{
  "export": {
    "source": "https://urth.darkrealm.vip/thread/whorl/604",
    "note": "Exported from an unofficial mirror of a public mailing list. Copyright in each message remains with the person who wrote it.  Email addresses are obscured as `user at host`, the form the original archive published. This file was rebuilt from parsed fields rather than retained headers, so it is faithful in content but not byte-exact.",
    "addresses": "obscured as 'user at host'"
  },
  "archive": "whorl",
  "thread": {
    "id": 604,
    "subject": "STL spoilers",
    "messages": 1,
    "voices": 1,
    "first": "1999-05-03T20:33:34+00:00",
    "last": "1999-05-03T20:33:34+00:00"
  },
  "messages": [
    {
      "message_id": "<whorl-v0009-0107@digest.urth.net>",
      "from": {
        "name": "Michael Andre-Driussi",
        "address": "mantis at sirius.com"
      },
      "date": "1999-05-03T20:33:34+00:00",
      "subject": "(whorl) STL spoilers",
      "in_reply_to": null,
      "reply_link": null,
      "blocks": [
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "Al and Rostrum,\n\nThanks for the notes. (I greatly enjoyed A FIRE UPON THE DEEP and look\nforward to reading A DEEPNESS IN THE SKY.)\n\nRe: seedships, another anonymous informant mentions Williamson's MANSEED.\nMaybe I should take a look at it--but as I say, the very concept of a\nseedship strikes me as so flawed . . . even the notion of a robotic\nterraforming flotilla (which is a near cousin) is based upon the premise\nthat robots are disposable slaves!  \"Thanks for the planet, Tinman--now go\nrust someplace else, you are staining the lawn.\"  Has there been a story or\nnovel where the humans arrive and have to make a deal with the robotic\n\"natives\" as to how much of the planet can be granted to the human\nrepresentatives of the civilization that sent the robots out to begin with?\n\n\"Yeah, for a handful of vacuum tubes I let the squishies squat on the\nManhattan Project Landfill!\""
        },
        {
          "kind": "quote",
          "depth": 2,
          "text": "SPOILER ALERT!<<"
        },
        {
          "kind": "text",
          "depth": 0,
          "text": "BETWEEN THE STROKES OF MIDNIGHT\nORPHANS OF THE SKY\nCAPTIVE UNIVERSE\nTHE STAR SEEKERS\nA WORLD BETWEEN\n\nRe: longevity, immortality strategies. Charles Sheffield's BETWEEN THE\nSTROKES OF MIDNIGHT did a pretty good job of that--not only setting up a\nnon-sleeper slowship system (ships limited to 0.1 c), but also showing a\ncolony world, showing Earth, hinting at other colony worlds, and showing\nhow the interstellar government (such as it was) would develop. (No FTL\ncommunications, no FTL of any kind; Earth badly messed up by nuclear war,\nbut ultimately a nature preserve world.)\n\nThe longevity technique was two degrees of \"slowness,\" one slow and the\nother hibernation.  In slow mode people still walk around the ship, but in\nslowed perception, motion, etc.  Aided by robots who move so fast by\ncomparison that they are invisible servants.  (This has been done before,\nbut I don't think in as detailed a fashion.)\n\nThe interstellar government amounts to an open caste of illuminati.  The\ncolony worlds have games ala the Olympics/games of Null-A, the top\nperformers of which are invited to join the offworld brotherhood at the\nlowest level, etc.\n\nCastes come up with great frequency in generation starship stories. Usually\nthey evolve over the course of the voyage as people forget \"the\nMission\"--this is the case in ORPHANS OF THE SKY and THE STAR SEEKERS--but\nsometimes the castes are planned as part of the program, as in CAPTIVE\nUNIVERSE (and TBOTLS) where it is portrayed as a stabilizing institution to\nkeep the cargo docile and in the dark.\n\nAnother scenario I enjoy is that in Spinrad's A WORLD BETWEEN. No FTL, an\ninterstellar \"internet\" sort of deal (looong before A FIRE UPON THE DEEP,\ntoo!), an interstellar information-exchange economy (the world Pacifica\nexports movies, a \"Hollywood\" of space), and two factions from Earth (the\nvictors and the vanquished) come out in ships to try and win hearts and\nminds as the fight spreads beyond the homeworld.  The ships are NAFAL, no\nspecifics that I recall.\n\n=mantis=\n\n\n\n*This is WHORL, for discussion of Gene Wolfe's Book of the Long Sun."
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}