Diversity
Ultimately, our job here is to
create a universe with enough diversity and personality that it will seamlessly
host all styles and levels of creativity. The Black Admiral universe has the scope to
accommodate everything from hard science
fiction to adventure yarns to tales of creepy horror, intrigue, or
romance. We would love to see works not only in the traditional vain but
also from less traditional specialties like children's fiction, CGI
animation and art, pulp and comic.
Continuity and a Well-Earned Suspension of Disbelief
We need to develop decent sounding science that is
reasonable for the background setting without unduly limiting story
ideas. We need to develop realistically detailed races and a rich
political background which will breathe life and depth into stories. A
well-developed
sense of history and politics promotes the feeling of a real world and
involves readers in something bigger than a single, fleeting
story. Consistancy in background brings readers back to familiar
territory and means that authors don't have a familiar background which
doesn't have to be over-explained to fit the context of a stand-alone
story.
To this end, we offer free consulting with authors on
continuity and technical subjects so they can just write and we will
help ensure the canon remains consistent. This is not to say that
potential authors should be scared off by the possibility of limits and
constraints, as the universe is huge and it only makes sense that there
would be variation in technology, terminology, and the knowledge and
opinions of the character. Some discontinuity is realistic and
encouraged.
A Sense of Wonder and a Sense of Isolation
The Black Admiral universe has lots of room to explore
the ways in which technology takes us places, yet drives us apart in the
same action. It has empowered races to spread throughout the universe,
colonizing and exploiting many worlds. Yet, by the very distances
involved, every world is isolated and responsible for its own destiny.
In many cases, on ends up with hostiles as closer neighbours than
friends.
Black Admiral should also explore the growth of
technology and not get caught up in the usual Science Fiction timeline,
where the North American government fills shiny ships with the US
Cavalry and sends them off to build universal democracy while fighting
bumpy-headed aliens. Black Admiral is basically a story of city-states,
of people trying to hold together a society and flourish in the face of
a huge, cold universe where chaos and attaxia claw at the edges of
order. So many works of science fiction see the progress of technology
as faster computers and transparent metal. Really, though, if you look
at the way technology progresses, it tends to make huge jumps based on
the fact we realize we've been wrong all along. Einstein kicked Newton's
ass. Now a new breed of scientists are saying that we may be
4-dimensional beings in an 11-dimensional universe. . Scientist
continually discover impossible lifeforms living in crazy places like
volcanic vents. Really, science fiction has apparetnly lost a lot of the
imagination that allowed people like Arthur Clarke and Isaac Asimov to
drive science, rather than respond to it. Do a search on what research
is being done at DARPA or on nanotechnology (how cool is UFog???) and
compare it to the banality of modern science fiction. All science, no
fiction... it is non-threatening and takes no chances. Black Admiral
should have a sense that there's more to science than science, that the
univers inheriantly carries with it a sense of mystery and enormity and
is populated by masses that go about their business not quite
knowing how they got where they are...
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