War, peace, wonder, despair. The struggles of the human condition remind us how terribly mortal we really are. There is so little we have control over that we agonize over holding on to the precious few bits of agency any of us can truly claim. As a species, we are as beautiful as we are vicious. We have achieved so much only to wallow in misery for what has yet been reached. We glimpse possibilities in others that give us hope, a sense of purpose, longing and desire turned to jealousy. The past is painted in radiant tones, romanticized until it enfolds us in comfort. The future, meanwhile, is filled with the terror of the unknown, impenetrably dark, and messy.
We have seen our future. We’ve let a handful of men and women show us the way forward only to pull back and embroil ourselves in petty squabbles that threaten our very existence. We stand poised on the cusp towards life amongst the stars and waste our potential when the wonder that is humanity turns against itself. All the while, we languish like a man dying of thirst near a spring as we’ve tasted a few sweet drops of nectar and lament the absence of that precious substance. We wish to be Icarus but willingly punish ourselves like Tantalus for entertaining dreams and flights of grandeur.
The universe is impossibly close and few of our kind have walked in it like the gods of yore. This is the future as we imagine it to be once we leave the terrestrial cradle for good. Undoubtedly we will have advanced to the point where we wield power that would feel godlike to our forebears and commonplace to our progeny. All of our wondrous accomplishments and we will still be the frail, flawed creatures we are today. The predatory nature that drove us to the evolutionary pinnacle lurks forever behind our eyes. War brought on by desire, jealousy, and despair will keep us from reveling in the wonders around us and a heartbeat away. Our imagination is a gift and a curse. What was once marvelous to our ancestors is commonplace today. Why should the future be any different?
This is the universe of A Thousand Dying Stars. It is filled with many of our beliefs of what the future holds walking hand-in-hand with the dark, unintended consequences of those same myths we have spun for ourselves. Humanity has seeded the stars, met new species, and fought like hell to mold the future in our own ideological images. Thousands of worlds explored and still plagued by the same failings and shortsightedness. To make matters worse, we have lost our way home—figuratively and literally. Earth is missing and people everywhere who care about the subject, regardless of culture and faith, believe that someone’s hiding it as the prize for uniting humanity into a single empire, a feat no one has ever managed. War and peace, wonder and despair until we find ourselves and maybe learn who and what we really are.