What is Other-Terrestrial?

Other-Terrestrial is a hard sci-fi with cosmic horror elements and focused on a complex cast of characters in a highly-developed and original future setting.

Many of us have known and loved science fiction – growing up, stories like Star Trek, the works of Asimov, and games like Mass Effect have showed us incredible futures where humanity had gone to the stars. They were not mindless action, but well-framed stories in fully realized worlds, where technology had limitations and even unpleasant ramifications.

And while our ability to portray these fantastic settings has grown more and more impressive, it sometimes feels like it has come at the expense of things like characterization, story, science – and wonder.

I have tried to bring back the Star Trek style of storytelling, and so Other-Terrestrial will consist of episodes that are largely self-contained stories dealing with one or a few major science fiction or cosmic horror concepts – along with the people who must survive them. Unlike most such stories where everything is reset between episodes, major events will carry forward, while the idea of addressing new “what ifs” will continue.

Other-Terrestrial is a passion project for me, and my only goal is for it to be read, for it to entertain, and for it to perhaps make you think. It is not a cynical work, and I hoped to create a plausible but positive view of the future, where the majority of humanity have learned to cooperate, to share, and to collectively own the society they live in. Humanity is not alone among the stars, and despite our differences, we have attempted to live alongside and cooperate with species both similar and staggeringly different from our own.

This includes the eponymous “other” terrestrials of the title; Shoggoths*. Ancient blob-like beings of vast intelligence and strength, first envisioned by the pen of H.P. Lovecraft in his seminal work, At the Mountains of Madness. Growing upon his ideas, my Shoggoths have existed alongside humanity, hidden for all of our history – but in the far future, for reasons unclear, they have revealed themselves and made contact.

*For those wondering, Shoggoths are in the public domain.

I have tried, wherever possible, to do the math of things like “how long would it take for this missile to reach this ship?”. Which of course then leads to questions like “how much can this missile realistically accelerate/how much delta-v can it create?” and so on. There is some physics-breaking, but I have confined it to a single family of technologies drawing upon the cosmic horror elements, and these face severe limitations and potential dangers of their own.

I am a historian and fascinated with anthropology, so I have tried to carefully develop every one of my aliens to be both interesting and plausible, with cultures and body plans existing based on the material conditions that created them. There are not thousands of species, but only a few dozen, and while some are humanoid, the majority are not.

Every character has a backstory that informs their worldview, motivations, and actions. The politics between powers are as complex as those of the real world, with economies and populations that dwarf our largest imagining. With developed systems able to house trillions or quadrillions if not more, fleets of ships are likewise staggering in size, and a fleet of fifty thousand multi-mile long vessels is only a small force compared to what could be mustered!

Yet above even all of the mighty power that a truly space-faring civilization can wield, there exists dangers. Cosmic forces, hostile civilizations – and ancient eldritch behemoths known as Leviathans that can lay waste to worlds and twist reality into obscene and graceless forms that can shatter both starships and minds. These are not beings that we can simply launch a special torpedo at and strike a weak point to destroy – these are things that are beyond our understanding, beyond our reality.

They are the embodiments of the hostility of space that we must learn to come to terms with.

And so come with me, as hard sci-fi journeys into a frontier of beings beyond our comprehension, of horrors that no human mind was meant to ponder.

We’ll have fun along the path to madness and the stars.

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