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Author: Sharrukin

Symphony of Cultures

Symphony of Cultures

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I have a contract in hand for this project, and the design is starting to come together nicely (although there is a ton of work to be done), so it’s about time that I pulled the tarp off of it.

As of this month, I’m working on (part of) a new book, with the working title of Symphony of Cultures. This is conceptually a “sequel” to Architect of Worlds, and it’s essentially going to be a book of tools and design sequences for building alien species and alien cultures for interstellar fiction. Ad Astra Games will be publishing it. The objective is to have it ready for release in about a year, in time for next summer’s big conventions. We’re aiming for a book that’s about the same length and heft as Architect of Worlds – that is, about 192 pages of rules, worksheets, and scientific/historical/literary background.

I’m not the sole author for this one. Ken Burnside intends to write at least a short section. We also have a third collaborator who has both gaming chops and considerable relevant expertise in evolutionary biology – honestly, they’re likely to end up writing more of the final draft than I do.

Prior art that might be relevant includes the various Traveller animal-design rules, the old Digest Group Publications release Grand Census, the alien-design rules in GURPS Uplift, and the Civilization tabletop and video game franchises.

The intention is to have a “short” design sequence, something a writer or gamer could complete in an hour or two, generating a “planet of the week” for a piece of fiction. There’s also going to be a “long” design sequence, that would take a lot more work but would help the reader generate the whole evolutionary and cultural history of an alien society in detail. That “long” sequence is where a lot of the scientific and historical mojo is going to be applied.

At the moment I’m drafting an initial design for a major portion of the “long” design sequence, and giving some thought to what the “short” sequence might look like. I’m hoping we can actually start writing big chunks of material by this fall. We may be looking for beta readers and “playtesters” at some point, so feel free to drop me a line if you might be interested in that. I probably won’t be posting portions of the draft here, as I did during development of Architect of Worlds. We’re on a much shorter development cycle for this one, and it has a publisher from day one, so we’ll be working through Ad Astra’s usual playtesting pipeline.

Should be an interesting project, though, and I’m looking forward to making it come together.

Automation for “Architect of Worlds”

Automation for “Architect of Worlds”

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It took us a lot longer than it probably should have – I can attest that other things kept grabbing higher priority – but Ad Astra Games and I have agreed on a general policy for anyone who would like to build a computer application to implement some or all of the Architect of Worlds design sequence.

The policy is sitting in my Google Drive, at this link. Ken Burnside and I have agreed on what’s in this document.

You’ll notice that Ken is interested in hosting a full implementation of Architect of Worlds on the Ad Astra Games site, as a convenience for writers and gamers who might want to use the design sequences without having to plow through the book by hand. Developers who would like to talk to Ken about submitting a design proposal are welcome to email him at Ad Astra Games – be sure to use the subject line “Architect of Worlds Automation Design Proposal.”

Supplemental Khedai Hegemony Map

Supplemental Khedai Hegemony Map

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Another piece of cartography for the “Human Destiny” space-opera setting, related to the physical map of the Orion Arm neighborhood I posted a few days ago. This one is a simple “subway map” detailing the wormhole-bridge connections between interstellar cultures in the vicinity of Sol.

The idea here is that galactic civilization expedites travel between cultures (which are otherwise likely to be years apart even given the available FTL drives) by setting up wormhole bridges between them. The termini of these bridges aren’t placed in densely-populated star systems, in part as a hedge against an ambitious local culture deciding to capture and possibly destroy their local “stargates.” Instead, they’re usually placed in nearby red-dwarf systems that lack significant native life. Then the culture in charge – in this case, the Khedai Hegemony – fortifies the local system and builds way-stations to facilitate through-traffic.

Here’s a link to this new map’s page in my Ko-fi shop. It’s free for monthly subscribers.

New Khedai Hegemony Map

New Khedai Hegemony Map

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I’ve just completed and posted a bit of cartography related to my “Human Destiny” space-opera setting. This is a new version of a map I did back in 2018, describing (in this case, a small section of) the Khedai Hegemony, the empire that conquers Earth and uplifts humans into galactic society in the mid-to-late 21st Century.

