scrape_r_rational/data/cache2/3onk74.md

## Looking for a Co-Author to help write and publish a rationalist sci-fi story

* Author: u/Sagebrysh  *Rank 7 Pragmatist**
* URL: https://www.reddit.com/r/rational/comments/3onk74/looking_for_a_coauthor_to_help_write_and_publish/
* Score: 17

* Created: 2015-10-13T23:44:28

### Post:

I've had an idea percolating in my head for a while that as I work on it just continues to get more fantastic and detailed. It seems like an awesome premise for a book, and I'd really like to become a writer and publish my own story. However, while I think I'm a decent(ish) writer, its clear that I have much to learn and I'm not sure how far I will get undertaking an endeavor like this on my own. The idea is a bit bigger then me though, I think it could be extremely compelling and I don't want it to be grounded by my own shortcomings as a writer. Obviously I'll continue writing and thus improving my own abilities through my serial fiction like Fall of Oso, but I'm really ready to start something that could actually see the bookshelves. 

Thus I'm looking for a co-author, someone who is equally or more experienced as a writer, looking to make a name for themselves, and who has a passion for literature. I'll probably repost this on a few other writing subreddits, but you guys are *my* community and I <3 all of you, so I wanted to post here first and see if anyone here sees this as something they could sink their teeth into. 

So here is the synopsis to the story, and the background on the world it takes place in. 

Its 2246, and humanity has done some growing up in the intervening centuries between now and then. The human race has planted seeds on every planet and moon they could. 

On Mercury, giant crawlers holding entire colonies slowly trudge across the surface. Habitation centers lurk in the dark side, protected by the world's bulk from the sun's deadly glare, while on the daylit side, industrial facilities use that heat and light to melt down the regolith and fire iron slugs into orbit using kilometer long mass drivers. 

On Venus, a terraforming project is underway. Asteroids have been accelerated to high speed using fusion drives, and then slammed into the planet at an oblique angle to blast away the excess atmosphere and slowly increase the world's rotation speed. Colonies float in the upper atmosphere, harvesting off gases, compressing them, and then shooting them up out of the gravity well. Optimistic figures say that Venus may be habitable within a millenia. 

Earth is doing less well. The ecosystem is unable to keep up with the needs of its 40 billion strong population, and ecological decay is the new normal. Rampant pollution and climate change have wreaked havoc on the world's ecosystem. While the early and mid 21st century saw humanity take a turn away from fossil fuels and carbon pollution, by the time the year 2100 rolled around, over half the world's major cities had been flooded and ruined by rising sea levels. Coupled with the seeding of the inner planets and seeming inevitability of climate change, the major economic powers eventually gave up on saving the Earth, and returned to their polluting ways. During the next 150 years, the deterioration of the world only accelerated. The biosphere is just slowly coming apart at the seams, the sea levels are rising, desertification is rampant, and severe weather is common. It is predicted that in another 200 years, the atmosphere will be unfit to breath, as runaway greenhouse forces render the air toxic to human life. 

Mars is also being terraformed, with huge carbon furnaces intentionally belching tones of Co2 into the Martian atmosphere in an attempt to thicken it. Lichens and simple grasses have already been seeded onto the world, and from space, the formerly red world has turned green. The air is still far too thin to breath, and lacks oxygen, but progress is slow and steady. 

Billions call the asteroids and moons of the outer planets home, with colonies scattered everywhere from Ceres to Triton and everywhere between. Proposals for a Plutonian colony are made every few years, but plans have been slow to develop. 

Meanwhile, twelve generation ships have been built and fired out of the solar system. Giant O'Neill style colonies that will support their populations for the centuries long journeys to nearby stars.

Life for the people of the solar system has its ups and downs. Many independent colonies and worlds exist, with the government of Mars being the largest, but four megacorporations hold the lion's share of the power. The average person can expect to live into their 120s, but no farther then that. Cancer is cured in the sense that a cure exists, but people still die of cancer. All viruses and diseases are curable, but that doesn't stop millions from dying of them every year. These horrors are rarely showcased by the corporate owned media, instead keeping the citizenry satiated with entertainment and media. Everything from immersive VR worlds to lifelike sexbots exist, and their use is widespread. Schools and colleges are gone, replaced by software accessed from the home. Health care is great for those who can afford it, but the 1% keeps the prices inflated and keeps their citizenry buying what they could afford to give away. A good percentage of the population has dove headfirst into VR and never come up for air, preferring their fictional kingdoms and magic to the slowly decaying world they live in. 

