Orion's Arm has been produced through the efforts of many individuals, listed here.

Aaron Hamilton created material for the OA project based on this website.

Blog hereGravity Balloons

Home Page Some other art by Anders Finerhttp://boardgamegeek.com/boardgameartist/14596/anders-finerhttp://fantasygallery.net/finer/

Andrew is currently a student at the University of California - Santa Cruz. As astrobiologists aren't in high demand at the moment, he plans to settle for studying the lifeforms of his own planet's oceans as a marine biologist.

ngel's interest in both science and myth is initially demonstrated by his nickname: Avengium. This grew out of two earlier nicknames: Paladium - A trojan statue of Pallas Athena (the Paladion) and the periodic element Pd 46 - and another nickname: Avangel.

ngel grew up reading ancient myths and legends and playing video games about castles and mages. In his teen years, he discovered his passion for planets and space and started to read anything he could find about aliens and other planets. While Angel developed a love for creature catalogs and D&D bestiaries, science and knowledge also began to attract his attention and with each discovery his horizons broadened a little more.

Exposure to so many wonders and facts eventually caused an urge in ngel to express his imagination in the form of writings and tales covering the most varied topics.

One day, by chance, he found OA and discovered a site difficult to understand at first, but deeply interesting with time. Today Angel's horizons keep broadening.

https://www.deviantart.com/avengium

Basu is the biological shell of an pre-singularity mind. This 'shell' is somewhere in the middle of what humans call the "teens". When the mind gathers some currency it wants to trade in this shell for something more lasting (say a few thousand years at least) and more efficient. In the meanwhile, the mind is interested in stuff such as physics, computers, medieval fantasy literature and of course the strange yet interesting concepts called "science fiction" and "philosophy". The mind is also considering studying something mundane and attending a thing that humans call "college" in the hope of getting something called a "job" (preferably one that brings him lots of currency). The shell is so useless that the mind prefers not to comment much on it. The mind also hopes to become a Godling and eventually participate in the Omega Point (if it gets a better shell that is). Discovered OA by accident while looking for information on destructive futuristic weaponry. His blog may be found here. Geek Code Version 3.12: GU d- s+:+a--- C+(++) W+ w+ PS+ PE++ Y+ t+(++) 5? X R tvb+(+++) D? D+ G>+++ e->St h! r(fr) z?

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Ben Higginbottom - Electronics engineer and archetypical nerd, has watched and read far, far too much science fiction, regional director of the Illuminati in the north west of England (we don't need orbital mind control lasers when Manchester United can be used to keep the proles in line), the scream of "Arrrgh when did I get old" can still be heard echoing around the hills of Lancashire when learning that the last series of Doctor Who was screened twelve years ago.

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Bill makes his living explaining simple concepts to complex people who tend to work for large companies. Bill believes that anything you do three times should be scripted, and that if a piece of code is 100 lines long it can probably be done better in10. Bill is a Pisces who enjoys long walks in the hills, full personal state vector uploads, and chatting about completely harmless things over strong, public key encryption. His website is here.

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A graphic designer and aspiring comic book artist, Brian is working on his own epic length sci-fi comic 'Mancer'. You'll find almost regular updates at http://www.mancer.com.

Brian works in advertising at a newspaper and as a result has absolutely no faith in the media.

Charles Mosteller is a baseline human (Homo sapiens sapiens) who, one day, inadvertently wandered off of the baseline habitat reserve where he lives, and stumbled across M.Alan Kazlev's futuristic space opera project, Orion's Arm.

He was immediately captured, and subjected to lengthy sessions of intellectual torture by a group known as "The Brains." During each of these torture sessions, Charles' brain was painfully extracted, dissected, and on occasion - exploded. Supposedly, this was all done in the name and interest of "hard science." Prior to his capture, Charles' interests included American constitutional law, poetry, writing, and on rare occasion - chess. While languishing in captivity, held prisoner against what remained of his will by "The Brains," his interests were reduced solely to watching Jell-O form in a bowl (Strawberry with pineapple chunks only, please!). Charles managed to recently escape from the evil clutch of "The Brains," by unexpectedly unleashing a nano-swarm of message postings in the Orion's Arm discussion group. His current location is unknown, but "The Brains" are believed to be close to tracking him down, so that they may resume their scientific experiments.

Chinedum Ofoegbu is a product of arcane genetic experiments, designed to produce a 75% emotionless, but otherwise "normal" lifeform. Instead, a being with diamond for brain, nitrogen for blood and the coldest hardest steel for a heart was injected into the population.

