The Terran Confederacy is the setting of three linked series by S. Andrew Swann. Description and tropes may contain spoilers.This Future History is also an Alternate History, with a divergence point in the late 1990s or early 20th century. Around that time the Pan-Asian war broke out, a conflict that stretched from Israel to Japan. During this war, many countries created Moreaus to fight for them, and a few nations, including Japan, ignored the U.N. ban on human genetic engineering and created several varieties of frankenstein. Before the war was over, Tokyo, New Dehli and Tel Aviv had disappeared in nuclear fire, and Japan had been conquered by China. This is the backdrop for the Moreau Series.
The discovery that aliens called The Race had deliberately destabilized human politics led to massive interstellar expeditions in slower than light craft and the Genocide War, in which humanity destroyed every colony of the Race and set battlestations to destroy anything lifting off from their homeworld. Artificial wormholes were developed, sent at sublight speeds to distant stars, and used to dump anyone the UN world government deemed undesirable. When the Centauri Trading Company discovered the Paralians, they learned the math that allowed the development of true FTL ships via the 'Tach-Drive'. They used this leverage to overthrow the Terran government and form the Terran Confederacy. This is the backdrop of Hostile Takeover.
After the fall of the Confederacy, Terran space broke up into a number of feuding polities, the largest of which is the Eridani Caliphate. Other major powers include the Indi Protectorate, SEEC, and the isolationist Fifteen Worlds, inhabited by moreaus and frankensteins. This is the backdrop for Apotheosis.
The Moreau Series is a Bio Punk series set in the mid 21st Century, and consists of
- Forests of the Night Nohar Rajasthan is an uplifted tiger who works as a PI in Cleveland and becomes embroiled in political conspiracy.
- Emperors of the Twilight stars frankenstein federal agent Evi Isham, who finds herself inexplicably out in the cold.
- Specters of the Dawn follows reformed rabbit gang leader Angel Lopez to the supposed tolerant haven of San Francisco
- Fearful Symmetries returns to an aging and retired Nohar, called back in for one last case.
Hostile Takeover covers the conflict between the star-spanning Confederacy and the anarchist planet of Bakunin.
- Profiteer
- Partisan
- Revolutionary
Apotheosis follows agents of two of the Confederacy's successor states as they investigate lost human colonies and an inexplicable anomaly.
- Prophets
- Heretics
- Messiah
- Tropes in the Moreau Series
- Tropes in Hostile Takeover
- Tropes in Apotheosis
Tropes present throughout the series.
- Artificial Gravity: Contragrav is a standard feature of the latter two series.
- Bird People: The Volerans are broadly avian, resembling colorful eyeless ostriches
- Bandit Clan: Tjaele Mosasa was a member of on of the pirate clans that haunted space near wormhole exits.
- The Chessmaster: Elements of the AI called Random Walk/Tjaele Mosasa/Mike Kelly/Ambrose/Adam have been manipulating human society to its own ends and that of its alien creators for centuries.
- Faster-Than-Light Travel: Tachyon drive ships, invented using equations obtained from the alien Paralians. Prior to that, interstellar travel was by artificial wormhole.
- Flying Car: In the Moreau Series these used vectored thrust fans and are primarily vehicles of the wealthy, or at least quite well-off. By Hostile Takeover they rely on contragravity and are much more common.
- Game Changer: The Paralian tach drive allowed the Centauri Trading Company to overthrow the U.N. and form the Terran Confederacy. The Dolbrian starmap on Bakunin showed the location hundreds of (presumably) terraformed worlds. Whoever controls it has a huge advantage in galactic politics
- Grey Goo: The colony on Titan was devoured by a Grey Goo swarm, leading to Nanomachines being made one of the Heretical Technologies as well. The Confederacy and its successor states continued this policy, enforcing it with things like hundred kilometer asteroids. It's the Only Way to Be Sure!
- No Transhumanism Allowed: The U.N. prohibited genetic engineering of humans, and later of all sapients, as well as the construction or use of A.I.s. After the Grey Goo incident that ate Titan, nanotech
- Precursors: The Dolbrians terraformed an unknown but large number of worlds, several of which still have star maps and/or megalithic artifacts on them. The
Face on Mars is one such artifact. - Starfish Aliens: The Paralians are described as 'squid-dolphins'. The Helminth are meter-long worms which have technology and build cities, but human scientists are largely unable to communicate with them. The Race are colorless amoeboid blobs.
- Technical Pacifist: The Race. They consider it to be the height of immorality to actually raise a hand(or pseudopod) against another sapient. Hiring mercenaries, sparking wars, destabilizing countries, building AI guided weapons, these are all fine, but they would never actually use violence against you themselves.
- Terraforming: A number of worlds were terraformed by the Dolbrians. Humans reterraformed Mars, and also terraformed Titan and several other large moons of the outer planets. Those colonies were later destroyed in a Grey Goo incident and the reactions to same.
