I just realized I haven’t yet told all of you about my ultimate plans for Earth in the far future of my space opera setting! In my post “Taking my Space Opera Setting into the Extremely Far Future”, I left them ambiguous, but now I’ve … Continue readingThe Lastborn of Mother Earth
I’ve mentioned some aspects of physics in my science-fiction setting before, but now I feel like taking the opportunity to add some more thoughts. The most characteristic extension of our real-life understanding of physics in my space-opera setting is an infinity of naturally-occurring wormholes at … Continue readingSome Physics of My Space Opera Universe
What if the universe had expanded much more slowly, so that Big Bang Nucleosynthesis lasted not a mere 20 minutes but rather, say, a trillion years? The age of stars would begin far later and start with a lot more heavy elements, completely reshaping the … Continue readingWorldbuilding an Expanding Universe
I know just last week I posted about taking my space opera into the really far future, millions of years from now, but since then I’ve been thinking about going all the way, to orders of magnitude longer time scales. Many orders of magnitude. As … Continue readingTaking My Space Opera into the Extremely Far Future
Last year I spent a lot of time worldbuilding the far future of my space opera setting, a time over a thousand years from today when the technology for opening up wormholes to anywhere in the cosmos is invented, unleashing a revolutionary surge in exploration … Continue readingTaking my Space Opera into the Really Far Future
“What?” you might ask: “Third Rome? Viking Tsars? Russian Turan?” I’m talking, of course, about what happens in the Russian sphere of influence in my alternate timeline, the history all of my science-fiction and space opera stories, from the 20th century to over a thousand … Continue readingThird Rome, Viking Tsars, Russian Turan, and Beyond
As I touched upon in a previous post, it’s a bit odd we don’t have mile-high futuristic towers in our cities built by the richest companies in the world to show off their power, and just because humanity can. Well, I’m a science fiction writer … Continue readingA Short Story in the Urban Fabric?
In alternate history one cliche is for a polity, society, or culture to “pull a Meiji”, referring to a rapid modernization and industrialization, the archetypal case being Japan under Emperor Meiji in the late 19th century, when Japan ascended to become one of the great … Continue readingPulling a Meiji in the Arctic?
It’s recently struck me that people in the science-fiction setting I write in and worldbuild live dangerously, or, more to the point, just don’t have the kind of risk aversion and (as I like to put it) “safety cultism” that plagues our modern cultures in … Continue readingLiving Dangerously on the High Frontier
One idea I’ve had for a story I’d write in the future is to make one about the “bloody wars” that were fought over the warp gates about a thousand years into the future before the law of dueling was put in place, a bit … Continue readingSpectres of Space