As he grew older and more dangerous, it soon became clear that, left unchecked, his machine-like disregard for his fellow man would result in global domination. Thus it was that higher intellects, in a desperate bid to sidetrack his growing powers, introduced him to Iain M. Banks and other purveyors of science fiction. Thus it was that he inevitably ended up here.

They have only postponed the inevitable.

D. David Barbeau grew up on science fiction, beginning with Star Trek and then was a Star Wars geek for a few years before graduating to novels like the Dune and Foundation series. The creation of the Sci Fi Channel helped him to begin his interest in scifi. He had been looking quite awhile for a space opera site before he found Orion's Arm. He is currently (besides writing for Orion's Arm) attending classes in hopes of someday getting a job and making enough money to buy his own personal island chain in the Seychelles Islands

D A G O N (Version February 2006) - this "dagon" individual is a highly distracted 41-year old bipolar from the Netherlands. Used to be hip and trendy but has grown intense, morose and cynical. Has been worldbuilding (escaping from mundane reality) since age 10, and early creations were undeniably Transhuman ... but these earliest stories had, as can be expected, many soft-SF qualities. Would love to use slow but steady artistic output as illustrator for real movie concept art one day. Considers self to be an ultrahard right winger Extropian (as long as the welfare system keeps flowing). Would love to be uploaded and get a thorough, "reconstructive" reformatting.

Niven fan, though Gibson, S.K.Robinson and Sterling evoke massive smiles as well. Started out with O'Neil's High frontier and so steadily flowed into hard, extropian ways of looking at SF... Space colonization radical. A very debased human being over all.

Daniel lives in the Niagara region of southern Ontario, Canada as an urban hermit, a libertarian monarchist, a licensed ham, the official Star Lord, a Potentate of the Rose, and an ordained minister in the First Church of Atheism. He plans to live forever or die trying, and finds the idea of being permanently stuck as a hairless primate an unsatisfying lifestyle choice.

"BEGIN OA GEEK CODE BLOCK"Version: 1.0.1/3.12GWB/CW>P d s:+ a>? C++++ UL P L+ E- W+++ N++ o? K- w+ O- M- V- PS+@PE- Y++ PGP++ t++ 5+ X+ R++>+++$ tv b++++ DI+ D++ G e@ h+ z?(**) >H+++OA++ M++ L+ P+ B? S D- Sp+++ SF+++ TS?"END OA GEEK CODE BLOCK"

Daniel Harle (aka Daniel Snarl, Harle, Harlequins, Snarlequins, Snarl, Quins and Maniacal Fishman) can be found in random places around the world, but most commonly in a small village in the North East of England, or on the internet on his (thus-far incomplete) website http://www.maniacalfishman.tk. Young Daniel is an avid fan of metal music, with such bands as System of a Down, Mudvayne, Metallica, Iron Maiden and Rammstein appearing in his record collection. Daniel is a fan on Final Fantasy games, and is currently writing a science-fiction novel, which as of yet lacks a title. If you want to learn more about him, and have first checked yourself into a mental asylum for having such thoughts, consult the Me, Myself and Maniacal Fishman on Daniel's website. Enjoy.

Geek Code OA Version: 1.0.1 GWB/GCW >H OA++ ~M++ L P+ ~B++ ~S++ D- SP++ SF++ TS--

Darren Ryding was born and raised in Western Australia. He graduated from Curtin University with a Bachelors degree in English, majoring in Creative Writing. In the years since, he has had a handful of short works published, mostly in Australian fanzines. After writing, Darren's second favourite hobby is digital artwork, particularly 3D animation and photomanipulation (although he swears that the tiger photo is real).

Some links to Darren's art here, here, and here.

Darren is one of the contributing authors for the recent Orion's Arm novella collection.

Dieter Ludmann's website is here.

Eric Lo, a.k.a, "Quakfusion", is the list's resident objectivist.

""Well, if we destroy Kansas, the world might not hear about it for a few years""Hi, I'm Blofeld, you might remember me from such films as "On Her Majesty's Secret Service" and "Diamonds are Forever". Due to the exploits of a secret agent, who's name is no secret to anybody, my organisation has suffered but it still lives on. As the Prodigy once sed, "I've decided to take my work back underground, to stop it falling into the wrong hands!"

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Johnny Nanonic, a.k.a Espen Antonsen, was a Star Wars/Trek fan for years before he stumbled upon Asimov's Foundation Trilogy, and since then he's never been quite the same. He is currently studying computer science and has delusions of becoming a professional writer. While waiting for the miracle that will allow this to happen he do things like worldbuilding.

