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What fictional world would you live in, if you could pick any one?
Given that it's a day a lot of people want to escape, I figured I may as well ask. I've been thinking about it for a while and I'm torn between some of my favourite sci fi or fantasy worlds.
Where would you go? What would you do? Any caveats, or would you just take a portal and hope for the best?
No contest. The Culture every time.
I always wondered if it wouldn't just get boring. A few of the books touched on this, but for the average culture citizen, there just aren't any problems left to solve, and even if there were, a mind could solve it way more easily than any human or group of humans ever could.
It seems like you'd feel totally powerless and without purpose, kind of like a child, but a child without the knowledge that you'd one day grow up to be an adult.
Being able to do whatever you wanted every day, live for as long as you wanted, and never having to worry about anything would be nice for a while, but I can't help but think it would drive me nuts after a few months or years.
Perhaps. The kind of problems I enjoy are the kind I've made up for myself to solve, like how do I make this thing by hand which I could easily buy pre-made, or how do I complete this game for which I could simply download a walkthrough? The problems I don't find so fun are the ones along the lines of "how will I pay for food and shelter?" or "what happens if I get seriously ill?" or similar.
How is that significantly different to how we live now? Very few current humans have meaningful amounts of power in their lives and a lot of what people talk about "purpose" seems derived from making life less shitty for oneself or others. Which is again a problem I'd rather not have to be solving.
What's left seems to be adventure and creativity. Going to new places, seeing amazing things, making cool stuff. A whole universe full of wonders to explore, a whole mind worth of ideas to pour out. Not a bad way to fill however long a life you decide you want.
In a similar vein, we're always told (by the rich) that money can't buy happiness but I reckon I'd be prepared to try to disprove that. Maybe it's true. Maybe getting everything you could ever want is rubbish. But I'm pretty certain it's better than not doing that.
I think for a lot of people the idea of creating your own purpose or challenge can be difficult, because as you said much of our daily life is carving out survival and comfort.
Personally, I'd like to climb some non-earth mountains. I feel like I could spend at least a century planning out climbing and backpacking trips on other planets, pleasant and hostile alike. I'm sure I could fill a few centuries with personally rewarding goals and activities.
In the long arc of forever, I could of course see things getting stale. E.g. the Q in Star Trek. But I'd probably die by accident before that point.
Well, in my current job, I at least have a feeling that I'm, in some small, barely measurable way, having a positive impact on the world. If a computer could do it a thousand times better than me, such that me even attempting to do it would actually negatively affect the world, I don't know, I wouldn't feel as fulfilled.
The "real" problems I spend time and energy solving aren't exactly fun. In fact, in many cases they're really terrible, boring, and un-fun. Most of them are at least fulfilling though. I get a sense of purpose from completing a vitally needed project at home, or making enough money to take care of my family, or solving a big issue at work in a way that I don't get from beating a challenging video game, or hitting a new PR at the gym. The sense of accomplishment is there, but the sense of purpose isn't, if that makes sense.
I think something might be lost if humans are no longer needed to solve their own problems.
Exactly why I'd pick Star Trek: TNG not yet expanded with Voyager and DS9
Oh come on, you don’t want to be in the giant gloopy shapeshifter ocean as an undifferentiated mass of consciousness?
Right now? Yeah go for it
Mood
If I could offer trips through the fairy rings...
Waste of a comment for me here but "HAHAHAHAHAHA"
(I love DS9 but watching it not living in it; too much gray but a damn fine watch)
Also, no Neelix please.
I see your TNG and raise you Generations. I know I'm just tired and burnt out, but my fictional universe within a fictional universe would be the Nexus.
The friend of the main character in Player of Games designed mountains for a living.
Or you could easily become the best you can be at something, maybe change gender, try that for a while etc. You can also decide to go into stasis for a while and check out the future.
There's way more to life than working for money or solving the problems of society. You just have to be creative. You may not have a job, but there's always meaningful activity, meaningful goals, etc.
If I recall correctly, one character in Permutation City spends a decade mastering Renaissance woodworking.
Yes, I mean I do have hobbies that don't contribute to the well-being of humanity, but if all I ever did were things for my own entertainment, I would feel unfulfilled. Even after I retire, I'd probably volunteer or something so that I'm contributing in some small way.
If I knew that anything I did would actually just be better done by a drone or a mind, and really, even attempting to help would mostly just be me getting in the way, I think I'd feel pretty unfulfilled.
