Trope-a-Day: Great Big Library of Everything

Alistair Young

Mar 24, 2017

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 Apart from containing copies of every work in every medium published anywhere in the Empire and many of the unpublished ones too, it routinely sends out collections agents to make sure it has a copy of any work it can get its hands on anywhere else within its light-cone, too. (Such agents can be quite persistent. The Black Chamber does not like to take no for an answer.)

← Things to See, Places (Not) to Go (9) | At Least It's Not Corpse Flower →

Nom

“Consider, gentle reader, that even as the flesh of an Emperor, or of any man, is constituted of what he eats, so then is an Empire, in bones and sinew, constituted of what it eats. “Therefore, to maintain the health, and to avoid the manifestations of ill-nutrition, unseemly bloat, or

Shipshape

I saw this picture today, via an Astral Codex Ten post on distinguishing human art from AI art, but that is not the context in which I reference it: Instead, I merely point out that it would be an accurate representation of what the Royal Alatian (later Imperial) Navy would

My To-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours

Pressed bean curds are a common item in many Eliéran cuisines, in recipes both savory and sweet. I refer to them using this long description since, despite being identical in many ways and produced from the same small group of plants, they are one of the very few foodstuffs to

Crazy Eddie

As a brief cultural note, today, I happened to be looking something up on the Atomic Rockets Future Mythology page, and was reminded of Crazy Eddie. (The one from Larry Niven & Jerry Pournelle's The Mote in God's Eye, obviously. Even if, sad to say, that

Read more

Nom

Shipshape

My To-Fu Is Stronger Than Yours

Crazy Eddie