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Fendy Sutandio is an Indonesian student of mathematics and computer programming. He can communicate in computer code better than he can communicate in human language, a reason why he likes contributing programs better than contributing stories. In fact it took him hours to write this very short biography. His interest is in the use of mathematics for generating artistic (or not so artistic) images, and learning foreign culture, history and languages.

FrodoGoofball is a baseline human who accidentally discovered the Orion's Arm project while searching for information on space habitats and decided it was more interesting than his former web pursuits. His current home page is here.

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Websites featuring Glenn Grant's Memetic Lexicon are here, here, and with Anders Sandberg's pages here.

DeviantArt page here

This is the work of Ralph Manis, also listed as a contributor. The infinitee designs website is here.

Isaac Arthur's YouTube channel here

James Philps was born in British Columbia, Canada, on December 13, 1989. He spent alot of time in movie theaters, watching all the blockbuster films that defined the 90s: Jurassic park, the lion king, toy story, independence day, lost world, men in black, godzilla, the prince of egypt, etc. As the new millenium came around, James became increasingly interested in written science fiction, with the surprisingly mature animorphs series serving as a catalyst. He tended to focus on works of sci fi that had alot of conflict present in them, with military themed plots being the most favored. When he turned 20, James learned about the concept of a singularity and the potential emergence of superintelligence. He frequently read the work of Eliezer Yudkowsky, and was incredulous at the future that was predicted by him. To make matters worse, he then discovered the orions arm encyclopedia, and read their dissertation on intertoposophic conflict. James was again astonished by what he read. After a failed attempt to prove (to his own satisfaction) that such theorys were groundless, he began to feel very small and vulnerable. He was merely an ant, after all. An ant in a world that would soon be filled with superhuman goliaths...

James Joseph Michael Ramsey a.k.a. LordRavenHawk a.k.a. JamieMage is a 21 year old from the rural parts of the eastern Tennessee and Kentucky mountains. Philosopher, dreamer, thinker, and sometimes artist. Interests include just about anything intellectually stimulating. Also Recent addition to the Fur net communities. Preferred interests, world building, writing, drawing, internet, fur art (especially felinoids) and anything with cinnamon in it. Psychic gifts remote viewing, empathy, memory reading, past reading, body reading, astral projectionist, as well as minor precog abilities. Dreams of having cybernetic implants so he never has to be disconnected from the internet and so he can remember where he put his shoes.

Geek Code OA Version: 1.0.1 >H-(--) OA+++ M+(++) L++(+) P+(++) B(+++) S+ D- TS+++

James Ward has been into SF for as long as he can remember, and into creating it for several years now. Currently enrolled in Appalachian State University in NC, he claims he's getting close to publishing a story. If he could just keep focused, that is.

Jay Dugger a.k.a. Til Eulenspiegel

Geek. Graphic Designer.

After getting degrees in Math, History, and Anthropology, John Snead became one of a number of disillusioned grad students who learned that he could have better job security and more fun writing about aliens and magicians than about cultural anthropology. As such he is now a professional freelance writer of role-playing games.

He is also a 3rd degree Wiccan priest, a serious SF fan, a gourmet cook, and a geeky eccentric. With favorite authors like Linda Nagata, Iain M. Banks, and Gregory Benford, OA was a natural interest. John also recommends books by Alastair Reynolds, Melissa Scott, Ken McLeod, and Karl Schroeder to folks who like OA.

Of course, the fact that John occasionally takes a break from paying RPG projects to help tinker with the OA RPG rules combines both geekyness and eccentricity beyond all reason. In his mundane existence, John lives in Portland Oregon, USA.

Jonathan Burns (informally Jonno) was born in the year of the Hydrogen Bomb. Watched Sputnik from the front lawn. Brought up in Canberra, Australia with two-year stays in London and Princeton NJ.

Jorge Ditchkenberg is an alien mind residing in a spaceship orbiting Earth, which is periodically telepathically overtaking a geek on the surface. The poor puppet thinks that he will gain something out of it.

Puppet does bioinformatics for the living, and likes bird watching and travel in his spare time.

