The World of the Starmen

At the end of the 20th century, the world economy was booming–a time which many people thought would last forever. This prosperity, however, was coupled with a decreasing morality. Violence, lawlessness, and wars were on the rise: few thought it was safe to be outside at night. The leaders of multinational corporations began to overreach themselves, becoming intolerant of competition, depending on economic growth for solvency, and laying the groundwork for the decay of global infrastructure.

The terraformation of Mars began early in the 21st century when a shower of meteors slammed into the planet. Although this was a natural phenomenon, scientists on Earth saw that this was a wonderful opportunity to begin the terraformation of the red planet. They quickly sent a number of unmanned rockets programmed to release a large number of genetically-engineered microbes designed to break down the rock into breathable atmosphere.

The first manned Mars landing took place in 2014, when the Captain of the NASA spacecraft Ares, Lee High Eagle, set foot on the planet. To hurry the process of terraformation, a few large Atmosphere Plants were set up in some specially engineered deep craters so that a few cities could quickly be established. Those plants have been maintained, and have given the crater cities a denser atmosphere than the rest of Mars.

In the late 20th century, the Communist block nearly disappeared with the dissolution of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. The only Communist nation remaining in the Western hemisphere was Cuba. The People’s Republic of China remained the world’s most populous country and the sole Communist nation on the world scene which had to be reckoned with. However, the rise of multinational corporations brought all the nations of the world into an increasingly-interdependent relationship, and many of these nations wanted to invest in China.

Political unrest in China, often subdued in the latter half of the 20th century by force or by fear, was never completely obliterated. In the first decade of the 21st century, the leadership of China was a council mostly composed of very old men. Their successors, although still hoping to retain power in a Communist government, realized that the old ways would not succeed, and that it was merely the sheer size of their nation that maintained its position as a world power. They knew that they would have to allow foreign investments into the nation if China were not to become isolated from the rest of the world.

These foreign investments eventually brought in the ways of the wider world, including a reasonably efficient computer network and internet communications. A controlled press was no longer possible, or even conceivable. Eventually a crisis of leadership brought about a bloodless coup. After a brief period without leadership, and somewhat to the alarm of Western business interests, in 2021 the Chinese people restored the Emperor. Within a decade, Taiwan and China had become one nation again. The nation was well on its way to economic stability.

Eventually things went sour. The world economy started to drop, and headed toward a steep recession. Normally the world would have recovered, but the declining morality of the world had created severe cultural instability which few wanted to admit. When millions of people lost their jobs, those people became dependent upon government welfare. The governments could not meet the welfare demands, and decided to increase taxes and decrease benefits.

Shame and frustration within the populace blossomed into anger and isolationism. Cults of personality offered stability to those looking for purpose, causing thousands of people across the world to retreat from society. The breakdown of national and international relations resulted in the Balkanization of countries.

When the recession turned into a depression in 2040, the world went mad. Riots flared up in dozens of cities. Bank runs happened all across the globe. A panic filled the air. Governments tried to crack down on their citizens using android enforcers to supplement or replace police organizations, repressing uprisings and meeting protests with sudden and extreme force. Populations reacted with increased and indiscriminate violence.

the collapse

Slowly, one by one, the governments of the world fell apart. The infrastructure of the planet gave in to the decay that had been gnawing at its bones. The citizens, not brought up with moral anchors, rebelled against their elected leaders. Worldwide violence, terrorism, and unrestrained criminal opportunism replaced the rule of law. Within collapsing countries, states seceded from their federal governments, and cities declared their autonomy from the state. Personality communes and survivalist groups violently defended their chosen territory. In less stable regions, criminal cartels replaced the governments outright.

The nuclear proliferation of previous years left uncounted numbers of unregistered nuclear weapons on the black market where they were sold to terrorists and fanatics. On August 6, 2045, an unidentified terrorist organization detonated an atomic device of undisclosed origin in the Middle East. History marks this day as the beginning of global social and political unrest known as the Collapse.

War erupted across the Earth. Small but fierce battles were waged between different factions as they battled over control of various areas. Their weapons were not multi megaton bombs capable of destroying several hundred square miles at a shot, but small bombs whose effectiveness was intended to be achieved by a process known as “swarm bombing”—that is, unleashing dozens of small nuclear bombs over the target. Millions of people died in the attacks and their fallout.

When news of the Earth’s upheaval reached Mars, the lack of supporting resources flowing to the frontier caused many settlers to return to the world of their birth. Eagle City’s population had swelled to more than 8500. By the time the last spaceship left for Earth the entire population of Mars was only 1900. They returned home to no more security than they had left behind.

