The Science Fiction GB - General discussion thread

[zenrat]

Personally, I'd like to see more Science Fiction stories that reflect Royal Navy tradition and terminology, rather than US Navy stuff.   Something about the blandness of US Navy terminology annoys me, whereas RN stuff is much more interesting.

Assuming that the technology of the sci-fi is semi-realistic (i.e. not literally flying battleships) then I'd like to see them abandon naval and aviation terminology altogether and come up with their own ship types and role descriptions. After all, we have little idea what roles actual military spacecraft will perform if they are ever developed at all, so it's hardly likely they'll be analagous to real-world wet-navy or air force ones to the poinr of the latter's terminology having mauch relevence.

It'll be a whole new turf war as Navy, Army and Air Force all fight to control the new military space force.

[Weaver]

Personally, I'd like to see more Science Fiction stories that reflect Royal Navy tradition and terminology, rather than US Navy stuff.   Something about the blandness of US Navy terminology annoys me, whereas RN stuff is much more interesting.

Assuming that the technology of the sci-fi is semi-realistic (i.e. not literally flying battleships) then I'd like to see them abandon naval and aviation terminology altogether and come up with their own ship types and role descriptions. After all, we have little idea what roles actual military spacecraft will perform if they are ever developed at all, so it's hardly likely they'll be analagous to real-world wet-navy or air force ones to the poinr of the latter's terminology having mauch relevence.

It'll be a whole new turf war as Navy, Army and Air Force all fight to control the new military space force.

The Air Force would have to be the leading contenders there, although the Army might insert themselves if boarding actions and/or planetary landings were a thing. it's hard to see how the Navy could justifiably get themselves into the space-war business, unless they found a water-world to fight on, though that wouldn't stop them trying of course, probably via naval aviation. After a few years of this BS, you could see the government making the Space Force independent in the way that Air Forces were, and then you have a four-way handbag-fight for budgets and politcal influence. Lovely.....

[PR19_Kit]

And who said it was THEIR space to defend anyway? 

[Steel Penguin]

operations would be more of a naval style, long ( months) missions, with cramped spaces, and a hostile exterior, so kind of like submarines.

[Weaver]

Some thoughts on which bits of naval terminology might or might not be appropriate for space war.

BATTLESHIP: Surprisingly appropriate actually, if you define it generally as a "ship to fight battles with" rather than getting bogged down in the irrelevent historical nitty-gritty of guns and armour.

<SOMETHING>-CARRIER: Again, logical, if your model of space war supports the use of smaller craft that have to be carried inside a larger craft. Even if 'fighters' are a dubious proposition in deep space, they make a kind of sense in close-orbit-to-atmosphere work, and 'drop-ships' or other kinds of space-to-surface ferry are pretty much a given, whatever their military credentials.

CRUISER: in the original sense of the word, i.e. a moderately-armed, lightly-armoured, fast, long-ranged ship for scouting, policing and gunboat-diplomacy this again would make sense, although 'cruising' is a pretty poor description of it's activity. 'Patrol Ship' or 'Scout Ship' might be better.

DESTROYER:  Nope. Orignally a contraction of 'Torpedo-Boat-Destroyer', this doesn't even make sense in the modern wet navy, let alone in space. All warships destroy things by definition. A space vessel that performed the roles of the modern wet navy destroyer would be more properly called an 'Escort Ship'.

FRIGATE/CORVETTE: Again, nope. Orignally types of sailing vessel, these also don't even make sense in the modern wet navy. Space vessels that performed the roles of these vessels would again be more properly called an 'Escort Ship'.


Exactly how you'd define your classes of space warfare vessels depends critically on the available technologies, particularly on how your FTL drive works (if you have one) and what the technical, tactical and strategic ramifications of that are. Broadly speaking, they might look something like this:

Battleship: a ship designed purely to dispense destruction, with all it's mass devoted to weaponry, speed and protection. It's unlikely to be slow, since speed is a weapon in and of itself in space and any ship capable of getting places in a reasonable time will be able to use it. You might have sub-categories such as:

Light Battleship (smaller than average)
Heavy Battleship (bigger than average)
Fast battleship (faster than average)


Carrier: a ship that acts as a platform and mother-ship for multiple smaller ships, particularly ones that are too small to have FTL capability. Since the capabiltiy of space-warfare missiles will probably approach that of remotely-piloted or AI drones, it might be more appropriate to describe a vessel armed primarily with them as a 'Missile Carrier' rather than a 'Missile Battleship'.


Cruiser: a "jack-of-all-trades" vessel designed to find out what's going on (particularly important if you don't have FTL comms), deal with minor problems and report back on big one. It would have good sensor, science and comms capabilities, good speed and range, moderate firepower and protection, and it's own space-to-surface craft. Another way to think of it is as an armed exploration ship.


Escort: a ship designed to protect other ships from attack. This ship would be relatively small (so that many could be built) and would bristle with short-range defensive weapons and technologies. Point-defence weapons, decoys and shields are obvious things, and you might also imagine the ability to (at some cost in complication) the abiltiy to extend defense force-fields around another vessel. It might also have a small contingent of space-only sub-craft in order to rescue survivors from an escorted vessel that couldn't be saved.

[Weaver]

operations would be more of a naval style, long ( months) missions, with cramped spaces, and a hostile exterior, so kind of like submarines.

