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Blazer, Deeper

Pre-Technocalypse terms for pioneers and adventurers who sort to explore and develop "deep space" (hence "deeper") and "blaze a trail" (archaic expression - hence "blazer") out beyond CisLunar space, Mars, the Belt and the main population hubs. It is thought that the term 'Blazer, with its original apostrophe, is an abbreviation of Outblazer, but this has never been confirmed.

While the majority were space-adapted tweaks, superior-tweaks, and cyborgs, 'Blazers came from all morphotypes and sapient categories, including vecs and ai, as well as ordinary baseline humans. Legendary accounts of solitary 'Blazers riding fusion torches to develop the moons of Uranus, or founding posthuman clades in the Kuiper Belt, are mostly apocryphal. Very few individuals in this age had their own ships to begin with, and 'Blazers were mostly organized in co-operatives. Many were even corporate franchised, or employed by Terran or Orbital nation-states or Lunar or Martian governments. Nor did they ever constitute a single clade or coherent memeticity, as was often believed from the later First Federation period onwards.

The names of a few 'Blazers have come down to us: Yang, Manfred, Rogers, 010001110, Alvarez, Starman, Petrov, O'Neill, Smith, Newchild, Chomi, Model 21351, Wilcox, Savimbi, and many more. However, not all of these may represent genuine individuals. Some historians have argued for example that the 'Blazer known as "Rogers, Buck," was actually a fabulist invention from centuries earlier. It is not impossible however that later individuals may have taken these earlier literary creations as their call sign.

During the Dark Age the 'Blazer phenomenon disappeared. Some 'Blazers would later reappear with the return of civilization to join the Federation, welcoming a chance to explore even greater interstellar frontiers, others established micropolities that stubbornly persisted well into the Age of Consolidation (3200 to 3800 AT), but the larger number just disappeared.

There are many explanations as to what happened, and different historians have proposed their own pet theories. All of these explanations have evidence supporting them, and each represents some aspect of the whole situation. These include:
  • The Hider Hypothesis (they simply became hiders),
  • The Assimilation Theory,
  • The Beam Rider Postulation. It is known that at least a few 'Blazers joined up with the original Beamrider Network, which later became the Deeper Covenant, although the similarity of name is purely coincidental,
  • and the Interstellar Promotion Hypothesis (it is known that at least a few Blazers set off for the stars during the Nanotech Window),
  • as well as less likely theories like the Worldship Collective.

 
Appears in Topics
0900 to 1200 AT: The Early Federation Age400 to 530 AT: The Solsys Golden AgeInterstellar Colonization
 
Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 24 April 2004.

 
 
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