The AetheR AGE (Guidelines v. 3.0 October 28 2009)
Page 1… INTRODUCTION Page 2… BASIC SUBMISSION GUIDELINES Page 5… AN OVERVIEW OF THE ALTERNATE HISTORY Page 7… SOME ADDITIONAL CONSIDERATIONS ABOUT THE HISTORY Page 8… WHAT IS THE AETHER? Page 9… WHAT’S NEXT?
Introduction: Suppose that the course of human history had been different. Suppose that over five thousand years ago, something happened in the Mediterranean basin, and perhaps all over the planet, that took all of human progress on a radically different path. Suppose, also, that something was different with nature itself and the Earth moved through space, shrouded in a vast life-sustaining cloud of unknown origin. This is a world where the printing press was used to propagate the philosophies of ancient Greece, where Pharaohs sailed in airships as Egyptian imperial grandeur reached its height, where mechanized armies clashed on the battlefields of Mesopotamia, and where interplanetary space itself came within the reach of brilliant, struggling humans all those centuries ago. This basic plan of this universe was sketched out over a series of blog posts and comments which are still available at www.mbranesf.blogspot.com and which can be recalled together using the “Shared World” label. Some related posts can also be found at Brandon Bell’s site www.nithska.blogspot.com, also indexed by
the “Shared World” label. A lot of great ideas were put forth, and we have pared those down to the ones that seemed to have the broadest support among the people participating in the discussion. This document reflects the results of that discussion and is intended as the first iteration of a writer’s “bible” for the Aether Age universe, a shared world that will be open to participation by anyone. BASIC SUBMISSION GUIDELINES This is a call for submissions for an anthology of original short fiction from MBrane SF and Hadley Rille Books in June 2010 [date approximate]. Submission period: From November 15 2009 through January 30 2010 How to submit: 1. Send your story as an attached .doc, .docx or .rtf file to mbranesf@gmail.com. Include information in the subject line in this format: Submission: Aether Age/author last name/story title No particular word count restrictions apply at either the upper or lower end, but stories in the 3000-8000 words range will probably tend to be preferred for this project over very short (flash fiction) lengths or very long ones. The basic premise: Egypt and Greece and other ancient civilizations have been uplifted so that they experience industrial revolutions and eventually become space-faring civilizations at a much earlier point in history than what happened in the real world. In addition to this, Earth has passed into a region of space or a phenomenon in space, the Aether, which is breathable and hosts its own indigenous life. Read the rest of this document for much more specific information. Stories may be set early in the timeline or in the middle of it or much later in history. This document is intended to plant the seeds for some exciting stories, but not to manage their direction. Payment: This is still to be determined. It will most likely be a token advance against royalties, followed by royalty payments, which will be a percentage of the book’s profit paid out to each writer after the advances have been earned out. Final details will appear eventually at the imminently forthcoming Aether Age blog page (not up as of this writing, but coming soon; keep an eye on www.mbranesf.blogspot.com for details.)
About Creative Commons: This may seem a bit unusual to some writers who are not familiar with Creative Commons licensing, so it needs to be made clear up front in case some people are not interested in participating in a Creative Commons project. The intention of this book is to launch a new fictional universe in which anyone can work. This means, in part, that the stories published in this book will become part of that milieu, part of the canon of the universe, and the concepts contained in them will not remain the exclusive property of their creators. We are planning to release this under an Atttribution/ShareAlike plan. My collaborator Brandon Bell explains these terms, how this will work and what the advantages are in plain language… Attribution: We let people copy, distribute, display, perform, and remix our work, as long as they give you credit the way we request. All CC licenses contain this property. ShareAlike: We let people create remixes and derivative works based on our creative work, as long as they only distribute them under the same Creative Commons license that our original work was published under. This would mean that readers, writers, or even other publishers could redistribute, adapt, or expound upon the stories, so long as they give Attribution. The ShareAlike means that if someone does this, they have to do it under the same license. So they don't get to create something wholly “theirs” but rather work that is similarly “set free” into the creative ecosystem. But ShareAlike keeps someone from totally depriving the creator of the original work. A derivative work may be better or at least more successful, but it cannot shore up exclusivity of rights since it is a derivative. Attribution ensures a clear line of descent for all derivative works. SOOOOO.... the writers subbing to the initial Aether Age anthology will always own their work. I could, for instance turn around and sell my AA story to another zine or anthology, if they accepted previous published work, but it would need to have the license attached to it since it is a derivative of the Aether Age concept. I could print it on tee-shirts and sell them, so long as I included the license info. Podcasts, stage plays, whatever. All free to do. But I have to note the license/attribution info. Even as a writer of one of the original stories, it is a derivative of the Aether Age concept. AND, these things I can do with my story, anyone else can do too. But to the basic license they must add attribution to me as author of the story. Same thing if they write a sequel to my story.
