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Ross 154 planet named Felicity, first multiethnic colonists arrive.
What??
2160: Great Dispersal. Civil conflict on some early multiethnic colonies. Individual Govcentral states sponsor ethnic-streaming colonies.
Whoever had the idea of founding an African-ethnic colony on a world that’s three-quarters temperate zones?” “Now that’s a tired old myth, that we have to be limited to tropical hellholes. It’s our society which counts.
I don't know whether to focus on how fucking weird it is that planets are divided up by... --the word "ethnicities" isn't really accurate here, but whatever--or how strange it is to have a Black character pointing out to another Black character that *it's just a myth that black folks can only live in hot jungle-y worlds*.
o_0
They cling to the bottom of their lakes, an ovoid body ninety centimetres high, with ten tentacles rising up from the crown. The tentacles are smooth, sixty centimetres long, devoid of suckers,
It had a lenticular shape, measuring one hundred and ten metres in diameter, thirty metres deep at the centre.
The hyperfocus on providing measurements for everything is approaching James Fenimore Cooper levels of descriptive-but-incredibly-dry.
Most religions perceive God as male, because they all have their roots in a time prior to female emancipation — which serves to illustrate how contrived they are.
This is not what I was expecting from this author! [Edit to add that my initial optimism here turned around FAST.]
But you said there are lots of different religions; how can there be many gods? There can’t be more than one Creator, surely? That’s a contradiction.
This seems objectively silly for anyone to say unless they were raised in a monotheistic religious context (and this child has not been). More than one creator god is no inherently stranger an idea than more than more than one person working together to make soup.
She enjoyed her time with Aulie unashamedly, as much for the mild censure and gossip it generated among her friends and family as the new styles of euphoria she experienced under his knowledgeable tuition. Now he was someone who really knew how to exploit free fall.
He's 44 and she's 17? Um. I'm just going to do my utmost to assume that with the other things that are a little different, maybe emotional development is much accelerated. I mean, the book acknowledges that it's scandalous in this society too, but... a kid? Seriously. Come on.
[Update: I now look back on this note and think, "oh, you sweet summer child. Just wait"]
The Ruin Ring formed a slim dense halo three kilometres thick, seventy kilometres broad, orbiting five hundred and eighty thousand kilometres above the gas giant Mirchusko.
Eighty metres ahead of him was a habitat shell section, one of the larger ones; roughly oval, two hundred and fifty metres at its widest. It was spinning slowly about its long axis, taking seventeen hours to complete each revolution.
So many measurements. I'm just going to start highlighting SOME of them.
Stacked above the silicon were various strata of polyp, forty-five metres thick, dulled and darkened by vacuum exposure. Sitting on top of the polyp was a seam of soil six metres deep, frozen and fused into a concrete-hard clay.
The cabin was only six metres long,
In its inactive state the Lunar State Industrial Institute (SII) programmable amorphous silicon spacesuit consisted of a thick collar seven centimetres high with an integral respirator tube, and a black football-sized globe attached to the bottom.
The shell section was twenty metres away.
Low, craggy black walls marked out a square five metres to a side. He got to within two metres of the floor and stopped, hanging parallel to it.
The visualization that materialized in his mind showed him a gash which was barely three metres long, forty centimetres wide, but definitely extending below the floor level.
If you took a drink every time something was laboriously described with barely-relevant measurements, you would need a hospital in short order.
It was a dark orange cylinder, twenty centimetres long, sculpted to fit neatly into his gauntleted hand.
I wish that at any point an editor might have pointed out to the author that readers do not need to be provided measurements for every. single. physical object in a book.
It ended ten metres down in a polyp cave.
Stalagmites blew apart instantly under the violent energy input, ice vaporized across an area three metres wide.
the passage lip was fourteen metres below the soil seam,
Looking down he could see the ochre silicon envelope thirty-five metres below.
Joshua had programmed it to produce a narrow beam, ten centimetres wide, three metres long.
!!
Like a fool Quinn Dexter had been waiting for the jolt, a blink of cold emptiness which would tell him the voyage had actually taken place.
Please for pity's sake let us follow up with even one of the characters you've introduced us to already instead of just stacking more new ones on top.
Banneth was plugged into Govcentral’s State of Canada administration as deep as a high magus in a virgin.
Again. Ew.
