Saturday 30 March 2024

The Interstellar Regimes

The Long Way Home.

Valti's offer to Langely includes:

"'...you can be set up on some human-colonized planet beyond the region known to Sol and Centauri. There are many lovely worlds out there, a wide cultural variety, places where you can feel at home again. Your monetary reward will give you a good start.'" (CHAPTER EIGHT, p. 82)

Brannoch's offer:

"'I'm prepared to offer a very generous payment, protection, and transportation to a world of your choice...'" (CHAPTER NINE, p. 91)

Despite the light-speed limit, despite also the many farther away civilizations that have become what I call "beyond contact," there is nevertheless a large number of inhabited planetary systems that are in regular contact with each other. And there are both human colonials and "Eties."

Alpha Centauri A has two humanly colonized planets, Thor and Freyja. Alpha B has two planets being gradually terraformed. The red dwarf, Proxima Centauri, also part of the triple star system, Alpha, has an inhabited gas giant, Thrym. The League of Alpha Centauri comprises Thorians and Thrymans with the latter possibly more powerful. A Thryman is a six-foot disc with six legs, head and sense organs in bulges at the centre of the disc. They are telepathic.

We have yet to summarize the set-up either in the Solar Technarchy or in the Commercial Society.

1 comment:

Sean M. Brooks said...

Kaor, Paul!

I've been rereading Stirling's BLACK CHAMBER books, and over and over in the series it's stressed that good intelligence agencies not only knows how to be ruthless when necessary, they also keep their promises to whoever they recruit. A double agent can be offered protection, relocation of him and his family to a safe place, and a financial reward.

Something we also see in ENSIGN FLANDRY, when Commander Abrams made similar promises to Dwyr the Hook.

Ad astra! Sean