trope-a-day
Talk About The Weather: Played straight, even with 3/5ths of people living in habitats in space, many planets requiring domes on the surface, and various other situations existing where the weather is entirely programmed, and even when that is not the case, weather generally being regulated to avoid serious
trope-a-day
Take That: It wasn’t actually intended, but in the course of writing up Raygun Gothic, it was brought home to me with some force just how easily the Eldraeverse setting could be read as a giant Take That to the entire cynical, gritty, postmodern style of writing, era, and
trope-a-day
Suspiciously Specific Denial: There is no Fifth Directorate, they aren’t a secret agency designed to fight existential threats and handle other excessionary issues, they don’t edit themselves out of the memory of anyone who claims otherwise, and they certainly aren’t standing right behind you with a stunner
linguistics
More questions from over on G+: How do the words “insurrection” and “rebellion” translate from Imperial to Earthian? Here they have a few too many overtones of “You should be happy that my boot is embracing eternity with your face”, something tells me that those connotations would not exist there.
trope-a-day
Surveillance Drone: Fairly ubiquitous, between the governance (for law enforcement, and externality monitoring, and infrastructure maintenance, and city management AIs, etc.; all – due to the transparency rules – open to general public use), odocorps, private security, edgehunters, newsies, vloggers, lifeloggers, and narcissists.
helium-3
The largest 3He producer in the System, prior to the opening of the Melíeréan gas mines by Extropa Energy, was undoubtedly White Plains Regolithics, ICC, a joint venture between Arctorr Heavy Industries, ICC, Empire Nucleonics, ICC, and members of the Seléne Commercial Habitation Consortium. Of course, they did not just
trope-a-day
Surgeons Can Do Autopsies If They Want: Subverted – yes, there is medical specialization, just as there is specialization in everything else. But given how long people live – and that long-lived people are the majority demographic – it’s amazing how many of those doctors (or engineers, or scientists, or, or, or…
uplift
“A little commented-upon feature of all the uplifted species is their racial pride. After all, while many species believe that they are, in some sense, the Chosen Ones, only this small subset have documented evidence to that effect.” – from a lecture on comparative sophontology
trope-a-day
Super Reflexes: Another one of the many things to go into the standard upgrade build, in the sense of better, faster, etc., nerves. Can, of course, be improved still further if you feel like upgrading your nervous system to milspec, or adding various special cognitive enhancements to run tell analysis
Darkness Within
These tactical observation platforms are covered in multiple sensory modules, priced at something over a million esteyn each. That’s not even counting the ones that are too classified to have anything resembling a market price. This I know very well, as they’re part of the ship’s hardware
trope-a-day
Subspace Ansible: The tangle channel, which involves manufactured entangled (not in the standard quantum sense, note, because we know that doesn’t work; these are ontotechnological devices using the “privileged channels” a long way behind those) particle-pairs. This makes them quite expensive (since they are a consumable resource, one particle
bandal / dogs
From the taking-inspiration-from-other-places department: Meet Rúz alt-Telithos (later Rúz alt-Silverfall), the Alatian Upland Herder later known, after extensive microgravity and extravehicular training at Oculus Station, as the First Dog Bandal On The Moon – travelling there with the Silverfall Five mission, during the course of which he participated in a number