trope-a-day
Kill It With Water: Leaving aside such not-really-the-water examples as water knives, pressure effects, and drowning, this is rather rare, inasmuch as the universe is full of the bloody stuff and as such having much of a vulnerability to water is unlikely to let you live long enough for anyone
worldbuilding
I’ve recently been asked elsewhere, “how far into the future is your setting?” Well, since it’s not connected causally to Earth, even fictional Earths, and technological development in the ‘verse didn’t necessarily take place in the same order or at the same rate as it did here,
books
It’s coming! (I was initially planning to wait until I had a novel-length piece to publish, but a lot of nanofic has passed under the bridge since then, so a third collection it is. At least once the editing work is done – so you can consider this a pre-announcement,
trope-a-day
Kill and Replace: A tactic – and with modern sophotechnology, a lamentably obvious tactic – used by lower-tech and lower-ethics intelligence agencies, for whom fast-growth cloning (or even radical plastic surgery) and programming is the best they can manage – rather than the implantation of overshadowing gnostic overlays used by the technological sophisticates
Rim Free Zone
“So you’ve been attacked in the Free Zone… “…you had a security provider, right? At least I hope you had a security provider, given the giant ‘THE RIM FREE ZONE TRAVEL FACILITATORS’ ASSOCIATION RECOMMENDS THAT YOU GET A SECURITY PROVIDER’ banner hanging in the starport with maybe a thousand
trope-a-day
Jump Jet Pack: A ubiquitous addition to virtually all combat armor (see: light infantry), scout armor, and the equipage of just about everyone else who can benefit from high mobility, from disaster relief teams to microgravity construction workers. (Being able to bend momentum with your mind is nice, but some
worldbuilding
So, yes, answers. But before we get to those, remember the reference to fanfiction being written in “Things You Are No Longer Allowed To Do In The Imperial Military Service“? Mark Atwood points out the following niftyness in a comment: The anime series “Gate – Thus the JSDF Fought There!” was
crossover
…on the technologically advanced civilization vs. WH40K Imperium of Man scenario occasionally played with. What we might have here is a really dramatic example of why you don’t want single points of failure, regardless of how well defended you think your single points of failure are. Combine Jon’s
trope-a-day
In The Future, We Still Have Roombas: There are probably something like 10,000 of these little guys – from literal space-Roombas to the more general purpose utility spider and cogsworth– running about (or fixed in place) performing various mundane tasks for every robot that we might recognize as something like
military
This one goes out to all my readers who have spent time deployed somewhere really, really, exquisitely tedious… From: Master-at-Arms, CS Ablator To: All Personnel, Task Group SPIKY POTATO Subject: Prohibitions That Should Not Have To Be Explicit It has come to my attention that due to the less than
eldraeic language
vaníälathdar: (lit. “beyond-knowledge-person”) Ultracrepidarian, or less formally, “bullshitter”; one who holds and/or gives opinions on matters which are beyond their knowledge.
trope-a-day
Intangibility: Has yet to be successfully developed, for most of the reasons given in the trope page (although I disagree on one major point: intangible objects can and probably should have mass; it’s the electromagnetic interaction they need to be lack in order to properly interpenetrate). There is one