Uplift War Glossary

This glossary defines some of the fictional words used in the Uplift War series of books.

Allophor
The metaphorical interpretation made by sentient minds of certain features in E-Level hyperspace.
Anglic
A human language created in the twenty-first century, using many English words, but also influenced by other pre-contact tongues and modified according to new understandings of linguistic theory.
Chen
Anglic term for a male Neo-Chimpanzee.
Chim
Anglic term for Neo-Chimpanzee, both male and female.
Chimmie
Anglic term for a female Neo-Chimpanzee.
Client
A species that owes its full intelligence to genetic uplift by its patron race. An indentured client species is one that is still working off this debt.
Criswell Structure
The general idea of a criswell structure is similar to that of a Dyson sphere. A criswell structure is a fractal shell surrounding a small red sun, utilizing all light energy from it. The fractal shape allows maximum possible "window area" in the inside of the structure, unlike a Dyson sphere.
Deconstructor
A mechanical device licensed by the Galactic Institute of Migration to demolish remnants of technological civilization on a planet declared fallow.
E-level Hyperspace
A dangerous hyperspatial region which the distinctions between consciousness and reality become blured. Self-consistent concepts may exist without a host brain or computer to contain or contemplate them.

Fem
Anglic term for female human being.
Fin
Anglic term for neodolphin, both male and female. "Fen" is the plural form.
Galactic
Used when referring to a person, race, technology or concept that derives from the eons old civilization of the Five Galaxies.
Galactic Institute
The Galactic Institutes in the Five galaxies are many, each of them vast powerful academies purportedly neutral and above inter-clan politics. The institutes manages and/or regulates various aspects of the Galactic civilization. Some institutes are over a billion years old. The institute of Navigation, the Institute of Migration, and the Institute of Civilized Warfare are just a few of the many that exist.
Galactic Library
A major foundation of the Five Galaxies, the Galactic Library stores the vast amount of knowledge that has been accumulated since the creation of the Galactic civilization. "Branch libraries" -- smaller quasi-sapient storage units that hold parts of the library's total knowledge -- are found all over the galaxies, from starships to most worlds. Wealthier clans can have very large "Branch libraries," while poorer clans such as Earth have relatively small ones.
Ifni
Anglic term referring to infinity or lady luck.
==Karrank%==
A Galactic term referring to species that has been so thoroughly modified during its indenture as a client race that it has been driven insane. The % at the end indicates that its impossible for human and human language to prounance this term properly.
Man
Anglic term referring to human beings, both male and female.
Mel
Anglic term referring to human males.
Mulc Spider
A life-form engineered to destroy buildings and technological artifacts on worlds declared fallow.
Nihanic
A pre-contact earth language, derived from a hybrid of Japanese and Han Chinese.
Orders of life
Refers to the seven different orders of sentient life known to exist in the Five Galaxies. These are:
Oxygen Breathers - Members of the Galactic Culture, including humans.
Hydrogen Breathers - Utilize "reducing" atmospheres, having slower metabolisms. Most inhabit gas giant planets, drifting among the clouds, performing internal simulations of the world.
Retired Order - Former patrons races that have reached senescence and "retired" from Galactic affairs.
Machine - Self-replicating sentient machines. Generally confine themselves to high-radiation areas or zones of deep-space unwanted by either hydrogen or oxygen civilizations, although a few types are tolerated for their usefulness.
Transcendant - Races that have "passed on" to a higher plane. Galactics are riven by many beliefs about this stage of life. The first to transcent (it is assumed) were the progenitors.
Memetic - Bizarre "thought" organisms residing primarily in E-level hyperspace.
Quantum - Organisms discovered only during the last 100 million years, existing between the interstices of the universe, making scant contact with Galactic society. Their way of life seems to depend on macroquantum uncertainty.

There is a widespread disagreement over whether the number of life-orders should equal eight. Even more are suspected. Contact between life-orders are dangerous and widely discouraged due to the huge differences and thus potential for misunderstandings that could lead to war (and has in the past).
Patron
A Galactic species that has uplifted at least one species to full sapience.
Primal Delphin
A semilanguage used by natural, non-uplifted dolphins on Earth.
Sooners
("Sooner" is a term from USA history, referring to illegal settling in an area. The Uplift Universe uses it to refer to outlaws who attempts to colonize worlds designated fallow by the Galactic Institute of Migration. On Jijo, the term means those who try to make new illegal settlements beyond the confines of the Slope.
Stress Atavism
A condition found among newly uplifted species, when individuals lose their higher cognitive functions under stress.
Transfer Point
An area of weak space-time that allows faster-than-light travel for vessels entering in precise ways.
Uplift
An ancient process by which older starfaring races bring new species into Galactic Culture, through breeding and genetic engineering of presentient races with the "potential" to become sentient. The resulting "client" species serves its "patron" for a period of indenture in order to pay off its debt. A race's status in Galactic Culture is determined by its genealogy of patrons, and by its list of uplifted clients.
Wolflings
A term used by the Galactic Civilization to refer to a species that has uplifted itself to starfaring status without the visible help of a patron. It is assumed that wolfling species have been abandoned by their patrons at some point in the uplift process. The penalty for a species that is found guilty of allowing a race they are uplifting to become "wolflings" is very serious.

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