Building a ruined Space Colony.

Hey everyone, I have a novel in the works and I wanted to see if this setting is interesting enough to be put to pen. the basic premise is that it is set on a half-evacuated planet, centuries in the future. the novel itself centers around three intersecting POV characters. so without anymore adieu, here is what I have so far.

Planet Kepler.

300 years prior to the events of the book. a fleet of colossal generation ships arrived at Kepler, a barren rock with earth like gravity. Space Elevators were installed for easier transit planetside. Cities were built up around these elevator sites. and during the terraforming period settlers expanded in all directions from these staging grounds. For a time, things were fine...

Terraforming Disaster

Terraforming was accomplished via fission reactors generating raw air molecules and Svalinn, an artificial ozone layer keeping the newly formed atmosphere in. For reasons unknown, A chain reaction deactivated parts of Svalinn. Rendering large zones of the planet uninhabitable. For years, the colonists attempted to fix the shield. They tried everything, but to no avail. with the atmosphere destabilizing, a planet wide call for evacuation was ordered.

Evacuation

The biggest problem facing evacuation was that over the time of colonization, the population had increased immensely. the ships that brought their ancestors could only hold four thousand each. Within hours, the elevator cities became overcrowded. over the seven months of evacuation, the cities were in chaos, those that didn't prepare quickly fell to famine and violence. Some made it off, but most were left behind on a dying world.

The majority of the story takes place in an elevator town under martial law on the break of civil strife.

Please feel free to give any critiques and questions.

Okay, as far as I know, ozone layer function is to reduce the effect of UV and other high-frequency cosmic rays that not beneficial on most living things on Earth surface. Ozone didn't prevent atmosphere from being wiped out, or holding it in one place.

Also, ozone layer didn't just missing in short notice. It took years after using ozone-unfriendly substances for humanity to observe the effect of ozone layer reduction on Earth's biomes wellbeing. It took many years later to discuss and argues on what we should do, and today, we are still breathing in our planet, for good or ill.

R Bomber is correct, but that said, you could easily fix your scenario by making the artificial layer necessary to protect the colonists from the radiation produced by the nearby star.

Oh yeah, also, every smart terraforming attempts will make sure that their biome can work indefinitely, without much outside interference. If your planetary atmosphere already goes on that it could stabilize itself after several generation without much intervention (which, if your terraformers are quite smart) then there's should be no problem, except if your planet or your outer space decides to, uh, "interferes".

Also, a bit unrelated, ozone is byproduct of normal high-energy atmospheric activity, a.k.a lightning and stuff like that. There's always cycles between normal oxygen and ozone on normal atmospheric circumstances.

Thanks for your replies, I think the shield suggestion is a good idea. For my story I need sufficient grounds for a planet to be evacuated and in a hurry. but atmosphere aside, I was wondering if the premise sounds coherent enough.

Of course, our Earth itself has find many ways to makes our livelihood a living hell pain in the ass without really trying. Major geological events that literally reshapes the face of Earth had been such problems and occurrences that many civilization lives on such active bedrock already adapted for those, and study on geology and such also fueled by the need of understanding that.

Of course, according your softness and tech presents, you can have your planet itself doing 'terrestrial purge' on "contaminated" (read:terraformed) area, basically pulling equivalent of Blitzkrieg on unsuspecting humanity. Just an advice.

Let's not forget how easy it is to start over.

'A meteor. I like it, so clean, just wipe it all out start over.'

Seriously though there is a lot. Artificial ozone, what do you have for law enforcement for dealing with panicked civilians trying to get into the colony?

That was one of the things I was going to cover in the story, How many of these elevator cities became quickly overrun by refugees. And how tensions between the local populace and the newcomers would naturally arise. I'd imagine that when an order to evacuate was made chaos would be pretty inevitable. But hey, this is a work of dystopian fiction after all.

I would suggest robots. Robots are generally a good choice because if you made em right they wouldn't need maintenance for awhile, they could follow orders to a command, they don't worry about right or wrong and environmental hazards aren't a big deal for them.

I'd suggest robots for maximum dystopian control.

