For sundry reasons which are assuredly of no interest to you, gentle readers, I have been granted an abundance of writing time, something which for the past year and a half I have been eking out in dribs and drabs here and there. So, this weekend notwithstanding, you should hopefully
The Immodest Orgasm: While this is unlikely to ever appear on screen… well, despite not being quite the hedonists the Culture are – having a few other things to do other than amuse the Minds – they do have access to high levels of biotechnology, and believe in excellence in all things.
Order in Council, 64th Meeting of the Stellar Council, 4941. We deem it regrettable that the once-proud name of the Valonar Interactate, once associated with the highest ideals of liberty and technological progress and a beacon for civilization in the Expansion Regions, has now become a byword for the fall
I’m Melting: This is what happens to people who are being devoured by certain types of nanoweapons (the generic name is nanoburn) whose mode of functioning is to rip you apart, molecular fragment by molecular fragment, until what’s left is a pile of organic sludge. This is, of
I’m a Humanitarian: There is, of course, absolutely nothing special about the tissues of sophont species – yours or others’ – that stops them from being grown as fauxflesh in a carniculture vat in the exact same way that any other tissues can. It’s certainly, ah, outré (I believe is
I Know Your True Name: In the Empire, the UCID (Universal Citizen Identifier), or for non-citizen-shareholders, its lesser cousin the SI (Sophont Identifier) is a unique and unambiguous technological True Name. You can’t do much with it, though, unless you also happen to have the proper ackles, which they
“I Know You’re In There Somewhere” Fight: Averted. If you think one of these is going on, you’re being Wrong Genre Savvy, and quite possibly, you’re being suckered by someone who thinks that they know that you’re Wrong Genre Savvy. Neither downloading-and-replacement, nor editing into compliance
IKEA Weaponry: There are a number of these, mostly analogous to their real-world equivalents. The exception is Eye-in-the-Flame Arms’s Puzzle Pistol, which is a 3D puzzle made from geometric chunks of blue-black diamondoid that can be disassembled from its polyhedral resting form and reassembled into an oddly-shaped cartridge (i.
Tempting as it is, I should probably not declare the official English translation of the Eldraeic “elén tramoc arkúël” (“servitor-robot blobs”) to be “shoggothim”…
I Don’t Like The Sound Of That Place: The Last Darkness constellation (centered around the black hole, Eye of Night) would be one of these – even though it’s actually quite a nice place to visit – as would the three stargates leading into the Leviathan Consciousness Containment Zone, Hell’
I Did What I Had To Do: This is the defining trope of the Fifth Directorate, whose entire existence as a too-black-to-even-have-a-budget quasi-independent, not asked about and definitely never telling, doing things which not only should decent people not know about but which it is important that they don’t
Having used the word, guess I should define it, huh? sédármódan (pej.): 1. Democrat. 2. Voter. 3. Mutual slaver (lit. “owned owner-of-sophonts”); compare dármódan (“slaver”). It should be noted that the definition of this term reflects Imperial local attitudes and political taxonomies, in which any governance apparatus not meeting their