Acknowledgements

2300 AD (role playing game) - early interstellar colonization, use of brown dwarfs.

Poul Anderson (SF author) - coined the terms sophont and sophontology

Isaac Asimov (scientist and SF writer) - for robotics, the Foundation series, and of course the original Encyclopedia Galactica

Dr William Sims Bainbridge, whose work on 'personality capture' - using preference or personality quiz information to generate a model of the answering person, something he believes to be a prequel to uploading...) - Home Page

Richard Baker (OA contributer and all-round expert) and David Dye for Ad Astra (website) which provides a guide to the earlier to middle stages of space colonization (information and interplanetary ages, and is perhaps the only developed speculative ultra hard SF worldbuilding scenario on the web, and for graciously allowing us to incorporate pages from that project in OA

Iain M. Banks (SF writer) Culture novels - benign ai-cratic utopias and rule of AI Minds in general - Home Page

Stephen Baxter (SF writer) Space - Nauri (greatly modified from original "Gaijin") - Home Page

Robert Bradbury - extropian

David Brin (SF writer) author of the Uplift novels and of OA concepts like Uplifts, the anglic/anglish language family, and sophontology - Home Page.

John W Campbell - for giving us hard SF and single-handedly establishing SF as a proper genre. biography

Arthur C Clarke - for hard SF in general, for Clarke's Third Law :-) aka clarketech, and of course for ai (Hal)!

Charles Darwin - for the theory of evolution by natural selection

Richard Dawkins (Darwinist) - memes which enables us to arrive at further (post-Dawkinsian) developments and concepts like memetic engineering, which provide an explanation whereby some minds and factions are able to manipulate others - Home Page

John Dollan (OA contributer and web author) - for the Planet Classification List and kindly allowing us to incorporate his planetology in the setting Home Page

K. Eric Drexler (futurist - nanotech) Engines of Creation and other material - nanotechnology; perhaps the single most important and significant technology and insight in creating this scenario, and its innumerable ramifications. However, Drexler rejects the possibility of hypo-nanotechnologies (pico- femto- etc tech) that are central to OA - Foresight Institute

Freeman Dyson (Astronomer and Visionary) - for Dyson Spheres and Dyson Trees, and a vision of the universe transformed and optimised as home for life

Greg Egan (SF writer) all works - various important themes, especially involving virtuals, and ultra hard SF in general - Home Page

Paul Di Filippo (SF writer) author of Ribofunk, and of the term and concept of splices

Gary William Flake, author of The Computational Beauty of Nature - Computer Explorations of Fractals, Chaos, Complex Systems, and Adaptation. See on-line glossary from the book. Brief and very technical but very pertinent to the early stages of ai (some will still apply to current era) Some good info science material that helped fill out a number of EG entries

Robert L Forward (Scientist and Visionary) for many important concepts Home Page

Robert Frietas (nanomedicine visionary) for giving us a good idea what the future may be like Nanomedicine

Hugo de Garis (AI researcher) for many important concepts involving AI, as well as ideas such as Scale war and assorted neologisms. Unlike Drexler, he does not shy away from the concept of hypo-nanotech technologies and Minds, such as are so important in this setting - Home Page see also Technical Terms Coined - some great terms and concepts, some of which have been adopted here and included in the OA glossary and the Encyclopedia

Robert J. Hall (RPG author) - Science Skills for Hero - a very comprehensive listing that provided the inspiration and foundation for many professions listed in the setting- bio here (scroll down)

Glenn Grant for the Memetic Lexicon of - further development of Dawkins' meme theory - Home Page

Aaron Hamilton (OA contributer), author of the superb The Hamilton Encyclopaedia of Exopaleontology - Historical Atlas, which he kindly allowed us to include in our setting, thus providing the basis for a history of galactic races - Encyclopaedia of Exopaleontology Home Page

Peter F. Hamilton (SF writer) author of Night's Dawn with its wonderful conception of bioships and biohabitats - another review - a review of the Confederate Handbook - Home Page

Frank Herbert (SF writer) author of Dune which helped inspire the neofeudalistic/aristocratic Great Houses - Home Page

Homer, and other great mythopoets, who were writing their own brand of "science fiction" more than two and a half millennia ago. And what are the archailects and baselines of OA but the scientific update of his gods and mortals?

BJ Klein - The Immortality Institute

Ray Kurzweil (AI researcher) The Age of Spiritual Machines and other material deals with AI and presents a persuasive argument for the Hard AI hypothesis - KurzweilAI.net - encyclopedic coverage of topics relating to artificial intelligence, posthumanism, nanotech, and more. Some only applies to the early information age, but there is also material on nanotech and other neat things.

