History
Star Fleet Universe products outline an extensive history that serve as the backdrop of the games. The usual chronology uses an Earth-based calendar (June, August, 365 days, etc.), with dates given in "Y-years". These are written as (for instance) Y168, or August Y168, and are dated to the year Earth first made contact with the Vulcans. A direct conversion to familiar Anno Domini dating is (purposefully) not given, however the Federation and Empire rules state that Y0 should be somewhere between AD 2020 and AD 2090, the Federation Commander rules arbitrarily set it as AD 2400 (referred to in-universe as the Valkenburg Chronology) and consistently use 'AD' dates derived from that rather than use 'Y-year' nomenclature, while an option setting the date at 2063 (in line with the year of First Contact set in other Star Trek settings) is known as the Amin-Audeh Chronology. In all cases, it is stated that the actual date cannot be precisely known.
As this chronology was created completely separately of anything done for Star Trek after the Original Series (which at the time also avoided any hard date for when it happened), it cannot (and should not) be reconciled directly with current Star Trek canon. As an example of the incompatibilities arising from the separate evolution of the two visions of Star Trek history, the SFU defines the "five year mission" of the original Star Trek series as being from Y155 to Y160, which by Paramount's chronology would put Y0 at AD 2108; while if one accepts the definition of Y0, it should be the year of the movie Star Trek: First Contact, AD 2063.
While the time periods recorded in the Alpha Octant, Small Magellanic Cloud and Triangulum Galaxy are only loosely arranged into particular eras, the history of the Omega Octant is broken down into 'Cycles', as recorded by the Chlorophon race (who act as the de facto fictional historians of the Octant). Such Cycles cover the defining events of each period, such as the Pax Mæsra (the period of the Mæsron Alliance's furthest extent in power and influence) and the Invasions (when the Andromedans and Souldra sought to conquer the Omega races).
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Famous quotes containing the word history:
“We don’t know when our name came into being or how some distant ancestor acquired it. We don’t understand our name at all, we don’t know its history and yet we bear it with exalted fidelity, we merge with it, we like it, we are ridiculously proud of it as if we had thought it up ourselves in a moment of brilliant inspiration.”
—Milan Kundera (b. 1929)
“Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism’s high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past.”
—Gilbert Adair, British author, critic. Sunday Times: Books (London, April 21, 1991)
“The history of mankind interests us only as it exhibits a steady gain of truth and right, in the incessant conflict which it records between the material and the moral nature.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)