I am not at all getting to grips with it because I have bitten far more off than I can chew, but I envision a science-fiction world with a progression across different blanets (with a “B”, since they surround a black hole instead of a star) where time passes at different rates and which hence are stuck in different stages of economic development. According to general relativity, the closer you are to the centre, the slower time passes on your clock, such that the innermost blanet has feudal and slaveholder societies, and there’s a capitalist and a socialist blanet further out who are having themselves a space race. But because of the distance of the accretion disk, they will have to rely on finite resources to sustain themselves, a constraint by which the inner blanets aren’t limited. Because of its slow development, the feudal blanet has yet to comprehend spacecraft technology, but it is the ideal base camp for either of the outer blanets to perform human space travel and scientific experiments near the black hole, and to extract energy from it. So while this whole space race is going on outside, the capitalists and socialists both seek to convince feudal empires to cooperate with them, but down there they are disconnected from their respective motherworlds, many generations behind the tech created at home in the meantime, and forced to abide by feudal rules. Also, they are both disgusted by feudal society and try to establish a bourgeoisie, but each one inherits capitalist/socialist values. Of course, I plan to eventually let the socialists achieve a more-or-less complete victory, perhaps with some aftertastes.

Rather than focussing on the complicated intrigues and schemes of space politics - which, although interesting in its own right, I consider to be liberal masturbation from which little of value can be learnt - I want my world to be grounded in both actual science and hard science-fiction, and look at the implications these physical effects and social differences have on the development of society at large, as well as the ways in which work, science, technology, trade, and art are accomplished. For that reason, I want to try to rely on working-class protagonists and supporting figures, narrate big events through a landscape of social and mass media with its respective bias and unreliability, and imply what is actually going on through descriptions of the real state of the world and the natural collision points of the cast. This necessitates all of the main characters to touch a lot of grass and get around, which is why I am going to use a lot of military, mercantile, academic, and touristic environments as well as public spaces.

As for the vibes, I am relatively good at describing and analysing but absolute dogshit at tragedy and action, so most of the time I will try to have a relaxed atmosphere and use comedy and absurdity to prompt the reader to ask questions about the in-universe narratives and learn theory. There will be some amounts of crime, death, and violence given the proxy schemes on the feudal blanet, but no total warfare and I don’t want to impact it the basic tone of the story too much.