Corporation Rim

The Corporation Rim does control a lot of territory, but there are a lot of independent worlds and places outside it and also a lot of unexplored space, basically. (Talking Murderbot With 'Network Effect' Author Martha Wells, Newsweek Interview.)

The Corporation Rim is the most powerful region in the series, with its territory spanning across a large portion of the galaxy. Rather than a single government, the Rim is a loose organization of many private corporations, which co-exist and extensively trade with each other, but are not bound by any single authority. A space station or planet within the Rim may be owned by a single corporation, which may then rent out space to others, with each having a great deal of control over its own territory.

Individual corporations may be concerned with mining resources, terraforming and colonizing new planets, transporting goods or passengers, providing security to other corporations, or any mix of the above, along with other economic pursuits.

Culture

The Corporation Rim runs on an extreme form of capitalism in which everything, including human life, can be bought and sold. Contract labor (actually indentured servitude) is common, and can even be hereditary, with their employer shaping most aspects of their lives. Some humans may instead be private contractors, entering temporary agreements with corporations without becoming permanently employed.

Inhabitants of abandoned or failed colonies do not have ownership of their worlds, but come under the governership of whoever purchases the rights to the colony from the previous owner. There are many varieties of residency within the Corporation Rim which do not qualify as “citizenship.” Surveillance is routine and profit-driven data mining based on this surveillance is common.

Some jobs are considered too dangerous, disagreeable, or sensitive to be performed by contract labor, but still require more flexible thinking than current bot technology can provide. In these cases, corporations will use Constructs, treating them like elaborate Bots.

Laws

The CR has little in the way of an overarching legal code. Almost the only effective laws in the Rim have to do with the handling of alien remnants; these are respected by most corporations because of the enormous potential danger remnants pose, and are codified in the Strange Synthetics Accord.

Contract law is also important; corporations and private individuals doing business with each other must agree to detailed contracts laying out the exact obligations of each party involved.

Law and order on stations and planets is enforced by private security forces owned or rented by one or more of the corporations with influence in the territory, and fully subject to the policies and business dealings of these corporate entities.

Politics

Though interconnected by strong economic ties, corporations also compete with each other constantly, vying for power and influence. Conflict between corporations may be settled between solicitors, but it is also not unheard of for one corporation to openly declare war on another, such as in reaction to a particularly egregious contract breach, or an act of corporate sabotage. While especially violent and destructive conflicts seem to be rare and newsworthy events, the Corporation Rim as a whole nonetheless treats the risk of such as a normal part of business.

Conflict within a single corporation is also common, with individual employees competing for promotions and standing within their company's hierarchy. Successful managers must avoid any sign of weakness before their competitors or subordinates. For parents building a family within the Corporation Rim, helping their children advance in corporate rank is an important goal.

History

In my head, what I see is that there was a whole society—pre-Corporation Rim—that went out and explored and colonized and developed terraformed worlds and all these different places. The Corporation Rim then grew and took over a large section of that. There was a disruption when that happened and so a lot of the pre-Corporation Rim colonies were either destroyed or have been lost. There are a lot of unknown territories out there. (Talking Murderbot With 'Network Effect' Author Martha Wells)

It is not clear how old the Corporation Rim is, but it is more than 37 standard years old. (Network Effect)

The Corporation Rim spans a large number of star systems. Travel between systems is by wormholes. Within the Corporation Rim, wormhole coordinates are proprietary (like nearly everything else).

Corporations frequently build colonies in the Rim, whether the colonists are voluntary or not. These colonies are frequently abandoned due to the cut-throat corporate politics, which can result in the colony's starvation and death. If they survive, there is the chance of the colony being rediscovered and exploited by any future company that discovers the location. Barish-Estranza was attempting to locate the Lost Colony for these purposes, and it is mentioned that this kind of 'speculation' was especially popular forty or fifty years before Network Effect's story began. The Preservation Alliance avoided this fate some time ago by leaving their original planet on an independent ship and being taken to a more viable planet, then declining help from Corporate Rim entities as they established themselves.

Corporations

A list of example corporations that are a part of this region:

• The Company
• GrayCris
• DeltFall
• Umro
• Palisade
• Barish-Estranza
• Adamantine Explorations
• BreharWallHan

Locations

Places inside the Corporation Rim include:

• Port FreeCommerce
• RaviHyral
• Pansystem University of Mihira and New Tideland
• HaveRatton
• TranRollinHyfa
• Lost Colony