The Sky People (S.M. Stirling)

[Space Cadet]

Has anyone read this book?

I think, its an interesting way to do a low tech Traveller campaign. You have a Venus that is covered with swamps and forests, where dinosaurs, cavemen, and prehistoric monsters roam. You have Mars, with its ancient canals and the remains of the civilization that built them, and you have modern Earth, circa 1988 with superpowers competing to settle these planets while spending vast fortunes to get there. Each side has a system of two stage shuttles and nuclear rockets to travel between the planets. Of particular interest would be Mars, with its planet-scaled canal system, any civilization capable of building such a vast canal system, is certainly worth looking into, no doubt, that is the reason the superpowers have turned their attention from the competing brush fire wars in the third world to trying to get to those two planets. The works of a superior alien civilization is in evidence here, one that is capable of terraforming two other wise inhospitable planets, and one that has lasted for the last 150 million years if the fossil evidence on Venus is any indicator. I think and RPG Campaign set in this alternate reality would be a very interesting prospect. You have monsters to fight and perils to over come, but no silly technology like that in the old Pulp planetary novels, the technology is all 1980s or feasible rocket technology if sufficient effort was spent at it. The Earth in this alternate reality is somewhat different from our own, their rocket technology is more advanced, but nothing really that NASA couldn't have accomplished had the had sufficient funding for it. Basically the resources that was spent fighting the Vietnam War and other brushfire wars, was invested instead in imporved interplanetary space transportation with the result that each of the two Superpowers has bases on both Venus and Mars each staffed with a few hundred officers and rangers as they are called, most are called to live off the land as they find it, they make contact with the local civilizations and establish relations, all while investigating the planets on which they are based, there is competition between the Superpowers on this as their are three planets at stake here, not just one.

 

[GypsyComet]

I've attempted to read S.M. Stirling twice. I will not make that mistake again.

 

[Border Reiver]

Although I find Stirling's books very poor, from his poor characterisation (via multiple viewpoints that are too similar) to some childish plot elements) his ideas are actually reasonably good fun for adventures (and don't get me started on some of his publicly held positions on race and nationality- is there a Canadian equivalent of a Copperhead?)

This would make a good D20 Past campaign plot rather than T20, it is ideal for this kind of mix. Rather than follow Stirling's premise let us look at some possibilities, perhaps.

Take some of the premises presented in Cold Space perhaps extend what would happen if Mars & Venus were opened up in the Sixties. The British Space Programme would not be cancelled and they would develop alongside and clashing with the USA, the wholesale shut down of the Empire would slow as the benefits of remaining in the British sphere becomes apparent. France would become the industrial lead of Europe as Germany would be stillborn when the emphasis of a US/CCCP face off shifts offworld.

Would the Cultural Revolution occur? Would China perhaps come to dominate the pacific while the West's head was turned? Or would Australia (and New Zealand) become the bastion against Chinese aggression?

What if the offworld civilisations gain atomic technology, would they try to build their own bomb? Would a Martian invasion be a possibility?

Endless fun.

As to stalking, nah just recognised you from the style and then post on New Mars. Sorry for outing you if that caused offence. I know you sometimes get a difficult time but you do bring some good ideas to the table, just don't react badly to criticism, graceful abeyance is more acceptable than knee jerk defence.

Hacking, couldn't write a line of code. Spying well some called the FRU spies but I wouldn't (and it was 15 years ago).

 

[mbrinkhues]

Bah, cognetive networks are a pain. Actually had to googel what a Copperhead was. My first two thoughts:

+ A guided artillery shell
+ A battery (... with the Copper Head)

OTOH I am the guy that get's the "Cat, not Tank" comment, whenever one mentions Leopards or Gepards hiding in Savanah Grass


As for S.M. Stirling, I only know his collaborative works. Those seemed quite okay.

 

[eclipse]

Originally posted by Space Cadet:
Has anyone read this book?

I read it, and liked it a great deal. It certainly is an interesting concept and would make for an interesting campaign setting. I'm looking forward to the next book in the series, which takes place on Mars. The setting on Mars is quite different, the Martians have had civilization longer than the Earthers and have very advanced genetic based science .

If you wanted to run on the Venus setting though, I would suggest taking a look at the old GDW game "Cadillacs and Dinosaurs."

 

[far-trader]

Originally posted by Michael Brinkhues:
Bah, cognetive networks are a pain. Actually had to googel what a Copperhead was.

So did I, my only thought was the snake and that didn't seem right given the context of the question.

Originally posted by Border Reiver:
...is there a Canadian equivalent of a Copperhead?

Oooh, tough question even for a Canuck...

...and any answer is likely to be political. So... I'll go with that instead of admitting that I can't think of any because I probably should have been paying more attention in history class

 

[Space Cadet]

Originally posted by Border Reiver:
Although I find Stirling's books very poor, from his poor characterisation (via multiple viewpoints that are too similar) to some childish plot elements) his ideas are actually reasonably good fun for adventures (and don't get me started on some of his publicly held positions on race and nationality- is there a Canadian equivalent of a Copperhead?)

