The Prison in Antares (29 page)

Authors: Mike Resnick

APPENDIX 2

THE LAYOUT OF THE BIRTHRIGHT UNIVERSE

The most heavily populated (by both stars and inhabitants) section of the Birthright Universe is always referred to by its political identity, which evolves from Republic to Democracy to Oligarchy to Monarchy. It encompasses millions of inhabited and habitable worlds. Earth is too small and too far out of the mainstream of galactic commerce to remain Man's capital world, and within a couple of thousand years the capital has been moved lock, stock, and barrel halfway across the galaxy to Deluros VIII, a huge world with about ten times Earth's surface and near-identical atmosphere and gravity. By the middle of the Democracy, perhaps four thousand years from now, the entire planet is covered by one huge sprawling city. By the time of the Oligarchy, even Deluros VIII isn't big enough for our billions of empire-running bureaucrats, and Deluros VI, another large world, is broken up into forty-eight planetoids, each housing a major department of the government (with four planetoids given over entirely to the military.)

Earth itself is way out in the boonies, on the Spiral Arm. I don't believe I've set more than parts of a couple of novels on the Arm.

At the outer edge of the galaxy is the Rim, where worlds are spread out and underpopulated. There's so little of value or military interest on the Rim that one ship, such as the
Theodore Roosevelt
of the
Starship
series, can patrol a couple of hundred worlds by itself. In later eras, the Rim will be dominated by feuding warlords, but it's so far away from the center of things that the governments, for the most part, just ignore it.

Then there are the Inner and Outer Frontiers. The Outer Frontier is that vast but sparsely populated area between the outer edge of the Re/files/13/09/24/f130924/public/Democracy/Oligarchy/Monarchy and the Rim. The Inner Frontier is that somewhat smaller (but still huge) area between the inner reaches of the Re/files/13/09/24/f130924/public/et cetera and the black hole at the core of the galaxy.

It's on the Inner Frontier that I've chosen to set more than half of my novels. In 1968's
Space Chantey
, the brilliant R. A. Lafferty wrote: “Will there be a mythology of the future, they used to ask, after all has become science? Will high deeds be told in epic, or only in computer code?” I decided that I'd like to spend at least a part of my career trying to create those myths of the future, and it seems to me that myths, with their bigger-than-life characters and colorful settings, work best on frontiers where there aren't too many people around to chronicle them accurately, or too many authority figures around to prevent them from playing out to their inevitable conclusions. So I arbitrarily decided that the Inner Frontier was where
my
myths would take place, and I populated it with people bearing names like Catastrophe Baker, the Widowmaker, the Cyborg de Milo, the ageless Forever Kid, and the like. It not only allows me to tell my heroic (and sometimes antiheroic) myths but also lets me tell more realistic stories occurring at the very same time a few thousand light-years away in the Republic or Democracy or whatever happens to exist at that moment.

Over the years I've fleshed out the galaxy. There are the star clustersâthe Albion Cluster, the Quinellus Cluster, a few others. There are the individual worlds, some important enough to appear as the title of a book, such as Walpurgis III, some reappearing throughout the time periods and stories, such as Deluros VIII, Antares III, Binder X, Keepsake, Spica II, some others, and hundreds (maybe thousands by now) of worlds (and races, now that I think about it) mentioned once and never again.

Then there are, if not the bad guys, then at least what I think of as the Disloyal Opposition. Some, like the Sett Empire, get into one war with humanity and that's the end of it. Some, like the Canphor Twins (Canphor VI and Canphor VII) have been a thorn in Man's side for the better part of ten millennia. Some, like Lodin XI, vary almost daily in their loyalties, depending on the political situation.

I've been building this universe, politically and geographically, for a third of a century now, and with each passing book and story it feels a little more real to me. Give me another thirty years, and I'll probably believe every word I've written about it.

