Stupid stuff you're stuck with now?
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
pretending it made sense in later books.
I forget the exact point, but several books into the Honor Harrington
series, David Weber changed his mind about how the Manticorian Prime Minister
was selected. He dealt with it in a foreword, saying essentially "I changed
my mind, here's how it works now".
Other series have done retcons, or have had cataclysms that alter the
fundamental rules..
Any favorite examples and how it was dealt with, or not?
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
>
> I forget the exact point, but several books into the Honor Harrington
> series, David Weber changed his mind about how the Manticorian Prime Minister
> was selected. He dealt with it in a foreword, saying essentially "I changed
> my mind, here's how it works now".
The classic Weber one is the "Grav Lance", a weapon with very short
range and an interesting ability to "punch through" their shields. Weber
initially didn't see a good use for it and painted the Grav Lance as a
useless weapon that Honor managed to somehow make useful in one specific
situation.
However, there are a number of ways people later pointed out that would
make the Grav Lance extremely useful. Weber these days tries to ignore it.
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Wayne Throop
: The classic Weber one is the "Grav Lance", a weapon with very short
: range and an interesting ability to "punch through" their shields.
: Weber initially didn't see a good use for it and painted the Grav
: Lance as a useless weapon that Honor managed to somehow make useful in
: one specific situation. However, there are a number of ways people
: later pointed out that would make the Grav Lance extremely useful.
: Weber these days tries to ignore it.
Hrm. Well, nowdays they battle at such long ranges; orders of
magnitude longer than when he thought it was useless. So, it
seems quite reasonable that it be ignored. Maybe.
However, the missiles are getting more capable; were "people
later pointing out" that a lance-tipped missile would be useful
(presuming it got through the lasers)?
Wayne Throop thr...@sheol.org http://sheol.org/throopw
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
Yep.
Bill Snyder
wrote:
Wouldn't it have to be an impossibly gargantuan missile? ISTR
that they more or less gutted the main armament of her Basilisk
command to make room for the lance.
--
Bill Snyder [This space unintentionally left blank]
Bill Snyder
See question to Wayne that crossed w/yours.
Kay Shapero
says...
> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
>
> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
> pretending it made sense in later books.
>
Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
--
Kay Shapero
address munged, email kay at following domain
http://www.kayshapero.net
Wayne Throop
:: pointing out" that a lance-tipped missile would be useful (presuming
:: it got through the lasers)?
: Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net>
: Wouldn't it have to be an impossibly gargantuan missile? ISTR that
: they more or less gutted the main armament of her Basilisk command to
: make room for the lance.
That would be my thought. But Manticore is undergoing a major
round of technological improvements to gravity tech, eg, for
multi-drive missiles, and for gravity pulse communications.
And also of fusion tech for their light attach craft.
And they are willing to sacrifice multiple LACs if they can bag
a capital ship, so clearly, they have the money to throw at it.
(Which is an interesting point; why not operate their LACs remotely
the way they do their missiles nowdays?)
I guess Weber could declare by fiat that the miniaturization still hasn't
allowed a grav lance to fit inside something that costs no more than a
LAC, and they can't afford to throw away anything mu ch larger. Or not
so much "declare" to anybody else, but just decide to suppose it's so.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
I believe the new LACs had more than enough power and if they could hit
a super-D wih a lance, that'd be worth a LOT of LACs.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> In article <7oh3nlF...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
> says...
>> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
>> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
>> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
>> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
>>
>> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
>> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
>> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
>> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
>> pretending it made sense in later books.
>>
>
> Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
This is what comes of not thinking through your magical system.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
>In article <7oh3nlF...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
>says...
>> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
>> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
>> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
>> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
>>
>> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
>> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
>> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
>> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
>> pretending it made sense in later books.
>>
>
>Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
>--
And time-travel, come to think of it..
Andrew Plotkin
> In article <MPG.258dcdd76...@news.west.earthlink.net>,
> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
> >
> >Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
>
If we're going to count per-episode Clever Ideas that aren't carried
through consistently in later episodes, this thread is going to be
carpet-bombed with Star Trek.
A slightly better example is the _Stargate_ movie, which established a
set of axioms about the gate so ridiculous that the TV series
(produced by different writers) had to practically juggle live
ostriches to make half of it usable in a week-to-week show. The other
half they just tried not to mention. Or at least tried not to make it
plot-critical.
Having a harder time thinking of book examples. I suppose Vlad's
ability to turn any given country into a Third Sea of Chaos is going
to become more and more relevant in future books, and it's not the
kind of thing that would have been *specifically* useful in (say)
_Teckla_ or _Phoenix_. But it still feels like an early Bright Idea
that Brust backed away from a little.
--Z
--
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
Mike Schilling
Immortality too. The HP series is chock-full of magic that's used to solve
a specific problem and rhen forgotten about.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Another book example would be the Martians and their super-toys in
Asimov's Lucky Starr books.
Robert Carnegie
Most of these are containable, and some of Rowling's other inventions
start out as "very difficult magic" and then become almost
commonplace. But that can be understood as a student's view of
whether a spell is difficult or not depending on how far they got
through school.
The time travel device apparently is dangerous, doesn't seem to allow
the past to be changed (ruling out rescuing people who died), so we
might as well suppose - untold - that it also doesn't let you travel
before the device was manufactured.
The Fidelius Charm in book three was constructed, I judge, as a clumsy
device to prove that one particular person was a traitor. Apparently
a friend and I can Fidelius my location into secrecy and I can sit at
my front window watching you and you can't see me if you aren't in on
the secret, which is just weird. I don't know if you think "Who is
that guy" or nothing at all.
Other problems include the Sorting Hat that condemns you at age eleven
or twelve to be good or evil, and the Unforgivable Curses that the
good guys must never use on humans, until book seven. Oh, and dead
people who won't shut up.
On the Curses I think the initial information is from a source
ultimately not necessarily accurate, I think the Hat actually examines
your character for the areas where you need to be drawn out (so Hero
House - Harry Potter's - starts out with a class of smart-asses, brave-
but-dumbs, cowards and sneaks, and the school champion in book four is
from a different House), and I'm not sure I've figured out the dead
people yet, except that quantum physicists apparently think that
"information" is never destroyed. So your personal "information" can
live on in people you know, or in portraits, objects, or ghosts.
Maybe that's why being a ghost is the wrong kind of immortality: it
excludes the other kinds. It means you're dead and forgotten. Maybe
that's why Dumbledore insists that one set of "echoes" of dead people
are in fact not ghosts...
Now for the original question: I'll nominate, with regret, a few
problems for James White's Space Sector Twelve General Hospital, which
of course was written over many years. At an unspecified date in the
future, they don't have robot surgery equipment, but we already do.
We also have women doctors, and we have communications protocols where
a message can be useably reconstructed from imperfect transmission and
reception more efficiently than by sending the entire message over and
over and merging all the copies. The same goes for video.
Communications failures were a plot point more than once, and clearly
the hospital and everyone around it uses analogue communication.
As for women, that was explained after a fashion: every student doctor
or nurse at Sector General is an excellent one-species doctor, but
some cannot go on to use the "Educator Tape" (tape!) recordings of
alien doctors' minds to increase their own knowledge, and that's
females - of some species anyway.
In an early story Dr Conway is also prevented by a robot chaperone
from performing (on another human) activities associated with
reproduction, but later on it's pointed out that other species either
won't be stopped by wild horses at the right time of year from the
equivalent activity or else won't even notice that it's happening. So
it must be a rule just for humans.
Juho Julkunen
(t...@loft.tnolan.com) says...
> In article <MPG.258dcdd76...@news.west.earthlink.net>,
> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
> >In article <7oh3nlF...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
> >says...
> >> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
> >> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
> >> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
> >> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
> >>
> >> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
> >> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
> >> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
> >> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
> >> pretending it made sense in later books.
> >>
> >
> >Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
Well, that one appears to be difficult to make, and I seem to recall
there were rather severe consequences to overuse.
> And time-travel, come to think of it..
In a later book a batch of time-turners get destroyed, which might or
might not be the lot of them. I suspect that might be her way of saying
"yeah, bad idea".
