The Culture, even more fully automated luxury gay space communism than Star Trek
This is the one
and no stigma attached to biomodding yourself, full rights for AI or creative use of internally produced brain drugs
any member of the Culture would be seen as a eugenics-war style abomination by the Federation
Player of Games has a main character who’s considered weird because they have zero interest in genderfluidity, because being fluid is just the absolute norm
‘I feel you want to… take me,’ Yay said, ‘like a piece, like an area. To be had; to be… possessed.’ Suddenly she looked very puzzled. ‘There’s something very… I don’t know; primitive, perhaps, about you, Gurgeh. You’ve never changed sex, have you?’ He shook his head. ‘Or slept with a man?’ Another shake. ‘I thought so,’ Yay said. ‘You’re strange, Gurgeh.’ She drained her glass.
Bingo, it’s like star trek but without biological hubris. You want to turn yourself into a weird sentient tree thing? Go for it. You want to fuck off and live by yourself just thinking about stuff? Go nuts. You want to murder murder murder? Well you’ll have to talk to some minds first but the space CIA can probably find some space fascists for you to let out all that murder on.
My only disappointment there being the remarkable lack of interactions with other species.
Within The Culture there are thousands of species. The label “human” just describes something with roughly the body plan of us humans, which in the setting is an extremely common body plan. Also at least a few of the books are explicitly about interacting with other species.
The very first book Consider Phlebas is all about an alien that is an enemy of Culture.
they’re TRIPODS too, i’ve never fully understood how the idirans properly look and frankly i don’t want to (i imagine something kind of like brutes from halo? but obv three legged, bigger, etc) shit rules.
and the Affront! fucking metroid-ass floaty squid things
i’ve never fully understood how the idirans properly look and frankly i don’t want to
Larry Niven had a gift for weird and imaginative aliens. I thought Idirans would look like pumped-up Puppeteers from the Ringworld series. I can totally see a Brute Puppeteers
Most of the Culture books focus on characters who either aren’t part of the Culture or at least didn’t originally come from it. Of the nine novels, only two (Player of Games and Excession) primarily focus on people born in the Culture.
I always forget there are more outside than inside Culture books. I always seem to think they were balanced somehow.
There’s a little fuzz to it because multiple intertwining storylines are common in Culture books. Like in Use of Weapons, I’m counting the main character as Zakalwe, but there’s a whole Diziet Sma plotline going on in there too. Anaplian in Matter acts mostly as a Culture SC agent even though she’s a princess from an industrial age society. Look to Windward is about Quilan, but it’s also about Masaq’ Hub.
Wdym? The Culture is always interacting with other species, it’s kinda their thing. Not just Contact either, they love having other species guests around. Plus, the standard Culture ‘human’ is any of like six different species from six different forgotten homeworlds.
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The writing is excellent. The worldbuilding is excellent beyond just the communist utopia. The plots are fascinating and intricate, the kind of thing you want to read through again after you’re done. The characters are compelling. The philosophy is interesting.
I’d recommend starting with either Player of Games or Surface Detail. Each book is a standalone story, they can be read in any order.
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If i was in star trek I would live in a big house with a bunch of lesbians and we’d chill and eat good food and have lots of sex. I’d act in dorky community theater and write poems for everyone in the polycule. Also I’d have bigger tits. And a bigger dick. And a bigger ass.
this is what happens to regular people in the Culture universe, it’s pretty much there in the books
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imagine being in the Star Trek universe and your “hobby” is recreating and reliving 9-11 as a hijacker pilot.
and that’s like all you do with free time. lmao.
somebody would definitely see the logs and be like “this guy has done this like 950 times, wtf”
Trying to optimize doing 9/11 like Boimler in the borg cube sim
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jfk reloaded in spaaaaaaace
“we must have more”
“five hundred 9/11s”
matter synthesizer noises
five hundred times 911, my god that’s 455500
tbf tho 2024 in the Star Trek universe isn’t much different to our current one, millions of people died in secret eugenics wars 30 years ago, plus there is for sure an atomic horror on the near horizon
Putting the homeless in camps, resulting in the Bell Riots, is looking more and more likely: https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/25/us/newsom-homeless-california.html
If we get the Bell Riots and Irish reunification this year we’ll know that Star Trek was actually prophecy.
Oh, that? That’s still going to happen, you see, because the Romulans have been using time travel to go back and fuck with various lynchpin events to prevent the Federation from existing.
spoiler
No, really, they actually said this in Strange New Worlds. lol
I consider that a loop on the timeline, once the temporal wars get settled, it reverts to the 90s
I wonder how many Hexbears would go on vacation to Risa.
Me I would.
worf, thank you for your contributions to the volcel police
The VOLCEL POLICE are on the scene! PLEASE KEEP YOUR VITAL ESSENCES TO YOURSELVES AT ALL TIMES.
