Jon Crocker  12-24-2017
19:17 UT
|
The payment in Imhotep furs is en route, it should convert to Stellars automatically.
I
was trying to think of something 'traditional' that Sword Worlders
would wish each other for the holidays, but everything I came up with
sounded like it was rejected from the script of Dr. Strangelove, so I
gave up.
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
|
jimmyjoejangles 12-23-2017
02:38 UT
|
Happy Holidays!
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-22-2017
15:06 UT
|
~
Piper Fans:
I've just paid the annual fee (US$49) required
to keep this list/forum (and archive) free of advertisements and to
provide expanded functionality such as image posting. You can support
the continued ad-free availability of this shared resource by making a
contribution using the PayPal Donate link at the top of the Discussion
Forum page. (You don't need a PayPal account to make a donation, just a
credit card.) Thank you for whatever amount of support you choose to
provide.
Have a merry solstice holiday, however you celebrate it, and best wishes for the New Year.
David
--
"I always was a present-peeker [on] New Year's. . . ." - Elaine Karvall (H. Beam Piper), ~Space Viking~
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-19-2017
06:08 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> Interesting map - since Imhotep is so well known in the
> Space Viking era, and there's a fair bit of trade with it,
> I'd have found a way to get it a lot further from Terra.
Ah, that's just because we can't see the "z-axis" distance in this 2D map. ;)
> But that could be another can of worms.
Seriously
though, I liked what Beam did with the planet names in "Naudsonce."
First you have Fafnir, a name from the Norse mythos, which suggests the
~Hubert Penrose~ expedition begins coming up with names at a point in
time when there are few Norse names left. Next comes Imhotep, Egyptian
mythos, suggesting that they're now reaching beyond the Norse but still
using a relatively well-known mythos. Then comes Irminsul, Saxon
mythos, which foreshadows the dive into the even less well-known Slavic
mythos for Svantovit. He is illustrating here, in microcosm, the naming
patterns over time of Terran Federation interstellar expansion.
What
makes this odd is to see all three schema--the Norse "originals," the
(Celtic) / Egyptian / (Hindu / Assyrian) "second wave," and the
more-diverse-and-less-common "third wave"--appear on the _same_
expedition. That's likely not the way it generally happened. We'd
expect any given expedition to be naming planets in the "Norse" phase, a
later expedition to be naming them in the "second wave" phase, and an
even later expedition--like that of the ~Hubert Penrose~ in "Naudsonce,"
perhaps--to be naming them in the "third wave." Sure, at some point
one phase might blend into the next--as Norse "originals" are used up an
expedition in that era might be naming planets for obscure Norse things
and a few Celtic or Egyptian things--but you wouldn't expect all three
to be occurring at a given time for the same expedition.
It's an
interesting instance of Beam trampling a bit over his dramatic narrative
in what seems to be an effort to reveal some of his background setting.
~Fwoonk~,
David
--
The
first extrasolar planets, as they had been discovered, had been named
from Norse mythology--Odin and Baldur and Thor, Uller and Freya, Bifrost
and Asgard and Niflheim. When the Norse names ran out, the discoverers
had turned to other mythologies, Celtic and Egyptian and Hindu and
Assyrian, and by the middle of the Seventh Century they were naming
planets for almost anything." -- H. Beam Piper, "Graveyard of Dreams"
~
|
Jon Crocker 12-17-2017
05:43 UT
|
Interesting map - since Imhotep is so well known in the Space Viking
era, and there's a fair bit of trade with it, I'd have found a way to
get it a lot further from Terra.
But that could be another can of worms.
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-15-2017
16:23 UT
|
~
Six Months to Every Planet?
Here is an interesting, if
fanciful (because it's two-dimensional), map from Rogue Games'
~Transmissions from Piper~ role-playing game supplement:
https://html1-f.scribdassets.com/9teuazv4l...es/1-35358eb923.jpg
This
map claims to depict the "Voyage of the ~Hubert Penrose~," the starship
of the Terran Federation Navy-Colonial Office expedition in
"Naudsonce." There are planets on this map which are never mentioned
(by name, at least) in Piper's yarn but what's interesting is the path
shown for the expedition. Even in 2D it's obvious that a journey from
Terra to Svantovit that follows that wandering path via each of the
planets shown here would take longer, for a starship traveling at the
same speed, than a trip directly to Svantovit from Terra.
Here, I
think, is a nice visual depiction--in 2D, of course--of the "milk-run"
explanation of the "six months to everywhere" conundrum we encounter in
many of Beam's Future History yarns. The travel time for a "milk-run"
that looks something like the "voyage of the ~Hubert Penrose~" might
very well be six months, even though a direct voyage to Terra might take
less time.
