Overview

Beyond is set in a future where technology is not much farther along than 20th century earth. Fusion power has become practical. A few other advances have been made. But the world is not unrecognizable to someone from the twenty-first century. Indeed, in rebuilding the world of the future, much attention was given to the history of the last days of the Great Age. The days before the War saw the greatest achievements of man. Greater than the technology of this, the modern era.

The one technology that sets the modern era apart from earth of the early twenty-first century is the star drive. Relying on technologies discovered just before the War, the drive allows ships to cover vast distances of space in mere days. The drive causes the ship to 'quantum tunnel' a matter of some score of meters orthogonal to the orientation of the drive field. Much like the quantum effects seen in atoms, the drive moves a ship from here to there instantaneously. Drive the ship though hundred or thousands or tens of thousands of occilations, and the ship can cover parsecs in days.

But the drive only works in the void of space. Any significant gravity gradient, and the drive loses efficiency. Too close to a large mass and drive ceases to be useful. For in system work, fusion drives feeding large plasma thrusters are the order of the day. Gravity is simulated with large centrifuges. Spaceplanes and shuttles service the big interstellar ships, which are built in space and are doomed to forever remain there.

Small, highly trained crews serve these giant vessels. Most of their passengers ride in silence, kept in gel baths in hypothermic comas, their muscles periodically stimulated by electric current to ward off atrophy.

See: Living in Space, Artificial Intelligence and medical technology