I’ve been a big fan of the idea behind Orion’s Arm for some time now. I’ve mentioned it here and there but never really blogged about it.

From the website, Orion’s Arm is:

Orion’s Arm is a bold new shared worldbuilding and creative writing project, creating and exploring a new vision of the future of humanity and other sentient beings, ten thousand years hence.

Our goal is to create a dramatic far-future universe that is internally consistent and abides as much as possible with the accepted facts and theories in the physical, biological, and social sciences. Thus matter cannot travel faster than light, matter and energy are conserved, no evolved humanoid aliens have been discovered, future ultratech social issues are likely to be very different to those of today, and so on. We embrace speculative ideas like drexlerian assemblers, mind uploads, posthuman intelligences, femtotech, magnetic monopoles, wormholes, as it is proposed that future sciences, technologies, and developments will make these possible. And we attempt a logical explanation for even the most fantastic-seeming elements in OA. We aim to paint a future that is plausible at every level, from the scientific to the social to the psychological.

So, take the world, fast forward 10,000 years and theorize the possible, explore the unknown. The fantastic thing is that the creation of this world, these stories, the art, is in and of itself a development, an evolution of the creative process. It is a vast, shared cyberspace for creative minds to come together, review each other’s work and contribute.

They’ve really come up with some amazing concepts at OA, and some good stories to boot. I go there every now and then for a little creativity injection. Check it out.
Orion’s Arm