Nyrath

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

Some ideas: It has been suggested that the oracular elements of Battlestar Galactica (2005) were due to some minds having a broadened perspective in the space experienced in FTL "jumps."

Ah, how could I forget. In Gilpin's Space by Reginald Bretnor, some people who travel in starships gain somewhat psychic powers. They are generally women, they basically become high priestesses.

This is good because some sectors of space are unhealthy. Such sectors are under the influence of ethereal hyperadvanced entities who are malign, basically evil deities. These can drive unprotected humans insane, but high priestesses can provide protection.

The enabling premise of the novel is some whimsical mad scientist invents an FTL drive that can be assembled in a garage. He transmits the blueprints over the internet to everybody he can find. All you need to do is mount the drive inside, say, a submarine, and you have instant starship.

Of course the various governments of Earth become very angry at this, but there is little they can do to stop the flood.

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

I assume that the go-captains are "hyperspace pilots"' date=' but what is the meaning or origin of the title "pin-lighter"? Or does it just mean "telepath"?[/quote']

 

The stop-captain is in charge of the ship up to the first jump. They are in charge of maintenance of the ship and keeping the passengers happy. The go-captain is as you surmised the hyperspace pilot.

 

The pin-lighters are described more fully in Cordwainer Smith's "The Game of Rat and Dragon." You see, in the deep space, far from the light of any sun, there are hideous monsters. They basically eat your soul.

 

The dragons are vulnerable to light, so the pin-lighters use photonuclear devices to kill them. The pin-lighters are assisted by their partners, the "companions." The human pin-lighters provide the brains, the companions provide the lighting like reflexes.

 

WARNING: spoiler

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Game_of_Rat_and_Dragon

 

from

http://www.troynovant.com/Franson/Smith-C/Game-Rat-Dragon.html

I read "The Game of Rat and Dragon", and another early story in the Instrumentality of Mankind series, "The Burning of the Brain", near the very beginning of my SF reading when I was quite young. Both stories impressed me powerfully, stayed with me, and after re-readings over the years still impress me.

 

"The Game of Rat and Dragon" is probably also one of the deep roots of my early conviction that the extra-Solar or interstellar spatial environment may be quite different from the Solar spatial environment. We should expect surprises.

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

I can't find a synopsis online -- can you sum this one up for me?

In "The Burning of the Brain" by Cordwainer Smith, ships are navigated by use of "lock-sheets". These are sort of route maps of the journey. In the story, by some colossal mistake, the ship makes the first jump, then discovers that instead of having thousands of lock-sheets for all possible permutations of the journey, they have thousands of copies of one lock-sheet.

They are lost in space, and will slowly die as the power runs out.

But one of the pin-lighters, who are telepaths, notice that some of the lock-sheets are in the go-captain's memory. These can be used to navigate the ship to safety. The problem is that the process of reading them will gradually burn out the go-captain's brain.

The go-captain sacrifices himself for the good of the crew and passengers. He winds up being an imbecile.

However, in a twist, as his brain is burnt, his knowledge of starships and navigation is telepathically transferred to his niece. She becomes the greatest go-captain of all.

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

How about one 2 astronomical units in diameter?

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stellar_engine

That's ... big ...

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

Some ideas: It has been suggested that the oracular elements of Battlestar Galactica (2005) were due to some minds having a broadened perspective in the space experienced in FTL "jumps."

In Clifford Simak's "All The Traps Of Earth", an intelligent robot hitches a ride on a starship, but it travels outside on the hull. The exposure to raw hyperspace gives it all sorts of cosmic powers, which it uses for the benefit of mankind.

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

If your navigator is injured or killed' date=' it becomes a desperate situation -- someone has to take a megadose to get the ship somewhere safe, hopefully with the medical facilities needed to save that person.[/quote']

 

Cordwainer Smith: "The Burning of the Brain"

http://www.universetoday.com/2009/09/15/mini-comets-ejected-from-comet-holmes-caused-outburst/

http://www2.ess.ucla.edu/~jewitt/Holmes.html

Comet 17P/Holmes caused a sensation in October and November 2007 when overnight, it brightened enough to be visible with the naked eye and became the largest cometary outburst ever witnessed. Using a special filter on the Canada- France- Hawaii Telescope in Hawaii, astronomers were able to peer inside Comet Holmes to determine why the comet became so bright. Images and animations show multiple fragments were ejected and rapidly flew away from the nucleus of comet Holmes.

