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
“Minley Traveler, you are denied landing permission at Qechra Down, technical eval. Maintain standard orbit, eight of twelve. Do you desire re-routing to Qechra Orbital? Qechra Local, over.” “Ah, Qechra Local, clarify technical eval? Minley Traveler, over.” “Minley Traveler, we have low confidence in your structural fitness for re-entry. Qechra
Cosmopolitan Council: The Presidium, and indeed the Conclave of Galactic Polities as a whole. On a more local level, the Imperial Senate, and indeed its analogs in other polyspecific societies.
The following, as is the preceding one and will be the other seven entries in the series, are extracts from the Word of the Flame, the record of the seeress Merriéle’s visions that is also the primary text of the Church of the Flame, the mainstream eldraeic religion. More
Cosmic Chess Game: Some say that this is what the assorted stable seed AIs are playing with the entirety of known space and its civilizations. Others say that that’s just incurably paranoid. The former respond that that’s exactly what they’d expect the pawns of the incomprehensibly ultratech
We met for the first time on Qechra, the world of forges. One morning at sunrise, standing on the Bridge of Chalcedony crossing the endless outpouring of Qechra’s ocean into one of its cooling gorges – where the spray of the falling water meets the steam boiling up from the