...a few people survived outside that Singularity...
I’m not sure what this means exactly. Are they returning space explorers who are surprised by recent developments (a la Planet of the Apes)? Luddite survivors who experienced the transition and rejected it? Members of an uncontacted tribe or some primitive culture with ethnographic boundaries respected by the machine? Each of these will interpret a post-singularity world in a very different way, I think.
‘Singularity’ is code for ‘we don’t know’, so as a writer you’re permitted just about anything. But the most fun I’ve had with post-singularity fiction is when there is a dominant singleton with running themes and strong personality quirks- The Optimalverse is the reigning champion here, in my opinion, but there’s also the famous I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Gods are fun to read about when they’re mad in some way, or at least when they seem mad from a human perspective. So it’s worth thinking particularly about the forces (that is, the choices and personalities) that give internal structure to your post-Singularity world. Randomness is not compelling.
Aside from that, my advice would be to avoid anything that is too much a fantasy trope. Try not to get in to the habit of thoughts like “It’s a dragon, except [x] is different.” Make sure it’s your world that’s driving these things, and not your genre.
Actual examples, as requested- although these probably suffer from being ‘too random’ since I don’t know anything about your world:
Exactly 1.4 trillion biological humans, cloned with some variations, buried underground in cryogenic stasis near the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, on a timer to wake up automatically in ten million years. One of many contingency plans in case of catastrophe. They have never been conscious, but there is a kind of dream.
A machine intelligence (or the machine intelligence) has begun to redirect comets and asteroids from the Oort Cloud to collide with Venus. Most people assume this is part of a terraforming effort, but that theory fails to explain why the collisions always occur in groups of three equidistant points along a great circle.
There is a handful of bipedal, roughly humanoid robots walking across Asia. They walk in a straight line, climbing directly over any terrain features to avoid deviating from the path. Any time they encounter a prepubescent human, they ask for her to give them directions, and will change course to whichever direction she points. Each is separated form the others, and seem incapable of acknowledging their existence.
In Antarctica, there is currently a replica of 17th century Paris carved entirely out of ice, detailed down to the level of individual ice cobblestones and ice candles with frozen flames in ice chandeliers. Last year it was 20th-century Jakarta, and the year before that Beijing. As the year progresses, the replica changes subtly as if it were lived in; furniture moves, ships-of-the-line are slowly completed, footprints appear. Nobody has yet taken responsibility.
I’m letting myself be inspired by Robin Hanson in a number of aspects, and had the intelligence explosion focused in high-population and urban areas, with the human survivors being those who avoided being in a city during the critical period.
Exactly 1.4 trillion biological humans, cloned with some variations, buried underground in cryogenic stasis near the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, on a timer to wake up automatically in ten million years. One of many contingency plans in case of catastrophe. They have never been conscious, but there is a kind of dream.
I’m not sure I could justify “trillions”, given what I’ve established for the setting so far; but for a more modest number, this is quite possible. (In fact, it’s a variation on an idea my protagonist once had, but never had the resources to attempt; though that version of the idea included staggered release times.)
comets and asteroids
I’ve had a Kessler Cascade turn the orbitals into a death trap for anything trying to leave Earth, partly for a narrative level to avoid self-replicating Von Neumann things in space overshadowing everything my planet-bound protagonist could even attempt, and partly in-setting as a result of the conflicts that arose during the Singularity.
There is a handful of bipedal, roughly humanoid robots walking across Asia.
In Antarctica
Ah, now these I could use almost without alteration, and, at least as importantly, as springboards for further ideas. :)
I’m not sure what this means exactly. Are they returning space explorers who are surprised by recent developments (a la Planet of the Apes)? Luddite survivors who experienced the transition and rejected it? Members of an uncontacted tribe or some primitive culture with ethnographic boundaries respected by the machine? Each of these will interpret a post-singularity world in a very different way, I think.
‘Singularity’ is code for ‘we don’t know’, so as a writer you’re permitted just about anything. But the most fun I’ve had with post-singularity fiction is when there is a dominant singleton with running themes and strong personality quirks- The Optimalverse is the reigning champion here, in my opinion, but there’s also the famous I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Gods are fun to read about when they’re mad in some way, or at least when they seem mad from a human perspective. So it’s worth thinking particularly about the forces (that is, the choices and personalities) that give internal structure to your post-Singularity world. Randomness is not compelling.
Aside from that, my advice would be to avoid anything that is too much a fantasy trope. Try not to get in to the habit of thoughts like “It’s a dragon, except [x] is different.” Make sure it’s your world that’s driving these things, and not your genre.
Actual examples, as requested- although these probably suffer from being ‘too random’ since I don’t know anything about your world:
Exactly 1.4 trillion biological humans, cloned with some variations, buried underground in cryogenic stasis near the Mohorovicic Discontinuity, on a timer to wake up automatically in ten million years. One of many contingency plans in case of catastrophe. They have never been conscious, but there is a kind of dream.
A machine intelligence (or the machine intelligence) has begun to redirect comets and asteroids from the Oort Cloud to collide with Venus. Most people assume this is part of a terraforming effort, but that theory fails to explain why the collisions always occur in groups of three equidistant points along a great circle.
There is a handful of bipedal, roughly humanoid robots walking across Asia. They walk in a straight line, climbing directly over any terrain features to avoid deviating from the path. Any time they encounter a prepubescent human, they ask for her to give them directions, and will change course to whichever direction she points. Each is separated form the others, and seem incapable of acknowledging their existence.
In Antarctica, there is currently a replica of 17th century Paris carved entirely out of ice, detailed down to the level of individual ice cobblestones and ice candles with frozen flames in ice chandeliers. Last year it was 20th-century Jakarta, and the year before that Beijing. As the year progresses, the replica changes subtly as if it were lived in; furniture moves, ships-of-the-line are slowly completed, footprints appear. Nobody has yet taken responsibility.
I’m letting myself be inspired by Robin Hanson in a number of aspects, and had the intelligence explosion focused in high-population and urban areas, with the human survivors being those who avoided being in a city during the critical period.
I’m not sure I could justify “trillions”, given what I’ve established for the setting so far; but for a more modest number, this is quite possible. (In fact, it’s a variation on an idea my protagonist once had, but never had the resources to attempt; though that version of the idea included staggered release times.)
I’ve had a Kessler Cascade turn the orbitals into a death trap for anything trying to leave Earth, partly for a narrative level to avoid self-replicating Von Neumann things in space overshadowing everything my planet-bound protagonist could even attempt, and partly in-setting as a result of the conflicts that arose during the Singularity.
Ah, now these I could use almost without alteration, and, at least as importantly, as springboards for further ideas. :)