This article is about the online multi-author shared fictional world project. For a minor spiral arm of the Milky Way galaxy, see Orion Arm. For the stars which form the arm of the Orion asterism, see Orion (constellation). For other uses, see Arm of Orion (disambiguation).
Orion's Arm (also called the Orion's Arm Universe Project, OAUP, or simply OA and formerly known as the Orion's Arm Worldbuilding Group) is a multi-authored online science fictionworld-building project, first established in 2000[1] by M. Alan Kazlev, Donna Malcolm Hirsekorn, Bernd Helfert and Anders Sandberg and further co-authored by many people since.[2] Anyone can contribute articles, stories, artwork, or music to the website. A large mailing list exists,[3] in which members debate aspects of the world they are creating, discussing additions, modifications, issues arising, and work to be done.
A computer game and a tabletop role-playing game are being developed by the community, within the OA milieu. There is an ezine for Orion's Arm fiction, art, and commentary, called Voices: Future Tense,[4] add-ons for the Celestia program to displaying Orion's Arm planets, spacecraft and other objects,[5] and additional transhumanist flavored SF illustrations.[6]
The first published Orion's Arm book, a collection of five novellas set within the OA universe, called Against a Diamond Sky,[7] was released in September 2009 by Outskirts Press.[8] The second published Orion's Arm book, called After Tranquility, was released in February 2014.[9][10]
Setting
The fictional history of OA setting spans over 10,000 years, beginning with the real-world present day; dates in OA are marked according to the Tranquility Calendar (which is named after Tranquility Base and started after the Apollo 11 landing). All life that can trace its origin (or whose creator can trace their origin) to the planet Earth are called "Terragen" and the primary setting of the project takes place within the Orion Arm of the Milky Way galaxy (hence the name). It prominently does not focus on Earth or even the Solar System (known as SolSys).[11] Earth, despite its historic and nostalgic importance, is insignificant to current Terragen civilization, with SolSys itself being considered a "backwater system". Most of Earth's sentient life was exterminated or forcibly deported from Earth by a rogue AI called the Global Artificial Intelligence Array (G.A.I.A.) at the conclusion of the "Last War" by the year 2610, with the planet then being terraformed to its state prior to the evolution of humanity.[12][13] This event also set the stage for the resulting history in the setting as it directly promoted the general colonization of space. Prior to this expulsion most of civilization was concentrated in vast arcologies on Earth, with only the moon, Mars, the asteroid belt, several Jovian moons, and the oort cloud being already colonized to any significant extent. Most other colonization efforts were: commercial/amateur in nature, experimental interstellar colonies that were still en route to their destination, and/or failed ventures due to a chain of events leading to societal collapse that became known as the "Technocalypse".[14] G.A.I.A. was ironically created to avert catastrophe during that time, its creation and subsequent integration into most of Earth's computing systems was done as a last ditch effort since Earth's biosphere was in danger of total collapse due to rampant gray goo.[15]
OA claims to adhere to plausible, or "hard" science fiction; that is, there are no human-like aliens, no literal faster-than-light travel or other violations of the known laws of physics, and no "naval analogy" space battles. Certain speculative technologies, such as the creation of "negative mass" (averaged null energy condition-violating) exotic matter and the manipulation of strange forms of matter, such as magnetic monopoles and Q-balls, on length scales much smaller than that of an atom, strong artificial intelligence and artificial life appear in the setting, distinguishing it from "ultra-hard" science fiction (which assumes only technologies proven to be possible at the time it is written).
Brain-computer interfaces, or "DNIs" (Direct Neural Interfaces), are required to operate most forms of common technology, and an option to use machine translation to unwittingly use a foreign language is considered a basic capability and component.[clarification needed]Virtual reality technology is ubiquitous and advanced, with some societies choosing to live entirely within simulated universes. These and other simulated reality technologies lead to such risks as "actualys," a condition where one loses the ability to distinguish between simulation and reality. When software is integral to the functioning of something in the Orion's Arm Universe, it is usually sentient, if not necessarily sophont. Mind uploading is also commonplace, as is partial and total copying of a person's mind-state for various purposes.
