Gaping Setting Holes in SF
LizM7
By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
overlooked the obvious.
My two choices:
The "Stardancers" series, especially the later ones: Apparently, it's
possible to get pregnant and have children as a Stardancer. But with
what matter? Stardancers don't eat or otherwise absorb matter - and a
fetus has to have material to grow with. And after the child is born,
the same problem applies: How do you grow when you don't have any
matter to use?
_ A Fire Upon the Deep_: Alledgedly, the human society is a
matriarchy, but the interaction between Ravna and Pham reads (to me)
as one in which Pham is dominant. I was raised in a matriarchy - and
this isn't one.
- Liz
Jordan S. Bassior
>What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
>By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>overlooked the obvious.
There was one novel I read (I can't remember the name, but it was one of those
"hunt for ancient alien artifacts" tales) in which there was fairly common
interplanetary and FTL interstellar space travel -- and on the Earth, there was
_an energy crisis so bad that people no longer used personal ground vehicles_.
It apparently did not occur to the author that whatever the spaceships were
using for power could be used to power the Earthly grid -- and that if for
some reason this wasn't possible, the spaceships could be used to loft a solar
power satellite system. I would have accepted this if the author had made it be
some weird ground-grubber superstitions that prevented them from using either
solution, but apparently the author did not even grasp that either of the two
solutions were possible.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
Jordan S. Bassior
storing large amounts of power in reasonably compact forms. So there was _no_
reason for there to be a problem with mobile power sources on Earth.
Del Cotter
LizM7 <hsel...@hotmail.com> said:
>What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
>By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>overlooked the obvious.
>_ A Fire Upon the Deep_: Allegedly, the human society is a
>matriarchy, but the interaction between Ravna and Pham reads (to me)
>as one in which Pham is dominant. I was raised in a matriarchy - and
>this isn't one.
I don't think that's right. Ravna lives in a society which is neither
matriarchal nor patriarchal. Thousands of years ago, her society went
through a pre-industrial period on a planet called Nyjora which might be
called matriarchal; traces of which still survive in children's fairy
tales and common family names.
(Some of those names also preserve vestiges of the patriarchal naming
practices on Old Earth, tens of thousands of years before *that*,
Olsndot, for example)
And Pham dominates Ravna because that's the kind of guy Pham is.
--
Del Cotter d...@branta.demon.co.uk
"People will say that young children are bored or disgusted by
[sex education] that early; well, I was bored and disgusted by
mathematics, but they made me learn it anyway." -- Zoe J Selengut
Henning Bergh
>What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
[...snip...]
>_ A Fire Upon the Deep_: Alledgedly, the human society is a
>matriarchy, but the interaction between Ravna and Pham reads (to me)
>as one in which Pham is dominant. I was raised in a matriarchy - and
>this isn't one.
'Fraid I have to disagree with you on this one.
By "human society" I assume you mean the Nyjora/Sjandra Kei/Straumli
culture that Ravna comes from? It's been a while since I read
_AFUtD_, but as far as I can remember (and gather from a quick
flip-through just now) matriarchy is only mentioned with reference to
"ancient" and "medieval" Nyjora. On the other hand, Sjandra Kei seems
to use a matrilineal naming system, so I could be wrong.
On the gripping hand, Pham Nuwen was raised in a patriarchal, feudal,
and medieval society, and apparently hung on to his "bias" even after
joining the Qeng Ho (at least, while talking to Ravna he mentions
something about how he would "never serve under a fem captain.")
Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
across as dominant.
In other words; to me, there's no hole in the setting. Anyone else?
-Henning
Michael Grosberg
> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> overlooked the obvious.
>
> My two choices:
>
> _ A Fire Upon the Deep_: Alledgedly, the human society is a
> matriarchy, but the interaction between Ravna and Pham reads (to me)
> as one in which Pham is dominant. I was raised in a matriarchy - and
> this isn't one.
>
Pham doesn't come from the same culture ravna came from, and anyway it
seems as if the matriarchy (I assume you mean "The age of
princcesses") existed in the history of Ravna's people, not
neccessarily in the present.
Ken Vale
by Sara Douglas (a good serries and a good author) all of the forests in a
kingdom, probably closer to the size of the Roman Empire, all of the trees
have been cut down for religious reasons. The technology level is roughly
that of middle ages europe, but with no trees you would find it very hard
to build things at that tech level. Non-Stone buildings, doors, shutters,
boats, sailing ships, furniture, most weapons, especially axes which are
fairly important to the first book. Not that any of this ruins the
stories, it just bugs me.
Ken
Jordan S. Bassior
Covenant stories. You have this immense mostly unpopulated wilderness, with
each _village_ a hundred miles or more from the next one, which somehow manages
to maintain a roughly High Medieval technology and a common culture. How?
David T. Bilek
wrote:
Covenant read too many crappy fantasies. So the Land, a creation of
his own mind, reflected some of the standard tropes.
-David
Jordan S. Bassior
>Covenant read too many crappy fantasies. So the Land, a creation of
>his own mind, reflected some of the standard tropes.
That's one explanation.
It's true that a _careless_ reading of _The Lord of the Rings_ can give you
that notion, until you realize that quite a lot of densely populated countries
are mentioned in passing, and that the heroes are mostly trying to _avoid_ them
because their mission depends on _stealth_.
Brenda W. Clough
"Jordan S. Bassior" wrote:
Really fat internet pipelines?
Brenda
--
What do you do with a secret?
Whisper it in a desert at high noon.
Lock it up and bury the key.
Tell the nation on prime-time TV.
Choose a door . . .
Doors of Death and Life
by Brenda W. Clough
http://www.sff.net/people/Brenda
Tor Books
ISBN 0-312-87064-7
Matthew Austern
But nobody ever said Pham's society was a matriarchy! He came from
somewhere else.
Michael Ward
"LizM7" <hsel...@hotmail.com> wrote in message
news:d89b4999.0111...@posting.google.com...
Aren't there some relationships were the female is
dominant in patriarchal societies.
Mike
>
> - Liz
Mark Atwood
> "Jordan S. Bassior" wrote:
>
> > Oh, if you want a huge hole in fantasy, look at The Land from the Thomas
> > Covenant stories. You have this immense mostly unpopulated wilderness, with
> > each _village_ a hundred miles or more from the next one, which somehow manages
> > to maintain a roughly High Medieval technology and a common culture. How?
>
> Really fat internet pipelines?
I'm suddenly getting this weird mental image of crystal balls being
used as transceivers for gigabit WAN pipes, and each town and city
having a "wireless magic MAN" with magic mirrors as fixed endpoints
and amulets running various roaming protocols....
--
Mark Atwood | I'm wearing black only until I find something darker.
m...@pobox.com | http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Taki Kogoma
to rec.arts.sf.written decree...
>I'm suddenly getting this weird mental image of crystal balls being
>used as transceivers for gigabit WAN pipes, and each town and city
>having a "wireless magic MAN" with magic mirrors as fixed endpoints
>and amulets running various roaming protocols....
Comming sooon to Ankh-Morpork and environs...
--
Capt. Gym Z. Quirk | "I'll get a life when someone
(Known to some as Taki Kogoma) | demonstrates that it would be
quirk @ swcp.com | superior to what I have now."
Veteran of the '91 sf-lovers re-org. | -- Gym Quirk
Joseph Major
:
: What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
:
: By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
: necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
: overlooked the obvious.
O'Donnell's "McGill Feighan" series.
All right, you have these people called "flingers" who can move
things anywhere, even between stars, by their mental powers. How does a
flinger get started? Another flinger comes along and triggers his power,
what they call "ringing chimes". But a flinger who has had his chimes
rung still isn't fully powered. How does he become so? By flinging away,
presumably to his death, the flinger who rang his chimes.
1) Where did the first flinger come from?
2) The number of flingers is obviously going to decline,
since one must die to bring one into being, and flingers die for other
reasons (_several_ are killed during the course of the series).
Joseph T Major
Shaad M. Ahmad
LizM7 <hsel...@hotmail.com> wrote:
>What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
>By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>overlooked the obvious.
Well, the example I'll use is that of a scientific error, but one
nasty enough to ruin the story for me. I don't recall the name of the
author, but it was published in (I think) one of Dozois' _Year's Best
SF_ Anthologies, and featured investigators in (I think) near-future
Australia trying to use forensic biology to track down some criminals.
They were being stymied by finding that their usual tools, e.g, DNA
fingerprinting, did not work. Subsequently they realized that someone
had been creating a race of human beings, identical to us in every way,
but using different organic bases (not A, T, C, G, or U) to make up their
DNA and RNA; said race being thus impervious to attacks by virii that
recognize DNA based on the traditional base pairs.
Now, this isn't a bad idea at first glance, and I suspect most
readers found it an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, it shattered my
willing suspension of disbelief irreparably; one of the perils of being
a biologist, I suppose.
The author assumed that all that was required was rewriting the human
genome using a different alphabet of bases (difficult, yes, but hypo-
thetically possible in the near future), that the same proteins would still
be coded for. What he/she has failed to take into account, though, are
the forces of evolution. Our proteins, the secondary structures of our
RNA, have been designed by evolution to work with DNA based on A, T, C,
and G. Enzymes which recognize particular sequences of DNA, for instance,
to say, begin transcribing RNA, recognize those sequences by bends in DNA
and specific side chains brought about by a particular A, T, C, G stretch.
Using different bases would drastically change the secondary structure
of the DNA, which means each and every protein which interacts with DNA
would have to be redesigned from the ground up. But it doesn't stop there.
Proteins rarely work in isolation. So the proteins that interact with
the proteins that interact with DNA would also have to be redesigned.
And so on, becoming an exponentially more and more complicated redesign.
And this redesigning process would not be at all easy. Because
for every amino acid change you make in a protein, you run the risk of
altering how it folds, and thus its secondary structure and function.