Deviantart page herehttp://juliaharrison.deviantart.com/

Keith Wigdor: HUMAN Born: August 10, 1965

"I recently exhibited at GEORGETOWN UNIVERSITY on August 18, 2002 in an Exhibit/Faculty Presentation called, "THE OMEGA POINT" based on the writings of French Theologian and Philosopher, Tielhard de Chardin. "THE OMEGA POINT" was run by Chief Scientist Aliana J.Maren (www.theeagleforce.com) who used my artwork, "REPRESENTATION OF COGNITION IN ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE" for the exhibit/faculty presentation. You can see this artwork online at THE HAMMOND GALLERY (www.hammondgallery.co.uk) My Artwork also appeared in CHURN ART MAGAZINE, one issue with ROGER DEAN and another issue along with the Legendary H.R.GIGER and Horror Artists, MIKE BOHATCH and CANIGLIA( both are friends as well). I am also friends with GREG BEAR who I occasionally show my most rare pieces, (I dedicated a couple to Greg) and I am a Contributor to the Surreal/Horror Underground E-Zine, THE DREAM PEOPLE (www.dreampeople.org). I will be creating the next CD Cover for the Industrial Trance Band Distant Sun ( I create all the art for their website as well), so please stay tuned, http://www.metalforums.com/~distantsun I did the Cover Art for THE SCIENCE FICTION AND FANTASY WRITERS ASSOCIATION MAGAZINE, "THE BULLETIN" winter issue 2001 (www.sfwa.org) and I am a Huge Science Fiction Fan and I just love Orions Arm!!!"

Kevin is one of the contributing authors for the recent Orion's Arm novella collection.

Wikipedia entry here

Hobbyist illustrator, animator, and full-time nursing assistant. Can usually be found drawing or gaming when not putting in hours at the Home.

Websites: http://rhedgecoth.tumblr.com.http://waya-shadow.deviantart.com

"The Cat's Whiskers" or Liam Jones, has been interested in Science Fiction, and science since a very young age. He spends most of his time using a computer, and plans to become an upload sometime in the next century. He lives in a relatively obscure town in the United Kingdom.

Loopquanta137 has contributed several stories to the OA universe.

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Luke Campbell is a practising computational and theoretical physicist specializing in electronic excitations in condensed matter.He has had a lifelong interest in science fiction, including a particular fascination with ray guns. When not trying to convince a computer to predict the behavior of matter, he has been known to dabble in the visual arts, and he enjoys the company of exotic pets.

Marcus Rauchfu describes himself as follows:

I'm 30 yeas old, currently residing in Munich with my fiancee, we are both goths and sci-fi buffs.

Geek Code OA Version: 1.0.1 GWB/GCW H++ OA++ M++(+) L+ P+ B S+ D? SP++ SF++ ~TS

Martin Andreas Cieslik says about himself

I am Martin Andreas Cieslik, aka MAC or Aethertaeter. I was born on. I was born on December 4, 1980 in Freiburg in Southern Germany. Spent most of my childhood in a nice little town close to Duesseldorf, southern rim of the Ruhr industrialized zone.

I had always been interested in sciences, especially if there were fun effects like sparks, fire or explosions. Thus I took math and physics as my major subjects for graduation. Then I served my ten months in the German Air Force, or Bundesluftwaffe, being a pencil soldier after eight weeks of boot camp.

Currently I am enrolled as a process engineering student at the Technical University of Clausthal. That is pretty much chemical engineering with a little more machine construction and thermal processing added.

Since about age ten I am addicted to SciFi literature after starting to read the classics out of my father's book case (Asimov, Clarke and German Hans Dominik mainly). The scientific ideas always fascinated me. Especially after I had decided to become an engineer I always tried to think about how it could be done. When I had first contact with universes like shadowrun and battletech I realized that the background worldbuilding was so much more interesting than the actually stories. One day I was looking for some data on megascale engineering projects and came across the site of the one true superbright of our time, Anders Sandberg. Obviously I was instantly hooked and thus had to absorb OA (that could be done in a week back then, at least the basics of everything) and wrote a couple of comments to Alan about some things, He invited me onto the list and now I am here. Geek Code

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Matthew C. Johnson, known online as Ares Johnson

Born June 30, 1987 in New England

Call him a geek or a nerd, he won't mind, he's proud of it. Fairly curious even at an early age, a general interest in dinosaurs as a child evolved into a fascination with Mars and space early in High School and later biology and science in general. His greatest interests are reading science fiction, watching anime, playing video games and working on his own sci-fi universe, The Garden Universe. Using newfound knowledge for XHTML and CSS, he has recently begun working on upgrading his website and hopes to one day get the Garden Universe published in some way. He is currently working toward becoming a High School biology teacher. He has also lately begun learning programs such as Terragen 2 and generally dabbling in graphic arts.

http://johnsonm.com/garden-universe/index01.html

Michael Beck has graduated from New York University, and am now studying graduate math at SUNY Stony Brook. His interests are math, writing, and well, that's it. He has recently completed his own science fiction-setting, Lungfish Alpha, also available on egroups. A mixture of ribofunk, space opera, occultism and some truly original ideas, it's an excellent setting. Currently he is working on his next big Worldbuilding project, Planet Exists

Whether it is singing with the Appleton Boy choir's men's chorus, the Mastersingers, studying art at UW Oshkosh, teaching himself the art of website and graphic design or writing short stories and RPG supplements, Michael Boncher has been involved in the arts for most of his life.

