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 the 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). 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.
The largest and most advanced polities in the setting are the sixteen "Sephirotic Empires," so named due to their loose correlation with the archetypes of ancient Kabbalistic mysticism.[11] The denizens of these societies are ruled over by god-like, superintelligent artificial intelligences (AIs), called "archailects", the descendants of humanity's early artificial life experimentation. These beings are so powerful that they can utilize spacetime engineering to create new miniature universes, and are completely beyond the comprehension of normal humans. They exist as distributed intelligences in networks of planet-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", and the local transapient usually can go through the data gathered in this way to review nearly every social interaction that has ever occurred in the polity. Angelnetting, where it allows civilian weapons, restricts their use. Like most contemporary technology, weapons often have some degree of sentience.
Outside the "ultra-civilized" sephirotic regions, there is the periphery, which is described as relatively lawless and as having some brutal dictatorships. Carrying personal weapons is recommended there, but usually, they are strongly regulated.
Outside of both of these regions, there is the Seams, a civilization of civilizations with vastly different values, but are generally more chaotic and free than sephirotic life.
Extraterrestrial life exists, but the focus of the setting is on the descendants and creations of Earth life, collectively called "terragen life". Normal humans, called "baselines", are an endangered species. Their genetically and cybernetically enhanced descendants have supplanted them.
There are many types of intelligent life: nearbaselines (enhanced humans), 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 (animals with enhanced intelligence, similar to "uplift" - see below), 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 civilised 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
Types of megastructure that feature prominently in the Orion's Arm setting 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.[12] Similar to Iain M. Bank's 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.[15]
The Orion's Arm website has also been recommended in a children's teaching guide.[16]
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[17] and discussion in a paper from UC Davis.[18]
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.
Transhumanism is a philosophical and intellectual movement which advocates the enhancement of the human condition by developing and making widely available sophisticated technologies that can greatly enhance longevity and cognition.
The Age of Spiritual Machines: When Computers Exceed Human Intelligence is a non-fiction book by inventor and futurist Ray Kurzweil about artificial intelligence and the future course of humanity. First published in hardcover on January 1, 1999, by Viking, it has received attention from The New York Times, The New York Review of Books and The Atlantic. In the book Kurzweil outlines his vision for how technology will progress during the 21st century.
Extropianism, also referred to as the philosophy of extropy, is an "evolving framework of values and standards for continuously improving the human condition". Extropians believe that advances in science and technology will some day let people live indefinitely. An extropian may wish to contribute to this goal, e.g. by doing research and development or by volunteering to test new technology.
Transhuman Space (THS) is a role-playing game by David Pulver, published by Steve Jackson Games as part of the "Powered by GURPS" line. Set in the year 2100, humanity has begun to colonize the Solar System. The pursuit of transhumanism is now in full swing, as more and more people reach fully posthuman states.
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.
A megastructure is a very large artificial object, although the limits of precisely how large vary considerably. Some apply the term to any especially large or tall building. Some sources define a megastructure as an enormous self-supporting artificial construct. The products of megascale engineering or astroengineering are megastructures. The lower bound of megastructural engineering might be considered any structure that has any single dimension 1 megameter (1000 km) in length.
Megascale engineering is a form of exploratory engineering concerned with the construction of structures on an enormous scale. Typically these structures are at least 1,000 km (620 mi) in length—in other words, at least one megameter, hence the name. Such large-scale structures are termed megastructures.
Anders Sandberg is a Swedish researcher, futurist and transhumanist. He holds a PhD in computational neuroscience from Stockholm University, and is currently a senior research fellow at the Future of Humanity Institute at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow at Reuben College.
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.
Stellar engineering is a type of engineering concerned with creating or modifying stars through artificial means.
The use of nanotechnology in fiction has attracted scholarly attention. The first use of the distinguishing concepts of nanotechnology was "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom", a talk given by physicist Richard Feynman in 1959. K. Eric Drexler's 1986 book Engines of Creation introduced the general public to the concept of nanotechnology. Since then, nanotechnology has been used frequently in a diverse range of fiction, often as a justification for unusual or far-fetched occurrences featured in speculative fiction.
Many of the tropes of science fiction can be viewed as similar to the goals of transhumanism. Science fiction literature contains many positive depictions of technologically enhanced human life, occasionally set in utopian societies. However, science fiction's depictions of technologically enhanced humans or other posthuman beings frequently come with a cautionary twist. The more pessimistic scenarios include many dystopian tales of human bioengineering gone wrong.
Transcendent Man is a 2009 documentary film by American filmmaker Barry Ptolemy about inventor, futurist and author Ray Kurzweil and his predictions about the future of technology in his 2005 book, The Singularity is Near. In the film, Ptolemy follows Kurzweil around his world as he discusses his thoughts on the technological singularity, a proposed advancement that will occur sometime in the 21st century when progress in artificial intelligence, genetics, nanotechnology, and robotics will result in the creation of a human-machine civilization.
Posthuman or post-human is a concept originating in the fields of science fiction, futurology, contemporary art, and philosophy that means a person or entity that exists in a state beyond being human. The concept aims at addressing a variety of questions, including ethics and justice, language and trans-species communication, social systems, and the intellectual aspirations of interdisciplinarity.
Engineering on an astronomical scale, or astronomical engineering, i.e., engineering involving operations with whole astronomical objects, is a known theme in science fiction, as well as a matter of recent scientific research and exploratory engineering.
A self-replicating machine is a type of autonomous robot that is capable of reproducing itself autonomously using raw materials found in the environment, thus exhibiting self-replication in a way analogous to that found in nature. Such machines are often featured in works of science fiction.
The Transhumanist Bill of Rights is a crowdsourced document that conveys rights and laws to humans and all sapient entities while specifically targeting future scenarios of humanity. The original version was created by transhumanist US presidential candidate Zoltan Istvan and was posted by Zoltan on the wall of the United States Capitol building on December 14, 2015.
↑ 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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