Quote:Most orbital shuttles are 'waved automobiles or small ships. This not being Car Wars, cars and yachts tend to be unarmed.
Even with the censor that handwavium imposes, the most effecient and cheaply made weapon available to the combatants are their own ships. With enough firepower in just one orbital shuttle to take out a city (at least), and with the massive proliferation of ships/weapons, there should have been mass al-qaedaing of damn near every habitat, space station, asteroid, colony, city and biosphere.
The only flying Space Shuttle in Fenspace is unarmed.
The only flying locomotive in Fenspace is unarmed.
The largest ship in Fenspace, Grover's Corners, appears to be unarmed.
And for the longest time, there was a cultural bias against arming Fenships. This was because nobody wanted to be like "that idiot in that L5 space station"...
Before you point out that the ships themselves are weapons: There are any number of ways to disable a ship under power if it becomes necessary - they aren't going to be used as kinetic-kill weapons if there's another Fenship in the area. And with the Warsies almost always out "on maneuvers", there's almost always another Fenship in the area.
Quote:Fen do not have thermonuclear capabilities.
Think about it. If we can start a venomous flame war about, I dunno, which battlestar galactica was better, then how would fans (or fens . . . which works as well as any other name, i suppose) react to each other when they have thermonuclear capabilities and a frightening lack of restraint?
Noah's not stupid - he had the means, motive, and opportunity to gather up all of the available fissionables in Fenspace before anyone else imagined doing so - heck, before most other Fen were even in space - and had them safely under lock-and-key before The Island lifted. Thus, he's the only Fan with access to "kaboomite", and nobody else knows that kaboomite is code for "baby nukes" except for Comrade Fnord (who helped with the cleanup operation). And nobody's talking - this is one of the best-kept secrets in Fenspace.
Quote:Good thing she's just a fan who biomodded herself (or possibly himself) into the appearance of her favourite anime character, then - she can't do anything of the sort.
(Haruhi)'s a great character. However, what really takes you out of this shared universe thing is the idea of a single god-like character out there laughing it up while handing out handwavium goodies.
Quote:Er... no. There's absolutely nothing stopping anyone from exploring something new.
Look at how this world was set up, regurgitating the ideas and dreams of dead men like ideological necrophiliac cannibals.
I'm doing so myself as an ongoing B-plot touched upon in almost all of my stories to date: How would self-aware AIs interact with the world when most but not all people don't know they're AIs? As far as I know, this idea is original to me... or as original as any "I've got a secret" idea can be.
Quote:AIs.
Where's the new, the outbreaks of future, ...
Biomods.
Colonies on Mars and at Alpha Centuari.
Quote:Which was done on purpose, I'm sure - it gives the story a familiar setting. We can make references to Starbucks and al-Qaeda without horrid circumlocutions, which we wouldn't be able to do in a story set a century in the future.
... in having your fictional avatar live in a world that people born in the ass-end of the last century would have found comfortable and explicable?
-Rob Kelk
"Read Or Die: not so much a title as a way of life." - Justin Palmer, 6 June 2007
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."
- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012