Younger World Story

The Younger World Story was a theory about a fundamental connection between the Homeworld and Earth. Specifically, it suggested that the Great Houses were a shadow of humanity.

The Story was supported by various uncomfortable facts. For instance, despite the excuses provided about their non-biological nature, the Houses are historically impossible, maintaining stellar-manipulation-level technology for ten million years without any cultural change. Inversely, humanity was destined to become the universe's first post-organic lifeforms in the mid-21st century, but for unknown reasons they never achieved this point, their progress coming to a complete stop right when they were able to understand every technology of the Homeworld and were about to develop methods of thinking unknown to the Great Houses. Earth and the Homeworld are the only two worlds in the Spiral Politic that break the anthropological models in this way, which makes the "coincidental" similarities between the two planets (for instance, the identical humanoid forms of their inhabitants and the equal lengths of their years) suspicious.

Many have interpreted the Story to say that the Houses are a reflection of humanity's cultural complexity, large-scale reflections of human cultural concerns. They particularly note the similarities between the Houses and the early human descriptions of pantheistic gods and all-seeing immortals who are supposedly superior but unfailingly predictable. (Traditionally, these similarities are explained by saying that human legends have been influenced by race-memories of the Houses.)

Though there were many similar theories connecting the Houses to other lesser species, the Younger World Story was unique in the fact that it spread to the Homeworld itself, carried by agents of the Great Houses, a fact which suggests that Earth certainly does have a specific part to play in the Spiral Politic. The jingoistic approach to the War taken by more militant Houses, such as the Newblood House Lolita, might even have been a reaction against the self-doubt the Story inspired.

In the Hollywood Bowl shooting during Michael Brookhaven's Mujun: the Ghost Kingdom, the Voice said, "This is a younger world, and this is where it's born", apparently referencing the Younger World Story. (PROSE: The Book of the War)