Natural selection might have had millenia of trial-and-error attempts
to bring this about; but for us to model this all (we are still not that
very good at predicting how a protein with a particular amino acid sequence
will fold in vivo) in order to create that race of humans would be a
computing nightmare.
And we haven't even begun to talk about RNA molecules, and how their
secondary structures would be changed by these sequences.
Regards.
sh...@leland.stanford.edu - Shaad -
http://cmgm.stanford.edu/~ahmad/
the deviant biologist
"Science is the human activity of finding an order in nature by organizing
the scattered, meaningless facts under universal concepts."
-- J. Bronowski
LizM7
> On 17 Nov 2001 23:56:33 -0800, hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote:
>
> >What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
> >
>
> [...snip...]
>
> >_ A Fire Upon the Deep_: Alledgedly, the human society is a
> >matriarchy, but the interaction between Ravna and Pham reads (to me)
> >as one in which Pham is dominant. I was raised in a matriarchy - and
> >this isn't one.
>
>
> 'Fraid I have to disagree with you on this one.
>
> By "human society" I assume you mean the Nyjora/Sjandra Kei/Straumli
> culture that Ravna comes from? It's been a while since I read
> _AFUtD_, but as far as I can remember (and gather from a quick
> flip-through just now) matriarchy is only mentioned with reference to
> "ancient" and "medieval" Nyjora. On the other hand, Sjandra Kei seems
> to use a matrilineal naming system, so I could be wrong.
IIRC, there's a point where Ravna describes her group's history as
resembling Pham's, except matriarchal.
And really, the situation isn't one I'd expect to find in a sexually
egalitarian society, either. (See next comment.) So either you've
got a society which has become patriarchal (in which case Vinge is
just confusing people) or a problem.
> On the gripping hand, Pham Nuwen was raised in a patriarchal, feudal,
> and medieval society, and apparently hung on to his "bias" even after
> joining the Qeng Ho (at least, while talking to Ravna he mentions
> something about how he would "never serve under a fem captain.")
Yes, so? (Myself, if I were Ravna in that situation, I would dismiss
him as a bigot and not consider dating the creep.) This means what?
If I come from an enviroment where I expect to have my opinions be
equal to those of my boyfriend's, and my boyfriend does not think so,
then we have major relationship issues that need to be dealt with.
> Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
> (inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
> increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
> Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
> across as dominant.
There's a scene (immediately after Greenstalk goes rogue) in which
Pham and Ravna fight. Pham says something about taking control of the
ship. Ravna says something about having some form of (oh, what's the
word for it?) code that'll be set off if she dies. Pham, being sick,
passes out. He wakes up later and locks people out of the ship. He
learns that Ravna's only set up these codes after their fight.
Now, if I were Ravna and I were convinced that my way is right and
Pham's is wrong, and (what's more) that our lives depend upon this
decision, am I just going to set up some form of trigger that'll
occure when I die? No. I'm going to lock Pham out of the system.
I'm a librarian; I've probably done far more work with the computer
than Pham is. There's no contest of wills, seeing as Pham is
unconscious. So why don't I do anything?
Patriarchy is the only explaination I can think of.
- Liz
Gareth Wilson
> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> overlooked the obvious.
Greg Egan's Quarantine. It's not much of a spoiler to say the setting
includes totally irresistible brainwashing techniques that can instantly
convert you into a loyal member of any group. This doesn't seem to have
made as much of an impact as I'd expect. There are no countries where
everyone has a compulsory copy of PATRIOT (Axon, $1,200), for example.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gareth Wilson
Christchurch
New Zealand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Steve Taylor
> I don't recall the name of the
> author, but it was published in (I think) one of Dozois' _Year's Best
> SF_ Anthologies, and featured investigators in (I think) near-future
> Australia trying to use forensic biology to track down some criminals.
> They were being stymied by finding that their usual tools, e.g, DNA
> fingerprinting, did not work.
Greg Egan. Story might be called _Fortress_. Or not.
> And this redesigning process would not be at all easy. Because
> for every amino acid change you make in a protein, you run the risk of
> altering how it folds
Doh. Even at my "yes-I've-read-the-blind-watchmaker" level of biological
knowledge I probably should have got that. Good thing I'm a hopelessly
unanalytical reader.
> shaad
Steve
--
I confirm that I said it, but I will neither confirm nor deny that I
meant it.
David Empey
news:3BF77FBB...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz:
> LizM7 wrote:
>
>> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>>
>> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>> overlooked the obvious.
>
> Greg Egan's Quarantine. It's not much of a spoiler to say the setting
> includes totally irresistible brainwashing techniques that can instantly
> convert you into a loyal member of any group.
Possibly not, but I bet it would be a spoiler to say...
that Egan also shows why this might not be as useful as one might
expect, as the brainwashees will decide that only themselves can
be trusted to run the group.
> This doesn't seem to have
> made as much of an impact as I'd expect. There are no countries where
> everyone has a compulsory copy of PATRIOT (Axon, $1,200), for example.
Wasn't the loyalty thing a secret development? Maybe the technology
hadn't gotten around yet.
--
Dave Empey
Justin Bacon
> 1) Where did the first flinger come from?
> 2) The number of flingers is obviously going to decline,
>since one must die to bring one into being, and flingers die for other
>reasons (_several_ are killed during the course of the series).
Can only fully-powered flingers "ring the chimes" of another flinger?
Now, if all the slingers you see in the book are fully powered -- you *might*
have a setting hole.
Justin Bacon
tria...@aol.com
Nancy Lebovitz
David Empey <dem...@cruzio.com> wrote:
>Gareth Wilson <gr...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz> wrote in
>news:3BF77FBB...@ext.canterbury.ac.nz:
>
>> LizM7 wrote:
>>
>>> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>>>
>>> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>>> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>>> overlooked the obvious.
>>
>> Greg Egan's Quarantine. It's not much of a spoiler to say the setting
>> includes totally irresistible brainwashing techniques that can instantly
>> convert you into a loyal member of any group.
>
>Possibly not, but I bet it would be a spoiler to say...
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>that Egan also shows why this might not be as useful as one might
>expect, as the brainwashees will decide that only themselves can
>be trusted to run the group.
That was very entertaining when it happened, but I bet that real
brainwashing of that kind would include compunctions against
trying to be in charge/taking power without consent of the currently
ruling group. It would be hard to write something like that without
damaging necessary initiative, but ruling groups make that sort
of tradeoff all the time anyway.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Henning Bergh
I'm sorry, but I think you missed my point(s). Let me try to clarify.
Your argument seems to be something like this: Ravna's society is
described as a matriarchy, but Pham dominates Ravna, hence the society
can't be matriarchal after all, and Vinge has made a mistake.
First off, I'm not at all sure that Ravna does come from a matriarchal
society. Matriarchy is only mentioned in relation to "ancient" or
"medieval" Nyjora (Nyjora being the planet from which Sjandra Kei,
Ravna's homeworld, was settled). There's the comparison of Canberra
(Pham's homeworld) to "medieval Nyjora, though not matriarchal.",
which you mentioned, and a few references to the Age of Princesses,
"in the dim past". But, as far as I can remember, there's no
indication in the book that Ravna's society has remained a matriarchy
up to the present.
On the other hand, the gender roles of Ravna's society aren't really
relevant to Pham's behaviour, as he comes from a completely different
culture. Pham was raised on Canberra, a strictly patriarchal,
medieval and feudal society. Despite spending most of his life with
the Qeng Ho, that comment about never serving "under a fem captain"
makes it clear that he remained a male chauvinist pig until the end.
(BTW, there's more about Pham's background in _A Deepness in the Sky_.
Highly recommended, better than _AFuD_, IMO).
In other words, you can't judge Ravna's society by Pham's behaviour;
he's never been exposed to Ravna's culture, and picked up his values
elsewhere.
I suppose you could argue that Ravna's behaviour (i.e her "submission"
to Pham) proves that she doesn't come from a matriarchy. But, as I
mentioned earlier, I can't see that Vinge describes present day
Sjandra Kei as a matriarchy. I find it more likely that it has
matured into a sexually egalitarian society (although I'll admit that
this assumption is based mostly on personal beliefs). And I can't see
that an author letting a society mature over time is "confusing
people", nor as a hole in the setting.
In fact, I think you can explain Pham's dominance without bringing
gender issues into it at all. Ravna is a young, apprentice librarian,
Pham has a lifetime's experience as an interstellar trader and ship's
master. Given the surroundings most of the action takes place in,
doesn't it make sense that Pham would take the lead? (As far as the
action is concerned, not their personal relationship.)
-Henning
Henning Bergh
<jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
>wrote:
>
>
>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
>>across as dominant.
>
>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
>
True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
unless there's an overdue book involved. (Or the librarian in
question speaks Oook, and has just heard the m-word.)
Jens Kilian
> I'm suddenly getting this weird mental image of crystal balls being
> used as transceivers for gigabit WAN pipes, and each town and city
> having a "wireless magic MAN" with magic mirrors as fixed endpoints
> and amulets running various roaming protocols....
I suspect that Hogwarts' internet connection uses RFC 1149 with the owls
as the physical layer. [The feasibility of RFC 1149 has been successfully
demonstrated, even if the ping times *were* a bit long :-]
--
mailto:j...@acm.org phone:+49-7031-464-7698 (TELNET 778-7698)
http://www.bawue.de/~jjk/ fax:+49-7031-464-7351
PGP: 06 04 1C 35 7B DC 1F 26 As the air to a bird, or the sea to a fish,
0x555DA8B5 BB A2 F0 66 77 75 E1 08 so is contempt to the contemptible. [Blake]
Courtenay Footman
comes to mind immediately.
I really, really wish that "Rosemary Edghill" (eluki bes shahar) would
finish this series; that is to say, I really, really wish that someone
would pay for her to do so. I would certainly buy the books.
[From the first page, where Ruth has just turned 30, and is contemplating
her probable future: "... Ruth was thirty. All alone, and on the
threshold of the rest of her life, which would be spent solitary,
virginal and depressed in some minuscule upstate New York library where
the book was on view from the hours of three to three-fifteen every
other Wednesdays." Need I state that, despite her virtues, Ruth does not
prophecy very well?]
