RE: Torch of Freedom spoiler
deowll
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I downloaded the RTF book. It has 413 pages. It needs a lot of polish. Some
of it is fine but some of it looks like the first run through by somebody
not all that talented at keyboarding or much of anything else. I regard it
as being worse than Oopsie in some regards.
I'm not sure that everything I read in this book matches up with earlier
books or the privious book.
I didn't think first generation life extenstion was good for centuries or
kept you looking all that young.
Events were dated so you do have a solid timeline.
I have my doubts that high ranking intelligence agents who know a lot about
their own side do much active field work but let's let that pass. That part
of the story came off a better than expected. They got some really good data
though who gets some of it may be an issue.
The battle of Torch was a lot more interesting than expected. The details
expand things in all sorts of ways leaving a lot of interesting
possabilities. Both the Mesans and the Mayans used much better hardware than
expected and certainly more of it on the Mesan side. The Mesan reason for
being willing to write all that hardware off when things are about to get
seriously nasty when it would have still been very useful against League
forces doesn't compute. It would would have done just fine for defending
the wormhole against snopes, etc. On the other hand I do understand why the
Mayans were willing to turn the captured hardware over to Torch. They had
their own reasons for not wanting their bosses to get a look at those ships
at all.
Names like Harper S. Ferry do not help the plot along though he died if I
recall correctly. There are to many references to things on ancient Earth I
don't think many if any of these people would have had the time or interest
to have a clue about. That turned into another bad joke.
Somebody seems to have learned at least a little casual biology. The girl
that was killed and caused all the angst in the Mesan good guys is modoled
on a real human I know a little about but he wasn't that fragile nor do I
think that the Mesans would have acted exactly as they were protrayed in
this story. They were going to be getting better answers than they were
getting or they'd have been doing something else.
They did confirm that the slaves contained a lot of genes later moved to the
improved gene lines. I have my doubts that many of the slave would have
needed to be short lifers. It wouldn't have taken much slight of hand to
produce humans that could have lived two or three times the human norm and
things like accountants, sex objects, and normal labor wouldn't need to be
modified all that much and certainly not in ways that would shorten their
life spans. Not wearing out nor needing much medical care is a good thing in
a slave.
The super soldiers, and the heavy worlders might well be different especally
if they were stuck in an enviroment for which their adaptions were less than
perfect which seems all to likely.
There was a fair amount of blather about a family which supplies some minor
players that doesn't advance the story line at all. Much of what was said
seems contrived and poorly writen. How they come to be selected to run a
space ship needed in the story is in many ways much less than clear. Why one
of the scrags ends up making the trip is also much less than clear.
On the whole I'd call this a somewhat fractured story but I don't regret the
time spent reading it or the money.
There was a lot less jumping around than in the previous story so you'er not
going to need to read it 3 or 4 times just figure out what the heck was
going on. The story line is tied together better than that.
John Fairhurst
>Names like Harper S. Ferry do not help the plot along though he died if I
>recall correctly. There are to many references to things on ancient Earth I
>don't think many if any of these people would have had the time or interest
>to have a clue about. That turned into another bad joke.
The ex-slaves would find that sort of thing quite interesting though I
do feel DW is being a little too Americo-centric - I don't think we've
met a William Wilberforce yet (though to be fair, most of the names
taken on by the slaves after gaining their freedom seem to be place
names rather than people names).
Regards
--
John Fairhurst
e: jo...@johnsbooks.co.u
W: http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk
q: http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk/Quiz
Dahak
made John Fairhurst <Jo...@Johnsbooks.co.uk> write:
>On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:27:02 -0500, "deowll" <deo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>Names like Harper S. Ferry do not help the plot along though he died if I
>>recall correctly. There are to many references to things on ancient Earth I
>>don't think many if any of these people would have had the time or interest
>>to have a clue about. That turned into another bad joke.
>
>The ex-slaves would find that sort of thing quite interesting though I
>do feel DW is being a little too Americo-centric - I don't think we've
>met a William Wilberforce yet (though to be fair, most of the names
>taken on by the slaves after gaining their freedom seem to be place
>names rather than people names).
>
>Regards
No... but we did see Honor naming her anti-slave trade program
Operation Wilberforce in /War of Honor/.
