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New to OA, what's a good way to "get into it"?
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Hi all,

I stumbled over Orion's Arm a while ago, and tried to get into the setting, but didn't really succeed. This is a bit strange since basically this kind of stuff should be right up my alley, so I decided to have another go, but this time around ask for some guidance.

Let me just quickly explain what I mean by "getting into it":

If I take some other sprawling and complex setting, like for example the dune universe, at the beginning you hear a few things, you see a few things, and what you get is that giant scary blob in your head that's essentially a big question mark, with some known spots that you don't really know where they fit. But you can read the novels, and watch a few summaries of the extended world building on youtube, and that blob starts to fill with connecting nodes of "stuff" (concepts, characte, locations...). Still a lot of question marks, but you have the feeling that you kind of understand the overall structure and aspects. It starts to feel familiar, your imagination can begin to navigate the space with confidence.

For Orions Arm, there is no obvious path to take to start forming familiar points and connections to navigate off of, because there's not really much guidance. You can start at one point, but you're not sure if it's the right one, you're not sure where in the blob it fits, and it can be hard to find things that fork off of it to have a kind of natural progression through the setting. It seems like all the things and locations and concepts I pick up don't directly connect to each other, and I don't know where in the overall blob they fit, so I struggle to grok them.

I've read the history primer, of course, I'm currently reading through a travellers impressions which I find gives some nice flavour but doesn't really deepen my understanding of the setting because things are rather disconnected. I have a pretty solid grasp on hard science fiction and transhumanist concepts, so at least most of the terminology used means something to me. But even this way, I struggle to get a "grasp" on the setting, to acquire some feeling of familiarity with the overall structure of the setting so I could actually begin moving my mind through it.

So, to end a horribly long explanation with a short question: Can anybody recommend to me a (preferably ordered) reading list that helps me acquire that overall familiarity? I would greatly appreciate that.
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New to OA, what's a good way to "get into it"? - by jedidia - 02-12-2019, 03:14 AM

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