Earth began settling the planets of the Colonial Star Cluster in 2104 using untested ships to make the thirty day interstellar journey to the nearest habitable world. Soon, people by the thousands from all over Earth were pouring out to the fifteen planets circling these distant stars. The old ways were set aside in favor of making a go at it in these new places.
But Earth always loomed, far enough away not to directly control the colonial worlds but close enough to interfere.
In 2169 these planets had had enough and declared their independence from the human home world, igniting the war that would last for a hundred and fifty years which would occasionally spill over onto the worlds themselves. Meanwhile, the planets had to deal with the tenuous alliance they’d created between each other, the Unified Republic of Stars.
It’s an epic and massive story, comprising years of chaos, infighting, and outright war in which heros can often be mistaken for villans and the villans carry out their acts by popular consent. Humanity has never been so powerful and yet also never given to such conflict.
We’re looking for story submissions based on the world of the Unified Republic of Stars. We accept fiction of all kinds released under the Creative Commons BY-NC-SA License so that others may base their own works on characters and places that you define.
Need help coming up with an idea? Try using our story generator, built to construct simple plots set within the Unified Republic of Stars story world.
There aren’t a whole lot of rules to follow but we do offer a few basic guidelines so that everyone can know what they’re involved in and that their work will be respected:
- No altering any of the major events. Everything in the Books category is part of what makes up the “story bible.” They’re documents at a high level of all the major events. If you want to set a character in one of them, taking part, or in a peripheral battle that hasn’t mentioned, feel free. But please don’t change the outcome of the event.
- Be kind with other people’s characters. If the original author hasn’t killed off a character they created, please don’t kill them. Their story arc may not yet be complete. Feel free to include them though and credit the original author at the bottom of your own work so long as you believe that what the character is doing is consistent with their previous appearances.
- Be kind to cities and planets. Don’t wipe cities and planets off the map. Other people might be using them as setting for their own stories. Any destruction of cities will be noted in the reference section well ahead of time.
- Be aware of the comments about rarity. If it’s mentioned that Plasma Pulse Pistols were rare before the revolution, it’s intentional. Everyone and their sister shouldn’t be running around with one. Sure, one guy can have one, but if it’s set in a certain year, and that year is before 2169, they’d better treat it better than they treat themselves. They’re that rare.
- No aliens.. This is a human centric story world and aliens are usually one dimensional stand-ins for some aspect of humanity. And if they’re not then they’re too human. Chances are, if there are aliens, they’re nothing like us and have totally different motivations. So… no close encounters, okay? However, people thinking they might be seeing aliens…? That could be interesting…
- Include an approximate year along with every story. It’s interesting to see how stories and people perceive the story world as time marches on.
- Write well. There’s no need to be Don fucking Delillo here but a competent skill in the English language would be good. Basic story rules apply: a beginning, a middle, and an end. Show, don’t tell. Blah, blah, blah.
- We reserve the right to edit. Please, don’t be offended. Everyone’s better after a good edit. It’ll be shared with you before publication and if you don’t like it, you can pull it. But if you do, then we’ll go ahead an post it.
- Go Crazy. Let’s see sweet, heartwarming, violent, and obscene stories. All at once if you think you can squeeze it together. Don’t be afraid to deal with the darker side of life. Or the lighter. Hell, whatever appeals to you. Just make sure it’s interesting. Point is, unless it breaks one of the guidelines listed above, you’re free to write whatever you’d like and we’d love to read it.