Transhuman Space

This is a background that’s been a long time coming in the RPG world… a realistic, hard-sf future that embraces biotechnology, nanotech, artificial intelligence and space exploration, with all the social and psychological changes those entail. This is a whole line of books, describing a setting contained entirely within the solar system in the year 2100, with books detailing the inner and outer system, cislunar space, Earth (and the more unpleasant side of transhuman society), and the oceans of Earth and Europa! The game system used for Transhuman Space is GURPS, the corebook is now (finally) available as a colour hardback and all the core supplements have now finally been released.

In a turn of events that still occasionally surprises me, I landed a place as one of the co-authors of Under Pressure (formerly known as “Blue Shadow“), the oceanic sourcebook for Transhuman Space – the other authors are David Morgan-Mar and Kenneth Peters. I wrote the chapter on the oceans of Europa (and Mars, and Titan), and generally contributed to other parts of the book. The book is now out of print, but it can now be purchased as a PDF from SJG’s online e23 store.

On this site…

SLA Industries Stormers, by Constantine Thomas. While looking through the rather fantastic SLA Industries RPG, I realised that the Stormers therein were basically bioroids. So I set about to convert them into the Transhuman Space setting. Currently only the basic Stormer 313 is presented here, but I might write up the others soon, if I can find some time to do them!

Maps

Global Sea Levels on Mars, by Constantine Thomas – (UPDATED: 22/4/03) The map of Mars presented in the ‘In The Well’ book is actually completely inaccurate – the sea levels are in the wrong place and make no sense. The version I present here is based on correct topographic data, but is not canonical – it is only provided here as an option for those who want realistic sea levels for Mars in Transhuman Space.

On the right is an accurate (and detailed) map focussing specifically on the Valles Marineris region. Both maps show all the settlements and features shown in the original ITW maps (in some cases, the settlements have moved to accommodate the new sea level).

This view of ITW Mars is much more accurate view of than the featureless orange ball on the cover of In The Well. Valles Marineris is being illuminated by orbital mirrors.

Europa Seafloor Map, by Constantine Thomas – This is a smaller version (1500×1125 pixels) of the original version of the map of Europa’s seafloor that I submitted to SJG for Under Pressure. Unfortunately, for reasons unclear to me, SJG’s art department destroyed a lot of useful information that I’d provided in the original map after I submitted it – for example, pretty much all of the rifts shown on the map were blurred out of existence in the book version. The version of the map that I present here is much more useful and is identical to what I intended it to show in the book. Note that this map is just a much clearer version that shows more topographic detail on the seafloor – otherwise everything else is the same.

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