my definitely not quite nearly first sci-fi story :o)

Morpheus

Hi peeps, Just thought id share a moment of in-work boredness that led to a tiny idea that grew to a few paragraphs. I already had this in literature... but the nice folks over there "recommended" i move it to sci-fi... im sure the baseball bats and balaclavas were just for show lol

i attempted it once here on the old add on story thread.. a LONG time ago, but ive a new story in mind and i threw together a possible opening today on my lunch break to see what you all think... remember its a draft and i havent had much time to proof read it.... let me know what you all think, constructive criticism only!! heh heh heh


Fellow sci-fi fans... let me know what you think!!

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D R E A D N O U G H T

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The dreadnought coasted through the void,stars glittering on its coal black surface as it tumbled lazily into eternity.

Seemingly lifeless to look at, wrapped in darkness and shadow, a spark of energy flowed, a lonely subroutine was kept alive and worked on into the never-ending night. Using only one or two ancient sensors it scanned the emptiness.

Time passed, gradually it became aware of a miniscule change in relative gravity, it waited, gravity increased again, not enough to bother the slumbering master program but sufficient to rouse a neighbouring sensor array. Time flowed on again... finally the array returned its findings, photonic activity was increasing along with gravity, spatial density was also increasing, a number of seperate gravitonic anomolies were logged in general proximity to a massively larger source of gravity, a whole spectrum of photons were flowing past. The array concluded that the most obvious answer was a star system.

The subroutine concurred and its AI decided that it had the required data to proceed, it kicked another subroutine into life. This routine pulled the last of the power from the ships remaining emergency reserves and erected slender metallic arms into the heavens from all along the length of the ship. Motors down the length of these arms whined their protest as they began unfurling great solar sails above the ship.

Finally in its last gasp of life, the lonely subroutine called the master program to wakedness and gave its own power to the greater need...

Photons screamed towards the behemoth and smashed into the surface of the great sails, there they were sucked of their life, their heat and kinetic energy were turned into raw power and their sheer numbers on the massive golden sails began to cause a much needed drag-slowing effect on the ship.

Deep inside the engineering sector, hundreds of power nodes and terminals whined and hissed into being, dust covered consoles and readouts hummed to life. cold networks and connections began trying to communicate with each other. Drunkenly the master program awoke to find trickles of power become coursing tributaires and finally flooding through its veins, it screamed for more information even as it was carried into its databanks. It was time.

All over the ship systems and sub systems blinked in the darkness, signals passed from one to the other in a game of cyber chinese whispers, they all clamoured for an answer from the master program but with a thought it slapped them all into silence and submission. It communicated with only those systems it couldnt do without, all others were ordered to shut down again, it would take full power before it could deal with their demands on its resources.

More power came on line and the whole structure shook as its gigantic ionic impulse engines rotated into position and powered up waiting for the order to engage.

When at last the ship had dropped to less than half the speed of light, the master program decided to begin slowing for star system manoeuvering. An inaudible but teeth chattering vibration shook everything as the impulse engines commenced decelerating the craft, 150 gravities were recorded on board as the dreadnought started its final approach to the edge of the system.

Some weeks later, after much course alteration and calculation of possible approaches the ship slid into a high orbit around the furthest planet from the mother star, a tiny rock of ice and dust. It had taken this long just to get enough reserve power to begin even the simple fusion reactor cores.
Six of the ten mainline fusion reactors wouldn't start when asked, two reported fuel cell failures, but four of these were in damaged sectors and beyond repair.

The massive stellar hyperion drive, drained of fuel, would work only with some intervention from outside the ship.

Maintenance droids worked for a few days on the two fuelcell problems and finally with six reactors online, enough power was available to start the complex life support system.


All along the murky airless corridors and maintenance shafts deep red and green light plunged into the darkness as diodes, terminal screens and emergency lights winked into existence. Massive bulkhead doors silently juddered and slid open as power surged through their motors, force shields punched across halls in damaged areas where the interior was exposed to space, cutting them off from sections that would soon try to hold an atmosphere.

jongore

Not bad but some of you discriptions are a bit strange. You are giving objects abilities they do not have and that makes some of the discriptions jarring.
(Photons screaming, the computer slaping etc.)

The general idea seems to be there but check everything logicly, Sci-Fi is based on logic and in this short piece there are holes.

Why would a craft decelerate so abrubtly (150 gravities) when it's low on power?.

If the ship is starting up a life control system then I assume that there are living breathing beings on board, they would have required more then 1 subroutine to maintain any suspened animation.

Almost there, so keep trying:)

azezil

I took it that the single sub routine refered to a low power mode in which the ship searchs out a new energy sourse and reactivate the main computer when found.

Originally I got the impression the ship didn't have any biological inhabitants, which I thought an interesting idea, thus the human characteristics of the computers actions, but on mention of an athmosphere I assume the crew is in cryostasis with indipendant power supplys

I like it.

Capt'n Midnight

To me it's tending more towared science fantasy than science fiction. ie. the sort of stuff they make films about.

Since I'm not that liteary lets have a go at the science which most people will just take for granted.

From the science bit you need to brush up on Photons - well if you can see a star or galaxy there will be photons so from visible objects it's the light you see first. Even if it's a black hole or brown dwarf you'll usually detect the change in course based on the stars you can see rather than localised gravity changes (frame of reference ya see).

hyperion drive - faster than light so again problems with photons.

It's it a bit like Iilah in "Dormant" by Van Vogt

Have a look at Rendevous with Rama by Clarke lots of bits of trajectory and age effects.

Dreadnaught - sounds like some thing out of E Doc Smith

It's able to decelarate to half the speed of light - yip you could run a computer from that..

BTW:
150g's = delta vee of 1.47Kms
530,000 Kms after one hour
or a quarter the speed of light in 6 days

ixoy

Is there any decent site out there for science fiction would-be writers letting them brush up on the basics of physics? For instance items like photons - as you point out - and deacceleration/acceleration rates (yeah, ok, you could use a simple formula but it'd be nice to have a table pointing out the gravities felt, time, etc). I mean the space flight alone could take a bit, if you wanted to include the scientifically correct method of entering the atmosphere, or whatever.

Then the site should probably cover basic stuff on genetics, anthropology, geogoly, etc. so you can have a believable alien planet (sociology, I imagine, is where the writer steps in). It took me ages to understand - for example - why life forms were expected to be carbon or silicon based rather than another-metal based, or why Class M planets suited us best.

... So any such sites? Because good scientific accuracy, whilst rare in TV/Movies, is fairly common in good sci-fi. Then again these guys are far too often physicists....

Capt'n Midnight

No need to get too worked up on the Science - you don't have to describe internal combustion in most stories involving planes, trains and autombiles. But if you do start to describe things in detail then the details should be fairly accurate. And plese try not to use as much technobabble as they do on Star Trek Voyage ( I can only take so many variations of phase modulations of tachyion beams)

Also you should try to stick to the conventions laid down by other writers to avoid confusing readers, or if you are doing something different then maybe give an explainiation depending on the target audiance.

This might be a bit of help when inventing aliens
http://www.yaridanjo.warmkessel.com/yaridanjo/Galactic.html

Zukustious

I very much liked that, thank you for making my day that little bit more enjoyable Morphéus. It's a very cool idea to say the least. Keep writing, I like it.

Morpheus

cheers for all your suggestions, i wrote it on my lunch break i know the science is all off, and the details are confusing, but i had this crazy thought of a monstrously huge ship coming to life throught the weak timid signal from one tiny incident happening to a little subroutine.

nice to have someones praise too, cheers Zukustious.