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Henning Bergh
<jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:03:50 -0500, Jon Meltzer
><jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
>>wrote:
>>
>>
>>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
>>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
>>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
>>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
>>>across as dominant.
>>
>>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
>
>I take that statement back. See
>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-111801inform.story
>
>
Huh? There's nothing in there about how many librarians I know. ;->
Mary K. Kuhner
David T. Bilek <dbi...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>Covenant read too many crappy fantasies. So the Land, a creation of
>his own mind, reflected some of the standard tropes.
It's interesting to me that when I read the books for the first
time as a teenager, I felt strongly that this theory was unsupportable.
I reread _Lord Foul's Bane_ and half of _The Illearth War_ this
year, and it seemed clear to me that, while I could make arguments
that the Land was "real" in some sense, it was *clearly* a
reflection of Covenant's inner demons.
Elena in particular. I don't react to Elena as a real person anymore;
the degree to which she is shaped to engage Covenant goes far beyond
anything his relationship with her mother could explain.
Why do the Lords, who are very careful about such things, accept
someone who is obviously crazy as High Lord? For me this is on
the same level of improbability as "what do people eat?" and points
in the same direction. They aren't exactly people; they are
playing out a psychodrama.
I can't think of another set of books where my understanding of
(as opposed to my liking for) what was going on has changed so
drastically. It's like discovering that Gollum has become the
hero of _LoTR_. Anyone else have such an experience?
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
John Schilling
>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:03:50 -0500, Jon Meltzer
><jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
>>wrote:
>>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
>>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
>>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
>>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
>>>across as dominant.
>>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
>True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
>unless there's an overdue book involved.
I rather suspect one can find a Rupert Giles action figure for sale
online, if not at your local toy store.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Mary K. Kuhner
>They were being stymied by finding that their usual tools, e.g, DNA
>fingerprinting, did not work. Subsequently they realized that someone
>had been creating a race of human beings, identical to us in every way,
>but using different organic bases (not A, T, C, G, or U) to make up their
>DNA and RNA; said race being thus impervious to attacks by virii that
>recognize DNA based on the traditional base pairs.
> Now, this isn't a bad idea at first glance, and I suspect most
>readers found it an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, it shattered my
>willing suspension of disbelief irreparably; one of the perils of being
>a biologist, I suppose.
This idea's been used a couple of times; it's in Greg Egan's _Distress_.
(The story you're citing may also be Egan but is definitely not
_Distress_.) I think it may flow from a chapter in _Godel, Escher,
Bach_ where the author discusses the possibility and concludes there
is no obvious reason it shouldn't work--he is thinking of DNA bases
purely as an encoding, and ignoring all their other roles as physical
objects.
Hofstader has such a way of saying things cogently and with certainty
that people tend to believe him--except in their own fields, where
they can see the problems.
(It bugged me in _Distress_, but so many things bugged me about
that book that it was relatively minor. It seems possible that
the person who claims to have done this is just lying or deluded.)
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
Henning Bergh
wrote:
>Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no> writes:
>
>>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:03:50 -0500, Jon Meltzer
>><jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
>>>wrote:
>
>>>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
>>>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
>>>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
>>>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
>>>>across as dominant.
>
>>>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
>
>>True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
>>unless there's an overdue book involved.
>
>
>I rather suspect one can find a Rupert Giles action figure for sale
>online, if not at your local toy store.
One can:
Mark Atwood
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> writes:
> > I'm suddenly getting this weird mental image of crystal balls being
> > used as transceivers for gigabit WAN pipes, and each town and city
> > having a "wireless magic MAN" with magic mirrors as fixed endpoints
> > and amulets running various roaming protocols....
>
> I suspect that Hogwarts' internet connection uses RFC 1149 with the owls
> as the physical layer. [The feasibility of RFC 1149 has been successfully
> demonstrated, even if the ping times *were* a bit long :-]
You can't run TCP over it tho. It would timeout on connection.
Jeff Walther
c...@adore.lightlink.com (Courtenay Footman) wrote:
> "Rosemary Edghill"'s Ruth Marlowe in the "Twelve Treasures" series
> comes to mind immediately.
>
> I really, really wish that "Rosemary Edghill" (eluki bes shahar) would
> finish this series; that is to say, I really, really wish that someone
> would pay for her to do so. I would certainly buy the books.
What??!!? Are there additional stories that continue the narrative of
"The Sword of Maiden's Tears"?
Joseph Michael Bay
>David T. Bilek said:
>That's one explanation.
I probably wouldn't think of LotR as *crappy* fantasy, really.
--
Chimes peal joy. Bah. Joseph Michael Bay
Icy colon barge Cancer Biology
Frosty divine Saturn Stanford University
"Your legs are too short to kickbox with the Buddha" - Thai saying
David Cowie
> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> overlooked the obvious.
>
_Dune_ has something. People in the _Dune_ universe don't use firearms
because bullets have too much kinetic energy to pass through personal
force shields. You can't use shields on Arrakis because they drive the
sandworms crazy. So why can't the Fremen use firearms? They seem to
have a high enough tech level.
One could say that Arrakis does not contain enough organic material to
make explosives. The Fremen could import them with money from bootleg
spice (the Fremen are already paying the spacer guild not to spy on
them) or they could use magnetic acceleration.
--
David Cowie
There is no _spam in my address.
"You had to do WHAT with your seat?"
Jordan S. Bassior
>_Dune_ has something. People in the _Dune_ universe don't use firearms
>because bullets have too much kinetic energy to pass through personal
>force shields. You can't use shields on Arrakis because they drive the
>sandworms crazy. So why can't the Fremen use firearms? They seem to
>have a high enough tech level.
There's an even bigger hole.
In this insanely Byzantine political system -- one which would probably make
the real Byzantine Greeks hide in terror, for that matter -- the Houses are all
plotting and scheming to destroy or dominate each other. Now, they all have
"Family Atomics" just in case the civil cold war turns hot, but they are
forbidden to actually be used because they would make all that personal combat
kinda stu ... um, I mean by mutual agreement to avoid undue devastation. This
is enforced by the general understanding that the Houses will turn on any
violator.
Possible SPOILER for _Dune_
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
But a lasgun fired into a shield triggers an atomic-level explosion -- as has
been known for millennia, which is why they don't use lasguns on the
battlefield. Yet, until the Fremen use this as a deliberate tactic, and later
Paul Atreides blows a hole through the Shield Wall this way, apparently nobody
thinks of doing this on purpose.
Duh.
That's ok, though. The Fremen -- masters of small-scale mechanical engineering
-- trigger the first explosions _manually_. It doesn't occur to them until much
later that they could use a timer. It _never_ occurs to them that they could
use an impact or proximity fuze.
Heck, that world has remote-controlled knife-sized cruise missiles, but it
doesn't occur to anyone to put it on anything like an RPV. And I don't mean
anything technically more sophisticated than a radio-controlled model airplane,
of the sort that already existed when Frank Herbert was writing the first book.
There's a lot of bizarre technological lacunae in that universe, not all of
them explainable by means of the Butlerian Excu ... I mean Jihad. (The
Butlerian Jihad itself doesn't make much sense, unless you assume that all the
computerized high-tech existing before then was militarily close to useless).
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
John Schilling
>>Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no> writes:
>One can:
>http://www.thelionspride1.com/rupertgiles.html
But no chainsaw, that I can see. What can one be thinking, to make a
Rupert Giles action figure without the chainsaw?
Sea Wasp
>
> Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no> writes:
>
> >On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:03:50 -0500, Jon Meltzer
> ><jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
> >>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
> >>wrote:
>
> >>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
> >>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
> >>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
> >>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
> >>>across as dominant.
>
> >>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
>
> >True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
> >unless there's an overdue book involved.
>
> I rather suspect one can find a Rupert Giles action figure for sale
> online, if not at your local toy store.
"Thought you could get away without paying your overdue fines, did
you, dogs? Well by Crom you reckoned without the sword of CONAN the
LIBRARIAN!"
--
Sea Wasp http://www.wizvax.net/seawasp/index.htm
/^\
;;; _Morgantown: The Jason Wood Chronicles_, at
http://www.hyperbooks.com/catalog/20040.html
J Greely
>How does a flinger get started? Another flinger comes along and
>triggers his power, what they call "ringing chimes".
Right, which does make one wonder how the whole thing got started.
But then, this is a universe that contains its fair share of meddling
aliens, so it's a minor detail that can likely be ignored.
>But a flinger who has had his chimes rung still isn't fully powered.
>How does he become so? By flinging away, presumably to his death,
>the flinger who rang his chimes.
Nope. Read the scene again (pages 55-59 of my copy of Caverns).
McGill's father wants to give him a whipping for his behavior. Jose,
suspecting that tonight is the night, insists on taking his place.
Under the stress of being whipped, McGill's talent matures, and he
Flings Jose away. It could easily have been his father, and in the
letter he leaves behind, Jose comments that the people at the Flinger
Academy will understand because "most of them got rid of their
change-ringers in the same way".
Now, ringing changes does seem to be a one-time thing for a retired
Flinger; we're not told what happens to the ones who survive the
experience, or what further effect their Sensitivity might have. That
whole bit just gets dropped, since we don't see any more retired
Flingers.
>1) Where did the first flinger come from?
Genetically modified by the Far Being Retzglaran, of course. :-)
-j
Matt McIrvin
wrote:
> On 18 Nov 2001 13:14:44 -0800, did Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com>,
> to rec.arts.sf.written decree...
> >I'm suddenly getting this weird mental image of crystal balls being
> >used as transceivers for gigabit WAN pipes, and each town and city
> >having a "wireless magic MAN" with magic mirrors as fixed endpoints
> >and amulets running various roaming protocols....
>
> Comming sooon to Ankh-Morpork and environs...
The clacks probably work better. Actually, the competition
between the two would make a good set-up for a novel.
