Very good comments, although part of the bare bones background includes hints that there is more to the setting (what alien device extinguished the sun and why? why are there still bases on Canada, Mongolia, and Deimos?) The goal when expanding this out wouldn't be to lean away from tropes, but to lean away from heavily prescriptive settings and into a more evocative Moorcockian style where things are labeled but seldom described. This to me isn't an often enough explored area of game design, where a lot of words get spilt on prescriptive settings that have less interest than the designer might expect to the players. I'd be curious to see what you think of Version 2, which is shaping up to be about 50 words longer in the main text and have several "Obstacle Tables" that are used to bring out some tone in the flesh of the universe.