I'm writing it as if everyone except for in a select few systems joins the "bad guys" but attempt to double cross them. There are three forces at work here--The Alliance (working name), The Garash (The bad guys), and the Rebellion (working name).
The Alliance is all that is left of a racially united power (8 races were part of it), overthrown because of an upheaval in another race. They were comprised of 3 human like races, 4 demi-human races, and one overruling race, the Ancients (working name).
The Rebellion started with one alien group. Since they are one of three remaining demi-human nations, the other two join, eager to throw off their current leaders. This pits human like creatures against alien like creatures. (the members of the Alliance are still diversified, however, seeing as how they never saw it coming)
The Garash are a single minded race (basically OSCs buggers with major differences) who started all of this, destroying the Ancients (working name) to take control of a certain power.
The Alliance and the Rebellion are working together for the first part of the story. After a raid against the Garash goes quite unexpectedly, the Rebellion comes out of hiding and attempts to take control of the few remaining systems.
Too cliche? It gets more complicated, but if the underlying concept is too predictable... I might have to do some rethinking.
Posted by dee_boncci (Member # 2733) on :
I don't get to read too much hard sci-fi, so I don't know all the conventions there.
A hard lesson I've recently learned is that stories are generally much more about people in situations than they are about sequences of events. I believe it is extremely difficult to come up with a plot that is truly unique in its essence. Your overarching macro plot (for lack of a better term) is possibly as good as any other--betrayal is one of those universal themes like love, friendship, war, etc. that is part of everything.
What would likely make the story too cliche is the characters we see up close (see the story through)and how they behave. If the main character is a swashbuckling space cowboy (think luke skywalker or Kirk), for example, then the story could quite possibly wind up indistinguishable from many others.
But good character selections can make the oldest storyline fresh. If you're worried about it, the kind of thing you might explore is making the main character one of the "betrayers", and explore the situation through the eyes of someone whose circumstances cause her/him to judge such a course of action to be the best one. In a sense the betrayal becomes more of the setting than the center of the plot.
Hope this helps a little.
Posted by MichaelCReed (Member # 2715) on :
It would be hard to add to dee_boncci's comments; they are completely correct. Modern fiction is mostly about characters, not plot, so as long as we-the-readers like the characters, we will probably like the story -- unless it is predictable or lets us down in some other way. As someone who reads a lot of hard SF, though, I must say that there is something of an exception for this genre. Hard SF contains a lot of details, and tends to focus on them. There's usually an underlying network of scientific thinking making itself clear, and this is occasionally the most important (and interesting) element, but I still wouldn't put it above character. Maybe beside it -- an extra area in which the author must focus a lot of his/her efforts. I realize that you were asking a specific question, but honestly it is a difficult one to answer. The plot you outlined was sufficiently confusing to make me read it over a few times, and I still have only a vague sense of what you are describing. Rather than outline my specific issues with what you've assembled, I'll just say that the political convolutions of a non-existent society take work to become interesting, and it is almost always the characters that do this work. As long as your plot isn't derivative or predictable, and as long as it isn't so complicated that the reader won't grasp it -- you will be fine.
~MR
[This message has been edited by MichaelCReed (edited July 16, 2005).]
Posted by Spaceman (Member # 9240) on :
If you keep the POV character low, a grunt you should be able to have a lot of interesting stories. The political backdrop will be interesting but stay in th background. It basically depends on where you are in MICE. If this is a milieu or event story, you are going to have to work very hard to make this believable, unique, structurally sound, and consistent. You already told me you've been influenced by OSC. See if you can move away from that and come up with something totally yours.
Posted by hopekeeper (Member # 2701) on :
Very good advice, everyone. Thanks. I think this should work out just fine--and don't worry Spaceman, I just used OSC's Buggers as a descripion. They are quite different in my world. The three main characters involved have almost no history with anything mentioned above, so there will be a lot of discovery and quite a few different roads I can take. And I promise it won't be as confusing as it seems. Posted by ChrisOwens (Member # 1955) on :
Hard SF is not what I read the most, but I've read some good ones. Based on the hard SF I've read, what you've described does not seem like hard SF, but normal sci-fi.
Posted by hopekeeper (Member # 2701) on :
...to be honest, I never knew the difference...
Posted by Corvus (Member # 2632) on :
Isaac Asimov argued that his science fiction, at least, was not a type of story but a method for exchanging ideas. This makes the plot and even certain gadgets more important by far than the characters (usually). They're still there, but the focus is not necessarily on an individual. (For example, Hari Seldon was a tool for explaining the idea of psychohistory; conversely the idea of the Second Foundation didn't rely on any one character.) Hardly a modern perspective, I guess, but it worked for him . . .
