OA is a part of the transhumanist space opera subgenre. The world was influenced by Iain M. Banks' "Culture series", Vernor Vinge's "A Fire Upon the Deep", and David Brin's "Uplift Universe", among others. It takes the concept of the technological singularity directly from the work of Vernor Vinge among others. In "Orion's Arm", there is not one singularity but at least six, and they refer not to stages in the technological development of civilizations as a whole, but to different levels of consciousness in individuals. The concept of Toposophics used in this setting is inspired by the work of Stanisław Lem.