Neolithia

Category: Administrative

  • Last Bit of Administrivia…

    …I promise! (Well, at least for the foreseeable future.)

    I finally copied the “Privacy Policy” and “Terms of Use” from one of my other blogs and created pages and links on this site. Check them out. Both of them are short, simple, and to-the-point.

    Over the next few days I plan to move the “Assumptions” posts into pages so that they’ll be easy to find and update as time goes on.

    Next week’s post will be the overall backstory for this site, which means it might span two posts if it gets too long for a single post. After that, I plan to begin actually writing content. Stay tuned!

  • Some admin stuff…

    What It’s All About

    It may not be totally clear what the subject matter for this site is, so let me attempt to clarify a bit. I created the domain name several years ago, with the intention to create and use a site to explore and write about two things that interest me (and that also happen to relate well, I think): post-apocalyptic speculative fiction, and “Space Opera.” Interwoven in both, of course, are the social, cultural, and spiritual issues that humans, and particularly groups of humans, deal with on a daily basis.

    The “shipside” stories and musings will comprise the Space Opera content. I will soon write a post that will provide the backstory for the ship and the folks onboard, and then I’ll get started on some short stories about them.

    The “dirtside” stories and musings will comprise the post-apocalyptic speculative fiction content. Again, I intend to write a backstory that details the return of the generation ship (see paragraph above) to an Earth much like the one we inhabit, but more-or-less devoid of human technology. In other words, an Earth that has returned to the Neolithic era, or New Stone Age. It may also be more-of-less devoid of humans, but that is yet to be decided. The flora and fauna will be the descendants of those which are extant today, with some mutations that have evolved to exploit niches created by the collapse of human civilization.

    If there are humans, they will not be zombies or mutant vampires or anything like that. They will be the descendants-of-the-descendants of today’s humans; the descendants who were able to adapt to the demands of survival in a post-apocalyptic era.

    Administriva

    “Real soon now,” I’ll be adding pages with a privacy policy, terms of use, and other necessary “non-content.” I’ll also add a contact page so that you can send me email directly with any questions or comments. In the meantime, please be kind to each other (and to me) with comments and replies to comments.

    Regarding privacy, I don’t, and most likely won’t, collect any personal information about the readers here, beyond that which is provided if you request an account (which is necessary to make comments). And I will never – not now and not ever – sell, give away, or provide any of your information to anyone (with the exception of any court orders or warrants that require me to provide any information, but let’s hope it never comes to that).

    It is my intention to not monetize this site. I want this to be a place for folks to read and think and discuss the subject matter of the content and related issues. I don’t want to say “never,” but I also plan to avoid having any ads on this site. Also, I won’t create any posts or pages that start playing any type of audio or video when you visit them (I hate that on sites that I visit).

    Finally, everything on this site is copyrighted by me. You all know what that means: don’t copy significant portions of the content and use it like you own it. I’m perfectly fine with the “fair use” exclusions, but I’d appreciate attribution, or at least a link back to the part of this site from which any quotes or citations are taken. I’ll be editing the site footer to include a copyright notice – I just realized it doesn’t have that already.

    Thanks for reading! Enjoy…

  • Assumptions, Part 1: Dirtside

    Before we can begin to investigate the possibility of successfully rebuilding civilization, we first need to describe our set of assumptions. For the purposes of this web site, we’ll have two sets of assumptions: one for the situation and conditions of “interstellar” travel (that is, the trip from one habitable planet to another, on what is often called a “generation ship”), and another set of assumptions for what constitutes a “habitable” planet and the situation and process of starting a civilization there.

    This post will describe the assumptions for a habitable planet, henceforth referred to (in most cases) as “dirtside.”

    First, of course, is the environment. Any planet on which human life is expected to survive will have to be very much like the Earth. The air will have to be similarly composed of nitrogen, oxygen, and other gases, in order for humans to breathe. There will have to be clean, liquid, fresh water (as opposed to salt water), constituting both rivers and lakes, to drink, to use for cleaning, for watering plants (including crops), and, eventually, for transportation. We will limit colonization and normal human habitation to the tropic (between 23.43682° N and 23.43682° S latitude) and sub-tropic (outside the tropics up to about 35° north or south latitude) areas, which will approximate the climate, geology, and geography that would be found in those zones on the Earth in the late 20th century. We might eventually also include some areas in the temperate zones (approximately 35° to perhaps 40° north or south latitude), but for now, we’ll stay with the tropics and sub-tropics. So, basically, we’re going to assume a good environment, with the possible exception of the area within, say, 5° latitude of the equator.

    Next is resources. We will assume that the resources are the same as those found in the tropic and sub-tropic zones on Earth in the late 20th century. Furthermore, we’ll assume that the types, quantities, and distribution of metal ore, minerals, gem stones, forests, grasslands, clay, sand, and other resources match the types, quantities, and distributions of those found in analogous latitudes and geographies (mountain, plains, inland, savannas, coastal) on Earth.

    Finally, plants and animals – some of which will be dangerous – will exist in, again, the types, quantities, and distributions found in analogous locations on Earth in the late 20th century. This includes both land, aquatic, and avian life.