Your mileage--or light-year-age--may vary, of course.
David
--
"As
for the other five, one had been an all-out hell-planet, and the rest
had been the sort that get colonized by irreconcilable minority-groups
who want to get away from everybody else. The Colonial Office wouldn't
even consider any of them." - Mark Howell (H. Beam Piper), "Naudsonce"
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-13-2017
03:48 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> Yes, the Third Imperium Sword Worlds are pretty different.
> Still a good read.
On that note I cannot resist this chance for a shameless plug:
http://www.zarthani.net/traveller/traveller_sword_worlds.htm
This
is very much a work-in-progress but my intention is to capture as much
as I can of Traveller's (version of H. Beam Piper's) Sword Worlds.
Smash the traitors first!
David
--
"I
don't know what plans you have for a next story project, but the
world-picture you've been building up in the Sword Worlds stories, or
Space Viking stories, or whatever you designate the series, offers some
lovely possibilities." -- John W. Campbell
~
|
Jon Crocker 12-13-2017
03:41 UT
|
Thanks for the tip - I do check out Far Future Enterprises from time to time.
Yes, the Third Imperium Sword Worlds are pretty different. Still a good read.
|
Dale Ridder 12-11-2017
00:53 UT
|
Jon Crocker wrote:
"There used to be a game company in the US,
Game Designers Workshop, they were active from the late 70s to early 90s
- they had read some Piper, they named a part of space in the Traveller
RPG after the Sword Worlds. One of their board games was Triplanetary, a
vector movement spaceship game, and I just realized where they might
have gotten the name from. (Fun fact, Steve Jackson Games is slated to
do a Kickstarter-backed re-release of Triplanetary around the middle of
next month.)"
Far Future Enterprises is still producing the
Traveller RPG, and this can be found at either the Far Futures Website
and also DriveThruRPG. There is a confederation called the Sword
Worlds, but the Sword Worlders as depicted at not exactly what you see
in Space Viking. The similarity is in the names, not the people.
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-10-2017
19:22 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> Both names are very evocative, I always wished we'd
> gotten more information on them.
We
might tease out a few more tidbits. Both are called "Empires" which
might, at first, lead us to consider them to be the same sector. But
Second Level seems to be a rather "ugly" place in general. Yes, there
is a sort of aristocratic representative-democracy in the Akor-Neb
Sector civilization of "Last Enemy" but of the three other Second Level
civilizations Beam tells us about, Khiftian Sector is almost
paradigmatic among Paratimers for a brutal civilization, Jak-Hakka (not
clear if this is a sector or something else) serves primarily as an
example of a failed dictatorship, and the Luvarian Empire Sector is yet
another "empire."
So, perhaps, there are both "Interworld Empire" _and_ "Triplanetary Empire" sectors.
> One of their board games was Triplanetary, a vector
> movement spaceship game, and I just realized where
> they might have gotten the name from.
Never played ~Triplanetary~ but I always assumed the folks at GDW who designed it were fans of Smith.
Cheers,
David
--
"Ideas
for science fiction stories like ideas for anything else, are where you
find them, usually in the most unlikely places. The only reliable
source is a mind which asks itself a question like, 'What would happen
if--?' or, 'Now what would this develop into, in a few centuries?' Or,
'How would so-and-so happen?' Anything at all, can trigger such a
question, in your field if not in mine." - H. Beam Piper, "Double: Bill
Symposium" interview
~
|
Jon Crocker 12-10-2017
05:55 UT
|
Both names are very evocative, I always wished we'd gotten more information on them.
There
used to be a game company in the US, Game Designers Workshop, they were
active from the late 70s to early 90s - they had read some Piper, they
named a part of space in the Traveller RPG after the Sword Worlds. One
of their board games was Triplanetary, a vector movement spaceship game,
and I just realized where they might have gotten the name from. (Fun
fact, Steve Jackson Games is slated to do a Kickstarter-backed
re-release of Triplanetary around the middle of next month.)
It's more dramatic to think that there were two sectors, both the Interworld Empire and the Triplanetary one.
While
I was having a look at the most recent messages, turns out I'd missed
the one about the Thorans. You're right, it does look too human, other
than that it was good.
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-10-2017
04:59 UT
|
~
Mike Robertson wrote:
> I always thought that Triplanetary was a shout out to
> E.E. "Doc" Smith!