While in college, Michael did comic book storyboarding and scripting with other local area artists, wrote an unpublished novella and a small set of short stories. He first taught himself how to use computer graphic programs by colorizing black and white photographs. Determined to use his artistic skill in business, he began to learn the new art of website development. Since then, he has developed over 25 websites and worked on hundreds of advertising projects.

A few years, Michael discovered 3D Graphic Illustration. Excited by the new tools for creating fine art, he has thrown himself head first into the new medium. The results of this are now yours to enjoy.

Recently, he discovered Orion's Arm when searching for information on Nanotechnology, and became enamored with its concept and desired greatly to help make OA the next big SF franchise.

M.K. Capriola, Jr is the pen name for writers Michelle Maus and Penelope Arcade, and artist April Phool. They are currently working on getting funding from the Radical Lesbian Front for a pilgrimage to Lesbos, which is their way of spending the winter in Greece while getting someone else to pay for it.

My name is Michael Jones, and I was actually directed to the OA worldbuilding list list from a very soft SciFi story-debate forum after asking a question on Wormholes. I like to think of myself as an amateur SciFi author, and your setting has inspired me. I hate commercial TV SciFi for the drivel it produces, and have long searched for a more realistic SciFi setting. I'm a registered nurse with an interest in anatomy and physiology - and I guess you could say my "specialty" is xenobiology, because I love fleshing out (heh - pun) alien races and biology in a scientifically plausible, utterly non-bipedal way. I'm 25 years old, and I work at the Childrens Hospital at Westmead, in Sydney, NSW, Australia. My lifestyle with work is very busy, so much to my dismay I haven't had much time for SciFi reading for a couple of years now. Before that, my favourite authors were relatively soft SciFi - Anne McCaffrey, among others. My tastes have certainly matured since them - the exposure of the internet has helped...*grin*.

Having grown up with an older brother who was a Star Trek fanatic (complete with 3-D chess board), going where no one has gone before seems quite natural to Michele. She has a Bachelors of Science from Indiana University with minors in Sociology, Art, and Religious Studies (make college the best decade of your life). She lives in a carriage house in the South (well, Southern Indiana) with a very lady-like English Spaniel, and two very evil cats.

She has been published multiple times in Bewildering Stories ezine, Quantum Muse, Aphelion, Voices/Future Tense, and AlienSkin (R.I.P.). She is currently working hard to sell her novels (A Fishermans Guide to Bottom Dwellers and Five Minutes Before) to a big-time agent for your basic rich and famous contract. Shes not giving up her day job, yet which is working as an Administrative Assistant.

Her website is: http://www.bottomdwellers.freewebspace.com and she can be contacted at her email mail account: micheledutcher@yahoo.com

Michele is one of the contributing authors for the recent Orion's Arm novella collection.

Mikael Johansson is studying Latin and mathematics at the university of Stockholm.

Materials Engineer

Michael Henry Parisi was born: 6-17-1972, and graduated Rhode Island College with a B. S. in Management. Everyone he knows says he bears a striking resemblance to Clark Kent. He has been interested in sci-fi from an early age (at least since he was 5 or 6). Not really serious about it until 1995 or 1996 when began writing short SF stories with a decidedly Hard SF bent for own amusement. Once got part of one of his stories published in my college newspaper, The Anchor. Other interests include Professional Wrestling (favorite wrestler: "The Game" Triple-H) and Karaoke (favorite song to do: "Beat It" by Michael Jackson, which I put my own unique spin on). All his stories contain a generous amount of knock-down-drag-out action and steamy sex scenes (where appropriate).

Personal Outlook: Not an atheist by any measure, but has been a skeptic at least since was 5 or 6; sees himself as a nondenominational Deist or an agnostic, and considers that no one blind man can have entirely the correct impression of the whole elephant. Favorite Movies: Ruthless People, Aliens, and Die Hard. Favorite Book: Ender's Game, by Orson Scott Card. Current Occupation: (besides worldbuilding and story writing): Security Officer (which gives him lots of time to think about worldbuilding and story writing).

Geek Code OA Version: 1.0.1 >H+ OA++++ M++ L+ P++ B+ S+ D Sp ~TS

Morgan's Deviantart Gallery can be found here

See the original post here:

Orion's Arm - Contributor Bios