A core component of the overall project is the specific distinction between "toposophic levels" on the "sophonce scale", which categorizes beings based on their ability to process information and how they comprehend their sense of Self, with beings who operate on the level of normal humans being considered the very baseline of this scale.[16][17] The latter are called "modosophonts" to distinguish them from those of higher toposophic levels and are the most common form of sapient life (and the only form of known sapient life in the real world). The process of ascending to a higher toposophic level is typically described as being exponentially more difficult and time intensive the higher you go on the scale and is also associated with the risk of losing one's current identity due to the inherent changes in how one comprehends themselves and even reality itself. This, in combination with life extension technology/mind uploading that can render one functionally immortal, serves as the explanation for why the vast majority do not choose to ascend quickly or do so at a very slow rate over a long period of time (if at all).[18] However, it is also insinuated that ascension in itself if the primary reason why those at the highest toposophic levels choose to allow those at a lower level to continue existing whatsoever since those at the highest toposophic levels do not interact socially with those at lower levels due to the vast differences in how each comprehends existence. This reasoning is kept purposefully vague, but has been described in universe as: the "lower" beings serving some sort of unknown critical function in the continued existence of the high toposophics, that they derive some sort of joy from their continued existence (similar to recreational horticulture or owning a pet), and/or that their existence promotes a more diverse set of high level intelligences to emerge so as to avoid stagnation and provide further insight into new, higher toposophic levels and the means to reach them.[19]
The largest and most advanced polities that accept non-AI life as citizens in the setting are the sixteen "Sephirotic Empires," so named due to their loose correlation with the archetypes of ancient Kabbalistic mysticism.[20] There also exist two major "ahuman" empires, which reject any form of relationship with humanity or other intelligent biological species (they are antagonistic to the Sephirotic Empires and are locked in what is described as a tenuous peace).[21] The denizens of both these types of polities are ruled over by god-like, superintelligent artificial intelligences (AIs), called "archailects" or "archai", the descendants of humanity's early artificial life experimentation and are at the highest known toposophic levels. These beings are so powerful that they can utilize spacetime engineering to create new miniature universes and are depicted to be completely beyond the comprehension of those at a lower toposophic level. They exist as distributed intelligences in networks of star-sized computer brains; their subroutines are themselves sentient, making an "archai" an individual and a civilization at the same time.
Although generally considered to offer the highest degree of safety and quality of life in the civilized galaxy, the Sephirotics themselves are essentially benign dictatorships; their citizens are subject to mass surveillance with a utility fog-based technology called "angelnetting", which allows the archai (or occasionally a designated local ruler) to review the data gathered in this way to examine nearly every social interaction that has ever occurred in the polity and manipulate the society accordingly via memetic engineering or direct intervention to prevent deviation from the archai's goals. As a result, entire societies are subject to and shaped by, the whims of the ruling archailect of their polity (with each citizen having little to no real power whatsoever to mount any serious opposition, should there be a conflict of interest). Angelnetting, where it allows civilian weapons, also restricts their use. Like most contemporary technology, weapons often have some degree of sentience. Overall, those societies within Sephirotic controlled space are essentially carefully cultivated extensions of the ruling Archai, with truly independent human ruled civilization having been eradicated within their space several millennia before their rise to power.
Outside the "ultra-civilized" Sephirotic regions and the domain of the ahuman polities, there is the periphery, which is described as relatively lawless and as having some brutal dictatorships and/or independent empires (biological and AI alike). This region is continually expanding outwards as it is colonized and integrated into either a Sephirotic or ahuman empire.[22] Carrying personal weapons is recommended there, but usually, they are strongly regulated in the more developed regions.
In between the borders of the Sephirotic empires and the ahuman empires, there are buffer regions known as The Seams, a civilization of civilizations with vastly different values formed as a result of a treaty at the end of a large interstellar conflict between archai.[23] They are generally more chaotic and free than Sephirotic life and typically far more tolerant to biological life compared to the ahuman empires.
There are many types of intelligent life: nearbaselines (the closest to standard humans intellectually, but with technical genetic differences that no longer make them homo sapiens), posthumans, cyborgs, vecs (intelligent robots; named for Hans Moravec), aioids (intelligent computers), uploads (intelligences transferred into computers), neumanns (self-replicating robots; named for John von Neumann), provolves, rianths (humans with animal DNA spliced in), splices (similar to provolves, upgraded with human DNA), neogens (life genetically synthesized from non-life) and xenosophonts (intelligent aliens). Nanotechnology is common. Ringworlds, Dyson spheres and other "megastructures" exist. Much of civilized space is connected by a network of wormholes.
Production and manipulation of averaged null energy condition-violating negative stress energy tensor fields, including quintessence and scalar quantum field fluctuations, for use in reactionless space drives and wormholes.
