EVE Fiction

I think it's almost impossible to absolutely fit into the lore. If you say, "The Gallente merchant looked up from his dish of wine-poached fish," you're assuming that there are fish in New Eden. Unless you've seen fish mentioned somewhere in the prime fiction, of course. At some point you have to make some assumptions, or all you can do is recycle a limited number of items and concepts from the canon.

For the current content at least, I don't think the judges will deduct points for adding items, technology, etc. that don't exist in the canon. For example, a custom monocle or artificial hand would be OK. What they could deduct points for is if you have something happen that directly contradicts events or facts that are plainly stated in the lore. Say, you're writing about the founding of the Sisters of EVE, and you say they were formed as an Amarr splinter religious sect interested in aiding slaves. Whereas the EVElopedia entry says "The Sisters were originally founded as a neutral aid organization during the Gallente-Caldari War." By saying they were an Amarr splinter sect, you're directly contradicting a set fact that's stated in the lore. That's different than speculating on a technology or item that might exist in New Eden (such as an artificial hand or a custom monocle).

On the other hand, you could have Blood Raiders infiltrating and attacking a space station, and not be violating canon. There may be no example of that kind of attack in the prime fiction, but as long as your Blood Raiders and space station generally behave like their counterparts in the lore, you're not violating the canon. You're using existing entities from the canon to tell a new story.

Basically, adding things not found in the lore is probably OK, but changing things that are already in the lore isn't. But as you said, inventing major things like time travel or a new sentient alien species is too much. But you could do that in the non-lore-faithful category (of this particular contest).

Kind of a complicated topic, I hope all of that didn't just add more confusion....

Edit: Check out these stories from last year's contest for some examples of what works. These stories all took the New Eden setting and pretty freely extrapolated on it. And they all passed muster with our lore-master dev judges and won prizes. There are many more good stories like that, these are just a quick sampling.

xCUSx, "Immortality Beckons" - Takes an historic space battle that is fairly briefly described in the lore, and develops the characters and the details of the action.

Ormond Lycurgus, "Hunted" - A capsuleer turned CONCORD agent tracks a criminal capsuleer.

Kazicht Cixit, "The Attrition Initiative" - An experiment in controlled cloning and transneural burning.

Well my worry was someone reading this stuff and taking it the wrong way if it is not explained fully. I mentioned the time travel because its the only criticism I have really had for one of my lore tidbits.

Its just the arguments are great and everything, and Horatius I don't know enough to say otherwise to your SOE origins idea, but its nice to send in a piece without these arguments pending. Without the potential for them.

Darn, its probably not going to happen. These arguments are sort of inherent to Sci-Fi and EVE. I was working on my entries for CBC's poetry prize previously but am new to writing science fiction. Its just how your audience in the genre of Sci FI may receive you, especially if you are a bold inventor of bloodlines, technology, designs, innovation etc.

type furiously,

Johnny