So, Kester is working on a Frontier Fringe book for Nebuleon and it got me wondering. What do you like/want in a sci-fi setting about the frontier, the edge of known space?

I know I want/like:
Previously unknown races
Mysteries/unknown ruins/derelict space craft
Strange cultures


So, any setting, what do you like about the outer endges of the known systems?

Thanks,
Bill

Backwater planets and systems with almost no law to speak of, save the rule of a few big criminal organizations.

Cargo cults.

Roanoke.

Forgotten colonies run by cannibals or worse.  

Men who've seen the blackness beyond the galaxy and gone stark raving mad for their troubles.

Why do I want on the fringe:

Dirt, grime, hell in space; pirate and smuggler coves; filthy backwaters where dirty deals are struck in every back room; a place where the law runs scared and the outlaws run the show. Forget aliens, unless they are scum too. Also, you should have nefarious government shadow agencies going about their business. Empires are won and lost by the diplomatic deals inked in two-bit, frontier towns . . . well, in silly fiction they are.

The Fringe should hold the bleeding edge of exploration and wildcat colonization.

(Backwaters should be closer to the core area. Like inner city ghettoes on a galactic scale.)

i'll totally second the space-derelicts idea!  there should be old explorers, or speculative merchants, or just "why were they there?" ships waiting to be explored, with just a tantalizing amount of log data about what's around/over the next spatial reference point.

undiscovered or infrequently encountered enigmatic aliens?  absolutely

either no law, or the faint, tantalizing wisps of law should be present.  maybe a gov representative or official is out there.  but does he *really* have any power out on the fringes?  and even if he cried for help, would it come in time?  unlikely. . .

it should also be uncharted, in the longer sense of things.  sure, we may know where the major stellar bodies may be.  but the effects of cometary or eccentric orbits?  or frequency of stellar flares or meteoroid showers?  we may know the rough lay of the land, but not really the local weather patterns

Colonies set up by fringe groups which look very much like utopias until you dig a little and find the dystopian stuff buried.

Stealing from different movies...

Like, a world where people live in harmony with the earth, everyone is young and beautiful, and no-one appears to be over 50 or under 15. That turns out to be because they force-grow clones of the beautiful people in vats, and when people turn 50 they're executed and turned into fertiliser.

A world where everyone lives in a giant underground facility working on a cure for a deadly disease, and each hopes to win the lottery where they achieve freedom from the place, going to a paradise... but in fact they're just clones for rich people, and winning the lottery means it's time to be cut open for their organs.

Um... time to tag someone else!

but to have such eccentricities, those groups would need funds, not something that would be found in a fringe, really.  those examples show signs of having generations (or at least many years) of backing, to establish such things.

the fringe of society, maybe.  but the fringe, as in frontier?  don't see it, sorry

Quote from: HinterWeltSo, any setting, what do you like about the outer endges of the known systems?

Abandoned scientific experiments.

Low life scumbag criminals on the run (and equally low life bounty hunters chasing them)

Weird cults whom nobody wants to join except the few damaged/deranged wrecks.

Floating space junks home to numerous desperate folks with secrets to hide.

The fastest ship in the galaxy

Regards,
David R