Capitalism still holds tightly to the reigns of power, and while some colonies are run off socialist or communist or technocratic models, the system as a whole is still held in the grip of the capitalist imperative. 

With the Earth's biosphere in tatters, the terraforming of Venus and Mars unfinished, and the population endlessly booming, most of humanity's food is processed algae bricks farmed in giant orbital habitats. Real food is a luxury barely conceivable to most. 

Technology to indefinitely extend the human lifespan exists, technology to scan and back up a human mind to a server exists, and technology to copy, download, and merge human minds exists. But all of this is unavailable to the average member of society. The four megacorps controlling the system have clamped down hard on this technology, protecting it behind patents, trade agreements, and copyrights. The technology isn't expensive to make, but because of these protections, the promise of immortal life is forever outside the reach of the citizenry. Bones are thrown out to keep them happy and believing they have a chance to win access to the tech, but these bones are covered in blood and shame. 

Televised bloodsports like the Hunger Games, where the winner is granted immortality and the losers die in the process are commonplace, as are lotteries which promise a chance to win immortality, but in reality to nothing but drain the pocketbooks of the desperate masses. 

Enter our first character, an AI researcher who has spent the last twenty years slowly grinding away at the problem of AGI. While incredibly powerful, lifelike, and interactive Narrow AIs are common and everyday, serving every purpose from customer service to sexbots to frontline soldiers, a general purpose, human level, sentient AI has been a pipe dream for hundreds of years. Working from the small mobile colony on Mercury he lives at, this researcher is starting to think it might just be impossible to create an AGI. That is, until he gets an encrypted email from a satellite node orbiting at Jupiter's L2 point. In the mail, he finds something strange and incredible. 

Enter our second character. A twenty-something hotshot hacker working out of her own (stolen) ship and on the run from the corporate authorities has managed to crack the encryption on a corporate satellite in the asteroid belt, and extracted the technique to upload and digitize a consciousness. She realizes the technology isn't anything but off the shelf components used in a new way, and creates a digital copy of herself. She's being hunted down by faster, newer ships and knows she doesn't have much time. So she fires off the digital copy into space, bouncing it through VPN tunnels, rogue open source satellites hosting pirated data, and sending her digital consciousness careening across the solar system at the speed of light. Where does she send it? Well, on the run, abandoned by her fellow hackers for her going to far and raising the alarms of the megacorporations, and blacklisted by the corporations, she sends it to the one person who might be able to do some good. An AI researcher who, for the last twenty years, has been advocating for free life extension and the open sourcing of this restricted technology. 

The AI Researcher is a law abiding man. While he will talk a big talk about ending death, uplifting humanity, and all the great and grand endeavors that man should be undertaken, he has never actually stood up to the corporations. Now, he's just been handed the keys to the kingdom, only those keys are connected by a trail of data to some very unpleasant people who very much do not want to see this technology reach the light of day. He has some new tools at his disposal though. Not only is there a sentient, digital consciousness living on his home computer which holds the keys to mind uploading, but by studying the base code of the uploaded hacker, he's able to make some crucial insights into how to put an AGI together, and assembles a new consciousness from scratch using this method for the first time in history.

The digital girl, the AI researcher, and the AGI are thus thrown into a pitched battle against the corporations hunting them down. Their goal: cure death for everyone once and for all.

There's obviously much more to it that I've worked out, but :spoilers: and so on. I'd really really like to create something publishable, so if this seems like an awesome world to you, commit or PM me and lets collaborate! 

