Sure. Thatâs fine a few times. In the sector. But if you have to do it for vast sections of the sector, then that explanation loses a lot of its flavor and charm. It still has to work out most of the time, and let the Ancients pick of the slack from their.
Plus, there is only so much you can do in 1000 years. Or even in 300,000 years. Sure, you can take a âclose to livableâ world and tweak and modify it. (Or at least attempt to.) But it takes millions (or more) years to start from scratch with no oxygen in the atmosphere. You gotta have something to start with to terraform, and if the system just doesnât have that time to get that headstart, there isnât much the Ancients (must less the Vilani or Darrians) can do with it.
Part of âgooeyâ SF (like Traveller) is that sense of wonder and the impossible. I get that and like that. But if there is no firm foundation on which it is built, then it just becomes an indistinct mess.
Mike West
From: [] On Behalf Of
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 9:42 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [Traveller_TNE] Re: TNE - Stellar failure
In Traveller, life doesn't have to develop independently. Between the Ancients, the Vilani, and all the other interstellar civilisations that have been hanging, there's a fair chance that most of the worlds in Charted Space are parkland rather than wilderness. That is, they have been modified, "terra"formed and otherwise messed with to a degree that allows all kinds of handwaving.
While it's a vastly different order of magnitude, the European settlements in both Australia and the Americas both occurred in landscapes that had been radically modified by their previous inhabitants. That is, they had already been "terraformed" to a remarkable degree.
---In , <mjwest@...> wrote :
If I remember right, the problem with both giants and main sequence stars O,B,A is that they just donât last the couple billion years required for life to develop. That said, it isnât as necessary to worry about the giants, as a few habitable worlds around a giant is cool for the type of SF that is Traveller.
Plus, there is only so much you can do in 1000 years. Or even in 300,000 years. Sure, you can take a âclose to livableâ world and tweak and modify it. (Or at least attempt to.) But it takes millions (or more) years to start from scratch with no oxygen in the atmosphere. You gotta have something to start with to terraform, and if the system just doesnât have that time to get that headstart, there isnât much the Ancients (must less the Vilani or Darrians) can do with it.
Part of âgooeyâ SF (like Traveller) is that sense of wonder and the impossible. I get that and like that. But if there is no firm foundation on which it is built, then it just becomes an indistinct mess.
Mike West
From: [] On Behalf Of
Sent: Monday, April 07, 2014 9:42 PM
To:
Subject: RE: [Traveller_TNE] Re: TNE - Stellar failure
In Traveller, life doesn't have to develop independently. Between the Ancients, the Vilani, and all the other interstellar civilisations that have been hanging, there's a fair chance that most of the worlds in Charted Space are parkland rather than wilderness. That is, they have been modified, "terra"formed and otherwise messed with to a degree that allows all kinds of handwaving.
While it's a vastly different order of magnitude, the European settlements in both Australia and the Americas both occurred in landscapes that had been radically modified by their previous inhabitants. That is, they had already been "terraformed" to a remarkable degree.
---In , <mjwest@...> wrote :
If I remember right, the problem with both giants and main sequence stars O,B,A is that they just donât last the couple billion years required for life to develop. That said, it isnât as necessary to worry about the giants, as a few habitable worlds around a giant is cool for the type of SF that is Traveller.