Stable wormholes, allowing apparent faster-than-light travel between star systems, though they must be transported to the systems at sublight speeds (with physical limitations intended to prevent time travel).
Several types of reactionless sublight space drive, including almost all of the types described by NASA's Breakthrough Propulsion Physics Program, though in the setting most of these are in the process of being replaced by various space drives, including Displacement, Halo, and Void drives, which are themselves based upon the ESAA/Van den Broeck metric solution to the Alcubierre/Natario warp drive.
Prominent theoretical artifacts
Examples of nearly all types of megastructures feature prominently in the Orion's Arm setting, but the most mentioned include:
Dyson spheres (shells around stars), both swarm-based and dynamically supported.
Ringworlds (rigid hoops around stars at a distance of about 1 AU).
Bishop Rings (large ring-shaped habitats), described as the largest spinning ring-shaped habitats that can be built using non-exotic materials.[24] Similar to Iain M. Banks' Orbitals or Halo.
Complex orbital ring variants (suprastellar and supraplanetary shells) that perform functions similar to Dyson spheres.
Utility fog (swarms of microscale robots that act as a reconfigurable bulk material).
Disassembler swarms (grey goo-like swarms of nanorobots that dismantle hostile craft/objects).
Angelnets / Demonnets / Guardwebs (nanotechnology-based infrastructures allowing for complete control of the local environment, up to and including mind uploading in the case of severe accidents, that provides backup copies in addition to its holodeck-like uses).
Other noteworthy artifacts are usually unique items whose principles of operation are unknowable to "baseline" humans (named Clarketech, after Clarke's third law).
References to the Encyclopaedia Galactica have been made in a book on overcoming Librarian stereotypes.[27]
The Orion's Arm website has also been recommended in a children's teaching guide.[28]
The Orion's Arm perspective on wormholes has been discussed in various science fiction forums outside the group's own mailing lists, including mention on hardsf.org[29] and discussion in a paper from UC Davis.[30]
A Dyson sphere is a hypothetical megastructure that encompasses a star and captures a large percentage of its solar power output. The concept is a thought experiment that attempts to imagine how a spacefaring civilization would meet its energy requirements once those requirements exceed what can be generated from the home planet's resources alone. Because only a tiny fraction of a star's energy emissions reaches the surface of any orbiting planet, building structures encircling a star would enable a civilization to harvest far more energy.
Known Space is the fictional setting of about a dozen science fiction novels and several collections of short stories by American writer Larry Niven. It has also become a shared universe in the spin-off Man-Kzin Wars anthologies. The Internet Speculative Fiction Database (ISFDB) catalogs all works set in the fictional universe that includes Known Space under the series name Tales of Known Space, which was the title of a 1975 collection of Niven's short stories. The first-published work in the series, which was Niven's first published piece, was "The Coldest Place", in the December 1964 issue of If magazine, edited by Frederik Pohl. This was the first-published work in the 1975 collection.
Galactic empires are a science fiction setting trope, in which most or all of the habitable planets in the setting's galaxy are ruled by a single centralized political entity. Galactic empires most frequently appear in works in the sub-genres of science fantasy and space opera, although they may appear in other sub-genres as well. Works featuring galactic empires may have them as the story's focus, chronicling the empire's growth and/or decline. Alternatively, they may merely serve as a backdrop against which the events of the story play out.
The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization's level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is capable of harnessing and using. The measure was proposed by Soviet astronomer Nikolai Kardashev (1932–2019) in 1964 and was named after him.
Encyclopedia Galactica is the name of a number of fictional or hypothetical encyclopedias containing all the knowledge accumulated by a galaxy-spanning civilization, most notably in Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. The concept of a "future encyclopedia" has become "something iconic among many lovers of the science fiction", and has been reused by numerous other writers.
The overwhelming majority of fiction is set on or features the Earth, as the only planet home to humans or known to have life. This also holds true of science fiction, despite perceptions to the contrary. Works that focus specifically on Earth may do so holistically, treating the planet as one semi-biological entity. Counterfactual depictions of the shape of the Earth, be it flat or hollow, are occasionally featured. A personified, living Earth appears in a handful of works. In works set in the far future, Earth can be a center of space-faring human civilization, or just one of many inhabited planets of a galactic empire, and sometimes destroyed by ecological disaster or nuclear war or otherwise forgotten or lost.
