Fiction > The Children of Tellus > The Solar System
For all intents and purposes, the solar system is our universe. There are surely other stars, and some of them are home to planets. And some of those may even be home to life. But, we cannot reach them, and we never will. No one has ever been able to travel faster than the speed of light, and deep space is haunted by eldritch horrors.
Presently, there are seven terrestrial worlds, earthlike worlds with surface oceans and oxygen - nitrogen atmospheres. Around a million years ago, all of them were colonized by an ancient human civilization. Though it totally collapsed, people survived, and we diversified into seven separate species. A Martian and Venusian are both human--they might even be able to have children--but they are very different from one another.
The Central and Outer worlds are both more dangerous. The former are hot and dry, too close to the Sun for life or water. The later are mostly cold and dark, native life usually hides deep within aquifers or subsurface seas. And, the further one gets from the sun, the closer one gets to the nameless demons of deep space. A few settlers have come here, most of them eccentric, desperate, or mad. But, the vast majority of people still live on and about the Terrestrial Worlds.
Many have noted that the Solar System is orbitally unstable: according to our best models, many of the planets ought to have been ejected long ago. But, they haven't. Physicists have yet to come up with a parsimonious explanation for this, and many take it as reason to believe in divine providence.