Two of the guiding principles in the writing for Lunatics are both rationalism and optimism.
We feel these are trends that a lot of modern science fiction media has strayed away from, and we feel it’s time to bring this more positive vision back to the field. “Darker and grittier” may have its place, but after awhile, it starts to seem a little excessive, and really it’s not as realistic as advertised. In the real world, bad things do happen, but there is also usually a very positive human response to those things, and we’d like to focus on that.
Optimism isn’t a fantasy that everything will turn out great on its own — it’s confidence that even when things do go wrong, we’ll be able to do the right thing. Life is complicated, and our brave protagonists will not have an easy time of it, but in the end, this is a story about success, not about failure. Politics and physics will both present significant obstacles for our tiny Lunar colony, but our characters are clever people who can solve those problems.
Of course, implicit in this problem-solving view of the world, is Rationalism: the idea that the universe is understandable and that we as humans can figure it out. Lunatics is science fiction, not fantasy. It’s about the understandable, solvable problems.
This seems like a bit of a departure from media which seems mostly to be focused on ever more “dark” and “gritty” depictions of worlds that are basically fantasy, since they are so disconnected from our world. We think it’s time to make that change, and we want Lunatics to be part of that.
