My Writes of 2019

Hi Geoff. LT is a great place for writers to meet readers, but it's not for this sort of promotion in general. The TOS restricts this kind of posting to the designated authors groups (Hobnob, etc.). There's also a "member giveaways" program that might suit your needs.

P.S. Your touchstones (title links) are amusingly defective.

>2 paradoxosalpha: Why did you comment = preserve this spam so it cannot be flagged away?

>3 anglemark:

Eh, not enough coffee I guess. You're right that the comment should have gone to his profile page for the reason you give. But I do think that the comment is a reasonable courtesy even though 95 percent of these posts in the groups are just fly-bys.

GeoffNelder has been here for eleven years, although I suspect he might not have been very active during those years.

He certainly hasn't cataloged many books.

Personally I would love to see a thread about 'writes' if it was actually about stuff people were currently writing rather than stuff people have already written and are trying to promote.

A thread that went, "I thought I was working on a colonization story, but I've just had some aliens pop up. Not sure what I'm going to do with them yet -- maybe I should do some research. Anyone got any first contact stories to recommend and/or disreccommend? Opinions to share on how to do or not do aliens?"

That kind of thing.

I was about to add that I didn't have any science fiction "writes" for 2019, I've only been working on fantasy stories, but I just realized that's not true. I've got the start of a science fiction romance novella hand-written on looseleaf somewhere, that I'm pretty sure I was working on at the beginning of the year.

It's set in a universe that essentially has replicator technology. I'm still trying to get my mind around how that would effect economics and lifestyle. Utter snobbery over "Authentic" as opposed to "Replicated" goods, (how would you prove it?) and services becoming even more important?

Also, if it takes about a month to go from one star system to another, who would bother?

Well, I'll admit to being somewhat curious how a vegan planet works, does the Kudzu vine take over the world? And exactly how is preventing other entities from needed resources to grow more moral than eating them? I'm not going to go dig out the story though.

>6 LShelby: Looking at transportation history (and I'm not an expert) wind power sailing times from the New to Old World were several weeks and a month wasn't uncommon.

For that matter, pre-WW II (prior to flight being common) I believe 10 days was pretty standard. Shuttling cruise ships from Europe to the Caribbean takes about 10 days now and people ride on those.

Two months for a round trip plus whatever time in the system would cut way down on travel but it wouldn't end it, especially if replicators were cutting down on work hours. IMHO :-)

Also, there's an article titled something like "Who mines the dilithium" that may clarify or confuse you more. Good luck with your story.

It's NaNoWriMo, and I'm using that as incentive to complete my dream fantasy inspired by The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosenkreutz and Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. I wouldn't call it sf, but it's my current "write."

>7 pjfarm:
As someone who initially planned to study ecology, I don't grok vegan morality at all. But I think a planet without animals would pretty doable.

Even if the kudzu did take over (which wouldn't surprise me), the kudzu period would eventually make way to a more diverse ecosystem as other organisms develop ways to out-compete it.

But there would still be micro-organisims that "eat" plants and they would also "eat" each other, because everything needs to cycle.

And in the early stages it would be a horribly boring place to live. After the ecological system rediversifies, it could be interesting, though. The most severe limitations on plant life that I am aware of, are that the ability to move around is minimal and poorly controlled, and the decision making process never gets very sophisticated. Ecologically speaking, these are connected. So what if instead of reinventing animals, life invented intelligent mobile plants?

Of course, this begs the question... what exactly makes a plant a plant?

Personally, I'd rather eat an unintelligent animal than an intelligent plant.

As for my question about space travel, I seem to recall (I am also not an expert) that in the sailing era the transatlantic shipping was largely raw goods going to the old, and manufactured goods (and colonists) heading back to the new. Sailors, merchants, military men, explorers and some business-men and politician/diplomats went both ways, but... I don't think it was ever popular as a pleasure cruise. I think that came later, with the invention of steam.

But I think you are right that in my replicator enriched environment, tourism is very likely to be a thing. Possibly even a far bigger thing than freight.

You can sort of picture a situation like the educated young men of Britain doing the "Grand Tour" to Europe that existed in the 17-1800s, can't you? "You aren't truly cultured my dear, if you haven't been off-planet at least once." And "Everybody who is anybody has been planet X, don't you know?"

I have looked up the Dilithium article, and it does touch on some of the issues I have been pondering. Unlike Star Trek, I haven't tried to eliminate money -- I know money is about exchanging, not just about stuff. But skills are still sellable. Raw goods are still sellable (even if machines build you whatever you need/want they still have to build it out of something). Rareties are still sellable. New information should still be sellable. Land is still sellable.

(Ownership of land is, in fact, one of the conflicts in my story. I think that holds up.)

