Space Janissaries
Back last spring, I was deep in research for Charming Lies and thinking about Interstellar Empires and space opera. Blah blah blah…what if OTTOMAN EMPIRE IN SPACE?
The way I’m thinking is this: things get weird in human space with the invention of nanotechnology and the end of scarcity. What do you do with the ability to conjure objects out of gray goo? How do you control people any more?
The first answer is that you don’t. Everyone can talk to the goo and make their own artifacts. This is an ideology suited to individuals or small groups of people roaming the solar system. These people, the Free, have developed some nifty techniques for wielding nanotechnology, but they’ve tended to fair badly against larger, more organized groups like…
The Select, who only allow people access to nanotechnology after they’ve passed through a long and arduous process of education. Of course there are many splinter groups who started their own accreditation programs, some more respected than others. They’ve made some important innovations in nanotechnology, and control about half of the solar system. The better half, however, is controlled by…
The Exalted, who have wedded nanotechnology to implanted interfaces, training children from infancy. While their movement began as an effort to bring all citizens access to nanotechnology like the Free, the Exalted government awards people weaker or more powerful interface devices depending on how much people are willing to pay. Their hereditary oligarchy controls the interface hardware, and ensures it keeps the best toys for itself.
You can recognize these three ideologies by the form of nanotechnology they use: the Free carry around sacks of gray goo, the Select surround themselves in clouds of utility fog, and the Exalted are swathed in intelligent cloth.
The Exalted were once the premier power in the solar system, but since the Select discovery of an extra-solar brown dwarf and its associated, resource-rich moons, Exalted dominance has waned. Worse, the old oligarchs have given too much leeway to their soldiers, whose demands for better interface chips have given them the power and the skills to overthrow their masters…
So go back and look at that picture above. Can you spot the space-Janissary? What else do you think might be going on in the space-Renaissance?