### Comments:

> **u/eaglejarl** [+4]  (2 days later)
> 
> Interesting premise, and your synopsis is well enough written that I would read the book. 
> 
> There's a few questions that I think you need to answer; I'll apologize in advance for the brusque tone of some of them, but they're important. 
> 
> ----
> 
> 1) You want to publish this. Atoms or electrons?
> 
> If atoms, publishing house or POD?  Why?
> 
> 2) Why publish? 
> 
> Do you want the social proof of saying "I published something?" If so, take one of your existing (finished) stories and put it on Amazon. I'll be happy to talk you through the process; start to finish it will take about an hour. 
> 
> Do you want to be recognized by a big-name publishing house? That's really hard to do and will take a lot of time and effort on your part. The opportunity costs are very high, so why is it worth it to you?
> 
> Do you actually want to make money?  If so, do basically anything else. Income from publishing a novel is for crap, especially since Amazon's changes to Kindle Unlimited in July. 
> 
> 3) What do you want your co-author to do?  
> 
> How do you envision this working -- you write the odd-numbered chapters and zie does the even-numbered ones? You do setting and worldbuilding, they do the actual writing? You collaboratively work on everything?
> 
> None of these are great models. Co-authorship of fiction is pretty rare, because fiction doesn't lend itself to being done by two people at once; usually when you see two names on the cover it means that one is a big name who is helping launch a smaller name. You don't have that cachet to lend, and you claim that you don't have the chops to write this yourself. (Although I suspect you could.)
> 
> 4) What's in it for your co-author?
> 
> You've heard the phrase "ideas are worthless, only execution matters"?  Well, it applies here. There's no money in this book, so what does the other person get? You've already provided the setting and premise, so there's no reason someone couldn't be inspired by this and write it themselves. What do you have to offer that would make someone want to put in the effort of collaborating?  Before you spread the call around the Internet, I suggest having an answer to that, as it will make it much more likely that you'll get a taker. 
> 
> ----
> 
> You've got a great setting here, and your synopsis was really engaging. Instead of beating the bushes for a co-author, I suggest just writing it. Post your chapters here as you go; you'll get lots of feedback that will be useful when you do the editing phase, and then you can publish it all on your own. 
> 
> Again, I'm happy to talk to you about publishing on Amazon if you're interested.

>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+1]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (2 days later)
>> 
>> > 1) You want to publish this. Atoms or electrons?
>> 
>> Atoms.
>> 
>> > If atoms, publishing house or POD? Why?
>> 
>> Publishing house, not sure what POD is.
>> 
>> > 2) Why publish?
>> 
>> Its not really about the social validation or about the money. Making money off it would be nice, but I want to be able hold a physical copy of the book in my hands and know I made it. I guess the social validation is part of it, but its less that I want to show off how awesonme I am, and more that I want to create something that stands some slim chance of outlasting me. I want to create something to share with the world, to bring excitement and joy to other people. Hard science fiction is a niche genre of a niche genre, so I don't expect it to be a blockbuster success, but I want to create something that will be sitting on someone's bookshelf fifty years from now, for their kids to pull down and discover. 
>> 
>> > 3) What do you want your co-author to do?
>> 
>> I'm imagining a back and forth wherein I pick a couple characters in the world and tell their story, and the other person picks another couple characters and tells their story. We write a few chapters, then trade the chapters we've written for editing and discussion. They go over my chapters, I go over theirs, we talk about what we like, what we don't, how to move the larger plot forward, and how to bring all the story arcs together. Its not that I can't do it on my own, but I've no idea how good anything I made by myself is. If I have another person whose equally literary then we can go over each others work and make sure we're not writing ourselves into a corner, or creating a knot in the plotline thats impossible to later untangle. Could a really dedicated editor do all that? Probably, but that sounds like less fun to me then having a hand in actually creating the content in the first place, and I want the other person to be able to get as much enjoyment out of the process as I do. I want them to be able to have a stake in the creative process that they wouldn't have as an editor alone. Plus, its probably easier to find someone to co-write with me and co-edit, then to find a dedicated editor whose willing to read through the whole thing.
>> 
>> The other thing is that while I've imagined the plot in very broad strokes, there's a lot of detailing in that needs to be done, and it would be fun to just have someone who's just as invested in the story to talk about those details with. Someone who would enjoy helping fill in the blanks and flesh out the universe. 
>> 
>> > 4) What's in it for your co-author?
>> 
>> The same things that are in it for me. The possibility of making something that might outlast them, that the rest of the world could read and enjoy. Telling a good story that people like is a reward itself, outside of whatever small amount of money might come out of it.

