Brainchild of billionaire playboy and archaeologist Alberich Dries, the Dries Historical Catalog was first self-published in 5245 and quickly gained a following as much for its swashbuckling adventure stories as for its detailed descriptions of archaeological sites across the galaxy. After Dries met his untimely end in a vacuum-surfing accident in 5261, his organization continued to issue annual supplements based on the work of its by-now extensive network of correspondents. From the start, editorial content was unabashedly political, first endorsing a hard-line Bariarchist position and later repudiating it.

Beloved of armchair explorers both ancient and modern, the Catalog’s colorful anecdotes are an invaluable yet problematic resource for the professional historian. The thrilling article on Operation Aurora in Catalog 2.1.6, evidently an eyewitness account, is our most reliable guide to that episode and widely assumed to be written by B’shin, constituting a rare example of his early, purely textual style; whereas its entry on Captain Logomere, naming him as a sleeper agent of the Tomorrow Hive, appears to be politically motivated.

—Thucydides Plutonium