--
Matt McIrvin
Matt McIrvin
mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote:
> Shaad M. Ahmad <sh...@Stanford.EDU> wrote:
> >They were being stymied by finding that their usual tools, e.g, DNA
> >fingerprinting, did not work. Subsequently they realized that someone
> >had been creating a race of human beings, identical to us in every way,
> >but using different organic bases (not A, T, C, G, or U) to make up their
> >DNA and RNA; said race being thus impervious to attacks by virii that
> >recognize DNA based on the traditional base pairs.
>
> > Now, this isn't a bad idea at first glance, and I suspect most
> >readers found it an enjoyable read. Unfortunately, it shattered my
> >willing suspension of disbelief irreparably; one of the perils of being
> >a biologist, I suppose.
>
> This idea's been used a couple of times; it's in Greg Egan's _Distress_.
> (The story you're citing may also be Egan but is definitely not
> _Distress_.)
I think the short story was called "The Moat."
--
Matt McIrvin
Matthew Austern
> (It bugged me in _Distress_, but so many things bugged me about
> that book that it was relatively minor. It seems possible that
> the person who claims to have done this is just lying or deluded.)
I'd be interested in hearing what bugged you about _Distress_. My
sort of glib one-line description of Greg Egan is that he's stunningly
good at discussing the social implications of advance biotech but that
he seems more interested in the philosophical implication of
speculative physics, and that most of what he writes about physics is
(skillful and probably deliberate) sleight of hand. On the other
hand, I'm no biologist. If I were, I might have a different opinion.
Matt McIrvin
Matthew Austern <aus...@research.att.com> wrote:
> My sort of glib one-line description of Greg Egan is that he's
> stunningly good at discussing the social implications of advance
> biotech but that he seems more interested in the philosophical
> implication of speculative physics, and that most of what he writes
> about physics is (skillful and probably deliberate) sleight of hand.
Exactly! He's a sort of magician; he'll write lines of argument that
sound precisely like real physics lectures, but where in a normal
physics lecture you wave your hands a little to get over a complicated
bit that the students will learn in more detail in the homework, Egan
instead slips in the palmed ace of spades that was up his sleeve.
In _Diaspora_ he took this to the level of high art, in my opinion...
albeit perhaps with a narrow audience.
An earlier master of this sort of thing was James Blish.
--
Matt McIrvin
Joseph Nebus
[ writing about Greg Egan ]
>Exactly! He's a sort of magician; he'll write lines of argument that
>sound precisely like real physics lectures, but where in a normal
>physics lecture you wave your hands a little to get over a complicated
>bit that the students will learn in more detail in the homework, Egan
>instead slips in the palmed ace of spades that was up his sleeve.
> [ ... ] An earlier master of this sort of thing was James Blish.
Agreed on all major points about Greg Egan. I just want to point
out that Blish may have the all-time perfect model of putting a contrary-
to-all-known-science, but-we-need-it-for-the-plot description into one of
his novels; I'm quite frustrated that I can't place it right now.
I don't want to spoil it, though. I'll just say the came up with
the name for his faster-than-light drive that perfectly evokes the types
of numbers you dig up if you try plugging velocities greater than c into
the Lorenz-Fitzgerald contractions and all those other things you learn
in Special Relativity.
And then -- in my case, it took a couple days after I was done
reading the book -- the *other* and much more common meaning of the word
used to describe it hits you.
One of my minor ambitions in life is to someday write a sentence
sufficiently clever that I can believe Blish would have liked it.
Joseph Nebus
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
OWK
> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>
> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> overlooked the obvious.
>
My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
[My education in the limits of supply using horse-borne transportation
is mainly due to reading American Civil War history, where it *was* a
major limiting factor on operations.]
And three examples were it is dealt with/not dealt with in novels:
1. LOTR - Basically never mentioned. Compared to example #3 this may
be the *best* way to handle it since a hand-wave doesn't jar as much
as attempting to deal with it and failing miserably. Some have said
how the food growing regions are in southern Mordor - but you still
have to effectively move the food.
2. Cross-time Engineer (Frankowski) - Dealing with a real world
example horde (Mongol). Who stripped an area and then suffered
horrendous casualties moving on because they *had* to. Didn't go into
why the Mongol horde has less of a supply problem (light traveling
nomads with minor needs). I consider this as a well-handled example.
3. Faith of the Fallen (Goodkind) - Recently read, and the primary
reason I'm making this post. Doesn't ignore the situation like #1
since supply trains and such *are* talked about; including the
building of a road network to support said army. Of course, this
"excuse" then falls flat when the distance supplies are being moved in
*winter* is considered, and for how many. Horse-drawn transport has a
very limited range since you have to carry "fuel" for the horses as
well for the entire round trip. At a fairly short distance the useful
cargo capacity of the transport becomes nil. Multiply this by the
requirements of a multiple hundred thousand man army in winter camp
(including cavalry who chew up supplies even quicker) and the
situation hits ludicrous speed...
As has been pointed out many times one will often accept things when
you're not clear on the subject matter (Egan on science), but quail
when an area of some expertise is entered and abused.
- Kurt
P.S. - What is the old military adage? "Amatuers study tactics,
professionals study logistics"
P.P.S. - And I've sworn off Goodkind at this point. "Atlas Shrugged"
was a better read by far.
Daniel Silevitch
wrote:
> John Schilling wrote:
> >
> > Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no> writes:
> >
> > >On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:03:50 -0500, Jon Meltzer
> > ><jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
> >
> > >>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
> > >>wrote:
> >
> > >>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
> > >>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
> > >>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
> > >>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
> > >>>across as dominant.
> >
> > >>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
> >
> > >True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
> > >unless there's an overdue book involved.
> >
> > I rather suspect one can find a Rupert Giles action figure for sale
> > online, if not at your local toy store.
>
> That's one good example. another...
>
> "Thought you could get away without paying your overdue fines, did
> you, dogs? Well by Crom you reckoned without the sword of CONAN the
> LIBRARIAN!"
There's also the Librarian of Unseen University, Ankh-Morpork.
Paraphrasing from (I think) _Interesting_Times_:
Dean: "Am I the only one who thinks that having an ape as a librarian
is a bad idea?"
Ridcully: "Yes. We have a Librarian who can tear your arm off with his
leg. People respect that."
-dms
Nancy Lebovitz
OWK <ove...@usaor.net> wrote:
>
>My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
>horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
>Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
>sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
>gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
>that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
>river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
>
>
>1. LOTR - Basically never mentioned. Compared to example #3 this may
>be the *best* way to handle it since a hand-wave doesn't jar as much
>as attempting to deal with it and failing miserably. Some have said
>how the food growing regions are in southern Mordor - but you still
>have to effectively move the food.
>
the bad guy can't bring his dragons into a fight because they're
non-flying dragons and they can't get there fast enough.
It gave me a very strong feeling of having the miniatures on the
wrong edge of the game.
James Nicoll
>example horde (Mongol). Who stripped an area and then suffered
>horrendous casualties moving on because they *had* to. Didn't go into
>why the Mongol horde has less of a supply problem (light traveling
>nomads with minor needs). I consider this as a well-handled example.
Despite the way Frankowski grossly overstates the Mongol
numbers to avoid having to explain how a relatively small number
of Mongols stomped Poland flat?
Jordan S. Bassior
>Despite the way Frankowski grossly overstates the Mongol
>numbers to avoid having to explain how a relatively small number
>of Mongols stomped Poland flat?
Well ...
... the Mongol armies _did_ supplement their numbers considerably with
auxiliary troops of subject nations. And slaves. That part of The Cross-Time
Engineer is true.
However ...
... even with all that, the Mongol army that invaded Europe was really prettty
small, maybe 20,000 Mongols and a few tens of thousands of auxiliaries, tops
(and I've seen smaller estimates). The reasons they beat the Eastern Europeans
were:
(1) - A better tactical system (horse + composite archer combination) capable
of inflicting casualties while taking few or none if handled correctly,
(2) - A better command system (fully articulated multi-level disciplined
organization from army down to squad level,
(3) - Extreme strategic mobility, allowing the same force to defeat one army
than wheel, force-march hundreds of miles if need be, and defeat the next
(which is why numbers were overestimated).
(4) - Incomplete feudal system in Eastern Europe -- in particular, a relative
scarcity of the heavy fortifications common in Western Europe in the same age,
coupled with
(5) - Favorable terrain (plains and relatively thin forests) for the Mongol
tactical system.
The irony is that the _real_ Mongol army could have been beaten by a Martin
Padway, given 10 years to prepare, _sans_ the neato-keen gadgets from the
Time-Daddies, but the main innovation he would have to make would be to simply
improve the Polish tactical system. The Mongol tuman was deadly, quick, but
rather fragile -- it could not attack into the teeth of better missile weapons,
and it could not survive prolonged melee combat. Everything about the Mongol
tactical system was geared towards using its superior maneuverability to
prevent either disaster from befalling the division.
The obvious defensive answer would have been a system of small fortifications
defending towns and villages, especially along the strategic conduits, backed
up by a highly-mobile fighting force of all-arms soldiers similar to the
Byzantine cataphracts (disciplined, well-organized, trained with bow, lance,
and sword) supported by a system of prepared remounts (at the small forts) to
allow forced cavalry marches. The forts would both serve as nuisance obstacles
for the Mongols, forcing them to spend time, manpower, or both to reduce them
or to waste time going around them, and as places of refuge for the civilian
population (some of whom would serve as a militia manning them). Each would
also contain post-riders to communicate with the next fort down.
When a Mongol force approached a fort, food would be destroyed or taken within
the walls. Meanwhile, post-riders would be dispatched to summon the main force.
The main force would avoid charging any but a _trapped_ Mongol force, and would
otherwise fight using maneuver and missile tactics. Naturally, the forts would
include defenses designed to trap cavalry.
This is a variant on type of the defense-in-depth (using ATG or ATGM for the
small forts and tanks for the mobile force) employed against blitzkrieg, and it
only makes sense, as the Mongols were essentially using a proto-blitzkrieg.
