Dead Sun Bible:
Dead Sun is an umbrella name for a planned series stories set in a shared science-fiction setting. I want this to be more of a loose association of stories in a vaguely shared environment instead of something with a tightly constructed backstory.
The Dead Sun is the name given by the inhabitants of a solar system at the far end of time. The “sun” is a device – about one quarter the size of our sun – that provides both a gravity well for the system, but also has some ill-defined role in how items arrive in the realm.
The system is roughly the size of our solar system – 35.5 Astronomical Units in diameter (an AU is 93 million miles). Within this vast space (the volume of the sphere is 258,023 AU) is debris culled from throughout the universe and time. Whoever built the Dead Sun didn’t leave an instruction manual, or an easy blow-by-blow chart as to how items – up to the size of a planet – are grabbed, or how people are found to populate it. This is known:
1) Items are drawn from throughout time and space and even from dimensions outside of our own.
2) Though the “sun” doesn’t give off light or heat, those who are brought are expected to survive, at the very least, the journey, so atmospheres, light, heat and gravity sources are somehow provided.
3) Every attempt to penetrate the Dead Sun has failed. Those who make it all the way to the center do not return.
4) Though ftl and warp-style ships are possible (and something like that must be used to drag folks out of time and space) they do not work within the system. Even faster ships will take several years to make it from one edge of the system to the other.
5) Those who try to escape are turned back by the Dead Sun at the border of its influence. Sometimes, ships cannot pass. Some may be transported to a random spot inside the system. In others words – once you are there, you are stuck.
Stories:
This is an anything goes type of environment. Not only are items drawn from throughout, but time itself is fluid in the area. There are thousands of habitats within the area, some as small as spacestations, others vast pieces of a Dyson sphere with their own artificial suns and sizes much larger than the Earth. It’s also big enough and travel is slow enough that a region wide empire is most likely impossible, not only due to size (think of the Romans and how they fell, only much much bigger) but also the nature of the place. You could get halfway through the empire and then discover that the places you conquered the year before have regressed 20 years and all of your troops are gone.
That isn’t to say regions can’t have wars, or vast threats, or heroes. Just about anything in a science fiction (or some types of fantasy – remember the Dead Sun pulls from everywhere and everywhen) can go.
A key to all of this is that there is no master plot underneath it. Continuity only matters within a single story or series of stories. Contradictions aren’t just fine, but encouraged. More than anything, I want Dead Sun to be messy, the way comics in the 1960s or TV shows like the original Star Trek and Doctor Who were. The hope is that as more pieces of the puzzle are crafted, interesting spaces for stories will emerge, but are not in turn constricted by a vast bible that has all of the details down the last piece.
Dead Sun is an umbrella name for a planned series stories set in a shared science-fiction setting. I want this to be more of a loose association of stories in a vaguely shared environment instead of something with a tightly constructed backstory.
The Dead Sun is the name given by the inhabitants of a solar system at the far end of time. The “sun” is a device – about one quarter the size of our sun – that provides both a gravity well for the system, but also has some ill-defined role in how items arrive in the realm.
The system is roughly the size of our solar system – 35.5 Astronomical Units in diameter (an AU is 93 million miles). Within this vast space (the volume of the sphere is 258,023 AU) is debris culled from throughout the universe and time. Whoever built the Dead Sun didn’t leave an instruction manual, or an easy blow-by-blow chart as to how items – up to the size of a planet – are grabbed, or how people are found to populate it. This is known:
1) Items are drawn from throughout time and space and even from dimensions outside of our own.
2) Though the “sun” doesn’t give off light or heat, those who are brought are expected to survive, at the very least, the journey, so atmospheres, light, heat and gravity sources are somehow provided.
3) Every attempt to penetrate the Dead Sun has failed. Those who make it all the way to the center do not return.
4) Though ftl and warp-style ships are possible (and something like that must be used to drag folks out of time and space) they do not work within the system. Even faster ships will take several years to make it from one edge of the system to the other.
5) Those who try to escape are turned back by the Dead Sun at the border of its influence. Sometimes, ships cannot pass. Some may be transported to a random spot inside the system. In others words – once you are there, you are stuck.
Stories:
This is an anything goes type of environment. Not only are items drawn from throughout, but time itself is fluid in the area. There are thousands of habitats within the area, some as small as spacestations, others vast pieces of a Dyson sphere with their own artificial suns and sizes much larger than the Earth. It’s also big enough and travel is slow enough that a region wide empire is most likely impossible, not only due to size (think of the Romans and how they fell, only much much bigger) but also the nature of the place. You could get halfway through the empire and then discover that the places you conquered the year before have regressed 20 years and all of your troops are gone.
That isn’t to say regions can’t have wars, or vast threats, or heroes. Just about anything in a science fiction (or some types of fantasy – remember the Dead Sun pulls from everywhere and everywhen) can go.
A key to all of this is that there is no master plot underneath it. Continuity only matters within a single story or series of stories. Contradictions aren’t just fine, but encouraged. More than anything, I want Dead Sun to be messy, the way comics in the 1960s or TV shows like the original Star Trek and Doctor Who were. The hope is that as more pieces of the puzzle are crafted, interesting spaces for stories will emerge, but are not in turn constricted by a vast bible that has all of the details down the last piece.
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