Future Imperfect: Generally averted, due to the historical greater continuity of civilization (“It has been 7,921 years since the last interregnum.”), general better record-keeping (thanks to the Repository of All Knowledge, et. al., and a religious climate that favors the burning of book-burners, and so forth), and, of course, people who live a long, long time and don’t forget much.
Gentles all, I ask but one thing of you in your scholarship: while you may and should, of course, describe the cliodynamic tendencies leading up to the states and systems you study, and the tendencies inherent in those states and systems that may push them in a particular direction, you
There are those who have commented extensively on the military advantages, when considering the rise of the Empire, of highly disciplined legionaries able to cast obstacles aside or strike down enemies with lightning, all through force of will. Far fewer have considered the greater advantage, in economic terms, of the
Something that came up over on G+ – in the course of discussing how many pre-spaceflight eldrae are still around (answer: lots, even if you discount the deep-submergence infomorphs and Transcendent afterlife, and even if some of them spent a while as frozen heads) – which I repeat here for general edification:
[Based, obviously, upon this.] This inscription is a warning and a safeguard. Pay attention to it! Sending this message was important to us. We considered ourselves to be a wise culture. Though we may have failed, we wish for you to succeed. This place is not a place of honor.
The Alathciera (lit. “weave-of-knowledge”) is the great encyclopedia published by the Repository of All Knowledge. It is a hypermedia encyclopedia containing 3×1218 bits of information, making up 2×1211 articles, based on the Repository’s 9,000 years of scholarship, and making up an abridged set of the full
If you’re coming to the Vector, your first stop is going to be Axiom Station, the tip of the beanstalk descending to Asymptote, the Vector’s capital, jack city, and safe harbor. Everywhere else in the system, from the solar corona to the Shards, is full to the gunwales
Great Big Library of Everything: The Empire’s Repository of All Knowledge, which is exactly what it says on the tin. Apart from containing copies of every work in every medium published anywhere in the Empire and many of the unpublished ones too, it routinely sends out collections agents to
(Okay, so I found one more…) Names to Run Away From Really Fast: In the Imperial context alone, Imperial Hand, Fifth Directorate, and any Imperial military officer, agent, or private contractor whose House name is “Sargas” are the chief contenders. In the Worlds as a whole, Operatives of the Conclave
So why is that a Trope-a-No-Longer-Day, I hear you cry? Well, because I’ve run out of pre-written ones, and the demands on my time these days are such that – especially if I want to keep prioritizing writing at all – I can’t take enough time out to go through
Creepy Cleanliness: To more than a few foreign visitors, yes. As William Gibson said in Disneyland With the Death Penalty, “Was it Laurie Anderson who said that VR would never look real until they learned how to put some dirt in it? Singapore’s airport, the Changi Airtropolis, seemed to
Real Money Trade: The problem is that it’s hard to define what qualifies as “real money” versus “game money” when the Mythic Stars MMO alone has an internal economy bigger than some respectably-sized planets. The logical consequences of this apply in full, including the follow-up to the city guards