Fermi and the Paleozoic

One of the problems SF writers have [1] is the Fermi Paradox. Obviously beings like us can exist, because we do, but we tend to rearrange our environment to suit us and nobody appears to have done that to Earth before we showed up [2].

One solution is that for some reason species like us are very, very rare. Worlds with complex life might be quite rare, for example. Earth seems to have got along fine without them for the first four billion years, after all. This has the downside of making the galaxy a rather boring place, at least biologically (Yes, happy playtime for microbiologists but they're a bit odd).

Is there some intermediate between Slime Worlds and the Oddly Sychronized Competition?

Let's abuse this quotation.

To quote Carlos' summary:

"Rough translation: life on land, until about 250 million years ago, was to modern land-based ecosystems much like what a mercantilist, caste-based economy is to a modern market economy. You know the kind: this ethnic group does this, while that ethnic group does that, and those guys? they take care of the horses; and there's never a winner without a loser."

And my question is: does the modern system manage to innovate faster than than the one prior to the Permian? Because if it does, I could then handwave that whatever happened 250 million years ago was unusual enough that it hasn't been duplicated elsewhere so while complex ecosystems exist, it takes them so long to toss up a species like ours that we showed up first.

Which suggests a setting, some world of a dimmer (and therefore more stable) star, one that has had complex life for much longer than the Earth, but with a regime thematically similar to Earth -250M. There are large lifeforms but the over-all diversity is smaller and the niche space exploration more caste-like.

I need to go think on this.

1: I joke, of course. A high percentage of SF writers never ask the question "If FTL is possible and there are and have been for some time advanced civilizations in the galaxy, why wasn't Earth exploited back when trilobites were cutting edge?" If the Highly Capable Guys over at Tau Ceti reached the FTL handwavium level 1% earlier than us in this history of the universe, then they'd have a head-start of over one hundred million years. A difference of 1% is almost simultaneous.

2: Aside from terrestrial species, of course.

Fermi and the Paleozoic

One of the problems SF writers have [1] is the Fermi Paradox. Obviously beings like us can exist, because we do, but we tend to rearrange our environment to suit us and nobody appears to have done that to Earth before we showed up [2].

One solution is that for some reason species like us are very, very rare. Worlds with complex life might be quite rare, for example. Earth seems to have got along fine without them for the first four billion years, after all. This has the downside of making the galaxy a rather boring place, at least biologically (Yes, happy playtime for microbiologists but they're a bit odd).

Is there some intermediate between Slime Worlds and the Oddly Sychronized Competition?

Let's abuse this quotation.

To quote Carlos' summary:

"Rough translation: life on land, until about 250 million years ago, was to modern land-based ecosystems much like what a mercantilist, caste-based economy is to a modern market economy. You know the kind: this ethnic group does this, while that ethnic group does that, and those guys? they take care of the horses; and there's never a winner without a loser."

And my question is: does the modern system manage to innovate faster than than the one prior to the Permian? Because if it does, I could then handwave that whatever happened 250 million years ago was unusual enough that it hasn't been duplicated elsewhere so while complex ecosystems exist, it takes them so long to toss up a species like ours that we showed up first.

Which suggests a setting, some world of a dimmer (and therefore more stable) star, one that has had complex life for much longer than the Earth, but with a regime thematically similar to Earth -250M. There are large lifeforms but the over-all diversity is smaller and the niche space exploration more caste-like.

I need to go think on this.

1: I joke, of course. A high percentage of SF writers never ask the question "If FTL is possible and there are and have been for some time advanced civilizations in the galaxy, why wasn't Earth exploited back when trilobites were cutting edge?" If the Highly Capable Guys over at Tau Ceti reached the FTL handwavium level 1% earlier than us in this history of the universe, then they'd have a head-start of over one hundred million years. A difference of 1% is almost simultaneous.

2: Aside from terrestrial species, of course.

Fermi and the Paleozoic

One of the problems SF writers have [1] is the Fermi Paradox. Obviously beings like us can exist, because we do, but we tend to rearrange our environment to suit us and nobody appears to have done that to Earth before we showed up [2].

One solution is that for some reason species like us are very, very rare. Worlds with complex life might be quite rare, for example. Earth seems to have got along fine without them for the first four billion years, after all. This has the downside of making the galaxy a rather boring place, at least biologically (Yes, happy playtime for microbiologists but they're a bit odd).

Is there some intermediate between Slime Worlds and the Oddly Sychronized Competition?

Let's abuse this quotation.

To quote Carlos' summary:

"Rough translation: life on land, until about 250 million years ago, was to modern land-based ecosystems much like what a mercantilist, caste-based economy is to a modern market economy. You know the kind: this ethnic group does this, while that ethnic group does that, and those guys? they take care of the horses; and there's never a winner without a loser."

