Alistair Young

Trope-a-Day: Hyperspace Arsenal

Hyperspace Arsenal: Given a nanolathe, some raw materials, any required rare components, and a little time to do on-demand manufacturing… essentially, see Hammerspace.

Trope-a-Day: Hammerspace

Hammerspace: While there is no actual Hammerspace technology – yet, the ontotechs are still working on it (see: Bigger on the Inside) – the ability of the ubiquitous desktop nanoforge and the hand-held nanolathe to produce small objects essentially on demand does create much of the same effect as being able to

Tárvalén Awaiting (1/2)

The statue stood in the center of the temple’s atrium, a tall stern-browed figure, its left arm holding a bundle of scrolls while its right hand reached down to rest upon the head of, and scratch behind the ears of, the wolfish bandal sitting by its side. With the

Painful Nuances

“I am an algetic composer. I am not a torturer.” “Indeed, I can recite more detailed information about the selective stimulation of pain centers than most people. That doesn’t change the reality of what I do, you understand? I am not some damned savage dealing out pain for interrogation

Trope-a-Day: Bigger on the Inside

Bigger on the Inside: Averted… so far (as referenced in Stop Fittling With That and its Author’s Notes).  The possibility is acknowledged to exist – the field of ontotechnology is working on it even now, in the present of their timeline, under the generic name of “dimensional transcendence”, and it

Trope-a-Day: Ave Machina

Ave Machina: Smile when you say that, squishie! Well, sort of.  The Imperials subscribe to the elegance of design, logic, and purity of the machine parts of the trope, but, well, this is a trans/postsophontist setting (even outside the Empire, which completely idealizes those notions, nothing-but-the-pure-flesh baselines are rare,

Is There In Death No Beauty?

High in the mountains of Cimoníë lies the black-spired citadel of the Aellakhassren, the Order of Beautiful Death, the finest students of ktenology the Empire has to offer.  Not death-worshippers, they would have us be clear; their order takes Ithával and Kalasané as exemplars, save those few who, by profession,

Speculativism Index

The Speculativism Index, under any of its names, is a crude clionomic hack used by free traders, weirdseekers, adventurers, and various other professions which necessarily interact with the starbound and minority civilizations of the known Galaxy in a more amateurish way than the Grand Survey or the Exploratory Service. The

Trope-a-Day: Deus Est Machina

Deus Est Machina: Done deliberately and intentionally.  When you build a recursively self-improving seed AI, the kind that turns into, in the lingo, a “weakly godlike superintelligence”, then you have to know that you’re committing a willful act of theogeny, right there.  Doubly so when you’re building a

Six Simple Machines

In today’s random conlanging post – the Eldraeic terms for the six simple machines, just because I could: rijvas Inclined plane. rijsevas Wedge (“double-sided inclined plane”, more or less) saejas Screw (originally “circular inclined plane”, then worn down) chalél / charét Wheel / axle sekánlél Lever (“stick that moves things not itself”

For The Honor of the Second

The drone stood in the hangar, its blunt nose and forward-swept wings scarred with the black lines of kinetic strikes and near-misses with explosive-tipped missiles, the capped remnant of one sensory pod dangling uselessly from its side. “For great valor in the face of the enemy,” the Wing Commander read,

Trope-a-Day: Hive Mind

Hive Mind: The Transcend is not a traditional Hive Mind, it’s a collective consciousness, or group intellect.  The difference, as it will point out to you at some considerable length, is that all of the members retain their individual personalities and perspectives as well as contributing to the whole,