Walter Jon Williams: Lightspeed War?
William December Starr
Barton's "Off on a Starship" and Williams's "The Green Leopard
Plague" in the "2003 best Asimovs stories" thread back in November,
I finally read the two stories[1] and, well, Richard and I seem to
have fairly divergent tastes in stories, even though I'm usually a
strong WJW fan. Oh well.
1: In the September and October/November 2003 issues, respectively.
Leaving subjectivity aside, I have a question about "The Green
Leopard Plague." It's set in two time periods: we have a somewhat
far-future researcher who's been hired to find out what a famous
historical figure was doing in the three weeks of his life during
which he dropped out of sight just before he did what made him
famous, and that's interspersed with the contemporary/very near
future story of that guy's three weeks. The distant future part of
the story is sprinkled with occasional references to something
called the Lightspeed War, during which a lot of data was lost (and
a lot of people died).
Query: is this Lightspeed War a part of any other story by Williams
(or, if you're listening Walter, will it be)? I'm kind of curious
as to what the heck it was.
--
William December Starr <wds...@panix.com>
Walter Jon Williams
@panix2.panix.com:
> >
> Query: is this Lightspeed War a part of any other story by Williams
> (or, if you're listening Walter, will it be)? I'm kind of curious
> as to what the heck it was.
>
Hey, thanks for your interest!
The Lightspeed War is part of the implied background of the "College of
Mystery" sequence, which at the moment consists of only two stories,
"Lethe" and "Green Leopard."
I haven't written any stories actually set in the war, because I haven't
figured out a war to make any such stories as interesting as stories set in
the society that follows it. If that makes any sense.
On the off chance that I =do= figure out a way to make such a story
interesting, I don't want to give away a lot of what the war was about. So
for the moment, think of it as a necessary kludge to get an Earth
sufficiently depopulated so that people (such as those in "Lethe") can
duplicate themselves numerous times without any hypothetical Population
Authority getting worried about it.
William December Starr
Walter Jon Williams <donttr...@phonyaddress.net> said:
> I haven't written any stories actually set in the war, because I
> haven't figured out a war to make any such stories as interesting
> as stories set in the society that follows it. If that makes any
> sense.
>
> On the off chance that I =do= figure out a way to make such a story
> interesting, I don't want to give away a lot of what the war was
> about. So for the moment, think of it as a necessary kludge to get
> an Earth sufficiently depopulated so that people (such as those in
> "Lethe") can duplicate themselves numerous times without any
> hypothetical Population Authority getting worried about it.
Sounds good. Thanks.
ns.s...@gmail.com
Thanks
Michael F. Stemper
> Hi,has there been any further developments on this 'war'?
<http://www.isfdb.org/cgi-bin/ea.cgi?669>
Does what you're asking about have another name?
--
Michael F. Stemper
The name of the story is "A Sound of Thunder".
It was written by Ray Bradbury. You're welcome.
Alie...@gmail.com
Ignoring what the war is about, what moves at lightspeed in the war, the weapons or the warriors? Or just the comms? I pointed out some time back that if you have FTL travel but are limited to lightspeed comms, you get fast fleet movements but slow wars because once the fleet gets someplace they may have to wait to find out if they're supposed to fight or not. Same applies to colonists/miners/traders- if you get to a system and have to dick around with authorities for guidance for decades, Bad Things can happen.
If none of that factors in the way the war is fought, why call it the Lightspeed War at all?
And no, I don't expect any real details.
Mark L. Fergerson
David Johnston
Cryptoengineer
news:b91e3cbc-6968-4724...@googlegroups.com:
This is pretty much the way our world worked up until the invention
of the telegraph. People, and their vehicles, were the fastest ways
to move a message farther than you could see.
[yes, there were a few exceptions, such as chains of beacon fires,
but they weren't generally useful).
As for the effect on warfare, consider the Battle of New Orleans
which was fought three weeks *after* the Treaty of Ghent had been
signed, but neither side heard about the sudden outbreak of peace
in time.
pt
pt
pt
Greg Goss
> Ignoring what the war is about, what moves at lightspeed in the war, the weapons or the warriors? Or just the comms? I pointed out some time back that if you have FTL travel but are limited to lightspeed comms, you get fast fleet movements but slow wars because once the fleet gets someplace they may have to wait to find out if they're supposed to fight or not. Same applies to colonists/miners/traders- if you get to a system and have to dick around with authorities for guidance for decades, Bad Things can happen.
the ships as "couriers", and bingo - comms are exactly the same speed
as the ships.
--
We are geeks. Resistance is voltage over current.
Alie...@gmail.com
You may not have seen the original discussion- I think it was in rasfs. Another important point is that lone courier boats are very liable to detection and interdiction, if not outright destruction, plus you don't want the enemy reading your orders if they decide to just capture couriers. Sending armed escorts just means more effort to intercept, and eventually you're back at a fleet carrying its own orders.
Mark L. Fergerson
Greg Goss
the description had the fleet waiting at destingation to find out what
they were supposed to do, which I didn't understand.
David Johnston
> On Friday, May 27, 2016 at 11:01:41 PM UTC-7, Greg Goss wrote:
>> "nu...@bid.nes" <Alie...@gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Ignoring what the war is about, what moves at lightspeed in the
>>> war, the
>> weapons or the warriors? Or just the comms? I pointed out some time
>> back that if you have FTL travel but are limited to lightspeed
>> comms, you get fast fleet movements but slow wars because once the
>> fleet gets someplace they may have to wait to find out if they're
>> supposed to fight or not. Same applies to colonists/miners/traders-
>> if you get to a system and have to dick around with authorities for
>> guidance for decades, Bad Things can happen.
>>
>> How can comms be slower than the ships? You just designate some
>> of the ships as "couriers", and bingo - comms are exactly the same
>> speed as the ships.
>
> But then you have a fleet carrying its own orders.
>
> You may not have seen the original discussion- I think it was in
> rasfs. Another important point is that lone courier boats are very
> liable to detection and interdiction,
faster than light. Because if you don't have a way of communication
that works faster than light, you don't have a way of detecting objects
moving faster than light until they are already past you either.
if not outright destruction,
> plus you don't want the enemy reading your orders if they decide to
> just capture couriers.
wouldn't have time to destroy the information it carries.
Robert Carnegie
thing, or the "U.S.S. Lightspeed" had a fault with
the ramjet drive and accidentally drove straight
into the homeworld of the Peaceons.
I suppose that events of future history are
included in stories because (1) you expect that
there /will/ be events in future history and
(2) the writer may want to exclude robots or
3-D printing from their story and they can
say it's "because of the war". e.g. the time
when the 3-D printers all were hacked to start
making murder robots.
Jaimie Vandenbergh
wrote:
situations - pre-shared key, one time pad, combination.
Just because so many spaceship fleet books are modelled on 18th century
sailboats, doesn't mean they're restricted to sealed envelopes with data
crystals inside...
Cheers - Jaimie
--
"I'd tried caffeine a few times; it made me believe I was focused and
energetic, but it turned my judgment to shit. Widespread use of
caffeine explains a lot about the twentieth century."
- "Distress", Greg Egan