Myriad Universe 3 - a wishlist
- Thread starter DarkHorizon
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So far I only had the time to read about half of "A Gutted World". So far I like it. It is dark but very intriguing.
I have read some of the discussions here and am very much looking forward to read all the stories.
Maybe some effort can be made to also write Myriad Universe stories that are positive and hopeful? Nothing against a good dark story but I would prefer it to keep the "Dark Star Trek" trend with "Mirror Universe". I think a mix would be better.
I am hoping for a New Frontier version one day and maybe even Vanguard.
I have read some of the discussions here and am very much looking forward to read all the stories.
Maybe some effort can be made to also write Myriad Universe stories that are positive and hopeful? Nothing against a good dark story but I would prefer it to keep the "Dark Star Trek" trend with "Mirror Universe". I think a mix would be better.
I am hoping for a New Frontier version one day and maybe even Vanguard.
Or he took command of Melbourne (the ship, not the city) and even though it may not have made much odds, we could see how he would handle a real tactical situation with the Borg, with it being at Wolf 359 and all.
I think a story where DS9's "The Reckoning" succeeded.
Or where Armus didn't kill Tasha?
The whale probe succeeded in crippling Earth?
The possibilities are endless.
Or where Armus didn't kill Tasha?
The whale probe succeeded in crippling Earth?
The possibilities are endless.
Alt history, in general, tends to posit worlds where things are "worse" than real history.
My own personal theory? It's easier to imagine something that's worse instead of something that's better.
Philosophically, it was Leibniz that wrote that we live in the best of all possible worlds. The idea of multiple worlds had been around for a few decades at that point -- Giordano Bruno formulated the concept, for which he was branded a heretic and burned at the stake for his affront to God -- and Leibniz, in his philosophy, expressed the concept that while an infinite number of worlds is possible, we obviously live in the most perfect world because God would not allow us to live in an imperfect world.
Given the variables and the butterfly effects, perhaps a "better" world is possible. Howard Weinstein posited a "better" Trek universe in one of his comics stories.
It's just that, when you're already dealing with a generally utopian society, it's difficult to imagine something that's better than a utopia. Add to that, writers like conflict and dark corners of the psyche, and dystopian stories are chock full of the things that writers like to write about.
What you want, Baerbel, isn't impossible. It's just a little less likely.
While I don't agree with Leibniz--for obvious reasons--I do think it nicely expresses a psychological factor behind the portrayal of alternate histories. Yes, certainly, there's a strong narrative reason to make your timeline darker: a more perfect world seems to offer less chances for the conflict that drives any good dramatic tale. But I also suspect there's a broad social desire, probably largely unconscious, to think that everything we've been through historically, particularly the nasty periods like World War II, have ultimately contributed to a better world. That our collective suffering as a species has been worth it and not just a pointless waste, because it has led to an improvement in our ethical character, sciences, etc; that all that pain does, eventually, pay off. Because as hard as it is to contemplate the scale of death we've racked up over even just the last hundred years, it is even more difficult to contemplate the weight of the possibilities snuffed out. That's why I think these 'this is the best of all possible worlds' type of scenarios continue to find such popular appeal.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
I'd like to see what space exploration would be like from an Earth where Rome never fell, the American South won the Civil War, and the Nazis won in Europe.
Coming at it from another angle, I was trying to figure out what the Department of Temporal Investigations and USS Relativity would do on a daily basis. Besides Kirk and Janeway, who/what keeps them busy? How do time cops deal with abandoning a utopian universe to its fate and coming home to 'our' universe?
Coming at it from another angle, I was trying to figure out what the Department of Temporal Investigations and USS Relativity would do on a daily basis. Besides Kirk and Janeway, who/what keeps them busy? How do time cops deal with abandoning a utopian universe to its fate and coming home to 'our' universe?
Be careful what you wish for.
This very thing happens in 'The Chimes at Midnight' from Echoes and Refractions.
And you know, these are fine ideas we're discussing here, but I hope that by doing so we're not inadvertently ensuring that they can never be written. Do they count as 'story ideas' and therefore make the real authors (of which there are many on this board) shy away from them?