Banks tried to address this in Look to Windward.
Quote
"So what," the Chelgrian asked, "is the point of me or anybody else writing a symphony, or anything else?"The avatar raised its brows in surprise. "Well, for one thing, you do it, it's you who gets the feeling of achievement."
"Ignoring the subjective. What would be the point for those listening to it?"
"They'd know it was one of their own species, not a Mind, who created it."
"Ignoring that, too; suppose they weren't told it was by an AI, or didn't care."
"If they hadn't been told then the comparison isn't complete; information is being concealed. If they don't care, then they're unlike any group of humans I've ever encountered."
"But if you can—"
"Ziller, are you concerned that Minds—AIs, if you like—can create, or even just appear to create, original works of art?"
"Frankly, when they're the sort of original works of art that I create, yes."
"Ziller, it doesn't matter. You have to think like a mountain climber."
"Oh, do I?"
"Yes. Some people take days, sweat buckets, endure pain and cold and risk injury and—in some cases—permanent death to achieve the summit of a mountain only to discover there a party of their peers freshly arrived by aircraft and enjoying a light picnic."
"If I was one of those climbers I'd be pretty damned annoyed."
"Well, it is considered rather impolite to land an aircraft on a summit which people are at that moment struggling up to the hard way, but it can and does happen. Good manners indicate that the picnic ought to be shared and that those who arrived by aircraft express awe and respect for the accomplishment of the climbers.
"The point, of course, is that the people who spent days and sweated buckets could also have taken an aircraft to the summit if all they'd wanted was to absorb the view. It is the struggle that they crave. The sense of achievement is produced by the route to and from the peak, not by the peak itself. It is just the fold between the pages." The avatar hesitated. It put its head a little to one side and narrowed its eyes. "How far do I have to take this analogy, Cr. Ziller?"
It's also interesting to note that he doesn't presume people would be immortal, even if they could be. Eventually, most people in the Culture feel like they've seen and done everything they really want to, and they elect to in their lives surrounded by friends and family. (Not a view I personally understand, but it was one that he supported. And possibly seemed to have embraced himself, to some extent, before his own death.)
But I take the satisfaction and entertainment I've gotten out of video games as evidence that we can find enjoyment in conquering "manufactured" challenges. We don't have to be solving "real" problems. I can only imagine what types of interesting problems godlike AIs could give us to spend our time solving!
I visited this thread when it was fresh, saw mat had already mentioned the Culture so I upvoted and moved on, but there are a couple of thoughts of my own.
There's far more for me to do than I can experience in a standard length unmodified human lifetime, so even if I have to eventually choose to put an end to my own life it still seems like a no-brainer to choose living in the Culture, where I'd have all the time and resources I might want, be able to engage with all of my interests and then put an end to things at the time and in the manner of my own choosing. But also, this is a problem I believe humankind will have to come to terms with sooner or later even in our reality, in a relatively near future, provided the world doesn't slide into a dystopia in which only a few benefit from the health and abundance brought about by medical progress, automation and cheap energy, and everyone else is kept miserable and shackled by artificial scarcity. Having more time than you need seems like a good thing; like the ultimate goal.
There are already plenty of people in the world who are smarter, better connected, more driven and wealthier than I am. Through no fault of my own, they can already solve the world's problems better than I possibly could. Conversely, the vast majority of people who live or have ever lived have left no mark in the world, except possibly a genetic one. Intuitively, it feels like it's much easier - and more likely - to have contributed to the future state of the world if I'm a horrible person. Impactful historical figures were often serial killers, warmongers, oppressors, manipulators, cheaters, cult leaders, rapists, etc. If we establish that the objective is not to leave a mark no matter what, but to objectively make the world a better place, I don't see why I would resent the Minds. They're just more sentient beings who are better than I am, except they seem much more likely to objectively make the world a better place than a disdainful billionaire or an academic misanthrope.
I find it interesting that there is a certain subsection of humanity (or perhaps it's a subsection of our society) that needs strong, outwardly delivered feedback as to the purpose of their life to feel fulfilled. I can say that, unequivocally, I do not need that. In fact, when I receive it, I interpret it as sarcastic, or manipulative. It seems obvious to me that the giver would want something out of me, be it my labor, my money, or my support, and that they don't care about my happiness or wellbeing. But I can also accept that is not the case for others.
