The Salvage Crew Series
The Salvage Crew series takes place in a far-future universe where uploaded minds - software transmissible at lightspeed - drive the economy, and humanity has made first contact with a stranger, more eldritch cosmos.
It explores topics that fascinate me (artificial intelligence, procedural generation, Buddhism, long voyages into the deep, and myth-making) while serving as a dark mirror to works that inspired it*.
Like the Culture series, the books stand alone; events from each ripple outward to set the stage for other stories. Code written for this series is listed and explained here.
Choir of Hatred
The Rubber Ducks: a mercenary company masquerading as caterers. War is hell, especially in space.
Pilgrim Machines
In the Salvage Crew's wake, the PCS Blue Cherry Blossom heads for the heart of the galaxy.
The Salvage Crew
A C-team lands on a backwater planet for a routine salvage job. The planet is inhabited. Nothing ...
- Notable ingredients:
Games:
- Tynan Sylvester’s Rimworld and the body of procedural game design and thinking - see Will Wright, Wildermyth, Dwarf Fortress etc.
- No Man’s Sky by Hello Games and its soundtrack by 65DaysofStatic
- Homeworld by Relic Entertainment
- Avorion by Boxelware and Battleships Forever by Sean “TH15” Chan
Novels:
- Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris and Fiasco
- Peter Watt’s Blindsight
- Ian Bank’s the Culture
- Some Clarke, most likely Childhood’s End and Rama
- Some Karl Schroeder, most likely Permanence
- Dennis E. Taylor’s We are Legion
- Certain elements of Buddhism, albeit made my own
- A very specific image from Only You Can Save Mankind by Terry Pratchett.
Others creep in as relevant, depending on what’s cooking in my mind.