The Aurora Universe

The Aurora Universe is a collaborative literary exercise, a series of interconnected stories set against a background that combines elements of comic book fantasy and science fiction. The comic book element is the superheroes and superheroines -- mostly the latter -- called Homo Sapiens Supremis. Like Superman and Supergirl in the comics, they are super-powered and invulnerable; those called Velorians can fly. The science fiction element lies in world creation, in an imaginary galaxy with thousands of worlds, many of them inhabited by descendants of humans who have been abducted from Earth and settled elsewhere for upwards of two millennia. Wormholes, a common sf trope, are used to facilitate travel between distant worlds.

Called the AU for short, the background was created in the mid-1990's by a writer who then called himself Sharon Best but later adopted the persona of Shadar. The AU took its name from Aurora, the name of a superheroine who figured in Sharon Best's early writing. Early AU stories were the primary, although not the only source, of erotic superheroine fantasy: the heroines were frequently seen showered with bullets, bathing in fire and the like -- to their own delight and that of male onlookers. Those onlookers would often get lucky and be invited to make love with these goddesses. To make that feasible, Best introduced the idea of gold serving a function similar to that of kryptonite in DC Comics -- but it weakens Vels only just enough to have sex with "frails," and also makes them hornier. Velor, the homeworld of the Velorians, was the equivalent of Krypton -- only it never blew up. Still, the planet's gold field prevented most Velorians from ever leaving their world.

Best gradually augmented and refined the mythology of the AU, bringing in the Galen as the god-like creators of the Supremis, the schism between the Velorians and Arions -- the latter exiled themselves to another world -- and the continuing conflict between the two super-races, in the deeps of space and on Earth. The mythos was further elaborated by writers calling themselves A.K. (Julie of Velor) S.T. Mac (the late Douglas W. MacBeth, who created the Infinity Bridge site), and Lisa Binkley (Jolie Howard Fiction). Their works were later characterized as AU-2. But when Sharon Best reinvented himself as Shadar in 2003, he took the mythos in a new direction, which has been called AU-3 but might be defined as Main Sequence AU fiction -- set against a more detailed historical background that connects his own stories with those of newcomers like Brantley Thompson Elkins and Velvet Belle Tree. Some have their own specialties -- Velvet created the canon fot the Scalantrans, for example, while Ultrasybarite has worked on the Diaboli -- mental supermen nurtured by the Elders, rivals to the Galen.

Besides the AU-3, there has been a variation of AU history by Tarot Barnes (Alternate Histories), and even Shadar has written stories outside the Main Sequence -- most recently MYTHOS. Any entries for variants will appear under the heading of Alternatives on the main Aurora Wiki page.