نحن شرطة VolCel.بناءا على تعليمات الهيئة لترويج لألعاب الفيديو و النهي عن الجنس نرجوا الإبتعاد عن أي أفكار جنسية و الحفاظ على حيواناتكم المنويَّة حتى يوم الحساب. اتقوا الله، إنك لا تراه لكنه يراك.
This is MY bit damnit, lol.
Additional: whenever this subject comes up the thing I always ask people to pause and consider is that presumably they will still be more or less themselves once they’re transported to this new universe. Like ok: maybe you are transported to a galaxy far far away or the wizarding world with magical powers and decades worth of training instantly as part of the whole process but again…certain caveats aside you’re basically still gonna be that universes equivalent of yourself…so pause and consider that you should maybe pick a world that plays to your strengths. I don’t know about y’all but I have this sinking feeling I’m still an engineer in most alternate universes I exist in…soooooooooooooooo…yeah. Star Trek it is.
I could be writing flight control software for starships, but more than likely I’d just get roped into doing data integrations so that middle-echelon commissioned officers can stare at their TPS reports.
And then the Borg happened
They only made it to Wolf 359, and eventually they join the federation so it’s all good.
eventually they join the federation
Is Brian Herbert writing for star trek now
It doesn’t happen until some unspecified time in the very far future, but it is confirmed in Lower Decks that eventually the Borg are a part of the federation.
Wolf 359 was an inside job. Wake up.
Dune but mainly because of Butlerian Jihad.
absolutely dune if i can be upcaste in any capacity
anything but Dune (except maybe 40k, i’ll take downcaste Dune over any place within most of 40k) if my current social standing is affixed and translated. I’m in the US - i would be geidi prime meat
As long as it’s not the ST: Picard timeline
I don’t consider Picard to be canon. I think it’s taking place in one of those other universes from the TNG episode Parallels. Same with STD.
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It’s definitely doable in Star Trek, though non-essential genetic engineering inside the Federation is one of their few holdout prejudices.
There are other ways - it’d probably be “fairly easy” to rig a transporter into the holodeck, cross a few wires, and be uploaded into the machine, because the safety manual for both of those is just the sentence “do not turn on, if you turned it on back away from the console, if you did not back away: pray” repeated a thousand times in progressively larger letters.
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Not during DS9’s timeframe though
random civilians on earth were fine.
idk why people read this question as “what fictional universe would you want to be a protagonist”
Breen still fucked up san fran and a bunch of outer colonies
Maybe not during ENT either, then
I love the whole vibe of Final Fantasy VIII’s world even if there’s monsters in the countryside and war. Always felt like the most believable FF world.
Final Fantasy worlds are fine despite there being bloodthirsty monsters behind every blade of grass because in that universe you can just pick up your sportsball or your favorite plushie and fuckin beat them to death with it, regular ass dudes are OP lmao
Oh yeah, if you have pluck and your hate is pure, you can just join up with the first roving band of mostly young people with outstanding hair you come across. You’ll be strong enough to defeat God within a year.
but they don’t have pokemon
Holodeck can cover that. And if you wanna go big, be a terraformer and make a planet where pokemon is real
if the rules are ‘you are a normal human on the planet earth’, then i pick either LANCER (almost exact same benefits as star trek, but with MECHA) or warhammer 40k.
40k might be a controversial pick, but Holy Terra is probably the safest comfiest place in the entire setting outside of like Eldar craftworlds or Tau space. like worst case scenario you are a relatively well-kept and relatively appreciated servitor cyborg, a living part of the planet/temple to the god-emperor of mankind. best case scenario you work for the High Lords of Terra in some administrative capacity. either way you avoid basically every downside to the 40k setting and still get cool technology and your proximity to the Emperor likely means your soul will be absorbed by Him rather than eaten by some chaos demon.
alternatively it gives you a great opportunity to infiltrate humanities homeworld on behalf of Tzeentch, Lord of Changethe real question is whether you prefer to have material comfort or a sense of purpose. star trek gives you the opportunity to do like, diplomatic missions and boring slow paced ship combat to defend the federation, but most people probably just pick it because of the holodeck. LANCER at least still sometimes has ground conflicts (with MECHS) where human scale decisions matter sometimes (unlike in star trek where like 1 guy on the ship makes any meaningful decisions during any conflict and all combat is photon torpedo 2d plane space combat or pointing remote controllers at dudes in polyester zentai suits), and 40k despite dystopia gives you a good sense of purpose and challenge, whether you serve teh emprah or wish to overthrow the corpse-throne’s stagnant regime
your soul will be absorbed by Him
Is that better than being absorbed by a chaos demon
On a scale from 1 to “murdered by a sentient tar pit,” where are we at?