>8 paradoxosalpha:
I don't NaNoWriMo myself, but I will cheer you on from the sidelines. :)

>9 LShelby: An aside, but according to at least some of my vegan friends, their point is not to support holding animals in captivity and tormenting them. The meat industry with pigs in small pens who never see the light of day, chickens kept in cages with two birds per square foot, cows that never get to leave the booth where they are born. Treating other species like this is criminal and demeaning, they think. Treating them like things. It's not about wild animals or animals being treated well.

What I don't personally get is how much importance many vegetarians and vegans put on the slaughter. Animals kill each other and die in pains and fear all the time, and have always done. It's perfectly natural. I sympathise fully with the thing about not keeping them captive under horrible conditions, but that day at the end of their lives when they are slaughtered doesn't bother me.

Well, that was an aside.

>9 LShelby: and insect pollinators? which quite quickly gets you to arthropods to prey on them, and then mammal like things. It's certainly true that a vegan world would have a lot less wildlife, but non-zero.

Travel and economics are one of the joys of a well thought-out SF universe, and sadly all too often ignored in fantasy - I need a city here, without thought of water supplies, farming availability, or why anyone would want to be there.

A month is pretty quick, providing the on-board conditions were ok. Any longer and you start heading towards generational ships, probably not frozen at the month scale, but cf dilithium, somebody needs to crew them, tend to the engines and wait on the passengers. An industry and opportunity all of itself.

Space ports/docks are staples of the literature for a reason - and not just the physics of avoiding too much slow intersystem traffic.

I'm very uncertain of what a "vegan" planet is supposed to look like, but I think attempting to prevent all animal-eating-animal behavior would inevitably lead to an eco-apocalypse, so all my further speculations are based on that premise.

I mean if you start out with a lifeless planet and build your ecosystem from scratch, then presumably you can accomplish a world with bees but no wasps or spiders, but as soon as you let nature take its course, I think you'll discover new non-herbivorous varieties of everything popping up. Meat is just too valuable a resource to be ignored.


As to the transporting and tending of the space liner passengers, most certainly it would be not just an industry, but practically its own culture. :)

...I've never actually been on a cruise ship, but I have done research on steam liners. They used to not clean as much during the trip as I would have expected. Just cleaning the kitchen and mopping up spills as needed, and then take care of the real cleaning and the laundry and so forth when you hit port at the other end. (Including burning all the furniture in the 3rd class cabins and rebuilding it!) That might work okay for a 4 to 10 day trip, but I wouldn't want to spend a whole month on a ship that takes that approach. Just saying.

I'm trying to come up with other differences that the slightly longer timeframe would create, and I'm drawing a blank. What else can be put off for maybe ten days but certainly not a whole month?

I'm still wondering who and what else is getting carted from one planet to another besides tourists, too. My fault, I presume, for not having bothered to invent any kind of handwavium for people to mine. If you invent your own resources then it's a much easier question to answer.

>12 LShelby: Well, in Stopping at Slowyear (I think it was), Fred Pohl suggested that 'B' list celebrities would be ideal and eager travellers by slower-than-light starships, as a) the more far-flung destinations would still think of them as 'A' listers, and b) visiting ships would be so few and far between that anyone who came in on a starship would automatically be News.

Food and water stores start to get very bulky at the month scale. Less space for paying passengers. Obviously it becomes more practical to ship high value wine etc rather than water! Health conditions might need treating more frequently than a month? Maybe also business deals trading conditions. Politics and news can change in that timeframe. Depends how feasible communications would be whilst travelling.

Art would be one reason for travelling - to see originals that can't be replicated. Might not be sufficient to support an entire space industry though. I suspect the bedrock would have to be a handwavium only present on some worlds, but required in others. Whether that's raw material or some finished product (longevity cure?) and the rest - tourists artists et al would piggy back onto the commercial routes.

>13 RobertDay:
I think Christopher Stasheff had a similar premise in his Starship Troupers series?

(I have a recollection of reading something called "Starship Troupers", but the descriptions on the Stasheff books are not exactly striking bells. Not sure what that's about.)

... So how would that interact with the whole cruise ship thingy. The entertainment troupe works their way to another planet by doing shows on the ship, and then they do a world tour, and then they work their way back? Convenient.

Which somehow made me think of a related group of people who might find it worthwhile to visit other planets... atheletes.

>14 reading_fox:
"What may I bring you?"
"Water"
"That'll cost 1000 credits."
"What? I could get a fairly decent bottle of wine for that much."
"Precisely so, Ma'am. We offer a fine selection of mineral waters from over fifty different worlds... do you have a preference, or will you go with the steward's recommendation?"

>15 LShelby: - well I suppose there's also the cheaper re-cycled option, but after a month that's probably running short and slightly whiffy. Cometary ice would another option, probably as pure as it comes, but access is even harder than a range of fifty different mineral waters.

Humans though - the grass is bound to be greener still on another world. Or maybe even blue.