George Lucas (Film Director) - for nice special effects and showing that space opera can look cool (even if his storylines are basically fantasy) - Home Page

Marc Miller and co-workers for the Traveller role playing game; with its vast setting and detailed galactography it provides a predecessor/ soft/medium Sf prototype for OA. Also the Traveller Library has inspired a number of neat ideas for the Encyclopaedia Galactica

Marvin Minsky - ai researcher

J.R. Mooneyham (futurist) - ideas on the information and interplanetary ages, and Early Digital Communities - Home Page (An Illustrated Speculative Timeline of Technology and Social Change for the Next One Thousand Years)

Hans Moravec - roboticist and ai researcher - Home Page

Dr Max More - extropian, who discussed many concepts that were later incorporated into OA

Gerald K. O'Neill (space enthusiast) author of The High Frontier for telling us that a planetary surface is not the best place to build an advanced civilization. His work has been the inspiration for the Orbital Habitats and space based civilization of our setting - Island One Society

Jeff Noon (SF/magical realism writer) - various works - Madverts (well it's a great name, but the meaning in OA is completely different), Dog Splices/Uplifts (again, completely different here)

Science Fiction Citations for the OED - more densely detailed and less systematic, use in conjunction with the Eric S. Raymond's SF Glossary. Part of the Science Fiction Citations for the OED - Hunting for the earliest citations of sf words site.

David Pulver and co. for GURPS Transhuman Space, an ultra hard SF role playing setting which features very important and realistic ideas on early interplanetary age spacecraft, biotech, bionano, microbots, etc - Home Page

Eric S. Raymond, SF Glossary a good and easy to read page that gives the original authorship and meaning of most common SF words. Use with Science Fiction Citations for the OED. Eric Steven Raymond's Home Page

Alistair Reynolds (SF writer) all works - relativists (very different from Reynolds' exotics) - Dawn Hunters (analogous to Reynolds' Inhibitors), various themes

Gene Roddenberry (Star Trek) - for paving the way - Star Trek Home Page

Rudy Rucker (SF writer) author of The Hardware/Software/Wetware series), which introduces and features the "moldies", the inspiration for the erotoginii of this setting - Home Page

Anders Sandberg (Transhumanist and OA contributer) author of an astonishing and encyclopaedic transhumanist web site, as well as Big Ideas, Grand Vision (website) with useful material on individual development of interstellar colonies and breaking away from the monolithic uniformity of most soft SF space opera (interplanetary age and Interplanetary dark age); compiled Transhumanist Terminology from the Lextropicon Max More and others - Anders Sandberg - Home Page

Marshall T. Savage (visionary) author of The Millennial Project : Colonizing the Galaxy in Eight Easy Steps - perhaps no other single written work can so inspire the concept of a Spacefaring Civilization and colonizing the galaxy!

Birgid Schlindwein, author of A Hypermedia Glossary of Genetic Terms - an excellent reference that is very useful in view of the importance of biotech and gengineering in the OA setting

Karl Schroeder (SF writer) - cycler (beamrider) network / Deeper Covenant, brown dwarfs Karl Schroeder Home Page

Kevin Self for the "2600 edition" "GURPS" Encyclopedia Galactica, the original (albeit much smaller) seed and inspiration for the present on-line version of the Encyclopedia Galactica. Although subtitled "a hypermedia supplement for use with the GURPS roleplaying system", it is an original work, and in fact it is the most complete version of the Encyclopaedia I have seen (prior to beginning work on the Orion's Arm edition) - with a comprehensive and all-rounded quality absent in the Asimov and "Collins" editions, above. The Ken Ferjik edition of the great Encyclopaedia is in fact in many ways simply a development of this version. So if you want to know where it all began, here it is! This material was completed in 1998. It is no longer online.

Trent Shipley (web author) - who's Galactic Library (based on David Brin's Uplift saga) helped serve as an inspiration for our Encyclopedia Galactica - Home Page Trent was the previous author of The Alliance for Progress Encyclopedia, now administered by Matt Lundstrom

Dan Simmons (SF writer) whose Hyperion Cantos features such important concepts as AI Minds and Wormhole Nexus - Home Page

Olaf Stapledon, who imagineered so many things so long ago artificial worlds and genetic engineering being prime examples. Star Maker review

Brian Stableford and David Langford - SF writers and futurists, and authors of The Third Millenium (link and review coming soon)

Bruce Stirling (SF writer) Schizmatrix - clades, Genettekers ("shapers"), Jovian League, Orbitals, various other concepts

Michael Swanwick (SF writer) whose book Vacuum Flowers includes great ideas on Wetware, Dyson Trees, and differing Clades

Alan Turing - the first person to conceive of AI

Vernor Vinge (SF writer and Mathematician) author of the Fire Upon the Deep and The Coming Technological Singularity who gave us concepts such as The Singularity, and Singularity Levels (which he presents as "Zones of Thought" but are here reinterpreted as true Toposophic grades), the Known Net, and Rule by AI. Without him, there would never have been an Orion's Arm worldbuilding project. - Home Page

Jordan K. Weisman and others for the Battletech/Mechwarrior universe, a vast role playing / computer gaming setting that in part inspired the idea of neofeudalistic/aristocratic Great Houses

Martin Whiteside - author of The Science in Science Fiction - A Guide to the Physics Governing the Star Trek Series - Part astronomy and physics encyclopaedia, part Star Trek, and even if the latter elements are not very pertinent to Orion's Arm, this is still a great resource

Jack Williams (SF writer) - Terraforming

Walter Jon Williams Voice of the Whirlwind and other works - various concepts - Home Page

The World Transhumanist Association

Eliezer Yudkowsky - extropian and author of some important papers on building an S1 ai

David Zindell (SF writer) author of Neverness and sequels which helped to inspire the conception of the Archailects, as well as other ideas - Home Page