Killing Mongols would be harder than Frankowski imagined, because the Mongols
were truly wily and would try to avoid being trapped. However, once the Mongols
_did_ make a mistake, destroying the army would be far easier than Frankowski
imagined, because if its relatively small size.
I will point out, though, that a _coherent_ army of over 10 thousand was
actually fairly large for a medieval force, so "small" is relative.
David Tate
> Hofstader has such a way of saying things cogently and with certainty
> that people tend to believe him--except in their own fields, where
> they can see the problems.
Yes, that's Hofstadter's other annoying trait. His first annoying
trait is saying things that have been known to everyone in the field
for decades, as if he were the only person to ever be so clever as to
think of them.
_Le Ton Beau de Marot_ is chock-full of examples of both annoying
traits, in the areas of linguistics and translation. The impression
he gives is that he never does any research, because he can't imagine
that the much-debated consensus of experts (or indeed the much-debated
disagreement among experts) is more interesting or important to his
readers than his own off-the-cuff guesses.
I haven't yet decided which of the two behaviors is MOST annoying.
David Tate
Craig S. Richardson
wrote:
>Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no> writes:
>
>>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 12:03:50 -0500, Jon Meltzer
>><jonme...@mindspring.com> wrote:
>
>>>On Sun, 18 Nov 2001 13:15:56 +0100, Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no>
>>>wrote:
>
>>>>Finally (running out of hands here) there's the fact that most of the
>>>>(inter)action takes place aboard the Out of Band II, under
>>>>increasingly tense conditions. Now, with Ravna being a librarian, and
>>>>Pham a former ship master, it's hardly surprising that he should come
>>>>across as dominant.
>
>>>You obviously don't know many librarians :-)
>
>>True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
>>unless there's an overdue book involved.
>
>
>I rather suspect one can find a Rupert Giles action figure for sale
>online, if not at your local toy store.
Sadly, you are correct. Such thingies exist.
--Craig
--
David Collins from Burnley: 70K pounds
Luke Weaver from Spurs: 500K pounds
Matthew Etherington from Grasshoppers-Zurich: 1.2M pounds
Leyton Orient 1-0 St. Mirren in the 2003 UEFA Cup Final: Priceless
Mary K. Kuhner
>I'd be interested in hearing what bugged you about _Distress_. My
>sort of glib one-line description of Greg Egan is that he's stunningly
>good at discussing the social implications of advance biotech but that
>he seems more interested in the philosophical implication of
>speculative physics, and that most of what he writes about physics is
>(skillful and probably deliberate) sleight of hand. On the other
>hand, I'm no biologist. If I were, I might have a different opinion.
I didn't like the shape and structure of the book. The early
scenes with the protagonist and his girlfriend were sufficiently
painful to read that I wanted them to come to something more than
they did; the whole thread about high-grade autism and the idea
that the protagonist may himself be autistic seemed to be
raised and then dropped. Unless the ending is, in fact, a
playing-out of that theme, and that's too bleakly downbeat a
reading to please me.
The parts about Stateless seemed preachy and digressive.
And the metaphysics of the ending went over my suspension of
disbelief limit in a big way--it went from "I'm not following
this, but okay, for the sake of argument..." to "Huh? Whaa?
Does this make any sense?" The retroactive explanation for
Distress itself seemed particularly hard to swallow, for some
reason. (Why just a little time travel? Why haven't people
gone screamingly mad since forever?)
The only point at which I objected violently to the biology was
the people with rewritten DNA, and they are totally peripheral
to the action of the book, though they do support it thematically
(alienation and isolation).
In _Permutation City_ the a-life researcher makes a major
breakthrough in achieving artificial evolution...but she is
shown as doing it by just sitting there trying things at
random, without insight. This is the kind of thing computers
are much better at than people, so if it could be done by
random fiddling I'd have expected them to do it years
previously. There's already plenty being done on the theory
underlying evolvability--how complex the genetic code can be
for a particular mutation rate, how many connections are
optimal in a network, etc. I would have liked to see a theory
breakthrough and not a movie-like "she just happened to
be messing around on her computer and by magic a solution
appeared."
Mary Kuhner mkku...@eskimo.com
LizM7
> hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote in message news:<d89b4999.0111...@posting.google.com>...
> > What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
> >
> > By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> > necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> > overlooked the obvious.
> >
>
> My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
> horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
> Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
> sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
> gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
> that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
> river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
This is why I LOVE the way the Book of Ash has the entire countryside
stripped bare. (Mind you, there were other considerations involved as
to why the army still held together, but to say any more would be
something of a spoiler.)
Mary Gentle rules.
- Liz
Louann Miller
<crichar...@worldnet.att.net> wrote:
>On 19 Nov 2001 09:31:47 -0800, schi...@spock.usc.edu (John Schilling)
>wrote:
>
>>Henning Bergh <knuc...@online.no> writes:
>>>True. I guess it's hard to think of a librarian as an action figure,
>>>unless there's an overdue book involved.
>>I rather suspect one can find a Rupert Giles action figure for sale
>>online, if not at your local toy store.
>Sadly, you are correct. Such thingies exist.
Ripper aside, try David Drake's "With the Lightnings" for a lethal
librarian.
David Allsopp
>hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote in message news:<d89b4999.0111172356.df3878e
>@posting.google.com>...
>> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>>
>> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>> overlooked the obvious.
>>
>
>My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
>horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
>Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
>sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
>gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
>that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
>river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
For all the bad press he gets, this is handled well by Eddings in "The
Belgariad". When Ce'Nedra raises an army, there's a big chunk about how
the Sendarian king takes over the logistics, arranges supply dumps, uses
the rivers to get them in front of his army, makes sure they don't march
too far each day, and so on. The second series also has Silk making a
killing in the Mallorean bean market, since he knows the army's going to
march soon.
--
David Allsopp Houston, this is Tranquillity Base.
Remove SPAM to email me The Eagle has landed.
Courtenay Footman
Yes. _The Cup of Morning Shadows_, DAW 1995, ISBN 0-88677-671-6
and _The Cloak of Night and Daggers_, DAW 1997, ISBN 0-88677-724-0.
IMHO, they are better books than _The Sword of Maiden's Tears_.
Unfortunately, the series stops there, and DAW has shown no desire to
continue it. To repeat, I would buy these books. (If feel that if I
repeat this often enough, some publisher might hear me. A fantasy, I fear.)
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Courtenay Footman
>Matt McIrvin <mmci...@world.std.com> writes:
>
>> [ ... ] An earlier master of this sort of thing was James Blish.
>
> Agreed on all major points about Greg Egan. I just want to point
>out that Blish may have the all-time perfect model of putting a contrary-
>to-all-known-science, but-we-need-it-for-the-plot description into one of
>his novels; I'm quite frustrated that I can't place it right now.
>
science." The Blackett equation was a real piece of contemporary physics
done by a Nobel prize winner. The fact that said Nobel prize winner was
another in the long line of great British physicists who lost it late in
life is no reason for an sf writer of the time to not use it in a story.
Sea Wasp
>
> hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote in message news:<d89b4999.0111...@posting.google.com>...
> > What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
> >
> > By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> > necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> > overlooked the obvious.
> >
>
> My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
> horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
> Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
> sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
> gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
> that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
> river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
A couple of other works that deal with this problem:
Brooks' Elfstones of Shannara: The ravening horde of evil doesn't NEED
to eat. Nice troops if you can get them (and if you can control them,
which unfortunately you can't).
Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
Joe Slater
>This is why I LOVE the way the Book of Ash has the entire countryside
>stripped bare. (Mind you, there were other considerations involved as
>to why the army still held together, but to say any more would be
>something of a spoiler.)
How long was the place shadowed, and how the dickens did fodd supplies
hold out that long? I couldn't get past that.
jds
--
Joe Slater was but a low-grade paranoiac, whose fantastic notions must
have come from the crude hereditary folk-tales which circulated in even
the most decadent of communities.
_Beyond the Wall of Sleep_ by H P Lovecraft
Dan Swartzendruber
David Johnston
She's my hero. I don't really give a damn about Whathisface, the latest
Hornblower, but she's the star of the series.
Nyrath the nearly wise
>
> In article <nebusj.1...@rcs-sun1.rcs.rpi.edu>,
> neb...@rpi.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
>
> > Agreed on all major points about Greg Egan. I just want to point
> > out that Blish may have the all-time perfect model of putting a contrary-
> > to-all-known-science, but-we-need-it-for-the-plot description into one of
> > his novels; I'm quite frustrated that I can't place it right now.
> >
> > I don't want to spoil it, though. I'll just say the came up with
> > the name for his faster-than-light drive that perfectly evokes the types
> > of numbers you dig up if you try plugging velocities greater than c into
> > the Lorenz-Fitzgerald contractions and all those other things you learn
> > in Special Relativity.
>
I disagree. I think he's talking about
the "Irrational" drive.
Ross TenEyck
>In article <48986b55.01112...@posting.google.com>, OWK
><ove...@usaor.net> writes
>>My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
>>horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
>>Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
>>sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
>>gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
>>that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
>>river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
>For all the bad press he gets, this is handled well by Eddings in "The
>Belgariad". When Ce'Nedra raises an army, there's a big chunk about how
>the Sendarian king takes over the logistics, arranges supply dumps, uses
>the rivers to get them in front of his army, makes sure they don't march
>too far each day, and so on. The second series also has Silk making a
>killing in the Mallorean bean market, since he knows the army's going to
>march soon.
He handles it, but I don't think he handles it well. The supply
line he describes is ridiculously long, and assumes an essentially
infinite supply of not just food in Sendaria, but military gear.
Why would the Sendars, or anyone else, have stockpiled all these
weapons and armor for a peasant army that nobody expected?