>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+5]  (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> > Publishing house, not sure what POD is.
>>> 
>>> Print On Demand.  Something like [lulu.com](https://www.lulu.com/) for example.  Basically, they shop for your book online and, when there's a purchase, Lulu prints and binds a copy, then sends it off.  (I haven't used Lulu myself.)
>>> 
>>> > Its not really about the social validation or about the money. Making money off it would be nice, but I want to be able hold a physical copy of the book in my hands and know I made it. I guess the social validation is part of it, but its less that I want to show off how awesonme I am, and more that I want to create something that stands some slim chance of outlasting me. I want to create something to share with the world, to bring excitement and joy to other people. Hard science fiction is a niche genre of a niche genre, so I don't expect it to be a blockbuster success, but I want to create something that will be sitting on someone's bookshelf fifty years from now, for their kids to pull down and discover.
>>> 
>>> I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but writing a novel is a *mountain* of work, so if you're going to do it you need to be really clear on why you're doing it.  If your goal is to have a physical product that other people can hold, then I strongly suggest going through a POD service instead of through a publishing house.  
>>> 
>>> The primary value that a publishing house provides is that all the components are under one roof -- editors, cover artists, advertising, distribution, etc -- and all of those components are good quality.  The downside is that you have to go through a lengthy vetting process to get accepted, and then they take a slice of your royalties.  If what you want to do is produce a book that people can hold, then a publishing house has nothing to offer.
>>> 
>>> >I'm imagining a back and forth wherein I pick a couple characters in the world and tell their story, and the other person picks another couple characters and tells their story. We write a few chapters, then trade the chapters we've written for editing and discussion. They go over my chapters, I go over theirs, we talk about what we like, what we don't, how to move the larger plot forward, and how to bring all the story arcs together. 
>>> 
>>> This sounds more like a collection of short stories than a novel.  If you're working with a co-author you're going to need to plan pretty closely -- have a plot skeleton in place and some details filled in on characters and etc.  Pantsing (writing "by the seat of your pants") is not a good plan if you're coordinating with someone else, because you're just going to end up throwing out a lot of what you create. 
>>> 
>>> > Its not that I can't do it on my own, but I've no idea how good anything I made by myself is. 
>>> 
>>> Get an editor.  [Upwork](https://www.upwork.com/o/profiles/browse/?q=editor) has editors for $20/hr and up.  (This is not a recommendation of those people or upwork, just an example.)
>>> 
>>> Or just post it here on Reddit; people will be delighted to tell you how good or bad your story is.
>>> 
>>> > Could a really dedicated editor do all that? 
>>> 
>>> Yes.  Alternatively, sit down with a friend over coffee and brainstorm, then you go off and write it. It will save you a tremendous amount of time and frustration, and will give you the things you say you're looking for.
>>> 
>>> >4) What's in it for your co-author?
>>> >
>>> >The same things that are in it for me. The possibility of making something that might outlast them, that the rest of the world could read and enjoy. Telling a good story that people like is a reward itself, outside of whatever small amount of money might come out of it. 
>>> 
>>> I strongly suggest to you that co-authoring with a stranger over the internet is not going to work.  If you really want a collaborator, you will almost certainly be better off finding a friend in atom-space; if you don't have a friend with those interests / skills, then cast your net for a new friend.  Go to some creative writing workshops in your area, take a course at your local community college, start a writers group, or go to some open mic nights and strike up a conversation.  [NaNoWriMo](http://nanowrimo.org) is starting in two weeks, and they have meet'n'greets with the specific intent of helping writers motivate each other.  That would be a great place to meet a potential collaborator.  (Although, not for this November's challenge!)

