Some SF non fandom settings
Sep. 26th, 2008 07:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wytchcroftHere are a few of my entries to the SF scene generation (challenge) thread.
Please have a look at the other entries from other people, they are more than half the prompt after all.
And join in!:):)
1. Heavy metal in the valley of the kings, or opera in the catacombs?
There had been music here once, twisting around the pillars, the wide sandstone walkways, the arches and imperious gateways. There had been voices raised in the bright chatter of gossip and commerce or in the hypnotic tones of the Opera, flowing outward from that open circular stage.
Now the only thing carried on the air was dust.
And the incongruous metallic noise of the distress beacon still pulsing out of the wounded wreckage of the ship. Cracked into shards and chunks and splinters - an unimaginable weight of heavy metal coming in at speed as though sent by some wrathful divinity to silence the proud catacomb of the subterranean city.
........................................................................
2. On The Stage
(in a 1950s style)
Shakespeare once said "All the world's a stage..."
If so, thought Being AXiiYt8 as it lfted the lid on the Terrarium and watched the busy dancing globes, then I must own a theatre.
Then again, and with a smile the being turned to another container, peeking in with satisfied eyes, Shakespeare was nothing now but six monkeys in a locked box churning out the sequel to Hamlet.
Some might call Being AXiiyt8 a patient entity - but existing outside of time itself meant nothing if not perks, Shakespeare trouncing Simians being one of them.
Still, 'All the world's a stage'...
It could be applied even to the rarefied heights of Dimension ZxXfg43 - and the fact that one of the existences therein was feeling nervous.
It was only a small universe, why should I have to explain myself, wheedled Being AXiiyt8 as it diffused itself to meet the Meta, things like that were easy to lose.
Well...
Linear thought was becoming hard now as the unfication of minds began.
Well... this my chance to strut some fretful after all.
Quite suddenly everything became infinite.
......................................................................................
3. Cloud City
Boy used to dream. Dream a lot. Dream of flying - dream of living in the clouds... the city of his imaginings twisting and changing as his mind recalculated and reconfigured the architecture. Now a city of leaves, like lilly-pads flung across the sea of cloud - now a complex of bubbles, each globe airy and reflective.
He stuck feathers to his Action Man dolls and threw them off the garage roof, sometimes on fire. "See you in the clouds," Boy would mutter, "this world or the next."
Now as he tried to peer through the dirty mist of cloud outside the window, he felt angry that his dream had come true. Some evil genie working over time in the wish factory of hell had stuck him and his mother up here on the 41st floor, among the clouds - and exchanging the dirt of the sprawling city below for the grime of the sky above.
As he moved back from the window and looked across his unkempt bed, he wondered if there were feathers in the pillows.
.................................................................
4. A picnic hamper by a river
"You aint Moses."
Fishing the soggy wailing bundle from the picnic hamper the big man sighed heavily. "No," he said again, "Moses you aint. But then..." he cast a squinting eye across his immediate environs; the concrete plains and thin trickling canals, "this aint..." he spat.
"I don't know where we are."
Shaking his head he threw a last resentful look towards the hamper, still marooned against the wiry reeds of the bank, still carrying a pretty blue ribbon, still irritating him. "A picnic yet!"
There was a mewling sound from under his arm.
"Ok son, we best get you dry. Then maybe I can figure this mess out."
He stumbled slowly towards the wide tarmac. He could lay the child by the side of the - he took it for a road anyway, and if they got real lucky a car might come past. One good thing about being so lost - folk might not notice the limp and the marks on his wrist where the cuffs had been.
That was when the sky seemed to crack and flare and out of the roar and out of the smoke and out of the heat - a voice called to him with impossible clarity. "I say old man, you do know you're tresspassing? Only the punishment for that is rather extreme. Sorry and everything, but it's the rules, d'you see?"
But the man with the baby couldn't see much of anything just then.
..........................................................................
5. A field where travellers meet:
Some wear the trappings of their God-hood like a burnished shield, others like a weight, a burden, ashes in an urn.
With Loki it was more like dandruff on the shoulder. It singled him out, yes but it didn't really help endear him to anyone - or make them do the knee trembling adoration bit that he had to admit to craving now and again.
Some deities were known for the beauty and spirtiual uplift of their words, they would drift through the aeons scattering wisdom like good seed.
Loki tried that, but people tended to brush themselves after his passing - which wasn't quite the reaction he was looking for either.
It was, therefore, something of a relief to enter the Field of Meeting because the law of averages (itself a fairly nondescript God Almighty) dictated that out of all the shining and shimmering divinties slowly coalescing - there were bound to be some more socially inept and hygenically challenged than he.