I actually plan to produce two more maps detailing this setting as of the early 24th Century, since that’s where a lot of the stories I’ve already written are set and where the proposed roleplaying-game treatment will focus. I don’t have a timetable for finishing those, although I suspect it won’t be long.

Here’s a link to the map’s page in my Ko-fi shop. It’s free for monthly subscribers.

Planning for July 2025

Planning for July 2025

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It’s not quite the end of June yet, but I find I’ve made decent progress on all my objectives for this month, and I’ve discovered a couple of dependencies in my creative work that mean I need to move a few tasks up in the priority order. So I think I’m going to lay out the plan for July a few days early and get started on that now.

As I began with last month, the planning message for July is going to be organized around a list of high-level projects, with a few paragraphs for each. Note that for any item that has multiple objectives listed, those will be more or less in priority order, and I’m not making any commitment to finish all of them in the coming month.

University Studies

I successfully completed my two courses for the 2024-2025 academic year at the beginning of June. Haven’t seen the results of my finals or my overall grades yet, but I’m reasonably confident I did well with both courses. I’ve selected two courses for the 2025-2026 year, but those don’t start until September, which leaves the rest of the summer free. No objectives for this item.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

I completed the Star Trek: Lower Decks novella “Panem et Circenses” a few days ago. Turned out pretty well, I thought – at least it’s been keeping my regular readers over on Archive of our Own happy and calling for more.

I haven’t come up with a title for the next story, which is going to involve character development, identity politics, and dealing with family issues, all of it happening on Vulcan. As I’ve observed, someday someone is going to write a story involving pon farr in which the characters involved resolve the situation without complications, and just end up happily married and ready for the next adventure. I’m not going to be writing that story!

The objective for July is to write the next story in my Lower Decks fan-fiction series.

Architect of Worlds

Today I had a lengthy conversation with Ken Burnside about a number of items having to do with Architect of Worlds. In particular, we had a long-overdue discussion about his vision for providing automation for Architect. We also talked about some possible follow-on products, most notably an expanded and improved version of the “Architect of Worlds for Traveller” document I put together a couple of years ago.

The objectives for July are:

  • Draft a one-page specification document for an automated utility for Architect of Worlds which can he hosted on the Ad Astra Games website, and get that approved by Ken Burnside
  • Begin researching and drafting a new edition of “Abbreviated Architect of Worlds for Traveller,” with the objective of being able to start final layout in August
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Continue to collect research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

I was able to rework my basic “structure of interstellar civilizations” document for Human Destiny in June, and published that for my Ko-fi readers. The next step in reworking that setting is going to involve some cartography, and some general notes on ship design. One I’ve finished those steps, I think I’ll be going back to the star system writeups I’ve already done and revising those, then starting to produce new ones.

The objectives for July are:

  • Build revised maps for near-Sol space on two scales, one for just the “Human Protectorate” region, another for a substantial portion of the Orion Arm that places the 8-12 other civilizations that humans will interact with most frequently, and release those to Ko-fi
  • Produce a one- or two-page document that describes typical starship designs and mission profiles, and release that to Ko-fi
  • Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Revise existing “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” documents to reflect the reappearance of FTL in the setting, and release the new versions to Ko-fi
  • Resume producing new documents in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely starting with the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons to Ko-fi

Upcoming Conventions

I had originally intended to hit some of the conventions closest to me this year, but the windows for getting on con programming and making other arrangements passed while I was still employed by the federal government, and I missed a lot of those opportunities. So in 2025 I think I’m going to hit the same conventions I attended last year: Travellercon in October, and Philcon in November. I’ll revisit my plans for conventions in the Baltimore-Washington area next year.

