Human Space

The extent of human expansion through the galaxy in the ten thousand years of practical interstellar travel is literally immeasurable. The ready availability of FTL space travel means that almost any group of political malcontents, utopians, religious fanatics, or hippies who can scrape together a few hundred thousand SVU can take themselves off in search of a planet of their own. Of course, actually finding a habitable planet before the air and food supplies run out is another matter, but that's by the by (see Locator).

From time to time, groups of intrepid colonists have set out in convoys or massive generation ships to explore and settle in the farthest reaches of the galaxy. The lack of any FTL communications (apart from those carried in ships or FTL drones) means that these groups are truly cut off from the rest of humanity. Where they may end up, and what they may achieve is a matter for speculation. Most of humanity is confined to a diffuse sphere of habitation only a few thousand light years in diameter, the center of which is the Oikumene.

The Oikumene

NOTE: The word "Oikumene" (OY-KOO-MEN-AY) was coined by Jack Vance from a Greek term meaning "The Civilized World"

The Oikumene is a loose economic confederation of settled planets, about ninety in number. There is not necessarily any political or social similarity between them, nor is there any concrete central government organization. The only thing all of the Oikumene have in common is an agreement not to interfere in each other's internal affairs, to maintain neutral spaceports on their planetary surfaces, and a general feeling that self interested cooperation is a more useful mode than isolation or conflict. The worlds of the Oikumene agree to abide by a more-or-less uniform code of conduct regarding human rights, the most notable being prohibitions on slavery, piracy, and interplanetary military aggression. All of the member planets contribute to the upkeep of a neutral military force - the Patrol - sufficient to maintain order in the event of any unfortunate adventurism on the part of any opportunistic tyrant with interplanetary designs, but whose main task is the suppression of piracy and the facilitation of trade. ISAC maintains offices on all of the Oikumene planets, as do their two major competitors, I.I.I. and ScumTrackers.

The most notable systems of the Oikumene are the Rigel Concourse, the Vega System, and (of course) the Sol System.

THE RIGEL CONCOURSE

From Chapter 1, 'The Astrophysical Background' in Peoples of the Concourse, by Streck and Chernitz:

It is Rigel, that magnificent star among stars, whose prodigious luminosity and spacious Zone of Habitability has afforded the Concourse its existence. Impossible not to marvel at the sheer grandeur of the system! Think of it! Twenty-six salubrious worlds swinging in stately thousand-year orbits around the dazzling white sun, at a mean radius of thirteen billion miles, not to mention the oft-ignored planets of the incandescent Inner Belt, and Blue Companion, a fortieth of a light-year to the side!

But the very circumstances that make the Concourse what it is provide one of the galaxy's most tantalizing mysteries. Rigel is deemed by most authorities to be a young star, ranging in age from a few million to a billion years. How then to explain the Concourse, which when Sir Julian Hove arrived, already displayed twenty-six mature biological complexes? By the time scale of terrestrial evolution, Concourse life is several billion years old - assuming such life to be autochthonous.

But is such an assumption warranted? While the flora and fauna of each planet differ markedly, there are at the same time a number of suggestive similarities - almost as if Concourse life, long, long ago, had a common origin.

There are as many theories to the situation as there are theorists. The dean of modern cosmologists, A.N. der Poulson, has ingeniously proposed a situation where Rigel, Blue Companion, and planets condensed from gas already rich in hydrocarbons, thereby giving life a head start, so to speak. Others, indulging in fanciful flights, have wondered if the planets of the Concourse where not conveyed hither and established in these optimum orbits by a now-dead race of vast scientific achievement. The regularity and spacing of the orbits, the near-uniform size of the planets, as contrasted with the disparities of the Inner Worlds, give such speculations a measure of plausibility. Why? When? How? Who? The Hexadelts? Who carved Monument Cliff on Xi Puppis X? Who left the incomprehensible mechanism in Mystery Grotto of Earth's Moon? Fascinating riddles yet to be answered...

The Twenty-six habitable planets of the Rigel System, making up the Concourse are:

AlphanorBarleycornChrysantheDiogenesElfland
FiameGoshenHardacresImageJezebel
KrokinoleLyonesseMadagascarNowhereOlliphane
PilghamQuinineRaratongaSomewhereTantamount
UnicornValisandeWalpurgisXionYs
Zacaranda

VEGA (Alpha Lyrae)

From "Everyman's Guide to the Stars":

...The three inner planets, Padraic, Mona, Noaille, are cinders of scorched stone, baking in the austere glare of the Great White Star. Noaille holds one face steady to Vega, and is noteworthy for the rains of liquid mercury which fall on the dark side, flow to the hot side, where they vaporize and return to the dark side.

Next are the inhabited worlds: Aloysius, Boniface and Cuthbert. Cuthbert is humid and unpleasantly marshy, with few areas comfortably habitable; in part due to the numerous insects which give Cuthbert its sobriquet: "Bug Hunter's Paradise".

Aloysius is next in orbit, temperate, if damp, and most densely populated of the Vegan worlds. The early history of Aloysius is dominated by rivalry between religious sects; the effects of the hatred and warfare so engendered persist to the present, most especially in the countryside, in the form of provincial suspiciousness. The cities Pontefract, New Wexford, Yeo are relatively cosmopolitan.

Boniface, outermost and largest of the habitable worlds, is gloomy, dank, and like a caricature of the other two, exaggerating all the harshness and oddities of its sister planets. The oceans are bedeviled by awful storms, the land masses are notable for an extravagant topography: vast plains supine to the force of wind and rain; mountains, caves, crags, chasms; broad rivers flowing from sea to sea. Here and there the land allows habitation, though never ease or comfort.

From earliest times the shrewd and provident folk of Aloysius, wresting value from dross, used the inhospitable wastes of Boniface as a penal settlement, and here were discharged the atheists, incorrigibles and irredeemables of the Vegan worlds...

The Vegan System was among the first to be colonized, and the cities of Aloysius are thus of considerable antiquity. New Wexford is a substantial centre of finance, and is the home of the Bank of Vega.

SOL

Old Earth in the Sol System is generally accepted as the cultural heart of the Oikumene, though it does have its upstart competitors. The planet is still often regarded as "home" by human inhabitants of distant systems, even by those whose ancestors emigrated so far in the past that they are practically mythical. A good proportion of the inwards traffic consists of corpses being sent for burial in their "native" soil, and the supposed qualities of Earth are the theme for more drunken nostalgia than any other subject. For all that, it is fashionable for young artists to sneer at the "morbid maunderings of a moribund society" - though it must be admitted that there are few of them who would not jump at the chance to take advantage of a scholarship to one of the prestigious Earth academies. Earth is a planet of universities, museums, art galleries, theatres, publishing houses, retirement communities and parks. It is possibly the most controlled ecosphere in the Oikumene, even including the mining settlements of the asteroid belts.

BEYOND

The boundaries of the Oikumene are constantly expanding. Old colonies which were founded in an attempt to escape society, now seek to return to it. Commercial colonies expand the borders of civilized space by forming new trade lanes. But no matter how far the Oikumene expands, there is always a frontier, and past that frontier — Beyond. Once a ship passes Beyond, it is on its own, outside the protection — or the reach — of Oikumene law. Likewise, any settlement Beyond is responsible for its own law, and its own protection. Though ISAC or their ilk may go Beyond in search of a suspect, they have no powers there other than those they can enforce, just like any other bounty-hunter.

MISCELLANEOUS SYSTEMS