The Field itself was alive of course in it's own fashion, throbbing with a low electricity through every blade of hazy grass, each branch of the stout trees that marked the perimeter. Insects buzzed between daisies and dandelions and their drone was like a holy word chanted from a distant mountain.
Pompous in a nutshell.
There were were tents and gazebos and caravans tracking in from the east, all slowly becoming visible. Most deities seemed to come with some kind of host attached; Minions, worshippers, guilds, followers, human, faery, alien, other - or all of the above. Pitching up camp with a riot of song, dance, tale or sermon. Everyone with something to say or display.
Soon enough the Field would be thronging with the multitude. Celebrations and deliberations and procrastionations and divinations and
well, just a crazy mess of 'ations'.
That meant pranks aplenty for him at least.
Please have a look at the other entries from other people, they are more than half the prompt after all.
And join in!:):)
1. Heavy metal in the valley of the kings, or opera in the catacombs?
There had been music here once, twisting around the pillars, the wide sandstone walkways, the arches and imperious gateways. There had been voices raised in the bright chatter of gossip and commerce or in the hypnotic tones of the Opera, flowing outward from that open circular stage.
Now the only thing carried on the air was dust.
And the incongruous metallic noise of the distress beacon still pulsing out of the wounded wreckage of the ship. Cracked into shards and chunks and splinters - an unimaginable weight of heavy metal coming in at speed as though sent by some wrathful divinity to silence the proud catacomb of the subterranean city.
........................................................................
2. On The Stage
(in a 1950s style)
Shakespeare once said "All the world's a stage..."
If so, thought Being AXiiYt8 as it lfted the lid on the Terrarium and watched the busy dancing globes, then I must own a theatre.
Then again, and with a smile the being turned to another container, peeking in with satisfied eyes, Shakespeare was nothing now but six monkeys in a locked box churning out the sequel to Hamlet.
Some might call Being AXiiyt8 a patient entity - but existing outside of time itself meant nothing if not perks, Shakespeare trouncing Simians being one of them.
Still, 'All the world's a stage'...
It could be applied even to the rarefied heights of Dimension ZxXfg43 - and the fact that one of the existences therein was feeling nervous.
It was only a small universe, why should I have to explain myself, wheedled Being AXiiyt8 as it diffused itself to meet the Meta, things like that were easy to lose.
Well...
Linear thought was becoming hard now as the unfication of minds began.
Well... this my chance to strut some fretful after all.
Quite suddenly everything became infinite.
......................................................................................
3. Cloud City
Boy used to dream. Dream a lot. Dream of flying - dream of living in the clouds... the city of his imaginings twisting and changing as his mind recalculated and reconfigured the architecture. Now a city of leaves, like lilly-pads flung across the sea of cloud - now a complex of bubbles, each globe airy and reflective.
He stuck feathers to his Action Man dolls and threw them off the garage roof, sometimes on fire. "See you in the clouds," Boy would mutter, "this world or the next."
Now as he tried to peer through the dirty mist of cloud outside the window, he felt angry that his dream had come true. Some evil genie working over time in the wish factory of hell had stuck him and his mother up here on the 41st floor, among the clouds - and exchanging the dirt of the sprawling city below for the grime of the sky above.
As he moved back from the window and looked across his unkempt bed, he wondered if there were feathers in the pillows.
.................................................................
4. A picnic hamper by a river
"You aint Moses."
Fishing the soggy wailing bundle from the picnic hamper the big man sighed heavily. "No," he said again, "Moses you aint. But then..." he cast a squinting eye across his immediate environs; the concrete plains and thin trickling canals, "this aint..." he spat.
"I don't know where we are."
Shaking his head he threw a last resentful look towards the hamper, still marooned against the wiry reeds of the bank, still carrying a pretty blue ribbon, still irritating him. "A picnic yet!"
There was a mewling sound from under his arm.
"Ok son, we best get you dry. Then maybe I can figure this mess out."
He stumbled slowly towards the wide tarmac. He could lay the child by the side of the - he took it for a road anyway, and if they got real lucky a car might come past. One good thing about being so lost - folk might not notice the limp and the marks on his wrist where the cuffs had been.
That was when the sky seemed to crack and flare and out of the roar and out of the smoke and out of the heat - a voice called to him with impossible clarity. "I say old man, you do know you're tresspassing? Only the punishment for that is rather extreme. Sorry and everything, but it's the rules, d'you see?"
But the man with the baby couldn't see much of anything just then.
..........................................................................
5. A field where travellers meet:
Some wear the trappings of their God-hood like a burnished shield, others like a weight, a burden, ashes in an urn.
With Loki it was more like dandruff on the shoulder. It singled him out, yes but it didn't really help endear him to anyone - or make them do the knee trembling adoration bit that he had to admit to craving now and again.
