The Unified Republic of Stars is a storyworld in which over three hundred years of history has been pre-defined. Yeah. Three hundred years. It covers the time from before the first ship left for what would become [[urs|Republican Star Cluster|The Republican Star Cluster]] to the [[urs|Invasion of 2338|2338]] and actually a little bit beyond. And that’s just the Age of Colonization and the Age of War. There will also be an Age of Betrayal added sometime in the near future.

So… is this constraining on authors and contributors or freeing?

What this predefined history means is that some events, no matter what, are going to happen at certain dates. They will happen and they will turn out as already described in the [[urs|A Short History of the Unified Republic of Stars|A Short History of the Unified Republic of Stars]] and [[urs|A History of the Age of War|A History of the Age of War]] history books.

So it all depends, really, on how it’s looked at.

On one side, it can be limited. For instance, someone who wants to tell a story about [[urs|Stewart Todd Warner|Stewart Todd “Dutch” Warner]] dying during the [[urs|Battle for the Republic|Battle for the Republic]] is shit out of luck. Dutch doesn’t die then. Lot’s of people do but not him. Dutch dies at home as an old man, holding a picture of his ship in his hands. That could be seen as limiting. However, there are several periods of Dutch’s life that are either undocumented or not dramatized. A story could always be told about his adventures as a smuggler captain or as a [[NOVA]] master. Knowing when a character dies is not the end all and be all of telling a story.

On the other side, having all this history can actually be seen as freeing.

In writing the stories that have thus far appeared on URS, I have used several elements of this history as backstory or toss away lines to provide “color” for the world. Take Drug Enforcement. The story is relatively early in the history of the world and the planets of the Unified Republic of Stars are still only colonies of Earth. Yet, Agent Sanchez remarks:

“Washington,” Sanchez scoffed. “The colonists. There’s going to come a point where they won’t want Earth telling them what they can do any more.”

For those who know the history, it’s a telling line. There will come a point where the colonists won’t want Earth telling them what to do any more. It uses the history (and the future history) to provide a backdrop for the events current in the story.

So… is it constraining or freeing?

I wrote all of this backstory originally with the idea of writing a book or series of books set within the storyworld of the Unified Republic of Stars. As I said before, I wanted a world that neither began or ended with my characters. To accomplish this, I created a series of events that would occur regardless of what the characters in any given story would do. Some characters, like Dutch Warner, would be involved in world changing events while others would merely be footnotes if mentioned at all.

I believe that this is freeing.

What it does is leave all the day-to-day events open for a creator to fill in. Sure, yes, the URS is a sci-fi world but not every day is an epic space battle. Just like real life it can sometimes be mundane. But there are hundreds of millions of people living within the Unified Republic of Stars and someone has to be up to something interesting. Then, using the political or historical backdrop of the year in which the story is being told, a tone can be set and characters can take sides.

To illustrate this, consider the year [[urs|Timeline#2169|2169]]. Independence has been declared by the [[urs|Independent Congress|First Independent Congress]]. Millions on the colonial worlds were actually still born on Earth. What side do they take? Will they stay where they’ve built lives for themselves or will they go back to the human homeworld?

I imagine that this would be as divisive as any civil war, with family loyalties split, perhaps the parents wanting to return but the children wanting to stay. And maybe even siblings might have differing opinions. One might want nothing to do with Earth, having rarely thought of it in the past, while the other is not so ready to cut them self off from the birthplace of humanity.

If a dozen different stories can’t be told about that, then I don’t know what could.

One of the most important rules of storytelling, as repeated almost everywhere, is to make a story personal. They often express this by saying “write what you know.” Of course, no one really wants to hear about the intricacies of keeping, say, fish. What it’s really getting at is that by writing what you know, you’re writing about something personal.

Now, if fish keeping is your thing and but you love sci-fi and want to write a story, it doesn’t have to include fish. Think about what else you know and write about that. Ever had an argument with your brother, sister, mother, or father you didn’t think you’d come back from? Fictionalize that and it’ll grab people.

The purpose of the Unified Republic of Stars storyworld is not to limit the stories being told. Rather it’s to provide a framework and common backstory to any kind of story someone might want to tell in a sci-fi setting. You can go epic, creating a good captain who gets killed in a major battle. In the history of the URS a lot of good people have died. Or you can go small and personal.

The choice is up to you.