Harper S. Ferry, to me, is only one step removed from Jeremy X,
the Audubon Ballroom and /Pottawatomie Creek/.
YMMV
-JPB
deowll
"John Fairhurst" <Jo...@Johnsbooks.co.uk> wrote in message
news:aqjn959dgnved5cre...@4ax.com...
How many moderns have names that are the exact name as ancients who lived
2000 years ago or know much if anything about people and events of the time?
You are still largely limited to English and French names. Most of the world
is not of European desent and most Europeans aren't English and French.
deowll
"Dahak" <Daha...@theXOUTfifthimperium.com.invalid> wrote in message
news:of3p95pi37ecf7s67...@4ax.com...
I do understand that making up a bunch of unfamiliar names may just not be
worth the trouble but at least a little variation on pronunciation and/or
spelling on occasion would have helped.
Ehran
> How many moderns have names that are the exact name as ancients who lived
> 2000 years ago or know much if anything about people and events of the
> time?
>
> You are still largely limited to English and French names. Most of the
> world is not of European desent and most Europeans aren't English and
> French.
>
>
i'll bet you'd be surprised by the number of first names you'd recognize if
you went back 2k years in the right parts of europe or the middle east. i'll
grant you the dismal ignorance of the average person about history or
historical personages.
if you look at the probabilities i'd expect a much larger percentage of those
outbound to the stars will carry anglo or french names than world
demographics would suggest. zambians for instance are unlikely to be anywhere
near the front of the queue for tickets offworld.
JohnFair
wrote:
> On Mon, 31 Aug 2009 14:29:33 +0100, an orbiting mind-control laser
> made John Fairhurst <J...@Johnsbooks.co.uk> write:
>
> >On Tue, 25 Aug 2009 00:27:02 -0500, "deowll" <deo...@gmail.com> wrote:
>
> No... but we did see Honor naming her anti-slave trade program
> Operation Wilberforce in /War of Honor/.
>
I'd forgotten about that one... :-)
> Harper S. Ferry, to me, is only one step removed from Jeremy X,
> the Audubon Ballroom and /Pottawatomie Creek/.
>
> YMMV
>
> -JPB
I know where Harper S Ferry comes from at least in general and the
derivation of Jeremy's name is fairly obvious as well but the only
Audubon I'm familar with was the birdwatcher/naturalist (or at least
that's how I know of him) and the Audubon Society is one of the bigger
Ornithological societies in the world.
--
John Fairhurst
http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk
Ehran
> I know where Harper S Ferry comes from at least in general and the
> derivation of Jeremy's name is fairly obvious as well but the only
> Audubon I'm familar with was the birdwatcher/naturalist (or at least
> that's how I know of him) and the Audubon Society is one of the bigger
> Ornithological societies in the world.
>
> --
> John Fairhurst
> http://www.johnsbooks.co.uk
http://www.lyrics007.com/Black%20Market%20Militia%20Lyrics/Audobon%20Ballroom%20Lyrics.html
lyrics to a song that might be relevant
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audubon_Ballroom this is most likely it's
genesis. it's a theatre where malcom x was murdered.
deowll
"Ehran" <brian_nosp...@shaw.ca> wrote in message
news:gDTnm.5427$4t6....@newsfe06.iad...
All of which is fairly clever but if you get it you slip out of the story
world or at least I do.
Don Sample
"deowll" <deo...@gmail.com> wrote:
At least Jeremy X and the Audubon Ballroom are clearly meant to be
deliberate historical references to Malcom X by the characters in the
story. Now Rob S Pierre as the leader of the PRH Committee for Public
Safety was just silly.
--
Quando omni flunkus moritati
Visit the Buffy Body Count at <http://homepage.mac.com/dsample/>
Ehran
thing is this is all happening thousands of years down the road from our
time. it's a bit like writing a modern story chock full of allusions to
mesopotamian history.
if he was perhaps less heavy handed with the allusions it would be better.
Don Sample
"Ehran" <brian_nosp...@shaw.ca> wrote:
More like if Malcom X had chosen to call himself "Sparticus" instead:
someone who is pretty well known today, for having led a slave revolt a
couple of thousand years ago.