The Autonomy Canon
The "Author's Canon" offers an "official" overview of the universe in which the Autonomy series is set, as envisioned by its author, Jean-Michel Smith. Eventually the Canon will include a complete "future history," an overview of cosmology of the Autonomy universe, and much more.
Legalities
The Author's Canon is © 2006 by Jean-Michel Smith.
Most of the Canon is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NoDerivatives License, Version 2.5, which essentially means you are welcome to use and share this information freely, so long as you give me, the author, credit and do not make derivative "unofficial" versions of the Canon. You are of course welcome to use the Canon as a reference if you are creating other works (novels, movies, what have you) that are set in the Autonomy universe. In fact, that is exactly what the Canon is for. For those used to the Free Software Foundation's GNU Free Documentation License (FDL), this Canon would be analogous to an "invariant section."
The sections describing the Community Standard Sexagesimal Numeral System and Metric-60 Natural Planck Units are licensed under the much more liberal Creative Commons Attribution License, Version 2.5, which means you can use them for any purpose whatsoever, so long as you give me credit as their creator.
Origins
I have been asked several times how I came up with the idea for a "Canon". The short answer is "Star Trek (the USENET discussion groups)". The long answer is that, while I strive for complete freedom for others to play in my universe and create their own content set in this world, I did want to retain some baseline reference of an "official" vision of events, places, and people. This doesn't mean others can't diverge from that and take the future history in a different direction (in fact, such divergences can enrich the entire experience), it simply means that, if someone wishes to know how the Autonomy universe is envisioned by its original creator (myself), this reference provides that. For that reason, I needed a definitive reference that would not be changed willy-nilly by others.
In the world of Star Trek, fans often referred to this or that event as "Canon", meaning it was an official part of the series, and other events (such as things portrayed in the animated series, or in novels not referenced in any movie or television broadcast) as "non canonical." A baseline reference of the "official" version of events is hence a Canon, and it was from my recollection of such online discussions that the idea for an "Author's Canon" describing my vision of the Autonomy Universe unfolded. I hope you enjoy browsing it as much as I have enjoyed creating it.
