Having a diverse assortment of human-settled worlds is a plot-friendly aspect of many science fiction settings. Authors may find themselves perplexed as to how they are to provide their colonists with the means to reach distant worlds while avoiding trade-driven homogenization (which might inhibit the development of planetary cultures along plot-friendly lines). Not to worry! There are many, many ways to provide sufficient space for worlds to find their own destinies.
At least five, in fact.
One answer is to have someone (or something) else providing the means by which humans spread from one system to another. If humans do not control (or even understand) the means by which people travel from one system to another, routine contact may be impossible.
Clifford Simak’s A Choice of Gods features this in its backstory. The vast majority of the human race (save for a handful of humans and a community of robots) are whisked away from the Earth by some unknown agency. Recontact occurs thousands of years later, after considerable cultural divergence.
Alison Sinclair’s Cavalcade shows the beginning of a similar process; offered a lift out of the solar system by an enigmatic starship, multitudes board, only belatedly comprehending the consequences of isolation.
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Some settings offer human technology sufficient to bridge the gap between stars with extraordinary effort, but insufficient to do this as a matter of routine. The sublight Exodus Fleet from Becky Chambers’ Record of a Spaceborn Few was a desperate bid to find a new home; recontact with Earth centuries later followed considerable cultural divergence.
Similarly, the generation ships that colonized the nearer stars in Fred Pohl and Cyril Kornbluth’s Search the Sky were sufficient to deliver small groups and the occasional trading cargo. The founder effect and the resulting inbreeding drives the plot.
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Routine contact might be sabotaged by economic, political, or military events. The same Bussard ramjets that delivered the Quakers in Joan Slonczewski’s Still Forms on Foxfield to Tau Ceti might have facilitated subsequent visits from Earth. Nuclear war put a stop to interstellar travel until enough time had passed for terrestrial civilization to recover along very different lines from the community on Foxfield.
Brian M. Stableford used this trope in his Daedalus series. Dozens of insufficiently studied alien worlds were settled with inadequate technology. Terrestrial crises forced a lengthy hiatus in star travel. A hundred years later, the starship Daedalus sets out to determine if any of Earth’s children survived, and if so, how their alien worlds have reshaped them.
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Authors cannot overestimate the utility of inconvenient natural events in this matter.
Grenchstom’s Planet, the setting for Nicola Griffith’s Ammonite, is free to while away the centuries independent of galactic cultures thanks to a disease that makes the world a deathtrap for most visitors.
Events on a far grander scale isolate Alta in Michael McCollum’s Antares Dawn; a supernova reshuffles the fold points on which interstellar travel depends. With no means to reach other systems, Alta is forced to develop along independent lines. Luckily for the colonists, their infrastructure is up to the challenge.
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Finally, nothing isolates like mutual loathing. Lois McMaster Bujold’s planet of Athos was settled by religious extremists determined to avoid the corrupting effects of mainstream civilization. Consequently, few galactics visit Athos, while only extreme crises can convince Athos’ people to visit the other worlds of the galaxy.
The colonies in David Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers setting engaged in displays of nationalist pride—no Johnny Foreigner wanted here!—rather than financially prudent ventures. The result is a wealth of borderline insolvent communities compelled by economic reality into contact, but lacking the requisite diplomatic skills necessary to avoid violent disputes. It’s a setting almost tailor-made to provide mercenaries with regular employment!
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No doubt there are a multitude of options I’ve overlooked above, because I didn’t think of them or because they were the sixth or greater example on a decidedly non-comprehensive list of five. No doubt some of you will be kind enough to mention those neglected options in comments, which are, as ever, below.
In the words of fanfiction author Musty181, four-time Hugo finalist, prolific book reviewer, and perennial Darwin Award nominee James Davis Nicoll “looks like a default mii with glasses.” His work has appeared in Interzone, Publishers Weekly and Romantic Times as well as on his own websites, James Nicoll Reviews (where he is assisted by editor Karen Lofstrom and web person Adrienne L. Travis) and the 2021 and 2022 Aurora Award finalist Young People Read Old SFF (where he is assisted by web person Adrienne L. Travis). His Patreon can be found here.
