High Desert Institute

Lore: Lore Style Guide

Check out the lore styleguide.

Lore Style Guide

This document outlines the standards for creating new lore entries for the High Desert Institute. Our lore serves to ground the technical and social projects of the Institute in a cohesive narrative context.

Tone and Voice

  • Retrospective Futurism: Write about current events (and the near future) in the past tense, as if looking back from a post-collapse or stabilized future era. This creates critical distance and a sense of inevitability.
  • Sociological Lens: Focus on systems, incentives, class dynamics, and power structures rather than “great man” history. Analyze how technology shapes society, not just how it works. Mentioning specific living individuals should not be necessary.
  • Aesthetics: Use the themes, terms, metaphors, and arguments of the cyberpunk, steampunk, and solarpunk genres.
    • The world is high-tech and low-life.
    • Power is corporate and fragmented.
    • The street finds its own use for things; people in limninal spaces use technology in unexpected and unplanned-for ways to carve out a niche and survive the collapse.

Key Influences & Lexicon

  • William Gibson (Neuromancer, Sprawl Trilogy)
    • Terms: Cyberspace, The Matrix, Simstim, Arcology.
    • Themes: “The street finds its own use for things,” high-tech low-life, the commodification of subculture, corporate extraterritoriality (Zaibatsus).
    • Frame: Technology is not a tool but an environment we live inside; the future is already here, just unevenly distributed.
  • Neal Stephenson (Snow Crash, Diamond Age)
    • Terms: Metaverse, Avatar, Franchise-States (Burbclaves), The Raft, Phyles, Distributed Republics.
    • Themes: The balkanization of nation-states into corporate/ideological enclaves, hyper-inflation, the privatization of everything (including justice and roads), viral information (memetics).
    • Frame: The absurdity of anarcho-capitalism taken to its logical extreme; competence as the only true currency.
  • Octavia E. Butler (Parable of the Sower, Parable of the Talents)
    • Terms: Earthseed, Change is God, The Destiny of Earthseed is to take root among the stars.
    • Themes: Adaptation as survival, community resilience, the fluidity of identity and belief systems in crisis, the moral complexity of survival.
    • Frame: A deeply humanistic perspective on apocalypse and rebuilding; survival through empathy and adaptability.
  • Philip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Ubik)
    • Terms: Simulacra, Empathy Box, Penfield Mood Organ, Reality Tunnels.
    • Themes: The nature of reality and identity, the commodification of experience, paranoia about authority and surveillance, blurred lines between human and machine.
    • Frame: A questioning of what is real in a world saturated with artificial experiences and entities.
  • Blade Runner/ Blade Runner 2049
    • Terms: Replicants, Voight-Kampff Test, Spinner, Wallace Corporation.
    • Themes: The nature of humanity, memory and identity, corporate power, environmental decay.
    • Frame: A dystopian future where the line between human and machine is blurred, exploring what it means to be truly alive.
  • Ursula K. Le Guin (The Dispossessed, Left Hand of Darkness)
    • Terms: Ansible, Odonianism, Propertarian vs. Non-propertarian.
    • Themes: Ambiguous utopias, the social cost of revolution, anarchism not as chaos but as responsibility, the wall (who is inside vs. outside).
    • Frame: Sociological and anthropological deep-dives; how language and environment shape thought; the “dispossessed” who have nothing and therefore are free.
  • Cyberpunk 2077 / Mike Pondsmith
    • Terms: Corpos, Nomads, Edgerunners, Netrunners, Ripperdocs, Braindance, The Net, The Nets.
    • Themes: Style over substance, attitude is everything, the slow apocalypse, the corporate wars, transhumanism as a survival necessity.
    • Frame: A world where you can’t save the world, only yourself; the system is too big to fight, so you survive in the cracks.
  • Solarpunk Movement
    • Terms: Solarpunk, Regenerative Design, Permaculture, Appropriate Technology, Community Resilience.
    • Themes: Optimism about technology used for ecological and social good, decentralized energy, community-led initiatives, harmony with nature.
    • Frame: A hopeful future where humanity has adapted to live sustainably within ecological limits through innovation and cooperation.

Structure

Every lore entry must follow this structure:

  1. Frontmatter:
    • layout: lore
    • title: Clear and descriptive.
    • slug: Kebab-case version of the title.
    • summary: A one-sentence hook that appears in lists.

  2. Core Definition: Start with a clear definition or “Core Pattern” that explains what the subject is.

  3. Key Characteristics: Use bullet points to break down complex ideas (e.g., “Sovereignty model,” “Primary terrain”).

  4. Context: Explain how this piece of lore fits into the broader history (e.g., “End-state / Transition Driver”).

Formatting

  • Headings: Use H2 (##) for main sections.
  • Emphasis: Use bold for key terms and italics for emphasis.
  • Links: Link to other lore pages using the format [Link Text](/lore/slug/).