By the time the Collapse ended in 2090, the world was in shambles. Most of Earth’s large cities had been destroyed. Much of the infrastructure was gone. Earth had no intercontinental–let alone orbital–launch capacity. Technicians, scientists, and doctors were extremely rare.

But the next generation got together and rebuilt. Being kind to your neighbor became important again. The concepts of stewardship, accountability, and mutual responsibility revived. People began to take pride in their work, and watch out for the other fellow. Things were a far cry from perfect, but it was a start.

thomas starlight

In that kind of environment, Earth painfully rebuilt what had been lost. One of the most critical losses was access to raw materials. Most of the mines that were left were deep mines that required sophisticated technology and infrastructure to obtain. In 2089, Thomas Starlight founded Starlight Enterprise as a mining and refinery endeavor committed to rebuilding the Earth and its culture. Originally a company dedicated to finding new sources of energy, it quickly became known for high ideals, philanthropy, and–eventually–interplanetary ventures.

Most of Earth’s mines were destroyed or rendered inaccessible through radiation during the Collapse, creating a need for rebuilding them or discovering new sources of ore. In addition, most of the mines were quite depleted, leaving only the most difficult and expensive ones still available. By 2090, Earth had developed a workable fusion reactor. The construction of such a reactor solved a lot of infrastructure problems: instead of rebuilding a couple of thousand power plants over the globe, people could simply build a handful of fusion plants that could do the job just as well.

Unfortunately, the fuel for fusion power (deuterium and tritium) is very expensive—so expensive that some people believed that it would be worth spending $40 billion dollars to set up a colony on the Moon to bring it to Earth because a single space-shuttle load of it would be worth about $1 trillion.

Thomas Starlight had developed a way to use a nuclear propulsion system to reach the Moon. Armed with this technology, Thomas and his wife Sandra built several colonies on the Moon that mined the rare ores, refined them, and shipped them to Earth.

The first Starlight Enterprise mine was a tritium mine for the fusion reactors of Earth. Once the mine was running, they started exporting other hard-to-get minerals: platinum, gold, iridium, titanium, and so forth. Since the Moon has lower gravity and machinery could operate in a near vacuum (no weather, no mudslides, no rust, ...) they could mine many of these metals with far less overhead than his competitors on Earth could. Also, shipping costs were less: since the Earth has more mass than the Moon, Starlight Enterprise only has to ship the ore “downhill”--and by using orbital mechanics they could easily deliver the ore to any place on Earth.

Some metals–like aluminum, which comprises 8% of the Earth’s crust–were cheaper to mine and produce on Earth. Other companies were able to provide these metals. But Starlight Enterprise had a decisive advantage with other metals–an advantage so great that they were willing to go to the Asteroid Belt to get them. The corporation proved to be very profitable, and soon had expanded and was supplying much of Earth’s raw materials. By 2110, Thomas Starlight had designed the technology to expand to the asteroids, and soon even more ore was pouring in.

Thomas always took the long view of things, and was content to lose big money in the short run in order to achieve long-range goals. With this in mind, Thomas often founded colonies that made little or no money, and often spent billions of dollars on expensive research projects that would not come to fruition for a hundred years.

One of Thomas’s early problems was a lack of well-trained men. He wanted to recruit bright, resourceful people to explore and colonize the Solar System, but the educational system of that day was not turning out people of the caliber he wanted.

To remedy this problem, in 2103 Thomas founded Starlight Academy. The Academy, funded and backed by Starlight Enterprise, was the most up-to-date university in existence, and many of the top minds in the Solar System taught there. The standards at the Academy were very, very rigorous: only top-caliber people could even hope to squeak through; the lazy did not have a chance. Many people applied to the Academy, and only a few were accepted–and fewer still managed to graduate. A degree from the Academy was an impressive achievement indeed, and those who had such degrees were in extremely high demand.

Of all the graduates from the Academy, the very best and finest went on to become Starmen. These Starmen were Starlight Enterprise’s starkly capable and highly trained explorers: the company outfitted them with ships and equipment, and dispatched them to explore, colonize, and discover the most remote and hostile corners of the Solar System. Starmen were respected, honored, and revered–and they were rare. With their exploits, an age of exploration and discovery began—a time not seen for more than six centuries, when Columbus, Magellan, Drake, and others had set sail to discover new worlds.

Thomas worked hard to ensure that Starlight Enterprise never devolved into a cold, dry, corporation focused on making money. To Thomas, space exploration was something he did because it was fun and rewarding; he tried to make money simply because he needed money to do his exploration. It was colonization and settlement that was his real goal, and profits always took the back seat–although Thomas did work very, very hard to ensure that he did have the money to achieve his goals.