The benefit is that we set the property (Aether Age) and all its components “free” in the same way that copyright expiration does to regular properties, but in such a way that it benefits the creator. It may not seem logical, but look at it this way: few of us really make a lot of money off this stuff. By licensing the Aether Age in this way, it opens up the possibility for viral growth. Someone could write a tabletop game based on it, or a video game. Other magazines could publish stories based on it. Movies or TV could be based on it (yeah, I know, but it's possible), high schools could do theatrical presentations of it... and any and all of these derivatives must point back to M-Brane SF and the individual writers. So, if we use this license, think of it as Midas: if touched, it turns to gold.... So if I don't want someone else writing about my Buddhist Vampires, I should not contribute that story, because, yes, it becomes furniture in the “commons.”
I. First, an overview of how the alternate history proceeds from the time of divergence until about the first century A.D. (in our realworld dating scheme): For ease of reference, all dates are based on our “real” world. In Egypt, at any given time, they tended to date from the beginning of the current Pharaoh's rule. So history receded into the past quickly. But with the introduction of the printing press, while they may have still done this, they should have better been able to understand the time frames of their own civilization. Dates approximate; the very earliest events are, of course, shrouded in legend… 3200 BCE – Back in the fog of antiquity, the gods ruled Earth. Eventually, the printing press is left behind when they leave Earth to let humanity rule the world. 3150 BCE --The god Thoth invented hieroglyphics, which were first used by mortals under the rule of Narmer, who first unified Kimet (Egypt). Thoth also invented the printing press. Having the printing press so early in human history is the big thing that makes everyone else proceed much differently than it did in the real world. 2600 BCE -- Considered the Height of the Pyramid Age. Economically sound and politically stable. Possibly some early great scientific minds would have lived in this period and been ready for the coming of the Aether. 2589 BCE -- The Great Pyramid of Khufu is built. Sometime during construction the Aether is seen to engulf the heavens. Black specks both orbit and follow a “jet stream.” They do not possess advanced optics at this stage and do not understand the true nature of this matter (which is later understood to be composed of asteroids with plants growing on them). 1700 BCE -- The Tales of Wonder were written (a Real World Fact, hereafter referred to as RWF) 1600 - 1050 BCE -- Mycenaean Civilization receives the printing press, whether through connections with Kimet or otherwise we don't know. The Greeks attack and take Troy. 1480 BCE -- The Battle of Megiddo won by Thutmosis Menkheperre. RWF : this is the first battle that we can trace the tactics and follow what happened based on the archaeology/records left behind.
