David Johnston

Re: Phrasing a Psych Lim

Psych Limit: Power=Responsibility

Re: To catch a clone

You're probably thinking about the fact that they discovered that the telomeres in clones are no longer than they are in the parent, meaning that even though they are actually younger, the aging process will set in earlier for the clone.

Re: Traveller=Pulp Hero+Star Hero

That's something unusual about Andre Norton. There weren't many sf authors back then who had it take centuries for serious space exploitation to start.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines)

Yeah. Go ahead.

Re: Dark Teen Champions: The Anime Series (genre concept)

Well, if this was a dark anime high school super series, then the first thing that would happen is that either the student government or the administration or both would be part of a conspiracy to take over the country at the least and possibly the world. The students have either been manuevered into coming to this school by said conspiracy which intends to either coopt or eliminate them, but first will test them to evaluate their potential threat, or the students have been manuevered into coming there by some opposing force which assumes they'll come into conflict with the bad guys. Very possibly both things are going on at the same time.

Said conspiracy would of course explain why powerful supers no longer seem to be present. The conspiracy makes the high profile types vanish.

Re: Traveller=Pulp Hero+Star Hero

Although I don't recall space opera being quite so dominated by lowlives out for a quick buck.

Re: How to get swords on your starship

Terror From the Deep taught me one way. Just give me an opponent who has armour that is impervious to my guns but not to my "vibro-blades". Not that it wasn't fun to spray a Lobster Man with the combined firepower of 10 heavily armed men (and a small tank) while screaming "It won't die! It just won't die!"

Re: Traveller=Pulp Hero+Star Hero

Not the best of her Solar Queen books: "Plague Ship". But it's not bad.

http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/16921

It was followed by Voodoo Planet which is also on Gutenberg, and Post Marked The Stars which was my favourite, but hasn't fallen into public domain, yet.

Re: Legend of Galactic Heroes Timeline

Legend of Galactic Heroes is one of those "endless warfare" Japanese cartoons of the 80s, where two sides are locked into combat and all efforts to find peace seem futile. In this case, the problem is the Galactic Empire and the Free Planets Alliance are for some inexplicable reason, only linked by two narrow safe navigational corridors. Since the author who seems to have been influenced by Lensman is cognizant of the sheer scale of resources involved in empires controlling significant portions of the galaxy, each side has millions and millions of ships to throw at the other and there's a substantial homefield advantage for the defender thanks to the narrow channels they have to pass through.

The Empire's ruling class are a bunch of brutally authoritarian (and racist) thugs who all dress like 19th century Prussian aristocrats. The Free Planets Alliance are...somewhat better, but are drifting in the direction of dictatorship because of the incessant warfare, which has been on and off for the last 150 years or so. The military high commands of both sides are inept dimwits on the order of the people in charge of the Western front in World War I. (You can count on old officers in Japanese cartoons to be fools at best and fools and villains at worst.) However the true villains are the rulers of the planet of Phezzan which, located on one of the two navigation routes between the nations, controls all trade between the two sides thanks to it's quasi-neutrality, and behind the scenes sabotages any attempt to score a decisive victory, or failing that make a lasting peace since if peace ever broke out, Phezzan would no longer have it's monopoly.

The heroes are two young military officers who, being young are of course much better strategists than the old pharts in charge. The Imperial hero, Reinhard has a lot more luck climbing the military totem pole because his sister is the Emperor's concubine and this connection gives him preferment. However he fully intends one day to lead a coup d'etat and overthrow the Emperor, uniting the entire galaxy under his rule (and freeing his sister from concubinage). Y'ang Wen Li is probably even smarter than Reinhard, but suffers from having bosses who hate him.

Re: Traveller=Pulp Hero+Star Hero

Traveller was mostly based on the 1950s science fiction of Andre Norton although she had rayguns.

This is the background for the mil sf cartoon "Legend of Galactic Heroes".