(Another annoying thing about the military forces in the _Belgariad_
was that each of the western nations was the best at some type of
soldier -- the Mimbrates were the best heavy cavalry, the Arends
were the best archers, the Drasnians were the best pikemen, and
so on. The Murgos, who trained as soldiers from childhood, were
second-best at *everything*. Some days you just can't catch a
break.)
The book that I thought did a really good job of conveying the
sheer logistical nightmare of even a smallish army was Cherryh's
_Fortress in the Eye of Time._ Fighting the battle is almost
anticlimactic compared to just getting the army there in the
first place.
--
================== http://www.alumni.caltech.edu/~teneyck ==================
Ross TenEyck Seattle, WA \ Light, kindled in the furnace of hydrogen;
ten...@alumni.caltech.edu \ like smoke, sunlight carries the hot-metal
Are wa yume? Soretomo maboroshi? \ tang of Creation's forge.
Mark Atwood
>
> Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
> materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
> Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
> need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
> constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
> distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
You also keep teams of commandos at your HQ, to project thru the
mirrors for short hard strikes, also with no need for carrying rations
and minimal need to carry backup equipment.
It would utterly change the face of war. Even the term "army" starts
becoming obsolete.
--
Mark Atwood | I'm wearing black only until I find something darker.
m...@pobox.com | http://www.pobox.com/~mra
Andrew Plotkin
> Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> writes:
>>
>> Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
>> materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
>> Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
>> need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
>> constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
>> distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
> The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
> have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
> short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
> the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
The mirrors are better than that. You only need to have the mirror at
one end, like a Star Trek transporter.
> It would utterly change the face of war.
Well, yes. You can also use mirrors to reach into the Dungeon
Dimensions, or the hearts of stars, and drop crap on the enemy... I
can't remember enough about the books to say whether they eventually
realized they had apocalypse-level weapons on their hands.
--Z
"And Aholibamah bare Jeush, and Jaalam, and Korah: these were the borogoves..."
*
* Make your vote count. Get your vote counted.
David Eppstein
Andrew Plotkin <erky...@eblong.com> wrote:
> > The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
> > have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
> > short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
> > the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
>
> The mirrors are better than that. You only need to have the mirror at
> one end, like a Star Trek transporter.
In _The Whim of the Dragon_ it is again necessary only to have a magic
mirror at one end, but there must be some kind of mirror already at the
other end -- one magic mirror creates another by its property of reflection.
--
David Eppstein UC Irvine Dept. of Information & Computer Science
epps...@ics.uci.edu http://www.ics.uci.edu/~eppstein/
Dan Swartzendruber
> > It would utterly change the face of war.
>
> Well, yes. You can also use mirrors to reach into the Dungeon
> Dimensions, or the hearts of stars, and drop crap on the enemy... I
> can't remember enough about the books to say whether they eventually
> realized they had apocalypse-level weapons on their hands.
Not quite that simple. Since the mirror needs to be at your end, unless
you are living in the heart of a sun or 10 miles underwater, there's a
limit to what you can send. The brilliant discovery one of the bad guys
made was figuring out how to send a mirror through another mirror without
breaking it.
Michael Brazier
>Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> writes:
>>
>> Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
>> materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
>> Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
>> need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
>> constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
>> distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
>
>The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
>have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
>short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
>the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
>
>You also keep teams of commandos at your HQ, to project thru the
>mirrors for short hard strikes, also with no need for carrying rations
>and minimal need to carry backup equipment.
>
>It would utterly change the face of war. Even the term "army" starts
>becoming obsolete.
Unfortunately, in _A Man Rides Through_ almost all humans go crazy when
they're teleported, which makes this style of war impractical there.
--
Michael Brazier But what are all these gaieties to me
Whose thoughts are full of indices and surds?
X^2 + 7X + 53 = 11/3
-- Lewis Carroll
Dan Swartzendruber
says...
> >It would utterly change the face of war. Even the term "army" starts
> >becoming obsolete.
>
> Unfortunately, in _A Man Rides Through_ almost all humans go crazy when
> they're teleported, which makes this style of war impractical there.
Not quite. They go nuts when teleported via a curved mirror (same plane
transportation). Through a straight mirror (different planes) it is
okay.
Michael Brazier
>Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote:
>> Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> writes:
>>>
>>> Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
>>> materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
>>> Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
>>> need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
>>> constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
>>> distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
>
>> The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
>> have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
>> short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
>> the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
>
>The mirrors are better than that. You only need to have the mirror at
>one end, like a Star Trek transporter.
Not quite -- the mirror has to be at the traveling end, because all mirrors
transport to and from a fixed location. (Star Trek transporters can send
and receive to arbitrary coordinates.) And of course there's the insanity
problem; you wouldn't want your field teams going progressively crazy.
>> It would utterly change the face of war.
>
>Well, yes. You can also use mirrors to reach into the Dungeon
>Dimensions, or the hearts of stars, and drop crap on the enemy... I
>can't remember enough about the books to say whether they eventually
>realized they had apocalypse-level weapons on their hands.
The villians in the books were, in fact, reaching into "the Dungeon
Dimensions" and dropping monsters from same all over the map. Nobody
thought of conjuring starstuff, but in one scene a thunderstorm gets
transported ...
Sea Wasp
>
> Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> writes:
> >
> > Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
> > materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
> > Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
> > need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
> > constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
> > distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
>
> The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
> have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
> short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
> the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
Yes, like I said. That's how they worked it.
Except that you couldn't teleport PEOPLE that way. Teleporting through
flat glass (which were the type of mirrors that had images of your own
world in them) drove people insane in that universe.
> It would utterly change the face of war. Even the term "army" starts
> becoming obsolete.
As I often mention, Donaldson's villains are fortunate in that the
crossover characters from our world aren't particularly inventive. With
Terisa or Geraden's powers, I could've ended that one climactic battle
at the end in about thirty seconds.
Sea Wasp
Strike that. Reverse it.
John Schilling
>hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote in message news:<d89b4999.0111...@posting.google.com>...
>> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>>
>> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>> overlooked the obvious.
>>
>My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
>horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
>Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
>sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
>gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
>that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
>river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
>[My education in the limits of supply using horse-borne transportation
>is mainly due to reading American Civil War history, where it *was* a
>major limiting factor on operations.]
>And three examples were it is dealt with/not dealt with in novels:
>1. LOTR - Basically never mentioned. Compared to example #3 this may
>be the *best* way to handle it since a hand-wave doesn't jar as much
>as attempting to deal with it and failing miserably. Some have said
>how the food growing regions are in southern Mordor - but you still
>have to effectively move the food.
Well, the filthy smoke-belching proto-industrial logistical support of
the armies of Evil is mentioned more than once.
On the side of Good, the armies consist of thousands rather than hundreds
of thousands, are assembled from contingents of hundreds drawn from across
the land shortly before the fight, and fight mostly in defense of citadels
provisioned for long siege. Only Rohan spends any great time in the field,
and their army consists of horse nomads in a fertile grassland.
So the logistics of the armies are mentioned. Not dwelt upon extrensively,
but there isn't terribly much to dwell upon as such things go.
The logistics of nine people trying to cross a continent on foot, OTOH,
are dealt with extensively and fairly realistically. That's where the
story is.
--
*John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, *
*Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" *
*Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition *
*White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute *
*schi...@spock.usc.edu * for success" *
*661-951-9107 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition *
Dan Swartzendruber
> Dan Swartzendruber wrote:
> >
> > In article <3bfb029a...@News.CIS.DFN.DE>, mbra...@argusinc.com
> > says...
> > > >It would utterly change the face of war. Even the term "army" starts
> > > >becoming obsolete.
> > >
> > > Unfortunately, in _A Man Rides Through_ almost all humans go crazy when
> > > they're teleported, which makes this style of war impractical there.
> >
> > Not quite. They go nuts when teleported via a curved mirror (same plane
> > transportation). Through a straight mirror (different planes) it is
> > okay.
>
>
> Strike that. Reverse it.
Fooey.
David Allsopp
<ten...@alumnae.caltech.edu> writes
>David Allsopp <d...@tqSPAMbase.demon.co.uk> writes:
>>In article <48986b55.01112...@posting.google.com>, OWK
>><ove...@usaor.net> writes
>
>>>My pet one (repeated in multiple fantasy novels) is the "ravening
>>>horde of evil" that happens to have no logistical support at all.
>>>Mideval era food production wasn't the greatest to start with, and the
>>>sudden imposition of hundreds of thousands of troops (and horses) are
>>>gonna strip the area quicker than locusts. Mideval armies weren't
>>>that big - and this is probably the primary reason - barring good
>>>river/sea access you couldn't keep an army supplied.
>
>>For all the bad press he gets, this is handled well by Eddings in "The
>>Belgariad". When Ce'Nedra raises an army, there's a big chunk about how
>>the Sendarian king takes over the logistics, arranges supply dumps, uses
>>the rivers to get them in front of his army, makes sure they don't march
>>too far each day, and so on. The second series also has Silk making a
>>killing in the Mallorean bean market, since he knows the army's going to
>>march soon.
>
>He handles it, but I don't think he handles it well. The supply
>line he describes is ridiculously long, and assumes an essentially
>infinite supply of not just food in Sendaria, but military gear.
>Why would the Sendars, or anyone else, have stockpiled all these
>weapons and armor for a peasant army that nobody expected?
Well yeah, but in the context of the discussion, "handles it well" is
almost equivalent to "even mentions that it might be a teeny bit of a
problem". The only books I've ever read that handle it well by absolute
standards are military histories...
Nancy Lebovitz
David Tate <dt...@ida.org> wrote:
>mkku...@kingman.genetics.washington.edu (Mary K. Kuhner) wrote in message news:<9tbflh$tou$1...@nntp3.u.washington.edu>...
>
>> Hofstader has such a way of saying things cogently and with certainty
>> that people tend to believe him--except in their own fields, where
>> they can see the problems.
>
>Yes, that's Hofstadter's other annoying trait. His first annoying
>trait is saying things that have been known to everyone in the field
>for decades, as if he were the only person to ever be so clever as to
>think of them.
