So, Gregory Johnson was asking about education: On a tangentially related note (to firmish SF), how does education work exactly, in your universe? It has been implied in several places that skills get basically downloaded (or can be), while it still takes to age 18 or so to be educated
Old-School Dogfighting: No. Just no, except for specialized orbit-to-atmosphere interceptor craft that would more properly be described as “fighter-interceptor aircraft with limited suborbital capability”. Ain’t no air in space. Ain’t no space fighters, either – hanging the mass of a meatbody and its life support, including acceleration limits, off
Oh My Gods: Occasionally played straight – although usually invoking one eikone or their attributes by name, rather than a generic exclamation. (It helps to be specific.) Not, however, seen in curse-word type invocations – that tends to be invocation of entropy or its aspects, the canonical example being “Shit and waste
Ienith Steamweaver tried and failed to restrain a grin as the techs tightened the straps holding him down, hooked up his oxygen mask, and slammed the hatch of the Skyreach capsule shut above him. It was happening. It was happening today. He was going to orbit. …on top of a
Of The People: Possibly averted. While the species name eldrae (which means nothing, except etymologically) is derived from the proto-Old-Empires el daratha, “the People”, that was not a tribe term, but rather a species term, in opposition to everything else, literally meaning “the thinking ones”. Compare, for example, modern el
Obstructive Code of Conduct: The Imperials would certainly argue that the Fundamental Contract, with its insistence on protecting people’s life, liberty, property, and contracts would be one of these. (Of course, some non-Imperials would point out that, given the very large number of societies in the Galaxy that aren’
While they are used on many colonies, due to the extremely small investment in infrastructure required, Sialhaith (Lumenna III) is the world on which the modern airship has reached its apotheosis. In Sialhaith’s hot, thick atmosphere – the planetary ecopoesis program was bought out and effectively terminated in its 150th
Obstructive Bureaucrat: Somewhat averted to begin with; a lot of what makes bureaucrats characteristically bureaucrats is that they’re supposed to operate in a manner practically void of discretion, as good little cogs executing according to the procedure manual and not much more. The Empire never had the population demographics
Or, the Difficult Worldbuilding Compromises that Result when You Didn’t Design Everything at the Same Time. It has been (entirely correctly) pointed out over on Google+ that this is not how wormholes, as we understand them today, would work. (Because they’d work like this.) This is one of
The reporter looked dubiously at his sandwich. “So this is made entirely of yeast?” “Absolutely! Nutriyeast spread on yeast-fermented yeast product with a steaming bulb of yeast-synthesized theobrom. Versatile little wonders, those.” With careful mid-bite timing, she added: “They also made the plate, the cutlery, and the table. Well, not
Mark Atwood asks: Do stargates conserve kinetic and/or gravitational potential energy? If I put half a pair on a planetary surface and the other a few lightsecs away, do I get to jump into steller orbit without paying for the climb out of the gravity well? If the other
Numbered Homeworld: Averted. As we mentioned way back in Naming Your Colony World, inhabited systems generally do get named objects, if only because they’re easier to remember. Even uncontacted alien homeworlds get names, often a pronounceable transliteration of whatever the local name is, out of some respect for local