Really, she painted herself in a corner right from the start. In
children's stories cool gimmics are more important than well thought
out consequences. Trying to move on from there to a more grownup tone
where consistency is desirable has got to be rough, especially when
you're making it up as you go. I think somewhere along the way her
reach exceeded her capabilites.
One example, not written alas, but it was on my mind:
Local sf channel just started showing War of the Worlds tv-series from
the eighties. (I hadn't even known there was one.) Now, I actually
quite like it, but there is one premise that's hard to swallow. The
series follows the events of the fifties movie, three decades later.
The war happened as depicted in the movie. 35 years later practically
nobody remembers it or believes that aliens exist.
Well, I suppose that's longer than it took Star Wars universe to forget
all about the Jedi.
--
Juho Julkunen
Greg Goss
Asimov's "galactic empire" books occasionally mentioned a radioactive
Earth. The readers and author assumed that mankind had barely
survived a nuclear war.
When Asimov stitched the robot novels into the galactic empire novels,
he changed this. A nuclear war doesn't produce enough radioactivity
to glow at night. So he came up with a new mechanism.
--
Tomorrow is today already.
Greg Goss, 1989-01-27
Greg Goss
Niven invented the stasis field for World of Ptavvs. Later, he
stitched the slaver universe into the rest of his future history.
However, the stasis field was far too useful, and he dealt with that
by largely ignoring it. Stasis was used as a defense in ringworld and
as a minor point in a short story. I think that the wire in a
variable sword was stasis-stabilized. Other than that, he pretended
that stasis didn't exist because if it did, it would dominate all
other technologies.
(Such dominance becomes obvious once you read Vinge's Marooned in Real
Time. The high-tech members of that society have, indeed, a
technology dominated by stasis tools, and their stasis fields could
only be spherical.)
Wayne Throop
: Niven invented the stasis field for World of Ptavvs. Later, he
: stitched the slaver universe into the rest of his future history.
: However, the stasis field was far too useful, and he dealt with that
: by largely ignoring it. Stasis was used as a defense in ringworld and
: as a minor point in a short story. I think that the wire in a
: variable sword was stasis-stabilized. Other than that, he pretended
: that stasis didn't exist because if it did, it would dominate all
: other technologies.
:
: (Such dominance becomes obvious once you read Vinge's Marooned in Real
: Time. The high-tech members of that society have, indeed, a
: technology dominated by stasis tools, and their stasis fields could
: only be spherical.)
Not sure I follow what you mean by "dominate". First, because Niven
used stasis a for several other things, such as the structural support
of the black-hole-manipulating weaspon in (iirc) "The Borderland of Sol",
and in the Man/Kzin Wars story "The Children's Hour" (iirc). It's a bit
odd that there weren't stasis ball bearings and races, and stasis chains,
used for stabilizing neutronium, and all kind of things... and so on and
so forth... but remember that stasis fields had the property that if you
enclosed one in a stasis field, they collapsed; therefore, if any of your
ship structure was stasised, you couldn't shield yourself with stasis,
etc, etc. Similarly with bobbles, only the restriction was that the
*outer* bobble couldn't form. So that sort of limits what you can do.
Seems to me that in Across Realtime, it's the Tinker computing
infrastructure that's the dominant tech (despite what the Peace Authority
might think...). So... I dunno. Far from "becoming obvious", it
mainly seems a sideshow to the real tech, which is the precise
command and control systems, without which the bobbles, eg as used
by the Peace Authority, were a near-useless curiosity.
I wonder what IRL is a "dominant technology". I think all our current
technology is dominated by electricity and electronics. Even our
understanding of chemistry and quantum mechanics is an outgrowth of
electromagnetism; it permeates EVERYthing. Would somebody writing
fiction in, say, Ben Franklin's time think of that? Or even quite a
bit more recent than that. Who until at least the 1800s, maybe even
mid 1800s, would have thought lodestones and cat fur standing on end
in dry weather were the most promising avenues of scientific and
technological development?
Wayne Throop
: Really, [Rowling] painted herself in a corner right from the start. In
: out consequences. Trying to move on from there to a more grownup tone
: where consistency is desirable has got to be rough, especially when
: you're making it up as you go. I think somewhere along the way her
: reach exceeded her capabilites.
Hm. My current leading candidate for "well-thought-out magic system"
would be the Codex Alera series. And come to think of it, it concerns a
muggle boy who goes to a magical school (Tavi having no furycraft, and
attending the Academy where one of the major topics is exactly that).
Of course, that's where the resemblance ends (if not before then, what
with Tavi being the only muggle in the entire world, but eh, so it goes).
But the comparison is somewhat telling, IMO. Tavi basically uses his
wits a lot more than (naict) Harry ever does. And the magical system
he uses his wits *for* is well thought out and well integrated into
mundane physics.
[Bernard] appeared with a black bow, as long as he was tall, its staves
thicker than Ehren's forearm. [...] The grain of the black bow writhed
and quivered even as it was bent, and Ehren realized that the Count
was putting an enormous amount of earthcrafting into bending the bow,
and would be using even more woodcrafting to straighten its staves
to impart all the power he could to the missile. When he released
with a short cry of effort, the reaction of the bow nearly took him
from his feet. There was a thundercrack in the air before him,
and the arrow leapt into the night [...] --- Bernard vs the Vordbulk
( I take that to mean the arrow went supersonic... )
Andrew Plotkin
>
> Other problems include the Sorting Hat that condemns you at age eleven
> or twelve to be good or evil
I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
was justified. Big V co-opted the clique of wizards that had bonded in
Slytherin in the 1960s and 70s, but that particular mix of racism,
arrogance, and bullying was transmitted to the next generation through
family environment and peer pressure -- not Hat.
Ambition gets a bad rap in the series, but in other circumstances...
how much evil is perpetrated by people who see themselves as having
the courage to do what needs to be done, and damn whoever gets in the
way?
(That said, Hogwarts is going to have a hell of a time rehabilitating
their house system post-book-7.)
Andrew Plotkin
*blatant* stupid thing that the HP series perpetrated in book one,
which Rowling was stuck with thereafter:
Renaming the Philosopher's Stone in the US edition.
(Not Rowling's decision, that I ever heard, but it was stupid and it
stuck.)
Dimensional Traveler
actually talk about it. IIRC they basically conclude its some form of
mass hysteria. Looking at it from the outside, the scene was basically
the writers saying "Ya, we know its a stretch but its a necessary one."
Which just gets even stranger when you reach the _second_ season.
--
"Dude. They've gone fractal."
Robert A. Woodward
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
Ahem, the people who promote the grav lance neglect to consider (or
have completely forgotten) the restrictions that Weber placed on it
from the very start.
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
William George Ferguson
I'm not sure your definition of 'forgotten about' and mine are the same. Of
the three mentioned above, the only one which is not dealt with afterwards
is the luck potion (although, it could be said that it is a potion that is
'known about' by most wizards, but not necessarily one that most wizards
can make. The time-turners are dependent on a complex and massive magical
artifact in the Ministry, which Ginny Weasley destroyed in the Battle of
the Ministry at the end of Order of the Phoenix. It would apparently take
a lot of time, and magic, to replace the capability.
As for immortality, it is dealt with pretty darn thoroughly. Voldemort's
personal quest for immortality, at the cost of his soul and humanity, is
half the main plot driver of the entire series (the other half being love).
A potentially bigger magical bit, which isn't ignored, is polyjuice potion.
Unlike some the other things, which require rare, or very difficult, magic,
apparently most wizards can make polyjuice potion out of fairly common
ingredients (Hermione first makes it when she is just 13, working entirely
from books she's read). The question 'why don't the wizards make more use
of this' is answered in the later books by the wizards, both good and evil,
making more use of it.
--
I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer.
Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration.
I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me.
And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path.
Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain.
(Bene Gesserit)
Wayne Throop
: Ahem, the people who promote the grav lance neglect to consider (or
: from the very start.
Since I've completely forgotten them, what were they?
Jerry Brown
The 2005 relaunch of Doctor Who used this approach too, to explain by
why no member of the general public seems to recall prior invasion
attempts by Cybermen, Daleks, Yeti, Autons and dinosaurs, among
others.
>Which just gets even stranger when you reach the _second_ season.