Some deities were known for the beauty and spirtiual uplift of their words, they would drift through the aeons scattering wisdom like good seed.
Loki tried that, but people tended to brush themselves after his passing - which wasn't quite the reaction he was looking for either.
It was, therefore, something of a relief to enter the Field of Meeting because the law of averages (itself a fairly nondescript God Almighty) dictated that out of all the shining and shimmering divinties slowly coalescing - there were bound to be some more socially inept and hygenically challenged than he.
The Field itself was alive of course in it's own fashion, throbbing with a low electricity through every blade of hazy grass, each branch of the stout trees that marked the perimeter. Insects buzzed between daisies and dandelions and their drone was like a holy word chanted from a distant mountain.
Pompous in a nutshell.
There were were tents and gazebos and caravans tracking in from the east, all slowly becoming visible. Most deities seemed to come with some kind of host attached; Minions, worshippers, guilds, followers, human, faery, alien, other - or all of the above. Pitching up camp with a riot of song, dance, tale or sermon. Everyone with something to say or display.
Soon enough the Field would be thronging with the multitude. Celebrations and deliberations and procrastionations and divinations and
well, just a crazy mess of 'ations'.
That meant pranks aplenty for him at least.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:20 pm (UTC)I will ask the help for friends.
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:24 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 07:16 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 07:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:29 pm (UTC)Seems not so easy to follow the game (same for the names...) It LOOKS easy... but only at a first glance.Assume it is a lot of fun to participate:)
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:34 pm (UTC)But then you can challenge someone else after!
Yes, great fun!:) But i am better at characters than settings...
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:41 pm (UTC)Aw... aw... now have to go and fight my own writer's block!
no subject
Date: 2008-09-26 06:45 pm (UTC)That is strange...
Date: 2008-09-27 07:26 pm (UTC)Used naming much closer to 1920-1930-s tradition. Doc Smith, Gernsback and so on. Whole Heinleins youth series was written right in this time and ends with well-known 1959s "Starship Troopers" - and i never met any such names anywhere, exept humoristic fiction.
Or I just don't get the point of all this literature game?
Re: That is strange...
Date: 2008-09-27 07:55 pm (UTC)but as for 1950s style - in the UK, comics of the period and radio and tv (as well as trashy novels) were very much in this style. Also US b-pictures.
if i were to spoof heinlein... hmmm, let me think - i would probably have had some guy with a very ordinary name drooling over an EXTRAORDINARY engine described in great detail, while planning the social structure of an inferior colony etc.
Iron Curtain cold-war era legacy, yes :)
Date: 2008-09-27 08:45 pm (UTC)Sic transis...
Oh, and about detailed engine description and social planning speach over 12 pages in R.A. style - it can't be Heinlein, until they will be mixed with other 12 pages of dialogues without any names of acting characters (readers must guess who is speaking by used words and phrase composition) dedicated to sex, carrot-headed teens and little kittens :)
From my very first job money I bought all Heinlein books in hardcover... his talent already made Things Not Meant To Know By Fragile Humans with my mind at that moment.
Re: Iron Curtain cold-war era legacy, yes :)
Date: 2008-09-27 10:08 pm (UTC)LOL! none of it worked of course. CCCP always sounded cool and you had a red star. There used to be little cards you could get with packets of tea (!) and my friends and me all collected the cosmonauts!! ha ha ha!:):):)
such are the times of childhood:)
http://www.dandare.org/
http://blogs.amctv.com/scifi-scanner/images/picture_24.jpg
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=HPy0GGXYLRY
http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcfour/gallery/comicsbritannia/images/21.jpg
http://homedir-b.libsyn.com/podcasts/57a105914719523d2ad574fdbf4f694b/48de9d17/scififriday/images/journey-logo1.jpg
http://www.astronomie.de/bibliothek/artikel/grenzwissenschaften/nach-vorn/7-perry-rhodan.jpg
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=z0pNV2gjhMQ
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=c9A-fR1lSzE
http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=6nxGy8FBxYU
http://atomic-surgery.blogspot.com/2008/04/jack-kirby-explains-origin-of-mankind.html
Re: That is strange...
Date: 2008-09-27 07:57 pm (UTC)Re: That is strange...
Date: 2008-09-27 08:05 pm (UTC)try these:
no.1) a setting: The Old Port
no.2) a characer name: Dr Ryker Varley
you're not supposed to put the character and the setting together - but we all cheat sometimes!:):)
Ok, I'll try
Date: 2008-09-27 08:48 pm (UTC)Re: Ok, I'll try
Date: 2008-09-27 09:17 pm (UTC)