Thomas Starlight’s real objective, however, was the planet Mercury. Mercury was known to have many fantastic deposits of rare minerals. Mining them proved to be a nightmare: the extreme surface temperatures and fierce environment destroyed many early stations. In the end it even defeated Thomas himself: in 2119 Thomas and his wife Sandra were killed when a refinery they were visiting on Mercury exploded.

The corporation then came into the hands of their 25 year old son, Richard, who continued to run the firm the way his father had. Richard managed to solve the problems of living on Mercury, and under his careful direction, Mercury became one of the Solar System’s pivotal resource points.

the reconstruction

Africa escaped much of the worst of the period of the Collapse, having little which was sought after by terrorists, and few targets worthy of nuclear destruction. After the nuclear terror of the mid-21st century, Africa found itself suddenly and unexpectedly in a position of world influence. The world trauma of nuclear devastation brought about a sharp reaction in the survivors for a strong, conservative foundation. People looked to their roots as individuals, families, nations, and an entire race.

Although this was severe, even frantic, in the first generation after the devastation, it was mitigated in the second generation, and became more balanced. People looked to Africa as the cradle of human civilization, and enormous interest grew up in the roots of human history. More significantly, as the world’s greatest emerging Christian culture, and having most of its population intact, the African nations bound themselves together in a loose federation similar to the original thirteen American colonies.

The African Federation was formed in 2101. Their civilization began to rival medieval Europe’s as a culture with enough force to shape human destiny. With easy access to knowledge, the emerging culture quickly surpassed that of the Middle Ages, which was often marred by superstition, lack of empirical science, and general lack of education. The robust Christianity of Africa, melded with the technology of the 21st century, provided the necessary foundation for a powerful world consciousness, spiritual and racial revival, and an optimistic future. The African Federation became a major world player.

In the United States, the nuclear devastation had been severe. Most major cities were destroyed, but the outlying and rural areas, for the most part, survived. New leadership arose from these areas, and the American spirit, which had gradually been eclipsed by special-interest groups, lobbyists, fringe organizations, and major corrupt economic interests, was largely purified. Along with a world-wide turn toward the conservative, the “old values” became popular, if not always followed. A generation of leaders arose with a popular appeal similar to that enjoyed by the “log cabin” presidents. A candidate who claimed to have simple values and homespun philosophy was guaranteed to win support from the remaining American population. Although it was in doubt for a time, the United States remained a major world player.

China and recovering Europe were not far behind. China was established as a strong nation under a constitutional monarchy when the rest of the world was rebuilt in the last years of the 21st century. Europe, however, was marked by a bitterness resulting from the loss of many of its treasures in art and architecture in the violence of the early years of the Collapse.

There arose a sizable “counter-culture” in South America, where poverty had remained fairly widespread, even in the boom years of the early 21st century. The Collapse did not change the fortunes of the populace very much, since most people there were already only a little above bare sustenance. But an attitude of resentment toward those who were better off, which had existed from the late 20th century, grew rapidly and deepened when the rest of the world, especially the United States and Africa, recovered from the Collapse in little more than a generation.

Like Africa, South America was not as devastated by the nuclear horror; unlike Africa, it did not move into the mainstream of world culture. Poverty remained, and anger toward the rest of the world hardened. The early 22nd century South America became a breeding ground of a criminal element which, with enough ill-gotten funding and organization, became the source of the majority of humanity’s public enemies.

In the rest of the world, as a generation arose which had not lived through the Collapse, most of the problems of the 20th century became literal history: racial and economic division, overpopulation and the consequent overuse of the world’s resources, and spiritual emptiness all faded into the background. One lasting repercussion of the circumstances that brought about the Collapse was a general antipathy toward human augmentation or replacement. The android technology that had enabled worldwide totalitarian enforcement was the focus of violent aversion. Even the cybernetic medical technology that had improved the global quality of life was viewed with suspicion and strictly regulated.

Although the major religions like Judaism, Islam, Buddhism, Taoism, etc., remained, the gradual perception of the world as a single community brought peoples of all kinds into frequent contact. Cults of personality arose as people once again resumed a search for purpose and explored the meaning of life; most of these faded and vanished as their founders passed on. African-style Christianity became the world’s most influential religion, similar to the age when the Roman Empire legalized Christianity in the early years of the fourth century. Intercommunication and interdependence brought about tolerance without condemnation.