==Background Timeline==

2039: A massive nuclear exchange between the powers which dominate the Earth (identified as the United States of Euro-Africa and the Northern Coalition) destroy most major cities.

2129: After 90 years of chaos Earth is united under the "Earth Unity Government" based in the capital of [[brisbane]].

2166: What will be a massive research installation on [[io]] is begun.\

2253: A slower-than-light vessel is launched for Alpha Centauri but never returns.

2360: The first faster-than-light drive is developed, but turns out to have deleterious effects on females.

2391: The problems with FTL are solved.

2402: A habitable world is discovered near Canopus.

2404: As the first colony ship is launched for Canopus, Earth's government establishes a "Navigation Safety Department" which later becomes known as the Department of Public Safety.

2428: The Department of Public Safety reorganises itself as a formal navy.

2682: Disgruntled colonies unite to complain about high taxes, interference in local administration, and their lack of proportionate representation in the Humanity Congress which is weighted to ensure that Earth will always have the deciding vote. Earth responds by trying to make Sirius into a scapegoat, accusing them of spreading subversion as part of a plot to take over.

2685: Earth's denunciation of Sirius makes it into the natural leader of the dissident colonies and they establish the "Sirius Congress" and begin to gather military power.

2689: Earth attacks the on Sirius VI (aka Rondolina) to suppress the dissidents. Earth's forces become increasingly undisciplined, culminating in a massacre of the city of Laglane similar to the [[Rape of Nanking]].

2703: The lack of discipline among Earth's forces leads to a devastating defeat at the hands of the much smaller rebel "Black Fleet".

2704: The Black Fleet blockades the inner Solar System for two months and then attacks the starving population, killing most of them.

2706: The death from heart attack of Carl Palgrem, the leader of the revolution, ends the unity of the rebels and they fragment into factions fighting for control.

2801: The United Stars of the Galaxy is formed, centered on Theoria, the 2nd planet of Aldebaran, and a new calender era is adopted, "Space Era" beginning in this year

2906 (106 S.E.): In order to deal with ongoing threat of space pirates descended from elements of the Sirius/Earth war who never reintigrated into civilisation, the U.S.G. authorises the creation of of a large military to combat them.

3088 (288 S.E.): A military genius named Rudolph Von Goldenbaum leads the U.S.G. space army to wipe out the resurgent pirates, becoming an idolised hero.

3096 (296 S.E.): Rudolph Von Goldenbaum having rocketed up the ranks to Admiral by the age of 28, retires to run for a seat in Parliament forming the National Reform Alliance. The public is eager for a man on a white horse to take over since the U.S.G. has become decadent and disorderly.

3110 (310 S.E.): President-for-life Goldenbaum declares himself Emperor of the Galactic Empire and this to be Imperial Year 1.

3120 (320 S.E., Imperial Year 9) Emperor Rudolph declares the Inferior Genes Exclusion Law which mandates sterilisation of the handicapped and execution of the mentally ill and terminates all social assistance of the poor. He begins selecting "superior genetic specimens", all of whom are white and have germanic names to form an aristocracy with titles handed out by Rudolph.

3141 (341 S.E., Imperial Year 42) Emperor Rudolph is succeeded by his grandson Sigismund, and widespread democratic rebellions break out, only to be suppressed. Billions of people lose their citizenship and become serfs for being family members or associates of executed rebels.

3263 (463 S.E., Imperial Year 164) Arle Heinnesen, reduced to serf status for being a member of a rebel's family, masterminds the escape of 40,000 serfs from a labour camp on Altair VII.

3327 (527 S.E., Imperial Year 218) The refugees, travelling more than 10,000 light years to flee the Empire arrive at a habitable world and decide to start the Free Planets Alliance from there, reviving the Space Era calendar.

3440 (640 S.E., Imperial Year 331) The Empire discovers the Free Planets Alliance and the war between them begins.

