The nightmare scenario, for me, is that the universe is teeming with intelligent life, but we're one of the senior races. This carries with it an ethical responsibility to the junior races, to ensure that they make it through the Great Filter in one piece. (See, for example, the asari and salarians in Mass Effect, or the Lentili in David Brin's short "Sshhh...".)
I think my nightmare scenario is more that the universe is teeming with intelligent life... but it will be practically impossible to ever visit or meaningful talk with each other because we can't create ships that could make the voyage and can't create signals strong enough to be noticed over less than millenia...
And maybe worse... eventually, all life goes out as it's not even possible to become a full Kardashev I scale civilization because you still run out resources before you get there...
Star Trek Online Advancement: You start with lowbie gear, you end with Lobi gear.
oh oh...I wanna be an elder race that gets to bully around the younger ones with vague promises of wishes being granted. With great mysterious black ships.
I want to alter their genetic makeup or brain chemistry so that they always see us some kind of angels if I we're not in a space suite, and speak mysterious wisdoms to them.
Oh, you want to be one of the more controlling patron races in the Uplift universe, then.
(In Brin's Uplift stories, it's unheard of among the Five Galaxies for sapience to arise naturally. Instead, a pre-sapient species must be "uplifted" by a patron race, becoming their client. A client race then owes 100,000 years of subservience to their patrons. It's part of how the quiet, multi-minded traeki became the arrogant, single-minded jophur - their patron didn't like the fact that traeki weren't at all warlike, and arranged for further genetic engineering. Humans are extremely controversial because we don't appear to have a patron species. Ordinarily that would have been swept under the rug and we would have been forcibly adopted by someone, but by the time humans discovered one of the several ways to go FTL we'd already uplifted chimps and dolphins, making us a patron species ourselves.)
"Great War! / And I cannot take more! / Great tour! / I keep on marching on / I play the great score / There will be no encore / Great War! / The War to End All Wars"
— Sabaton, "Great War"
This is what Tanya Huff's Confederation of Valor series postulates: most species that become spacefarers are pacifist, at least to the extent of giving up war if not necessarily small-scale violence, because the ones that don't tend to wipe themselves out first.
In Star Trek we have the Cardassians who developed space flight as a way to get a tactical advantage in wars.
In B5 we have the Dilgar. They're warmongers who make Klingons seem merciful. Mainly because they don't value slaves as highly. Jha'dur, the last of the warlords of Omelos, was said to have used bio-weapons to wipe out, or attempt to wipe out several entire planetary populations.
This is what Tanya Huff's Confederation of Valor series postulates: most species that become spacefarers are pacifist, at least to the extent of giving up war if not necessarily small-scale violence, because the ones that don't tend to wipe themselves out first.
In Star Trek we have the Cardassians who developed space flight as a way to get a tactical advantage in wars.
In B5 we have the Dilgar. They're warmongers who make Klingons seem merciful. Mainly because they don't value slaves as highly. Jha'dur, the last of the warlords of Omelos, was said to have used bio-weapons to wipe out, or attempt to wipe out several entire planetary populations.
As well as conducting experiments on living beings, and creating an anti-agapic which could only be synthesised from living tissue...
There's a reason the League worlds called her Deathwalker.
Comments
I think my nightmare scenario is more that the universe is teeming with intelligent life... but it will be practically impossible to ever visit or meaningful talk with each other because we can't create ships that could make the voyage and can't create signals strong enough to be noticed over less than millenia...
And maybe worse... eventually, all life goes out as it's not even possible to become a full Kardashev I scale civilization because you still run out resources before you get there...
(In Brin's Uplift stories, it's unheard of among the Five Galaxies for sapience to arise naturally. Instead, a pre-sapient species must be "uplifted" by a patron race, becoming their client. A client race then owes 100,000 years of subservience to their patrons. It's part of how the quiet, multi-minded traeki became the arrogant, single-minded jophur - their patron didn't like the fact that traeki weren't at all warlike, and arranged for further genetic engineering. Humans are extremely controversial because we don't appear to have a patron species. Ordinarily that would have been swept under the rug and we would have been forcibly adopted by someone, but by the time humans discovered one of the several ways to go FTL we'd already uplifted chimps and dolphins, making us a patron species ourselves.)
Who are you? What do you want?
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
Risan Yellow Science Vessel Submarine.
Speaking of What do you want?
It also has the best apology ever.
When that happens, I am so camping out in Montana like a Star Trek Convention in Vegas.
Oh and while were at it before we subject them to horrible music, I suggest Elton John or the Eagles.
2063 here we come!
Nah, if we're gonna go to space, we need somma dis.
— Sabaton, "Great War"
Check out https://unitedfederationofpla.net/s/
In B5 we have the Dilgar. They're warmongers who make Klingons seem merciful. Mainly because they don't value slaves as highly. Jha'dur, the last of the warlords of Omelos, was said to have used bio-weapons to wipe out, or attempt to wipe out several entire planetary populations.
My character Tsin'xing
As well as conducting experiments on living beings, and creating an anti-agapic which could only be synthesised from living tissue...
There's a reason the League worlds called her Deathwalker.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood