Proposal Discussion What to take and what to leave...
- Thread starter warbaby2
- Start date
Yep, excellent it is too... and it has a great ship's name: Captain's Fancy.
I like his stuff, but find him too inconsistent in his style. That said, his settings are certainly great.
I decided to resurrect this thread because I was thinking of starting one myself 
+1 to Alien for the atmosphere and also for missions inspired by the films.
+1 to Isaac Asimov, reading the foundation series felt like it could be the same universe as Frontier.
+1 to Mechwarrior. If we get Mechs at some point in an expansion, that will be sooo fantastic
+1,000,000 to Cowboy Bebop When it comes to landing on planets and being a bounty hunter, I want to feel like I'm in an episode of that show! (hopefully with a better success rate lol) every episode is a goldmine of ideas for missions, places, characters and atmosphere.
Bladerunner the film and the game are great too for inspiration for city gameplay.
More anime inspiration: Ghost In The Shell, Akira and maybe even a little Evangelion.
Finding the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world would be such an amazing experience if it was detailed enough with dangers and useful resources to be found and a story to be uncovered.
+1 to Alien for the atmosphere and also for missions inspired by the films.
+1 to Isaac Asimov, reading the foundation series felt like it could be the same universe as Frontier.
+1 to Mechwarrior. If we get Mechs at some point in an expansion, that will be sooo fantastic
+1,000,000 to Cowboy Bebop
When it comes to landing on planets and being a bounty hunter, I want to feel like I'm in an episode of that show! (hopefully with a better success rate lol) every episode is a goldmine of ideas for missions, places, characters and atmosphere.Bladerunner the film and the game are great too for inspiration for city gameplay.
More anime inspiration: Ghost In The Shell, Akira and maybe even a little Evangelion.
Finding the ruins of a post-apocalyptic world would be such an amazing experience if it was detailed enough with dangers and useful resources to be found and a story to be uncovered.
Rex_Black
R
It doesn't have to be alien either. It could be an old human colony that has been lost for centuries, either a victim of some natural disaster like a massive asteroid or comet impact, a plague outbreak, some kind of geological disaster or even an internal conflict for control of the colony that got out of hand.
Uncovering the mystery of what happened to everyone, and perhaps even find some small number of survivors would be an interesting story.
The best hard sci fi that is also cool is Revelation Space imho. The technologies are plausible but really scary. I also like the casual way tragedy affects people in his universe, a kind of horror that you are lost in a harsh universe.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Revelation_Space#Lighthugger
I love Dune by Frank Herbert, but it's too "messianic" and also mystical for Elite IMHO.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Technology_in_Revelation_Space#Lighthugger
I love Dune by Frank Herbert, but it's too "messianic" and also mystical for Elite IMHO.
I quite like the feel of Harry Harrison's novels, his most famous of which are very much the 'one man against the universe' types of affairs. Invariably in Harrison's books, the central character is usually intelligent, witty and fair minded, with a strong sense of self-preservation and occasional criminal tendencies, whereby they often have to bend the rules to either right a particular wrong or simply to get on in life. Which is very Elite-like.
Harrison's books tend to walk a very fine line between action, adventure, parody and satire, giving them wide appeal. He often satirised other sci-fi works, notably pro-military novels such Heinlein's Starship Troopers (which is actually a very good book itself) with his Bill the Galactic Hero series, largely because Harrison was very anti-military himself after having served in the US Army in WW2. But it is with his Stainless Steel Rat series of novels where Harrison's writing really shines, and these books are an almost perfect recipe for the Elite premise of one player trying to get along in the future, but not taking things in a too po-faced or serious manner.
Harrison could certainly write very serious sci-fi when he wanted to though, notably with Make Room! Make Room!, which became the basis for the 1973 movie Solyent Green, although much of the subtle homage to writers such as Hammet and Chandler which one finds in the novel is gone from the film adaptation.
Ultimately, it is his grounding in very human traits and issues, set in a sci-fi backdrop which makes his books such a worthwhile read in my opinion. The sci-fi elements tend to be there to add colour and scope to the tales, rather than to provide a convenient deus ex machina for the storyline, which is something a lot of sci-fi is often guilty of, notably Star Trek with its 'what if we reverse the cross-flow polarity of the dilithium crystals in Jeffries Tube number six?' b*llsh*t solutions to supposedly insurmountable plot issues.
Of course the really great thing about all that is, one hardly needs to actually include elements of Harrison's writing in Elite to emulate it, since it is more of an attitude one can adopt for one's character when creating one's own story. I suspect there will be quite a few players out there emulating Slippery Jim DiGriz.
Harrison's books tend to walk a very fine line between action, adventure, parody and satire, giving them wide appeal. He often satirised other sci-fi works, notably pro-military novels such Heinlein's Starship Troopers (which is actually a very good book itself) with his Bill the Galactic Hero series, largely because Harrison was very anti-military himself after having served in the US Army in WW2. But it is with his Stainless Steel Rat series of novels where Harrison's writing really shines, and these books are an almost perfect recipe for the Elite premise of one player trying to get along in the future, but not taking things in a too po-faced or serious manner.
Harrison could certainly write very serious sci-fi when he wanted to though, notably with Make Room! Make Room!, which became the basis for the 1973 movie Solyent Green, although much of the subtle homage to writers such as Hammet and Chandler which one finds in the novel is gone from the film adaptation.
Ultimately, it is his grounding in very human traits and issues, set in a sci-fi backdrop which makes his books such a worthwhile read in my opinion. The sci-fi elements tend to be there to add colour and scope to the tales, rather than to provide a convenient deus ex machina for the storyline, which is something a lot of sci-fi is often guilty of, notably Star Trek with its 'what if we reverse the cross-flow polarity of the dilithium crystals in Jeffries Tube number six?' b*llsh*t solutions to supposedly insurmountable plot issues.
Of course the really great thing about all that is, one hardly needs to actually include elements of Harrison's writing in Elite to emulate it, since it is more of an attitude one can adopt for one's character when creating one's own story. I suspect there will be quite a few players out there emulating Slippery Jim DiGriz.
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I love that series, I did feel when I was reading it that it was basically elite with added nastiness.
If Jar-Jar Binks or anyone else remotely like him shows up in my cockpit, he'll be out the airlock sans helmet in very short order.
"Yousa float home now. Mesa sooo sad. Byee now."
If Jar-Jar Binks or anyone else remotely like him shows up in my cockpit, he'll be out the airlock sans helmet in very short order.
"Yousa float home now. Mesa sooo sad. Byee now."
Indeed, a summary execution for any bink-a-likes shall be forth coming rapidly. Or Sell him as a slave.. perhaps have to give him away though.
Oh dear, yet another sci-fi series to go on the pile of must reads! Thanks Dejay!
I agree, you can't go wrong with Alastair Reynolds, and all his books have a very different feel to them and are very different from one another. Some of them do make sense to read in a certain order, but they are more loosely tied than a definate series.
I'm trying to think what the best one to start with would be
Foundation - Isaac Asimov. all over the place with a drop of hienlien for emotion
