I have a new short story I’m finishing up. It’s called Rapunzel, and is a tale of first contact. The cover is done, but the story itself won’t be ready to go for a couple of weeks. It belongs in neither my Waking Late nor Ground Based universes, so I’ve been mulling how to categorize it. Also, there’s at least one other story in the pipeline that doesn’t fit either universe.
The answer arrived last week from one of my students. In my space law class at Catholic University’s law school, we finally got to the Liability Convention, which explains when and how liable a launching state will be for what space activities. Yes, yes, lawyers know how to make even space boring. We’re clever like that.
For those of you who haven’t clicked away, I will tell you a little about the Liability Convention. It says that a launching state shall be absolutely liable for damage its space object causes on the surface of the Earth or to aircraft flight. Everyone thinks this means that the launching state would have to pay for any damage it caused on the ground even if it had done nothing wrong. On the other hand, if a launching state’s space object causes damage “elsewhere than on the surface of the [E]arth” then the launching state is liable only if it’s at fault. In other words, a launching state would have to pay up if it was to blame when its space object caused damage in space.
Thinking aloud, the law student explained that space had to be elsewhere because the treaty said, in effect, elsewhere than Earth. We all had to agree.
“Elsewhere” is a fine substitute for “other” and “miscellaneous.” Accordingly, my third category of fiction will cover stories that take place elsewhere than in the Ground Based Universe or on Nwwwlf.
And so it shall be.
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