>>>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+1]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (2 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> > I'm not trying to be a jerk here, but writing a novel is a mountain of work, so if you're going to do it you need to be really clear on why you're doing it. If your goal is to have a physical product that other people can hold, then I strongly suggest going through a POD service instead of through a publishing house.
>>>> 
>>>> Oh, I know exactly how much work it is. I've already written one manuscript, and its junk that I doubt will see the light of day. And that took me six months. I know it will probably take *years* for something I write to make it through a publishing house's doors, but I'd rather go with a publishing house then with POD because I want the wider availability. I want it to be something someone could buy in a bookstore. 
>>>> 
>>>> > Get an editor. Upwork has editors for $20/hr and up. (This is not a recommendation of those people or upwork, just an example.)
>>>> 
>>>> That costs more then I make in an hour, so not really viable. 
>>>> 
>>>> > Or just post it here on Reddit; people will be delighted to tell you how good or bad your story is.
>>>> 
>>>> I've been considering that, and I want to. I want to write a chapter, share it, and get feedback,  but if I do that, won't it harm my ability to get it published through a print publisher? Would even Amazon take it if its already out there like that?
>>>> 
>>>> > Yes. Alternatively, sit down with a friend over coffee and brainstorm, then you go off and write it. It will save you a tremendous amount of time and frustration, and will give you the things you say you're looking for.
>>>> 
>>>> That'd be great if I had some nerdy rationalist literary friends who I could gush about transhumanism and writing styles with. But I don't have anyone like that in real life, the only people I know that are like that are...you know, here in this subreddit. 
>>>> 
>>>> > Go to some creative writing workshops in your area, take a course at your local community college, start a writers group, or go to some open mic nights and strike up a conversation.
>>>> 
>>>> I'll see about that, it might be a good idea, but I already have a community of fairly like minded people here. I'm already casting the net, I'm just doing it over the net instead of in meatspeace. I'm  not of the opinion that you can't be friends with someone unless you're around each other in meatspace, a lot of my best friends are those I've made over the years online.

>>>>> **u/eaglejarl** [+2]  (2 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> > I've been considering that, and I want to. I want to write a chapter, share it, and get feedback, but if I do that, won't it harm my ability to get it published through a print publisher? Would even Amazon take it if its already out there like that?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Amazon has no problem with your book being available elsewhere unless you sign up for the Kindle Unlimited program, which is basically a lending library.  If a book is in KU then it needs to be exclusive to Amazon; you can give up to 30% of it away elsewhere, but you can't distribute the entire text through any other venue.  That means no selling it with another dealer and also no giving it away.  If the book is *not* in KU then you can go nuts -- give it away online for free, sell it on B&N / Smashwords / etc, print it out and hand out copies in Times Square, whatever.
>>>>> 
>>>>> About 50% of my income from my novels, and about 30% of my total income, comes from KU, so if money is relevant than the KU decision is an important one.
>>>>> 
>>>>> > I'm not of the opinion that you can't be friends with someone unless you're around each other in meatspace, a lot of my best 
>>>>> friends are those I've made over the years online. 
>>>>> 
>>>>> I would definitely agree with that.
>>>>> 
>>>>> I wish you all the best on this.  If you succeed in writing it, I'll look forward to reading it.

> **u/gvsmirnov** [+5]  (8 hours later)
> 
> Promising. Might be a good idea to throw a challenge to write a ~2K words oneshot in this setting, it would be much easier to get someone and gauge their skills in writing, worldbuilding, and all that.

> **u/OrzBrain** [+2]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (18 hours later)
> 
> That sounds very cool (and actually somewhat similar to a setting I came up with at one point).
> 
> Question: Why aren't the corporations taking advantage of the incredible earnings potential of strong AI? Are they that stupid that they don't see the potential? Is it considered very difficult (if so, why don't the corporations have everything the heroes have in their labs -- uploads, brilliant researchers, etc.?)? Is it illegal? Is is illegal and everyone with enough power has done it on the sly and is currently trying to keep their skynetish strong AIs boxed while getting useful work out of em and the whole thing is a powder keg about ready to blow up unless something outside the system saves them? (That was what I went with in my setting.)

>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+3]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (18 hours later)
>> 
>> the corporations have been hammering away at Strong AI like everyone else, and the AI researcher character in the story would have been working for one of the corporations on just such a purpose at the beginning. Everyone wants strong AI.
>> 
>> But the corporations are also very protective of the intellectual property rights, and they don't just let their AI researchers have access to the uploaded consciousnesses of their 1% leaders. The uploads are treated as an entire separate branch of research and technology, one that's 'finished' already. They have uploads, they work, they use them to back up their rich and important people. That's all the tech needs to do. The idea of applying it back to AI research isn't something that has occurred to them "you want us to let some AI researcher tinker with and possibly damage the upload of XYZ important person? What if they torture the upload into giving up trade secrets? What if they make secret copies of the upload and dissect them for trade secrets? Better to just keep it all sealed up in a nice neat bow.

