I had this setting in my head for a while before writing my novel. I’d thought about using it as a setting for a sci-fi TTRPG (tabletop role-playing game), then a short story, and eventually decided to tell a long-form story with Khalo as the backdrop— my as-yet-untitled novel.
I don’t know why but I’m having a really tough time naming the thing! Suggestions in the comments!
I was intrigued by a concept for a space station proposed by Gerard K. O’Neill in his 1976 book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. Admittedly, I haven’t read this little gem but the concept has definitely penetrated the membrane of famous hypothetical structures, along with Dyson spheres and space elevators.
The O’Neill cylinder is a cylindrical structure, constructed in the vacuum of space, that can be scaled up to 20 miles long and 5 miles wide. The original design consists of two rotating cylinders, counteracting each other’s gyroscopic forces. Each cylinder is split up into 6 strips that run the entire length, 3 land and 3 windows alternating around the shaft. Huge angled mirrors reflect sunlight from the nearest star through the windows and onto the land segments opposite.
The land strips of the inner surface of the cylinder are the habitable zones. They’re often depicted as huge green spaces with hills and valleys and lakes between the starry space-scapes. An Earth-like paradise, like a National Park in space.
Khalo Station, my setting, is quite a departure from this original vision, and probably not as scientifically sound, but still shares some fundamental similarities. For example, Khalo is still a gargantuan cylinder that spins around its axis utilising centripetal force to create artificial gravity on the inner surface.
Now, the more astute among you may be asking yourselves; but what about gyroscopic forces that would cause the station to drift away from its intended position in space?
Here’s where there’s some fiction in the science of Khalo. Lukshae (more on these guys later), being a spacefaring race with considerable understanding of the physical universe, have developed technology that allows the manipulation of certain physical forces and even the limited generation of gravitational fields. This purely hypothetical technology is what makes Khalo Station’s existence possible.
Okay, definitely not as scientifically sound as O’Neill’s very well-conceived idea, but enough to suspend that ever-present disbelief.
If the original visions for O’Neill cylinders are nature reserves and National Parks, Khalo Station is an urban sprawl played out over the entire inner surface of a single cylinder. It’s 4km in diameter, 20km long and has a structure running through the central axis, called The Heart, that provides light to the whole station as well as housing a lot of its autonomous systems, like life support. There’s a little more to it but that’s the jist. If you want to find out more you’ll have to read the novel.
The why of the station is where it got interesting for me. In my imagined Earth, first contact has been made with another intelligent race of humanoids from a planet called Luksha, which orbits Luyten, a star approximately 12 lightyears from Earth. The respective governments of these planets came together to create a new overarching authority that deals with everything to do with the union.
The agreement between the two governments was named The Bond.
Khalo was conceived and built as a pit stop, supporting the logistics industries and the couriers who ferry cargo and passengers back and forth between the planets of The Bond.
Located in the Wolf359 system, the construction platform responsible for the building of the station itself served this purpose for many years until Khalo was ready to inhabit. It was a truly collaborative effort between Earth and Luksha to create this mammoth structure, which utilises technologies and systems from both planets.
Over the next 150 years, Khalo went from pit stop to unofficial colony. 16 districts, 4 to a sector, each with a different focus but, like a city, most districts have the means to live, survive, and contribute to the station’s ongoing existence.
Permanent residency
Education for all ages
Sports and leisure facilities
Industrial operations
Scientific research in the Wolf359 system
Tourist destinations (mainly for the ultra-rich, holidaying on the station from the pervasively capitalist Earth.)
A self-sustaining food and water production district.
As Khalo became more and more self-reliant, animosity toward The Bond grew. Multiple generations of people, human and lukshae, had been born, lived, and died on the station, leading to the development of a culture of its own. A culture that has drifted away from the sentiments of its home worlds, and suffers at the hands of both the hypercapitalist influence of Earth, and Luksha’s obsession with scientific progress (at any cost).
Khalo just wants to be Khalo.
This is why there has been a surge of anti-Bond sentiments in recent ‘years’ (time is measured differently too, but that’s for another time..), and even a push for the independence of Khalo as a self-governing, sovereign colony. Neither human nor lukshae, nor Bond.
The story of the novel takes place at that point in time. An unexplained explosion leads the protagonists down a rabbit hole of discovery that not only threatens life on the station but challenges everything they know about the universe.
A nexus point for Khalo’s future and our main character’s place in that future.
If you’d like to read a story like this, check out Chapter One!
I’m posting a new chapter every other week, all first drafts, so, if you’re so inclined, you can offer any thoughts or feedback you may have and help me shape the final product!
Ross, how much of the novel begins by setting the stage?
Great world-building, by the way!