UEE Writers Guild / WRITERS

*“But what can we do, Seamus?” the well dressed middle-aged man asked.
“We must make a way without losing our ability to support it,” said the second man in the room, also well dressed, but gray haired and obviously older.
“Can we do that?”
“Yes, Shen, we must.”

So was born the core of what is now the UEE Writer’s Guild. The two men, Seamus Ennis, Director of the UPE Archive of Records and Lu Shen-zhong, Prime Curator of the UPE Historical Vault for Antiquity met on March 3, 2548 on a sailboat near Shanghai, Earth, Sol. The reason? Prime Citizen Messer had only days before signed a new edict covering mandatory review of all writing to insure “official correctness”… ALL writing. Press, documentary, opinion, research, science, fiction, plays, poetry, lyrics… even military reports scheduled for archiving would be subject to review. Both men saw this for what it was, the imposition of absolute censorship on all authors.

Yet not only were they men of letters themselves, they held writers of all stripes in high esteem and knew the danger to posterity that having only officially approved material survive posed. Following the March 3rd meeting, both looked for a means of securing a safe place both for authors and for what they wrote. With tight budgets, they nearly despaired of solving the problem, until Director Lu stumbled across an odd article on the Shanghai Daily Spectrum portal. It cataloged the miseries of one of the last water-bound super-liners from Earth’s oceans: The Alexa.

The Alexa was at one time the largest seagoing vessel on the planet, a super-liner that had served the ultra rich for more than a century. Long before 2548, the title had passed on to the Sha Yu Casino ship, though also by 2548 it was again the only ocean-liner over a kilometer long still actually sailing open waters. Designed as a cross between a university and a playground for the uber-rich, the Alexa was really a small floating city… but one that had been all but abandoned. Lu contacted Ennis and together they hatched the “Alexandria Project” in honor of that ancient seat of learning and its once great library. Scheduled for scrap, both Directors stripped their budgets of everything they could sacrifice and purchased the ship for barely more than the scrap dealers offered.

They moved quickly and the Alexa was rechristened “The Alexandria” on July 4th, 2548. Officially, it was to be a learning center for approved writers, but both Lu and Ennis managed to forget to collect a list of officially approved persons. They did, however invite authors they knew, ones with their own circles of like minded writers. Director Lu’s links within the creative world and Director Ennis’ contacts within the government and both the fourth and fifth estates provided a who’s who of authors from the UPE to attend the Alexandria’s maiden voyage.

Oddly enough, many on the ship disappeared on the first voyage… or so the reports were. In fact, the ship had been refitted with quarters that provided both privacy and ample permanent storage, and the ship’s very size made it a suitable landing place for craft coming directly from orbit. Some authors took up residence in public, teaching official classes while looking for new blood. Others stayed secretly, doing research or just writing. Many more would come and go, either from space without comment or officially with a cover.

By the time the Messer’s fell in 2792, there were actually three “Alexandria” locations: the original Alexandria was still mostly at sea near the Hawaiian Archipelago with 2743 writers in permanent residence; the Alexandria II, a floating island (mega ship) plying Terra III’s oceans with 5280 writers in long term residence; and the Alexandria Research Colony on Cassel with a mostly transient author population that occasionally topped 8,000. Together, these writer’s Meccas held the creative results of more than two centuries of authorship as well as related scholarship into materials from antiquity and nearer times.

The UEE Writer’s Guild was formed from this surviving core of independent thinkers, writers, editors, and academics. It has continued to consider all writing to be valuable and encourages all writers to join, regardless of their genre. We stand by the greeting Seamus Ennis offered his guests on the first Alexandria’s maiden voyage: “If you are a writer, you are welcome here.”*