>>> **u/OrzBrain** [+2]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (19 hours later)
>>> 
>>> That sounds very well thought out.
>>> 
>>> What about running uploads of AI researchers at accelerated speeds as in Vinge's Cookie Monster?
>>> 
>>> *
>>> 
>>> *
>>> 
>>> Sorry. Every setting can have holes poked in it. If authors plugged all the possible holes nothing would get written.

>>>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+5]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (21 hours later)
>>>> 
>>>> The answer to "Why don't the corporations just do X" with restricted technology is always going to be that the technology is restricted. Why would they let a *mere* AI researcher have access to the technology they reserve for their cabal of rich snobs? Being an AI researcher is a fairly mainline middle class career. No one's going to pay the license fees to upload an AI researcher when they could use that money to repaint their private spacecraft.

>>>>> **u/OrzBrain** [+2]  **Fingers* to *dance*, *hands* to *catch*, *arms* to *pull** (a day later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Yeah, corporations not rational, even though they are people. When's Texas going to execute one?

> **u/blockbaven** [+1]  (23 hours later)
> 
> looking for someone to do work for me

> **u/gbear605** [+1]  *history’s greatest story* (22 hours later)
> 
> If you happen to need a beta for this, I'd be glad to help (though it sounds like you're more interested in actually publishing it, not just publishing it online). Unfortunately I don't have much in the way of creative writing skills, so I wouldn't be a very good co-author.

> **u/None** [+1]  (a day later)
> 
> [deleted]

>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+0]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (a day later)
>> 
>> Should I do it in this subreddit or in like, /r/writingprompts you think?

> **u/shadozcreep** [+1]  (2 days later)
> 
> Something that seems to crop up a lot in speculative sci-fi is emergency projects to terraform other planets in order to save the human race, but I just don't buy it.
> If we haven't gotten our ducks in a row sufficiently to keep Earth's atmosphere from choking us, how are we supposed to believe a coordinated effort to radically transform another planet to make it habitable to humans?
> I know this concept may seem strange, and the idea of terraforming Mars is really cool, but why don't we see more speculative sci-fi dealing with making *Earth* habitable for humans rather than scrambling off of it in such a big hurry?
> Yes, I love the idea of expanding out into the stars, but terraformation of other planets isn't a very good plan for avoiding the 'choking on our own gases' type of extinction event.
> At this point the idea is starting to harm my suspension of disbelief.

>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+3]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (2 days later)
>> 
>> In this case, its largely that the Earth is seen as irrelevant at this point. Humanity won't go extinct if the Earth's atmosphere becomes inhospitable to life, humanity on Earth won't even go extinct. A lot of people on Earth already live under domes to avoid the air pollution, and very little food is grown planetside at all. 
>> 
>> As for why not make Earth habitable before going to other planets, do you have a moment to talk about the gospel of The Asteroid Will Not Care How Clean the Water is?

>>> **u/shadozcreep** [+1]  (2 days later)
>>> 
>>> That makes more sense.  
>>> To be clear, I am all for expansion to other worlds. I was just skeptical at the mention that Earth was straining under the weight of 40 billion humans, which shouldn't tax the planet's resources or atmosphere too badly unless we're *still* chugging fossil fuel.  
>>> Terraforming is great, but the ability to expand human influence to other planets shouldn't mean we stop caring about Earth. It seems like a troubling mentality to rely on the eventual extinction of the planet to justify leaving it a garbage heap. Fundamentalist Christian's do the same thing to justify ignoring pollution, except instead of an asteroid they're waiting for the Anti-Christ.  
>>> I'm no hippy. My point is pollution is a real problem that is ignored or handled too lightly in spec fiction to the detriment of the strength of the setting.  
>>> If anything, just treat this as advice: Your setting sounds good, and I get into all sorts of high concept stuff, but you don't have to treat Earth like something to crumple up and throw away now that we're "done with it." You don't even have to change anything in the setting. I'm just suggesting that you not sever the emotional connection most people would naturally feel towards home just to seem more science-fictiony.  
>>> But if you'd rather depict a callous outward expansion I'd still consider reading it. It's your story, after all. Maybe I'll just write my *own* story, with Black Jack, and hookers, and a compassionate treatment of the human home world...  
>>> Ah, forget it.

