Recent content by Pete Cortez

johnandersoni apparently wants to set this scenario on some barren rock with little to no infrastructure, so don't imagine there will be a lot of traffic. Even if there was, the bad guys apparently have the wherewithal to cross interstellar distances and track the sky. Tracking objects in...

Is there any reason the bad guys--who apparently can set up shop on another planet and easily track objects reentering the atmosphere--can't detect your ships approach in the first place?

The fantasy universe where I am insanely rich.

Pretty much echo what others have said. Commit to tethers and then deal with the problem of counterweights, length and arrangement.

I imagine there's a lot left unsaid about what happened during the generational period prior to Dorwin's inconsequential visit to Terminus. We only have hints, for example, the conversation between Pirenne and and Hardin in the Encyclopedists: We're also making some enormous assumptions about...

I'm afraid not, though I may be making allowances insofar as my imagination permits. Could you be more specific? Perhaps I'm not following the analogy correctly.

Hasn't been written yet.

George Costanza.

Breakin' 2: Electric Boogaloo.

I don't recall any scholarly definition of "fascism" that reads "a militaristic government with limited citizen participation." Also, don't agree that veteran monopoly of the franchise qualifies as "militarism." Starship Troopers fully depicts only one conflict and barely hints at another...

Counterpoint. Angsty, anti-establishment screeds were and are a dime a dozen. Enough so that Starship Troopers basically kicked off an entire subgenre all by itself.

Not sure how the political system depicted in Starship Troopers qualifies "facist." Not unless we're yet again redefining the term to mean something anathema to the left-wing that's presented uncritically.

A significant theme in the Foundation novels is the scale of the Galactic Empire, and even its "microcosm" on Trantor. Terms like "fair" and "egalitarian," which stretch to their limits on a planet of just 6 billion people, may be parochial to an absurd degree across a backdrop of millions of...

Counterpoint. It bodes extremely well.

Open access at CQG.