Shipbucket

I have a few questions about what constitutes an AU.

Does it have to be alternate history? If I say created a setting that takes plane on another planet in the far future, but with a roughly 20th century earth level of technology, does it still count as an AU?

The idea here is a planet colonized by a seed ship. There are two groups of people living in the solar system, a small enclave of high tech posthumans live on the moon, while the rest of the population lives a feudal existence on the planet's surface. The lunar people are supposed to be guiding the development of the planet's civilization, but they have a very hands off approach, and as such their authority is delegated to local warlords. The result is a situation similar to feudal japan, except instead of samurai, they have 3d printed battleships. A feudal Admiralty.

The Admirals have industrial scale 3d printers, allowing them to build large warships quickly and cheaply, but any sort of "high resolution" manufacturing (such as integrated circuits) has to happen offworld, and is rare and expensive.

Oh yeah, there are also sea monsters, the result of the AI in charge of Teraforming getting tired of the humans upsetting her perfect ecosystem with their pointless wars.

It's all social commentary or something.

Everything that in any way alter current timeline is AU. Past, present or the future.

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Nobody expects the Imperial Inquisition!