 

Astronomers Rachel Stevenson, Jan Kleyna and David Jewitt began observing comet Holmes in October 2007 soon after it was reported that the small (3.6 km wide) body had brightened by a million times in less than a day. They continued observing for several weeks after the outburst and watched as the dust cloud ejected by the comet grew to be larger than the Sun.

"Dust cloud" eh? More like a sensor swarm, or a delivery of alien assembler nanotechnology that will soon start to devour the solar system.

Re: Interdimensional stories

This might be useful

http://www.dailygalaxy.com/my_weblog/2009/09/parallel-universes-are-they-more-than-a-figment-of-our-imagination-a-galaxy-classic-----------------the-multivers.html

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

As far as a maximum plausible size' date=' to my mind the upper boundary would be pretty darn huge. You could built an environment inside of Ceres with more square footage than Alaska and launch the whole thing out of the solar system.[/quote']

Actually, if you gave Ceres a set of levels with about 15 feet spacing, you'd probably have more square footage than the land area of Earth.

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

As for a crew' date=' Nyrath, perhaps there IS still a functioning crew of robots and AIs?[/quote']

Good point. Some kind of automated self-repair that is not too intelligent.

Re: Maori legend of man-eating bird is true

Have you crossposted this to Pulp Hero?

 

If not - why not??

I thought we were not allowed to cross post.

Re: Star HERO with... not magic, really, but...

one element I do want to include' date=' I think, is more mysticism than typical science fiction settings or games. What I'm thinking of mixing in is a sort of "otherspace", that allows things like FTL, psionics of a sort, and other strangeness. There's also the possibility of "horrors from otherspace" if I want to go that way, even if it's just for a session or two. (Maybe even eldritch things that feed on "psionic" energy, lurking in wait...)[/quote']

"The Game of Rat and Dragon" by Cordwainer Smith

In SPI's RPG "Universe", psionic adepts are the FTL drive. In A. Bertram Chandler's "Grimes" novels, psionic adepts are the FTL communication system.

 

And if you want something gritty but "Traveller" flavored, with lotsa psionics, run, do not walk, and dig up a copy of the novel THE SHATTERED STARS by Richard S. McEnroe. http://www.bookfinder.com is currently showing about 25 used copies for under $6

Re: Maori legend of man-eating bird is true

Then there is the cryptozoologic "Thunderbird."

The weird thing is that lots of people seem to remember seeing an old photo of it in some book or magazine, but the photo does not seem to exist. It is like the photo was "edited from the Matrix".

http://forgetomori.com/2008/skepticism/the-brazilian-lost-thunderbird-false-fortean-memories/

http://www.weird-encyclopedia.com/thunderbird.php

http://www.prairieghosts.com/tbirdaz.html

http://www.haxan.com/portfolio/freakylinks/WWWFRE~1.COM/FREAKO~1/TAILS_~1/THUNDE~1.HTM

http://www.cryptomundo.com/cryptozoo-news/lost-t-bd-photo/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thunderbird_%28cryptozoology%29

Re: Maori legend of man-eating bird is true

A three-meter wingspan and tiger claw-sized talons? Holy crap' date=' no wonder they're still telling stories about this thing.[/quote']

Capable of diving at 80 miles per hour, able to fly off with small children, yeah that's pretty scary.

Re: Interdimensional stories

There was The Crossroads of Time and Quest Crosstime by Andre Norton (collected as "Crosstime")

H. Beam Piper's Paratime series

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paratime_series

All of an Instant by Richard Garfinkle

http://www.sfsite.com/10b/all67.htm

Twistor by John Cramer (contains a nasty way of using parallel universe as a hand to hand weapon)

http://faculty.washington.edu/jcramer/Twistor.html

Ring Around the Sun by Clifford Simak

The Big Time by Fritz Leiber

The Corridors of Time by Poul Anderson

A Greater Infinity by Michael McCollum

sort of off-topic

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10597177

In New Zealand, the Maori had an outlandish legend about a huge man-eating bird. Nonsense, right?

