posted
I endorse the Ninja Bot idea. It would make an interesting story. Who wouldn't love Ninja Bots? Sadly you are getting farther and farther from your original idea. It seems like you need to get the ratplants out of your system, instead of trying to fit each new idea into the ratplant story. I had the same problem with one of my first stories; I kept wanting to add new exciting stuff. Problem was that eventually it got so crowded with ideas,; there was no room for a story. Don't let that happen to you. I think we all came to agree that the problem with the ratplants was that they didn't make scientific sense in the "real world". So - don't worry about being seriously scientific. Is there any reason why you can't write about your ratplants in a comical way? Maybe you could go "old-school" with the ratplants. Maybe they could be mutants that are products of nuclear testing. You could even do the story as a parody, comedy, or nostalgic look back at the monster movies of the 50's & 60's. You know, Praying Mantis, Giant Ants, Attack of the Giant Leeches, Attack of the Killer Shreks, The Blob, etc. That might be fun, and your ratplants would finally find a home and be out of your system. Just because the idea is absurd, does not mean you can't write a really good story about it. No matter the subject matter, if you write a really good story, it has a chance of being published. The ratplant does not need to work in the "real world". You can create your own world where the ratplants do work. If that world is a 1950's Mayberryville under attack by science experiments gone bad, then write it that way. Just make it obvious that the ratplants are not meant to be taken too seriously, then go with it. Posts: 579 | Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
why does it seem this board is obsessed with robotics except for me?
hehe, it's not that i'm trying to put in too many ideas, it's that i'm trying to preserve an idea, whilst attempting to improve believability... can be a very difficult endeavor, especially when you start out with something so incredibly unbelievable.
even so, if i do switch over to robotics, that could make millennial war work, but ceasing planet would still have a problem, see, i introduce a religious aspect where all life had to have originally been in heaven... including my mortvers... well, robotics isn't exactly life now is it?
posted
How can you even think of writing SF if you don't know anything about Von Neumann machines?
I think that mm came the closest by suggesting the nanotechnology angle, though obviously ninjabots would need to be large enough to use ninja weapons, and thus couldn't be nanoscale.
Basically, Von Neumann machine refers to a self-replicating robot (it also refers to all machines based on Von Neumann's theories of computation, meaning all modern computers, but this usage is only applied by stuffed shirts). "Robots making robots, now that's just stupid" as an anti-robot paranoid might put it. Combined with ninjabot, it implies a human scale and near human intelligence robot.
So perhaps these ninjabots, when they reproduce, prefer to decompile a human brain or two and use that as the basis for a new AI rather than bothering to grow a new AI from scratch or copy an existing AI. Even using nanotechnology, this wouldn't do the humans' brains any good.
The moral dilemma comes in because the new ninjabot, though constrained to act in accordance with the Laws of Ninjabotics (Carry out your mission at all costs, Avoid being detected, Kill anyone that notices you), still has the memories and personality of the human brain used to establish its base synaptic framework.
And the difference is that ninjabots are good SF, whereas mortvers are terrible SF.
posted
Personally, I didn't like self-replicating robots in Stargate SG-1, and I don't understand the purpose for creating ninja-bots at all. I think they could make an interesting story for someone interested ninjas, but they aren't really my thing. Besides, wouldn't ninja-bots have to rely on AI technology that is further into the future than the next hundred years?
I like the idea of creating a creature to try to solve one problem but ends up creating a worse problem. The need for food is fundamental to all life, therefore, if the food supply is sufficiently threatened, we would probably turn to science to "fix" the problem.
Recently I watched Red Planet, it has a simillar story concept (I think). Click here for a summary of the movie.
Like the summary says, this movie is kinda fun, but not great hard-core sci-fi. I think the Mortvers could probably serve a simillar function, but they are not really great as a hard sci-fi device.
posted
as i said Survivor, i'm not into that angle. never have been. so the main reason not to use mortvers is because it is not a well practiced device in hard sci-fi?
haha, you folks seem rather hypocritical on this. you say in some threads to go ahead and pave new highways, then you go and say in others that you have to keep with precedent... which is it?
personally i'm going to stick with my mortvers, discussion can continue without me.
as for examples where something similar to the mortvers has been used before look at stargate and at andromeda... both use parasitic creatures that do genetic "blending" between species... in stargate it is the goauld (prolly spelled wrong, but i don't care) and in andromeda it is the magog... well, i guess the magog is a little further off. and both are a bit different because they are aliens and not genetically modified creatures... but whatever, i cannot use aliens, and it would be completely unbelievable for me to try to shove that in somehow. or rather, it would be far too obvious what i did, i couldn't possibly make the alien thing mesh right
and the robot thing, now that i understand exactly what you are trying to get me to do is completely inappropriate as well. you can't say i didn't explore the avenue though
quote: though obviously ninjabots would need to be large enough to use ninja weapons, and thus couldn't be nanoscale.