I also find it obvious that the majority of our choices will be driven by a whole host of completely random and arbitrary variables that just happen to exist around us. People are choosing to have 1 child, or no children, because of the economy, because of their genetics, because of housing scarcity, because of their family medical history, etc. We can't even conceive what we may choose to do if none of those factors even existed. Would we raise a family of 20 children if we had unlimited space and resources? If we didn't have to question their future safety? Would we choose to be body builders if we could have perfect health, perfect recovery, a holographic massage and sauna after every workout? If we could be trained by holo-Arnold himself for a decade? Then spend a decade training marathons under Eliud Kipchoge. If our bodies didn't slowly degrade over the latter half of our lives, if we didn't have hormonal disregulation or whatever diseases we may run into in our lives?
Honestly though, that is the whole point of the Star Trek world. Most of the population lives in their communities, finds meaning among themselves, goes on however they wish. For those few driven enough, they join Starfleet, explore the galaxy, or practice new medicines in the breach of space. And just like today's scholars, they may spend their entire lives just to push the boundary of human knowledge that needle point further than it was before them. For the few who actually need that, it is always there. Most of us don't, though. Most of us can't do that for reasons outside of our control.
The Culture is similar. (Star Trek may have inspired Banks. In fact, when the Culture visited Earth in the 1970s in "The State of the Art", some members of Contact watched the original Star Trek!) Most Culture people just live out their lives on an orbital or on a GSV, hedonisticly pursuing whatever interest catches them at any given time. For some people, they want to seek out new lives and new civilizations, so they join Contact. (And for an even smaller subsection of those people, they really want to improve/meddle in the lives of sentients across the galaxy, so they are recruited into Special Circumstances.)
Me? I think I would be perfectly content to nerd out on learning things from AI teachers and going on safe but imaginary adventures. If I had the opportunity, I would probably spend a great deal of my life as if I were back in college, talking to other nerdy people and my professors, and then doing something like gaming with my wife at night.
In my real life, I'm just a software administrator for a mortgage company. I'm definitely not "making a difference." I can't imagine how I even would. (But maybe that's my highly external locus of control talking.)
It's a pretty amazing option
Aren't they limited by thermodynamics? Surely there are better options.
BTW, GCU Grey Area is "Meatfucker." It also has no crew.
This is the only answer really.
Pokémon. It's just so optimistic, you know there's some Pokémon you'd like to be friends with. All you need to put up with is some dog that poses an existential threat to something like the space-time continuum every three years or so, but that's a breeze - a 12 y/o deals with it every time. The kids are alright!
I don’t know much about Pokémon, and maybe under the surface it’s totally wholesome. But the high concept to me seems to be “I’ve captured some animals and I force them to fight other animals”. It’s cockfighting. Sorry but that’s highly unethical and illegal in most societies.
I mean, if you really want to get into the tall grass - first off, that's assuming you have to fight with them; there are plenty of people in-universe who just bum around with their Pokémon. Secondly wild Pokémon are dangerous to the point where it isn't recommended to go out without your own trained Pokémon, so there's some IMO defensible self-defense reason why training happens. It's still safe enough where 10 year olds are trusted to get around when they properly take care of them, and they're shown to have schools where younger kids are taught to do so in every mainline game. Lastly, Pokémon are also pretty clearly some level of sentient past typical animals and do not listen to trainers who they don't deem worthy. It's hand-wavey, but that's consent to me.
There's also the fan theory why almost all trainers are children: there was a massive global war and most of the adults died.
To add to Lapbunny's point: while the mainline games are about battling, the Detective Pikachu games (or at least the first one, haven't played the second yet) really show how much of the world exists beyond battling. I loved seeing all these normal people living their normal lives, just with the addition of Pokémon. Plenty of people seemed to treat them like pets or regular old wild animals, it was really fun to see what daily life would be like for non-trainers. Same goes for the Pokémon Ranger series, lots of people who have pet Pokémon but never battle with them.
My bigger concern about living in the Pokemon universe is just how they're a LOT more dangerous than regular wild animals. And also a lot of ghost-type Pokémon tend to steal people and children.
A lot of the Pokedex entries come across as tall tale stuff, eg Machamp punching people oVeR tHe HoRiZoN, so considering ghosts already get crazy folk tales IRL I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of them are inflated rumors.
If they are real, tho, Drifloon trying to abduct people and getting tugged around instead is kinda cute.
