Orion's Arm - FAQs page - Miscellaneous Questions

What happens when history overtakes the OA timeline?

Although there are a number of options available such as the "parallel universe" approach, or drawing a date in the sand and just letting the future turn out differently; or only having the timeline start post-nanoswarm and leaving earlier history deliberately vague on the rationale that the information and records might be lost, most people in the group feel the best option is to just keep the next couple few decades vague, and re-edit them as current events progress. As things change in the real life we will work to update the setting accordingly for the really near term and current items, leave items from the next century or so less specific, and let the far future take care of itself.

I am finding some concepts in OA very difficult to understand. Is there any simple introduction?

The OA scenario can be confusing and bewildering for anyone with no background knowledge or experience in these sorts of things. Furthermore, the OA setting represents the work of a lot of people over several years. So it can become rather convoluted.

Unfortunately although we do keep trying there may be no simple antidote for this problem. Probably the best current attempt to "sum up OA" in a reasonably sized package is the OA Primer, available here.

As for non-fiction, some lists of useful reading (with some overlap) are the Mike Deering's Singularitan Reading List, Anders' compilation, and of course our own list (with more that can be added). A very good Web page is Elizer's Staring into the Singularity which nicely conveys the sense of "otherness" of the transapient state. Remember, this only pertains to the first Singularity, OA consists of a series of further half dozen Singularities, or Toposophic Levels

A good list of novels that are OA applicable can be found here under the heading "Very Relevant". Perhaps the best of these might be Vinge's Fire Upon The Deep (the "Zones of Thought" are very like our Toposophic levels), the wonderful stories of Charles Stross, John C. Wright's The Golden Age trilogy (about a far future utopia with elements in common with OA), and anything from Banks on The Culture (a sort of benign Sephirotic equivalent, rather simpler than OA). You might also want to peruse the Voices of Orion's Arm section of this site, which contains the "Daily Life" section and Original Short Stories that are specifically set in the OA Universe

As for roleplaying manuals, the GURPS Transhuman Space series, and the fourth edition versions of  GURPS Biotech abd GURPS Ultratech are highly recommended. Transhuman Space represents a setting equivalent to our Interplanetary Age, but still includes many useful concepts for OA in general (including the "current era" of the timeline). An OA RPG or a rendition of OA in some existing game system is planned for some point in the future, though there is no work currently under way.

There are currently no movies or TV series that convey a specific sense of the OA Universe, although one may find relevant concepts here and there (see TV and movie reviews).

A while ago I remember reading something about 'warp-bubble sweeps' or 'FTL warp bubbles'. Isn't that a no-no in this project? Or is it just I who misunderstand the concept?

Early in the OA project we decided to have nanoscale "warp bubbles" since these would not have the same impossible energy requirements that the standard Alcubierre drive has. This would be an extremely advanced technology available only to AI Gods and equivalent very high beings

They were also an important part of the original Amalgamation write-up

Some time later, for various reasons, we made the decision to scrap warp bubbles from the setting (see also Objections to FTL).

How would the OA civilization fare against other SF Universes?

This is like comparing Star Trek and Star Wars, to see which ships and tech are the most powerful. There are a couple of reasons why we don't do this. First, such debates seem to rapidly become acrimonious and encourage ill feeling rather than cooperation. Second, they encourage munchkinism rather than serious SF. For these reasons, we feel that OA is better off having nothing to do with VS arguments. While some people may indeed use OA (just as they may use anything else!) to engage in VS or munchkin arguments, it is official OA policy not to. This is not to in any way denigrate those who do so, or to say that it isn't fun for those who are in that way inclined. It's just that we don't wish to spend our time in this manner.

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