In order to stay alive, you have to spend all day every day doing stupid meaningless work. And the only way to get out of it is to quit, cut loose, t… - Neal Stephenson

"The Bibliotheque du Roi then gives you the closest thing that currently exists to God's understanding of the world."
"And yet with a bigger library we could come ever so much closer."

I wanted to create an interesting scifi universe that didn't violate the laws of physics, and that means that you're limited to staying inside the solar system. I also wanted to get away from the ship-centric style of science fiction. Star Trek is ship-centric and it's all about the Enterprise — there are many other examples. What if we decided to get away from the obsession with ships and instead thought about big machines and structures that might be used to create a civilization inside the solar system?

Enoch...why are you here?
Why has my spirit been incarnated into a physical bodi in this world generally? Or specifically, why am I here in a Swedish forest, standing on the wreck of a mysterious German rocket plane while a homosexual German sobs over the cremated remains of his Italian lover?