“Space Trucking is a concept. Space Trucking is a lifestyle. It transcends time and space and different dimensions. I’ve seen them all, and I’ll tell you what’s important: Space Truckers have to look out for each other.”
-Lucky Jack. From the Space Trucker Handbook
Allow me to introduce you to the GIF, that’s that Galactic Interstellar Foundation, an association of star systems under one Human-led government, a non-member species under the Galactic Council but sponsored by The Arcturian Collective.
(Nobody can agree on how to pronounce “GIF” despite the G’s obvious reference to “galactic” many Humans insist upon pronouncing it with a soft G like “Jiffy” and this is further complicated by many Humans referring to their common language as “Jiffy” because it’s so easy to learn.
It is, of course, not easy to learn, so “Jiffy” is also meant to be sarcastic. Likewise, many sarcastically pronounce “GIF” as “Jif” and follow-up by saying “The best government in the Jalaxy”)
The GIF makes up a cluster of 23 stars nearby but not directly overlapping human’s star of origin, Sol - famous for their home planet called Earth or Terra by Latin afficionados. (Sol is also the Latin variation. Their sun is called “Sun” but that’s actually not unusual and can be found in 79% of languages recognized by The Galactic Council Bureau of Xenolinguistics, and “Earth” isn’t much different in that regard.)
Earth, itself, is a quarantined planet. The Galactic Council has classified it as Developmentally Dangerous on 7 different metrics. Like many laws, this one is often ignored, and Earth’s chaotic culture is popular among tourists, missionaries, and documentarians representing various Galactic Member Species.
Earth is also remarkable for have a (sponsored) member candidate civilization as well as a quarantined primitive-classifies civilization and is also the planet-of-origin for one full member civilization, the Atlanteans.
It was, in fact, the Atlanteans that drafted the original Earth Quarantine bill and brought it to the Galactic Council. About 11,000 years passed on Earth between the Atlantean exodus and the Sponsorship of a new Earth Patronage by the Arcturians.
Shorter Version:
The GIF is made up of Humans brought from Earth to a cluster of space by the Arcturians to settle a new civilization and become part of the Galactic Community, even though the state of their species on their home planet lacks cultural cohesion and is not only unfit but considered dangerous by the rest of the member species.
The GIF is not quarantined, but travel is heavily restricted by the Arcturians who are running the whole experiment.
GIF Settlements and Technology
Humans in the GIF weren’t given many planets to settle because even though there’s really no shortage of them, their species has a poor reputation, and it was deemed best to let them practice on a few easy ones where they couldn’t do too much damage.
They were given lots of space stations, however, and the manufacturing technology needed to build however many they want. The GIF experiment began in the Earth year 1947 and the Arcturians spent the next 30 years in the first phase of migrating Humans into space and collecting cultural data and technology so that the Humans of the GIF would have ample context to move forward with their development.
In consideration of Human biorhythms, a time standard was adopted to maintain consistent subjective years- and days- when practical for Humans living in space.
At our present time, the GIF has been operating for 77 years, with a few aberrations due to time-effects of Arcturian technology, but 77 is close enough. That’s 539 dog years, and it’s been plenty of time for a culture to evolve that is almost completely indifferent to Earth.
Kids in the GIF are taught that Earth is a dirty, pathological, and violent place and Humans needed to be saved from themselves. Some scholars consider that characterization to be a little heavy, but it captures Earth in-a-nutshell.
Lucky Jack
Now that you know where the GIF started from, you can understand the role of space truckers a little better.
Most industrial shipping is done by large computer-automated vessels, or behemoths with a tiny Human crew to keep an eye on things.
Space truckers are the independent spaceship operators who own or lease their vessels and who take the jobs that are too small, too delicate, or too weird to trust to the machines.
The godfather of space trucking is Lucky Jack. He was born in the GIF and a first-generation spacer who helped establish the culture and economy of station-to-station commerce.
Lucky Jack wrote the book on space trucking, literally: “The Space Trucker Handbook”
As you can see in the quote at the beginning of this post, Space Trucking is a lifestyle. It’s a philosophy. It’s a way of life for a very small and elite group of misfits and outsiders who work best in a society when they are at the edge of that society.
But space truckers also have their own society. They have friendships and rivalries. They have their own stories and their favorites stories to pass on.
Space truckers are cut from a very special kind of cloth but they are also, ironically, indispensable to the lifestyles of everyone else in The GIF.
Next Time
Next time I write to you, I’ll tell you more about some specific characters and the stories that I have to tell about space trucking and The GIF. You’ll learn more about Lucky Jack, his mysterious disappearance, and the daughter he left behind.
Thanks for reading!
I cannot wait to read one of your Space Trucking stories. Your GIF and Jiffy paragraphs gave strong Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy vibes!