And my question is: does the modern system manage to innovate faster than than the one prior to the Permian? Because if it does, I could then handwave that whatever happened 250 million years ago was unusual enough that it hasn't been duplicated elsewhere so while complex ecosystems exist, it takes them so long to toss up a species like ours that we showed up first.

Which suggests a setting, some world of a dimmer (and therefore more stable) star, one that has had complex life for much longer than the Earth, but with a regime thematically similar to Earth -250M. There are large lifeforms but the over-all diversity is smaller and the niche space exploration more caste-like.

I need to go think on this.

1: I joke, of course. A high percentage of SF writers never ask the question "If FTL is possible and there are and have been for some time advanced civilizations in the galaxy, why wasn't Earth exploited back when trilobites were cutting edge?" If the Highly Capable Guys over at Tau Ceti reached the FTL handwavium level 1% earlier than us in this history of the universe, then they'd have a head-start of over one hundred million years. A difference of 1% is almost simultaneous.

2: Aside from terrestrial species, of course.

What I learned from John Sprovieri

When you use another candidate's website as a template for one's own, it's important to remove those elements that are specific to the other candidate. This includes even the little things, like which gender you are and whether or not you happen to be married to Grumont Grewal.

What I learned from John Sprovieri

When you use another candidate's website as a template for one's own, it's important to remove those elements that are specific to the other candidate. This includes even the little things, like which gender you are and whether or not you happen to be married to Grumont Grewal.

What I learned from John Sprovieri

When you use another candidate's website as a template for one's own, it's important to remove those elements that are specific to the other candidate. This includes even the little things, like which gender you are and whether or not you happen to be married to Grumont Grewal.

Half-Gelled Ideas: Fugu Science Fiction

The credit for this should go to someone else and as soon as I remember who it was I will mention them.

Fugu SF is SF where the ingredients require skill to avoid tragic results. You could, for example, try to show that some basic but undesirable behaviors in inequitable relationships transcend race by creating a racist society with blacks on top and whites on the bottom. That's fine. If you then decide to show how exploitive the (black) rulers are by having them _eat the (white) slaves_, the message you sent may not be the one that you intended.

FIREFLY could be an example of Fugu SF: merely because Whedon used a book about one of the losers of the Slavers' Rebellion as source material, used the post-Civil War Old West as the inspiration for his sets, used a set-up that seems to mirror the lies of American Civil War revisionists and made his hero mouth variations of "the South will rise again" doesn't mean that he was trying to make a show to appeal to those people who view the 13th Amendment as a Statist infringement on their basic right to own other people. It could just easily be that it was aimed at people who are merely indifferent to the 13th Amendment.

Half-Gelled Ideas: Fugu Science Fiction

The credit for this should go to someone else and as soon as I remember who it was I will mention them.

Fugu SF is SF where the ingredients require skill to avoid tragic results. You could, for example, try to show that some basic but undesirable behaviors in inequitable relationships transcend race by creating a racist society with blacks on top and whites on the bottom. That's fine. If you then decide to show how exploitive the (black) rulers are by having them _eat the (white) slaves_, the message you sent may not be the one that you intended.

FIREFLY could be an example of Fugu SF: merely because Whedon used a book about one of the losers of the Slavers' Rebellion as source material, used the post-Civil War Old West as the inspiration for his sets, used a set-up that seems to mirror the lies of American Civil War revisionists and made his hero mouth variations of "the South will rise again" doesn't mean that he was trying to make a show to appeal to those people who view the 13th Amendment as a Statist infringement on their basic right to own other people. It could just easily be that it was aimed at people who are merely indifferent to the 13th Amendment.

Half-Gelled Ideas: Fugu Science Fiction

The credit for this should go to someone else and as soon as I remember who it was I will mention them.

Fugu SF is SF where the ingredients require skill to avoid tragic results. You could, for example, try to show that some basic but undesirable behaviors in inequitable relationships transcend race by creating a racist society with blacks on top and whites on the bottom. That's fine. If you then decide to show how exploitive the (black) rulers are by having them _eat the (white) slaves_, the message you sent may not be the one that you intended.

FIREFLY could be an example of Fugu SF: merely because Whedon used a book about one of the losers of the Slavers' Rebellion as source material, used the post-Civil War Old West as the inspiration for his sets, used a set-up that seems to mirror the lies of American Civil War revisionists and made his hero mouth variations of "the South will rise again" doesn't mean that he was trying to make a show to appeal to those people who view the 13th Amendment as a Statist infringement on their basic right to own other people. It could just easily be that it was aimed at people who are merely indifferent to the 13th Amendment.