The objectives for July are:

  • Register for convention programming for both Travellercon 2025 and Philcon 2025
  • Begin preparing a world-building seminar, tentatively titled “World-Building for Science Fiction: Getting the Astronomy Right,” for one or both conventions
  • Begin preparing 2-3 tabletop game sessions to run at both conventions

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

I made very little (although not zero) progress on this item in June, and it’s probably going to stay close to the bottom of the priority list. The objective for July will be to continue researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it.

Water in the Very Early Universe

Water in the Very Early Universe

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Image credit: NASA

Okay, now this is a really interesting result.

Abundant water from primordial supernovae at cosmic dawn

The claim is that the hypothetical Population III stars, the very earliest generation of stars in the universe, could have seeded the interstellar medium with vast amounts of water. This might have led to the formation of rocky, water-bearing planets – possible abodes for life – as early as 200 million years after the Big Bang. Long before galaxies really started taking shape, certainly long before the Milky Way began to form.

Take it with a grain of salt, of course. We don’t have proof that Population III stars of the kind modeled here ever actually existed. Still, this suggests we might be able to push the start date for biological life in the universe back by a lot. I may need to rethink the deep back-story for the Human Destiny setting . . .

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

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I’ve just published a PDF document to my Kofi page, free for current subscribers:

Notes on the Structure of Interstellar Civilizations

This is a collection of assumptions, a bit of mathematical modeling, and lots of commentary on the prevalence of interstellar cultures in the Human Destiny setting. Even if you’re not interested in that setting per se, it may be of some interest as an example of deliberate world-building on a very grand scale.

There’s going to be a follow-on project, involving making some maps of the Human Protectorate’s primary volume, and of the immediate galactic neighborhood around Sol in the Human Destiny universe. Not sure if I’ll turn to that immediately, but it’s in the critical path for my project to re-think that setting, so probably sooner rather than later.

Planning for June 2025

Planning for June 2025

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Well, here we go, my first creative-planning message in close to six months. Now that I’m retired and have a lot more open time, I intend to get back into a regular schedule of creative work, organized as before around a loose plan that’s updated each month.

I’m going to experiment a little with the format, though, starting with this month. Instead of publishing a bullet-point list, I’m going to have a few one- or two-paragraph sections, each of which describes the current state of a project set and sets out tentative goals for the coming month.

So, without further ado . . .

University Studies

This month I’m wrapping up my university studies for the 2024-2025 academic year – this is my effort to acquire a second degree in Natural Sciences (Astronomy) and maybe acquire a graduate degree in the discipline in the coming years. The first week in June is probably going to be spent mostly on studying for my final exams, which are scheduled for 5 June and 9 June.

Therapy Writing (Fan Fiction)

The one creative outlet I managed to maintain, during that last stressful five months of my federal career, was a new burst of fan-fiction writing. That’s been in the form of a series of Star Trek: Lower Decks stories, forming a personal continuity that picks up where the television series left off. So far I’ve written five complete stories and am busy with the sixth.

If you’re interested in reading any of those:

The objective for June is to finish “Panem et Circenses,” and maybe get started on the next story.

Architect of Worlds

Now that I have some time free, there are a few things I’ve been wanting to do with Architect of Worlds that may be rising to the top of the priority list. Most of this is just product maintenance.

The objectives for June are:

  • Talk to Ken Burnside about how to approach the question of automating Architect – do we want to license one pro developer to be able to sell a piece of software, do we just want to be able to offer a seal of approval for amateur developers, or do we want to try something else?
  • Reconstruct a formal errata list, so readers can see what’s been fixed in each minor-version release so far
  • Start collecting new research for a potential second edition of the book, and make occasional world-building posts to this site based on that new research

The Human Destiny Universe

This is my primary space-opera setting, which has seen a few published stories already and is intended eventually to support more fiction as well as a tabletop RPG.

Lately I’ve been continuing to re-think the setting’s core premises, possibly because I’ve been on a Star Trek kick of late and I’m looking for ways to make the stories and the eventual RPG more Trek-like. For a while I was thinking in terms of a slower-than-light-only universe, but in many ways that’s a poor fit for pseudo-Trek, and it makes it much harder for any one character to have lots of interstellar adventures in their lifespan. I think I see a way to keep the over-arching premises of the setting while re-introducing FTL starships, but that will require some re-thinking of the structure of interstellar civilizations.

