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Comment Threads

• graydonish commented on Interstitial note
  Given the kind of capabilities being discussed, I've always thought there was a kind of elegance in arranging some large black holes in a Klemperer rosette, spinning the rosette up as fast as you can, and firing the centre of mass of the whole construct over the target. The black holes won't hit it, but bad things ought to happen. You then catch your destabilized rosette and put it back together, and maybe do the whole thing again....
• existentialistjoy commented on Interstitial note
  .. 400 years of gate war? There should be no targets left. All the planets would have been evacuated (to make them pointless as targets) or destroyed, and everyone still living doing so in randomly jumping floating stations to avoid sudden vaporization. Being in a predictable location means you end up very rich (because people can find you and do some commerce) or very dead, or both. Like, take backups, set up shop, do business and send off your profits asap until killed.....
• Specialist commented on Interstitial note
  Recall that Marion Zimmer Bradley's first Darkover novel, "The World Wreckers", was a response to E.E. "Doc" Smith's Cosmic Nutcracker, where he took two planets and put them on collision course, with his target planet squarely in the middle. She mused that there had to be a less spectacular, more subtle way of destroying a world. That led into world destruction for profit: get paid to wreck it, then get paid to put it back on its feet....
• paws4thot commented on Interstitial note
  Sure, but Ed's idea was to destroy a planet inhabited solely by beings bent on galactic domination. This is at least arguably a Good Thing, whereas destroying a planetary economy for your own enrichment is probably a Bad Thing....
• Specialist commented on Interstitial note
  "A final idea is an ecosystem like the Pandora planet of Avatar, which looks just like a jungle until the player rocks up and starts trying to kill it. Then we see why the entire ecosystem is neurologically linked up, and what else besides trees it is hooked up to." It Has Been Done. "Balanced Ecology", by James Schmitz....