Bill MacKenty

A lot of writing lately

I've been doing a ton of writing for an interesting project. I can't wait to share it with you. I've also been developing setting for a far-future science fiction...

So. Much. Writing. I can't wait to share a project I'm working on. It should be ready by next February, and I am very hopeful it will be impactful and important.

In addition to mega-secret project alpha, I've also been developing a far-future science fiction setting lately. Most of the content is here. The idea is to create a universe in the year 7019 - far enough in the future to think and imagine and play with ideas related to who we might become. I'm folding in a space trading game I started working on a while ago (link here) but I haven't started to assign values or abstracted the ideas yet. I am hoping for a book, a computer role playing game, and a table top role playing game.

I start with vague ideas about who we are and cycle out to think about 100 years, 300 years, 1000 years. It's a really fun exercise. I have been thinking about history, and how we have changed (and haven't changed). It's helpful to extrapolate our past into our future.

Of course I have species, planets, events, factions, etc... What I really want to capture is the variety within a setting. It's challenging because the broader the scope, that harder it is to understand what that scope means. I think most science fiction is rather one dimensional - star trek focuses tightly on a bridge and a top-down command structure. Although star trek references a big universe, it only portrays a narrow window of it most of the time. My favorite types of stories are when there is a switching between micro and macro. Tom Clancy's book, Red Storm Rising did this beautifully.

Lots more to say, but I'm thinking a lot about the future these days.