Fair point, although it depends on the tech level. Serving on the Nostromo would be a very different experience from serving on the Enterprise...

[Steel Penguin]

Weaver,  Indeed very different, and even more so on later versions of the Enterprise,    up to the difference of being on board one of the bigger Ian M Banks culture vessels ( 10s of Kilometres long with millions of people, more of a space bound city)  all of the comforts, and conveniences of  home, and the ability to travel at Kilo Light+ speeds across the galaxy.

I like the combat ship descriptions as well,  it doesn't bog down in dozens of hair splitting differences, that seems to affect some systems.

[Weaver]

Some more definitions:

Scout Ship: a miniature version of the Cruiser, with a similar role, which is small enough to land on a planet and therefore doesn't need sub-craft.

Patrol Ship: a ship designed for a policing/gunboat-diplomacy role in established areas where there's little exploration left to do and civilan facilities/ships that can cope with planet-side emergencies. It's similar to a Cruiser in performance and military capability, but with all the non-military facilities removed and with space-to-orbit shuttlecraft replaced by a few fighters and space-to-space shuttles.

[NARSES2]

Weaver,  Indeed very different, and even more so on later versions of the Enterprise,    up to the difference of being on board one of the bigger Ian M Banks culture vessels ( 10s of Kilometres long with millions of people, more of a space bound city)  all of the comforts, and conveniences of  home, and the ability to travel at Kilo Light+ speeds across the galaxy.

As I've said before at a Salute demo game back in the day a Klingon "ship" scored hits on the Enterprise and damaged a bowling alley and No 2 hairdressing salon    That game will stay in my mind for ever I think, or at least as long as my mind stays with me 

[Weaver]

Weaver,  Indeed very different, and even more so on later versions of the Enterprise,    up to the difference of being on board one of the bigger Ian M Banks culture vessels ( 10s of Kilometres long with millions of people, more of a space bound city)  all of the comforts, and conveniences of  home, and the ability to travel at Kilo Light+ speeds across the galaxy.

As I've said before at a Salute demo game back in the day a Klingon "ship" scored hits on the Enterprise and damaged a bowling alley and No 2 hairdressing salon    That game will stay in my mind for ever I think, or at least as long as my mind stays with me 

It's okay: no 'real' damage was done because they had a councellor on-board to help them work through their feelings about it....

[nighthunter]

Weaver, I suggest that we forgo the Battleship, and instead go with these Cruiser "subclasses":

Battlecruiser: Strictly a warship, big guns and/or missiles and all.

Exploration/Scout Cruiser: Well armed, but science and scouting is it's main mission.

Patrol Cruiser: Well armed, but meant to be a colonial defense/law enforcement flagship.

[zenrat]

Culture "ships" were mostly designated Vessels or Units.
http://concord.wikia.com/wiki/Iain_M._Banks_Culture_Universe_Spaceship_Names

[Weaver]

Something to think about for people still choosing a subject:

This GB almost perfectly coincides with the June 1947 Kenneth Arnold UFO report which is widely held to be the kicking-off point of the modern UFO phenomenon. Interestingly, when you strip away all the subsequent accretion and look at his original report, it sounds far more like a sighting of experimental flying-wing jet aircraft than of what subsequently became the stereotypical UFO account. Equally interesting is the involvement of pulp sci-fi magazines and their editors in both establishing the tropes of the genre beforehand and in promoting the Arnold sighting and characterising it as extraterrestrial immediately afterwards.

July's Fortean Times (which should still be in the shops) has several articles covering various aspects of all this if you're interested.

[zenrat]

Was it Arnold who coined the phrase "flying saucers"?  I can't remember.
The Roswell "crash" was also 1947.

I have a Fly Avrocar.  Does it count as Sci Fi?  If so i'll throw it together for the GB.

[Weaver]

Was it Arnold who coined the phrase "flying saucers"?  I can't remember.

Well, yes and no (you get a lot of that in ufology.... ). Arnold described shield or crescent-shaped craft which were thin ("having the proportions of a pie plate") and which "moved with a bobbing motion, like a saucer skipped over a lake". So he mentioned round objects twice in an account about non-round objects in order to describe their proportion and their movement, but NOT their shape. A reporter then got confused, which is slightly forgiveable (even if it was a reporter), filed a story about saucer-shaped unidentified flying objects, and the rest is history and a goldmine for publishers and TV scriptwriters.

Arnold's drawing of the craft in his report made them seem shield-shaped, rather like the Avro Canada Project Y mockup, but he later endorsed an artist's impression that portrayed them as more crescent-shaped, with a point in the middle of the trailing edge, which makes any aircraft buff immediately recall the Horten flying wings.

The fact that the description of them as 'flying saucers' was actually wrong, but was then followed by 70 years of people reporting saucer-shaped UFOs, tells you a lot about the cultural component of the phenomenon. Another telling point was that in the 1960s, decriptions of UFO occupants and witnesses' interactions with them were very variable, with ufonauts ranging from the classic little grey/green men to blonde, blue-eyed 'space Vikings' in silver jumpsuits. It was only when the Greys-and-probings 'alien abduction' type of story, with it's appeal to horror-movie tropes, entered the cultural zeitgeist in the 1970s, that the overwhelming majority of accounts fell into line with it and described the skinny, big-headed, almond-eyed noseless dwarfs we love/hate today.