Comments on: The Invention of Iron

By: halfjack

halfjack — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 19:11:16 +0000

That’s interesting, Josh — I’m not sure that actually addresses the relativity/causality issue, which derives from the fact that nothing travels faster than C — not even events. But if the point is that the wormhole system adjusts for time regardless of location (sounds like an artifact to me!) then it does work and that’s pretty cool. In the classic two of three choice, FTL/causality/relativity, the universe doesn’t guarantee causality but the technology for FTL conserves it. That’s really cool.

Must be what our slipstreams do. See that’s why I don’t explain everything in the book. So I can cheat.

By: Josh W

Josh W — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:52:58 +0000

One of the minor things I love about Ken Macleod’s Fall Revolution is that it avoids closed timelike curves (and their associated paradoxes) by having the distant wormhole be 2000 light years away and 2000 years back in time! So you pop a hand in and flash a torch, and you will see that light imediately, taking the long way round compared to the signals in the neurons of your arm. In other words, we could be in a cluster with the very galaxy we are observing now with no paradox issues.

By: halfjack

halfjack — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 13:46:43 +0000

Oh yeah, nothing is likely to grow here — iron is essential to our ecosystem. Are there ecologies where it’s not essential? Hard to say, but (to answer your other questions) without anything heavier than iron the biology is going to be fairly unusual. I’m not even sure that planets as we know them will form. A pre-iron region of space might be little more than a lonely research station hanging over a blue-white star in sparse undifferentiated space, waiting for the next shipment for everything.

By: Coelecanth

Coelecanth — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 10:57:05 +0000

I love this idea. Assuming that you can crow food in the absence of iron, I can see a scenario where the survivors of a shipwreck have to slowly eat all the iron parts of their wrecked ship to survive. “Here you go Captain, today’s filings fresh from the left landing pod. Eat up!”

Mind you, doesn’t this mean that the elements heavier than iron would be missing too?

By: halfjack

halfjack — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:59:48 +0000

Judd, it’s not mentioned because it wasn’t actually an influence. I’ve never played it. I own it, of course, because everyone owns it, but I’ve only partially read it and that was way back when it was first released.

However, there is certainly a game design influence from that area in a more indistinct fashion. Burning Wheel was an eye-opener for us, our first major diversion from d20 and Traveller, and so maybe Burning Et Cetera should have seen some kind of action in the acknowledgements. It’s not a game that we played a lot and surely not one we play no, but there’s no question that it influenced how we play everything and what we choose to play, and so it has to have affected our design.

I’ll add that to the errata for Diaspora.

By: Judd

Judd — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 17:53:45 +0000

I love you and want to have your game design babies.

I am reading the book now. It seems like Burning Empires was a big influence. Any reason why it isn’t mentioned anywhere?

By: Nite Sky Girl Astronomy Blog

Nite Sky Girl Astronomy Blog — Thu, 22 Oct 2009 19:33:10 +0000

WOW ASTOUNDING !