>
>_Le Ton Beau de Marot_ is chock-full of examples of both annoying
>traits, in the areas of linguistics and translation. The impression
>he gives is that he never does any research, because he can't imagine
>that the much-debated consensus of experts (or indeed the much-debated
>disagreement among experts) is more interesting or important to his
>readers than his own off-the-cuff guesses.
>
>I haven't yet decided which of the two behaviors is MOST annoying.
I gave up in the middle of _Le Ton Bon de Marot_ because I just wasn't
as interested in Hofstadter's smartness as he seemed to be. And I'm
usually in favor of displays of intelligence.
--
Nancy Lebovitz na...@netaxs.com www.nancybuttons.com
Dan Swartzendruber
d...@tqSPAMbase.demon.co.uk says...
> >He handles it, but I don't think he handles it well. The supply
> >line he describes is ridiculously long, and assumes an essentially
> >infinite supply of not just food in Sendaria, but military gear.
> >Why would the Sendars, or anyone else, have stockpiled all these
> >weapons and armor for a peasant army that nobody expected?
>
> Well yeah, but in the context of the discussion, "handles it well" is
> almost equivalent to "even mentions that it might be a teeny bit of a
> problem". The only books I've ever read that handle it well by absolute
> standards are military histories...
Don't forget that old aphorism: amateurs worry about tactics&strategy,
professionals worry about logistics (minor variations of this...)
Jordan S. Bassior
>Well yeah, but in the context of the discussion, "handles it well" is
>almost equivalent to "even mentions that it might be a teeny bit of a
>problem". The only books I've ever read that handle it well by absolute
>standards are military histories...
Some military SF handles it well. In Drake & Flint's Belisarius series, there
is _extensive_ discussion of the issue, and a couple of major plot turns hinge
on the logistical factor.
--
Sincerely Yours,
Jordan
--
Gareth Wilson
> I gave up in the middle of _Le Ton Bon de Marot_ because I just wasn't
> as interested in Hofstadter's smartness as he seemed to be. And I'm
> usually in favor of displays of intelligence.
I liked it, but he did come off as a bit of a crank in places, especially in his rant against German and his scorn at literal
translations.
--
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Gareth Wilson
Christchurch
New Zealand
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
LizM7
> hsel...@hotmail.com (LizM7) wrote:
> >This is why I LOVE the way the Book of Ash has the entire countryside
> >stripped bare. (Mind you, there were other considerations involved as
> >to why the army still held together, but to say any more would be
> >something of a spoiler.)
>
> How long was the place shadowed, and how the dickens did fodd supplies
> hold out that long? I couldn't get past that.
Which place?
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
S
P
O
I
L
E
R
Ok, here we are.
Carthage survived because everyone turned to fighting. Which they
*had* to do. You didn't have a choice about whether or not to build
an army - it was join or die (and be killed, but that's another
story).
As for Burgandy, the place had (up until they were finally reduced to
the single city) sunlight. So you could produce food. So people
survived.
OTOH, the Carthaginians held out simply because everyone knew that the
only way to survive was to invade Burgandy and get what food was
available there. That's the brilliance of it all - you didn't have
people deserting because there was nowhere to desert *to*.
At least, that's how I understood it.
- Liz
LizM7
> Sea Wasp <sea...@wizvax.net> writes:
> >
> > Donaldson's _A Man Rides Through_: Magical supply lines. They can send
> > materials to the army on the road as they are needed, through the
> > Imager's Mirrors, and therefore have two advantages: the army doesn't
> > need to carry more than backup supplies, and the length of trip isn't
> > constrained by the supply lines themselves, which don't care about
> > distance. As long as the home base has supplies, the army is set.
>
> The proper logistic model to use if you have magical teleporters is to
> have small camoflauged teams hauling the mirrors around. The teams work
> short shifts (8 to 12 hours), then `port back home to be replaced by
> the next shift. No need for camping or foraging.
>
> You also keep teams of commandos at your HQ, to project thru the
> mirrors for short hard strikes, also with no need for carrying rations
> and minimal need to carry backup equipment.
>
> It would utterly change the face of war. Even the term "army" starts
> becoming obsolete.
Heck, what would happen if the opposing army got its hands on one of
your teleporters?
Zarf, you dealt with that, didn't you? "Spider and Web," I mean.
- Liz
Mark Atwood
>
> Don't forget that old aphorism: amateurs worry about tactics&strategy,
> professionals worry about logistics (minor variations of this...)
I heard it as something like "field officers worry about tactics,
theater commanders worry about strategy, and 4 star generals worry
about logistics".
One of the pieces of neat tech in the Gulf War, something as amazing
as the video footage of smart bombs, but far more subtle, but
ultimately even more important, was the US military's computerized
logistics planning.
IIRC, the heart of it was a MITRE research project that got rushed
into field duty. The upshot of it was, what the different units
needed, THEY GOT, almost immediately, or else it was immediately
denied. And quite often it was supplied to them before they needed it.
I met once an old man who had been a unit supply clerk in WW2. He was
full of stories of trying to keep track of all the stuff his unit
needed, trying to order replacements before they ran out, having
requests for critical stuff get lost or arbitrarily denied, have
request get denied and then shipped to them anyway, having wrong lots
or the wrong stuff get shipped, receive stuff that was obviously
life-or-death critical for some other unit but useless to them,
mountains of critical and important stuff left rotting on docks
because it's transit paperwork got lost or was in error or the
paperwork said to load 200 tons into a 50 ton ship etc etc etc.
By and large, these kind of mistakes didn't happen in the Gulf War.
The estimated saving for using the just AI logistics planner in just
Gulf War, as comparied to doing it with human clerks, repaid every
last penny, and then some, that the DoD has spent on AI research in
the last 5 decades.
Robert Sneddon
Richardson <crichar...@worldnet.att.net> writes
>>online, if not at your local toy store.
>
>Sadly, you are correct. Such thingies exist.
"WITH VAMPIRE-SHOOTING CROSSBOW ACTION!!!"
--
Robert Sneddon nojay (at) nojay (dot) fsnet (dot) co (dot) uk
Robert Sneddon
>professionals study logistics"
Read "Ash: A Secret History" by Mary Gentle and you get the third part
of that triad -- "winners study finance".
It's a neat point in Eric Flint's book, "1632". King Adolphus is
impressed by the modern tech of the 20th centrury Americans, but he's
ecstatic when the financial network run by the Abramenels throws its lot
in with him, offering him cheap loans to pay for his logistics.
--
"Buy War Bonds!"
Andrew Plotkin
> Mark Atwood <m...@pobox.com> wrote in message news:<m3pu6dh...@khem.blackfedora.com>...
>>
>> becoming obsolete.
> Heck, what would happen if the opposing army got its hands on one of
> your teleporters?
> Zarf, you dealt with that, didn't you? "Spider and Web," I mean.
I barely waved a hand at the consequences. Other writers have done a
much better job.
(Someone help me think of one.)
Mark Atwood
>
> > Heck, what would happen if the opposing army got its hands on one of
> > your teleporters?
>
> > Zarf, you dealt with that, didn't you? "Spider and Web," I mean.
> I barely waved a hand at the consequences. Other writers have done a
> much better job.
> (Someone help me think of one.)
Um, I really dont want to mention this, but the one that springs to mind
is, well, the second half of _Battlefield Earth_.
Konrad Gaertner
>
> I met once an old man who had been a unit supply clerk in WW2. He was
> full of stories of trying to keep track of all the stuff his unit
> needed, trying to order replacements before they ran out, having
> requests for critical stuff get lost or arbitrarily denied, have
> request get denied and then shipped to them anyway, having wrong lots
> or the wrong stuff get shipped, receive stuff that was obviously
> life-or-death critical for some other unit but useless to them,
> mountains of critical and important stuff left rotting on docks
> because it's transit paperwork got lost or was in error or the
> paperwork said to load 200 tons into a 50 ton ship etc etc etc.
ObSF: Asprin's _M.Y.T.H. Inc. in Action_
--KG
Captain Button
> On Sunday 18 November 2001 07:56, LizM7 wrote:
>> What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
>>
>> By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
>> necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
>> overlooked the obvious.
> _Dune_ has something. People in the _Dune_ universe don't use firearms
> because bullets have too much kinetic energy to pass through personal
> force shields. You can't use shields on Arrakis because they drive the
> sandworms crazy. So why can't the Fremen use firearms? They seem to
> have a high enough tech level.
> One could say that Arrakis does not contain enough organic material to
> make explosives. The Fremen could import them with money from bootleg
> spice (the Fremen are already paying the spacer guild not to spy on
> them) or they could use magnetic acceleration.
Another gunpowder alternative is compressed air guns. No really,
IIRC this was tried at some point and you can get man-portable
deadly guns firing bullets with air pressure. They just aren't
as good as chemical firearms because they require more precise
metal-working (making them more expensive and harder to maintain),
and because the leakiness of the air tank requires frequent
repumping to maintain readiness.
But they would be a great advantage against unshielded Harkonnen
swordsmen.
--
"We have to go forth and crush every world view that doesn't believe in
tolerance and free speech," - David Brin
Captain Button - but...@io.com
Captain Button
> In article <3bf80087...@nntp.we.mediaone.net>,
> David T. Bilek <dbi...@mediaone.net> wrote:
>>Covenant read too many crappy fantasies. So the Land, a creation of
>>his own mind, reflected some of the standard tropes.
> It's interesting to me that when I read the books for the first
> time as a teenager, I felt strongly that this theory was unsupportable.
> I reread _Lord Foul's Bane_ and half of _The Illearth War_ this
> year, and it seemed clear to me that, while I could make arguments
> that the Land was "real" in some sense, it was *clearly* a
> reflection of Covenant's inner demons.
This reminds me of a thread here a few months ago where people
were complaining that in _The Illearth War_ we are told Hile
Troy is this brilliant military genius, but people pointed
out numerous reasons why he was nothing of the kind.
