Congratulations, my students, on your successful completion of the first half of Ontological Engineering. When you return in two months, it will be time for each of you to choose the research project you’ll be carrying out for the next two years. And with regard to that, I would
(No, don’t worry, I’m not turning into a political blogger, here.) But I did read an interesting little hypothesis which means I may need to revise my little internal guess as to what the Empire’s Gini coefficient, or your preferred measure of income inequality, is.  (I say
One of the most potent of these extremely rare drugs is the unassuming, shimmering nanofluid sold as cháldar. The nanites suspended within the fluid are a modification of the standard brain-alteration nanites used for downloading mind-states into organic brains, modified to have an erratic temporary effect. One who injects a
And I Must Scream: The number of things that one could theoretically do that fall into this category, given the dark side of virtual reality (where torture can’t kill you, only make you wish you were dead) and the ability to pervert sophotechnology, is as infinite as the possibilities
Ambition Is Evil: Averted. This is the sort of thing (along with the human cultural notion that seems incapable of separating “ambition” from “total backstabbing fuckery”) that would strike the Imperials as utter irrationalist lunacy. “Sure… pursuing one’s goals, achievement, progress, advancement, and deeds of renown without peer are
And, based on that last story, it looks like I’ve elected to use the Egan-style ve/ver/vis pronouns for the neuter gender (the friend, although it never comes up, was a kaliatar; a neuter member of a trisexual species). Still haven’t settled on which English pronouns to
I will find my death here in the Exclaves. He – that outworlder – beat my friend to death. Not for profit. Not for a plan or a revenge or some twisted necessity. Slowly, and for his pleasure, because ve was an alien, and he hated all that was wider than his
Wealth is not virtuous. Wealth is virtue. Does gold have value? Does silver, or polished kal-gems, cogs or brights or stones or staves, bars or bills, serren-shells or scrip, shares of stock or notes of hand? Can shining metal feed you? Can a mound of scrip build a home? Will
Ambiguous Robots: Between one advancement and another, mechanical robots, biological bioroids, cybernetic implants for biological bodies (including nanocytes and nanosomes), biological organ-implants for mechanical bodies (including skin and flesh coverings, with active nerve integration), and biomimetic materials… well, yes, the middle ground is getting rather ambiguous, isn’t it? Half
“No, we’re not a democracy, or so they say. They, of course, ignore that the Senate’s Chamber of the People is randomly selected from all our citizen-shareholders, and also ignore planets like Viëlle, that uses the totality of the population as its planetary Assembly, or Meryn, where ever-changing
Ancient Keeper: Remember those elder-race archives left behind by dead civilizations? And the Living Relic mind-states found therein? At least some of those are these, in the form of the index/assistant/librarian AIs that used to manage the archive before it became a relic of a dead civilization. Some
Ambiguous Clone Ending: …as pointed out back in Cloning Blues, people are really quite comfortable with the pattern theory of identity and their personal self-awareness, so no-one from the advanced bits of the galaxy is going to angst over maybe not being the real one, because they all know that