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Hello! Enjoying Orion's Arm again!
#1
Hello everyone!

   I used to read Orion's Arm about 15 years ago when I was a teenager and a long lockdown nostalgia tour of various media (alongside a renewed interest in Science Fiction) I ended up back here, feel like I understand it a bit better this time! I even tried to see if any old emails still worked here but I think the account must be long gone.

I particularly like the Solar System Era and the "Solar System in 560 AT" article, to see where technology and exploration would take us in the relatively near future. I think snapshot articles of a particular time are really interesting ways of reading about the setting. Are there any others? The only other one I've seen is "The Solar System in the 9th Century AT", are there any others?

Personally I have to say I think I would remain a baseline on some peaceful reserve rather than some morphologically fluid future being. Though I find it interesting that the relatively small proportion of humanity willing to undertake radical changes to colonise the stars could end up representing the vast majority of its future. Perhaps there are some parallels with the sections of medieval society that were optimised for modern, capitalist urban living which ended up being the future of those societies.

I love that Orion's Arm keeps some mystery about the long lost past and far off civilisations, either in the other side of the galaxy or in another reality altogether.

I noticed on WorldCat, the global library database, that the Orion's Arm novella collections seems not to be held by any library around the world. I may have to buy a copy of each and donate them the British Library once read, to save them for posterity.

Merry Christmas!
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#2
Hi! Welcome (back) to OA! Smile

In some respects, OA hasn't changed in the last 15 years and in others it's changed quite a lot (and continues to change on a slow rolling basis). Please feel free to ask any questions that come to mind, raise any concerns you might have, and either join or start any conversations that you'd like to take part in.

Re the sort of snapshot or extended article type you mention, there was another such article that depicts the Solar System in 10,600 AT (in addition to a separate smaller article about the Solar System as a location), but we recently combined these into a single article to simplify things. You can find it HERE.

Re other such articles, off the top of my head, there are:

Corona - although in looking at this today, I'm see some formatting issues that need some adjustments. On a different note, this article also includes a 'Snapshot' which is a type of narrative that we didn't have 15 years ago. Basically, it's a sort of 'slice of life' vignette that (hopefully) illustrates some aspect of life in the setting. You'll find them scattered around the EG here and there, although there aren't currently as many as we would like and we're always looking to add more.

Duxed - a sometimes colonized Garden World

There may be others I'm overlooking right now, but hopefully someone will post links to those as well (or I'll remember more later).

By all means, if living as a baseline in a reserve or other quiet corner of the galaxy appeals, that's a perfectly acceptable lifestyle choice in Y11k.

And if you do happen to donate copies of the story collections to the British Library, Thank you in advance. Smile

Hope this helps, Merry Christmas to you too, and once again - Welcome to OA!

Todd
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#3
(12-26-2021, 11:32 PM)GutenburgPress Wrote: I particularly like the Solar System Era and the "Solar System in 560 AT" article, to see where technology and exploration would take us in the relatively near future. I think snapshot articles of a particular time are really interesting ways of reading about the setting. Are there any others? The only other one I've seen is "The Solar System in the 9th Century AT", are there any others?

I love that Orion's Arm keeps some mystery about the long lost past and far off civilisations, either in the other side of the galaxy or in another reality altogether.

I noticed on WorldCat, the global library database, that the Orion's Arm novella collections seems not to be held by any library around the world. I may have to buy a copy of each and donate them the British Library once read, to save them for posterity.

Merry Christmas!

welcome back! 
yeah go for it! 

Snapshots from around the OA universe...

the easiest way to find snapshots is possibly the updates page 
https://www.orionsarm.com/xcms.php?r=oa-...en_updates

but here's some samples:

Muuh pylons
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/54038758217d5
terraforming
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/4851e16f514d0
assorted snapshots from various articles
https://www.orionsarm.com/page/643
Astrology
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45f9b81511521
augmentation
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45eac4d93ad11
Ascension 
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/45f993669526b

Also I've been adding small scenes from longer OA stories as snapshots
like the Solar Dominion
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-topic/45ce432e44565
cryonics
https://www.orionsarm.com/eg-article/46462d7124dee

Edit: I see you meant overall snapshots of time periods/ locations..
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#4
Thank you both! Looking forward to reading all these articles on my commutes!
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#5
Happy to help! Smile

Also, here's another narrative snapshot about von Neumann machines you might enjoy - LINK

Todd
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#6
Welcome back!
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