The sculpted hull of the starship rose impossibly skyward, looming over the queuing passengers as if it might fall upon them any minute. Gleaming chrome and gold, it shone in the sunlight against the black-painted metal of the stardock. The subdued roar of its warming engines, readying themselves to propel
Mary Sue Topia: Well, of course. If you donât want one of these (especially with regard to, say, No Poverty), whatâs wrong with you? (And, for that matter and rather more smugly to say, if you donât have one of these, you arenât trying hard enough.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE Partial Service Restoration, Spinward Constellations; Possible Coreward Outages Expected Outer Ring Netweavers, ICC, is pleased to announce that full extranet service, including open-service relays, has been restored to the Galith Waste, Frentish Nebula, and Cordai Gap constellations. Service has also been fully restored to regions of the
No Poverty: Played straight in the Empire â and indeed the entire Core Economic Zone. Well, at least as far as absolute poverty goes. Let us consider, for example, the hypothetical lowest-income citizen-shareholder in the Empire, someone who certainly doesnât exist, having never had a single original, marketable thought in
âSpace may be silent, but itâs easy to tell how the shipâs maneuvering from the noise inside. Cold-gas thrusters hiss. Hypergolics hiss too, with a harsher metallic note, bangs and pings. Hydroxy rockets, they roar. Solid packs are similar, but rougher, with underlying stutters and clicks. Fusion torches
Rich in Dollars, Poor in Sense: Part of the problem â to an extent, sense being defined as specifically those kinds of it that apply in scarcity economies â the Empire and its economic peers have in relating to the rest of the galaxy, specifically those parts of it that arenât
âProgress begins with someone saying: âThere has to be a better way to do thisâ. This, then, must be the basis of techneprax morality: never to fail to ask that question.â â prologue, Eternal Progress, Ianthe Claves-ith-Claves Elinaeth
Marked Bullet: You can actually buy gun add-ons to engrave the flechettes (with elegant and situationally relevant haiku, even, in the case of the Eye-in-the-Flame Warrior-Poet Gun) â granted, itâs too small to read with the naked eye, and itâs almost impossible that it will be readable post-impact â as
LANDING, SARAGĂS â âThe future of SaragĂłs as an independent world today hangs in the balance, as the Iltine Unionâs true intentions in keeping its primary fleet elements at home were revealed in a surprise attack on the freesoil world SaragĂłs, on the rim of the Osis Deep constellation. Behind
For those with a curiosity as to why this automatically constitutes three or four crimes rather than one, at least in legal terms, the answer is that the Imperial legal system, unlike ours, works very hard to make its charges atomic. That is to say, each individual part of the
Marital Rape License: Hah. The only difference in Imperial law between non-marital and marital rape is that in the latter you go from committing three crimes, two of them capital, to committing four crimes, three of them capital (the extra one being Infiduciarity, which becomes capitalized due to the precise
Manipulative Bastard: The right (or wrong) kind of professional memeticist (or related professions, such as lawyers â the technical term for one kind, for example is nomomach, freely glossable âwar-lawyerâ). The Office of Warrior Philosophy, for example, is full of the militarized subspecialty of this, but itâs hardly the only