Let’s talk about set(ting) baby!

Yes that title is there entirely for the pun.

With editing work on Oranje about to start I thought I would talk about the setting for the story and some of the themes that will be part of it. This post will summarise them and then I’ll elaborate on each one in its own entry but I hope these will help communicate a lot of the ideas behind the setting.

  • The when – The September series and subsequent stories set in the same universe will take place over a thousand years in the future where humanity has spread across the galaxy and there are hundreds of colonised worlds.
  • A decelarando universe – Best summed up by this article from Rocketpunk Manifesto, technological progress in the setting has slowed down so tech wise it is not too far from what might be seen over the next few centuries (or at least as much as we can predict).
  • Balkanised humanity – Once united humanity is now divided into nations that do not tend to go beyond the region of space they are in. September is one of those regions.
  • ‘Realistic’ technologies – Spacecraft are powered by nuclear reactors and use chemical engines to get around. Radiators are a necessity to get rid of heat, 3d printing is used in construction and also in medical areas as well. It’s aiming to be based about what we can predict now
  • Well, mostly realistic technologies – This is not aiming to be hard sci-fi, there are a few additional techs added for story reasons. Those being faster-than-light travel and communications and artificial gravity. These technologies are going to have sensible limitations on them, no appearing in high orbit to drop hugely accelerated bombs on a planet then disappearing in the blink of an eye.
  • Diverse humanity – We’re a diverse species and I intend to get some of that across in the setting for the book. Much of the population of worlds in September are from Africa and India originally and I’m trying to avoid mono-culture planets as much as possible as a) they’re not very realistic b) they’re not very interesting either.

So those are the goals I am aiming for with the setting and the background to the story. I want it to feel like it is part of an on-going history and world that exists and not just a background that has been created just for this story to exist in. It should be complex, diverse, difficult and layered.

It should be a setting based on humans for a story about people.

Next time, I talk more about why I’m setting it so far in the future.