Obligatory
I was thinking for a bit about the OP question but when I saw this answer, that's it.
Hm… if I ended up being a mostly normal ass citizen in whichever universe, I think Star Trek would maybe be one of the better picks for me? It would be neat to work on a starship and explore or even do what Kasidy Yates does and be a space trucker.
I’m trying to think of fantasy worlds to live in, but many fantasy stories are fraught with danger where there’s a good chance I’d just die. So I guess certain periods of the forgotten realms would be fun to live in, but hopefully times where my city isn’t being blown up by one apocalypse or another, or hopefully I just happen to be a main character adventurer and fight through it, ha.
I was going to say Star Trek. At least the original series. Star Trek is a utopia where people on earth learned how to get along and met nice aliens and made alliances with them. Society is post scarcity and everyone is free to do what is most fulfilling. There are some problems but there is an attempt to solve them without selfishness and violence.
After the original series the galaxy seems to have too many existential threats to be so utopian.
What starts annoying me is when there are constant threats to earth in Star Trek shows.
In TOS and most of TNG, earth is depicted as a paradise that's solved world hunger, poverty, war, greed, and so forth. Most people there are happy, not stressed, and free to enjoy their lives. It was aspirational. Every new show and movie that comes out needs to raise the stakes, such that earth is threatened constantly. You can't live in a utopia if you're always worried about an alien incursion or terrorist attack or just straight up having your history erased.
I think honestly at this point, if we were to take Star Trek canon as a whole, I'm safer as a current day US citizen than a federation citizen on earth in the 24th century.
I'm pretty sure more people die in car crashes in a random year on modern Earth than died in any one of those attacks. Never mind all the other ways people die today that Star Trek characters can fix by waving a light over it or politely telling people to chill out.
The worst from before Discovery's far-future nonsense is probably what, the Whale Probe? Or maybe the Xindi from Enterprise cutting a trench through Florida? The Borg never made planetfall in any of their attacks, nor did Discovery's Klingons. The Breen bombing was pretty small scale and directed at Starfleet headquarters, nothing else in the Dominion war got that far. What am I missing?
Off the top of my head, seven million people died in florida during the xindi attack on earth, the Breen attacked and killed a bunch of people during the dominion wars, the borg actually successfully borgified the planet in First Contact, but that was reversed. I'm sure there's a bunch of others I'm forgetting. Even if a bunch of people aren't killed though, the earth/galaxy/quadrant is regularly threatened and constantly comes to the brink of totally ending. The galaxy is extremely dangerous and violent, I think the only way you could live peacefully on earth is by being willfully ignorant of it all.
All the small problems—poverty, illness, racism, etc.—have been solved, but then there are bigger, galactic-scale problems: hiveminds threatening to assimilate Earth, spacetime anomalies threatening to destroy Earth, time-traveling vengeful Romulans threatening to destroy Earth, etc.
The good times are good and the bad times are hellishly horrible.
Yes that's why I specified the original series (TOS). TNG and after is where the galaxy-threatening events happen. In TOS there was sort of a cold war with the Klingons and one with The Romulans but they were not a constant threat to Earth. There was no Borg or dominion yet.
I wrote elsewhere:
I'd say Star Trek TNG too. Although my favourite Trek is DS9, but there was a whole war going on and introduced section 31.
So I very much prefer the Utopia of TNG. I'd be a regular citizen. Or maybe someone on some boring research station.
Being on the Enterprise itself would result in multiple unresolved traumas.
And being on Voyager would result in abandoned lizard babies.
Yeah, fuck being on the Enterprise or Voyager. I don’t want to become a transporter clone or stuck in a time loop or attacked by monsters or have the responsibility of preventing wars. I would want to explore the stars, though, so I’d try to have my own smaller ship that I could travel in. Ever since I played Elite Dangerous, that’s kind of been my space fantasy.
I would want to visit the station Deep Space 9, but only before or after the war, ha. It’s my favorite location in Trek (and my favorite Trek) and just seems super cozy and I’d love to meet all the people coming and going on their business. I think that’s why I like the location so much, it’s filled with ordinary people and not just starfleet people.
It's my favourite location in Trek for the same reasons too. Deep Space Nine feels lived in compared to the other settings. They also feel weirdly more like family despite them having much more disagreements and living separate lives.
I would love to have a drink at Quarks and have a chat with him. It's such a fun and lively environment!