In a burst of enthusiasm for interplanetary exploration, sparked in part by a world-wide desire to do a Great Deed in the generation after the Collapse, an unmanned expedition was sent out to reach the farthest extremity of the Solar System, bypassing even the nearer of the Outer Planets, and land on Pluto. The first attempt, made in 2117, ended in disaster when the expedition suffered system failure somewhere between the orbits of Saturn and Uranus. Stirred by this failure, a second and successful attempt was made in 2124. The success was mostly symbolic, as the initial exploration of Pluto led to the not-surprising conclusion that the outermost planet is barren. However, the technological triumph of the expedition made possible the exploration of Saturn and its moons a mere six years later.

the world of 2151

The Moon plays a major role in the defense of Earth, in manufacturing, mining, biological research, and medical care (many older people prefer the Moon’s lower gravity). The Moon also plays a pivotal role for another reason: it is the capital of Starlight Enterprise and houses most of its manufacturing and research stations.

The capital of the Moon is Tycho City, located near Tycho Crater on the Moon’s North Pole, where large water deposits were discovered in the early 21st century. The sprawling city has a population of 8 million, the most populous city anywhere in the Solar System. On its outskirts lie the vast Starlight compound and several important military bases. Most of the Moon’s cities are located underground, with few structures open to the fierce heat of the sun. Now that stronger materials are becoming more available, more structures and domes are being built on the surface. There have been some hopes that the Moon could be terraformed, but so far no practical way to accomplish this has been discovered.

Tycho City houses much of the Moon’s infrastructure, but there are a number of other cities as well. All told, the Moon is home to 13 million people, with more coming all the time. Since men can live longer in the Moon’s weaker gravity, people are flocking to it all the time, and now that the effects of the Collapse are wearing off it is a booming place.

The Moon is a key place in the Solar System, as it is home to most of the Solar System’s manufacturing industries. Ore is shipped from Mercury and the asteroids to the Moon, where it is refined and launched to Earth, Mars, and the other planets.

Mars is still under terraformation. New forms of life are being engineered and released in an attempt to render Mars even more habitable. The process is a slow one and has had some serious setbacks.

Currently, close to 20 million people live on the cities of Mars. Of those, 10 million live in the large crater that houses Eagle City, the capital of Mars. Named after Lee High Eagle, Eagle City has become the grand port of Mars, with a large space center, military defense outpost, and important refineries. The atmospheric pressure is not artificial, but is generated naturally. NASA chose a deep crater as well as an expansive one, to establish the most Earth-like environment. It has to have fields to grow crops, large factories, houses, spaceports, mines, etc.

In the Asteroid Belt, Ceres is the largest and most important asteroid in the system, with a population of around 100,000. It doubles as a spaceport, and is a stopping-over and refueling point on the long voyage between Earth and the outer planets. Advances in propulsion have vastly cut the time it takes to get from Earth to deep space, and many flights now bypass Ceres completely, depending on the relative location of the ports of the journey.

Besides the one passenger base at Ceres, there are a few mining bases and perhaps a small colony here and there. There are no other population centers. The Asteroid Belt supplies most of the Solar System’s minerals and raw materials. Starlight Enterprise does most of the ore mining and refining, although the Belt houses a number of competing companies. However, there are many independent miners, living a life not too far different from the near lawless, gold-rush mentality of California in 1849. The world of inhabited asteroids is a true frontier life: it breeds hale, hearty, strong people.

By the middle of the 22nd century, Earth has recovered from much of the effects of the Collapse. Few of those living are old enough to have experienced the worst horrors of the period. The human population of the Solar System is around 2 billion. Passenger travel between Earth and the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and the Asteroids is fairly common via passenger liners that can span the distance in a matter of days to a maximum of two weeks, depending on the relative location of the ports.

Starlight Enterprise is the largest, most influential organization in the Solar System. Based on the Moon, they are focused on the technology of exploration, including locating and refining the rare earths required. This makes Starlight Enterprise the leader in virtually every field of education and technology, but they are not the only company leading the way into the future.

Nolan Mining Enterprise works closely with Starlight Enterprise, but is focused on mining and refining ores from the Asteroid Belt. Operating on Mars and throughout the Asteroid Belt, Forge Consolidated has brought thousands of people up from Earth to brave the dangers of the frontier for the chance at a new life. Answering to the governments of the Earth, Space Command attempts to bring law and order to the inner Solar System, pursuing criminals and providing emergency services.

guardians of the void

When the series opens with Mutiny on Mars, new Starman David “Zip” Foster is on Mars for his first assignment. Pirates from the Asteroid Belt, in a sudden attack, take control of the Martian settlements.