Someone then pointed out that this supports the idea
that the Land was just a delusion on Covenant's, and
Hile Troy was just Covenant's uniformed idea of what
a military genius would be like.
[ Why was a nut like Elena High Lord? stuff snipped ]
> I can't think of another set of books where my understanding of
> (as opposed to my liking for) what was going on has changed so
> drastically. It's like discovering that Gollum has become the
> hero of _LoTR_. Anyone else have such an experience?
In the Sime~Gen series I had a transforming revelation when
I realized that the real purposes of the drugs given to Pen
Gens are not the stated ones of preventing revolt and increasing
fertility. The real benefit of those drugs is to ensure
any changeovers in the Pens die. Meaning that the Pen system
not only murders endless numbers of gens, but endless numbers
of Simes also.
This reduces the major setting hole of the series (the
demographics problem of junct Sime society) from utterly
impossible to merely absurdly improbable.
The other Simes are just in denial about this necessity.
J Greely
>No really, IIRC this was tried at some point and you can get
>man-portable deadly guns firing bullets with air pressure.
More than tried, they were quite popular as hunting weapons for
a while, and even got some formal military use. Quick overview:
http://www.airguns.net/history.html
-j
Johnny1A
> LizM7 said:
>
> >What gaping setting holes in SF have you run into?
> >
> >By "setting holes" I mean obvious flaws in world-building - not
> >necessarily a scientific error, but a place where the author has
> >overlooked the obvious.
>
> "hunt for ancient alien artifacts" tales) in which there was fairly common
> interplanetary and FTL interstellar space travel -- and on the Earth, there was
> _an energy crisis so bad that people no longer used personal ground vehicles_.
>
> It apparently did not occur to the author that whatever the spaceships were
> using for power could be used to power the Earthly grid -- and that if for
> some reason this wasn't possible, the spaceships could be used to loft a solar
> power satellite system. I would have accepted this if the author had made it be
> some weird ground-grubber superstitions that prevented them from using either
> solution, but apparently the author did not even grasp that either of the two
> solutions were possible.
In general, SF stories that display 'Dysonian' level technology, and
yet have the heroes and villains living on planetary surfaces,
complete with weather-related plot developments and living in
single-family dwellings that might have been pulled from the suburbs
of Chicago.
A couple of examples: The "Giants" trilogy by James Hogan. The first
one wasn't too bad about this, the second pushed it, the third book
shattered all limits. The third book, _Giant's Star_, has the aliens
building deep-space power plants with components _five thousand miles_
long, transmitting energy across interstellar distances through
artificial black holes. The figure given for the alien society's
total energy usage is "about one lunar mass per day". They derive
this matter from the "core's of dead stars", I think Hogan was
referring to white dwarf stellar remnants.
OK, one lunar mass per day is very roughly 74 _million trillion_
metric tons. I apply E=MC^2, and I get E=1.85*10^33 kilowatt-hours.
The Sun generates, by comparison, roughly about 8.64*10^24
kilowatt-hours per day. So, the aliens are using a power budget 200
million times the output of Sol.
Where do they live? On planetary surfaces, communicating by
mind-links and virtual reality, and _Earth's_ supposed military power
is needed for the decisive showdown. Excuse me? Something isn't
computing here. (Incidentally, since Sol and their homestar are
supposedly in the same region of the Milky Way, and they've been there
for millions of years, I'm not sure why their society is not the
brightest radio object in the sky. I don't know if Hogan considered
it, but if there's any waste energy at all with that power budget,
everyone with a radio receiver as good as Marconi's should know it!)
Another example: the Lensman Series. I hate to criticise Doc Smith,
since the SF community owes so much to him, but even he makes this
error. The figures for energy use of the ships and machines in the
Lensman Universe are gargantuan, and yet the characters drive
automobiles, live in recognizable cities, and so on. There is a gap
here between the stated energy levels and the society that the energy
powers and sustains.
Shermanlee
Courtenay Footman
Captain Button wrote:
>Wild-eyed conspiracy theorists insist that on Mon, 19 Nov 2001 21:02:21 +0000, David Cowie <david_co...@lineone.net> wrote:
>> On Sunday 18 November 2001 07:56, LizM7 wrote:
>
>Another gunpowder alternative is compressed air guns. No really,
>IIRC this was tried at some point and you can get man-portable
>deadly guns firing bullets with air pressure.
Air rifle is an Olympic sport.
--
Courtenay Footman I have again gotten back on the net, and
c...@lightlink.com again I will never get anything done.
(All mail from non-valid addresses is automatically deleted by my system.)
Geoduck
wrote:
A recent episode of the program 'Junkyard Wars' had a team building a
cannon using this principle.
--
Geoduck
http://www.olywa.net/cook
Lee DeRaud
wrote:
[snip]
>Possible SPOILER for _Dune_
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>*
>
>But a lasgun fired into a shield triggers an atomic-level explosion -- as has
>been known for millennia, which is why they don't use lasguns on the
>battlefield. Yet, until the Fremen use this as a deliberate tactic, and later
>Paul Atreides blows a hole through the Shield Wall this way, apparently nobody
>thinks of doing this on purpose.
Smallish nit-pick: IIRC, he actually used some of the Atriedes 'family
atomics' to blow the Shield Wall...there was some discussion/debate
about this, hand-waved away as being used only against an inanimate
'target'.
And people *do* "think of doing this on purpose" (shield-lasgun
interaction) in that universe: early on, they find a Harkonnen booby-
trap based on that principle, and Paul and Thufir (or maybe Gurney, I
forget which) discuss how it would be indistinguishable from atomics.
As near as I can remember, the *only* reason for that passage was to
get the "Great Convention" point across.
Lee
Jordan S. Bassior
>And people *do* "think of doing this on purpose" (shield-lasgun
>interaction) in that universe: early on, they find a Harkonnen booby-
>trap based on that principle, and Paul and Thufir (or maybe Gurney, I
>forget which) discuss how it would be indistinguishable from atomics.
>As near as I can remember, the *only* reason for that passage was to
>get the "Great Convention" point across.
My problem is that given that people know how to do this, I don't see how it
could possibly be prevented from being used as a standard weapon. Lasguns and
shields are both fairly common -- far more so than nuclear weapons are on the
Earth of c. 2000. If nothing else, troops in desperate situations would
improvise battlefield nukes out of these weapons, and face the music later.
Steve Holland
The difference is that the Dune universe has an extremely stable
and conservative society where major infractions of the Great
Convention, are punished by planetary annihilation. It's hard to
believe that this sort of feudal society could last for 10,000 years,
but given that it did the conventions that govern behaviour in that
society must be very strong. I suspect that most troops in the Dune
universe have a death-before-dishonour approach to life that would
prevent most of them from violating the Great Convention. In the
cases where violations do happen they would be either covered up, or
severely punished to the point that the violator's fate would be worse
than if he had just left he lasgun alone.
=====================================================================
To find out who and where I am look at:
http://www.nd.edu/~sholland/index.html
Spammers: Please send spam to: ab...@aol.com and ab...@yahoo.com
=====================================================================
James Nicoll
Steve Holland <hol...@origo.ifa.au.dk> wrote:
>
> The difference is that the Dune universe has an extremely stable
>and conservative society where major infractions of the Great
>Convention, are punished by planetary annihilation. It's hard to
>believe that this sort of feudal society could last for 10,000 years,
>but given that it did the conventions that govern behaviour in that
>society must be very strong. I suspect that most troops in the Dune
>universe have a death-before-dishonour approach to life that would
>prevent most of them from violating the Great Convention. In the
>cases where violations do happen they would be either covered up, or
>severely punished to the point that the violator's fate would be worse
>than if he had just left he lasgun alone.
There should be room in the Dune universe for a 47 Ronin
type story where a lord is out in the position of appearing to have
violated the Great Convention and after he and his family pay the
price, his now unemployed retainers avent him.
Jordan S. Bassior
\
> The difference is that the Dune universe has an extremely stable
>and conservative society where major infractions of the Great
>Convention, are punished by planetary annihilation. It's hard to
>believe that this sort of feudal society could last for 10,000 years,
>but given that it did the conventions that govern behaviour in that
>society must be very strong.
I don't even see how it's possible, because it would be an obvious trick to set
a lasgun-shield explosion and frame a rival House for it. I also think that
given normal cultural drift at the periphery (even before the Great Scattering)
you would see "barbarians" emerge who were perfectly willing to violate the
Convention left and right.
I could see a Convention like this lasting for a century or so, but Herbert has
it last for a hundred times as long. (Though note, it's broken in the end --
Paul and Leto II have no compunction against using atomics themselves).
This is actually a specific instance of a more general plausibility problem in
Herbert -- things are just too stable, even before and after Leto II's reign
(when there is a specific reason for it).
Steve Holland
> I don't even see how it's possible, because it would be an obvious
> trick to set a lasgun-shield explosion and frame a rival House for
> it.
I suspect that the lack of radioactive fallout would be a strong
clue that the explosion was not atomic. If that is the case then it
would not be possible to frame a rival House this way.
> I also think that given normal cultural drift at the periphery (even
> before the Great Scattering) you would see "barbarians" emerge who
> were perfectly willing to violate the Convention left and right.
How are they going to deliver their atomics with-out the Guild?
This sort of thing probably does happen from time to time, but when it
does the response would be overwhelming: the entire Universe against
the barbarian House Bassior. This is dealt with, to a degree, in the
prequels.
> I could see a Convention like this lasting for a century or so, but
> Herbert has it last for a hundred times as long. (Though note, it's
> broken in the end -- Paul and Leto II have no compunction against
> using atomics themselves).
Yeah, 10,000 years is far too long. It's a good example of a
set-up that is nessessary to make a story work, but doesn't bear too
close examination. The Dune universe really depends on the Guild
monopoly on spaceflight and their willingness to ccut off any planet
which violates the Great Convention. It's possible that violations
abound, but that those planets are now cut off from the rest of the
Imperium by the light-speed barrier.