>> **u/nicholaslaux** [+2]  (4 days later)
>> 
>> Also the methods of terraforming shown aren't exactly "subtle". Slam an asteroid into earth to cool it down some and you've caused an extinction level event. Do the same to Venus and... there's nobody there to go extinct, so who cares? 
>> 
>> Making something uninhabited become habitable is a lot easier when there are no existing balances that need to be kept, so if you overshoot a bit, just fire up something else to balance it and wait a bit longer.

> **u/nicholaslaux** [+1]  (4 days later)
> 
> One comment I'd make about the setting that vaguely bothers me - what caused the massive collapse that destroyed the food sector so much that everyone effectively eats rations? 
> 
> Taste and hunger seem like one of the most low level pleasures that humans get, on nearly the same as sexual pleasure, so any setting that has a roughly thriving population with mass levels of either one missing seems like it would require an explanation to me. 
> 
> More believable to me would be that it's devolved into mostly just junk food/fast food places, possibly with the base material of almost all fast food being the space kelp mush, in the same manner than most fast foods today seem to be random shaped meat stuff. 
> 
> However, lack of diversity in the food supply to me indicates that none of the megacorps are in any sort of food supply business, meaning that companies like P&G, Kellogg, and Coca Cola have all either gone out of business or been bought out and then dismantled due to somehow no longer being exorbitantly profitable.

>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+1]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (4 days later)
>> 
>> > More believable to me would be that it's devolved into mostly just junk food/fast food places, possibly with the base material of almost all fast food being the space kelp mush, in the same manner than most fast foods today seem to be random shaped meat stuff.
>> 
>> This is basically it. Coca-Cola still exists, Pepsi-Cola still exists, its just that all these companies have merged together into four massive conglomerates. Their food is all sourced from the algae mush because its the cheapest way to get the desired effect. Just like how all sugar in america is corn, all food in the future is algae derived. Earth tried to hold onto its local farming as long as it could, but with central africa, Brazil, and the midwestern united states turning into deserts, the ability to grow food continued to be gradually hemmed in more and more. There's 40 billion people on Earth in need of food, and the climate just continually proves itself too chaotic to provide that, so a lot of the farming moved indoors. On earth, you can probably still get locally grown organic produce, its just that it would be grown via hydroponics in a giant vertical farm in a city instead of in an even more giant horizontal farm in the country. 
>> 
>> Thats on the Earth though, off the Earth, there's not a lot to work with, providing food for the billions who live and work in space has basically come down to cramming as many calories and dollars worth of growing into as little space as possible. Algae farms are huge in space, because they don't require gravity to grow correctly. Corn and vegetables and other crops require spin gravity. Some orbital colonies have this, and their corridors would be lined in some places with vegetable plants to provide a bit more air and a bit of color to your diet, but that's a long way from providing for the entire population.

>>> **u/nicholaslaux** [+1]  (5 days later)
>>> 
>>> Gotcha. 
>>> 
>>> So it's not everyone eating tasteless algae bricks, it's just that the "steak", "chicken", and "cheese" in my Chipotle all originally come from space algae, rather than from any actual animal or plant, and everything else is likely some form of artificially generated sweetener or seasoning?
>>> 
>>> From my perspective, this actually doesn't seem all that bad, then.

>>>> **u/Sagebrysh** [+2]  *Rank 7 Pragmatist* (5 days later)
>>>> 
>>>> If it was all you'd ever known, it probably wouldn't be too bad. But from the perspective of us on earth eating our 'real' food in this day and age, it would probably inspire some shock and revulsion.
>>>> 
>>>> "What do you mean your burgers are made of ground up locusts? That's gross"
>>>> 
>>>> "They have excellent protein, just put some algae based barbecue sauce on it."

>>>>> **u/nicholaslaux** [+1]  (5 days later)
>>>>> 
>>>>> Right. Plus, from my perspective, describing food where it comes from today is actually rather more gross than that.
>>>>> 
>>>>> "What, your burger comes from ground up burnt cows? What did they ever do to you?"
>>>>> 
>>>>> As a not-quite-vegetarian, though, I recognize I'm not exactly the norm.

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