by Vernor Vinge
* QU about time-keeping possibilities
* [hld] Time keeping can be done by using a number of pulsars EM ticks on the assumption that c is constant across Zones although other things aren’t. Initial sync may be done with “flying clocks” or astronomical events like supernovae or active galactic core startups
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 CHKd 5.184Ms + FallSjK + 100h = 5.544Msec
* PRB So how come the newsreader system doesn’t suppress the details of the time-keeping on this message, the way it does elsewhere? SOLN maybe there are fields in the message asking that it not be suppressed “Please pay special attention to this; we did it with extraordinary precision”. At this point in the story, I don’t think the newsreader system would be smart enough to guess this on its own.
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Note 1159
* [ur] CHRON ” [5.781 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei] (Clock Slop : indeterminant)
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Note 1160
* ID recommend that somewhere you explicitly comment about how the Net disguises (sometimes lethally) the true alienness of many of the participants. (Like “you never know what’s on the other side of a byline”)
* [vsv] [ur] I’ve already done some of this (see Sandor commentary)
* PRB somewhere should make clear to the undiscerning reader that we can’t have gosh-wow 1990 LAN stuff on the Known Net because of bandwidth and transmission delay problems.
* [vsv] CHK these numbers are probably too low to be what would happen over a decade of normal zonal evolution — however, they are talking about the number of civilizations, not the number of civilized star systems
* [vsv] QU Fonts etc, that appear in std Trisk translations
* [vsv] NÆH : Suggested by the idea of finding the usual greek letter for Hausdorff dimension.
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Note 1161
* [vsv] Do you really want the recess to go below what it was before? It’s also strange that you are implying that civilizations are lost in the normal course of events (though this would happen because of orbits)
* CHK following numbers: Surface area of a sphere is 4*pi*r**2Area of a disk is pi*r**2Best approximator here is probably 2 times disk. Roughly take r = 30e3 ly so the entire zone surface is about 5.65e9 ly**2The area affected by the Surge, say 500 ly radius (not 2-sided) so that’s 7.85e5 ly**2 (ratio: 1:7.2e3) backgrou.txt says long term shrinkage is 750m/s = (750m/s) / 9.46e15 m/ly = 7.928e-14 ly/s. Thus 20 y would be 20y*3.155e7s/y*7.928e-14 ly/s*5.65e9 ly**2 = 2.83e5 ly**3 in 20y would appear. Allen, p236, figures about 0.057 Msun /pc**3 = 0.00164 Msun /ly**3; so 464 Msun across the interface in 20 y but this should also be rechecked in backgrou.txt to make sure the the long term shrinkage is what you want. The change to 2 years may make this pretty close to being consistent:
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Note 1162
* [vsv] [ur] CHK INCON 1000 ly etc June 16, 1991 : ! Consider lowering
* [vsv] June 16, 1991 About casualty estimates. First how many any-hab planets in the affected volume. Given the extraordinary max height, and including systems only affected momentarily, let’s say a volume of 1e9 ly**3 is 1/2400 of disk volume of Beyond, say 42000<?> any-hab worlds (see backgrou.txt) say 420000*1e9 sophonts say 1e-5 fatality rate gives about 4 billion dead
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Note 1163
* ID INCON might go back and look if you still have any reference to zonometric endeavors of Straumli Realm
* QU RETRO ? Clock Starter Event; Primal Partition; Ur-Partition; Great Partition? One minor reference toward the end of the preceding chapter. Then one reference a little further on. Get your dates together so that you can combine this with the Rider Myth.
* ID there’s also the interesting point that different receivers monitoring the same events (if those events were important enough) would likely be aware of entirely different news items because of the filtering performed by their newsreader automation. (Hmm, but there might still be some especially respected sources, like Sandor at the Zoo.)
* [vsv] IMP ID lies, masquerades, newsreader-filter blindness
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 Following is still a question: June 16, 1991 NÆH
* [vsv] IMP QU . Should I use this News item to shorten the discussion at the end of c33 (aboard OOB right after the surge begins), or perhaps shorten this instead?
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 Hmm, actually rereading now, the redundancy doesn’t seem too obnoxious (this comment does not apply to the philosophical windup)
* [vsv] usage QU capitalize Zone* ? I do capitalize in almost all cases
* [vsv] Give a rough time for the Clock Starter Event and use it in at least one other place June 16, 1991 NO , deleted instead
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Note 1164
* [vsv] June 15, 1991 I think “million-year-scale” is just barely a big enough word. In a million years, the shrinkage would be about 2 ly.
