by 
Treating deep space as a local neighborhood. Too often, script ideas show characters bouncing from solar system to solar system, planet to planet, without the slightest comprehension of the distances involved or the technologies required to support such travel.
Amen to that.
Още когато сядах да пиша TCW, отпърво си създадох списък със сетингови парадигми, които да ме водят по принцип (за да си пиша сюжета спокойно без светова "детайлност" и същевременно без да влизам в противоречие на по-късен етап).
Първите три парадигми? Посветени именно на мащабите на космоса. Защото Sci-Fi Writers Have No Sense of Scale. Съответно:
TCW setting paradigms wrote:1. Space is HUGE. HUGE!
- That means colonies act like "islands of influence" amidst vast "wilderness" where anyone and anything goes
2. Space is DANGEROUS.
- Instead of hundreds/thousands of crowded "Core Worlds" and vast number of "Frontier Worlds", there are only between a few dozen or a hundred and change colonized systems interspersed irregularly, and of varying levels of infrastructure and population density
- Terraforming is often more expensive than finding a "garden world" out of the box, though it is used in lesser forms on already established colonies in order to expand the system's capability, comfort, and livable area
- Exploration is akin to 16th century Age of Sail - survival is NOT guaranteed, due to the uncertainty of hyperspace (Paradigm #5) and the large numbers of cosmic anomalies a la "Лунна дъга" which are surmountable only by trained and/or experienced professionals
3. Space is UNKNOWN.
- The cosmos still holds many secrets
- Some of them are possible to turn up even in "well-explored" regions, due to sheer scale of space (Paradigm #1), and the hazards associated with exploration (Paradigm #2)