By the end of the second season of newWho, however, everyone on Earth
knows what Daleks and Cybermen are.
Jerry Brown
--
A cat may look at a king
(but probably won't bother)
Anthony Frost
Jerry Brown <je...@jwbrown.co.uk.RemoveThisBitToReply> wrote:
> The 2005 relaunch of Doctor Who used this approach too, to explain by
> why no member of the general public seems to recall prior invasion
> attempts by Cybermen, Daleks, Yeti, Autons and dinosaurs, among
> others.
>
> By the end of the second season of newWho, however, everyone on Earth
> knows what Daleks and Cybermen are.
Although with the timeline, Henry van Stratten should have recognised
the Metaltron he'd aquired for what it was as that event took place a
few years after the Battle of Canary Wharf.
Although, wibbly wobbly...
Anthony
Juho Julkunen
(erky...@eblong.com) says...
> Here, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> >
> > Other problems include the Sorting Hat that condemns you at age eleven
> > or twelve to be good or evil
>
> I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
> was justified.
Neither did I, until the last book. In fact, for most of the series
prejudice against Slytherin is pretty much treated as just that: a
prejudice (and Our Heroes tend on the leap-to-conclusions judgemental
side). Then in the last book it turns out the prejudice was entirely
justified as practically the whole Slytherin sides with Voldemort. I
thought that was cheap.
> (That said, Hogwarts is going to have a hell of a time rehabilitating
> their house system post-book-7.)
Hell yeah. "So what do we do with House Evil?"
--
Juho Julkunen
Juho Julkunen
Traveler (dtr...@sonic.net) says...
> Juho Julkunen wrote:
> > One example, not written alas, but it was on my mind:
> >
> > Local sf channel just started showing War of the Worlds tv-series from
> > the eighties. (I hadn't even known there was one.) Now, I actually
> > quite like it, but there is one premise that's hard to swallow. The
> > series follows the events of the fifties movie, three decades later.
> > The war happened as depicted in the movie. 35 years later practically
> > nobody remembers it or believes that aliens exist.
> >
> I remember that. In one of the first season episodes the character
> actually talk about it. IIRC they basically conclude its some form of
> mass hysteria. Looking at it from the outside, the scene was basically
> the writers saying "Ya, we know its a stretch but its a necessary one."
Dr. Forre^H^H^H Blackwood expresses his belief that it's a bit of both
of two leading theories, some effect of the aliens themselves and
repression of memories on human side. In the second episode, I think.
> Which just gets even stranger when you reach the _second_ season.
Looking forward to it?
--
Juho Julkunen
Greg Goss
>Seems to me that in Across Realtime, it's the Tinker computing
>infrastructure that's the dominant tech (despite what the Peace Authority
>might think...). So... I dunno. Far from "becoming obvious", it
>mainly seems a sideshow to the real tech, which is the precise
>command and control systems, without which the bobbles, eg as used
>by the Peace Authority, were a near-useless curiosity.
The bobble was a trade secret owned by a bureaucracy in the first
novel. Bureaucracies don't like to innovate because any change can
disrupt their power. The Peace War was about innovation in the fields
that weren't being suppressed (low power electronics), as well as
innovation in fields where the suppression failed (the hero of the
book had his genes repaired).
>I wonder what IRL is a "dominant technology". I think all our current
>technology is dominated by electricity and electronics. Even our
>understanding of chemistry and quantum mechanics is an outgrowth of
>electromagnetism; it permeates EVERYthing. Would somebody writing
>fiction in, say, Ben Franklin's time think of that? Or even quite a
>bit more recent than that. Who until at least the 1800s, maybe even
>mid 1800s, would have thought lodestones and cat fur standing on end
>in dry weather were the most promising avenues of scientific and
>technological development?
Yes to electronics. You don't have to go back to Ben Franklin to see
a similar miss. As of the early sixties, the new LASER was a tool to
apply huge energies to small points -- death ray or perhaps large
scale metallurgy.
Skip forward fifty years and the laser is everywhere. As a data
device. Satellites are underutilized and radio bands are available
because most data transmission has gone underground where low power
lasers are shining into glass fibers. Movies are played from small
disks by lasers, and I just backed up a sixty GB computer onto eight
such disks using a laser. None of these have any resemblance to the
death ray vision of the laser.
Jerry Brown
wrote:
True, and the Cyberman head in his museum was close enough to the
makeovers due to appear in the next season to have given him pause for
thought.
However, I suspect that is now a stub timeline (like the ones from
Turn Left and The Last Time Lord) where aliens and their artefects are
still known only to a select few, and Harriet Jones is still Prime
Minister.
>Although, wibbly wobbly...
The Doctor couldn't have put it better himself (the real one, not the
one in "CAnada" - if you don't know who I'm talking about, be
grateful).
David Mitchell
> :: However, the missiles are getting more capable; were "people later ::
> pointing out" that a lance-tipped missile would be useful (presuming ::
> it got through the lasers)?
>
> : Bill Snyder <bsn...@airmail.net>
> : Wouldn't it have to be an impossibly gargantuan missile? ISTR that :
> they more or less gutted the main armament of her Basilisk command to :
> make room for the lance.
>
> That would be my thought. But Manticore is undergoing a major round of
> technological improvements to gravity tech, eg, for multi-drive
> missiles, and for gravity pulse communications.
Would those be the gravity pulses that travel FTL?
<snicker>
--
=======================================================================
= David --- If you use Microsoft products, you will, inevitably, get
= Mitchell --- viruses, so please don't add me to your address book.
=======================================================================
Dimensional Traveler
the most extreme re-toolings I can recall.
Bryan Derksen
> A slightly better example is the _Stargate_ movie, which established a
> set of axioms about the gate so ridiculous that the TV series
> (produced by different writers) had to practically juggle live
> ostriches to make half of it usable in a week-to-week show. The other
> half they just tried not to mention. Or at least tried not to make it
> plot-critical.
The series writers wound up introducing a few of their own problems as
well. One that stands out in particular is how the third shot from a Zat
disintegrates its target - used a couple of times early in the series
and then ignored because it makes little sense and is way too
convenient. They hung a lampshade on this in their 100th episode, where
the director of a show-within-a-show that was unknowingly based on the
"real" Stargate program had this raygun feature suggested to him and
dismissed it as a stupid idea.
Brenda Clough
Earth to originally be flat. The plan was for the world to be Bent
later on by plot devices too complicated to go into here. But as time
went on, he decided that a flat earth was just too Flat Earth, and he
undertook to rewrite the entire megilla from a heliocentric basis. He
died before accomplishing it, and no wonder.
Brenda
Michael Grosberg
> Yes to electronics. You don't have to go back to Ben Franklin to see
> a similar miss. As of the early sixties, the new LASER was a tool to
> apply huge energies to small points -- death ray or perhaps large
> scale metallurgy.
>
> Skip forward fifty years and the laser is everywhere. As a data
> device. Satellites are underutilized and radio bands are available
> because most data transmission has gone underground where low power
> lasers are shining into glass fibers. Movies are played from small
> disks by lasers, and I just backed up a sixty GB computer onto eight
> such disks using a laser. None of these have any resemblance to the
> death ray vision of the laser.
Niven used lasers as communication devices in stories from the 60's.
Wayne Throop
:: death ray or perhaps large scale metallurgy. [...]
:: Skip forward fifty years and the laser is everywhere. [...]
:: None of these have any resemblance to the death ray vision of the laser.
: Michael Grosberg <grosberg...@gmail.com>
: Niven used lasers as communication devices in stories from the 60's.
And used these comm lasers as death rays on iirc several occasions
(definitely one, the attempt to kill the pursuer in the long ramship
chase in "ethics of madness"... and I think the photon drive doubled as
comm laser in at least some stories, see also "kzinti lesson").
But still, lasers fairly early on were associated with rangefinding,
interferometry, and holograms, so there wasn't quite the same situation
as with, say, lodestones.
Kay Shapero
@y24g2000yqb.googlegroups.com>, rja.ca...@excite.com says...
.
> [re Harry Potter]
> The time travel device apparently is dangerous, doesn't seem to allow
> the past to be changed (ruling out rescuing people who died), so we
> might as well suppose - untold - that it also doesn't let you travel
> before the device was manufactured.
