Hello, dreamers. This month is an exciting one for me. After years of hard work, I am preparing to query Pioneers, and release my first book series, Turn of the Century. That means that, for the first time, readers at large will be introduced to my overarching fictional future, which I’ve long called the Dotiverse.
This month, every Saturday I’ll be posting “Into the Dotiverse”, giving readers a glimpse into this fictional future, one they’re about to become very familiar with. Read on, and dream with me.
Part 2: The Timeline of the Dotiverse
My early background work on the Dotiverse was all over the place. After all, I had hundreds of years of fictional history to flesh out. So I would get a story idea, then start building around it. Over time, however, most of my work began to coalesce around several distinct eras. In recent years, I’ve begun working mostly within those set eras, which are currently as follows:
The Solar Era
The detailed portion of my continuity begins with what I’ve dubbed the “Solar Era”, running from roughly 2090 to 2114. By this point, humanity is united under the United Nations of Earth, and has become a spacefaring species. The conquest of space is the sole, overriding goal of humanity. Leading the charge is the Earth Space Administration (ESA), the space exploration and logistics arm of the UNE, formed from the amalgamation of existing space programs including NASA.
By the 2090s, millions of humans have left Earth. Earth’s orbit has become increasingly crowded, with wheeled space stations both in near-Earth orbit and at three of its Lagrange points. Another station, Halo 1, sits in a halo orbit of Luna, Earth’s moon. Mars is being colonized, but by this point, the outer planets are the frontier of human space exploration.
Bases have been build on the Jovian moons Callisto and Ganymede, to assess mineral resources and the prospects of terraforming. Further outposts are planned for Titan in orbit of Saturn, and Triton, the largest moon of Neptune. These bases are serviced by the Poseidon Deep Space Vehicle (DSV): a massive spacecraft driven by a circular solar sail ten kilometers in diameter, which allows it to reach Jupiter in approximately two years.
The resources to supply such feats of engineering are gathered from the Asteroid Belt. There, massive ships manned by minerologists and metallurgists break down asteroids with magnetic rakes and massive funnels, fueling mankind’s expansion. Also, in the mind-2090s humanity launches its first manned extrasolar missions, under the Pathfinder Programme. My upcoming book series Turn of the Century and a planned prequel to Pioneers, Pathfinder, take place within this era.
The Pioneers Era
Running from roughly 2114 to 2130, the Pioneers Era marks the transition of humanity into an interstellar civilization. This transition occurs through several major events:
- The terraforming of extrasolar planets, starting with planets in the Proxima Centauri and Sirius star systems.
- The start of the Aquarius Missions, in which ESA dispatches endurance spacecraft to conduct manned exploration of the surfaces of habitable exoplanets.
- The launch of the Samarkand Expedition, which arrives in orbit of the ninth planet of Megrez, beginning the colonization of the Ursa Major Moving Group.
This period marks the beginning of humanity’s expansion into the galaxy, as extrasolar travel becomes routine. Humanity has begun launching unmanned probes, known as Journeyman probes, to nearby star systems. Most space exploration is conducted by robotic probes, with manned missions only launched to potentially-habitable planets to search for life. Those manned missions begin under ESA’s Aquarius Programme, beginning with the Aquarius 1 mission to a habitable moon in the Rigil Kentaurus star system.
By this point, Mars has been terraformed and re-settled, and terraforming is underway on Venus, with plans to do so on several moons of the outer planets, as well. As mentioned above, terraforming is also planned or underway in several other star systems.
The founding of colonies in the Ursa Group, which lies on average eighty light years from Earth, also begins the divergence of human civilization for the first time since the eighteenth century. My complete and soon-to-be querying novel Pioneers takes place within this era, as does my upcoming WIP, Aquarius 1.
The Other Earths Era
The third and latest era I’ve written in, the Other Earths Era runs roughly from 2130-2170, making it the most expansive era thus far. By this point, humanity has become a fully interstellar species: human colonies are scattered across roughly two dozen exoplanets. Most of these planets have two things in common:
-They are terraformed, and thus would never have naturally supported life.
-They lie within a radius of approximately fifty light-years from Earth.
This radius is established organically, due to the use of quantum communication, which allows instantaneous communication between two points, but only across a finite distance. Notably, this places the growing colonies of the Ursa Group out of range, with all communication between Earth’s inner colonies and the group conducted through a relay on the OutReach 1 space station orbiting the star Talitha.
As early as the 2140s, independent cultures have developed on many of the terraformed exoplanets. Though humanity is capable of faster-than-light travel, the drives used ( the Alcubierre-Casimir Drive, a form of warp drive) are limited. Due to the immense power constraints, human spacecraft are limited to traveling no faster than roughly 13 times the speed of light. Thus, travel between inhabited star systems is still measured in years. This distance leads to isolation, mitigated only by quantum communication with Earth.
In the Ursa Colonies, however, a common culture develops. This arises due to the proximity of the stars to one another; most stars of the Ursa Major Moving Group lie within two light years of one another, but an average of eighty light years from Earth. This leads the colonists, who have settled on non-terraformed worlds, to band together in common cause. And this will ultimately lead to conflict with Earth.
The Future
Though I have not written any actual fiction beyond the Other Earths Era, I am by no means done. The entire Dotiverse concept initially arose from stories of humans exploring space in the 23rd and 24th centuries. And though there’s been no actual writing within those later periods yet, I’ve written plenty of notes about where the story will go. I currently have plans for stories that will extend well into the early 24th century, and possibly beyond.
Next week, I’ll start venturing deeper into detail about the Dotiverse, starting where it all began: Earth, the Pale Blue Dot itself. Until then, dare to dream. – MK
Writing Tomorrow 