recommendations
This, gentlesophs, is how you fiction some goddamned science! (Of course, if you’re a regular reader here and weren’t already planning to watch it, I don’t understand you at all. Are you a chthonic impossibility, by any chance?)
trope-a-day
Tank Goodness: Oh, definitely, including all of Spider Tank, Hover Tank, and Drill Tank. (Not Land Battleships, though – too easy for ortillery to target.) But also, of course, the good old-fashioned ground tanks, like the HV-10 Basher or the HV-12 Stormfall and their variants (p.s. click that link for
quotation
(Here, have a Robert E. Howard pastiche.) “Know, O prince, that between the years when your ancestors brought the last of Eliéra’s shining cities beneath their aegis, and the years of the rise of the Thirteen Worlds beyond the Gates, there was an Age undreamed of, when gleaming habitats
trope-a-day
Talking Lightbulb: While it’s not always one of these, most people wearing all-concealing environment suits, etc., or using off-the-rack bodies with non-unique synthesized voices generally do have some sort of “I’m speaking now” indicator on the outside, if only so that people can tell who’s talking when
Darkness Within
Oh, this is very bad, Isif, very bad indeed. I have made one hell of a mess of the design of the thrust frame end. These beam stubs aren’t going to hold under the drive thrust. Static load, maybe. Dynamic load, not a chance. It’ll warp all to
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 MelĂerĂ©an 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 SelĂ©ne 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…