I had a hard time time coming up with a name “Unified Worlds” for the main body of aligned planets and races. Anything with “United,” “Federation,” or “Planets” became too Star Trek-y. Anything with “Alliance” became too Star Wars. Plus, “alliance” felt too warlike, in that it feels to me you become “allies” when you’re banding together AGAINST someone else. I preferred the more peaceful term of “unified” since that didn’t have a connotation of battle lines.
And I know in actuality, whole worlds and planets wouldn’t join these types of organizations, as each planet/world would typically be made up of different ruling bodies, like all the different countries and governments of the real-world Earth. It starts to get confusing though to account for that many different factions, so it’s a bit cleaner to generalize races into “planets.”
Cember, you are trouble.
Excellent comic, by the way. I found you via the Kleefeld review and I’m glad I did, because this is awesome. Good luck!
Glad to hear people are talking about the series and getting the word out since every little bit helps! I just checked out the Kleefeld review, which was awesome. His list of things he was looking for in a series pretty much sums up all the things I was looking for too, which led me to start RUNNERS in the first place. Funny!
http://kleefeldoncomics.blogspot.com/2009/05/runners.html
I don’t know, from a political standpoint “Unified” makes me assume they actually have the same government in all these places, which is unlikely. (“United,” by contrast, connotes collective action for some things but not necessarily everything.)
Good point on the connotations of those two words. I basically figured that “Unified” would be a name decided upon by the ruling body, and for political reasons, they would try to use a term that made their collective seem as strong and impenetrable as possible. So while all the different member planets certainly aren’t “unified” or “united” in all aspects, the chosen name would try to convey a strength and unity of purpose that may or may not actually be there.
so does the Unified Planets have a NATO style organization?
I see the Unified as consisting of a couple larger entities that are the superpowers of the group, which then includes a lot of lesser planets/governments, giving them a hefty strength in numbers. The Tet’Sali, by contrast (who are mentioned more in Vol 2) are the opposing organization, which is composed of 3 major forces but not a lot of smaller planets. Those two alliances end up being roughly equal, with the Unified having the slight advantage.