This would make a good D20 Past campaign plot rather than T20, it is ideal for this kind of mix. Rather than follow Stirling's premise let us look at some possibilities, perhaps.

Take some of the premises presented in Cold Space perhaps extend what would happen if Mars & Venus were opened up in the Sixties. The British Space Programme would not be cancelled and they would develop alongside and clashing with the USA, the wholesale shut down of the Empire would slow as the benefits of remaining in the British sphere becomes apparent. France would become the industrial lead of Europe as Germany would be stillborn when the emphasis of a US/CCCP face off shifts offworld.

Would the Cultural Revolution occur? Would China perhaps come to dominate the pacific while the West's head was turned? Or would Australia (and New Zealand) become the bastion against Chinese aggression?

What if the offworld civilisations gain atomic technology, would they try to build their own bomb? Would a Martian invasion be a possibility?

Endless fun.

As to stalking, nah just recognised you from the style and then post on New Mars. Sorry for outing you if that caused offence. I know you sometimes get a difficult time but you do bring some good ideas to the table, just don't react badly to criticism, graceful abeyance is more acceptable than knee jerk defence.

Hacking, couldn't write a line of code. Spying well some called the FRU spies but I wouldn't (and it was 15 years ago).

To each his own I guess. I enjoyed Stirlings other books, especially The Island In the Sea of Time series.

In this book, he takes the subject of old Pulp Science Fiction ideas, like in Burrough's Mars and Venus, and he gives them a realistic treatment and examines what might follow if those conditions did exist on those two planets.

The timeline only departs from our own significantly when the probes launched by the US and USSR reach their destination, and find life and civilization, they find that Perceval Lowell's Martian canals did exist and weren't figments of tired eyes or his imagination, and Venus really is a jungle with dinosaurs and humans. The departure point for this timeline as far as human events are concerned is 1961. Everything before 1961 occured acording to our history books, there was a World War II for instance. Afterwards, the cold war took a decidedly different turn, instead of the emphasis on brushfire wars such as in Vietnam, the money and resources were spent in trying to get to Venus and Mars, quite a bit of money in fact. The expenditures on space travel would be camparable to the Defense Budget. NASA was basically stillborn, instead we have a renamed Air Force with an expanded mandate to travel in space. The United States Aero-space Force. Since there are things on Venus and Mars that are dangerous to space travellers, it is not just a rock collecting expedition, astronauts or Rangers, as they are called, must go armed.

 

[Space Cadet]

Sorry for loosing my cool with you, Border Reiver, it just seems extraordinary that someone could come to such a conclusion after so little information given on my part.

When I was younger and naive, I used my own name on the web sites, but then it occured to me, that some psycho could get mad at me after a heated internet discussion, he might look my name up in the phone book, find my address, and pay a visit to me and my family with his favorite firearm.

I'd rather just talk about subjects and not myself or other people on this board.

Besides, I got tired of having the name "Laryssa" hanging around my neck.

"Space Cadet" more accurately describes what I am. I have been called a "Space Cadet" at times when I was in High School after all.

 

[Border Reiver]

No offence taken, I just recognised the style in your system building thread (it can be quite distinct) but I found the clincher was the SMS post. I had already thought that it was quite unusual to see your post on New Mars after I had just been criticising him directly for "provocative" remarks online.

Now on with the show.

 

[Space Cadet]

As a setting, the Venus and Mars parts are similar to that old RPG Space 1889, except with Earth of 1988 replacing the Victorian Earth and the Rubber Physics that the Victorians need to reach these planets. I think it is Hard Alternate History Science Fiction. Basically what we're talking about is the end product of two terraforming projects conducted by aliens. The aliens would have had to have been very long lived as a civilization, having started their work in the middle of the Jurassic, about 150 million years ago, and they would have had to have continuously imported creatures from Earth up to and including modern humans. I imagine some sort of perpetual "nuclear winter" of suspended particles high in the atmosphere would have had to have been maintained to reflect excess solar radiation away from Benus to prevent it from over heating and reverting to its former self. The hardest thing of all would have been to spin up Venus so that it could have 30 hour days. The hard part is figuring out the motives of the aliens for doing this. Well, since these motives are not likely to be known to the player, they don't have to be know to the GM as well.

One possibility is that the aliens are not really aliens at all, it is an alternate reality of course and alternate realities can be caused by time travellers from the future. In the book, nothing really alien ever shows up, all the creatures are modified Earth stock creatures. Even the "tall Martian" in the last part of the book, could simply be a human adapted to low gravity. Most of the Pulp aliens in the Early 20th century fiction are derived from Earth creatures anyway, taking this assumption, that hard science fiction explaination would be that they are descended from Earth Creatures that further evolved to adapt to the local environment.

