I'm pretty sure the term comes from the Hyperion Cantos universe created by Dan Simmons. I highly recommend the books BTW, but be sure to read them in order.
While seeking to avoid spoilers:
The Ousters are one of the two main branches of humanity, descended from space hab dwellers who took off into interstellar space during a period of massive upheaval early in the history of the human civ in the books. Exactly why they left is never explained in the stories.
They eventually form a 'macro-life' civilization, moving nomadically from star system to star system for resources, but otherwise spending most of their time in interstellar space traveling in great Swarms of thousands of ships, habs, and engineered comets and asteroids, all fitted with the FTL Hawking drive used in the setting.
They have a tense to all out warfare relationship with the other main branch of humanity, the planet based WorldWeb/Hegemony of Man and later the Pax.
I imagine that Alan appropriated the term into the setting, but that it never really caught on or was superceded by others (e.g., Backgrounders).
Personally, I'd prefer that we simply remove it from the setting to avoid seeming like we are copying from the Cantos universe.
My 2c worth,
Todd
While seeking to avoid spoilers:
The Ousters are one of the two main branches of humanity, descended from space hab dwellers who took off into interstellar space during a period of massive upheaval early in the history of the human civ in the books. Exactly why they left is never explained in the stories.
They eventually form a 'macro-life' civilization, moving nomadically from star system to star system for resources, but otherwise spending most of their time in interstellar space traveling in great Swarms of thousands of ships, habs, and engineered comets and asteroids, all fitted with the FTL Hawking drive used in the setting.
They have a tense to all out warfare relationship with the other main branch of humanity, the planet based WorldWeb/Hegemony of Man and later the Pax.
I imagine that Alan appropriated the term into the setting, but that it never really caught on or was superceded by others (e.g., Backgrounders).
Personally, I'd prefer that we simply remove it from the setting to avoid seeming like we are copying from the Cantos universe.
My 2c worth,
Todd