Yeah, but 31 billion ninjabots working together might be able to not only wield a kama, but be one as well. And how about self-directed shuriken, using lifting body aerodynamics to direct themselves in flight? Not to mention kinetic poisons or other ninjabot tricks.
[This message has been edited by mikemunsil (edited November 30, 2004).]
posted
I think the poor boy has misunderstood. The reason not to use mortvers was because the idea sucked from a science perspective. Look again at SG1. Did humans create the Gouald? If they had they would be able to destroy them. Did the Gouald use photosynthesis? Did anyone try to persuade us that the Gouald were important to mankind?
So what is the answer? Well if you don't like the ninjabot idea... then you are looking at soft sf and not hard sf.
Of course I would go with meiotic replicating samurai biobots... but that is just me.
posted
Mr. Patridge, it's not robotics we're obsessed with, it's ninjas. Seriously, those dudes are totally sweet.
Posts: 1528 | Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Yeah, science fiction, as the term implies, is fiction based on science
Seriously, though. I haven't seen anything that the mortvers could possibly do that ninjabots couldn't do better and more plausibly.
By the way, the make or break for developing human level AI is less than a hundred years...a lot less. Conservative estimate is fifty years to get a human level AI, some people calculate it at less than twenty years.
I think that it'll be break rather than make, myself. But transhuman intelligence comes before macrogenetic engineering of the type needed to create something like a mortver, if either happen at all.
The purpose of creating ninjabots is to spare human life. In war, many soldiers and many more civilians die. If we had ninjabots, then only a few leaders on the losing side would be inconvenienced, along with anyone unlucky enough to get in the ninjabots' way.
Right up until the ninjabots decided humans weren't their friends anymore, at least
quote:you say in some threads to go ahead and pave new highways, then you go and say in others that you have to keep with precedent... which is it?
I'll bite. It's both.
The trick of any speculative story, of any story at all really, is to get the person reading it to suspend their disbelief until you're done telling the story. There are lots of discussions on this board about that topic, but one of the points made over and over again is the believable foundation of the story. That's what many people, most notably Survivor and his ninja-bots, are trying to get you to see with your mortvers.
On the other hand, if you tell the same story over and over again, people will get bored and quit reading your stuff. It's a tricky balance and even the best authors don't always succeed.
If I read about these creatures in a story, I would only believe they were possible if they were an alien species. In fact, when you were still using the photosynthesis idea, I had an image of these rat-like alien plants that woke up when a scouting party landed to explore the planet. Very "Alien", I know, but it was a nice image.
I like how your writing has improved and I'm glad you're willing to spend so much time on an idea. But, if you're writing a serious SF novel/series, you need to think up something else. Even if you have to throw out the whole novel/series and start from scratch, that's better than wasting time on an idea that doesn't have a solid foundation.
And just so you know, my first story on F&F was SF and it had the same problem. I've learned since then.
posted
well, it certainly isn't a joke series, but by the same token, it's not the really hard stuff either... it's kind of a speculative fiction that takes dips into both fantasy and sci-fi... it also touches base with theology/religion.
okay, i guess the better way to phrase it is that it's a theological sci-fi with some fantastic elements thrown in
posted
Karate fighting, self-replicating robots taking over the world is an excellent concept. It has work for "Magnus Robot Fighter" comics foir many years. Here's the link.
posted
Cool! But once again we're straying from hard SF. In this case it's totally understandable because events are taking place sooooo far in the future (4000 A.D.).
I especially like the receiver Magnus has in his head. Nice touch. I wonder if it ever made him insane.
dpatridge, it might make it more plausible, if this is fantastical soft SF (is that a real term?), if you strengthen the fantasy element. Make the mortvers on par with a mythical creature that evil magicians create in a not-far-distant future.
Make the magicians a secret organization who have finally seen a chance, now that society is collapsing, to assert themselves as they did in the Dark Ages. In order to help them in their evil scheme, they discover the remnants of a spell that will create the mortvers, a deadly creature that will make the peasants cower in proper reverence. Unfortunately, the portion of the spell that controls the mortvers is lost. They hesitate. One arrogant, slightly insane magician creates them anyway, plunging the world into an unstoppable reign of terror.