The town from Kiki's Delivery Service. Post-scarcity and magic and fantastical elements are all well and good, but I just want something normal again.
Alternative answer: Middle Earth, if I'm allowed to bring a set of scuba gear. Like, Maglor couldn't have thrown the silmaril that far into the ocean, right? He was just standing on the shore, and that thing glows real bright. Sea monsters notwithstanding, surely it'd not be all that difficult to find???
So, Stockholm? :-D
Terry Pratchett's Discworld. Imperfect and a little wild, but it would be interesting.
Equestria, obviously. Even if I were an earth pony, society would be based around the design of hooved creatures.
Eeyup, i feel in a world with magic there should be a branch of engineering for magic, which is the most exciting part for me.
The universal-ish peace, universal language, magic of music, and magic of harmony in general would be a bonus too
Thanks for this post today. Last week I was talking with one of my clients. She is a senior executive for one of the big environmental organizations. Just coming out of a brainstorming session to rework their messaging for the upcoming Administration, she asked what I would do.
Over a decade ago, Neal Stephenson famously challenged science fiction writers at one of the big conventions to break their addiction to dystopia. Everybody loves their apocalypses, catastrophes, and alien invasions.
We need positive visions of the future so that we know what we are working toward and how much it is worth it to make all the sacrifices to get there. Since then, I’ve been building worlds I want to live in instead of writing yet another grim cautionary tale about the dangers of this or that technology.
I’ve posted my projects in the past. This comment isn’t meant to be self-promotion. But we desperately need compelling visions of the very near future, like 10 years from now, that can combat all the anguish and despair we currently suffer.
Was this after dinner of his more dystopia focused novels?
... That said, Snow Crash and the Diamond Age don't really read like dystopias in the usual sense.
Yeah Neal hasn't necessarily followed his own advice lol. But the pressures to satisfy an edgy and cynical audience are so hard. Cozy positive stories about healthy futures are evidently what only a tiny minority of readers actually want. And all of our storytelling instincts are about conflict and optimized binary good/evil arcs etc. You have to leave a whole lot behind if you want to engage in truly wholesome worldbuilding.
Fortunately, unlike him I don't have an agent anymore or an editor to torment me with their demands.
Examples do come to mind for both books when I think of how Neil tows his own line, though.
In Snow Crash, he describes the juiced up suburban kid in the minivan - descriptions that stuck with me because of how obscure and plausible, but at the same time totally cynical and judgemental it is. He explores this and the topic of an Illustrated Primer (Diamond Age) as an advanced, class extractive education tool for the rich in ways that are neither utopia or dystopia leaning - they just are.
Margaret Atwood in Oryx and Crake does this too. She's slightly more of a dystopia writer, but what's great about both is how they describe the bleak, mundane reality of their characters, and by extension, our contemporary lives.
Because tone can be difficult to convey I'm just going to preface this with that the following are genuine questions from the perspective of someone that is not a writer. I'm aware they read a bit like rhetorical argumentative questions, but that is not my intent.
What does a story look like if the world is relevant, but not broken in some way? If it isn't intended to be changed over the course of the story, or at least have any concerning implications of the setting considered by the audience, then what purpose is there in actually fleshing out the world in either a positive or negative fashion?
The thing I'm thinking when asking this is that naively I'd assume a story that doesn't need the world to change is then a story about the relationships between the characters where the world is just an interchangeable set piece. In my mind that makes the explanation about why those stories about positive worlds are rarely written simply that the story ends up the same even if you strip away any unique parts of the setting, so those would get edited out to make the story focus on the elements that actually support the plot. I feel I may be missing something though.
A number of years ago I addressed this issue head-on. My daughter and I wrote books together when she was young. But when she was seven she hated all forms of conflict. So we wrote a book that had none.
Yesif is the story of a girl about six hundred years in the future. She wakes up one morning happy and excited. She gets to go see her friend. But Yesif lives at the bottom of the ocean and he lives in the faraway asteroid belt.
First she rides a friendly sperm whale to the surface. Then she makes more friends on her way to the mountains. The cloud wizard shoots her off into space. Then she lands in her friend’s habitat and they study the stars together.
The scenes are charming and absorb one’s attention because they are so funny and unique and extreme. But everyone is working together. Everyone is happy to see each other. There is a sweet ending.
I consider this a successful example of storytelling without conflict. I’ve read the book aloud to groups of kids and they agree.
