Cult Colony: Averted initially, because sublight colonization was so ludicrously expensive that “cults” couldn’t possibly have afforded it. Played straighter once the stargate plexus made it easier to get to new worlds, with a side-note that the failure rate – for which read death rate – of these is particularly high;
Cryonics Failure: While not nearly as bad as some of the examples given under the trope – for example, with the exception of the ill-fated Valiár (Thirteen Colonies) mission, whose failure was the result of engine defects rather than cryonics problems, virtually all of the cryostatic colonists were revived safely on
“INASMUCH as the proven success of the Thirteen Colonies and their foundation by means of lighthugger colony ships has demonstrated the viability of such starships for interstellar voyaging; “And inasmuch as the reconnection of the Thirteen Colonies to the metropolitan Empire and our Reunification has demonstrated the potential of the
Here’s the next six cards (previous 1-6, 7-12). Only six more to go! 13. THE CITY The marble spires of the city pierce the heavens, roofed in gleaming gold and copper and silver, and tunnels below delve deep into the earth. Balconies and plazas are crowded with people of
Cross-Cultural Handshake: While there are any number of othercultural handshakes, the standard Common Social Protocol greeting, based off an old Eldraeic one, is a simple brush of manipulator against manipulator (note: brush, don’t grip), which is something that just about every species can handle to some degree. [A comment
This came up on the conlang/conculture mailing lists: Ursula K. LeGuin writes some really gorgeous stub-languages into her fiction.  In a lovely short story called “Dancing to Ganam” in her collection A Fisherman of the Inland Sea, I paused to earmark this: “Tezyeme,” he said, which meant something on
Creepy Monotone: While they don’t really intend to, more than a few Imperials come off this way (even if it’s actually more of a calm monotone, really) to more naturally-emotive cultures. It’s another minor drawback/side effect of the calmness/rationality/serenity that comes from having your
“If we had a translocator, we’d have a mass reactor… which could power a translocator.”
Dissonant Serenity: Actually very common among Imperials, for two reasons. First, the standard modification to the epinephrine system to make it promote rather than suppress higher-level prefrontal/frontal brain functions, on the grounds that most disasters, crises and battles one runs into in the modern world require more advanced problem-solving
For those wondering about some of the technical background: The chief obstacles to using “normal” computers in space are heat generation (given the average spacecraft’s limited heat budget – disposing of heat in vacuum is hard), cooling (because in microgravity, convection doesn’t work – there go heat-sinks without a lot
“…things have changed since the old days, gentlesophs. If you were paying attention in history class, you’ll have learned all about the exotica they had to use to compute in the early days of spaceflight, but anything you’ll work with on a starship now will be familiar to
Crapsaccharine World: The Equality Concord. Sure, it’s a fully-functioning Communist utopia, full of happy people working away, enjoying socially approved recreational activities, and going home each night to their loving families – from each according to their abilities, to each according to their needs, with seemingly no blots on the