The history of my "universe" began with writing The Bright Black Sea. It did not start out as a fully fleshed timeline, but rather it evolved, with each book set in that universe adding another layer to it. I don't think that there are any revisions needed to the original time line, I just added more "data points" to it as I went along.
The hallmark feature of my timeline is that I set my stories in the far future - 50,000 to 100,000 years in our future in order to make it credible that humans had expanded beyond the solar system to colonize the worlds of other stars - without faster than light spaceships. I have no specific dates in mind.
In The Bright Black Sea, I recall mentioning that the ships from Earth arrived some 40,000 years before that story was set to allow the time needed for humans to settle hundreds of planets and moons, and spread to uncounted of rocks and planets in the Drifts beyond the formal human civilization of the Nine Star Nebula, The Unity. Figure another 10 - 20 thousand years needed to reach the Nine Star Nebula from Earth, and you have 50 - 60 thousand years since they left the Solar System. There is also several human colony-ships within the Pela, that may've come from Earth, or perhaps a world settled by Earth long enough to have developed to the point where they can send out their own colony ships. Who knows? (I don't.)
The Nine Star Nebula Mystery/Adventure stories are set maybe a century before the events recounted in The Bright Black Sea, since they recount the tales of the youthful Rafe gil'Giles, the systems mate of the Lost Star, though under a different name. He uses a lot of names.
In the Tropic Sea stories, I had it take the colony ships from Earth 9,373 years to reach Dara, and those stories are set almost 5,000 years after the settlers landed on Dara. I have no idea when they left the Solar System. I haven't settle on any definite time line for the settlement of the planet I've set Chateau Clare on, save that it's been at a little less than 1,400 years since a revolution outlawed much of the high technology brought from Earth, labeling it sorcery. However, I would think six or seven generations of settlers would've lived prior this revolution - so say the planet may've been first settled around 3,000 years before the story told in Chateau Clare.
Though I can't say when all these colony ships left the Solar System, I can say that they all left prior to the "Death" - the mass flowering of fungi that had been dormant in the lungs of three quarters of the humans of the Solar System. The flowering filled the lungs of everyone it had lodged in, sweeping across the Solar System killing three quarters of humanity in a week, and putting an end, as far as I know, to interplanetary travel within the Solar System, and of course, the interstellar colony ships. Again, I don't have any date in mind, but it would be tens of thousands of years in the future, as I envisioned it taking something like 10,000 years to terraform Mars, so there's no need for us to worry about it. Two of the three three Post Solar Age stories, Keiree and The Girl on the Kerb are set about 1500 after that event. The third, Beneath the Lanterns, which takes place on the terraformed Moon, is set sometime latter. Beneath the Lanterns was the first story in which I invented that event (though only in my mind), in order to use it just to explain my premise of a fallen civilization on a terraformed Moon. Because of the way timekeeping on the Moon works, and the fact that I had the event unknown by the narrator, lost in the mists of legends, so I'm not sure if I set an actual date. Still, my if my memory serves, I think it was more like 2,000 years before the events in the book, and thus, likely after Keiree and The Girl on the Kerb. This would suggest that interplanetary travel did not recommenced any time soon, if ever, since there is no evidence of it in that story. However, there is that other, unknown and unexplored, side of the Moon... Who knows? (I don't.)
I guess I find it pretty easy to throw thousands of years around like decades, in part because generations are almost four times as long - five lifetimes per a thousand years. While this give me leeway to tell the stories I want without violating too many laws of nature, it does mean, as I mentioned previously, that I have to turn a blind eye to how humans might evolve over such a long time span. In any event, as you can see, there is no definite timeline to my stories, though I think that the stories set in the Nine Star Nebula are probably the outer limits of my timeline.
I have one more installment of this series to write - a piece describing all the things I had to invent to make my stories work. I make no claim to writing "hard science fiction" but I did try to keep things at least seem possible. Stay tuned for all my inventions.
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