Of course now that my daughter is no longer a child she loves murder mysteries and horror films lol. But it’s not all she loves.
So I love the Monk and Robot duology by Becky Chambers It's about one character feeling unsatisfied in a pretty utopic world and seeking something different, and meeting our other character who is coming to the world to learn something.
The world itself doesn't need to change, but also isn't really interchangeable either. The backdrop is pretty necessary for the character struggles and development to make sense in this specific way. Different settings would allow similar character interactions but not the same.
Idk cozy/hope punk is a genre and/aesthetic for a reason. Sometimes the world is pretty good and it's just doing something new that is the struggle
I know things turn out okay in Seveneves, but the first half is .... a lot. Not sure it gets more dystopian than that.
Loved that book. Such a hard one to read
Etheria from She-Ra and the Princesses of Power. Magic is cool and the idea that queerness is so normalized it's not really noteworthy seems really nice to me right about now. Also, their government, undemocratic though it may be, seems to be in much better hands than America's.
If a portal to it were to open up, my only hesitation would be to get my wife to come with me.
A few too many robot attacks for my liking.
The Bobiverse, ideally as a Bob (or equivalent). The idea that I could just explore space and build what I need sounds pretty fun.
It's hilarious how the book treats that like a terrible hellish existence for most people, but tons of people are like "sign me up. Let's get my brain in a spaceship already."
As long as I don't have to go through the initial hell of being a brain floating in sensory deprivation void and trying not to go insane.
Post-instantiation of the Bobiverse? Yes, that sounds quite nice.
Some aspects of it are appealing, but I always thought it a bit weird (and maybe narcisstic) to have so many copies of yourself around. I know there's replicative drift, but they all essentially started from you. And what happens when factions and conflict arise within your own "family"? It's going to be weird. And it's far too male dominated in the books!
Except for, ya know
stuff
civil war and aliens determined to kill everyone
Not all Bobs had to deal with that stuff!
I'm not done with the series but is there a Bob survival rate? I suppose it depends on which Bobs and when
It's like the Martian, where the competence porn is the point, I think. I finished book 3 but I'm hopping around a bunch of series right now so it's one I dip into when I want an audiobook I don't have to pay a ton of attention to.
But yeah I get it.
They're not the best thing I've ever read. The narrator has the benefit of not needing to do a ton of voices. But they're quick and easy listens
Medeiros? ;)
I didn't particularly enjoy Terry Pratchetts, Long Earth series when it released but I've been turning over the idea in my head more and more.
If you've not read it. It's a Multiverse series where some weird schematics goes viral, of a device that is simply a potato in a box plugged into a 3 way switch. And if you flip the switch, you instantly jump to an alternative dimension. And you can keep going as far as you like in either direction, but there is only one human world. And suddenly we're in a true Post-scarcity society and no one gives a crap anymore. Sort of like the ring-gates from The Expanse, but with far more individual autonomy.
Pratchett was fairly prolific with some concepts but even back then I did not care for the benevolent Advanced AI CEO that convinced the world it was a reincarnation of a Buddist monk. Also the society of evolved humans that are super genius, puts a bad taste in my mouth, given how they were the "saviors" of humanity and had a real stick up their collective asses.
But what really stuck with me was the little side stories highlighting the paradime shift between the new reality and people firmly clinging to the old status quo. Like the guy who wants lay claim to gold veins, but there is literally no point to it. Or the government trying to put down a protest but can't do anything to stop people just nopeing out.
So I think for now, I just want to wander around and camp on some uninhabited planets for a bit and.
Conjoiner society from the Revelation Space universe. The Culture is cool and all but when you get right down to it, humans are still basically humans, and they never personally approach the intelligence of the Minds. I want my cybernetic mental augmentations and immortality.
Yeah, they are the ones who have machine brains that extend outside their skulls and frequently operate interstellar close-to-light-speed ships that go on journeys longer than regular human lifespans.
I think the guy with the special knife was probably the character Dreyfus in the Prefect, who had a whiphound that could slice basically anything. Not a Conjoiner, but he does meet with Clepsydra, who is a conjoiner.
Some of the other short stories are basically only about conjoiners.
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality most probably, magic + science +
Well the Culture is posted already so This Used to be About Dungeons - generally just a chill mostly optimistic setting with large variety of magic and for the more thrill seeking person there are always the dungeons.
