#amazon b.e.

[tektalox]

Interstellar Society and how to make it work

Known space consists of several small governments and corporations, all of which have different resources and practices. All of this spread over vast distances makes a centralized cohesive government more or less impossible. But instead of allowing everbody to fend for themselves, several influential agencies trying to spread and maintain common ideals is the better alternative. These so called Stellar Institutes (SIs) keep an eye on the various governments and corporations and make sure they follow basic ethical standards.

While they are basically giant advocacy groups, think tanks and environmental/humanitarian organizations, they are powerful enough to enforce their will making them sort of like super-nations bossing around smaller nations. Enforcement methods include everything from simple whistle blowing and denial of service to even fines and ’justice wars’.

As vast organizations, the Institutes themselves have no centralized ruling body with adherence to the basic ideals being the core that supposedly unites the scattered Institute-stations, and regular communication between them helps them agree what the basic ideal is and improve when needed. This of course requires that the SIs run on trust and honesty and impartiality, but not even the Institutes are perfect. Some Institute members still carry biases and even agendas from their society of origin, and even minds born with Institute ideals can get some dubious ideas.

Although everybody is in theory equal within the Institutes, in practice some member societies or clades have more influence than other, making them the unofficial or even official rulers of most if not all stations within the organization. For example; while everybody has a saying in the SIoC&CE it is the Siblinghood of Tethys who’re the brains of the Institute.

Stellar Institute of Settlement & Migration (SIoS&M) This Institute monitors which celestial bodies (including asteroid belts) are open for settlement and industrial use. If they find a place with a rare phenomenon (such as alien life), the institute can declare it off-limits to colonize or industrialize allowing the celestial body to be a nature reserve. Any unauthorized being (either an illegal colony ship or free-roaming Von Neumann probe) that tries to visit such a place will be evicted or destroyed of it ignores warnings. SIoS&M also administer inter-planetary/stellar travel, mapping the movement of celestial bodies and spaceships, planning safe and optimal routes for travelers.

Stellar Institute of Security & Controlled Conflict (SIoS&CC) The Institute maintains the safety of settlements, evaluating the risks of dangers such as potential meteorites or grey goo outbreaks and deals with such threats through armed force. SIoS&CC also handles conflicts with rules designed to favor the underdog, halt escalation, limit civilian casualties, and deter ecological damage.

Stellar Institute of Free Culture & Transparent Information (SIoFC&TI) The task of this Institute is to preserve all history, science and art produced by civilization and make it all available to the citizens, ’information wants to be free’ is their motto. It works to keep all authorities (governments or corporations) transparent and accountable, allowing citizens to have a saying about authority plans and actions. Due to their philosophy, this Institute tend to be in conflict with authorities that wants to keep state secrets and copyright laws.

Stellar Institute of Bio-Design & Terraforming (SIoB&T) This very influental Institute is tasked with overseeing the creation of new biospheres both on space-stations or planets. The Institute dictates what kinds of modifications can be made to a solar system in order to make its worlds habitable and provides guidelines for how the inhabitants can adapt to the worlds.

Stellar Institute of Caring & Co-Existence (SIoC&C) This Institute primarily works with protecting and helping sapient beings, making sure that they are treated with fairness and compassion. It also works with managing relations between different forms of life, and the Institute protect and raise alien species as well.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Body Horror

This is a horror trope I have been exposed to early in my life, mostly through Cartoon Network shows. Whenever I want to spook myself I’ll imagine monsters with decayed bodies, but teratomas and embryo-like forms are other flavors of ugly I like.

During Armageddon - Happens all over the place during the reign of the fallen angels. After billions of years of desolation, the angels finds pleasure in remaking organisms, especially humans, into their twisted image. Lesser demons are guarantied to have pitiful forms (such as mummies that can only eat by shoving rotting waste into their ruptured abdomens) but even greater demons can have gruesome appearances (like predatory horses with five extendable tongues and detachable jaws). And that is just the fauna, there is plenty of mutagenic microbiota and poisons that can warp demons even more.

Duck Avenger: Earth’s Galactic Era - Advanced nanotech can be used for drastic body changes. Organisms altered by weaponized or malfunctioning nanites are truly the work of nightmares. There’s a good reason why this tech is so strongly regulated.

Amazon B.E. - With most Terran nations possessing superadvanced biotech, it is a given that a few bad apples have used it to control and torture others. And some people invert this trope by having their bodies dramatically altered the consensual way. Madame Darkayda are one of these people and she wants to turn into something that wouldn’t look out of place in ”Berserk”.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Speculative Fiction LGBT

Of course there will be LGBT+ stuff in my worlds. It allows more diverse characters if non-heteronormative traits are included. I’m not doing this just to appeal to specific demographics, I’m also doing it because I’m a little queer myself.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - The Ness are naturally Non-Human Non-Binary. They do have biological sexes but it is not relevant in their social roles. The main characters Happy Ness and Lovely Ness (both female-coded) are even a lesbian couple.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - Most of interstellar terran civilization is very open to free gender-expression and sexuality. Extreme examples include individuals that easily change sex by themselves, and species that naturally have multiple sexes or no biological sex at all.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Inscrutable Aliens

Sometimes aliens are more interesting when they bring more questions than answers. But it is still good for a worldbuilder to have some idea for what their inscrutable alien is about even if they will never officially reveal it. That will make your mysterious alien come across as an actual being rather than a cheap special effect. I also hope that there are more ways this trope could be used beyond one-note alien invaders.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - When the Terrans do discover aliens, either live ones or their remains, it would be fun adding a mystery or more. Enigmas could be that one alien organism that doesn’t seem to be related to the rest of the ecosystem it is in, or a derelict mega-structure of no obvious purpose.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - This optimistic series will deconstruct the trope: even if the aliens are very mysterious, concluding that they are ’too alien’ to ever understand would be dangerous as that attitude basically could dehumanize them (and making it more probable for the aliens to dehumanize us in turn). Just because they seem inscrutable now, it doesn’t mean that you should give up trying to understand them.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Invisible Aliens

