I meant that Saberhagen's Berserkers (and their imitations by other SF writers) ARE "an obstacle for the real people in the show to overcome".

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

There was an episode of Babylon 5 where a probe was sent to ask questions. They even gave a nod to Saberhagen by having the thing called a Berzerker. A robot in the truest sense of the world, like the Doomsday machine, with the meaning of the term 'robot' not just used to describe a human like automaton.

Well, I did make the suggestion of a space opera TV series with "nothing but replicating von Neumann probes". It was a joke, but I don't see anything inherently wrong about the idea.

Now, if we assume that most von Neumann probes are cooperative with others of their own kind, then the obvious way to produce storytelling conflict is to have more than one "clan" of von Neumann probes. One "clan" could be humanoid robots originally from Earth, with human emotions and personalities. (They may or may not be entirely "humanoid", they could be like Wall-E.) Another "clan" could be alien robots along the lines of Daleks.

Depending on how campy/simplistic you like your space Opera, it could be just that simple--friendly cute "good" robots vs hostile ugly "evil" robots.

Hmm...for that matter, various Transformers series have done that already. Some of them did away with non-robot human characters entirely; the human characters were superfluous in Transformers to begin with.

Another vote for "Known Space". Those stories have enough material to have three series on the air simultaneously.

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"Time travel gives me a headache." - Capt. Kathryn Janeway

You do know that the word robot is from the Czech word for worker or slave and that the robots of the first SF novel to use the word were organic humanoid factory workers, right?

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

For about one season each. If they stretch it. And don't mind overlap with the other two.

There are about 4 dozen stories set in known space.
For three series, you need almost twice that number.

I think you're seriously underestimating how many ideas are actually needed to keep a series running if it's to have a new story each week.

I would however agree that it's a rich enough universe that many new stories can be written within it, though I doubt it can carry three series.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

You know, I actually had some hope for Defying Gravity* but they were dashed when they revealed there was a god-thingy in pod #4... I wonder how the tv folks in USA can make cop shows and hospital series without ghosts or vampires (at least some of the time) but so far very few space shows without something superpowered/supernatural hanging around.

Anyway, I wondered about the instant communication bit but was thinking they might've just screwed up a little and not shown any lag yet as I've only watched the first 3 eps so far.

As to the question...

An actual hard science mundane scifi show might be good for once, seeing as DG isn't going to be it. But I'm not sure if you can actually have a mundane science fiction space opera (tho I hear Alastair Reynolds -- who's Revelation Space setting might work for a series as well BTW -- is going to try that for his next big trilogy, but that's books of course, quite a different environment in all ways).

Other than that, hardish science with implications of the übertech (such as FTL) thought through (or at least further than the norm) would be good. A very highflauting futuristic world and aesthetic would be good. Nonhumanoid aliens among the protagonists would be good. And character developement and a story arc are rather musts.

Other than that by all means do bring on the buxom space vixens and kilometers-long battleships firing obscenely powerful weapons that treat planets as practice targets.

---

*) Incidentally, the Finnish translation is Rakkauden painovoima, literally Gravity of Love which is tacky but actually more descriptive

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So you have been setting up your interstellar colony for hundreds of years, struggling to terraform your planet, and fighting local wars between a number of mutually antagonistic factions (I don't know- perhaps militant feminists versus state capitalists versus orthodox Unitarians or something), when, all of a sudden, a ship from the Solar System arrives with a wormhole that will allow contact back to the old worlds.

The Solar system is filled with bizarre, advanced cultures that have been developing in weird new ways for all the hundreds of years your colony has been isolated. Now you've got to contend with smart-alec robots, beautiful cyborgs, virtual or genetically modified humans, talking chimps and dogs... you and your friends (and enemies) from this uptight little colony are going to find it hard to cope with the weirdos coming through the 'hole. And even worse, you might be tempted to go through it yourself, to look at the vast cities on the old worlds.

What do you do? try to embrace this new cultural bounty? Fall victim to its various addictive vices? Fight for the integrity of your old culture against the cultural imperialism of the Old Solar System? Even attack the Solsys ships, or try to sabotage the 'hole somehow?

Hmmm... looks like I've got the plot for my next book but one... all I need to do is find the time to write them...

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Hmm, that's actually pretty close to one suggestion thrown around on another forum a while back...

The pilot of the show basically would start off with your standard teen/high school fare... Only there are small hints such as brand names on cereal packets and the like which show that the place is not the "Old Earth". And suddenly, maybe at the end of the first ep or thereabouts, the sky's full of ships just like an alien invader was coming... Only they aren't "aliens", as exotic as they might first appear, but actually (trans?)humans from Earth, come to check up on a long lost colony. Cue all sort of weird funny shenanigans, romance, politicing and whathaveyou.

It sorta sounds like V I suppose, only with no cheesy lizard aliens.

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The dog, the dog, he's at it again!

I wondered if it had been done before. Surely someone in the Golden Age wrote something like this- but the reason I find Golden Age space opera unsatisfying is that it always seems to assume that an advanced human society will be something like 1950's America; even 21st century America isn't like 1950s America.

