This is a stalemate in my own head about a fundamental background aspect of the story I'm working on, and I'm hoping that getting some other people's thoughts will help.
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Premise:
Earth has discovered via experimentation that there is a barrier of some sort around the solar system. The barrier blocks patterned transmissions (i.e. communications) and disables drive systems.
Long story short, long ago humanity was out among the stars and was part of the galactic community. We ended up at war with several of the major races, and were eventually beaten back to our home planet. There the galactic community forced the opposition to hold off our extermination, as they value the rarity of intelligent life in the universe. However, all of our technology was wiped out with nanites and we were knocked... <ahem> back to the stone age, basically. We were nicknamed the "Destroyers" over the years for our ferocity and used to scare children at night.
The story is about humanity's escape from the Barrier via a jump drive that tunnels through space instead of actually moving through space, and the politics of various alien races that wish they had helped us before, and intend to do so this time. The first jump ship is also destroyed by a force stationed around our star, and of course Earth knows nothing about what has happened before.
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Question:
I originally wanted to set this in a few hundred years from our time. The problem is that that requires at least some explanation of how this actually fits into our own known timeline. However, I don't really want to make this into an Atlantis story. That shouldn't be the focus.
The other option is to make US the ones that get out and fight, and have the story set several THOUSAND years down the road, and learning about us. This would remove the need for explanations, but create the need for a whole new world, set of governments, military structure, economics, etc.
Both of these are attractive, but I particularly like the idea of it being in our time.
What do you think are the pros and cons of both approaches? I'd certainly appreciate any other thoughts as well. Thank you. -Matt