APPENDIX 3

CHRONOLOGY OF THE UNIVERSE CREATED IN
BIRTHRIGHT:
THE BOOK OF MAN

YEAR	ERA	STORY OR NOVEL
1885 A.D.	“The Hunter” (IVORY)
1898 A.D.	“Himself” (IVORY)
1982 A.D.	SIDESHOW
1983 A.D.	THE THREE-LEGGED HOOTCH DANCER
1985 A.D.	THE WILD ALIEN TAMER
1987 A.D.	THE BEST ROOTIN' TOOTIN' SHOOTIN' GUNSLINGER IN THE WHOLE DAMNED GALAXY
2057 A.D.	“The Politician” (IVORY)
2403 A.D.	“Shaka II”
2908 A.D.	1 G.E.
16 G.E.	Republic	“The Curator” (IVORY)
103 G.E.	Republic	“The Homecoming”
264 G.E.	Republic	“The Pioneers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
332 G.E.	Republic	“The Cartographers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
346 G.E.	Republic	WALPURGIS III
367 G.E.	Republic	EROS ASCENDING
396 G.E.	Republic	“The Miners” (BIRTHRIGHT)
401 G.E.	Republic	EROS AT ZENITH
442 G.E.	Republic	EROS DESCENDING
465 G.E.	Republic	EROS AT NADIR
522 G.E.	Republic	“All the Things You Are”
588 G.E.	Republic	“The Psychologists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
616 G.E.	Republic	A MIRACLE OF RARE DESIGN
882 G.E.	Republic	“The Potentate” (IVORY)
962 G.E.	Republic	“The Merchants” (BIRTHRIGHT)
1150 G.E.	Republic	“Cobbling Together a Solution”
1151 G.E.	Republic	“Nowhere in Particular”
1152 G.E.	Republic	“The God Biz”
1394 G.E.	Republic	“Keepsakes”
1701 G.E.	Republic	“The Artist” (IVORY)
1813 G.E.	Republic	“Dawn” (PARADISE)
1826 G.E.	Republic	PURGATORY
1859 G.E.	Republic	“Noon” (PARADISE)
1888 G.E.	Republic	“Midafternoon” (PARADISE)
1902 G.E.	Republic	“Dusk” (PARADISE)
1921 G.E.	Republic	INFERNO
1966 G.E.	Republic	STARSHIP: MUTINY
1967 G.E.	Republic	STARSHIP: PIRATE
1968 G.E.	Republic	STARSHIP: MERCENARY
1969 G.E.	Republic	STARSHIP: REBEL
1970 G.E.	Republic	STARSHIP: FLAGSHIP
2122 G.E.	Democracy	“The 43 Antarean Dynasties”
2154 G.E.	Democracy	“The Diplomats” (BIRTHRIGHT)
2239 G.E.	Democracy	“Monuments of Flesh and Stone”
2275 G.E.	Democracy	“The Olympians” (BIRTHRIGHT)
2469 G.E.	Democracy	“The Barristers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
2885 G.E.	Democracy	“Robots Don't Cry”
2911 G.E.	Democracy	“The Medics” (BIRTHRIGHT)
3004 G.E.	Democracy	“The Politicians” (BIRTHRIGHT)
3042 G.E.	Democracy	“The Gambler” (IVORY)
3286 G.E.	Democracy	SANTIAGO
3322 G.E.	Democracy	A HUNGER IN THE SOUL
3324 G.E.	Democracy	THE SOUL EATER
3324 G.E.	Democracy	“Nicobar Lane: The Soul Eater's Story”
3407 G.E.	Democracy	THE RETURN OF SANTIAGO
3427 G.E.	Democracy	SOOTHSAYER
3441 G.E.	Democracy	ORACLE
3447 G.E.	Democracy	PROPHET
3502 G.E.	Democracy	“Guardian Angel”
3504 G.E.	Democracy	“A Locked-Planet Mystery”
3504 G.E.	Democracy	“Honorable Enemies”
3505 G.E.	Democracy	“If the Frame FitsÂ .Â .Â .”
3719 G.E.	Democracy	“Hunting the Snark”
4026 G.E.	Democracy	THE FORTRESS IN ORION
4027 G.E.	Democracy	THE PRISON IN ANTARES
4375 G.E.	Democracy	“The Graverobber” (IVORY)
4822 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Administrators” (BIRTHRIGHT)
4839 G.E.	Oligarchy	THE DARK LADY
5101 G.E.	Oligarchy	THE WIDOWMAKER
5103 G.E.	Oligarchy	THE WIDOWMAKER REBORN
5106 G.E.	Oligarchy	THE WIDOWMAKER UNLEASHED
5108 G.E.	Oligarchy	A GATHERING OF WIDOWMAKERS
5461 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Media” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5492 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Artists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5521 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Warlord” (IVORY)
5655 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Biochemists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5912 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Warlords” (BIRTHRIGHT)
5993 G.E.	Oligarchy	“The Conspirators” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6304 G.E.	Monarchy	IVORY
6321 G.E.	Monarchy	“The Rulers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6400 G.E.	Monarchy	“The Symbiotics” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6521 G.E.	Monarchy	“Catastrophe Baker and the Cold Equations”
6523 G.E.	Monarchy	THE OUTPOST
6524 G.E.	Monarchy	“Catastrophe Baker and a Canticle for Leibowitz”
6599 G.E.	Monarchy	“The Philosophers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6746 G.E.	Monarchy	“The Architects” (BIRTHRIGHT)
6962 G.E.	Monarchy	“The Collectors” (BIRTHRIGHT)
7019 G.E.	Monarchy	“The Rebels” (BIRTHRIGHT)
16201 G.E.	Anarchy	“The Archaeologists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
16673 G.E.	Anarchy	“The Priests” (BIRTHRIGHT)
16888 G.E.	Anarchy	“The Pacifists” (BIRTHRIGHT)
17001 G.E.	Anarchy	“The Destroyers” (BIRTHRIGHT)
21703 G.E.	“Seven Views of Olduvai Gorge”