The objectives for June are:

  • Re-work the document I have that describes the shape and structure of interstellar society in the setting
  • (Tentative) Re-work the spreadsheets I have modeling the exploration and colonization of near-Sol space, now based on FTL assumptions
  • Finish writing another document in the “Atlas of the Human Protectorate” series (most likely the Alpha Centauri writeup) and release that for patrons on my Ko-fi site

Re-publishing Earlier Fiction

This is probably the last item in the priority list, but I eventually want to evaluate my previously published fiction (3-4 ebooks, mostly published on Amazon Kindle Direct) and prepare to re-issue all of it. That’s going to involve removing these ebooks from Amazon, possibly giving them each an editing pass and rebuilding them, and then re-publishing them on a few less-billionaire-owned outlets. (I’m making almost no money from Amazon anyway, so I don’t anticipate losing much by moving my work elsewhere, and who knows? Sales may actually improve.)

The objective for June is probably going to be limited to researching my options for re-publishing, and starting to develop a workflow for it. I may get a first ebook re-issued this month, but that seems unlikely.

Status Report (17 May 2025)

Status Report (17 May 2025)

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This is the first update to my writing blog in over two months, and I’ve got a lot to discuss.

Where I’ve Been

My absence over the past few months can be tied back to the results of last year’s elections here in the United States. I have plenty more to say about that, you may be sure, but not in this space – this blog is solely for my creative work and isn’t intended as a current-events commentary. Still, the immediate impact of those elections on my personal and professional life was profound. I was, after all, employed by the US federal government at the time.

Suffice it to day that late in January, my wife and I looked at our finances, and realized that it would in fact be feasible for me to retire now, rather than three or four years from now as was my original plan. Watching what was already happening elsewhere in the federal government, what was already happening in my own piece of it, we decided that was the best move to make. I put in for retirement, and as of today (17 May 2025) that’s in effect.

However, that meant I had less than four months to finish one last really big project for my office. This at a time when almost daily, major changes were being imposed on my workplace that made actually doing that work more and more difficult.

I managed to get it done – that final project was completed two days before my retirement – but at the cost of almost all my creative production from about the end of February. After taking care of my other commitments, I just didn’t have the time or the emotional resources to focus on creative work at the end of each day.

So that’s why I haven’t updated this blog, or my Kofi page, or most of my other online presence, since early March.

Fortunately, that dry spell is over. I’m now retired, and I have no plan to look for a new full-time job anytime soon. Which means I now have the time – and, once I’ve adjusted to the new state of affairs, the energy – to get busy with my own projects once again.

In short: I’m back.

Creative Projects

So, in which creative projects do I intend to start investing some of my newly available time?

Architect of Worlds

At the moment I’m mostly in maintenance mode for Architect of Worlds. I’ve started collecting some notes for an eventual second edition of the book, but it may be a few years before I feel prepared to seriously start work on that. In the meantime, Ken Burnside and I keep collecting errata and releasing new minor updates to the book.

Ken and I also need to have a discussion about possible automation for the design sequences in the book. In particular, whether we want to work with someone to produce software that can be sold, or whether we want to take a different approach. That discussion is months overdue, and there are people who have done great work producing candidate software that have been in limbo because I just haven’t had the time to give the matter my full attention. Time to get that figured out.

Meanwhile, I think I have enough material to start producing at least one or two blog posts a month on new research or extra “rules” for Architect of Worlds. Special cases, new design sequences for additional detail, worked examples, all of those are possible.

The “Human Destiny” Universe

The Human Destiny setting is my primary space-opera universe under development.

Before my hiatus, I was working on using Architect of Worlds to produce short write-ups for specific star systems in the Human Destiny universe, and publishing those via my Kofi page. I’d like to get started with that once more, and hopefully get up to producing at least one new writeup per month. All this material will eventually go into an “atlas of human space” that might be published as a complete book.

