New/Semilurker with questions

[Drashner1]

The scientific aspects, the exact placement in the OA timeline...other minutiae of OA lore and making sure that things seen in these early days do not countermand things that happen in later days (or that I don't create weird anachronisms)...that's going to require a lot of help.

No worries - we're happy to help with that sort of thing and in some cases there are particular members who have an interest in a particular area and can act as a resource or resident expert. Just ask for what you need help with and we can lend a hand.

I understand that the period until 2113 is governed by strictures against writing that close to the present day, which from my reading of the timeline might present a problem, as I suspect from the state of technology as I am picturing it in my head that I could be awfully close to that line. It would be either the tail end of the Information Age, or the beginning of the Interplanetary Age, most likely.

Stories have a bit more flexibility in this regard (or in regard to the setting in general) because they are presumably relating what the characters think/believe/experience not necessarily the 'facts' of the setting that the EG lays out. Canon is a bit more restricted, mainly in terms of physics (if your characters are going to be flying around in a tachyon drive FTL starship we're going to have a problem ), but we can discuss any potential issues.

In terms of the timeline strictures, we'd need to look at what you want to do and when you want to do it and go from there.

So if I correctly understand it, it's OK for a character--including a story narrator--to make absolute and definite statements from their position of belief, and that will be accepted as valid for the sake of the story, but as long as I did not then take that stance and say that no one else was allowed to write otherrwise, then I would be within the rules?

Pretty much yes. Characters can pretty much do/say what they need/want to make a good story. An author tract in the form of a story gets trickier, but again will depend on the subject matter and circumstances. As always, the best approach is to present the idea(s) to the forum and see what folks say.

To be honest, some of the outcomes seemed (and some still seem) frightening to me as I read through it.

Hm. Which outcomes? Just curious and, separate from any stories, this sort of thing can make for interesting discussions and sometimes new ideas or refinement of existing ones.

I understand that it isn't a good idea for noobs to rock the boat. So you can probably expect a ton of questions which, while they might sound stupid, would be me checking my understanding to make sure I am placing my story in an appropriate period chronologically and not accidentally retconning anything.

Noobs rocking the boat is how some of our most cherished ideas got here

Please feel free to rock away, although I can't guarantee that anything will change as a result. Also, be prepared to remind me/us that I said this. Also, how an idea is presented can also have a major impact on how it is received. And sometimes we need some time to process something to see a way it could work or fit into the setting. Gentle prodding or request/reminders to 'think on it a bit and see if there's a way to make this work' can go a long way

Todd