A Primer on the Races of Humanity

by on June 9, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

Most people don’t know how many alien species we’ve made Contact with over the years. Partly that is because they are either human like us, or genengineered Albion creations, or both. Partly it is because people in charge of our education departments didn’t want to teach our children just how dangerous the universe can be. Whether they be intelligent cats, bears, birds, or numerous other examples, the Albion designed them all to fight, and they can be dangerous. But the vast majority of them are far away from Earth, and so the decision was made long ago that we didn’t need to teach our children about them. I think that is the wrong decision, but nobody asked me.

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity – Branan

by on June 8, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

I traveled to Betelgeuse shortly after we made Contact with the Branan. The Thunderbirds as most people refer to them. The most important thing to remember about them is that they were never as primitive as some thought them. They utterly lacked hyperspace travel, and that caused many to underestimate them. But the truth is that local hyperspace conditions were far more…rigorous…than those surrounding Earth. We would not have had hyperspace travel either if we grew up on Betelgeuse. Despite that, they colonized six nearby multiple-star systems and had established electronic presences in almost every system within one hundred lightyears of their home. That was a truly monumental task for a slower-than-light society. My family sent me to negotiate trade and manufacturing deals with them. I did that, and so much more.

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity – Branan

by on June 7, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

I met my first Thunderbird on Sunnydale back when we were assembling the fleets for the big push into the Hyades Cluster. I didn’t know word one about them at the time. I’d been born long after that Contact, and there’d never been much news about them after the initial reports. Almost like someone quieted the news or something. But what do I know? I’m just a starfighter pilot. Point is, if I’d ever known they existed, I’d forgotten about them by then. So them coming out of hyperspace with their big old ship that matched nothing in Betty’s database while me and her were on a quiet little patrol on the edge of the system was…let’s just say a surprise. Then the face of an overgrown bird appeared on my displays and started squawking away. Did I fail to mention that the Thunderbirds can’t speak any human language? Yeah.

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A Primer on the Races of Humanity

by on June 6, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: The Races of Humanity

One of the things we learned very soon after Contact was that the long-dead Albion were industrious little gengineers. It was the reason they were dead, after all. The Ennead had taken exception to their perversions against Mother Nature, or whatever they called her, and devoted their existence to destroying the Albion. And the last order the Albion gave their assorted creations was to kill the Ennead. The death of both races left the Albion’s creations without an enemy and without a master. Most of them found whatever homes they could locate and retired to live out the rest of their lives. Two millennia later, we have made Contact with many of them. And if there is one thing we have learned about the Albion from their creations, it is that they were supremely imaginative in their own way.

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by on June 5, 2017 at 12:01 am
Posted In: Diaries

The events of this weekend remind me why, when I first wrote Jack of Harts, I had things get worse before things got better.

There are generations of people out there who have been taught that others are less human than they are. That others have less rights to speak for thinking the wrong thoughts. That others can be driven out of business for being the wrong religion. That others can be evicted from our schools for being the wrong skin color. That others can be killed for not being like they are.

I grew up watching Star Trek, where mankind had grown beyond those petty disagreements. It was a hopeful message for mankind, a world where we did most things right and built a world we would want to live in.

The events of this weekend remind me that there are those on this planet who do not wish to share it with people who are different than they are. We must defend ourselves from them. We must stop them. We must stand against them. We must drive them from our communities, because they will drive us from ours if we let them. We must, in the end, be willing to fight them.

If we do this well, if we do most things right, we will create that magical world that Jesus, Roddenberry, and Mister Rogers would approve of. I believe that is our future. But as this weekend proves, we have a long way to go before we get there.

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