Draw the parallel between genetic engineering in that universe and the spell so that you retain your point. Include bits of technology here and there to give it that futuristic feel (once again, do your research to find what fits). The theology can also be woven in there as well.
[This message has been edited by Keeley (edited December 01, 2004).]
As for Magnus, ninjabots go all the way back to the early twenties (though obviously they weren't called "ninjabots" at first). And the whole "man uses science to create monster, monster kills man" concept is as old as SF, in fact, stories existing before the emergence of this theme couldn't be plausibly catagorized as SF because the creation of a monster by science is one of the foundational ideas of SF.
Still, even though the general idea is in good standing, your mortvers are not. Put them in a clear fantasy context, and they might work, but they don't work at all in an SF story.
posted
If you want a good example of a biological Von Neumman machine try Greg Bear's Blood Music (the only novel that has ever given me nightmares).
Von Neumman machines are basically artifical or mechanical devices that emulate a biological device in that they replicate. Given the way science is currently developing biological devices are probably more in line than mechanical. Imagine a bioengineered Water Bear (tiny bug that can survive in space) and spew that out to other worlds and such and you get the idea.
I too am surprised you haven't come across the Von Neumman concept before, it is a hallmark of most Sci-Fi.
Something that is often not addressed but that should be (Criton does this in Prey, which I didn't particularly like but it did address this issue) is that in any manufacturing process there are going to be defects and addressing those defects in the process is important. This is exacerbated when you consider the number of machines being produced.
quote:Conservative estimate is fifty years to get a human level AI, some people calculate it at less than twenty years.
This should be a snap, because we're beyond the year 2000 technological revolution! As a matter of fact, right now I'm about to take my flying car to the food pill store. I don't even need to lock up my electroatomic-spacedome-house, because all crime and war was eliminated by our enlightened social evolution and, of course, the government destructobots.
posted
I'll just point out that we've had flying cars for the past thirty years, food pills for the past million years, and the next generation of goverment destructobots are now coming online.
I don't know how an "electroatomic-spacedome-house" differs from a regular spacedome house, but I'd guess that we've had those for a while too.
posted
In my engineering classes, my students only get credit for knowing that a Von Neumann machine is a digital device with a central processor, some sort of fast memory, and some sort of slow long term storage. Students who give the other answer don't get credit.
And rumors that I have a flying car parked in my garage remain unproven. For the record, where I'm going I still need roads.
posted
As long as you warn them in advance, that's okay with me. When I was in school the correct answer was that machines which used binary representation of numbers for calculation were Von Neumann machines.
Technically, "a central processor, some sort of fast memory, and some sort of slow long term storage" could be applied as a model to any cybernetic system, including such items as the idle setting screw in your car. In other words, it applies equally well to all calculating systems devised before Von Neumann's contributions to the field. Unlike using binary representation of numbers for purposes of calculation, it was not something he really invented. He wasn't even the first to notice that these were essential features of such systems.
And if you have a car flying while parked in your garage, then you must have a flying garage
posted
Strangely I have yet another idea of what is meant by the term, which is: a system which has a processor that stores both the instructions it will execute and the data those instructions will operate on in the same kind of memory, thus enabling instructions and data to be treated interchangably.
posted
That one at least is clearly attributable to Von Neumann rather than being a general property of computing systems.
There is something of a movement in the computer science and engineering communities to steer away from attaching Von Neumann's name to self replicating machines. While it's true that Von Neumann is clearly the source of the idea of a machine that could build a copy of itself (rather than making other machines), it has remained a "far fetched" idea even after all this time, while certain other important contributions he made to the theory of computers were implemented during his lifetime. So that's understandable.
But it is probably also futile, in the long run. It may be that a fundamental breakthough in processor design will abolish the distinction between instructions and the processor itself, or the distinction between fast memory and long term storage. True, either of these would be really impressive advances in computing even by my standards, but both are imaginable possibilities. The advance to a trinary state architecture (assuming for argument's sake that this would be an advance) wouldn't even be particularly revolutionary.
But any of them would obliterate Von Neumann's place if we define it so narrowly. I think that his name deserves to be attached to his most grandiose invention, even if nobody has built it yet, just as we attach the name of Turing to his rather grand idea of the universal computer, the computer that can replicate the function of any other possible computer.
Of course, technically, that's the ultimate Turing machine, whereas Turing machine is used to refer to more limited computations that the ultimate Turing machine could emulate. I think that's a bit...stingy. Even so, even the regular Turing machine is a theoretical construct rather than a humdrum actual computer that will become obsolete in time.
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