Yep,
that memory has always been sparked by this reference for me too. (It
may even have been that an editor asked Beam to change "Triplanetary" to
"Interworld" in ~Lord Kalvan~ for just that reason.)
At the same
time, I think this similarity highlights the possibility that
"Interworld Empire" and "Triplanetary Empire" might be distinct sectors.
I mean, we know that Second (and some Third) Level civilizations are
often interplanetary in scale. (There is even an "Interplanetary
Sector" on Fifth Level where the Paratimers apparently move around the
solar system to reach transposition points on Second Level time-lines.)
It also seems that there is no faster-than-light drive anywhere in
Paratime so the most advanced Second Level civilizations will mostly be
restricted to the solar system. Thus, it seems likely that there will
be many "interplanetary" civilizations on Second Level and, thus,
multiple situations which will be "interworld" or "triplanetary" (i.e.
spanning Earth, Venus and Mars) in some sense.
We simply don't
have enough detail from Beam about either one to know for sure. If we
take what Beam wrote at face value, then there would seem to be two
different sectors. I'd be hard pressed to describe any differences
between the two though that I wasn't simply making up myself.
Cheers,
David
--
"She
went to Gindrabar, on Venus, and transposed to the Second Paratime
Level, to a station maintained by Outtime Import & Export Trading
Corporation." - Tortha Karf (H. Beam Piper), "Last Enemy"
~
|
Mike Robertson 12-10-2017
04:08 UT
|
Interworld Empire or Triplanetary Empire?
I always thought that Triplanetary was a shout out to E.E. "Doc" Smith!
Mike Robertson
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 12-10-2017
00:56 UT
|
~
"Interworld Empire" or "Triplanetary Empire"?
In "Time
Crime" there are two places where a Second Level "Triplanetary Empire
Sector" is mentioned. We get few details about this sector--not much
other than that it was the location of Verkan Vall's "first independent
case." These seem to be the only two places in Beam's work where the
Triplanetary Empire Sector is mentioned.
At the very end of ~Lord
Kalvan~, when Verkan and Tortha Karf are talking about the difficulty
of maintaining the Paratime Secret, a Second Level "Interworld Empire"
Sector is mentioned. (It's not actually described as a Sector but it's
mentioned in context with "Sino-Hindic" Sector and "Europo-American"
Sector so it seems reasonable to assume it's a Sector.) As far as I can
tell, this is the only place in Beam's work where the Interworld Empire
Sector is mentioned.
Are these two different, Second Level
sectors? Or was Beam simply being a bit forgetful here, meaning to write
"Triplanetary Empire" at the end of ~Lord Kalvan~ but perhaps not quite
remembering what he'd called it a decade earlier when he was writing
"Time Crime" (and perhaps not having a copy of the February and March
1955 editions of ~Astounding~ at hand)?
Any ideas?
David
--
"Oh,
my people had many gods. There was Conformity, and Authority, and
Expense Account, and Opinion. And there was Status, whose symbols were
many, and who rode in the great chariot Cadillac, which was almost a god
itself. And there was Atom-bomb, the dread destroyer, who would some
day come to end the world. None were very good gods, and I worshiped
none of them.” - Calvin Morrison (H. Beam Piper), ~Lord Kalvan of
Otherwhen~
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 11-21-2017
04:00 UT
|
~
Svants and Thorans
If you have Rogue Games' ~Transmissions
from Piper~, a Traveller role-playing game supplement based upon Beam's
yarns "Naudsonce," "Last Enemy" and "Ministry of Disturbance," then
you've already seen (a black-and-white version of) this illustration of a
Thoran by Jeff Preston:
https://roguegamesblog.wordpress.com/2008/...-piper-art-preview/
This
Thoran "hillman" is a bit more humanoid than I'd pictured them--and the
kilt is not nearly as garish as I'd imagined--but it's great to finally
see them depicted.
There are also a couple of wonderful illustrations of Svants by Alfredo Lopez, Jr., including one of "Sonny" and "Mom."
~Transmissions
from Piper~ doesn't seem to be in print any more, but you can still
find used copies at ABEBooks.com. You can get a PDF version here:
https://studio2publishing.com/products/tho...ions-from-piper-pdf
Enjoy,
David
--
"I
saw a man shot once on Mimir, for calling another man a son of a
Khooghra. The man who shot him had been on Yggdrasil and knew what he
was being called." - Jack Holloway (H. Beam Piper), ~Little Fuzzy~
~
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 11-11-2017
15:28 UT
|
~
The Return on eBay
A great-priced (so far!) copy of ~The
Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes~, which contains the original,
expanded version of Piper's and McGuire's "The Return" is now on offer
on eBay:
https://www.ebay.ca/itm/312000217545
(The plot, of course, was spoiled by the yarn be collected in this anthology!)
