BuNine got started in a group of science fiction fans around Tom Pope and Ken Burnside, designers of Ad Astra Games's Saganami Island Tactical Simulator. Over time, the group became a more formal organization. When a movie developer needed help conceptualizing the bridge of an Honorverse starship, the group adopted its current name and started having annual meetings. Then, for the 20th anniversary of the first novel, On Basilisk Station, David Weber suggested BuNine to create the companion book House of Steel, forcing them to actually become a legal entity, BuNine Consulting, Inc.