BY LETTER
Blazer, Deeper
History > 0900 to 3200 AT: Interstellar Era > 0900 to 1200 AT: The Early Federation Age
History > 0030 to 0900 AT: Interplanetary Era > 400 to 530 AT: The Nanotech Age
Culture and Society > Cultural Factors > Interstellar Colonization
History > 0030 to 0900 AT: Interplanetary Era > 400 to 530 AT: The Nanotech Age
Culture and Society > Cultural Factors > Interstellar Colonization
Pre-Technocalypse terms for pioneers and adventurers who sort to explore and develop "deep space" (hence "deeper") and "blaze a trail" (archaic expression - origin unknown) out beyond CisLunar space, Mars, the Belt and the main population hubs. It is thought that the term 'Blazer, with its original apostrophe, is an abbreviation of Outblazer, but this has never been confirmed
While the majority were space-adapted tweaks, su-tweaks, and cyborgs, 'Blazers came from all morphotypes and sapient categories, including vecs and ai, as well as ordinary baseline humans. Legendary accounts of solitary 'Blazers riding fusion torches to develop the moons of Uranus, or founding posthuman clades in the Kuiper Belt, are mostly apocryphal; very few individuals in this age had their own ships to begin with, and 'Blazers were mostly organized in co-operatives. Many were even corporate franchised, or employed by Terran or Orbital nation-states or Lunar or Martian governments. Nor did they ever constitute a single clade or coherent memeticity, as was often believed from the the later First Federation period onwards.
The names of a few 'Blazers have come down to us: Yang, Manfred, Rogers, 010001110, Alvarez, Starman, Petrov, O'Neill, Smith, Newchild, Chomi, Model 21351, Wilcox, Savimbi, and many more. However, not all of these may represent genuine individuals. Some historians have argued for example that the 'Blazer known as "Rogers, Buck," was actually a fabulist invention from centuries earlier. It is not impossible however that later individuals may have taken these earlier literary creations as their call sign.
During the Dark Age the 'Blazer phenomenon disappeared. Some 'Blazers would later reappear with the return of civilization to join the Federation, welcoming a chance to explore even greater, interstellar, frontiers, others established micropolities that stubbornly persisted well into the Age of Early Interstellar Empires, but the larger number just disappeared. There are many explanations as to what happened, and different historians have proposed their own pet theories. All of these explanations have evidence supporting them, and each represents some aspect of the whole situation. These include the Hider Hypothesis (they simply became hiders), the Assimilation Theory, the Beam Rider Postulation (it is known that at least a few 'Blazers joined up with the original Beamrider Network, which later became the Deeper Covenant - although the similarity of name is purely coincidental), and the Interstellar Promotion Hypothesis (it is known that at least a few Blazers set off for the stars during the Nanotech Window), as well as less likely theories like the Worldship Collective.
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Development Notes
Text by M. Alan Kazlev
Initially published on 24 April 2004.
Initially published on 24 April 2004.