I also want to get back to serious design work on the Human Destiny tabletop RPG, using some game system that has a third-party-creator-friendly licensing scheme. Most likely candidates are Chaosium’s Basic Roleplaying engine, and the Modiphius 2d20 engine.

Finally, I have three or four new pieces of fiction in this setting at various stages of development. Plus a couple of previously published works that I’m considering taking down, re-working, and republishing on a more creator-friendly platform. (Self-publishing on Amazon certainly makes money for Amazon, but the available evidence suggests it doesn’t do much for most authors.) Those stories are likely to appear as I find my hindbrain has finished processing them.

Writing Fan-Fiction

The one creative outlet I did manage to pursue over the past few months has been writing some fan-fiction, specifically Star Trek: Lower Decks fan-fiction. That’s been so much fun (not to mention useful therapy for stressful times) that I’m likely to continue with it. The stories I’ve written thus far are all available on Archive of Our Own: Lower Decks Continues.

The portion of my subconscious mind that I call “my muse” also handed me another insanely ambitious fan-fiction idea recently: write a sequel to the classic Arthur C. Clarke novel The City and the Stars. As often happens, I keep telling my muse to drop the idea, and she keeps ignoring me and handing me concept after concept in support of it. I suspect I’m going to have to write the thing just to get her to shut up about it.

Other Projects

There’s also my Fourth Millennium historical-fantasy setting, which got a fair amount of my attention last year and will probably rise back to the top of the queue at some point.

One project that’s long overdue: over the past couple of years, I’ve purchased several tabletop games that I’ve just never had time to bring to the table. Now that most of my days are going to have plenty of free hours, that’s going on the agenda. Some of those titles are nicely evocative and thematic, and they may well suggest some ideas for stories. I won’t know until I’ve tried them out . . .

Finally, I’m still working on a second undergraduate degree, and eventually a master’s degree, from the Open University. That’s going to continue, and in fact over the next 2-3 weeks it will take up a significant chunk of time – final assignments and exams are coming up. By next fall I’ll likely be enrolled in a couple of new courses. Still, with my day job no longer a factor, I expect I’ll be able to be a better student and still get a lot more creative work done.

Current Status

So there it is – I’m on the cusp of a major realignment in my time and creative work. I plan to spend what’s left of May just adjusting to my new status, working on my university courses, and starting to build some new habits. You may see some new work from me before the first of June, but I’m not prepared to make any promises.

About the beginning of June, though, you can expect to see the monthly planning message resume, and I’ll hopefully be producing new items on a regular basis for the first time since early this year.

My thanks for everyone’s patience. Looking forward to the new adventure . . .

Planning (sort of) for March 2025

Planning (sort of) for March 2025

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Very short planning message this month, because I’m honestly finding it difficult to plan creative work more than a few days in advance right now. For anyone who’s getting impatient, my apologies and things are likely to improve dramatically after 16 May.

My current primary objectives, assuming I find the time and serenity for them, are to (1) knock out one or two more star-system writeups for the Human Destiny setting, and (2) maybe pull together some more notes for the Human Destiny RPG sourcebook. On that second item, I’ve got a fairly complete set of character-design rules in the back of my head, and I think they hold together pretty well, it’s just a matter of getting them down on paper.

Meanwhile, my “writing fan-fiction for therapy” pseudo-project isn’t going too badly. About 21,500 words of new prose in the past two weeks, which isn’t bad at all for something I’m just doing in odd moments. I’d almost forgotten how smoothly the prose can flow when you’re playing in someone else’s sandbox. I’ve decided against posting any of that work to my Ko-fi, since fan-fiction really shouldn’t be allowed that close to even small amounts of actual money, but if anyone’s interested here are a couple links:

Some more things developing on the back burner, but better to discuss those when they’ve taken shape a bit more fully. Also, when I’m out from under my current employment and can start enjoying retired life. Two months and seven days . . .