1. Kidnap the G-7 leaders at the conference then let rescuers rescue your replacements for them.

2. Shrink everyone to the size of Barbies so the planet will be more easily able to support them.

3. Trigger a sudden ice age.

4. Generate a self-sustaining black hole, then drop it into the planet

5. Reanimate every corpse in a large area as zombies under your necromantic control.

6. Become the most intelligent man in the world by draining everyone else's brain power into the mentally deficient range.

7. Open a gateway for the hordes of Hell.

8. Strip away Earth's atmosphere to give Mars a breathable atmosphere.

9. Remove humanity's capacity for physical violence.

Re: Villain Team Name

The Circle of Seven

The Angels of Destruction

The Chosen Few

Re: The Core Suns

 

The section for the HabCat database also explains what the columns are.

It's not that I can't figure out what the columns are. It's that there are no columns. It actually came out clearer when I pasted it here.

Re: The Core Suns

Those databases are in CSV format, which stands for "comma separated values." You can open them with Notepad or other word processing program.

Yup. I just can't make any sense out of them. The start, for example looks like this:

HIP,RA,DEC,V,PARX,SIGPX,B-V,SIGBV,CCDM,HD,BD

6,00 00 04.30,+03 56 47.4,12.31,18.8,4.99,1.336,0.02, , ,

7,00 00 05.40,+20 02 11.8,9.64,17.74,1.3,0.74,0.02, , ,B+19

I've no idea what that means.

Re: The Core Suns

Not having a spreadsheet program the Hab databases are little use to me. The rest of it's pretty handy, though.

Re: Islam replaces Christianity

Simple POD: No Charles Martel.

 

The Holy British Empire: Which started calling itself that when the Papacy was relocated to London from Rome. The British Empire is very Catholic indeed. It controls what in our world would be the North Eastern United States, and Eastern Canada as well as Great Britain and Ireland and Southern Africa). New York is known as "New Rome". North America is known as Avalon. An Inquisition exists, and spends much of it's time hunting for Moorish spies and "heretics" in the colonies. There is an independance movement in the colonies but it is in fact in the pocket of the Al Andalusians who control the equivalent of the south eastern United States and use slave labour from both Africans and Europeans to work plantations in a manner very reminiscent of our world's 19th century. Colonisation of the Americas has proceeded more slowly. Mexico is known as Tlaxcalla and is ruled by a Mesoamerican culture who converted to Islam. They are moving northward into the Great Plains, squeezing out the nomads who still dominate that area. Japan converted to Catholic Christianity in imitation of the British and now controls what in our world would be California. Austrailia is a remote Ottoman outpost.

 

The major nations in the world are

 

The Ottoman Empire (The unquestioned superpower)

Al Andalus (Spain, but it has conquered large parts of North Africa a well as colonising in the new World)

The Holy British Empire

Al Faranj (France, with large parts of Germany tacked on)

Nihon (Japan with the California Colony).

The Mogul Empire (A still largely Hindu India ruled over by a Moslem upper class)

 

And of course the Great Powers are on the verge of a devastating war with the Moguls and the Faranji fighting the Ottomans and Andalusians and the British and Nihonese drawn in on the side of the weaker Faranji, unaware that the Andalusians have developed a terrible new weapon, a bomb that can destroy entire cities and will be used by them against London and New Rome should war break out.

Or if you really want no Christian nations left, then maybe the Holy British Empire, and its Avalonian colonies were conquered a few years back.

Re: WWYCD: We hope you're feeling better now

Well Poet would point out that he isn't seeing or hearing weird things any more and he'd like to get out now. Unless they let him out fairly quickly though, he'll escape because he didn't like being incarcercerated in a place like this before, and he doesn't like it now.

Hellfire will assume that what she is now seeing is real, but she'll be upset her husband never happened and she'll miss being a superhero. She'll try to get them to release her so she can train to become one again.

Wizard had no powers. He was just a precociously good engineer. Either his technology still works or it doesn't.

