The Thousand Cultures (A Million Open Doors, etc.)

[Chris Goodwin]

...regarding the series by John Barnes, consisting of A Million Open Doors, Earth Made of Glass, The Merchants of Souls, and (thus far) The Armies of Memory. Be prepared for possible spoilers, by the way.

 

This thread isn't so much for statting things out, though feel free to do so if you really want to. It's more for talking about what things you'd like to see in a Hero game based on the series, or cool things in the series that would make cool things in a Star Hero game.

 

To begin:

• The springer. The million open doors of the first book in the series, this is essentially an interstellar teleport gate. It can be used in a variety of ways, but it also gets used for "conventional" interstellar travel -- the springership, in which a springer inside the ship is used to transport fuel to the ship so that it has an effectively infinite amount of delta-vee (up to about 80 percent of C or so). Which you need in order to get somewhere there is no springer already. (This is the only dodge around the laws of physics -- no FTL travel or communication aside from this; the springer spreads from one planet to another via radio, at the rate of one lightyear per year.)
   
  
• The psypyx. A recording of a person's mind which can later be implanted into a clone, giving the person a second chance at life. Legally the same person as the original.
   
  
• Aintellects. AIs, in a nutshell. The ones used in the Thousand Cultures have "asimov modules" which are basically the Three Laws of Robotics. (Physical Limitation?)
   
  
• "The Box". Primarily used on Earth, it's a Matrix-like virtual reality construct people jack into. Usually a one way trip, people use it because they essentially don't want to deal with reality anymore.
  

Anything else?

[TheRavenIs]

Re: The Thousand Cultures (A Million Open Doors, etc.)

 

All I can say it is a great series. Loved them.