Only it turns out to be true. There was a huge carnivorous bird called Haast's eagle, which became extinct a mere 500 years ago.

Reminds one about the episode of Jonny Quest where he encounters the last surviving pterodactyl. What if Haast's eagle is only mostly extinct instead of totally extinct?

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

Personally' date=' I would have the ship be a vast, sub-light vessel that can still reach pretty high speed. Perhaps like 10 -30% the speed of light. Perhaps there is some sort of rubber science drive system that is still slower than light speed. In terms of vastness, I am thinking tens of miles long, wide and deep.[/quote']

Don't forget the Starlost.

http://www.snowcrest.net/fox/starlostf/galery/index.html

Though that was sort of a glorified Valley Forge from Silent Running.

 

For those that have played the game' date=' (any edition) are there the same sort of mutations present? I imagine it would be much more fun to have some sort of mutation packages available instead so you can get the mutations you want, instead of a random roll system.[/quote']

IIRC there was a random roll system.

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

H'mm I thought that link would lead to Heinlein's Orphans of the Sky. I've never heard of' date=' let alone played Metamophosis Alpha.[/quote']

Well, that is what the original poster was talking about. Recreating the Starship Warden from Metamorphosis Alpha.

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

Would that be right after the control panels exploded in a shower of sparks?

Heh, trek like? Maybe.

But actually I'm thinking in terms of, say if a mutated killer virus wiped out most of mankind on planet Earth, how long would all the coal fired power plants and hydroelectric dams run unattended with no maintenance? Certainly not for hundreds of years.

http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/090911-space-water-dump.html

A bit of local color.

Or a way for your player characters, marooned in space, to try and attract the attention of a rescue mission.

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

Personally' date=' I'd go with a [i']really[/i] big asteroid with an antimatter drive with an acceleration of about 1g to provide gravity and a lighting system set up to provide "day and "night".

Well, except that would be a problem in a spacecraft that lost its crew generations ago.

If there is no crew, a spinning spacecraft would still spin for hundreds of years.

If there is no crew, an antimatter drive accelerating for hundreds of years would eventually suffer a failure in the containment tanks, resulting in the entire ship being vaporized in a matter-antimatter explosion.

http://www.cosmosmagazine.com/news/3003/captured-comet-becomes-moon-jupiter

Jupiter’s gravity captured a comet in the mid-20th century, holding it in orbit as a temporary moon for 12 years.

Jupiter's large gravity field is good at capturing comets.

This means that some of the tiny moons of Jupiter are not native to our solar system. They are from ... outside.

Who knows what eldritch horrors slumber inside comets older than our solar system?

Re: How Big Can Starship Warden Really Be?

To calculate the spin required for gravity, there are a couple of on-line calculators

http://www.artificial-gravity.com/sw/SpinCalc/SpinCalc.htm

http://www.talisiorder.ca/worldbuilding/spingrav.php

The equations are here

http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3u.html

Re: "Dark Flow" Discovered at Edge of the Universe

It's also worth noting that Galileo extrapolated his observations of the orbits of Jupiter's moons into a theory of a sun-centered solar system' date=' for which he had no directly-observed evidence. It wasn't until the detailed observations of planetary movement by Johanes Kepler that astronomers had the mathematical tools to support that theory.[/quote']

Boy, I'm glad I didn't use Giordano Bruno as an example. Maybe Hypatia of Alexandria. Who by the way is the subject of a new movie coming out.

http://agorathemovie.com/

Re: "Dark Flow" Discovered at Edge of the Universe

and could only achieve FTL if fueled by burning alive blue Smurfs.

Dude' date=' I'm totally stealing that.[/quote']

That's OK, I sort of borrowed it from Vaughn Bode's SUNSPOT cartoon. The spaceship is powered by burning alive Screw robots in the nuclear furnace. The Screws have no arms or legs so they cannot avoid their fate. Screws tend to be depressed a lot.