Alternatively Hoard in the Rhivaak Empire - a goverment most of the time kept competent and honest by a dragon Empress that also just lets it just run most of the time. Plus lots of magic.
Alternatively Quill and Still - a different take on social structures and possible incentives.
Caveats are of of course that even in optimistic settings are likely places that are not all that pleasant and than there is the question of language and culture. So a just portaling there, or anywhere, would still be basically playing the lottery.
Ok but if living in Quill and Still means I have to live through the paragraphs of alchemical research, I quit and go fight in a dungeon.
(I liked the concept but I could not keep reading)
!!!
We read, and then stopped reading, the same stuff! For the same reason!
You, u/DefinitelyNotAFae, are a gentlebeing and a scholar.
There's slice of life and then there's a slice of a science textbook ಠ_ಠ
I can tell the author enjoyed it! But yeah. Not a horrible place to have to live in the scheme of things.
𖡼𖤣𖥧𖡼𓋼𖤣𖥧𓋼𓍊
The Shire from Lord of the Rings. I would need a custom house. Other than that the Hobbit life suits me well.
That’s such a good answer as long as it’s not during the tail end of the war of the ring, but there are thousands of years before or after that would be perfect! It would be so peaceful to live in a hobbit hole and your job is fishing or farming or being a jeweler or a tailor and you just party and eat and drink all the time!
I wonder if Angel Beat's purgatory would be a nice place to live it. Endless school days in a well-funded schools, with various facilities for students' afterhour activities like gardening, baseball, fishing, or even starting a band. The only way to leave, is to leave without regrets.
Easy, Glie. I value stability, and I'm not one for adventure. A peaceful life in a walled city where everyone has their place would be my natural habitat
Thedas. Like, yeah, the world is constantly ending, theres a terrible deadly plague that regularly ravages the world and yeah its a feudal monarchy but like......Magic.
Id also take Pokemon, Star Trek TOS, or Naruto. lmao. Basically i just want the ability to do some kind of magic, ride or die friends, and the ability to save the world with the aforementioned friends; im not super picky about the where or how lol (inb4 "star trek doesnt have magic" comrade have you seen vulcans and betazoids? that's magic and i will die on that hill 😂 also, pokemon are close enough to magic. i too would like to talk to my cat and have them understand me)
I would like to live on Beta Canum Venaticorum, as described in the role playing game 2300 AD. More specifically, I would look for a house either on the east coast of the French Continent, a little east of Premiere, or perhaps on the west coast of the British New Africa, somewhere near Bayview. Climate in both places is wonderful, the rhythm of life reasonable, and while the system is about a 3 months' travel from the hustle and bustle of the core systems of Earth and Alpha Centauri, it is still a reasonably modern colony world, being the centre of the French Arm of the galaxy as well as its breadbasket.
Most specifically, I would want to live in this universe as it was described in the original, 1980s print of the game. Later editions have tried to modernise the world somewhat, but I much prefer the (now) retro-futuristic vision of the future, where computing is more or less done with 8 and 16 bit computers, the internet is largely BBSs and emails, yet everything is also hydrogen and solar powered and we have some level of cybernetics, as well as means to travel across (a part of) the galaxy. But it is also a hard scifi setting, so there are no such things as artificial gravity or hyperspace jumps, and the universe itself is largely a hostile, cold and empty place.
But Beta Canum itself is just wonderful, I've always loved it. The local flora and fauna are similar to Earth's in principle (although not in form), but since everything native on the planet developed from right-handed amino acids unlike on Earth where everything is left-handed, everything that natively lives and grows on BC is entirely incompatible with us and our biology, offering no nutritional value. While this means that we need to do a lot of work to grow our own imported plants and animals, and in doing so clear out areas for ourselves, it also means that for most parts of the planet we have just left things be as they are.
I also find it exciting that in addition to the French, British and German colonies (so practically all the major powers that matter), Beta Canum is the home to a Pentapod colony. They are some of the weirdest and most alien, well, aliens that I have encountered in any universe. Through a long history of genetic engineering, they have evolved to be something like biological machines, each individual having a specific function in the larger Pentapod society. Some say that they have gone so far in their biohacking that they have lost any sense of self and identity, but based on my limited encounters, I feel differently. They are an utterly fascinating species that I believe could also teach us much about ourselves. If only we knew more about them and where they come from!
Oh yes, and there is of course the space elevator. The only one in the universe outside of Earth's. I would be proud of that fact if I lived on the planet and could call myself a betacanumite.
