I Will Buy You An Island Where Your Seaweed Can Grow
From having a few people look at the draft of the novel so far, it sounds like there are plausibility and vagueness problems. I'm trying to use realistic near-future technology, which is hard. Here's the situation:
Our hero, engineer Garrett Fox, is trying to establish and run a sea colony, specifically an underfunded, understaffed platform on the ocean's surface somewhere near Bermuda. He plans to grow GM seaweed and fish. His starting crew is a geek, a mystic, his girlfriend, and a sentient robot. The crew composition changes substantially in a way that includes several dozen loonies by around a third of the way in. He's got a boat but no dedicated crew for it. The platform is called Castor, partly as a joke and partly for lack of a compelling better name.
Physically, the platform looks like Sealand, as written so far. (Photos and floor plans of Sealand here.)
I was thinking that Castor would be "Sealand deluxe," but when I realized that Sealand's pillars were living space and that it actually could house 150+ people, I thought Castor should be "Sealand lite." But then I figured they need storage space for their products, which means more area again.
Also, Sealand -- which is WWII surplus -- was offered for "eight figures," ie. an insane amount of money, way more than my heroes can afford.
So what I currently imagine is a Pi-shaped platform several stories above the water (I wish I knew how safe it is to build right on the water), with two square-shaped "towers." To keep them straight in my head I decided to call them North Tower and South Tower, which also gives me symbolism points re: 9/11. North Tower has a door near the waterline, and a staircase up to the deck, where there's a big flat area with a deckhouse. (So people can remember, "the North has more industry.") The beds are in the South. Each tower is divided into several floors of bare concrete rooms, with internal stairs. The initial crew is rattling around in there, expecting several dozen people eventually. Later in the outline, I say that people start building "rafts" and then fancier plastic platforms that Garrett thinks are deathtraps. Again, I don't know whether you absolutely need to build way above the waterline to avoid being constantly swamped.
In contrast, Phil's novel Freedom City has a Carribbean colony consisting of gigantic flat plates, all several stories above the water, with very little vertical space. (Basically it's the deck level and a seedy, dark underlevel of girders.) Deck space is extremely expensive there. I don't know how plausible that is. If the people really can build small structures lashed together right on the surface, that's much cheaper than building a whole massive tower, right? I can have characters experimenting with different architectural styles, but need them to build something plausible first.
Two other examples to look at are Oceania, an abandoned utopia project, and The Venus Project, which looks neat but is right in line with that "Star Trek is fascist" theory. Figure that the hero wants his project to look like these and ends up with something much messier, eventually realizing that that's a good thing.
My overall question is, how do I make this setup plausible? I want to start with a small group of characters, yet they arguably need huge amounts of money and manpower to do anything. The best idea I've got so far is that the chief financier is planning to use the hero's group to get initial results before bringing in additional employees.
Our hero, engineer Garrett Fox, is trying to establish and run a sea colony, specifically an underfunded, understaffed platform on the ocean's surface somewhere near Bermuda. He plans to grow GM seaweed and fish. His starting crew is a geek, a mystic, his girlfriend, and a sentient robot. The crew composition changes substantially in a way that includes several dozen loonies by around a third of the way in. He's got a boat but no dedicated crew for it. The platform is called Castor, partly as a joke and partly for lack of a compelling better name.
Physically, the platform looks like Sealand, as written so far. (Photos and floor plans of Sealand here.)
I was thinking that Castor would be "Sealand deluxe," but when I realized that Sealand's pillars were living space and that it actually could house 150+ people, I thought Castor should be "Sealand lite." But then I figured they need storage space for their products, which means more area again.
Also, Sealand -- which is WWII surplus -- was offered for "eight figures," ie. an insane amount of money, way more than my heroes can afford.
So what I currently imagine is a Pi-shaped platform several stories above the water (I wish I knew how safe it is to build right on the water), with two square-shaped "towers." To keep them straight in my head I decided to call them North Tower and South Tower, which also gives me symbolism points re: 9/11. North Tower has a door near the waterline, and a staircase up to the deck, where there's a big flat area with a deckhouse. (So people can remember, "the North has more industry.") The beds are in the South. Each tower is divided into several floors of bare concrete rooms, with internal stairs. The initial crew is rattling around in there, expecting several dozen people eventually. Later in the outline, I say that people start building "rafts" and then fancier plastic platforms that Garrett thinks are deathtraps. Again, I don't know whether you absolutely need to build way above the waterline to avoid being constantly swamped.
In contrast, Phil's novel Freedom City has a Carribbean colony consisting of gigantic flat plates, all several stories above the water, with very little vertical space. (Basically it's the deck level and a seedy, dark underlevel of girders.) Deck space is extremely expensive there. I don't know how plausible that is. If the people really can build small structures lashed together right on the surface, that's much cheaper than building a whole massive tower, right? I can have characters experimenting with different architectural styles, but need them to build something plausible first.
Two other examples to look at are Oceania, an abandoned utopia project, and The Venus Project, which looks neat but is right in line with that "Star Trek is fascist" theory. Figure that the hero wants his project to look like these and ends up with something much messier, eventually realizing that that's a good thing.
My overall question is, how do I make this setup plausible? I want to start with a small group of characters, yet they arguably need huge amounts of money and manpower to do anything. The best idea I've got so far is that the chief financier is planning to use the hero's group to get initial results before bringing in additional employees.