Hello, SFIA audio listeners. In this month's Nebula exclusive, big alien theory,

we're asked at the reason alien civilizations might be rare is because most aliens are huge.

To hear it and every episode early and ad-free, plus hours of bonus content,

check out go.nebola.tv slash Isaac Arthur and use my code, Isaac Arthur.

Shakespeare once wrote in King Lear that the stars above us govern our conditions.

It makes one wonder, though, who should govern the stars themselves.

In the year 2424,

humanity was on the brink of a new interstellar era.

The Earth, center of an interplanetary empire of almost 300 billion, was beginning to send out

more and more interstellar arc ships every year.

Indeed, the nations of the Great Mediterranean Economic Alliance had agreed

to fund and send a colony fleet of their own every summer Olympic game, and the selection

of the senior crew and colony leaders was almost as big of news as who won the gold

medal in swimming that year, a shocking contestant from Hesperides, the Twilight Sky City that floats

on the Day Night Terminator of Venus, and where the only pool on Venus exists, and not

a large one at that.

Maxwell Augustine had the honor of awarding that prize as a publicity event to also celebrate

his appointment to be the planetary governor

of New Actium, the chosen name for the planet the GMA would be sending its Olympic fleet

to, carrying tens of thousands of colonists, and which was set to launch before the year's

end.

Maxwell, or Max to his friends, was a seasoned administrator and visionary, and was appointed

...