trope-a-day
Sliding Scale of Shiny Versus Gritty: In general, the Empire and the Photonic Network hit shiny the hardest of anything, in the former’s case for ideological reasons combined with the fact that decaying things just drive them nuts. Everything is shiny, polished, gleaming, and in perfect working order… including
law
“While it is necessary to examine data from early Imperial history (before the instantiation of the Transcend and its immediate precursors, and to an extent even before the advent of modern meme rehab) to see this trend clearly, from the perspective of the typical Worlds criminologist vis-a-vis Imperial forensic psychedesigners,
robot
Sliding Scale of Robot Intelligence: All of it. Much of the automation, autofac segments, and other component-type robots are bricks. Utility spiders and other functional motiles are robo-monkeys. More sophisticated robots, like the coordinating members of a pack of utility spiders, are idiot-savant average joe androids. Thinkers and digisapiences are
trope-a-day
Sliding Scale of Law Enforcement: Standards vary acutely, depending on where in the Worlds you are. The Empire’s Watch Constabulary and the PPLs signatory to the Warden-Bastion Compact occupy the idealistic end of the scale (well, one idealistic end of the scale, since they’re perfectly happy to shoot
Imperial Exploratory Service
Of course, what I didn’t establish in the previous posting is exactly where the Empress Eledíë-class fits into the line-up of starship classes used by the Imperial Exploratory Service, so that I shall expand upon in this post. The short answer is: basically, pretty much in the middle, in
trope-a-day
Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Played straight at both ends. The greater galaxy, by and large, is a cynical place. It may not be a Crapsack World – hell, it doesn’t even come close to a Crapsack World – but it is a realistic universe – which is to say, entirely
Empress Eledíë-class explorer
So, if you were following my G+, this is what I said this morning: Well, since The Martian , and seeing their gorgeous model of Hermes , I’ve had a real urge to design the Empress Eledíë-class explorer, which one might be able to claim resembles its bigger, upteched, somewhat more
trope-a-day
Slave Race: Actually, mostly averted (with the provisos mentioned under Slave Mooks) – since We Will Use Manual Labor in the Future is averted, apart from war (again, see Slave Mooks, and preferably with tactical enslavement) about the only practical use of biological slaves is “pleasure slaves” (for which, obviously, one’
Darkness Within
MET 185-14+10 So the air, not so delicious, and getting less so by the minute. What is delicious? This sandwich, battered as it is. Alwyn, I recant every harsh thought I ever had about you. Or about your lamentable taste in lóskith-stinking food from the Dominions. One decent sandwich
worldbuilding
An interesting little article here from Charlie Stross (h/t Winchell Chung), concerning China’s new “credit score” system that incorporates all sorts of other social information and which looks to be shaping up into a horrendous mechanism of total social control, the way they’re using it. This, of
trope-a-day
Slave Mooks: There are some species and polities that like to keep these around (often AIs or other disfavored “not-people” in the eyes of galactic bigots, although that tends to come with special risks; see Robot War), and some people – well, for ultimate values of complete bastards, people – do this
Wayseeker
(Well, obviously I’ve been thinking about Mars rovers since yesterday’s movie-watching, so here, have some inspiration results…) “…the Wayseeker rover, launched by the Spaceflight Initiative in 2208 and arriving in the following year, was the first Talentar probe to make use of a polymorphic software-derived artificial intelligence to