The Expanse had its finale on Amazon Prime this week. Its rocket-propelled space battles, intrasolar system conflict, and relative paucity of AI, cyber-, or bio- tech got me thinking about science fiction of the Golden Age and the pulps. I think you could fairly easily transplant much of the conflict and setting of the series to a setting with gleaming-hulled rockets, habitable planets beyond Earth, and 50s haircuts. That last one is optional.
There are different approaches to take, of course. You could go full Captain Future with every celestial body in the system with enough gravity to be spheroid having native human life, or something more like the work of Stanley Weinbaum where the other worlds are not so hospitable to humans and the life there is alien. I think a Weinbaum approach would fit well with the protomolecule and ring gate stuff, but that material is less interesting to me that the human-colonized solar system conflict. My approach would be something along the lines of Asimov's Lucky Starr juveniles or some 50s work of Poul Anderson: a view of the planets that proved to inaccurate, but was plausible (if optimistic) at the time the stories were written.
So the settled inner worlds would include Earth, Mars, and Venus. Venus would be a water world, perhaps with artificial islands or undersea cities. Mercury would likely research stations or the like, controlled by the UN on Earth. Unlike in The Expanse, Mars and Venus would likely have native life, though probably not intelligent life.
The Belt would be much like in the show, though in keeping with pulp conventions, pirates would be more common. The Outer moons might be a bit more hospitable (perhaps a lot more depending on how pulp you want to get) so the Outers as a whole group might be a bit better off than in The Expanse.
What does this add? Well, it certainly adds a new aesthetic. And of course, since this becomes alternate history, so you've got the potential for it to go in a very different direction from similar core conceits and concepts.
7 comments:
You might also look at the "Bullard of the Space Patrol" stories by Malcolm Jameson, which fall toward the Lucky Starr end of the spectrum here. Fantastic author despite a very short career, greatly underappreciated here in 2022.
TSR's Buck Rogers XXVC RPG also did this same general concept, but with somewhat more plausible science. The planets and outer moons are fairly inhospitable, although Mars and Venus both have ongoing terraforming operations (Mars being much farther along). Unusually, the setting assumes genetic engineering will be used extensively to adapt colonists ("gennies") to the environment they're intended to live in. This has the side-effect of making it more difficult for them to leave that environment, which gives the evil Russo-American Mercantile corporation a ready supply of workers who are virtually enslaved to their jobs.
Yeah, Buck Rogers XXVc is a great setting, though it's definitely a "modern" setting except for the design of it's rockets. There's a re-imagining of Captain Future in a few novels in the 00s that is not dissimilar it it.
I've always toyed with running a pulp styled solar system adventure: The jungles of Venus, the deserts of Mars, pirates in the Belts. Every planet is habitable. Silver rocket ships and ray guns. Silver space suits with bubble helmets.
I'm afraid the anti-reality of it is too much for my table.
I rather fancied cloud cities floating above a (slightly) inhospitable Venus, plus or minus carbonite.
Like ThrorII, I'd love to run a Rockets & Rayguns campaign some day. But my players, who don't balk at the idea of wizards and dragons, or mutants and ancient tech, would likely not be that interested. One or two of them, maybe.
I like that one too! http://sorcerersskull.blogspot.com/2019/01/solar-trek-underside-of-clouds.html
Have you looked at Worlds United for Mythras from The Design Mechanism?
It's rooted in pulpy sci fi with an inhabited Venus and Mars.
Post a Comment