That also may have been the Total World Supply of time-turners that was
destroyed during the battle in the Ministry. I'm pretty sure that's
what I would have considered doing if I realized I'd made a mistake...
:)
>
> Now for the original question: I'll nominate, with regret, a few
> problems for James White's Space Sector Twelve General Hospital, which
> of course was written over many years.
And the earliest ones were early enough that guess what, we didn't HAVE
a lot of things we consider routine. Some of his saves later weren't
bad anyway. My problem was when I sat down to analyze his nifty 4 letter
species description system with the idea of using it myself in gaming, I
found so many discrepancies I realized he'd pretty much just fudged it.
Oh well...
--
Kay Shapero
address munged, email kay at following domain
http://www.kayshapero.net
Kay Shapero
giao...@hotmail.com says...
> In article <hg1v7s$j0g$1...@reader1.panix.com>, Andrew Plotkin
> (erky...@eblong.com) says...
> > Here, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
> > >
> > > Other problems include the Sorting Hat that condemns you at age eleven
> > > or twelve to be good or evil
> >
> > I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
> > was justified.
>
> Neither did I, until the last book. In fact, for most of the series
> prejudice against Slytherin is pretty much treated as just that: a
> prejudice (and Our Heroes tend on the leap-to-conclusions judgemental
> side). Then in the last book it turns out the prejudice was entirely
> justified as practically the whole Slytherin sides with Voldemort. I
> thought that was cheap.
Agreed. Uncalled for, certainly. The last two books come across as
published first drafts, I'm afraid. In the unlikely event I ever become
a Fabulously Wealthy Popular Author, I think I shall hire my own private
editor so stuff actually gets EDITED before publication...
Kay Shapero
sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
> Kay Shapero wrote:
> > In article <7oh3nlF...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
> > says...
> >> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
> >> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
> >> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
> >> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
> >>
> >> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
> >> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
> >> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
> >> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
> >> pretending it made sense in later books.
> >>
> >
> > Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
>
>
>
Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
For Making It Nonexistant"
Kay Shapero
giao...@hotmail.com says...
> In article <7oir5jF...@mid.individual.net>, Ted Nolan <tednolan>
> (t...@loft.tnolan.com) says...
> > In article <MPG.258dcdd76...@news.west.earthlink.net>,
> > >In article <7oh3nlF...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
> > >says...
> > >> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
> > >> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
> > >> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
> > >> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
> > >>
> > >> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
> > >> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
> > >> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
> > >> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
> > >> pretending it made sense in later books.
> > >>
> > >
> > >Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
>
> there were rather severe consequences to overuse.
It only has to be available to the Bad Guys once...
David DeLaney
>sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
>> This is what comes of not thinking through your magical system.
>
>Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
>For Making It Nonexistant"
Wizards of the Coast can tell you a great deal about this as well.
Dave "what do you mean you want TWENTY dollars for that Mox? - me, around 1995"
DeLaney
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
Robert Bannister
>
> Other problems include the Sorting Hat that condemns you at age eleven
> good guys must never use on humans, until book seven. Oh, and dead
> people who won't shut up.
I always assumed that this was an allusion to the English 11+
examination which condemns children to be middle-class goody-goodies or
brainless thugs apparently by magic. I don't know whether it is still in
use. (I passed, so I am Good).
--
Rob Bannister
31 years England
38 years Australia
Robert Bannister
Judging by the condition in which most books appear these days, that
will be the only way to get it done.
--
Rob Bannister
Robert Bannister
>
> Hm. My current leading candidate for "well-thought-out magic system"
> would be the Codex Alera series. And come to think of it, it concerns a
> muggle boy who goes to a magical school (Tavi having no furycraft, and
> attending the Academy where one of the major topics is exactly that).
> Of course, that's where the resemblance ends (if not before then, what
> with Tavi being the only muggle in the entire world, but eh, so it goes).
> But the comparison is somewhat telling, IMO. Tavi basically uses his
> wits a lot more than (naict) Harry ever does. And the magical system
> he uses his wits *for* is well thought out and well integrated into
> mundane physics.
I hope you've given me good information here. On this recommendation,
I've just ordered the first 3 books and, if it's any good, it looks as
if I'll be up for buying quite a few more.
--
Rob Bannister
Howard Brazee
>Niven invented the stasis field for World of Ptavvs
I imagine several people have invented it. Poul Anderson's _Shield_
was before Niven's.
--
"In no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found,
than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace
to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
- James Madison
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>>Niven invented the stasis field for World of Ptavvs
>
>I imagine several people have invented it. Poul Anderson's _Shield_
>was before Niven's.
My bad, that's not a stasis field. But we have had stasis fields of
a type used in time travel stories, and in fairy tales.
Howard Brazee
<erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
>was justified. Big V co-opted the clique of wizards that had bonded in
>Slytherin in the 1960s and 70s, but that particular mix of racism,
>arrogance, and bullying was transmitted to the next generation through
>family environment and peer pressure -- not Hat.
Not a lot of Rowlings makes sense, except as a boy's wet dream. They
cheat to make the right house win. Repeatedly.
Movies haven't been better. In fact in one movie, Snape is
attacking a bad guy and Harry zaps him. The bad guy gets away (we
know Sirius Black is really good, but Snape doesn't), and we never
hear anything about Snape being zapped. Snape doesn't even seem to
remember it.
Howard Brazee
<giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
>> was justified.
>
>Neither did I, until the last book. In fact, for most of the series
>prejudice against Slytherin is pretty much treated as just that: a
>prejudice (and Our Heroes tend on the leap-to-conclusions judgemental
>side). Then in the last book it turns out the prejudice was entirely
>justified as practically the whole Slytherin sides with Voldemort. I
>thought that was cheap.
But did the facts shown in the last book make sense?
Howard Brazee
<rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>I hope you've given me good information here. On this recommendation,
>I've just ordered the first 3 books and, if it's any good, it looks as
>if I'll be up for buying quite a few more.
Only 3 more.
Wayne Throop
: Howard Brazee <how...@brazee.net>
: I imagine several people have invented it. Poul Anderson's _Shield_
: was before Niven's.
Except that anderson's shield isn't a stassis field.
Onaccounta the contents aren't stasisficated. Plus it
hasn't got the absolutely-nothing-whatever-can-get-through-period
nature of the beast that stassis and bobbles have.
Niven tends to create things that are absolute; stassis fields.
GP hulls (though he eventally noted that they can degrade).
Suppressing charge on the electron. Etc. Anderson, not so much.
Quantum microjumps. The shield. Considering that rounded triangular
rollers would wear to a circular shape. Etc. Of course, the distinction
isn't exactly clear-cut, but while Anderson may have implausible things,
they don't feel so much like physics props, like frictionless pulleys,
massless ropes, infinitely rigid/resistant structures, etc, etc.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:MPG.258f17f6d...@news.west.earthlink.net:
How could anyone possibly be surprised that a series of books
constructed almost entirely out of stereotypes and EFP plots ended
with in a standard EFP way based on steerotypes?
--
Terry Austin
Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole. -
David Bilek
Yeah, I had Terry confused with Hannibal Lecter. - Mike Schilling
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:slrnhib3l...@gatekeeper.vic.com:
> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
>>sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
>>> This is what comes of not thinking through your magical
>>> system.
>>
>>Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No
>>Substitute For Making It Nonexistant"
>
> Wizards of the Coast can tell you a great deal about this as
> well.
>
> Dave "what do you mean you want TWENTY dollars for that Mox? -
> me, around 1995"
$20? You're kidding, right? I sold mine for $100 each.
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:bt4bi5tl05tlpkagd...@4ax.com:
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:48:44 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Plotkin
> <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>
>>I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against
>>Slytherin was justified. Big V co-opted the clique of wizards
>>that had bonded in Slytherin in the 1960s and 70s, but that
>>particular mix of racism, arrogance, and bullying was
>>transmitted to the next generation through family environment
>>and peer pressure -- not Hat.
>
> Not a lot of Rowlings makes sense, except as a boy's wet dream.
> They cheat to make the right house win. Repeatedly.