approx 1200 BCE -- RWF: only about one in one hundred could read, and this was a high literacy level compared to other cultures. In the Aether Age timeline, literacy levels in Kimet vary among classes but are comparable to post-industrial civilization levels. Most people have some schooling and have basic reading skills. Poeple living in major cities such as Thebes (Waset), Pr-Rameses, Mennefer, Iunu, Khemenu, Kebet are extremely literate. 1100-750 BCE -- The Greek Dark Ages in real world time line; in ours it is difficult, but leads to a golden age. Athens still emerges as one of the leading Greek city-states. The above timeframes are, for their respective civilization, the period during which the changes really get rolling. In Kimet, we have this stable civilization in which great minds have the luxury to explore their world. Think Renaissance, Egyptian style. For Greece, their higher collective intellect is brought to bear against the invasions by the Dorians and Aeolians who destroyed Mycenaean civilization in the real world. In the Aether Age world, the Greek city states rise to stand against these invaders, and innovations are often spurred by the needs of war. 800-480 BCE -- What we call the Archaic period is viewed as the Greek Golden Age. 727-332 BCE -- Egypt had been in decline in the real world, suffering attacks and wars with the Kushites, Assyrians, Persians. In this alternate timeline, however, Egypt is growing greater than it ever did, and fights off these attempts to topples it with superior intellect, technology, and tactics. 499 BCE -- The war with Persia begins and the Greeks are at Victorian (maybe a bit of steampunkish) tech levels. They lack airplanes, possibly due to their terrain, but they do have airships and balloons. They do have optics (earlier than the Egyptians) and know there are forests floating in space above them and flora on the Moon. 480-323 BCE -- Athens is never defeated by the Persians and Athens and Sparta remain allies turning, toward the real threat that is perceived in Kimet, which is also at similar levels of scientific advancement. Full fledged industrial revolutions occur in both countries. 323BCE-146CE –The Aether Age world diverges further and further from our real world: There is no Hellenistic period. Macedonia never takes Greece, hence no Alexander. Nor a Roman Empire: it simply never emerges. And thus no Byzantium.
0 -- While any writer is free to explore the subject, we don't see how a Christian cult could arise. The traditional religions of Greece and Egypt will be dominant. Though worship of Zeus may have emerged as a monotheism (there are RWF hints that some did worship him in this way), Jehovah is only worshiped by whatever tribes of Israel might exist (and since this derived out of Babylonian polytheism, it is possible that some semblance of ancient Hebrew religion got started, but rather unlikely that it spawned the rest of the Abrahamic faiths as it did in the real world). By this time, Greece and Egypt are “Aether-faring,” meaning that they have achieved the ability to leave the surface of the Earth, pull away from its gravity and enter what to them is outer space, the strange Aether cloud. In this realm, the usual constraints on space travel, such as needing an effectively pressurized vehicle or life support system do not exist. Following the above timeline some possible further events could include: --Moon shots and lunar colonies; the colonization of cis-lunar space by humans and their nations. --explorations that try to reveal cause of the Aether. Is it the result of mega-scale engineering by someone or a natural phenomenon? --Aether wars and attempts to reach Venus and Mars, successful or otherwise. --Some vast threat encountered “out there?”
II. Some additional considerations about the history The above timeline focuses, of course, on events around the eastern Mediterranean. We can assume, however, that in an “ancient” world with the printing press and sophisticated means of travel, the technological advances that happened there will not be confined there. We speculate that elsewhere in the world, such civilizations as the Chinese and the Indians and the Olmecs of what we call in the real world Central America, will also be undergoing a rapid uplift parallel to what’s happening in the Mediterranean basin. While this world is wide-open for speculation by the writers who wish to work in it, and nearly anything can occur, we will make a few rules as to what may and may not occur: 1. Stories within the Aether Age “canon” will not depict the complete destruction of any established civilization; e.g. the Egyptians won’t be shown as having been eradicated by a Chinese nuclear attack.
