Skip to main content

Forever War

I think a film or television version of Joe Haldemann's novel could be achieved. In this version extreme measures are taken to control the population and there is no faster-than-light travel. The starships are powered by anti-matter drives and also use solar sails. A vessel capable of journeying to a target system and returning can achieve a velocity of 22% of lightspeed. The crew enter hibernation during most of the journey. In extremis a ship can travel at 44% of lightspeed and this method is sometimes used to avoid enemy ships or to attack enemy bases.
When Mandela is conscripted there is no knowledge of alien life but a number of exoplanets are believed to contain life. UNEF and the Elite Conscription Act are established in order to send the most qualified expeditions to these planets to establish their suitability for colonisation.
Private Mandela's platoon is the first to encounter a Tauran base. When their landing craft is shot down during his second tour of duty the UNEF brass confirm that intelligent-and belligerent-life exists elsewhere in the universe. UNEF reacts by extending the number of tours from two to an infinite number, ending only when the conscripted reaches the age of 25.

Well.......
that was idea one anyway.

I think a version can be made which is more faithful to the source material but in which the UN controls the population by discouraging vaginal intercourse.        

Version two: The war, or at least it's preparation, begins in 1992. Mandela is conscripted in a secret programme in 1997. The general public is aware of the Tauran's existence when a Tauran vessel is discovered on the surface of Mars in 2035. The shuttle programme is used for this secret war along with a secret conscription programme.   

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Westeros 2

One thing which bothers me about ASOIAF/GOT  is the height of the Wall and the fact that people have been able to cross over it. Not just stone-age Wildlings but that the (supposedly under-manned and under-funded) Night’s Watch were not only able to get to the top of the Wall but actually place defences on the top!  The Wall is actually so high that people would get blown off by the wind on a regular basis! It is established in the books that the Wall (which is 700 feet high and 300 miles long) protects itself, so perhaps this is more of a plot hole. OK, so let's imagine that the Wall is, actually (more like) 300 feet high and 150 miles long, while some parts of it have fallen down. At these parts the Night's Watch have their fortifications. Specifically Castle Black, Mole's Fort which basically contains a trebuchet and Eastwatch, where the Wall is a consistent 200 feet high and extends 60 feet into the Narrow Sea  There are a number of abandoned castles on the W...

Fan theories 2

Just as Childhood's End (first theory) could be viewed as a prelude or explanation of many SF fictional universes (the "Overmind" is the Force in Star Wars, among others) the film AI could be a seen as a mythological version of the founding of The Culture -in particular the "panhumans" described as being abundant in the (well "our") galaxy and beyond.  At the film's epilogue, all the humans had been killed as a result of a new Ice Age but the descendants (so to speak) of the film's "mechas" (intelligent androids) remain. It could be conceivable that a similar event actually happened in Earth's distant past. A race of hominids, perhaps unknown in the fossil record, invented and heavily utilised, artificial intelligence just before their civilisation was destroyed in an ice age. Of course, a few survivors could have left Earth in spaceships before this happened, but the main point is that the AIs which survived were able to crea...

Fan Theories Four

Westeros was artificially (or magically) created by raising land from the ocean. I t could even be alive in some fashion, hence the God's Eye is an actual eye . This explains why Westeros wasn't colonised by humans much earlier (or conquered by the Valyrians) as it just didn't exist apart from a few islands. If this is the case, the raising of Westeros dates after the building of Dragonstone. Cersei and Jamie are Targaryns. There is a theory that Tyrion's father was Aerys, but what if Aerys was actually Cersei's father? This makes sense if she knows this and also if Aerys and Tywin suspected this. It also explains her irrational hatred for Robert (and Tyrion to a lesser extent) and why Jamie was named to the Kingsguard. Cersei and Jamie are still Lannisters because their mother was Tywin's cousin. Interestingly, Joffrey also refers to himself as a dragon.