It may not make sense, but it does accurately capture the very worst
of the British educations system (and, with a global search and
replace on the slange, pretty much all education systems).
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 17:00:08 +0200, Juho Julkunen
> <giao...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>>> I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against
>>> Slytherin was justified.
>>
>>Neither did I, until the last book. In fact, for most of the
>>series prejudice against Slytherin is pretty much treated as
>>just that: a prejudice (and Our Heroes tend on the
>>leap-to-conclusions judgemental side). Then in the last book it
>>turns out the prejudice was entirely justified as practically
>>the whole Slytherin sides with Voldemort. I thought that was
>>cheap.
>
> But did the facts shown in the last book make sense?
>
So you're saying the books got more realistic as they went?
Wayne Throop
:: would be the Codex Alera series. And come to think of it, it
:: concerns a muggle boy who goes to a magical school (Tavi having no
:: furycraft, and attending the Academy where one of the major topics is
: Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com>
: I hope you've given me good information here. On this recommendation,
: I've just ordered the first 3 books and, if it's any good, it looks as
: if I'll be up for buying quite a few more.
I'm not sure which part of the description you're reacting to,
but in general, "better thought out" and "protagonist uses his brain
quite a bit more" and "magic system makes more sense" should hold up well,
at least in my experience and compared to Harry Potter.
Hm. First three. IIRC at the end of the third book, Tavi starts
mixing magic and physics for the first time. With interesting results.
And of course he's using physics *against* magic all along.
Both of these remain a theme throughout the rest. And by "the rest"
I mean "the other three".
I'll be interested what you think of it.
"He followed me home. Can I keep him?" --- Tavi, re: Doroga
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>Niven tends to create things that are absolute; stassis fields.
>GP hulls (though he eventally noted that they can degrade).
>Suppressing charge on the electron.
Monofilament garrotes.
Howard Brazee
wrote:
>Hm. First three. IIRC at the end of the third book, Tavi starts
>mixing magic and physics for the first time. With interesting results.
>And of course he's using physics *against* magic all along.
>Both of these remain a theme throughout the rest. And by "the rest"
>I mean "the other three
And in the last book, others are recognizing how revolutionary such a
mixture can be.
Robert Carnegie
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 05:48:44 +0000 (UTC), Andrew Plotkin
> <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
>
> >I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
> >was justified. Big V co-opted the clique of wizards that had bonded in
> >Slytherin in the 1960s and 70s, but that particular mix of racism,
> >arrogance, and bullying was transmitted to the next generation through
> >family environment and peer pressure -- not Hat.
>
> Not a lot of Rowlings makes sense, except as a boy's wet dream. They
> cheat to make the right house win. Repeatedly.
>
> Movies haven't been better. In fact in one movie, Snape is
> attacking a bad guy and Harry zaps him. The bad guy gets away (we
> know Sirius Black is really good, but Snape doesn't), and we never
> hear anything about Snape being zapped. Snape doesn't even seem to
> remember it.
Maybe that's what the spell does. The kids zap Snape in the
corresponding book too and then Hermione freaks out. And there's a
shouting match amongst the staff.
But the HP movies, for me, mostly look terrific, I won't analyse the
acting, but the sequence of events and character development are
gravely debased compared to the books. For instance, Hagrid is
complicated and interesting because he actually is quite stupid and
keeps very dangerous animals around and I think more than once leaks
information to the bad guys and it really might be safer sometimes not
to have him around at all, but in the first film he's reduced to
leaking to the kids and then saying "I wasn't supposed to tell you
that". In the second, his important role in the plot seems to have
been obscured by whatever they did to the exciting final battle that
annoyed me, that I've also forgotten. But I think that's when I gave
up, too.
Likewise, pretty much, _The Lord of the Rings_ - for me. I expect
someone somewhere is also discussing specifically how _The Hobbit_ is
going to be... shall we say betrayed? Although a book where Elves
first appear sitting in trees in the evening making mocking songs
about their visitors' hairy feet, and then show up as one of the Great
World Powers, is difficult to handle anyway. Maybe cast Bilbo as a
kind of Baron Munchausen bamboozler figure, especially to kids, since
no one else in The Shire has seen Elves or Orcs or what's past the
next hill and he can make up any story he wants?
As for Slytherin being House Evil, being run by Snape may have
"helped" - allowing for many revelations along the way, one thing that
he always had is a badly bent moral compass - but when you aren't
trying to read the books critically, they are just the gang of
antagonists and jeering spectators whenever the good guys come off
badly. It is quite reasonable to read the books as saying that they /
were/ all bad before they even got to Hogwarts, although as I said
that isn't what I prefer, and that's troubling.
Robert Carnegie
Well, depending. That's what the IRA said about decapitation attacks,
for example.
On the other hand, the luck potion's effect also may depend on your
moral character - whether you have noble or base goals. Like the
Mirror of Erised, which reflects things that you want, so that it's
quite hard to turn your mind away from it - you need to be not
controlled by your desires.
Although if the potion has that limitation, how did Slughorn manage to
make it? Why doesn't he make use of it? Perhaps he can't? Perhaps
too many of its effects in your favour don't last?
John F. Eldredge
The standard spelling is "stasis", not "stassis".
--
John F. Eldredge -- jo...@jfeldredge.com
"Reserve your right to think, for even to think wrongly is better
than not to think at all." -- Hypatia of Alexandria
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> In article <MPG.258f2defb...@news.kolumbus.fi>,
> giao...@hotmail.com says...
>> In article <hg1v7s$j0g$1...@reader1.panix.com>, Andrew Plotkin
>> (erky...@eblong.com) says...
>>> Here, Robert Carnegie <rja.ca...@excite.com> wrote:
>>>> Other problems include the Sorting Hat that condemns you at age eleven
>>>> or twelve to be good or evil
No, the Sorting Hat condemns no one; it simply looked into you and
directed you in the dominant direction of your heart. If you had more
than one direction, it might mull things over, give you a chance to
choose yourself, as it did with Harry, and apparently with some others
(there's a noticeable variation in the time it spends deciding).
>>> I never saw any reason to believe that the prejudice against Slytherin
>>> was justified.
>> Neither did I, until the last book. In fact, for most of the series
>> prejudice against Slytherin is pretty much treated as just that: a
>> prejudice (and Our Heroes tend on the leap-to-conclusions judgemental
>> side).
More as a justified prejudice that the other characters occasionally
argue against as not being entirely justified.
Then in the last book it turns out the prejudice was entirely
>> justified as practically the whole Slytherin sides with Voldemort. I
>> thought that was cheap.
>
> Agreed. Uncalled for, certainly.
Implied throughout all the other books. There is as far as I can recall
ONE reasonably decent Slytherin we meet, and one other who's doing the
Right Thing but for very personal reasons (Slughorn and Snape,
respectively), but all the others are portrayed as at best grim and
opportunistic and at worst just nasty pieces of work all around. Another
indication is that of ALL the Slytherin Quidditch players we ever see or
hear of, there is exactly one (1) who is not explicitly described
committing deliberate and blatant personal fouls on the other players.
> The last two books come across as
> published first drafts, I'm afraid. In the unlikely event I ever become
> a Fabulously Wealthy Popular Author, I think I shall hire my own private
> editor so stuff actually gets EDITED before publication...
>
There is no lack of editors. If their stuff isn't edited, it's because
the AUTHOR chooses not to have it happen. As in "I'm the goose laying
all your golden eggs, and if you dare touch any of my Holy Prose, I'm gone."
--
Sea Wasp
/^\
;;;
Live Journal: http://seawasp.livejournal.com
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> In article <hg1bb0$foc$2...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
>> Kay Shapero wrote:
>>> In article <7oh3nlF...@mid.individual.net>, t...@loft.tnolan.com
>>> says...
>>>> There's a phenomenon where an author (perhaps a beginning author)
>>>> starts a series and the series proves to be popular. Unfortunately
>>>> the author established something extremely stupid in the first book
>>>> that becomes more and more implausible as the series progresses...
>>>>
>>>> I guess the example that struck me most in recents years is "Quidditch"
>>>> in the Harry Potter books. Rowling established a very poorly thought-out
>>>> game in the first book, yet it remains very important at least until
>>>> the magical world starts falling apart. She dealt with it by just
>>>> pretending it made sense in later books.