As a practical matter, I think Traveller models this pretty well. Most of the Terrans on the Venus bases would be scouts. The native nomadic types are barbarians. The city dwellers are tech level 1 types, the base personell are at tech level 7. The rocket technology is a bit advanced. Interplanetary transportation is accomplished by a system of two-stage shuttles, and nuclear powered interplanetary spaceships. The United States Aero-Space Force is the equivalent of the Navy in Traveller terms, all Navy Characters are members of the USASF or the Soviet equivalent. I get the impression that all transfers of crew personell between planets are done by one of these two government agencies, its kind of like a giant Apollo Program on Steroids. There are no Merchant Characters, most space activity is done by government. Probably the main reason for this massive expenditure in space has to do with the evidence of advanced civilization on Mars, the canals for instance which are the most visible sign of this civilization. Current Mars is a collection of city-states at the apex of canal intersections. Martian civilization is currently fractured into a number of waring nations, they've declined from their heights of global spanning civilization, and much of their advanced technology is carefully preserved artifacts from that prior global society. Some of these artifacts could possibly affect the global balance of power if they fell into certian hands. A nuclear damper, could for instance protect a city from nuclear attack if it were sufficiently long ranged. long range lasers could shoot down missile warheads enroute to their targets on Earth. I think the USA and Soviets are primary concerned that their opposite number might aquire certain Martian technology which unbalances the balance of power between the two global superpowers, so both nations spend massive amounts of money to explore these two planets in the name of National Security. Money gets diverted from other efforts such as the aborted Vietnam War for instance. John F. Kennedy correctly deduced that it doesn't matter if Vietnam were to fall to the Communists if the United States were to suddenly acquire exclusive access to Martian technology with military applications, the Soviets followed suit and so both sides in the Vietnam conflict were left to their own devices without outside support. Without the Vietnam War, the 1970s and 1980s look unfamiliar, there was no "peace now" movement because there was no War to protest Most of JFKs Republican opponents criticised him for that cowardly withdrawal in the face of a commuist insurgency, but they had to tacitly admit that getting to Mars first was more important than beating some communist insurgency in some third world country.

Even with the reduced costs of space travel building a base on Venus and Mars is prohibitively expensive for any except the two major superpowers and their allies. There is no such thing as a Belter or a Merchant character class in this setting. Mining the asteroids for resources is all very nice, but what the governments are after is any access to the alien relic technology which managed to terraform two worlds millions of years ago, the value of that far exceeds the mineral content of any asteroid, since this early in the space age, such minerals can't be economically extracted anyway.

Making contact and estabishing friendly relations with the natives is also vitally important, since they are more likely to know where to look for the ancient artifacts, than the hundred or so personnel that each country can afford to send to the two planets. It can be assumed that the PCs are either explorers sent from their respective countries or primitive natives who've made contact with the Terran Explorers.

 

[Space Cadet]

The Planet
VENUS: Parameters
- ORBIT: 0.723 AU
- ORBITAL PERIOD: 224.7 days
- ROTATION: 30hrs. 6mins (retrograde)
- MASS: 0.815 x Earth
- AVERAGE DENSITY: 5.2 g/cc
- SURFACE GRAVITY: 0.91 x Earth
- DIAMETER: 7,520 miles (equatorial; 94.7% Earth)
- SURFACE: land 20%, water 80%
- ATMOSPHERIC COMPOSITION:
- - NITROGEN 76.2%
- - OXYGEN 22.7%
- - CARBON DIOXIDE 0.088%
- TRACE ELEMENTS: Argon, Neon, Helium, Krypton, Hydrogen
- ATMOSPHERIC PRESSURE: 17.7 psi average at sea level

Venus differs from Earth, its sister planet, primarily in its slightly smaller size and slightly lower average density, as well as the lack of a moon or satellite, and its retrograde (clockwise) rotation. The composition of the atmosphere is closely similar to that of earth, the main differences being the higher percentage of oxygen and the somewhat greater mass and density of the atmosphere as a whole.

Average temperatures on Venus are roughly 10 degrees Celsius higher than those on Earth, due to greater solar energy input, moderated by the reflective properties of the high cloud layer; isotope analysis suggests that these temperatures are similar to those on Earth in the Upper Cretaceous period, at which time Earth, like Venus today, had no polar ice caps.

Most of Venus' land area of approximately 40,000,000 sq. miles is concentrated in the Artic supercontinent of Gagarin, roughly the size of Eurasia, and the antarctic continent of Lobachevsky, approximately the size of Africa. Chains of islands constitute most of the remaining land surface, ranging in size from tiny atolls to nearly half a million square miles ...

 

[Space Cadet]

The actual distribution of high elevation features on real Venus appears different. I happen to have a topographical globe of Venus.

There is an actic "continent" called Ishtar Terra, in the center of the continent is a circular mountain range called Maxwell Montes, these mountains tower above Mount Everest in height, this Northern continent is about the size of Africa.

Along the Equator is a huge "continent" of Aphrodite Terra, its length spans half the equatorial circumference of the globe. The rest of the land surface consists of islands, one island in particular approaches the size of Australia, its named Beta Regio, it lies in the northern hemisphere to the west and south of Ishtar.

It I was going to do an RPG based on The Sky People, I'd use this topography instead as we have maps of it.