Lore

Classic Elite startup screen

Classic Elite's Instruction Manual

Holdstock's Dark Wheel

Frontier (Elite 2) Box

The first of Drew's Oolite Series

Canon in the Game

There is Strict Oolite - and then there are the over 12655723162254307425418678245150829297671403862274660768187828858528140823147351237817802795619571074765208532598060224803240903782164769430795025578054271906283387643826088448124626488332623608376164081221171179439885840257818732919037889603719186743943363062139593784473922231852782547619771723889252476871186000174697934549112845662596182308280390615184691924446215552586523740084932807259056238962104689731522587564412231618018774350801526839567367444928206231310973619440354723718012867753019556135721376207959558860559933052856914157120622980057169891912595926540427596853441276985006724869558201930657900240943007657817473684008944448183219124163017666607770667585082169598239230274035517738648065600492702095732843492708856036920219883363111527988109277392696562776813446645651238419301586157342867860646666350050113314787911320639668510871569846664873595017518995670958477806411667505346462590471136862647349666243426242677175204732314281064417939041868653741187423064985189556742640111598580035644021835576715752869397465453828584471291269955890393294448315746500268702149708808053100406398480942695623586049403348084970064668900206251516968479727515576425962392136269169089884609794271331061018895634421094082310408889752954265842691732460538911784,960,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 different versions of Oolite with .oxp's - and that is ignoring the tweaked/altered .oxp versions!

So to establish a 'canonical version' of Oolite the game is no mean feat! Attempts to do this in the past (Realistic Shipyards & Oolite Extended) failed dismally.

Canon in the Lore

IF we turn from the game to the lore, we find instead a sustained argument.

There have been at least two major schools of thought:

• The first school, the syncretists, seek to link in Classic Elite/Oolite with the Frontier family (which includes Elite Dangerous). It includes those working to incorporate elements of Frontier in Oolite either in the game itself (though writing OXPs) or in literature or writing background material - most notably Selezen and Drew Wagar.
• The second school, the purists, regards the entire exercise as a waste of effort! It includes Cim, Smivs & Cody/El Viejo.

Some of the keener exponents of the first school have since migrated to Elite Dangerous, whilst those of the second school seem to have gotten lost in inter-galactic space (except of course, Cody, who seems luckily to have quaffed from the chalice of eternal life).

Feature	Classic Elite	Oolite Vanilla game	Frontier/Elite 2	First Encounters/FFE2	Elite: Dangerous
Number of "Universes"	8	8	1	1	1
Existence of GalCop	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Existence of Federation & Empire	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes
Thargoids	Enemy	Enemy	Inexistent	Neutral	Neutral
Non-human races: felines/lobstoids etc	Yes	Yes	No	No	No
Planet Earth on map?	No	No	Yes	Yes	Yes

What would count as the core Lore?

• As regards Classic Elite, we have what we see in the game (see table above) and then there is the material in the Instruction Manual and that in The Dark Wheel.

But Cody & Smivs, for example, do not see the Dark Wheel as canonical ("there are too many things that Holdstock got wrong" - see The Dark Wheel controversy section).

The purist school is thus split between ultra-minimalist purists who pretty much reject everything apart from the games themselves (ie, the code!) and the moderate purists who accept the Manual and The Dark Wheel and possibly even:

Andy Redman's Imprint which was released together with PC Elite Plus in 1991 (instead of Robert Holdstock's Dark Wheel).

User2357 on the other hand sees - not only the Dark Wheel & Imprint but - Dylan Smith's The Virtuous Misfortune as an essential part of the core lore (DS is this wikipedia's host).

For an example of lore derived from game code, see Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy.

In conclusion, our ultra-minimalists will accept Her Imperial Majesty's Space Navy, our moderates will add in Raxxla and our syncretists will be looking to add in nascent Federations and Empires.

• As regards Oolite there is the official Oolite anthology with a mix of short stories from adherents of both schools: Alien Items.
  • Then there are Drew Wagar's novels and also Clym Angus's Chronicles of Shulth which are both syncretistic - but in very different ways - regarding Frontier. Drew combines early elements of Frontier into his descriptions of the Ooniverse. Clym portrays a Borgesian multiverse ("The Garden of Forking Paths": 1941) where the Ooniverse (similarly depicted to Drew's above) is purposely transmogrified into a lobstoid-free single-universe Froontieverse by a mad scientist.
  • Cody's novels are very different, as expected (no nascent Empire & Federation etc).
• There are also a bevy of OXPs: The Tionisla Orbital Graveyard collection and the Tionisla Chronicle Array, the old Lave OXP and the newer Lave Academy OXP. There is also the Deep Space Dredger and the Generation Ships OXP.

• Dylan Smith wrote in his page on the Frontier game that "Many rumours abounded following the release of the game that Frontier was never intended to be a sequel to Elite, and was simply written as a new space simulation. The rumour states that someone suggested tacking the Elite ships onto the game, and the decision was eventually made to include the popular elements from Elite into the game, including Lave and the surrounding systems and the ships from the older game. This, although never confirmed to this author's knowledge, does explain why there are very few other elements of Elite present in the game other than the most well known systems and the ships".

• It should be mentioned that both Drew & Selezen now also see a lore-based disjunct between Elite Dangerous and its predecessors. Whilst in the early days they were trying to harmonise the lore in ED with the earlier variants (and inter-alia were campaigning for the Orbital Graveyard to be installed in ED's Tionisla), with ED game changes driving ED further away from its earlier versions, they have since thrown in the towel.

Definitions

The Lore (accumulated knowledge or beliefs held by a group about a subject) can be defined by the Canon. Thus arguments about Lore often end up as arguments about the Canon.

Links

• History
• 2014 Discussion of is there a canon?
• What is regarded as canonical in Oolite history?: 2012 Discussion
• "Not in the manual" - setting and canon in the eight charts: 2015 Discussion led by the 3rd Lead Developer, Cim
• Metafiction: Dialogues on the Lore of Xlite: 2020 discussion.
• Background story of the Elite universe - musings of a Frontier devotee back in 2006
• The Problem of the missing Earth for Selezen's syncretist solution (2010)

• For something a bit lighter than the above, try Legends of Elite & List of Oolite stories.