>>>>
>>> Then came up with the luck potion later. Oops...
>> This is what comes of not thinking through your magical system.
>>
>>
> Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
> For Making It Nonexistant"
Er, that's not a GM's mantra. The mantra is "If You Can Do It, They Can
Too."
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
>> sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
>>> This is what comes of not thinking through your magical system.
>> Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
>> For Making It Nonexistant"
>
> Wizards of the Coast can tell you a great deal about this as well.
>
> Dave "what do you mean you want TWENTY dollars for that Mox? - me, around 1995"
> DeLaney
You WERE a cheap bastard. I sold mine for $100 or more each, and my
Black Lotus went for like $250-$300.
Wayne Throop
: The standard spelling is "stasis", not "stassis".
Yess, I know, but ssometimess it'ss hard to convince my fingerss of that.
John F. Eldredge
Just don't start monologuing about your preciousssssss...
Dimensional Traveler
--
"Dude. They've gone fractal."
Lawrence Watt-Evans
wrote:
>Agreed. Uncalled for, certainly. The last two books come across as
>published first drafts, I'm afraid. In the unlikely event I ever become
>a Fabulously Wealthy Popular Author, I think I shall hire my own private
>editor so stuff actually gets EDITED before publication...
You don't need to be fabulously wealthy; freelance editors work cheap.
(I admit that the ones I've hired gave me most-favored-author prices,
but even so...)
--
My webpage is at http://www.watt-evans.com
I'm selling my comic collection -- see http://www.watt-evans.com/comics.html
I'm serializing a novel at http://www.watt-evans.com/realmsoflight0.html
Mike Schilling
>> "Robert A. Woodward" <robe...@drizzle.com>
>> Ahem, the people who promote the grav lance neglect to consider (or
>> have completely forgotten) the restrictions that Weber placed on it
>> from the very start.
>
> Since I've completely forgotten them, what were they?
It can only be used by people able to document three generations of pure
Manticoran descent.
Mike Schilling
> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 15:26:19 -0800, Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net>
> wrote:
>
>> Agreed. Uncalled for, certainly. The last two books come across as
>> published first drafts, I'm afraid. In the unlikely event I ever
>> become a Fabulously Wealthy Popular Author, I think I shall hire my
>> own private editor so stuff actually gets EDITED before
>> publication...
>
> You don't need to be fabulously wealthy; freelance editors work cheap.
I think Kay's point was that non-FWPAs get edited in the normal course of
events.
Garrett Wollman
Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>> You don't need to be fabulously wealthy; freelance editors work cheap.
>I think Kay's point was that non-FWPAs get edited in the normal course of
>events.
Is that true any more? It seems to me that you don't have to be
fabulously wealthy or popular: the effort put into editing these days
appears to decline astonishingly rapidly for even mid-list authors
once they've made a few sales.
-GAWollman
--
Garrett A. Wollman | What intellectual phenomenon can be older, or more oft
wol...@bimajority.org| repeated, than the story of a large research program
Opinions not shared by| that impaled itself upon a false central assumption
my employers. | accepted by all practitioners? - S.J. Gould, 1993
Robert A. Woodward
thr...@sheol.org (Wayne Throop) wrote:
> : "Robert A. Woodward" <robe...@drizzle.com>
> : Ahem, the people who promote the grav lance neglect to consider (or
> : have completely forgotten) the restrictions that Weber placed on it
> : from the very start.
>
> Since I've completely forgotten them, what were they?
>
It had a range much less the common weapon systems in the series
and the light cruiser that was equipped with it was utterly useless
when known to have it. I also believe that the light cruiser was
equipped with the grav lance because it was the smallest ship that
could carry it. This restriction is less obvious, I will admit, but
I have good reason to assume it.
--
Robert Woodward <robe...@drizzle.com>
<http://www.drizzle.com/~robertaw>
Lawrence Watt-Evans
Ha. Not as much as they should be.
Wayne Throop
: It had a range much less the common weapon systems in the series
: when known to have it. I also believe that the light cruiser was
: equipped with the grav lance because it was the smallest ship that
: could carry it. This restriction is less obvious, I will admit, but
: I have good reason to assume it.
OK. I would have thought the "smallest ship" bit would be the key.
But if you assume it could be made small enough to fit in one of the
new LACs (or thereabouts), maybe by leaving out all life support and
the inertial compensators (or whatever they call them), and ramp the
drive up to be closer to that of a missile, and then pepper the massive
flights of missiles with grav-lance super-missiles, it might find a new
use.
But bottom line, yes, it seems entirely reasonable for Weber to not
use them again; in fact he spends several scenes in subsequent books
pointing out that aside from Honor's stunt, they really are still useless.
If there's some reason why Weber might be wrong about h is own fake tech,
that might be of some interest, but as a thing he had to ignore and
regreted introducing... not so much.
Kay Shapero
forward, backwards, left, right or up, will promptly dig straight
down." (from memory)
--
Kay Shapero
address munged, email kay at following domain
http://www.kayshapero.net
Kay Shapero
wol...@bimajority.org says...
> In article <hg4lck$qdo$1...@news.eternal-september.org>,
> Mike Schilling <mscotts...@hotmail.com> wrote:
> >> You don't need to be fabulously wealthy; freelance editors work cheap.
>
> >I think Kay's point was that non-FWPAs get edited in the normal course of
> >events.
>
> Is that true any more? It seems to me that you don't have to be
> fabulously wealthy or popular: the effort put into editing these days
> appears to decline astonishingly rapidly for even mid-list authors
> once they've made a few sales.
Well, I'm an engineer, not a fiction author - but I get REAL nervous
about releasing anything without proper testing and feedback from
someone ELSE.
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
Robert Bannister <rob...@bigpond.com> wrote:
>Wayne Throop wrote:
>
>>
>> Hm. My current leading candidate for "well-thought-out magic system"
>> would be the Codex Alera series. And come to think of it, it concerns a
>> muggle boy who goes to a magical school (Tavi having no furycraft, and
>> attending the Academy where one of the major topics is exactly that).
>> with Tavi being the only muggle in the entire world, but eh, so it goes).
>> But the comparison is somewhat telling, IMO. Tavi basically uses his
>> wits a lot more than (naict) Harry ever does. And the magical system
>> he uses his wits *for* is well thought out and well integrated into
>> mundane physics.
>
>I hope you've given me good information here. On this recommendation,
>I've just ordered the first 3 books and, if it's any good, it looks as
>if I'll be up for buying quite a few more.
>
>Rob Bannister
They're quite good and not a lot like Butcher's other series at all.
In fact, it's rather surprising that they could both be good in such
different ways. (You could of course say "Miles with magic", but that's
hardly a bad thing..)
Ted
--
------
columbiaclosings.com
What's not in Columbia anymore..
Wayne Throop
: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
: They're quite good and not a lot like Butcher's other series at all.
: In fact, it's rather surprising that they could both be good in such
: different ways. (You could of course say "Miles with magic", but that's
: hardly a bad thing..)
Huh. I wouldn't have made that connection, but now you point it out, it
is true that (among other things) Tavi *does* start out as a handicapped
dwarf jvgu n sbezvqnoyr zbgure who compensates by overdeveloping his wits.
Sort of.
But that said... one might almost say that of Dresden, too.
(Or... did you *mean* Harry to start with? Dunno.
Either one seems a bit thin, really.)
The Sword of Stealth is given to
One lonely and despised.
Sightblinder's gifts: his eyes are keen
His nature is disguised.
--- Song of Swords
"Crows. If only Sextus had your courage."
"Well. He didn't have the benefit of my fine upbringing and education."
--- Fidelias and Tavi
Ted Nolan <tednolan>
>Re: Codex Alera series...
>
>: t...@loft.tnolan.com (Ted Nolan <tednolan>)
>: They're quite good and not a lot like Butcher's other series at all.
>: In fact, it's rather surprising that they could both be good in such
>: different ways. (You could of course say "Miles with magic", but that's
>: hardly a bad thing..)