More generally, the world of 2300 AD is just so close to my own heart, and exactly where I would like to exist. It sort of takes the turn of the 80s optimism and concerns and puts them into a hard scifi context whose geopolitical realities are largely based on the 18th and 19th century colonial eras. While we can travel faster than light, distances are enormous and travel times from one system to another counted in weeks and months. And as the number of interstellar spacecraft available is also very limited, colonies must be fairly self-sufficient, end up developing their own cultural and colonial identities, and remain fairly small. Beta Canum is actually one of the largest colonies, with a total population of around 50 million, across the three human colonies spanning the planet's three major continents. Just the right size, if you ask me.
This sounds like a very fascinating setting and I think I’m going to have to read up on it. 80’s and 90’s retrofuturism is my jam!
I'll be the odd duck and go with Arcadia Bay from the Life is Strange series...after the storm, or when the storm never happens depending on your choices.
Sure what happens in the game is pretty horrific, but the setting is idellic and I'd love to live somewhere so beautiful and intertwined with nature.
I would say Animal Crossing but living on a small island seems too boring. So I'm going to say Pokemon. Much more varied landscapes and in general not huge amounts of strife. And yes, people trap animals in little balls and force them to fight but at least in that world it is canon that the animals like it and want that (nto that it is really forced).
I'd be happy living in Pelican Town (Stardew Valley). No real scarcity, easy to live the high life after a few years, plenty of romantic options, easy childcare, if anything goes too bad you just wake up in your bed or in the hospital a little poorer. Every few years a new place to visit magically appears. All hail our lord and savior ConcernedApe.
I’d like to live in the world of David the Gnome. I could have a nice family and friends, help other people, have a long life, and turn into a tree to give shelter to future generations when I die. I’d like to think I could do something in my gnome life to resolve differences between the world’s so-called ‘gypsy gnomes’ and other groups. It would also be fun to interact with forest animals and ride on a bird from place to place.
As long as I can choose the time as well, I would go to the world of The Wheel of Time during the Age of Legends.
Probably the world of the Elder Scrolls. Your power in the world directly scales with your knowledge of it. There is, however, a very high chance of being a lowblood nord working a farm under imperial control.
I'm surprised nobody has said Star Wars yet. Assuming I get a little leeway with who I get to live as, it's got such a wide variety of types of life a person might live all with the fun of space fantasy/western!
Idk being a regular person in that universe does not seem that fun, unless you're a collaborator with the Empire I guess? I can see the appeal but I get real fixated on day to day life stuff myself
The Star Wars Universe would probably be the last choice that I would make, even in the old cannon. Because it seems that every year there is something that is wanting to either destroy or conquer the universe or wanting to commit genocide so that their species can thrive in that galaxy instead (like the Yuuzhan Vong). And with planet killing super weapons, it seems to be a living hell having to live with that threat over your head.
Well, and even on days when they're not trying to destroy the whole universe, the average person seems to live in pretty rough conditions.
Well from 1000 BBY - ~50 BBY (during the height of the old republic), things are supposed to have been quite peaceful and prosperous. However, that only really applies to the core worlds, anywhere in the outer rim (especially in hutt space) would be dreadful to live.
There are soooo many Legends books that would make good films or TV shows, such as the the Vong War series and Death Troopers and its prequel. And if we can get a Mira Jade movie or show, either during the Imperial period as a Emperor's Hand or after Luke had redeemed her back to the light side. The only new Star Wars that I like is the Rouge One, Andor and the final season for the Clone Wars.
One of the things about the Vong, for people that are wondering, they think that using advance technology was blasphemy, thus almost all of their "tech" was organic in nature, including their ships that they used to get to the galaxy that Star Wars takes place in. There is also the fact that the Force had no effect on them at all because something happened in their home galaxy that cut their entire species off of the Force.
And there was a fan theory that Palpatine knew that these guys existed and they scared him, and this is part of the reason why he sunk a lot of resources into two Death Stars, the other being stated in the movies, fear.
Sure. If I knew I was just going to be randomly assigned a life I wouldn't pick it - no one wants to wind up a slave or whatever! But the galaxy is large and even at its peak the Empire isn't everywhere. And the Empire doesn't even always exist! I think I'm drawn to it because it's familiar enough to the life we have now, but with fun scifi/fantasy elements.
Oh absolutely fair, I overly fixate on that "common person" experience.