“Join The Army,” They Said: While it’s never as yet been shown on screen, I am pretty certain both that the advertising is pretty realistic about the nature of war, but also that the recruitment slogan for the Imperial Military Service is along the lines of: CIVILIZATION HAS ENEMIES.
From: Karr mor-Kadrek, Fleet Security To: Virni Alman, Fleet Communications Subject: Re: War warning – procedure? File it. Nice of the home office to send it through, but even cutting the corner of their space, what’s the worst they could do to us? It’d take ’em ten years just
Jack Bauer Interrogation Technique: Averted three times over. Firstly, because of the ethical problems (the people who are very cautious and gentle about imprisoning the accused because they don’t own their people are hardly going to endorse torture). Secondly, because it doesn’t work, assuming you have any reason
FROM: CINCSPIN (CS LIBERTY’S PRICE) RELAY TO: ALL UNITS, SPINWARD FLEET COPY TO: CORE COMMAND ***** WILDFIRE WILDFIRE WILDFIRE ***** FLEET CONFIDENTIAL E2048 ***** STRATEGIC ACTION MESSAGE 1. THIS MESSAGE CONSTITUTES A WAR ORDER. 2. CINCSPIN DECLARES CASE SABLE, REPEAT, CASE SABLE. 3. AS SUCH, RULES OF ENGAGEMENT F6-UNLIMITED ARE THEREFORE IN
…of the trope-a-day worldbuilding technique I use is the recurring nightmare I have that someone is collecting them all in one ridiculously large file they plan to dump on TV Tropes en masse. Which isn’t really the point of the exercise and I’m sure would annoy them right
It’s Not Porn, It’s Art: While not a legal distinction – for obvious reasons – the important distinction between the socially acceptable (and indeed regarded as something of an art form) erotica and the socially unacceptable pornography is that the former requires (a) appealing characters, (b) some semblance of a
FROM: BORDERLINE DEFENSE MATRIX (107 – CHARACH) RECEIVED AT: BORDERLINE DEFENSE MATRIX COMMAND RELAY TO: CINCSPIN (CS LIBERTY’S PRICE) ***** EXPEDIENT ***** FLEET CONFIDENTIAL E256 ***** SITREP INCURSION INCURSION TRANSIT DETECTED REPEAT TRANSIT DETECTED SIGNIFICANTLY EXCEEDING TREATY PARAMETERS AT REPUBLIC GATE, CHARACH SYSTEM. MORE FOLLOWS. AUTHENTICATION ROSE FLARE GALL DIADEM GALLANT CREEK / 0xAC2243D0E891B336
To: the Idiot Riggers in Habitation Module 4V and Their Damn-Fool Party Friends Re: Your Still Yes, I know about your still. No, I’m not going to shut you down, because if you don’t have the still I know about, you’ll just set up one l don’
“Yeah, no. Just because you cooked it over the reactor doesn’t make it fusion cuisine!“
It’s A Small World After All: Partially justified, in that (a) there are generally a limited set of places to land – Landing, Star City, Phílae Interstellar Starport, Stationary Station, etc., and (b) most people who have any sort of regular offworld dealings live there, or maintain offices there, or
Reminded that I meant to occasionally feature things like this here by it, let me quote to you a little of Joshua A. C. Newman’s review of Rosemary Kirstein’s Steerswoman series: “The Steerswoman is an extraordinary speculative fiction series by Rosemary Kirstein. So far, it exists in the
Technically, this is a trope-a-day from much later in the cycle, but seeing as (a) I just wrote it up having been thinking about it recently, (b) I’m sure at least some of my readers have been wondering about the very common use of reaction drives in the Eldraeverse