ClassicDrogn Wrote:"Luminous beings are we, not this crude matter." Apparently Brains' strain of the 'wave recognises Lensmen as the thing Star Wars was "turned down from eleven" from too.Brains is both an artist and an engineer. He can recognise the aesthetics in a gadget as well as the technical possibilities.
In a number of cases, Brains has deliberately not pushed handwavium as hard as he thinks it ought to theoretically go. This is because he has thought through the social consequences of certain handwavium strains, as well as how they might upset a lot of people's fun, and maybe bring on the Singularity sooner than is a good idea.
Yes, Brains has turned-down quite a few things that Lensmen Fen might be working really hard to do, because that really isn't the sort of world he wants to live in, and he knows about Virtue Ethics:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristotelian_ethics
(Brains doesn't have much respect for Utilitarianism, or ethics based on respect for some 'authority'.)
He regards working on the mauler as a bit of a reflection of his 'dark side'.
But, note that the basis of his handwavium use is as much about:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_W._Campbell
http://www.gutenberg.org/browse/authors/c#a9112 (free to read works)
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"It is the business of the future to be dangerous" - Hawkwind