I find it boring that we haven’t found solid proofs of extraterrestrial life yet, despite the fact that the universe is old and large enough to have lots of aliens, a fact called the Fermi Paradox. When thinking about why this might be the case, the simplest explanation could be that the evolution of life is such a complex and delicate process that it occurs very rarely. Regarding other answers to the Fermi Paradox, the most fun ones are when aliens, for the moment, are undetectable one way or another. Sure, maybe this may inspire paranoia to some, to me this is an optimistic scenario with is a lot of wonders waiting to be found.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - Since this space opera is based on our real life universe, it too have an apparent absence of alien civilizations in our interstellar neighborhood. There are many explanations for this: one optimistic theory is that aliens and their technology are so alien that we don’t know how to identify them. A more pessimistic theory claims that civilized life is rare and most examples goes extinct before they can have an lasting impact on the cosmos. Whatever the reasons are, most alien life will be discovered later rather than sooner.

Duck Avenger: Earth’s Galactic Era - This trope is definitely averted here. Even before the aliens arrived in our solar system, there are tons of evidence that extraterrestial biospheres and civilizations are common in the galaxy. Such evidence could be fossilized microbes in asteroids, the sign of oxygen atmospheres on several exoplanets, and the drive plume of a Generation Ship.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Solar Punk

This is a genre that I agree with. It is important to make fiction with worldbuilding emphasizing ecological sustainability, cultural inclusiveness and economical fairness so that the public knows what a better future could look like and thus work towards it.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - Ecological sustainability has been a social virtue to the Ness since the beginning of their civilization. This is justified by the limits of their home environment; when you spend your entire life in enclosing caves, it is important to maintain and even create ecological cycles so that vital resources won’t be completely exhausted.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - This is a legal requirement in the majority of Terran space civilization and a nations status is determined by complexity and sustainability of a designed habitat. There’s even quests for attaining what is called the Eco-Technological Magnum Opus; a state where machines approach the thermodynamic equilibria of the environment and economics is replaced by an ecology where nothing is wasted. In other words, a civilization so efficient it is indistinguashable from surrounding wilderness.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Eldritch Abomination

Love this trope along with Starfish Aliens. But honestly, I find this trope to be an oxymoron with maybe some Trope Decay: TV Tropes defines these as something that defy the laws of reality, but if something appears in the story (no matter how unexpected and strange) then it is by definition part of the storys reality. There is nothing that can be truly unnatural, instead there are either unknown things which completely challenges our worldview or well-known beings that are considered inimical to life as we know it. Considering the fact that ’abominable’ is a subjective quality, I might even invert this trope, having eldritch beauties.

During Armageddon - the fallen angels are abstract beings that are beyond mankinds modern understanding of physics, while also representing physics (both familiar and alien ones). When empowered, the angels are capable of transforming the world, filling it with magic. Even demons, especially archdemons, can have biology-defying forms sustained by magic.

Gazing Starlight - Archeologists studying extinct civilizations have noticed a disturbing trend; most civilized species were killed off by monstrous forces called the Greater Beasts and Curses of Despair. No Beast/Curse is alike but they’re all defined as living extinction events that pop out of nowhere and soon disappear after all sapient life is destroyed.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - In the deepest parts of the Melange dwells immense entities mentioned in ancient legends. According to the stories these Lords roamed the Melange before the beginning of Ness civilization but are now confined to the hellish and hostile DeepGulfs for having defied the order of the Harbingers. The only proof of their existence are giant locked vaults and ghastly groaning heard from the other side of the seals. The Harbingers themselves were an inversion: while they were of a completely different existence compared to their creations, they are revered as wardens of life as we know it.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - There is a subculture, CryptoXenology, dedicated to the hypothesizing and search of entities that (currently) exist beyond Terran perception and understanding. While most of these ’cryptids’ are merely hypothetical, there are reports about unexplainable phenomenon and strange life-like shapes in otherwise barren environments.

[tektalox]

Time for Tropes: Precursors

There are so many ways this fun plot device can be used in when I want to add historical depth to my universes, justify why/how the status quo was established in the first place, and give young civilizations access to awesome and valuable things that their current technology is not capable of creating.

Duck Avenger: Earth’s Galactic Era - Even among alien species older than mankind there are stories about elders among elders called Megaforms. These are not extinct but they tend to mind their own business and very rarely intervene.

HN-tSotL 2.0. - According to the Ness history, long before the the rise of Ness civilization existed the Harbingers which taught the primeval Ness how to care for the environment before they disappeared. Evidence of their existence comes in the form of bizarre ruins and artefacts. One object proves that the Harbingers seeded the Melange with organisms from another universe.

Gazing Starlight - The Stars have seen the rise and falls of many species throughout the Earth’s million year long history, each civilization being very different from one another. All of them have fallen victim to both natural and anthropogenic disasters but a few small remnants do survive in forgotten parts of the world. Archeology is a very adventurous profession here.

Amazon B.E. (Beyond Earth) - Some Alien-Believers think that when the universe was very young, some time before stars were even born, there were super-intelligences that actively modified the physics of the universe to allow the thriving of future life forms. Exactly what these hypothetical intelligences were, when they arised and how they modified the universe depends on who you ask.