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Looking for thoughts to break a stalemate

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prophet224:
This is a stalemate in my own head about a fundamental background aspect of the story I'm working on, and I'm hoping that getting some other people's thoughts will help.

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Premise:
Earth has discovered via experimentation that there is a barrier of some sort around the solar system.  The barrier blocks patterned transmissions (i.e. communications) and disables drive systems. 

Long story short, long ago humanity was out among the stars and was part of the galactic community.  We ended up at war with several of the major races, and were eventually beaten back to our home planet.  There the galactic community forced the opposition to hold off our extermination, as they value the rarity of intelligent life in the universe.  However, all of our technology was wiped out with nanites and we were knocked... <ahem> back to the stone age, basically.  We were nicknamed the "Destroyers" over the years for our ferocity and used to scare children at night. 

The story is about humanity's escape from the Barrier via a jump drive that tunnels through space instead of actually moving through space, and the politics of various alien races that wish they had helped us before, and intend to do so this time.  The first jump ship is also destroyed by a force stationed around our star, and of course Earth knows nothing about what has happened before.

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Question:
I originally wanted to set this in a few hundred years from our time.  The problem is that that requires at least some explanation of how this actually fits into our own known timeline.  However, I don't really want to make this into an Atlantis story.  That shouldn't be the focus.

The other option is to make US the ones that get out and fight, and have the story set several THOUSAND years down the road, and learning about us.  This would remove the need for explanations, but create the need for a whole new world, set of governments, military structure, economics, etc.

Both of these are attractive, but I particularly like the idea of it being in our time. 
What do you think are the pros and cons of both approaches?  I'd certainly appreciate any other thoughts as well.  Thank you. -Matt

the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh:
how about; we find the secret of stardrive A within the next ten years.  Stardrive A is fast enough and cheap enough, and we've found enough interesting looking extrasolar terrestrial planets, for it to make economic sense to get out there and exploit them, so we go out there, and the people who do so are, oh, rapacious corporate types, or manifest-destiny militarists, people who will see this as an opportunity and not take seriously the notion that non-humans might have any preferences in the matter, or give us a hammering if they objected, until they do. 

[ I'm presuming, if the aliens have tech enough to knock us back to the stone age, then they have tech enough to exterminate us if they wanted to. Therefore they don't want to and are letting us live. Because they are so much nicer than we are, if we become their bogeymen as you describe. ]

Knocked back to the Stone Age with bits of modern tech lying around, maybe even the odd library or two, all you need for a plausible recovery in a few centuries is one reasonably successful tech-focused society - who can go ahead and rebuild a civilisation in just a few hundred years, srpad out into the solar system again, and end up discovering stardrive B and giving you your story.

If you need a few thousand years to pass in the outside world, have there be a time-slowing component to the barrier.

prophet224:
Well, definitely some of that could be a story idea.  That said, the original humans are actually scapegoats, who, though very fierce and successful in the military sense, didn't actually start the original war anyway.  That's been covered up all along, however, and only one race (and maybe some high-ranking officials elsewhere) know the truth. 

Your presumption is quite correct, that they could have exterminated us, and they nearly did, only refraining because genocide is the one "unforgiveable sin", if you will, in galactic society.

In the original idea, their nanotech wipes out EVERYTHING technological and they kill off most of the population, so we are literally thousands of years rebuilding. 

That said, if I go with us being the original humans, I can certainly do the several hundred years thing.

It's not so much a question of the how, as that is part of the fun of writing.  The question is which. :)  Thanks for the response!!

Buttersfly:
I like your premise; it sounds like a book I'd want to read.

I'd go with the whole world instead of just the US.  Current events make it hard to project US global dominance lasting in its present form through the next few weeks, much less the next few centuries.  Global power seems to be shifting to China and India, which would make an interesting alternative to the US, but might necessitate getting an M.A. in Asian Studies.  My advice, again:  go with Planet of the A--holes.  Things change.

jaezon:
Just making sure I have a cocuple of tidbits right.
The humans coming into the jumpdrive age (albeit their 2nd) is going to "escape" or solar system.
They have no knowledge that this is their 2nd coming, or of the beings that lie beyond the barrier.
Former allies of humans will approach the newly arrived generation and again try to aid them.

Are all of those points valid?

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