Here's something I did. The idea that was since these are the non M-Type suns within 30 light light years (Except for Procyon and Sirus, both of which are binaries with a nearby white dwarf making the habitable zone unusable), these are the suns you could look for habitable planets near. The numbers beside each star are their coordinates in lightyears (centered on Sol) There are of course huge numbers of red dwarfs in addition to these suns, but these are the suns that would be primarily worth looking at for colonisation.

Sol: 0,0,0

Alpha Centauri: -1.6, -1.3, -3.8

Epsilon Eridani: -6.8, -2.0, -7.7

61 Cygni: 6.6, -6.1, 7.2

Epsilon Indi: 5.7, -3.2, -9.9

Tau Ceti: 10.3, 5.0, -3.3

Keid: 7.2, 14.6, -2.2

70 Ophiuchi: 0.4, -16.6, 0.7

Altair: 7.7, -14.7, 2.6

Sigma Draconis: 2.6, -6.0, 17.6

Gliese 570: -12.8, -12.5, -7.0

Eta Cassiopeiae: 10.1, 2.2, 16.4

36 Ophiuchi: -3.4, -17.1, -8.7

82 Eridani: 9.3, 11.1, -13.5

Delta Pavonis: 4.3, -6.8, -18.2

Gliese 892: 11.3, -2.3, 17.9

Xi Bootis: 9.8, 4.2, 19.1

Gliese 667: -3.3, -18, -13

Gliese 105: 18.1, 14.7, 2.8

Gliese 33: 23.7, 5.1, 2.2

107 Piscium: 20.6, 9.9, 8.4

Pi 3 Orionis: 7.8, 24.8, 3.2

p Eridani: 13.4, 6.2, -22.1

Beta Canum Venaticorum: -20.3, -3.0, 18.0

61 Virginis: -24.0, -8.9, -8.7

Zeta Tucanae: 11.8, 1.0, -25.4

Chi 1 Orionis: 0.6, 26.5, 9.8

Gliese 250: -6.4, 27.5, -2.6

Gliese 666: -3.5, -19.4, 20.8

Gliese 183: 7.3, 27.7, -2.9

Gliese 785: 14.3, -21.3, -13.1

Gamma Leporis: 1.8, 27.0, -11.2

Beta Coma Berenices: -25.1, -8.1, 14.0

Kappa Ceti: 19.2, 22.8, 1.8

Gamma Pavonis: 9.8, -7.8, -27.3

Re: WWYCD: Alternate Identities

Hellfire briefly considered becoming a superheroine named "Midnight Blue" when her fire powers were blocked but they returned before she made her debut.

Wizard might build a new suit of power armour and call himself something like Ironheart.

Riptide would don a pair of falsies and pretend to be his own half-sister.

Re: WWYCS: "Why Shouldn't I Kill Him?"

Poet: You think death stops people from making trouble? Let me introduce you to my dead friends...

Re: Philosophical question

Given the social and political forces in play in Germany after WWI' date=' it seems almost inevitable that someone like Hitler would come to power eventually. By killing Hitler, doesn't that open up the possibility that whoever did come to power [i']wasn't[/i] a total nutcase and actually knew how to run a war?

 

It seems to me that the main reason German lost WWII, in the end, is because Hitler just wasn't very capable as a military leader. By filling his slot in history with someone who knew what they were doing, doesn't that make it a lot more likely that the Wehrmacht doesn't collapse under the incompetence of its leaders, the Nazis win the war, and everyone's speaking German by 1948?

 

THAT'S a really scary thought, Mein Herr.

But not a plausible one. As a military politician Hitler wasn't incompetent except in one way. He didn't know when to back down. A replacement Hitler who lacked that flaw wouldn't be taking over the world because he'd realise that the world is too big to chew. He would have stopped at Czechoslovakia. The result would probably have been a nasty dictatorial Greater Germany that would have lasted for decades but there was no realistic chance that it would be taking over the world unless our replacement Hitler is a Vandal Savage armed with technology from the future, which is always fun.

