It’s Friday! And you know that means! It means I’ve almost broken my streak of posting a new storyworld each week!
Almost, but not quite. While the clock on this week ticks down, I present TESLANAUTS, an alternate history storyworld of high adventure, mad science, and galactic exploration. (Steampunk goggles recommended but not included.)
The TESLANAUTS storyworld is set in the Victorian era of an alternate history in which rival nations use interplanetary teleportation to explore and battle for control of alien planets.
When Nikola Tesla introduced his long-range matter transmitter device in the late 1800s, he dreamed that by opening the doors to the stars, humanity could move beyond the petty national feuds and rampant colonialism that had defined so much of the century. Instead of moving beyond these things, however, the European powers expanded their empire-building efforts to include dozens of habitable planets. Now, instead of continents, they had entire worlds to claim, conquer, and plunder.
By the turn of the century, the nations of Earth have established permanent colonies on several planets and built outposts on dozens more. These settlements regularly teleport raw materials and exotic local goods back to Earth in exchange for supplies and a steady stream of laborers. While the regions surrounding such settlements are typically controlled by a single nation or corporation, more distant area on those planets are wide open frontiers, where anyone can stake a claim — so long as they can defend it.
At the forefront of these interstellar “expeditionary” efforts are men and women commonly known as “teslanauts.” They are popularly thought of as brave explorers who seek new planets, new territories, and new life forms either for profit or for the sheer thrill of discovery. Some teslanauts do match this description, but others are practical colonists, old-world bureaucrats, hired guns, or highly-trained agents tasked with undermining the operations of rival nations.
Life in the colonies can be a challenge. Explorers discover new dangers each time they venture into the unknown. Colonists may find themselves fighting off the local wildlife, struggling to grow enough crops, navigating the social order, or taking up arms against a rival’s invading colony. Regional governors must strike a balance between protecting their own people and placating their masters back on Earth. Border skirmishes between rival colonies aren’t uncommon, and are always followed by rumors of all-out war.
Here are a few of the stories to be found in the world of TESLANAUTS:
- While establishing a new colony, a team of teslanauts discovers ruins that suggest the planet was inhabited, then abandoned, and still hold secrets of alien life.
- The French and German colonies on a jungle planet are starting to amass troops and weapons along their common border, but their common enemy remains in hiding.
- An isolated farm colony specializing in exotic spices is being threatened by an interplanetary crime syndicate and turns for help to a most unlikely source.
- When the English spy infiltrated the Russian factory on Ares IV, he realized it wasn’t a factory at all, and that he would never see Earth again.
- When an alien form of gold is discovered, it triggers a mass immigration that turns a sleepy mining colony into a deadly boomtown.
- While the natives of New Paris seem friendly, the authorities grow suspicious when a second survey team disappears in the blue forest.
TESLANAUTS is an epic storyworld, with conflicts and drama that span entire planets. It’s a realm of adventure, steeped in the breathless proto-pulp sensibilities of the fiction of the time, and wearing the more over-the-top trappings of the steampunk genre. It isn’t intended to be a Serious Examination of alternate history, but an excuse to send Victorian adventures on interplanetary adventures outfitted with Tesla-designed lightning guns and anti-gravity carriages.