>
>Huh. I wouldn't have made that connection, but now you point it out, it
>is true that (among other things) Tavi *does* start out as a handicapped
>dwarf jvgu n sbezvqnoyr zbgure who compensates by overdeveloping his wits.
>Sort of.
>
>But that said... one might almost say that of Dresden, too.
>(Or... did you *mean* Harry to start with? Dunno.
>Either one seems a bit thin, really.)
Nope, I meant Tavi. Given that Tavi *doesn't* have magic, I phrased
it badly: Miles in a world with magic.
Nigel
> : Greg Goss <go...@gossg.org>
> : Niven invented the stasis field for World of Ptavvs. Later, he
> : stitched the slaver universe into the rest of his future history.
> : However, the stasis field was far too useful, and he dealt with that
> : by largely ignoring it. Stasis was used as a defense in ringworld and
> : as a minor point in a short story. I think that the wire in a
> : variable sword was stasis-stabilized. Other than that, he pretended
> : that stasis didn't exist because if it did, it would dominate all
> : other technologies.
> :
> : (Such dominance becomes obvious once you read Vinge's Marooned in Real
> : Time. The high-tech members of that society have, indeed, a
> : technology dominated by stasis tools, and their stasis fields could
> : only be spherical.)
>
> Not sure I follow what you mean by "dominate". First, because Niven
> used stasis a for several other things, such as the structural support
> of the black-hole-manipulating weaspon in (iirc) "The Borderland of Sol",
> and in the Man/Kzin Wars story "The Children's Hour" (iirc). It's a bit
> odd that there weren't stasis ball bearings and races, and stasis chains,
> used for stabilizing neutronium, and all kind of things... and so on and
> so forth... but remember that stasis fields had the property that if you
> enclosed one in a stasis field, they collapsed; therefore, if any of your
> ship structure was stasised, you couldn't shield yourself with stasis,
> etc, etc.
What occured to me is that stasis fields should be used in a lot more
places than they are shown in the Known Space stories. Their use in
variable swords show that they can be made small, low powered and
(presumably) fairly cheaply (otherwise they wouldn't be used for
something that trivial). In that case, they should be showing up in
domestic appliances, for example as a replacement for fridges.
One obvious example for the use of Stasis Fields would be in the area
of child care. Is your new baby keeping you awake at nights or are
you having trouble finding a baby sitter while you go on vacation ?
Then all you need to do is put junior in a stasis field where he will
be perfectly safe until you want to take up being a parent again. Now
obviously this means that the child is going to take a lot longer to
grow up (as measured by the outside world), but in a world where
booster-spice indefinitely prolongs life and the number of children
you can have is limited by law, that's actually an advantage. The
child benefits as well as his parents are going to be more relaxed and
have more time to be with him.
That's the sort of usage of Stasis Fields that should be showing up in
the stories, even if only as a background detail.
Cheers,
Nigel.
David DeLaney
>David DeLaney wrote:
>> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
>>> sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
>>>> This is what comes of not thinking through your magical system.
>>> Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
>>> For Making It Nonexistant"
>>
>> Wizards of the Coast can tell you a great deal about this as well.
>>
>> Dave "what do you mean you want TWENTY dollars for that Mox? - me, around
1995"
>> DeLaney
>
> You WERE a cheap bastard. I sold mine for $100 or more each, and my
>Black Lotus went for like $250-$300.
This was _early_ 1995. It was already apparent that A/B/UL were going to head
into unprecedented territory (modulo the whole FIELD of CCGs being
unprecedented, but hey), but they went faster and further than people were
expecting.
I had the _money_ at the time to buy boxes and boxes of Arabian Nights. Had
I done so I would be rather more well-off today than I am. I didn't have the
_knowledge_ at the time (or, realistically, the access to said boxes, but if
I'd had the knowledge I could probably have made it to one or another con
where they briefly were).
Now, of course, the Power Nine are the sort of thing you measure other CCGs'
excesses against...
(I did sell a complete Legends set not too much later than that. For ... let
me actually check... actually slightly more than stores are asking to-day...
But it took a bit of effort to put together, even back then.)
Anyway, this has veered, my fault, fairly off-topic. Maybe I can redirect it
to the product WotC was famous for BEFORE Magic, The Primal Order?
Dave
--
\/David DeLaney posting from d...@vic.com "It's not the pot that grows the flower
It's not the clock that slows the hour The definition's plain for anyone to see
Love is all it takes to make a family" - R&P. VISUALIZE HAPPYNET VRbeable<BLINK>
http://www.vic.com/~dbd/ - net.legends FAQ & Magic / I WUV you in all CAPS! --K.
David DeLaney
>What occured to me is that stasis fields should be used in a lot more
>places than they are shown in the Known Space stories. Their use in
>variable swords show that they can be made small, low powered and
>(presumably) fairly cheaply (otherwise they wouldn't be used for
>something that trivial). In that case, they should be showing up in
>domestic appliances, for example as a replacement for fridges.
>One obvious example for the use of Stasis Fields would be in the area
>of child care. [snip modest proposal]
>
>That's the sort of usage of Stasis Fields that should be showing up in
>the stories, even if only as a background detail.
Not to mention their really really obvious applications in all SORTS of
manufacturing processes. And packaging! Why are things not sold in stasis-
shrinkwrap? (Well, other than "you can't actually see what's inside"...)
Wayne Throop
: it badly: Miles in a world with magic.
Ah, OK, then I took your meaning about right.
I'd say Tavi isn't as... manic as Miles, nor has his... deformity
scarred him in quite the same way, given the way Isana, Barnard and
Araris raised him, and his problem being so unheard-of that there was
no active prefab prejudice to slot him into. Mind you, he gets his
share of hazing, but it's enough different, and his personality is
enough different, that I wouldn't really connect the two.
But still, yes, now it's been mentioned, some points of similarity, fershur.
Chris Thompson
> In the unlikely event I ever become
> a Fabulously Wealthy Popular Author, I think I shall hire my own private
> editor so stuff actually gets EDITED before publication...
But maybe that attitude is just what stops you becoming a FWPA ?
--
Chris Thompson
Email: ce...@cam.ac.uk
James Nicoll
Nigel <ncw...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>
>What occured to me is that stasis fields should be used in a lot more
>places than they are shown in the Known Space stories. Their use in
>variable swords show that they can be made small, low powered and
>(presumably) fairly cheaply (otherwise they wouldn't be used for
>something that trivial). In that case, they should be showing up in
>domestic appliances, for example as a replacement for fridges.
>
One area of activity that should have used stasis fields but
didn't was the UN/Belter interstellar colonization program. People in
stasis fields are not going to care about ramjet magnetic fields,
meaning that the colonists could have been delivered to their destination
far more quickly than they were for most of the program. I can think
of some possible explanations:
1: Early stasis field generators were too bulky.
2: Early generators were as or more vulnerable to magnetic fields
than humans.
3: Ramjets are expensive. Slowboats are cheap. Bulk cargo goes by slowboat.
--
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)
erilar
Sounds interesting. I just requested the first one from the library.
It sounds like a series my fantasy-loving granddaughter might enjoy as
well.
--
Erilar, biblioholic medievalist
erilar
"Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
> Kay Shapero wrote:
> > Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
> > For Making It Nonexistant"
>
> Er, that's not a GM's mantra. The mantra is "If You Can Do It, They Can
> Too."
That's why I have two D&D characters who are invulnerable to pointed
objects even when naked: they bathed in dragon's blood and survived and
the DM said "OK".
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor) <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>> David DeLaney wrote:
>>> Kay Shapero <k...@invalid.net> wrote:
>>>> sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
>>>>> This is what comes of not thinking through your magical system.
>>>> Repeat after me the GM's Mantra "Making A Thing Rare Is No Substitute
>>>> For Making It Nonexistant"
>>> Wizards of the Coast can tell you a great deal about this as well.
>>>
>>> Dave "what do you mean you want TWENTY dollars for that Mox? - me, around
> 1995"
>>> DeLaney
>> You WERE a cheap bastard. I sold mine for $100 or more each, and my
>> Black Lotus went for like $250-$300.
>
> This was _early_ 1995. It was already apparent that A/B/UL were going to head
> into unprecedented territory (modulo the whole FIELD of CCGs being
> unprecedented, but hey), but they went faster and further than people were
> expecting.
