Invisibility Cloak: Well, true invisibility cloaks don’t exist for essentially the same reasons that you can’t have Stealth In Space for fear of roasting yourself, plus the double-blind effect. But the ambioptic transceiver, a rather nifty piece of quantum nanotech for simultaneously transmitting and receiving photons across a
Intrepid Merchant: The entire culture associated with free traders in space; in the more advanced parts of the stargate plexus, there are enough crumbs dropped by the big shipping firms for them to get along by picking them up, and in its farther and less developed reaches, mail contracts, small
And now to the comment I wanted to answer: Back on “Trope-a-Day: Intimidating Revenue Service“, Mark Atwood commented: On the other hand, I do wonder what the various access fees, use fees, and voluntary organization membership fees all add up to. The two examples I am thinking of are: For
(Seeing as it has become relevant as background information to a comment reply I plan to make soon, a summary.) Well, the first obvious question is “does the Empire even have taxation?” This is a matter of some controversy, for values of controversy equal to “the Empire says it doesn’
Intimidating Revenue Service: The Imperial Revenue is really quite happy and fluffy as an organization; it helps that thanks to the Empire’s by-explicit-act only citizenship and please-agree-to-this-to-enter border crossings, the tax really is opt-in for almost everyone; that the Empire Services Fee really is The Tax, a single one
In The Future Humans People Will Be One Race: Averted. It is perhaps possible (as the original trope points out) for this to happen naturally over a long enough time scale, but even the possible candidates for sticking around long enough for that timescale have generally taken to inventing about
“If you want to learn how to make worlds, come to the University of Talentar. Our rusty world and its youthful wine-dark – and wine-colored, red as a fine Vintiver port – seas have been the test-bed for every ecopoetic technique in the manual. Since first Copperfall, we’ve changed the face
The Internet Is For Porn: No, no, no. The Empire’s cultural values see to that. The Internet is for really awfully high-class erotic literature, watchvids, InVids, slinkies, and other media. Now, the galactic extranet, a lot of that is for porn. Or at least you think it’s porn
Internal Affairs: Threefold, actually, in the form of the Threefold Auditors of Impropriety, three departments only united at the level of the Stellar Council which audit the entire Imperial Service, including both the Watch Constabulary and the Imperial Military Service. In addition to the different institutional perspectives deliberately maintained by
Intergenerational Friendship: Ubiquitous in Imperial society, given both how very long lifespan is compared to generation (any given generation is a small demographic segment indeed, and therefore… and besides, after the first century or so, does it really matter?). And also the low birthrate mentioned under Immortal Procreation Clause meaning
It is a truism of celestial warfare that among the most valuable targets to seize in the course of a major planetary assault operation is the primary planetary starport or local starports close to the  intended target(s) of the operation. Starports, for all the obvious reasons, make perfect orbitheads,
Intelligent Gerbil: I’m working really hard to avert this one, except – quite – in the case of the uplifts (in whose case, retaining the mental characteristics of its animal ancestors that are compatible with sophoncy and civilization is half the point; in a world in which data is trivially shared,