Share
Cultural Refugia from the Technocalypse

Early Interstellar Colonies with historically important records of the Pre-Technocalypse Ages

red2 Tau Ceti Shuttle
Image from Anders Sandberg
Red, a colony ship that took colonists (and vital historical data) to Nova Terra, Tau Ceti

Though the Technocalypse meant the end of many earlier cultures and many records of earlier times there were a number of survivals either of the cultures themselves or information concerning them.

The Technocalypse in 565 AT had a very large deletion effect on available information within Solsys, since so many data banks were destroyed or (worse) corrupted or altered in the confusion. For this reason the era is often referred to as the Sundering. Though many individual habitats throughout Solsys, and many individual sites on Old Earth itself, claimed to have survived unscathed and preserved their data stores intact through the subsequent "Dark Ages", there is always the suspicion that they too were affected. However, some colonists had already departed Solsys with very large fractions of human knowledge, before the collapse began. Many historians regard these as the best source of knowledge regarding pre-Sundering history. They include:
Some individuals who left in GAIA arks, and in so-called 'Backyarder' ships had varying amounts of historically important data from the pre-Sundering era and sometimes even collections of pre-Sundering information. Some of the craft which left in the period following the Great Expulsion are listed below:
  • Alpha Centauri (launched 647, presumably failed)
  • Tau Ceti (The last shuttle ship departed Solsys during the Technocalypse and was found to be infected; a GAIA ark was launched in 653, after the Expulsion)
  • 40 Eridani ( launched 652, arrived 789)
  • Epsilon Indi (Starlark launched 645 arrived 764, further arks arrived soon after)
  • Zarathustra (heteromorphic tweaks [Nedyne Industries] left Solsys in 671, arrived c.838)
  • GL 877, Dorranok (Doran clade mission launched 659)
  • Epsilon Eridani ("Bismillah" mission launched 654, arrived 744, followed by several more)
  • Epsilon Indi (Hindi expansion vessel arrived 880)
  • 18 Scorpii (Great South American Alliance missions, launched from 705 onwards)
  • MyuvYin (Tweak Bioborg clade, arrived 809)
Many failed arks were intercepted later in history and in a few cases individuals and/or their data stores have been forensically reconstructed; they are considered great treasure troves by historians. The few successful and the many derelict expeditions from the Backyarder era are similarly valuable to historians. It is believed that all such refugees and immigrants have now been collected and accounted for and retrieved, excepting those who beamed themselves out of Solsys as information.

A very few individual colonists or AIs have personally survived to the present age. Most of those who have are much changed by the passage of time, and some have ascended to transapient status, and they and often decline to give details about their reminiscences, declare themselves unable to remember the time with any accuracy, or give mutually contradictory accounts.

 
Related Articles
 
Appears in Topics
530 to 900 AT: The SunderingKnowledge and InformationSignificant Historical Events
 
Development Notes
Text by Stephen Inniss, with additions by Graham Hopgood
Initially published on 28 July 2007.

 
 
>