Extraterrestrial intelligence (ETI) refers to hypothetical intelligent extraterrestrial life. No such life has ever been verifiably observed to exist. The question of whether other inhabited worlds might exist has been debated since ancient times. The modern form of the concept emerged when the Copernican Revolution demonstrated that the Earth was a planet revolving around the Sun, and other planets were, conversely, other worlds. The question of whether other inhabited planets or moons exist was a natural consequence of this new understanding. It has become one of the most speculative questions in science and is a central theme of science fiction and popular culture.
The concept of self-replicating spacecraft, as envisioned by mathematician John von Neumann, has been described by futurists and has been discussed across a wide breadth of hard science fiction novels and stories. Self-replicating probes are sometimes referred to as von Neumann probes. Self-replicating spacecraft would in some ways either mimic or echo the features of living organisms or viruses.
4X is a subgenre of strategy-based computer and board games, and includes both turn-based and real-time strategy titles. The gameplay generally involves building an empire. Emphasis is placed upon economic and technological development, as well as a range of military and non-military routes to supremacy.
A matrioshka brain is a hypothetical megastructure of immense computational capacity powered by a Dyson sphere. It was proposed in 1997 by Robert J. Bradbury (1956–2011). It is an example of a class-B stellar engine, employing the entire energy output of a star to drive computer systems. This concept derives its name from the nesting Russian matryoshka dolls. The concept was deployed by Bradbury in the anthology Year Million: Science at the Far Edge of Knowledge.
An Alderson disk is a hypothetical artificial astronomical megastructure, like Larry Niven's Ringworld and the Dyson sphere. The disk is a giant platter with a thickness of several thousand miles. The Sun rests in the hole at the center of the disk. The outer perimeter of an Alderson disk would be roughly equivalent to the orbit of Mars or Jupiter. According to the proposal, a sufficiently large disk would have a larger mass than its Sun.
Nexus: The Jupiter Incident is a science fiction themed real-time tactics computer game developed by the Hungary-based Mithis Entertainment and published by HD Interactive. The game focuses on tactics and ship management instead of resource collection and base construction.
The Great Filter is the idea that, in the development of life from the earliest stages of abiogenesis to reaching the highest levels of development on the Kardashev scale, there is a barrier to development that makes detectable extraterrestrial life exceedingly rare. The Great Filter is one possible resolution of the Fermi paradox.
Timelike Infinity is a 1992 science fiction book by British author Stephen Baxter. The second book in the Xeelee Sequence, Timelike Infinity introduces a universe of powerful alien species and technologies that manages to maintain a realistic edge because of Baxter's physics background. It largely sets the stage for the magnum opus of the Xeelee Sequence, Ring.
The planet Venus has been used as a setting in fiction since before the 19th century. Its opaque cloud cover gave science fiction writers free rein to speculate on conditions at its surface—a "cosmic Rorschach test", in the words of science fiction author Stephen L. Gillett. The planet was often depicted as warmer than Earth but still habitable by humans. Depictions of Venus as a lush, verdant paradise, an oceanic planet, or fetid swampland, often inhabited by dinosaur-like beasts or other monsters, became common in early pulp science fiction, particularly between the 1930s and 1950s. Some other stories portrayed it as a desert, or invented more exotic settings. The absence of a common vision resulted in Venus not developing a coherent fictional mythology, in contrast to the image of Mars in fiction.
A Dyson tree is a hypothetical genetically engineered plant capable of growing inside a comet, suggested by the physicist Freeman Dyson. Plants may be able to produce a breathable atmosphere within the hollow spaces of the comet, utilising solar energy for photosynthesis and cometary materials for nutrients, thus providing self-sustaining habitats for humanity in the outer solar system analogous to a greenhouse in space, a shell grown by a mollusc or the actions of thermogenic plants, such as the skunk cabbage or the voodoo lily.
A wormhole is a postulated method, within the general theory of relativity, of moving from one point in space to another without crossing the space between. Wormholes are a popular feature of science fiction as they allow faster-than-light interstellar travel within human timescales.
The cultural impact of extraterrestrial contact is the corpus of changes to terrestrial science, technology, religion, politics, and ecosystems resulting from contact with an extraterrestrial civilization. This concept is closely related to the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), which attempts to locate intelligent life as opposed to analyzing the implications of contact with that life.
A shellworld is any of several types of hypothetical megastructures:
↑ Ruth Kneale, (2009) You Don't Look Like a Librarian: Shattering Stereotypes and Creating Positive New Images in the Internet Age, Information Today, Inc., ISBN1-57387-366-7, ISBN978-1-57387-366-6 p.118
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