I just became a patron, via Patreon, of Winchell Chung’s Atomic Rockets web site. And I am taking this moment now to tell you two things. Firstly, whether you write SF – in which case I’m sure you already know about it and don’t need me to tell
Going Critical: Averted. In four ways: Fission reactors in the universe are very well designed, ideally – although not always – to keep messy things like prompt criticality out of the possible performance envelope. Some of them, the higher-power ones, can still quietly melt down (giving you basically a corium puddle in
Kythera System, Lunar Transshipment One, Docking Ring Gilek, Third Quadrant, Afterquay Level Offices of Hyneral, Myninine and mor-Vertak, Bonded Cargo Brokers “Good shift, brokers. Athné Calaris-ith-Calandia…” “…master of Greed and Mass-Energy! Cheneos-class free trader, I seem to recall. It’s been a long time since we’ve seen you in-system,
Goggles Do Something Unusual: Since medical technology has long since adapted to the point of being able to fix just about any eye problem imaginable, any time you see glasses on someone’s face – and there are periods of history where you will see this quite a lot – you might
Go for the Eye: As a tactic, it still generally works, but do remember that not everybody keeps their sensors in the same place.
God Guise: Subverted; arguably, this is what a lot of the Transcend’s archai are doing when they adopt the trappings and guises of the mythological eikones as a means to interact with regular sophonts, but in this case, it’s not like all parties don’t know perfectly well
God Emperor: Originally, the “Divine Majesty” in the style of the Imperial Couple was merely metaphorical; one step above the “Imperial Majesty” previously used by the lesser Emperorships of Cestia and Selenaria, and deemed appropriate by those who deal in the semiotics of such things for Alphas I and Seledië
For astronauts flying in space, spacesuits are a must-have accessory. But spacesuit technology has come a long way since the dawn of human spaceflight. Tonight, MIT professor Dava Newman will discuss her BioSuit spacesuit design and you can watch it live online. http://www.space.com/25885-biosuit-spacesuit-tech-design-webcast.html This may
A God Am I: Averted, mostly. The Transcend (and its eikone archai) are perfectly aware (and will point out to the confused) that they aren’t omnipotent – that’s what the “weakly” in weakly godlike superintelligence means – merely extraordinarily powerful, intelligent, and possessed of limited prolepsis via clionomic calculation and
No Such Thing As Wizard Jesus: Its aversion and playing straight would both be played out in the event of any first contact with Earth, around the first time someone tried to convert one of the offworlders, ’cause, y’know, water into wine? Nanobots do it all the time. Magical
Global Warming: Yes, it happens. The usual result, at least in the civilized worlds, is massive technofixes, from the brute force (say, giant orbiting sunshades with solar panels on the back) to the subtle and ecological; usually coupled with an extensive program to move industries off-world, into orbit at the
Giant Flyer: None of the major worlds documented thus far have truly Giant Flyers; some of the ones with lower gravity have some pretty large flyers, but gravity-scaling doesn’t make them terribly strong, rideable, or dangerous. Well, perhaps I should say terrestrial worlds. A few life-bearing gas giants (and,