I've recently become the moderator of r/SciFiConcepts and have been sharing them with the people over there. The subreddit has become increasingly popular over the past week so I thought I'd share the concepts in different places. If my concepts are well received here then I'll keep posting. If not but you are still interested in the ideas, then you should visit the subreddit.

Genetic Debt:

In a non-FTL future, commerce between star systems would be limited and take hundreds of years to complete. Therefore, I was thinking a possible workaround would be that all long-term financial transactions would be encoded into the DNA of both parties. This germline gene editing would then be inherited by the children and so on. Therefore, if you sold or bought something that could take longer than your lifetime to see any investment it would be worth it. You will be assured that your descendents will get the money and their descendents will have to pay for it. Their debt and your profits are literally encoded into your DNA.

There could even be a blockchain, either genetic or digital that would make sure nobody can just change their DNA. and get away with it. There are probably easier, ethical and more boring ways of tracking debt across light years of space but here's my version.(I do understand that this wouldn't be very common because the cost of transporting things across lightyears is much more expensive than just making it in your home system, but I'm sure there will be some information or luxury items that would make this process worth it.)



Links

• SciFi Concepts: https://www.reddit.com/r/SciFiConcepts/
  
• Genetic Debt: https://www.reddit.com/r/SciFiConcepts/c...etic_debt/
  

Someone on Quora, answering a question about whether dragons fought on the side of Sauron at the Battle of the Last Alliance (hoo hoo hoo, I thought; everyone knows that Sauron doesn't command dragons!) cited this:

"From Imladris they crossed the Misty Mountains by many passes and marched down the River Anduin, and so came at last upon the host of Sauron on Dagorlad, the Battle Plain, which lies before the gate of the Black Land. All living things were divided in that day, and some of every kind, even of beasts and birds, were found in either host, save the Elves only. They alone were undivided and followed Gil-galad. Of the Dwarves few fought upon either side; but the kindred of Durin of Moria fought against Sauron."

If taken literally, this says that Sauron had not only dragons in his service, but Evil Ents.  And that the Last Alliance had a few friendly trolls and pet dragons.

Well, we finally decided to sign up for Disney+. I have my reservations but I guess now I can watch Wandavision if I find time to get into it.

Meanwhile, my wife and I watched the first episode of LOKI (or is that Loki?).

It was different.

I don't know enough about the Marvel comic book universe(s) any more to know if the show is introducing new ideas or adapting things from the comics.

I do think it's interesting that Disney+ doesn't seem to carry Marvel's Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. - which, if it's available over the service, seems to be well-hidden.

I bring up that TV show because Loki is billed as part of the MCU. So is Wandavision, and apparently a few other shows are.

So Loki has been scooped up by the Temporal Hacking Authority (or something), a sort of Timecoppian-oversight agency that protects "the Sacred Timeline" against hacking (well, they call them variations but it looks like temporal hacking to me).

That is, after Loki escaped from Stark Tower in 2012 (ala the bizarro scene in Avengers: Endgame where we learned that Tony Stark wears Axe body spray when he's buzzing around the planet as Iron Man), he fell into the hands of the TVA (not the Tennessee Valley Authority, although I suppose that is possible in an alternate timeline).

These TVA folks are not to be trifled with. They have skills and tools that make them superior to everyone but their bosses - the Time Lords, or Time Gods, or Time Trio (something). Loki quickly discovers to his dismay that everything he thought was powerful and worthwhile in his universe is not really.

And because he's been so evil, he's not worth saving. The TVA judge is about to condemn him to a weird sort of death (he won't really die - just the Variant of Loki whom they've captured) - when Owen Wilson steps in to requisition him for a secret purpose.

Mayhem ensues as Loki tries to escape the TVA. Things finally calm down and he experiences a transformative moment of introspection (I'm trying not to give away all the secrets here).

We finally learn at the end of the episode what makes this variant of Loki so special. And then it ends on a sort of cliff-hanger.

I'm not sure about my wife, yet, but I guess I'll keep watching. But this is a very different show. It rolls out a fair number of comic book tropes (in that things happen quickly against a rather expansive background).

There are people who take great delight in picking out CGI special effects from TV shows, whereas others will want to ignore the flaws in the illusion to follow the story. The thing is, I'm not sure if some of the odd appearance of the sets isn't intentional. It creates a sort of etherealness, or other dimensionalness, that seems intentional to me.

I'm pretty sure we'll be spending less time outside of Time and more time inside alternate Time(lines). But they still have to explain a number of things.

And I'll leave it there.

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In 2085, the physicist, Varsha Deshpande, had a major breakthrough to rival that of quantum mechanics, General Relativity, and Special Relativity.

Textures were found to be more basic than particles or fields. Further, space-time was replaced by a more primitive construct called a Sheet.

However, as philosopher of science, Miriam Federico, wrote in 2090, "because science is basically metaphor, we are switching metaphors but ultimately we cannot ever get a perfect and complete description of reality. There is always an inevitable abyss between our descriptions of 'what is' and 'what is.' Descriptions and reality are fundamentally two different kinds of things. This conclusion does not lessen the spectacular achievements of Varsha Deshpande, however. It is just a fundamental limitation and not even the genius of Deshpande can get around it."

Herschel Garrison disagrees and argues that a description that predicts all the behavior of a system is a perfect description of that system. Deshpande's Texture and Sheet Theory has made significant improvements in describing behavior but has not yet matched all known behavior. The debate between Federico and Garrison is whether that is even possible.

Links to references:

https://iai.tv/articles/all-science-is-b..._auid=2020

https://areomagazine.com/2021/05/19/what-if-were-wrong/

https://www.livescience.com/end-of-einst...-time.html

Step outside and a high-powered infrared satellite can take your temperature and text it to your phone. A slight fever may indicate Covid-19 and the government will know.

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The Game of Stars and Comets

 I KNOW there is one that starts out with that game. And the young player is Shanghai-ed and put in cold sleep. I’ve looked through the list of her books but nothing has rung a bell. Can you help?

Dogs may be hoping to play "Fetch" in a new way!

A dream by Gracie, a 7-year old beagle, was determined to a 93% confidence level to be about having opposable thumbs. Her visual cortex patterns matched that of dog paws with an opposable digit that was holding a ball.

Brain scanning has become so good that it can reliably determine what objects an animal is dreaming about. Tested in humans first, patterns in the visual cortex can be correlated with what humans are reporting they are thinking about.

Now, this technique has been extrapolated to other mammals, whose visual cortices are very similar to humans.

Various Witch World Maps available at Ebay

https://www.tor.com/2021/06/07/closing-t...tch-world/