* PRB am I being too “eloquent” for a point of view that is going to be pretty spectacularly scragged?
* [vsv] QU too much of red herring? too irrelevant
* [jrf2] [in reference to “red herring”] vis à vis what??
* [vsv] I mean vis à vis the ultimate revelation that this surge and the catastrophe at the end of the book are artifacts.
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* Twirlip priors: file 13, speculation based on human hexapodia file 15, speculation that Zone instab is connected to the Blighter threat. Twirlip may know all the big secrets, but it’s just too strange for credible translations — hence its permanent crank status throughout this story.
* TUF PRB I don’t see why this would even get past Ølvira‘s bogosity filter
* [vsv] remember, they’ve just come through the surge!
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* [ur] [Light gloss]
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Note 1167
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 CHKd so written while surge is still going
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Note 1168
* [ur] CHRON ” Date: 5.743 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei x.xxxx Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei (Clock Slop < 90000 seconds)
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Note 1169
* QU PRB I don’t want this to be too flippant or solipsistic, but it seems to me that it is a viewpoint that must be expressed somewhere, if I am to have the ending this novel has.
* [vsv] QU Should I put this news item before the preceding one?
* [vsv] CHK CHRON should indicate someplace that you don’t normally (or lightly) consult an archive (as on internet)
* [vsv] June 16, 1991 6000 ly may direct attection to closely. One way to defuse this is to make the max height of the surge less than the 1000 ly reported above
* [vsv] Note that the 6000 ly refers to the Blight’s activities in the Transcend!
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 SEQ might try to make more consistent with Lynn Margulis paradigm
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Note 1170
* [ur] [Light gloss]
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Note 1171
* [ur] (full-gloss)
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Note 1172
* [ur] CHRON ” Date: 5.795 Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei x.xxxx Msec since Fall of Sjandra Kei (Clock Slop < 30000 seconds)
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Note 1173
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 INCON here with the notion that only part of the fleet went chasing. Also, it is implausible to me that the Alliance would expend any big percentage of its resources on this chase.
* [vsv] June 16, 1991 But note that I am saying just part of the fleet
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Note 1174
* [vsv] usage “bridge” — you certainly use this word for “command deck” at many places throughout the story
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Note 1175
* CHK have you had a name for this race before?
* QU They should hav
e been strung alarms into crew quarters, so calling them seems unnecessary?
* [vsv] this transition must be revised to reflect the fire change on OOB
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Note 1176
* [vsv] CHK CHRON 100hr
* PRB INCON how could pending messages be queued?
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Note 1177
* [vsv] Tirolle is “first officer” c33) and is on the nav station. I want Tirolle on tactics in this chapter
* INCON In c33 isn’t it Glimfrelle who is on signals? But note that in the higher Beyond these jobs would have been more “metaphorical”
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Note 1178
* [vsv] CHK 1.2 ly/hr c33, you say “just over a ly per hour”) June 16, 1991
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Note 1179
* [vsv] CHK these timings and also see if it is geometrically possible with a linear model of the surge front — I have some drawings that appear to make it plausible also CHKd INCON numbers below
* [vsv] Usage “main window” v “command window”; in the previous chapter, on Ølvira, you used “command window”
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Note 1180
* Dirokimes: deer image, Bambi grown up, longfingers and short
Rudolf the Red-Nosed Dirokime. The brothers are not identical twins but they operate as a unit in reproductive strategy — have to think on that
* [vsv] QU so what is the Dirokime reproductive strategy (something that involves brothers)?
* IMP ID BKG background on Dirokimes can be used to make some of this more plausible and affective. Their race is very old, was localized to the Sjandra Kei system. Spent most of its time dreaming now that it had seeded the transcend so many times. The brothers are unusual — even old races have fun and young individuals. Thus, they are not real attracted by the notion of a pogrom back in the Middle Beyond, if there are possible mates in the Aniara Fleet. This background needs to be RETRO written, too.
* [vsv] This may be all jrf was asking for about Dirokimes back in c33<?>, which might mean just moving the stuff that is now about half a page down back to c32 or c33
* Critters related to Bambi
* Could have them regard Commercial Security stuff as a kind of game hence “Boss”, etc.
* ID Possibly have a Dirokime as a type of humorist who in most cases always see the piquant. In any case, you should have some such characters in this story IMP , maybe Peregrine? Ravna?
* NÆH : QU should I cool it on “Boss” (too much like “Baas”==”the Man”)?