2. While alternate history is the basis for this whole universe, we will limit speculation as to what is possible based on the broad outline above. In other words, civilizations or historical events that cannot have happened under that timeline, won’t happen in Aether Age stories. We are taking the position that once something major changes in the past, then more or less everything after it changes as well. For example, the Aether Age universe will never have a French Revolution or the discovery of “America” by an alternate universe-Columbus (or even the naming of that continent “America”) because the rise of Rome was pre-empted by the permanent dominance of Greece and Egypt in that region, and therefore the rise of all the European and Middle Eastern civilizations that we know from real history never happened in this world. No Italy, no France, no Spain, no British Empire, nor any Moors or Ottomans. This may be the most potentially difficult aspect of working within the Aether Age universe because some attention needs to be paid to the main timeline and a writer may need to look more closely at real world history from time to time to see if an idea is plausible within this context. 3. We propose that while there may be various forms of international collaboration, this world does not develop any sort of “One World Government” or Terran Empire or anything of that sort. 4. We are suggesting that, at least in the initial run of stories set in the world, that opinions about the Aether itself and about extraterrestrial life are best put forth as speculation or topics of debate rather than as scientific fact, particularly in tales set early in the timeline. It will be interesting to see what develops and to have it be possible to later “canonize” ideas that may not have been dreamed of yet. 5. The existence of extraterrestrials and their past presence on Earth is probably a fact of the Aether Age, but aliens as a constant “on-camera” presence is not desirable. Little is known about them other than that we don’t see an obvious, routine presence of them. While there may have been alien influence on early human history, we are not imagining a Von Daniken “Chariots of the Gods” premise: aliens did not build the pyramids, etc.
III. What is the Aether? What’s “science” like in this world? The exact origin and nature of the Aether is not understood at this time, but its obvious qualities are this: 1) it is a phenomenon that creates a breathable, pressurized medium that fills space surrounding the Earth, extending out past the Moon and possibly further; 2) Life is able to exist in this space; flora covers asteroids and the surface of the Moon, and when people on Earth are able to perceive this, it spurs their Space Age; 3) In later times, human habitation of the Aether realm becomes possible and many of the same competitions and conflicts
that dominate human affairs on Earth extend into the Aether and eventually beyond. Despite the scientific improbability of the Aether phenomenon, the world of the Aether Age is much more a rational and science fictional world than a magicalfantastical world. Even though everything is not understood at the beginning, the explanations will ultimately not be rooted in supernatural phenomena, magic, wizardry and the like. The Aether Age has an internally workable and decidedly rational basis, even though its exact nature is not fully understood by everyone. For example, the original discussion of this topic prompted a suggestion that the Aether could be explained by the Earth being encompassed within a diffuse protoplanetary cloud that is holding something like an atmosphere within it. Such possibilities are neither confirmed nor denied by what we propose here. That being said, it is still possible to have stories—particularly earlier in the timeline—that have a more fantasy-style tilt to them since the way that the characters understand their world (whether they are right nor not) is obviously a key to telling a story from their point of view. Indeed, the whole premise of the Aether Age’s science grows in large part from a speculation on what things would be like if the ideas of ancient people had been more accurate.
IV. What’s next The first major project for the Aether Age will be a stand-alone anthology of such stories. We encourage writers to start dreaming up ideas for this, but we would also like to leave these guidelines open for some more input, refinements and details. Anyone who has any input is welcome to post comments at the M-Brane blog (on posts tagged as “Aether Age” and “shared world”) or email mbranesf@gmail.com Eventually, as the stories for the book are selected, many new “facts” of this universe will become established and incorporated into future versions of this bible or add-on modules to it. Since fiction in the short story to perhaps novella length will be the first projects written in this universe, it seems best to think of ways to show the world and events within it from a “regular human” or micro-scale as opposed to trying to show the vast epic sweep of history in a few thousand words. Certainly major world events and even characters at the centers of power can be depicted effectively, but there is probably not room in the first run of stories to show in detail centuries of events or vast plotlines. We imagine a process of peering into this world through smaller windows, which will in turn shed greater light on the nature of the Aether Age.
Special thanks to Brandon Bell, who devised the timeline and first proposed using the Aether phenomenon; and also to all the other imaginative folks who have contributed so far to the creation of this universe. Chris Fletcher M-Brane SF www.mbranesf.blogspot.com mbranesf@gmail.com and Twitter @mbranesf