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New Orion's Arm Site . The Starlark . Against a Diamond Sky (OA Novella Collection) . OA Flickr set

I know... I suppose part of the idea I outlined might've been to sorta lampoon that a bit.

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The dog, the dog, he's at it again!

If you want to see alien/human culture shock, check out Gintama. Basically, imagine if Samurai Era Japan were visited by advanced aliens instead of Commodore Perry's "Black Ships". (In real life, this led to a massive cultural upheaval as Japan tried to modernize up to 19th century standards...imagine instead trying to modernize up to 23rd century standards.)

There are more than four dozen stories in the Man/Kzin War series alone. The total number of stories set in the Known Space universe is much higher, with most of those being novels long enough to provide at least a season's worth of programming, or novelettes equal to at least a miniseries.

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

A lot of the best story concepts have already been done, as far as I'm concerned.

Humans finding their place in a galaxy full of life: Babylon 5.
Surviving the loss of their home: New Battlestar.
Aliens coming to Earth: Alien Nation (God, this one was so underrated...)

I thought First Wave was an interesting concept.

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The last time I felt a warm fuzzy feeling, I was informed by my doctor that it was just gas.

Chtorr or Snowcrash.

Of course, its a complete coincidence they are both set in a post-apocalyptic US.)

Remind me please, what was the apochalypse in Snowcrash?
From what I remember of it and it is admittedly half a year or so since I last reread it, it's an extrapolation of current trends with the volume turned to eleven, but there wasn't a discontinuity in the past historical development from now.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.

Correct-o-mundo.

There is the hyperinflation, which presumably brought about the downfall of the United States, but that's not what I'd call apocalyptic.

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If we don't play god, who will?-James Watson
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The large print giveth and the small print taketh away.-Tom Waits
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from a yo-yo.-Enoch Root, The Confusion
When I was a kid, if someone brandished a shrink gun he'd get a little bit of respect!-Myron Reducto, Harvey Birdman

More than two seasons.

Not to do three seasons end end on a cliffhanger [Primeval].

That's what they did, made it through three seasons then canceled the show on a serious cliffhanger...

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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

Heh. Even some of the shows that run their full course end with a cliffhanger these days -- see The Sopranos

Anyway, my understanding of the US showbiz is that the series do often get cancelled very late in the day so there is little to no time to wrap up and no money to reshoot anything.

Meanwhile a season end cliffhanger is seen as pretty much a must (at least for scifi etc. type shows), presumably because it gets the audience to come back for the next one. OTOH "serious" drama series and comedies more often seem to be able to create some kind of closure...

I suppose it's kinda a self-inflicted vicious circle.

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The dog, the dog, he's at it again!

Back in 2011:-

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2009...recommissioned

SWEET!! Thanks for the heads up!

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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

My personal favorite for a series is Anne McCaffery's "'Dragonrider stories. I'd also like to see the Honor Harrington series adapted as a movie or series.

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"Everybody's playing the Game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side." (Tim Rice)
No matter how strong, or brave, or pure of heart you may be; sometimes the dragon wins!

John Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series...good old fashioned alien invader stories with plenty of behind the scenes intrigue by the aliens.

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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

Most good ideas have been done, but if they are done differently, then they seem completely different. Like the saying goes. Give ten writers the same basic premise and you'll get twelve different stories.

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"What you think you thought you saw you did not see." Agent J, MiB - Manhatten Bureau

Can I please throw up?

Not that any TV studio would touch it -- way too bloody (and too right-wing) for network TV.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

As far as I am concerned, best space opera concept is "Humans spreading through galaxy at slower-than-light speeds, and drastically speciating in the process, until Earth's distant descendants are aliens to each other." Very hard to do, but mind-blowing when done well. Never done on film yet, as far as I know.

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Fiction has to be plausible. Reality is under no such constraint.

It's basically World War two with alien invaders that eat people...

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"Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it." — Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

441!!!! :)

What would I like to see? A series that isn't [bleep]ed over by their network, and actually gets to have a decent ending for a change. And has writers good enough to come up with one instead of "lets throw in everything we can think of and hope we can patch it together later and eventually explain on our website what we think it means".

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"If this were play'd upon a stage now, I could condemn it as an improbable fiction."
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night
"The Mayan symbol for "book" looks a lot like a triple hamburger, but I've never seen them claiming it as proof the Mayans had Big Macs." - KaiYeves
"Distance doesn’t matter much in space, where if you just start a thing off with the right kind of shove, sooner or later it will get where you want it to go." -Frederik Pohl, Mining the Oort

Like the short story about the first encounter happening after humanity had developed to a ring species along the edge of the galaxy in both ways.
I can't remember what it was called, but the conclusion was the despite all the ways in which they looked differently, they where still recognizably human because they reaction on finding that they were both humans and hadn't actually found someone else to meet, was to both turn and look wistfully outwards towards the next galaxy.

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‘To those who regard “crime fiction” as some sacred icon which must follow a rigid formula, I will always be the man who writes 18-syllable haiku.’Trying to make sense of computers, The Error Log.