The Orion’s Arm Universe Project is an online collaborative project focused on world building. Recently I received an invitation letter from the creators of the project. These folks have been around for sometime now and the projects has been praised by the likes of Cory Doctorow. The invitation is not just to our website but to the reader of Islam and Science Fiction. I encourage the readers to take up this offer and contribute to the Orion’s Arm Universe. Here is  the letter:

The Orion’s Arm Universe Project is an open source collective worldbuilding and fiction writing project that seeks to depict a plausible world set 10,000 years in the future.

Orion’s Arm (OA for short) is a big place with nearly a decade of history and hundreds of contributors.  But we’re always happy to welcome new friends and new ideas.

From time to time, the members of the project have discussed the fact that although we seek to depict the future of the entire human race, we have little information on the site regarding the future of cultures that don’t have their origins in Europe or the America’s. This is primarily due to the fact that the bulk of our membership comes from those parts of the world and also because we are reluctant to attempt to write about cultures and parts of the world we know little or nothing about beyond what we might find on Wikipedia or the like, which would likely not be fully correct or realistic.

Recently we came across a blog from a Muslim SF fan that included a link to your project.  After looking at your site, we discovered that you actually have a link to us in your site archive, specifically related to one part of our website, the Stellar Umma, which can also be found here.

Based on this, as well as the quality of your website and project, we’d like to do the following:

First, we’d like to return the favor and add a link to your website to our Links and Extras page.

Second, we wanted to extend an invitation to any authors or artists associated with your project to pay us a visit, explore the OA universe and its fictional future history, and possibly contribute ideas, stories, or artwork to the project.  In particular, we were hoping you might be able to help us expand our depiction of Muslim and possibly non-European cultures and ideas within OA.  Any such contributions would need to fall within the bounds of the Canon of the OA universe but in general we’ve found that the setting is large enough to accommodate just about any idea.

So please, check us out, explore the Orion’s Arm setting, and consider joining one of our discussion groups, where everything in the OA setting gets started.  If you have any questions or concerns regarding any of the above or just on general principles, please don’t hesitate to contact us, either via the discussion groups or using the link on the OA homepage.