The Earth is long gone, it was destroyed millennia ago by the sun's cataclysmic supernova. Eight things survived the explosion; four goldfish, a kumquat, a box of fun sized milky ways, a fan, and an out of work Labour MP. The goldfish supposedly succumbed to the vacuum. The MP however survived the pressures of vacuum by being sucked into a massively dense oxygen cloud that happened to be floating past at the time. He died by eating an unripe kumquat.

The fan spins endlessly into space collecting ice upon the grill and the outer bits on the blades. Thin amounts of oxygen gather around the spinning blades, the law of inertia states that the blades of the fan will keep on spinning until an equal force is applied to the blades. Sods law states that the blades will keep on spinning until a small child sticks a pencil in between them.

By strange coincidence involving many weighted dice upon gods' behalf and a lot of lying on mine, life evolved upon the spinning fan. The blades were covered in water, with a large central continent on one of the blades, minuscule humanoid life forms evolved on this central continent. The technological advancement of the people there is roughly the same as that of our late twentieth century.

They are a steampunk civilisation. Basing most of their energy requirments on steam. This steam is sometimes generated by coal or charcoal or even wood or gas. But most of the steam is generated by Dragonfire. Dragons are real in this universe. Most are the size of small dogs but some can grew up to the titanic proportions of myth and legend.

The fun sized pack of milky way bars was split by the sun's explosion and was scattering milky way bars around the fan. They were caught in the fan's gravity and became orbiting satellites. Life evolved upon some of these as well. But telling too much about these would spoil later plot developments, so I shall not speak of such things.

A rather interesting piece of trivia about this world is that until around four hundred years ago they all thought that the world was flat. Then a man called Horseham Columbo started saying that the world was round. To prove his point he sailed off the end of the world. Relative velocity stated that he was going at the same speed as the fan but as soon as he left it, relative velocity raised its nose and turned its back upon poor Horseham. The ill-fated explorer's head was found halfway across the blade. And as for the dragons that inhabit the edge of the world, they feasted handsomely that night upon the crew men of his ship the Golden Behind.