I'm not the seller (and I already have a copy so I won't be bidding).
Bon chance!
David
--
"Do
you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or
which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be
comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you [at university].
The tools, which you don't have now, for educating yourself." - Bish
Ware (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
|
Tanith in Oz 11-03-2017
13:03 UT
|
So after doing some sleuthing I’ve determined that “sociology” as
it came to be known did not have an official governing body in Australia
until 1963. There were various institutes at the University of Sydney,
Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide etc… but there was no centralized
authority. Sociology, in Australia as it turns out was governed
under the Education Workers Association in each state before the
incorporation of the Sociological Association of Australia and New
Zealand (SAANZ) in 1963. It seems there was a very long and
torturous history for the field in Australia, and it took until the 60s
for it to crystalize a governing body. There are many reasons for this,
but the primary one is that each state liked to run its own affairs and
distrusted Federal government mandates. This tended to manifest in the
way Aboriginals, the poor/destitute and wards of the state were treated
and how in many ways this conflicted with other jurisdictions. However
in the late 1980s New Zealand decided to split off and go it alone.
This forced the remaining Australian States to form The Australian
Sociological Association (TASA) in 1989. This organization continues to
today. TASA runs annual conferences in Australia, allowing
various universities to bid for the right to host. In 2018 it will be
held at the University of Western Australia. Now, given Piper
preferred to use the term “sociography” it’s possible that something
like TASA could have formed and run conferences in his universe. A
Federation Sociography Association I guess, an organisation separate to
the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association. I think this is
a likely extrapolation and would provide a plausible reason for
visiting academics from aboard to have been at one of these conferences.
They would then be stuck in Adelaide unable to return to France. This
then would lead to a choice to try to return to a "French" colony, or
to remain in Adelaide (or other places in Australia). Most of the
contingent choose to stay and are incorporated into the University of
Adelaide. I like it. I think bringing a small part of the
Sorbonne into Adelaide university culture is an interesting idea. And
it then makes Adelaide Uni much more prestigious and could have started
the academic notoriety that was eventually mentioned by Piper in Uller
Uprising. And it might not end there. The same thing also
could have happened at the University of Montevideo. Say visiting
academics from Cambridge got stuck there. Or maybe Yale? The sky's the
limit on this but I could see this being a reasonable possibility. Therefore
applying the same method the "Melbourne Times" might not be a physical
relocation of the entire Times organization from London. But some of
their journalists could have gotten trapped in Melbourne too. Lets say
they were traveling with members of the British Royal Family when the
4th war happens. Stuck in Melbourne they either start up their own
version of their paper from back home or they take over a smaller paper
and rename it. Either way it certainly works better than saying the
whole thing moved. So yeah. Regards Terry Edited 11-03-2017 14:08
|
Tanith in Oz 11-03-2017
05:08 UT
|
~
Jon Crocker wrote:
> There's always some university
researchers doing field work, so if it just happened that a handful from
one big > european university were in town, sure.
This is a
fair point Jon. I do like the idea of some members of the Sorbonne
being down under when the balloon goes up. Perhaps some of them were in
Adelaide for a conference, or a symposium, or something academic
related. Whatever the reason they were in Adelaide they stay when it
becomes obvious Paris has been destroyed.
Staying in Adelaide
they join the school of Sociology, later Sociography and then steer the
reputation of Adelaide Uni over the centuries.
I think this is a good solution and its rather elegant.
Regards
Terry
|
David "PiperFan" Johnson 11-03-2017
05:08 UT
|
~
Terry "Tanith in Oz" Glouftsis wrote:
> Given that the London Times went to Melbourne
> it occurs to me that many other institutions may
> have also gone down under too.
Jon
makes some excellent points here and he's correct that we don't
ultimately know how to explain this. His musings about the amount of
time between (genuine concerns about) the outbreak of the Fourth World
War and the destruction of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere
(presumably including London) are spot on. But my sense--just my sense,
I can point to no other evidence in his work--is that Beam was telling
us something about how that war unfolded here.
> Previously the idea of the British Royal family
> coming to Australia had been touted
A
couple of points. First, we know that there is extensive damage in the
North in the Thirty Days' War which in and of itself might lead some
Northern nations to move some government functions to the South in the
"interwar" years. The folks who do that are going to tend to be the
Northern Thirty Days' War "victors"--the Americans obviously--and they
will tend to move to "available" territory in the South. But the hitch
here is that much of the South is _already_ inhabited by nations that
_don't_ suffer much in the Thirty Days' War.