As far as running Wings of the Valkyrie is concerned, I think it's more interesting if you give a choice about whether or not to stop the time-travellers before you know what the consequences are. As it stood, WotV was too linear.

Re: Re-Imaged Hero(ines)

When he was 6 years old, Ivan Kandinsky wandered away from his parents and through a hole in the universe. On the other side, he met an old man named Koschei who took him as a servant. Koschei was terribly afraid of death and relied upon regular magical assistance just to keep living day to day. He taught young Ivan the magic needed to fight off death and for over ten years the young man regularly laid hands upon his master in order to give the incredibly old man just one more day of life. Eventually, he found a way to escape, and decided to leave Russia to put a little more distance between himself and the terrible old man.

He kept a low profile, until the day of the disaster, an earthquake that ripped apart his new city, killing many and injuring far more, and the carnage was such that he decided he had to do something. He donned a surgical mask and started using his power to keep people alive until their injuries could be treated. Later there was a more vicious than usual confrontation between superhumans and he did it again. Eventually, he was routinely showing up at 911 calls. He didn't heal them as such. But after he laid his hands on them, they would simply stop bleeding, their diseases would cease progressing for a while. Death, temporarily had no dominion over those he helped. If they could be saved in that time by conventional medicine, then they would be. Fear of what certain wealthy men would do for his life extension magic kept him from revealing his identity, so he just called himself "Lifeguard".

Re: Islam replaces Christianity

Simple POD: No Charles Martel.

The Holy British Empire: Which started calling itself that when the Papacy was relocated to London from Rome. The British Empire is very Catholic indeed. It controls what in our world would be the North Eastern United States, and Eastern Canada as well as Great Britain and Ireland and Southern Africa). New York is known as "New Rome". North America is known as Avalon. An Inquisition exists, and spends much of it's time hunting for Moorish spies and "heretics" in the colonies. There is an independance movement in the colonies but it is in fact in the pocket of the Al Andalusians who control the equivalent of the south eastern United States and use slave labour from both Africans and Europeans to work plantations in a manner very reminiscent of our world's 19th century. Colonisation of the Americas has proceeded more slowly. Mexico is known as Tlaxcalla and is ruled by a Mesoamerican culture who converted to Islam. They are moving northward into the Great Plains, squeezing out the nomads who still dominate that area. Japan converted to Catholic Christianity in imitation of the British and now controls what in our world would be California. Austrailia is a remote Ottoman outpost.

The major nations in the world are

The Ottoman Empire (The unquestioned superpower)

Al Andalus (Spain, but it has conquered large parts of North Africa a well as colonising in the new World)

The Holy British Empire

Al Faranj (France, with large parts of Germany tacked on)

Nihon (Japan with the California Colony).

The Mogul Empire (A still largely Hindu India ruled over by a Moslem upper class)

And of course the Great Powers are on the verge of a devastating war with the Moguls and the Faranji fighting the Ottomans and Andalusians and the British and Nihonese drawn in on the side of the weaker Faranji, unaware that the Andalusians have developed a terrible new weapon, a bomb that can destroy entire cities and will be used by them against London and New Rome should war break out.

Re: Character: Socially Conscious Man!

I love this character, Socially Conscious Man would make a wonderful supervillian!

 

"You come home to your rundown apartment. Only to find that it is no longer there. In its place is a beautiful modern skyscraper. It takes you awhile to figure out where one of these luxarous rooms belongs to you. But, when you arrive, all you stuff is there, right where you left it (relatively speaking). You wonder if somehow this is all just a dream until you find a note on the door...

 

'Due to the recent renovations, your rent will now increase to reasonable marketvalue of its worth.

That would only happen if it was an isolated instance. If he improved housing on a massive scale the market valuation of a domicile of a given level of quality would go downward because of the increase in supply.