by Allen Steele
2069—Huygens Base established on Titan; all contact lost within two months.
2070—Covert Pax military operation to Titan is lost; discovery of the Titan Plague. Queen Macedonia declares Titan off-limits to all Pax vessels. (“Kronos”)
2071-2078—Outbreaks of Titan Plague throughout populated system. Pax quarantines all vessels arriving from outer system. ConSpace sells its shares of Callisto Station to the Pax. Earth governments unilaterally prohibit any space vessels from landing. Ares Alliances formed by Mars colonies. (“The Death of Captain Future”)
2079—Pax and Earth lift quarantines; interplanetary commerce recommences. Ares Alliances announces tariffs against Pax vessels. (“0.0G Sex: A User’s Manuel”)
2080—ConSpace builds Evening Star in orbit above Venus. Venusian mining operations commence. (“The Exile of Evening Star”)
2086—Queen Macedonia dies; King Lucius is coronated. Pax Astra declares war against the Ares Alliance.
2091—Treaty of Ceres ends the System War; Callisto Station ceded to the Pax, the Saturn system to the Ares Alliance. The Zodiac is formally outlawed by both governments, but maintains covert ties with the TBSA.
2092—Ares Alliances establishes new bases on Titan and Mimas. (“Shepherd Moon”)
2093—Asteroid 4442 Garcia purchased by Pasquale Chicago, transformed into a colony. (“Working for Mister Chicago”; “High Roller”)
2094-2099—King Lucius rumored to be terminally ill. Political unrest within the Pax Astra. Tachyon beam transmissions received from Pax Astra probe Queen Macedonia I regarding extrasolar planets orbiting 47 Ursae Majoris.
2101—Humankind’s first starship leaves the solar system, outbound for 47 Ursae Majoris. (A King of Infinite Space)
APPENDIX 2:
Spacecraft and Space Station Designs
These are the original pencil sketches of Descartes Station, Arsia Station, the TBSA Comet, and Olympus Station from my notebooks.
Biography
Allen Steele has been a full-time science fiction writer since 1988, when his first short story, “Live From The Mars Hotel”, was published in Asimov’s. He was born in Nashville, Tennessee, but has lived most of his adult life in New England. He received his B.A. in Communications from New England College in Henniker, New Hampshire, and his M.A. in Journalism from the University of Missouri in Columbia, Missouri. Before turning to SF, he worked as a staff writer for daily and weekly papers in Tennessee, Missouri, and Massachusetts, freelanced for various business and general-interest magazines, and spent a short tenure in Washington, D.C., covering Capitol Hill as a stringer for papers in Vermont and Missouri.
His novels include Orbital Decay, Clarke County, Space, Lunar Descent, Labyrinth of Night, The Jericho Iteration, The Tranquillity Alternative, A King of Infinite Space, Oceanspace, and Chronospace. During the last decade, he has devoted most of his attention to the Coyote series—Coyote, Coyote Rising, Coyote Frontier, Coyote Horizon, and Coyote Destiny—along with a stand-alone novella, The River Horses, and two spin-off novels set in the same universe, Spindrift and Galaxy Blues.
Steele has published over 75 stories, principally in Asimov’s, Analog, Fantasy & Science Fiction, Science Fiction Age, and Omni, as well as in dozens of anthologies and small-press publications. His short fiction has been reprinted in five collections: Rude Astronauts, All-American Alien Boy, Sex and Violence in Zero-G, American Beauty, and The Last Science Fiction Writer. He has also written reviews and essays for a number of publications, including The New York Review of Science Fiction, Locus, Science Fiction Chronicle, and SF Age, and he is a former columnist for Absolute Magnitude and Artemis.
His work has received three Hugo Awards (two for Best Novella and one for Best Novelette), two Locus Awards (for Best First Novel and Best Novella), four Asimov’s Readers Awards (three for Best Novella, one for Best Novelette), an Anlab Award (for Best Novelette), a Science Fiction Chronicle Reader Award (for Best Novella), a Science Fiction Weekly Reader Appreciation Award (for Best Novella), and a Seiun Award (for Best Foreign Short Story). His stories also have four Hugo nominations, three Nebula Award nominations, two Sidewise Award nominations, and a Theodore Sturgeon Award nomination. Steele was also a nominee for the John W. Campbell Award.
Steele serves on the Board of Advisors for the Space Frontier Foundation, and is former member of both the Board of Directors and Board of Advisors of SFWA. In April, 2001, he testified before the Subcommittee on Space and Aeronautics of the U.S. House of Representatives, in hearings regarding the future of American space exploration.
He lives in western Massachusetts with his wife and dogs.
Copyright Acknowledgments
“Introduction 1 (1998): Coming of Age” Copyright © 1998 by Allen Steele.
“Introduction 2 (2009): Return to Near-Space” Copyright © 2009 by Allen M. Steele.
“Walking on the Moon” Copyright © 1992 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Rude Astronauts; Old Earth Books, 1993.
“Free Beer and the William Casey Society” Copyright © 1989 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1989.
“The Return of Weird Frank” Copyright © 1991 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, December 1991.
“Sugar’s Blues” Copyright© 1992 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, February 1992.
“The Flying Triangle” Copyright © 1995 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Bending the Landscape: Science Fiction, edited by Nicola Griffith and Stephen Pagel; Overlook Press, 1998.
“The Zoo Team” Copyright © 2010 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, November 2010.
“Live from the Mars Hotel” Copyright © 1988 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, Mid-December 1988.
“The War Memorial” Copyright © 1995 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Isaac Asimov’s Science Fiction Magazine, September 1995.
“Moreau2” Copyright © 2004 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, July/August 2004.
“The Great Galactic Ghoul” Copyright © 2010 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, October 2010.
“The Emperor of Mars” Copyright © 2010 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, June 2010.
“Zwarte Piet’s Tale” Copyright © 1998 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Analog Science Fiction and Fact, December 1998.
“The Weight” Copyright © 1995 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Great Britain by Century-Legend, 1995.
“Kronos” Copyright © 1995 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Science Fiction Age, January 1996.
“The Death of Captain Future” Copyright © 1995 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, October 1995.
“The Exile of Evening Star” Copyright © 1998 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Asimov’s Science Fiction, January 1999.
“0.0G Sex: A User’s Manual” Copyright © 1997 by Allen Steele.
“Working for Mister Chicago” Copyright © 1995 by Allen Steele. Originally published in Absolute Magnitude, Fall 1995.
“High Roller” Copyright © 2004 by Allen M. Steele. Originally published in Cosmic Tales: Adventures in the Solar System, edited by T.K.F. Weisskopf; Baen, 2004.
“Shepherd Moon” Copyright © 1994 by Allen Steele. Originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, June 1994.
“Near Space Timeline” Copyright © 1998 by Allen Steele. Revised 2010.
Space Station and Spacecraft Designs copyright © 1999 by Allen Steele.