7.5 KiB
[RT] Upsides
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Author: u/cthulhuraejepsen Fruit flies like a banana*
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URL: http://archiveofourown.org/works/5135483/chapters/11817437
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Score: 30
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Created: 2015-11-03T17:41:48
Post:
Comments:
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+7] Fruit flies like a banana (34 minutes later)
If you need a pitch:
One day, the effects of gravity are reversed for every human on the planet.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+7] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
One bug:
In the first second, they’d gone one meter. In the second second, they’d gone three meters. That meant acceleration approximated one meter per second per second, which was almost exactly equal to the force of gravity, only working in reverse.
Earth's gravity is 9.8 m/s^2 ... 1m/s^2 would be about a tenth of a gee. That would actually be more survivable, but still fatal for anyone outside.
Could simply be a thinko by the narrator, in a stressful situation.
Edit: also, at 1 m/s^2 in the first second they'd go 1/2 a meter, in the second second 2 meters. s = 1/2 a t^2 ...
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+7] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
That was just me screwing up math. And you're right that the math is still a little bit off even when multiplying values by ten; you don't reach 10m until 1.5 seconds and 30m until 2.5 seconds. But eh, close enough for napkin math.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
Interesting. I thought this was a repost, because I saw a story with a similar premise fairly recently.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+2] Fruit flies like a banana (an hour later)
You might have seen this comment by me in the Friday Off-Topic thread?
u/ArgentStonecutter [+3] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
No, it was a whole short story based on gravity reversing... though it effected more than people but less than "everything". There was a bit with someone flying an inverted ultralight to get around, and landing on the underside of a bridge. It might have been an ebook short story collection, or maybe infinity online, if it wasn't here.
u/traverseda [+2] With dread but cautious optimism (an hour later)
I don't recognize it
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (an hour later)
I can accept coincidence. It's the third story with weird gravity I've read in the past year. The third had gravity turned sideways.
u/traverseda [+1] With dread but cautious optimism (2 hours later)
I think I vaguely recall that one. They exploit the damaged physics to build much larger indoor caverns then should be possible. The physics not being sane becomes an important and spoilerey plotpoint...
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+7] Fruit flies like a banana (2 hours later)
Bit Players by Greg Egan.
u/AttuneAccord [+1] (20 hours later)
On a side note, [The Day The World Turned Upside Down] (http://www.lightspeedmagazine.com/fiction/the-day-the-world-turned-upside-down/) by Thomas Heuvelt also has a gravity reversing premise. It won a Hugo award, and is a pretty fast read.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+1] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
That's the one.
u/ArgentStonecutter [+2] Emergency Mustelid Hologram (2 hours later)
Also also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JHmXx7i6fr8
u/youtubefactsbot [+1] (2 hours later)
REVERSO | What if your Life was inverted? - Incredible 3D CGI Animation by ArtFx School [7:15]
Barney lives with his father, Walter, in a littler suburban house. He tries to live a normal life even though Barney is different: His sense of gravity is inverted...
^MadArtistPublishing ^in ^Film ^& ^Animation
^8,374 ^views ^since ^Jan ^2013
u/Kodix [+2] (19 hours later)
I hope you do post future chapters in this subreddit. That was pretty neat.
u/adad64 [+1] Chaos Legion (an hour later)
Oh, very nice. Interesting premise and very well written. I'm excited to see what happens.
u/4t0m [+1] Chaos Legion (4 hours later)
This is great! Are you sure you only want to write 4 chapters of it? I suppose as time passes it becomes a very different type of story.
u/cthulhuraejepsen [+5] Fruit flies like a banana (4 hours later)
If I were going for more, I would probably do it with multiple viewpoints, so you would see the reactions of a variety of different people as they respond to the change. Stephen King did that with "The Stand", which I think is a good way to do a disaster. This will be a more "cozy" type of story.
The other concern is that a survival story like this naturally lends itself to a reversal of the typical dramatic flow. Traditionally, a novel/movie/whatever starts slow and ramps up to a big crescendo as the end. But if you're talking about something like this, the natural tendency will be for the big dramatic thing to happen at the beginning and then things gradually get better and less dramatic as food, water, and shelter are taken care of. You can mix things up with an author who throws in lots of curve balls, but I'm sort of on the fence about that. So to make sure that I'm not petering out (because the world is moving from chaos to order with every success on the part of the main characters) I want to keep the story pretty tight. This story mostly exists because I read "The Martian" and started thinking about how people structure Man vs. Nature.
u/4t0m [+2] Chaos Legion (5 hours later)
Makes sense. In any case I'm really looking forward to the rest of the story.
u/Transfuturist [+1] Carthago delenda est. (23 hours later)
u/mns2 [+1] (6 days later)
Nice. I expect people to make heavy suits that let them walk around with their hands outside and farming/utilities to be a big deal. Also, immediate research on tools and techniques for living in an upside down world.
Properly weighed heavy suits should allow very fast manual travel. (Massive hand leaps are easy now)
u/Bluerking [+1] (a month later)
You could do something similar with boots instead of the full suit as a quicker way of pulling it off. Though I dont see any effective solutions to blood rush other than some strange stilt things.
And now I realize this is a month old post that i am responding to
u/mns2 [+1] (a month later)
It's an upside down suit. You walk with your hands by pushing the ceiling/floor. You're still face up from your perspective. The suit would need to have a "high" center of gravity for this, and boots/gloves that weigh 70+ kg total are hard to find. You need a distributed set of weight you're pushing down or sitting on in order for your muscles to not be overstrained in one area and to be stable enough not to "fall over" upwards. Ideally the suit makes you "weigh" effectively a total of ~20 lbs so you can move fast outside with your hands. (like moon jumping but with your hands)