New Starmen Joseph Taylor and Mark Seaton are called on to make a secret entry into Mars and team up with David Foster. Equipped with a new, experimental, and top secret antimatter drive, the two Starmen and their freewheeling partner, Steve Cliff, enter Martian airspace disguised in The Spud Peeler, a decrepit cargo ship. Their assignment is to prevent the pirates from lifting off from Mars and to sabotage their defense operations. Without compromising their primary assignment, Joe and Mark also hope to find David Foster and join forces with him. The success of the Starmen will allow the forces of Earth to land safely and free Mars from the assault by the pirates.

In the second book, The Runaway Asteroid, a number of pirates barely manage to escape the three Starmen as they abandon Mars and high-tail it back to their base in the Asteroid Belt. Their leader, Lurton Zimbardo, can sheathe objects and make them invisible to radar. With this technology Zimbardo launches a storm of small, cloaked asteroids at Mars that wipe out its atmospheric generators. Zimbardo then gives Earth his threat: either turn over the reins of power, or get hit with an invisible asteroid forty-five miles wide!

The story continues in Journey to the Farthest Planet. Lurton Zimbardo, foiled in his monstrous extortion attempt, has fled beyond the orbit of Pluto. An astronomer on staff with Starlight Enterprise, the unusual Dr. O has discovered that there is a planet that lies beyond Pluto! Starlight Enterprise decided to send an expedition to explore the planet Nyx, and the Starmen are going along with the purpose of locating and apprehending Lurton Zimbardo and his last cronies. Trouble begins almost at once: the ship jointly built by Nolan Mining Enterprises and Starlight Enterprises experiences near-catastrophic failure midway to the planet.

As the crew stops for repairs on Titan, a moon of Saturn where there is a small base, the Starmen learn that a beneficent alien race had visited the Solar System many centuries before. The visitors left several signs of their presence, but they themselves are nowhere to be found.

When the ship lands on the Planet of Darkness, events soon throw the Starmen into a desperate conflict with formidably powerful alien foes called the Xenobots. Most alarming of all, the Starmen learn that this violent race is searching for its “ancient enemy”--the Benefactors–and will demolish Earth if necessary to further the search.

In Descent Into Europa, David Foster organizes a desperate search for the Benefactors. Without their help, Earth stands no chance against the technologically superior Xenobots. With impeccable logic, the Starman leader has determined that if the Benefactors had a central base in the Solar System, it had to be on Europa, a watery moon of Jupiter with a crust of ice several miles thick.

The Starmen launch an expedition to Europa, and soon find themselves trying to find a way through Europa’s icy crust. Once underneath the thick barrier of frozen water, the Starmen enter an ocean ten miles deep. At its bottom, after passing through several perils, they do indeed discover a city built by the Benefactors, but learn that it had been quickly abandoned centuries earlier. The native population of Europa, octopoid intelligences that have never seen the sun, reveal that the name of the Benefactors’ home planet was “Ahmanya.”

At the end of this book, Starman David Foster reported that “The mission to Europa has not achieved all that I had hoped. We did not encounter any members of the race of the Benefactors. The evidence of their presence we have discovered on Mars, Titan, Nyx, and now Europa is all very old. …

“We now know that there are, or have been, four intelligent races in our Solar System: the primitive race of Mars, few in number and which disappeared suddenly, perhaps after contact with the Benefactors; the Europans; the extrasolar people the Benefactors brought from a distant star system to Titan approximately 12,000 years ago; and we of Earth. We also know now that the Benefactors had dealings with the other three races. Why did they not make contact with us?”

In the fifth Starman book, A Kingdom in Twilight, David Foster’s search for the Benefactors takes him back to Mars, where the People of the Wind have revealed a new connection between the vanished Martians and the unseen Benefactors. Trouble begins as soon as they arrive in Eagle City, when an unseen foe sabotages their plans and takes steps to set the whole of Mars against them.

The secret history of the Solar System is finally revealed in book six, The Treasures of Darkness. David, Mark, and Joe are at their lowest. Traitors within Mars have allied themselves with the Xenobot foe and set themselves against the Starmen. The true extent of Xenobot fear and hatred is brought to light, along with the final fate of the vanished Benefactors–the Ahmanyans. The survival of four worlds rests in the hands of the Starmen of Starlight Enterprise.

The seventh book, Breaking Orbit, collects stories from throughout the history of The Starman Saga. It chronicles the story of the early Martian settlers, the first meeting between the People of the Wind and the Ahmanyans, and Allen Foster’s historic expedition to Titan. David, Mark, and Joe adventure on Mars, the Earth-Moon system, and Europa. Finally, we return to the last moments of the first Xenobot War to witness the fallout of that titanic struggle.

Secrets will be revealed. Hidden foes will be exposed. New mysteries await in the shadows.

Light in the darkness, Starman!