Red Antelope: non-OA fiction

[weirdspecter]

Hi, folks!

As no doubt most of you may now know, I write non-Orion's Arm scifi on my own site.

I've been working on a post about a... relatively unconventional first contact scenario which I thought folks here might like, and frankly, I'd appreciate feedback from the Orion's Arm community on my setting and writing more generally seeing how much I owe to the format and hard-SF focus of OA and its membership.

Anyway, here's the link to the post, feel free to let me know what you all think:

https://beaconsinthedark.wordpress.com/2...-antelope/

Best regards, folks!

Lilly.

[selden]

It seems to me that it would be possible to approximately locate the Antelopes’ home world from the distribution and ages of the stations: The older ones would be closer to it. Perhaps a brief mention of this and its implications might be reasonable. E.g how far it might be to spinward from Human Space, etc. (If they had no FTL, then it has to be less than 15 KLY from Ross 128, probably much less.)

Accumulated radiation damage might provide another age estimate, although perhaps with larger error bars due to how unpredictable flares are. There’s also the question of what kinds of stars they preferred, presumably red dwarfs, but quieter ones seem likely, with implications for the stations’ detectability.

Of course you might prefer to leave it all a mystery.

[weirdspecter]

It seems to me that it would be possible to approximately locate the Antelopes’ home world from the distribution and ages of the stations: The older ones would be closer to it. Perhaps a brief mention of this and its implications might be reasonable. E.g how far it might be to spinward from Human Space, etc. (If they had no FTL, then it has to be less than 15 KLY from Ross 128, probably much less.)

Accumulated radiation damage might provide another age estimate, although perhaps with larger error bars due to how unpredictable flares are. There’s also the question of what kinds of stars they preferred, presumably red dwarfs, but quieter ones seem likely, with implications for the stations’ detectability.

That's a really good point that I actually hadn't considered. Luckily it isn't too much of a worry for me as the author -- humanity has only spread out through a volume about a thousand lightyears in radius by the 3600s, so they aren't about to find the Antelopes' homeworld and ruin all of my hard-earned mystique, haha. That said, it might be an interesting avenue for future writing about them.

I definitely imagined the Antelopes as being a sort of... cluster civilisation? That they may have settled a few different parts of the Galaxy at extreme long range, forming little bubbles of activity. But that's just a passing thought.

Thanks for the read

[DarrenRyding]

This is perhaps one of the more realistic depictions of alien discovery (as opposed to contact) I have read.  I have a feeling that we may encounter ancient abandoned alien artefacts long before we encounter living aliens.  Your matter-of-fact, almost documentary style certainly adds to the realism, combining recent real-life discoveries with the more speculative discoveries of the near future.

I've just skimmed through your website's timeline.  You clearly have the talent for detailed, plausible future history that Orion's Arm values.  It is interesting to imagine the next thousand years being just as violent and tumultuous as the last thousand.  The more things change ...

[stevebowers]

Very good!
I'll add a link to your site in the next update.

[weirdspecter]

Hey folks, didn't realise I'd gotten more feedback!

This is perhaps one of the more realistic depictions of alien discovery (as opposed to contact) I have read. I have a feeling that we may encounter ancient abandoned alien artefacts long before we encounter living aliens. Your matter-of-fact, almost documentary style certainly adds to the realism, combining recent real-life discoveries with the more speculative discoveries of the near future.

I've just skimmed through your website's timeline. You clearly have the talent for detailed, plausible future history that Orion's Arm values. It is interesting to imagine the next thousand years being just as violent and tumultuous as the last thousand. The more things change ...

Thanks for your kind words! I stumbled upon the SETI reports about radio signals from Ross 128 and just found myself inspired. For what it's worth, I agree -- it seems much, much more likely we'd find some inert artefact long before we meet anyone living, at least as long as there isn't some Bracewell Probe in our Solar System. It may not be the ruins of a dead civilisation -- it could be the leftovers of some space littering, for example, or a damaged machine. But I think it's much more likely that we'll find something inert before we find anything alive.

As for my setting at large... I studied political science at university. I guess I've a certain cynicism about the nature of politics and human conflict from that, but for what it's worth, I *am* optimistic. The more things change, the more they stay the same -- but things still get better, over all.

I'll add a link to your site in the next update.

Wow, thanks Steve, I really appreciate it. It means a lot that you folks like my work, especially since I've been reading OA since I was thirteen or fourteen.

As an aside, I've been on something of an alien kick lately: I rewrote an old article about another instance of first contact and published it tonight. You can read it here, if you're interested: https://beaconsinthedark.wordpress.com/2...ders-2775/

Let me know what you folks think!

[selden]

Very good!

Its technological background seems to have a resemblance to parts of OA.