That being said, I like the possibility of finding out what Earth was like in the timeline with no Bell Riots. In "Past Tense", O'Brien and Kira briefly appear in this timeline (offscreen). O'Brien later says something about "Earth had its rough periods, but never that rough." I wonder what he could have possibly meant by that. Whatever O'Brien saw in the alternate timeline must have been worse than World War III, and I find that extremely f*cked up (what could possibly be worse than WW III?).
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Those are really insightful thoughts. Thank you for posting them. I never looked at the subject that way before.
Pretty much.
Shit.
Well, looks like we're never gonna see any of this, then. Might as well close the damn thread and get it over with.
I guess I just don't get it, though. Saying "what was Earth like in the timeline without the Bell Riots" is pretty general, isn't it? It's a fucking *concept*, not a specific idea. Nobody has suggested what, specifically, would happen. ANYBODY could come up with that concept. So why is it forbidden to discuss? Are you seriously suggesting that this could not actually be used?
So, what, those other worlds don't have God in them? Or do they have less perfect Gods? Or did Leibniz just think God liked us best? What if he was wrong and somebody else was God's favorite?
I thought "the best of all possible worlds" came from Pangloss in Candide or whatever that was. Was Pangloss borrowing from Leibniz?
As I said in the review thread for Infinity's Prism, I'm not interested in exploring alternate histories in terms of "better" or "worse" -- just different. I figure any altered history is going to be better in some ways and worse in others, and I find it more interesting to explore how things turned out differently than to make a value judgment out of it. And Places of Exile certainly wasn't a dystopian alternative. It had some bad things happen, but other things turned out quite well, or just in a different way.
That would be a question to ask about the Temporal Agents from Daniels' era, not the DTI. Dayton Ward's SNW story notwithstanding, I don't believe the DTI actually travels through time. Their job is to investigate temporal incidents that do occur, probably to regulate or confiscate time-travel technologies, generally to try to minimize the tampering with history. Actually traveling through time themselves would seem to be counterproductive.
Shit.
Well, looks like we're never gonna see any of this, then. Might as well close the damn thread and get it over with.
It can't come as a complete surprise; you guys have been posting here long enough to know the risks of threads like this. On the bright side, as several people have rightly pointed out, the possibilities inherent in the Myriad Universes concept are, well, myriad. It's not as if the authors have any trouble coming up with their own ideas.
Although, "Dukat's daughter, Lal" might be worth swiping, just to watch the seizures.
Ideas...
What if Kirk hadn't been sucked into the Nexus?
What if Picard hadn't have been stabbed through the heart?
What if Kirk hadn't been sucked into the Nexus?
What if Picard hadn't have been stabbed through the heart?
No, I'm suggesting that people who do this for a living prefer to come up with their own ideas.
I meant it from a strictly legal perspective. Would an author refuse to use anything from this thread, for fear of being sued? *That's* my concern here.
Well, for what it's worth, I already know what I'd like to do if I got to write another MyrU tale, and nobody here has come anywhere remotely near suggesting it.
Thank you, and you're welcome, though I'm sure I'm not the first to have thought of it. Really, it's an extrapolation of something I've observed at the individual level: persons who have gone through addiction, or youthful incarceration, or some other major tragedy in their lives, and recovered, will often say that they are stronger for the experience. I can't speak to whether that's true or not--I imagine it varies significantly from individual to individual--but I do think those who say so want and believe it to be true, for the reasons elaborated above.
Your signature makes me think: humans are uniquely positioned as a species insofar as we can override the survival instinct. When oppressed by despair, we can choose to die, an option most animals do not have; nobody does suicide like we do. Maybe it's for that reason that we're compelled to seek out the silver lining; why we often try to extract some benefit from tragedy; why our stories about disasters tend to focus not on the ninety-nine who died, but on the one who made it through. One could say that a certain degree of optimism is actually a survival mechanism. Pandora's Box and all that.
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
That depends:
http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mbugsuicide.html
"Pessimism is not a survival trait." -- Dylan Hunt, Gene Roddenberry's Andromeda, "Under the Night" (written by Robert Hewitt Wolfe)
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