If, as OGH suggests, the hack is 'somewhat broken', I suspect the original implementation had either visualization of patterns or a simple wish 'jump here', and the patterns were an internal implementation detail and not even consciously visible.
But we'll have to wait to find out :)
(Like others here, I ground to a halt in book 3 of the original series, and will retry with the revised version. Publishers: demanding that books be ripped in two at the last minute does no good to them! Which should be obvious.)
]]>Of course! The objects were described in the books, but I didn't realise they weren't built by regular protein synthesis.
Speculation hat on!
So, I'd assume as a first hypothesis that they are inherited via the egg cell, that is, in a maternal line. The needed chromosome might inherit through "normal" means, but the world-walk organelles would then be inherited like mitochondrios.
So, they'd be in all the descendants, but only passed through the maternal line? (Sorry if the terms are not correct, I'm not a biologist.) This would mean that the first Clan member (the refugee) would have needed to be a woman, because otherwise the organelles wouldn't be inherited, as they wouldn't fit in a sperm cell.
]]>Is there any legal way that I might obtain it? Or are your publishers begging people here to torrent?
]]>Ok; I've never even done a school certificate level course in biology, but have studied statistics at college leven and actually use the subject at work.
]]>No, the UK audiobook of TFM doesn't exist because recording an audiobook is frickin' expensive. (Hint: you have to pay a voice actor to sit in a studio for a couple of weeks. Then you have to pay an engineer to mix down a couple of weeks' recording work.)
The US audiobook market is big enough to justify the expense. However, the US edition is owned by Ace, a different publisher. To publish the US edition in the UK, Orbit would have to buy the master recording, and the owners (Audible US, actually, who sub-licensed the rights from Ace) want more money than Orbit could make from selling the audiobook in the (small) British market. In other words, they'd lose money on the deal.
Good news: Orbit are working with the RNIB (Royal National Institute for the Blind) to split the costs. RNIB provides studio space and half the money in return for the right to use the recording free for Talking Books for the Blind and Hachette pay the other half (which they hope to recoup through sales).
They released "The Atrocity Archives" and "The Jennifer Morgue" this way in 2013. I'm hoping they'll do "The Fuller Memorandum" and "The Apocalypse Codex" next.
It's your decision whether or not to torrent the files. However, every time you do so a fairie dies[*] it's one less sale for the (eventual, does-not-yet-exist) UK audiobook, which makes it less likely that subsequent books in the series will get turned into Audiobooks.
[*] Actually, dead fairies are a really good thing in the context of the Laundry universe. Because Laundry fae are about as loveable as Laundry unicorns ... but we don't get to see this until book 6.
]]>Are your fairie all Unseelie Court, some Seelie and some Unseelie, or does the concept just not exist?
]]>Concept exists but was invented by illiterate or barely-literate human peasants, abducted as slaves/playthings, who somehow escaped. They had no insight whatsoever into this other hominid species' psychology or societal organization, so bolted a farrago of superstition onto political frameworks they were familiar with.
Elf-related mythology bears about the same relationship to elves in the Laundryverse that mythology and symbolism about unicorns bears to the Equoids. And approaching elves with these myths in mind is a really good way to get yourself killed.
(Hint: it's a Lovecraftian horror series. So the elves are Lovecraftian horrors ...)
]]>OTOH, if you see alien abductions[1] as a modern equivalent of fae abductions, just like those are an early medieval equivalent with the Wild Hunt[2], then it might be interesting to look at some of the ideas about the hidden motives of the Greys or Greens or whatever, it's been some time since watching the X-Files...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_alleged_extraterrestrial_beings
[1]Well, I'm an adherent of the psychosocial school of UFOlogy,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychosocial_hypothesis
namely the one mixing up neuropsychology with transcultural psychiatry. Which means just like the human visual cortex has some discrete failure modes, corresponding to specific hallucinations, which get coloured according to cultural beliefs, where said cultural beliefs are influenced by certain quirks of human neurology,
http://people.mbi.ohio-state.edu/golubitsky.4/reprintweb-0.5/output/papers/6120261.pdf
http://psychedelic-information-theory.com/Entoptic-Hallucination
humans have a number of failure modes which explain abduction by fairies or aliens, e.g. hypnagogic hallucinations and like. And it depends somewhat on the culture you belong to if you interpret it as fairies or aliens, where I wouldn't be that surprised if there was some cross-contamination, e.g. ideas about fairies color alien abduction and vice versa. OTOH, hypnagogic hallucinations have some specific components, e.g. sleep paralysis, there might be some paresthesia in genitals and like etc., or, on the contrary, dissociation that keeps sexual ideas at bay, and these are going to influence the beliefs of people into alien abductions somewhat.
[2] Not the most ridiculous idea if you watch a really nice storm, BTW.
]]>Trottelreiner #128[2] The "Wild Hunt" is often (not always) characterised in the myths I know as an activity of the Seelie or Unseelie Court.
]]>Since most of the cultures in question also have some nature spirits or nymphs that could be conceptualized as an equivalent to fairies, and we could argue quite a few tales about faes are remnants of pagan gods, it's somewhat tricky which one was first, the fae or the god interpretation.
]]>This qualifies as a sort of "director's cut" version of these books. Suggests some exciting new possibilities for e-books. Perhaps other authors (or Charlies himself) will go farther, and include "expanded editions" with early drafts, alternate endings, short stories featuring some or all of the main characters is prequel or sequel stories, etc.?
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