That's what helps to
make things like an American move into Antarctica make more sense: it's
a place the Americans can go to without having to fight others who are
already established here. (It also helps here that we know _someone_
ends up settling in Antarctica and that they have surnames like
"Murell.")
The British, even if they stay out of the American-led
(first) Terran Federation likely still remain allied against the
Eastern Axis in the Thirty Days' War. That means Britain may suffer in
that war too.
Unlike the Americans, the British have have some
places where they might go in the South where they likely don't have to
"fight their way in." Namely, the Commonwealth nations. The
Commonwealth had already stopped being "British" (formally, at least) by
the time Beam was writing but a great deal of affinity nevertheless
remained between Britain and nations like Australia. And then, of
course, there is the ~Melbourne Times~. . . .
So, if the Fourth
World War unfolds in ways that leave time for the British to evacuate
their government it's not unreasonable to guess that they might do so to
a Commonwealth nation like Australia.
(Here's the intriguing
thing about Melbourne. In the early period of Australia's independent
nationhood--before Canberra was established as the federal
capital--Melbourne was the seat of the monarchy. If Australia finds
itself playing host to a British monarch-in-exile during the Fourth
World War there are good reasons why it might nevertheless not want to
be seen as being _too_ close to Britain. Sequestering the British
monarch away from the Australian capital--in the monarchy's "old digs"
in Melbourne--might very well help to serve that purpose. This is all
conjecture, of course.)
> Now the French. We've also spoken about there
> being a lack of French references in the Federation
> and that had they gone south they may have gone
> to Madagascar (also a strong possibility).
Perhaps.
The fact remains that the French seem to play no role of prominence in
the Federation (or later) eras. The French may evacuate to Madagascar
or elsewhere in the South but this will be a much smaller presence than
that of any Americans in Antarctica or of any Britons in Australia. (On
the other hand, if the French are allied with the British in some
manner--perhaps in joint opposition to the early, American-led Terran
Federation, perhaps they end up having a not-insubstantial presence in s
few former Commonwealth nations too. Again, just conjecture here.)
> So what I wanted to ask is what about the Sorbonne?
> Adelaide University is mentioned a number of times
> as having a strong Sociography department. Given
> that the French have a strong sociology tradition at
> the Sorbonne is it possible that elements of that
> institution fled to Adelaide? Perhaps not the whole
> organisation, but some of it?
Possible,
yes. Likely? Who knows? We have little evidence either way. But for
this to happen, two other circumstances would seem to be required.
First, Jon's musings about how the Fourth World War unfolds would have
to be resolved with an assumption that there was enough "advance notice"
for this sort of thing to take place. Second, evacuated French
institutions in Australia raises the likelihood of some sort of
Anglo-French affinity in the "interwar" years.
> I think it's possible to argue for it, but I do agree it
> could also be a stretch.
I think you have that just about exactly right. ;)
Tchau,
David
--
"I
was trying to show the results of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire
after the First World War, and the partition of the Middle East into a
loose collection of Arab states, and the passing of British and other
European spheres of influence following the Second." - Edward Chalmers
(H. Beam Piper), "The Edge of the Knife"
~
|
Jon Crocker 11-03-2017
04:20 UT
|
We'll never know for certain what exactly that term means, "The Times went to Melbourne."
Did
far-seeing individuals in that worthy news organization put contingency
plans in place that were eventually activated? Did a portion of the
staff of The Times quietly move down under?
Or, after the balloon
went up, did a few surviving reporters from the southern hemisphere
congregate in Melbourne, along with a couple of the editors that had
been vacationing with family around Australia & NZ? "I say, Nigel,
these Aussies mean well, but they need a guiding hand, being colonials
and all. What do you say we show them what's cricket?"
There's
scant evidence either way. If it was just a few people involved, it
would be easy for that exact beginning to be a bit obscured over the
centuries.
There's always some university researchers doing field
work, so if it just happened that a handful from one big european
university were in town, sure.
Heads of State are easier to explain - people were thrown on planes and headed south on pre-planned routes.
A
lot of it depends upon how quickly WW4 broke out - years or months of
tensions? Lots of people have lots of warnings and move. If it burst
out of nowhere, not so much.
You could always have one or two big
organizations be deemed to have been 'extra-prepared' - someone high up
in the organization is determined to keep 'the firm' running no matter
what, so keeps a few extra people tucked away down under. But that
really only works for one or two organizations and could easily be over -
used.
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