The Spindle Verse
7/4/450
Scope
The motivation behind building The Spindle Verse
The Spindle Universe started as my response to the old pulp scifi novels with 100% more queer representation. I want fun space adventures with a rag tag found family floating through our solar system putting a stop to weird villains and silly space things.
A few things have changed, and I keep going further back in time to figure out 'how we got here' and I'm starting to figure out that... I don't think it matters. There are some questions I don't have answers to, and some which are difficult to really answer in a way that would ever meet up with reality. So I'm just not going to.
In the course of worldbuilding I might answer some of these questions that are bugging me, I might not. Right now the point is that I want to figure out this universe and what the folks in it are doing and how they're surviving.
The goal of the project
Ideas! And plot! And maybe some fun characters, and a book or.... seven. I have titles for novels, I have vague ideas for them. I am floundering because the world is still ephemeral. So far the titles are:
- The Spindle
- Space Pirating Made Easy
- Holiday On Enceladus
- I've heard the Kupier Belt is Great this Time of Year
- Outsmarting the Military and You
- Waters of Europa
- Edge of Life
The Spindle Verse's Unique Selling point
I love space, and I love artificial intelligence, but rather that assume malice from the singularity, I am instead looking at our capacity for kindness and how that might translate to artificial beings.
I would like to bring in the "humans are space orcs" meme from Tumblr at some point, but that might be a second series and not something specific to this first run as I don't want to really dig into aliens just yet.
For now I'm looking at what happens to humanity when we create AI, and terraform both Venus and Mars.
Theme
Genre
Science Fiction with a boat load of handwaving 'could be magic' if you squint. I'm not really planning on digging into the physics or other sciences on a deep mathematical level. I have a background in medicine (nurse) so I know a bit about med enough that I'm using some of it to extrapolate how far we might be able to go.
Genres include: SF, queer, dystopia pushing through to hopepunk, and possibly some solarpunk
themes: what makes us human, where is our place in the solar sytem/galaxy, are we obsolete now that we've created AI, what is our role in our own evolution,
Reader Experience
I know the first book is going to be a bit deep and dark. I'm hoping that going through it in the first book will open everything up to wonder and adventure. I don't plan to skirt around any topics, but I do want the sense of exploring our solar system and discovering our new place in it to be fun and adventurous and possibly a little terrifying.
Reader Tone
It's in the middle, with light and dark things happening all the time to anyone and everyone. It starts off rather dark and then gets worse before it gets better. Then flops about trying to figure out what it is.
Recurring Themes
Family has many meanings and they are all valid. What makes us human and does humanity have the market on 'souls' 'individuality', etc.
Character Agency
The main crew of characters are agents of change, They're a group of the absolute wrong people in the wrong situations at the right time. They're the kind of person that looks at a situation and goes "hmm, what would happen if I did this" and do That exact that to see how the pieces fall.
Focus
Drama
- There are three main responses to AI, one of welcome and inclusion and the other an absolute disbelief that it exists and any possibility of it is extinguished at first notion. The third is the neo-luddite movement which hate any thought of Artificial intelligence and are actively trying to destroy all of it, including any and all augmented humans as augmentation is believed to 'open the door to sin'
- Relations between the settlements and Earth are strained at best. A particular branch of the US military that separated long ago but still hold to the old titles has a lot of power/influence in the diplomatic ring. Mars and Crescent City among others are overwhelmingly supportive of AI as equal members of the population. The moon and some other locations a lot of them on earth are being swayed by the Federation, unfortunately it also controls all the access to earth which makes is difficult for Mars et al to offer any kind of assistance should the need arise.
- Earth has a climate refugee problem and depending on where you are in the history is either being subjugated by several large corporations who have taken over the talking points of UBI and other forms of social address by hijacking Spindles and using them to cow and subdue the populace.
- Cringers the colloquial name for the neo-luddites have begun mobilizing and are hiding behind the federation and instigating attacks on outposts and settlements that are against the correct order of appropriate hierarchy of life.