A possibility could be that the terraforming process provokes a positive feedback — for whatever reason, soil containing frozen greenhouse gases, dramatic albedo change (I'm not a climatologist) — and you've got a runaway climate change on your hands, which will ultimately turn the planet into Venus.

The setting is boring and monotonous. Or maybe it's exciting and varied - it really doesn't matter unless you're writing a capital-H History of the planet with no character interaction, and that usually makes for a dull novel.

Just have a backstory that makes sense, and can be summed up in one paragraph. Over-explaining just gives more time for Fridge Logic to kick in (as it has here already). I would actually just go with the characters never fully understanding what happened.

Or, here, what about a planetary calamity instead of a needlessly sci-fi one? There's a local mining operation - the reason the planet became colonized in the first place - and their latest experimental excavation technique has begun causing quakes and climate change on a planetary scale (those were some big-ass operations).

Or, maybe there's been an outbreak of a disease - something like [[Anime/Betterman Algernon]], maybe - that doesn't spread quickly or easily but causes the infected to lash out. It's largely tapered off by the time the story takes place, but is still a background threat.

It's a really terrible government that allows chaos, famine, and violence to happen so quickly and easily. I'd definitely focus on that.

Thanks, you know, a virus was my first idea, but I was unsure how virulent I should make it. Totally agree on the keeping it vague, most of this story is going to be character driven and a lot of the setting info is just gonna be in the background. I am considering just making it a meteor that does it in. especially one that can pull off a slow KT event style winter.

And the problem with that is, you have to explain why a space-faring planet-colonizing society that can build space elevators like two-story brownstones, couldn't see a meteor impact coming.

There's also - if you really want to go the old-school dystopia (read: Cyberpunk) route - the possibility of all the planet's backers pulling out for some ill-defined reason that makes sense on a balance sheet. With them go the planet's primary means of economic growth (mining? resource exporting? etc.), and more importantly the terraforming operation is halted... and begins to reverse itself, as it was a half-assed operation to begin with, so even after 300 years there's not enough forest or algae to sustain itself. The people who can afford to get a ticket out, do, but those who cannot are left behind (terrible book, btw) and forced to fend for themselves.

haha, Well nobody said you had to read it. Still, I am probably going to go with meteors. It could be the point of fact that armageddon was wrong, and that while you could spot the thing coming a million miles away, but there is no stopping one of that size. (KT was as big as North Carolina).

edited 22nd Jun '15 2:43:52 PM by mockmeamadeus

Actually, if you can spot it early enough, you can avert it. Not the Armageddon way, of course — blowing the asteroid up would only mean hundreds of smaller impacts instead of a single big one — but it could be deviated. I'm with Deus Denuo on that one : if they can build space elevators they can alter the course of an asteroid.

I see, well then I am at a bit of an impasse here . how do I make an advanced space-faring civilization pack up and leave as quickly as possible while still leaving behind a portion of the population to fend for themselves.

We can deflect an asteroid's course with ground-based lasers now.

what if it was a shower of them? I mean that would certainly work if there was only one. what if the asteroid that hits is "the one that got away"?

I like Deus Denuo's idea of whoever's funding the colony suddenly pulling out. Or my idea of the terraformation going horribly wrong (or horribly right).

Really, if you intend to stay vague about it, you can just say that the terraformation process ran into unforeseen complications and now the global average temperature is rising by, say, about 1°C per year. The readers are free to draw their own conclusions — maybe it's clathrates, or maybe it's a dramatic albedo change, or maybe it's something else altogether.

That could work, but dont make them too small, or they'll just burn up in the atmosphere.

of course, im thinking its a bunch of them, each bigger than the last. Point is, i just don't want it to blow up the world, just kick up enough dust that it would cause food shortages, instill panic and so on. it would be a slow death for the colony that's for sure.

I once had an idea like this... a very big asteroid smashes into the Moon, and most of the (still large) debris are caught in Earth's gravity and shower it for weeks or even months.

Also : even if the asteroids burn up in the atmosphere, the dust and heat will still be there. But you won't have impacts, making the catastrophe a little cozier.