I've had millions of ideas (not literally) for individual stories set in this perceived future, but they all fall under the following "epochs":
1) The Solar Epoch. This would consist mainly of a Solar War, or Solar Wars, but it may also include such things as life on Earth in the nearish future and attempts at space piracy (which, while I'm the writer, will probably fail).
2) The Human Ascension. This would be an account of the major events that took place for the first few millenia of Human expansion throughout the stars. Remember that I don't believe in Faster-than-light, and I intend on making these stories as believable as possible (even if that means getting a PhD in physics!!! Hah, not even sure if I have a decent GCSE in science yet
), so there could be entire novels based around the day-to-day lives of colonists aboard a city-sized spaceship (I have a reason for believing that many might choose to remain conscious for much of the trip, and survive). There might also be some interstellar war, but I haven't thought much about that yet.
3) The Great Age of Discovery. This would begin with our first discovery of alien relics, but for this "epoch" there would be no actual contact with sentient extraterrestrials. I have a seriously insane idea for one of these alien relics...
4) The Age of Misunderstanding. I can't really say why we would be like this, otherwise I would ruin the stories of the previous "epoch", but here we would make our first contact with extraterrestrial sentiences, and it would immediately result in war. This would be an account of the first interspecies war in Human History, as well as being on a ridiculously epic scale (the entire war will probably end up being a few million years long, due to distances).
5) The Matter of Humankind. Here, Humans or their enemies would come into contact with a third sentient species, which would result in peace between the ancient rivals (due to distances, many hundreds or thousands of years would pass before the two species are fully at peace). Somehow, and I admit I've barely begun to consider how, the three species would reach an understanding, and would form an interstellar government. This epoch would be concerned mostly with Humankind's place in the universe, and how it deals with its alien neighbours. This would involve not only Humans trying to survive in an alien world, but also aliens trying to survive in a Human world. There would be very little in the way of epic wars, here, but some actiony stuff will probably still take place (interstellar bounty hunt, perhaps?). Also, during this epoch, the three species would encounter at least one other sentient species only, where they were all technologically advanced and travelling through space when they encountered eachother, this fourth species would be primitive and only beginning to form a civilisation. This would be a bit like a futuristic version of the European discovery of America.
6) The Galactic age. This would begin with the 3 (or possibly more) species settling on every inhabitable planet in the local "region" (in this case it is an area of space which is neither too dense or too "light"-on the edge of a spiral arm) and their first venture into another such region. Like in The Human Ascension, this could have entire stories set inside spaceships. This epoch would involve the Humans and their allies subjugating or understanding species in every region of the Milky Way. It would be the longest epoch so far. It would end with the entire Milky Way being ruled by one government, and most of its inhabitable and useful planets being colonised. From this moment forth, this government and the species under its control shall be called Milkyans (until I can think of a better name).
7) The Final Ascension. This would be the final epoch, and by far the longest. This epoch would begin with the Milkyans exploring the nearby galaxies. They would then colonise them, and continue outwards. This epoch would not take billions of years, but trillions! This could well involve intergalactic wars! It will ultimately end with a perfect universal Eutopia. I don't want to go any further than that.
So that's the general idea. Some of it might sound ridiculous-for example, how do you wage an interstellar (never mind intergalactic) war if you can't move faster than light? And what about ruling interstellar/galactic empires?!! Well, I can only speculate, but speculate I shall and as realistically as I possibly can!
As you can see, the scale of the epochs increases exponentially with the transition from one epoch to the next-it begins with the solar system, then a few other stellar systems within a few hundred lightyears, then the next three are all set within a region of several thousand lightyears cubed, then the Milky Way Galaxy, and finally the entire universe! I suppose it might be best to apply an epoch to the local group of galaxies then go on to the rest of the universe, but meh, seven is a good number.
These stories might be written in a variety of styles. I think many of them would be similar to The Silmarillion-they would be somewhat storylike, but also sound quite factual and historical. Others would be like eye witness accounts and biographies, whereas some might just be fairly normal third person stories centred around the exploits of a single protagonist.
Anyways. That's a brief overview of my evil plan (it's not really evil, but it is a plan). I'm still not fully decided on whether or not to begin at the beginning of everything, with The Solar Epoch, or whether to begin with a story later on, perhaps making odd references to previous epochs so that the reader is like "Ooh, that sounds interesting, maybe he'll write a story about that one day?" Suggestions would be very helpful-where do you think a good place to start would be?
Tell me what you think-is it crap? Be honest. I know there will be some people who would love something like this (surely there's someone at least something like me out there?! Am I destined to walk amongst nothing other than mere Humans all my life?!), but I imagine most probably haven't even read most of what I've written out of boredom! Ideas are always welcome. Attempts at making me stop saying "idea" are always welcome. Free cashew nuts are always welcome.
And with that, good night.
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Actually, because of my no-faster-than-light rule, anything that takes place in more than one star system will have to take many years, decades, centuries, millenia, etc, because people orbiting different stars will communicate very slowly with eachother. If there was a war (or several related wars) taking place across an area of a hundred lightyears cubed and a ceasefire was agreed in the centremost theatre of war (the most central planet being fought on in that region), it would take at least fifty years for peace to settle throughout the rest of the region, unless the other theatres came under peace seperately.
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