FC

Era

The Guttering Age

2312–2354 · 42 years · 7 series · 22 books

Two generations of abundance later: free energy, a terraformed Mars, instant reach — and a hated Earth. Then somebody counts the stars that should still be burning, the roads start being rationed by the people who have to live beside them, and the question stops being whether the light is running out and becomes who decides whose sky goes dark.

What fixes the era

  1. 2312 The Sable Reach is opened — A civilian survey ship charts a reach that was dark on the ledger, and finds a human voice already waiting at the other end.
  2. 2318 The Cairn Compact — The relay at the Sable throat is made a shared station under a compact between governments that none of them expect to last. Authentication is kept out of any single power's hands.
  3. 2334 The first mobile authority sails — A converted survey hull leaves the Cairn carrying an embarked wound-and-route cell, because a fixed station has just proved it cannot reach the pockets.
  4. 2348 The visitation at Hart — Something arrives over a settlement of nineteen thousand people and reads everything it has ever written down. It never explains itself.
  5. 2350 The first formal measurement — The dimming stops being an argument about evidence and becomes a figure on a sheet that somebody has to sign.

Set in this era

SeriesWide Sky SeriesThe Cairn SeriesThe Far Roads SeriesThe Chosen Dark SeriesClosed Sky SeriesThe Long Going SeriesThe Working Sky

Books set in this era

BookWide Sky BookThe Widened Road BookThe Closing Sky BookWho the Door Admits BookWhat First Call Buys BookWho Gets to Answer BookWho Holds the Standard BookWhat the Station Keeps BookThe Way Out Closes BookThe Road Called Good BookInside the Window BookThe Last Cache BookThe Surveyors BookTerminal Black BookOne Road Out BookThe Firing Order BookKeller's Field BookThe Defensible Route BookMissing, Presumed BookThe Last Manifest BookWrong Sky BookNothing Given BookWhat Stone Keeps BookNot in My Lifetime BookMuster BookTime Served BookWashing Day BookThe Empty Leg

Places

Placethe Sable throat PlaceThe Sennets Placethe Weir PlaceHart PlaceHart traffic and climate station PlaceKelland PlaceLake Cormorant PlaceOram PlaceThe Grange PlaceTolliver Station PlaceHighreach PlaceMercer Yards PlaceThe Cairn (Cairn Relay) PlaceAlmon PlaceCorran PlaceFarrant PlaceHember PlaceLantry

Either side

EraThe Frontier Golden Age

Elsewhere in the archive

Drawn from what this entry actually names — not a curated list, so it grows as the record does.

Places

the Sable Reach

In the glossary

RoadThe CairnThe DimmingThe node-ledgerThe Sable throat