago;

These are 1-bed CORR hab-units, around 50 sq.m. (current UK minimum), along with a garden, built over the road, with commercial space inside, and parks outside. Using the real world as a basis for the design constraints the solutions, and forces creative thought. In being designed for real-world situations, they can be judged by anyone, and if they seem reasonable, they will be more believable. The idea is to make it easier to suspend disbelief and draw the reader in. We can then use these as a springboard for future developments, as it all leads to the Ecoria concepts. The nuke proof Ecoria are an extreme idea, they can be hard to accept, so I want to show the steps of how we get there.

As for politics and philosophy, it turns out they are a little complicated to resolve into a framework and reconcile it with an 'objective' morality, all for a storyline about AI in Sciror. It's ironic that researching this stuff actually changes your real-world politics, and it seems I disagree with everyone (what a surprise!). There seems to be a real disconnect between politics and what people really do, and want. Ask anyone about the government's strategy on Brexit, and you'll get an earful.

Good sci-fi always confronts the issues we face, but also want to look to the future and what is coming down the pipe. The rise of AI and the machine economy is relevant to our real world and raises a lot of questions. There is an inherent contraction at the heart of the machine economy. If everything is automated then what do us humans do, how do we make money? It's an interesting thought. It seems logical that a business owner will be paying for a machine workforce to produce the goods, but through taxes, will also be paying for a human workforce to sit idle. Usually in economics, the workforce are the customers, but the workforce is human and the customer is human. Here the workforce is not human, and machines are not customers. A disconnect. An odd situation that gives the business owner a lot of power. Obviously, this is so crazy that it will (probably) never happen, but it does highlight that maybe those currently using automation are not paying their fair share of tax while those who hire people are paying tons in tax. Our system is disadvantaging humans compared to machines. So how does future us solve this?

As always, I'd like to hear your thoughts as I post things. To start building a community (again) around Sciror, along with the WarSpike ruleset and figure out ways to fund it all. I had planned for Troll Forged Miniatures to be my way in, but while I've been away TFM has ceased trading, so all those gorgeous gribbly aliens I love are probably not going to be part of Sciror 🙁 I hope Ed does get back to sculpting one day, as he is a real talent. It's all left me a bit shell-shocked. I spent a lot of time on TFM, and the ill-fated Kickstarter (which is still going to be fulfilled by the sounds of it, thank god). There is a lot of Sciror and WarSpike stuff in the forums that I'm going to have to extract.

Currently, I'm updating the canon chapters in 1,000 chapter project, seems I've collected up a few along the way.

Lots of ideas and not enough time...

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Hearing feedback is very important to me in developing my ideas. Much of my designs are inspired, and crafted, by chatting to fans on forums before snowballing into a full concepts posted on this website. I would like to thank all those who have contributed critiques and participated in discussions over the years. If you would like join in, you are most welcome!

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