* [vsv] CHK INCON June 16, 1991 140 ly of fleets, 81 ly ahead of OOB
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Note 1181
* [vsv] CHKd
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Note 1182
* [vsv] Some pathos stuff about Dirokimes had to be taken out from here
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Note 1183
* [vsv] QU Why didn’t the tears float?
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Note 1184
* [vsv] June 3, 1991 CHK CHRON
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Note 1185
* [vsv] related to redo of MSGs I think I have the alt ecologies idea properly done now here and back in Sandor’s MSG in c32
* ID PRB I think you’ve brought up this notion of stable alternative galactic “ecologies” before CHK . It might be something not to introduce till about this time, since it fits with certain speculations at the ending (which you may not want to make even there, though).
* [vsv] INCON small: Since he’s receiving the messages in real time (no queueing) it’s a little strange that they are so apt,
* INCON but still should work to relate the message rates consistently with elsewhere in the story. June 10, 1991 SOLN ? Should be no unsurmountable difficulty in processing the messages they actually receive.
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Note 1186
* [vsv] CHK INCON ?
* PRB pseudo INCON that onset was so abrupt compared to emergence.
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Note 1187
* Slight INCON I’d like OOB to come out within seconds of Limmende
* [vsv] why?
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Note 1188
* [vsv] NOTE TO COPY-EDITOR Following should be in the font used for Net News and electronic mail:
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Note 1189
* [vsv] [ur] CHK meaning of the term “Order of Battle”
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Note 1190
* INCON get the duties of Tirolle and Glimfrelle (and other differences) straight (see earlier in this file )
* [vsv] CHK June 16, 1991 65 ly
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Note 1191
* [vsv] CHK INCON “main window”
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Note 1192
* [vsv] CHK CHRON hours
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Note 1193
* [vsv] PRB Hope they also trash Limmende’s ramscoop vessels. Ah, but toward the end of this chapter, you say all Limmende’s ships destroyed.
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Note 1194
* [vsv] Probably should RETRO write Pham’s claim that he’ll know what to shoot at — related to the OOB ship fire and the Lost Time
* [ur] IMP INCON work out consistent timing here. This includes the logistics of drones; how close they must approach; how big they would have to be to do damage; how long the target must be “stationary” — Drone timing CHKd
* PRB Probably should have more about Limmende’s attempts to get in the way.
* [vsv] ID Someplace bring up your reservations about Public Key Encryption.— maybe in Lost Time retrospective.
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Note 1195
* [vsv] [ur] CHK fugue
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Note 1196
* [vsv] May 4, 1991 Note that the retargetting pushes back the deadline that Pham just cited
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Note 1197
* [vsv] NÆH : ID PRO RETRO make Jo Haugen female? YES .
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Note 1198
* CHAR INCON spell Haugen consistently
* [vsv] Possible INCON that they should be well equipped for this type of combat in particular Possible SOLN RETRO that they were specially armed to counter the type of threat that they thought the Alliance was aiming at Sjandra Kei
* QU maybe “drone” is not the right word
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Note 1199
* [jdv] p712 too tech talky
* [vsv] QU How important to try to head off complaint that the drones should not be smart enough to jump (the explanation of course is that they are controlled by Lynsnar via ultrawave)
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Note 1200
* [vsv] CHK ==> between 10 and 16 jumps per second
I think the 30000km is okay.
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Note 1201
* [vsv] CHK INCON collision of Haugen with ‘Rolle and ‘Frelle’ — or maybe you mean to be ambiguous?
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Note 1202
* CHK other ship names for Norsk collisions lynsnar == lightning (quick as a flash), trance == trance
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* [jrf] how does this separate them?
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* [vsv] Does weapon spectrum make sense? QU
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* CHK Dirokime expletives, and representation of sublinguistical behaviors
* QU Is “rem” the right term (seems too tissue oriented to apply to the volume of the deck)
* [hld] I think “rads” is the old unit for dose to equipment. You have used “n
uke” and “antimatter bomb” interchangeably
* [vsv] Okay, delete references to “nuke”.
* NÆH : QU (from Science) what’s a sievert as a measure of exposure?
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* [vsv] RETRO get fleet numbers consistent. June 16, 1991 Say 200 Blighters left
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Note 1207
* ID QU consider making the damage/injury to Ølvira much more severe. This would add color, tension. They should however be able to reestablish communication since that’s the point of the next scene If this were done right, it ought to also clarify and strengthen bkg, char, plot, maybe even solve some outstanding problem(s)
* [vsv] Note that this is connected with the “fire” on OOB
May 4, 1991 only indirectly connected now
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Note 1208
* PRB there is some question here whether more searching is important.
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