>
> I had the _money_ at the time to buy boxes and boxes of Arabian Nights. Had
> I done so I would be rather more well-off today than I am. I didn't have the
> _knowledge_ at the time (or, realistically, the access to said boxes, but if
> I'd had the knowledge I could probably have made it to one or another con
> where they briefly were).
I was a stockholder and bought several boxes of the originals and the
next three supplements. This got me out of debt and financed my move
from Pittsburgh to Albany.
>
> Now, of course, the Power Nine are the sort of thing you measure other CCGs'
> excesses against...
>
> (I did sell a complete Legends set not too much later than that. For ... let
> me actually check... actually slightly more than stores are asking to-day...
> But it took a bit of effort to put together, even back then.)
>
> Anyway, this has veered, my fault, fairly off-topic. Maybe I can redirect it
> to the product WotC was famous for BEFORE Magic, The Primal Order?
For really small values of famous. I helped with a read-and-review of
the original (for which I got the stock), and later wrote the first
draft of a TPO supplement called Unorthodox Strategies. It was a great
product, but not very many people knew about it. It also demonstrated
for me the problem with NOT making a flashy cover. The original TPO
cover literally faded into the background at a few feet of distance.
James Nicoll
WRAITH: I'M TOO GLOOMY FOR MY CLOTHES was even worse: the title
was written in gray ink on a mottled gray background. Now it was true
that under one particular set of conditions the ink could be seen clearly
but those conditions required first that the book be exposed to light
and then that the room the book was in plunged into pitch darkeness so
the glow in the dark ink could glow for a few minutes.
By an unfortunate coincidence the gray on the cover also matched
the color of my store's slatwall. For customers to find WRAITH, I would
usually have to go over and tap the book with my hand.
The typos on the back cover did not help sales, given that as I
recall the initial word was that there would be bo second edition of the
game.
In contrast, we once ran a series of tests to see how far away
a typical Dreampod 9 product would have to be before it could no longer
be IDed. This ran into the problem that once the person carrying the
book got farther than a block from the store, some physical feature in
the surrounding terrain would block our view of him (1).
1: If he went west, a condo would get in the way. If he went south,
a hill got in the way. East ran into a large wall almost immediately
and north had a nice long alley with a sudden, largely unmarked 4 foot
drop at the end of it.
Chuk Goodin
>
> There is no lack of editors. If their stuff isn't edited, it's because
>the AUTHOR chooses not to have it happen. As in "I'm the goose laying
>all your golden eggs, and if you dare touch any of my Holy Prose, I'm gone."
I thought it was more like the publishers saying "We're already late with
this one and we know it'll sell no matter how bad it is, so why delay with
another editing pass?".
--
chuk
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
There's that, but then THAT is in the control of the author too.
Don't be late. There's a few good reasons to end up behind the 8-ball
on those kind of deadlines, but not very many, and it often sounds like
lateness is somewhat endemic in this field.
Wayne Throop
: Sounds interesting. I just requested the first one from the library.
: well.
And I'd say, while reading the first one, keep in mind that
they get better sebsequently, imo. Not that I expect the first
to give a negative impression, but still, imo they do get better.
Which is sort of remarkable. Hence this remark.
Richard R. Hershberger
I just want to say that as the parent of a two-year old and a three-
month old, this idea is disgusting, sick, and wrong! Where can I buy
one?
Richard R. Hershberger
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
SUBSCIRBE
I have four kids. I want to buy four of them. Now.
Wayne Throop
::: area of child care.
:: I just want to say that as the parent of a two-year old and a three-
:: month old, this idea is disgusting, sick, and wrong!
:: Where can I buy one?
: I have four kids. I want to buy four of them. Now.
This makes me think of what is probably the number 1 missing use of stasis
fields in Known Space, and that's stassissicles displacing corpsicles.
Number one mainly because corpsicles show up in lots of works.
I mean, sure, you can count World of Ptaavs as a long-duration
stassissicle, but I mean non-accidental non-emergency timeshifting of
all sorts. Taking voluntary time-hops futurwards, was a major use of
Vinge's bobbles.
Closely related, of course, since the child care example is just
voluntary timeshifting with somebody else doing the volunteering of
a person by a parent/guardian/keepter/whatnot.
Oh, and organ bank storage. And for that matter, TV dinners. Pop the
stassis, sit down to a hot meal. And of course stasis thermos bottles,
both via enclosing contents *in* the stasis and using it for insulation.
Hey, fuel pelets; stasis up bits of plasma or other what-would-normally-
be-very-volatile-high-energy-something-or-other, and ship as pelets to be
fed into a furnace or somesuch. Extremely short-lived transuranics for
power, or other extremely short-lived isotopes for medical uses. Oooh,
oooh, shipping molten metals ready for pouring into moulds by clients.
Hm. Yes, there really are endless uses, ent thar. Many more than I was
thinking there were. Some of the interesting ones are problematic, like,
you can ship stasised items in a container that you intend to stasis,
and you ahve to take extreme care about such things if the contents are
valuable, and preserving valuable contents is one of the likely uses.
And those fuel pellets seem to be terrorist-bait. But still, as easy as
they are portrayed as being, especially in terms of self-sustaining and
externally-opened packaging (ie, the expense of the stasis generation
can be paid at a factory or shipment point, and need not be portable),
seems like they're more useful than I was at first thinking. Still maybe
not quite as pervasive as electronics is getting irl, but getting close.
Bobbles, a bit less so, since they are necessarily spherical, and you
have to decide duration up front, both problems niven stasis doesn't have.
Mike Van Pelt
>This makes me think of what is probably the number 1 missing use of stasis
>fields in Known Space, and that's stassissicles displacing corpsicles.
There was one Niven story... I recall workers wallpapering the
inside of a colony ship with fine wire mesh, and someone saying
"We're going to pack colonists in here like subway commuters at
rush hour."
--
Mike Van Pelt "If they're going to talk about
mvp.at.calweb.com Camelot, then we get to talk about
KE6BVH The Lady in the Lake." - ?
Gutless Umbrella Carrying Sissy
news:hg5v7f$22v$1...@news.eternal-september.org:
Which, in turn, can be caused by publishers setting unrealistic
deadlines.
There's plenty of stupid to go around.
--
Terry Austin
"Terry Austin: like the polio vaccine, only with more asshole."
-- David Bilek
Jesus forgives sinners, not criminals.
Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)
> "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)" <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote in
> news:hg5v7f$22v$1...@news.eternal-september.org:
>
>> Chuk Goodin wrote:
>>> On Sun, 13 Dec 2009 22:37:09 -0500, "Sea Wasp (Ryk E. Spoor)"
>>> <sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com> wrote:
>>>> There is no lack of editors. If their stuff isn't edited,
>>>> it's because
>>>> the AUTHOR chooses not to have it happen. As in "I'm the goose
>>>> laying all your golden eggs, and if you dare touch any of my
>>>> Holy Prose, I'm gone."
>>> I thought it was more like the publishers saying "We're already
>>> late with this one and we know it'll sell no matter how bad it
>>> is, so why delay with another editing pass?".
>>>
>> There's that, but then THAT is in the control of the author
>> too.
>>
>> Don't be late. There's a few good reasons to end up behind
>> the 8-ball
>> on those kind of deadlines, but not very many, and it often
>> sounds like lateness is somewhat endemic in this field.
>>
> Which, in turn, can be caused by publishers setting unrealistic
> deadlines.
>
> There's plenty of stupid to go around.
>
What's unrealistic about asking for a novel in 2 months?
Kay Shapero
sea...@sgeinc.invalid.com says...
> >
> > I had the _money_ at the time to buy boxes and boxes of Arabian Nights. Had
> > I done so I would be rather more well-off today than I am. I didn't have the
> > _knowledge_ at the time (or, realistically, the access to said boxes, but if
> > I'd had the knowledge I could probably have made it to one or another con
> > where they briefly were).
>
> I was a stockholder and bought several boxes of the originals and the
> next three supplements. This got me out of debt and financed my move
> from Pittsburgh to Albany.
>
Y'know, I think this is the first time I've heard the Man Bites Dog
version of that story... Congrats!