“What planet?” The crewman gave him a funny look. “Lalonde. Why, didn’t they tell you?” “No.” “Oh. Well, you could have copped a worse one, believe me. Lalonde is EuroChristian-ethnic, opened up about thirty years ago.
Ah, come again please? So in the far future, space is like prison, wherein for the good of everyone we divvie up into ethnic/nationalist/religious groups so the planet isn't torn apart by all that diversity gumming up the works? What even is this?
The name Marie Skibbow was printed along the top; an attractive teenage girl smiled rebelliously at him from her hologram. Her parents were in for a few years of hell, he decided.
A gorgeous teenage girl trudged past, face down, lips set in grim misery. Her jump suit top was tied round her waist; she was wearing a tangerine scoop-neck T-shirt underneath, revealing plenty of smooth skin that was coated in sweat and dust.
We get it.
After reviewing the predominantly South-East Asian catchment profiles and intended culture-base of other stage one colony planets in the same sector as Lalonde, the LDC board decided to concentrate on EuroChristian-ethnic stock to give themselves an adequate immigrant pool.
...
the ship’s generalist and medical officer. And Ruben, the fusion-generator technician, who had become Syrinx’s lover a month after he came aboard, and at a hundred and twenty-five was exactly a century older than her.
Even though she was used to the degree of honesty which affinity fostered, Ruben always astounded her with his intimate knowledge of her emotional composition. You don’t complain about my other teenage attributes, she shot back, complete with a very graphic image.
This is really becoming a weird, persistent thread.
It is hard, I know; for captains more than anyone. We are the ones who truly open our souls to another entity, we feel the deepest, and suffer the most. And knowing that, knowing what you would endure in life, I still chose to bring you into existence, because there is so much joy to be had from the living.
Beautiful
Ninety per cent of the adults were involved with spaceflight in one field or another, which meant long absences were the norm. But when they came back, it was the house and Athene they always visited first, staying or passing through as the fancy took them. “Athene’s boarding-house, bordello, and playpen,” the old ex-captain had called it on more than one occasion.
Emerging from the jumble of doubt and misery was the tenuous wish that the Adamists were right after all, and there was such a thing as God, and an afterlife, and souls. That way Thetis wouldn’t be lost. Not for ever. It was such a tiny sliver of hope.
If there is a God, and if somewhere my brother’s soul is intact, please look after him. He will be so alone.
Up ahead was one of the circular harbours, six hundred metres in diameter,
I have never encountered an author so enamored of telling me the exact measurements of every damned thing. It's almost a tic.
Kulu was a Christian-ethnic culture, and very devout.
Please explain.
They were free enough with their hospitality, especially the daughters who liked to think of themselves as bohemian; and his scavenging flights made him notorious enough to enjoy both their patronage and bodies.
Please stop.
I wonder what he’d think if he knew what his little darling daughter was doing last night? Although knowing this lot, he’d probably want to join in.
For fuck's sake, do not make me dnf this at only 16%
There was something quirky about her, a suggestion of hidden depth. He experienced that same uncanny thrill he had when he was on the trail of a Laymil artefact, not quite arousal, but close.
Wow can we switch POVs now kthx
“I’m afraid I forgot what you do, though,” he said. “Same as everyone else in here, a rich heiress.” “Not quite everybody.” “No?” Her mouth flickered in an uncertain smile. “No, there’s me, you see. I didn’t inherit anything.”
At least he's upfront about being really into himself
She sucked in her lower lip, intrigued. It was an endearing action, making her look even younger.
EWW
Her smile turned mischievous. And she was suddenly all little girlish again.
Vomitous
It was her hair, he thought, all the girls he knew in Tranquillity had long, perfectly arranged hair. With her short, shaggy style she looked almost elfin, and supremely sexy.
Manic pixie dream girls ... in spaaaace
“You and all those beautiful rich girls. You’re an excellent lover, Joshua. Did you know that?” “Yeah. Thanks.”
“You wait for the girls to climax, you want them to enjoy it. You make them enjoy it.” She kissed his sternum, tongue licking the ridges of his pectoral muscles. “That’s very rare, very bold.”
If my eyes roll any fucking further, they will get stuck that way.
gloating at her wide-eyed incredulity as his semen surged into her in a long exultant consummation.
What the actual fuck. Is this shit.
What’s wrong with him? He lies continually, he sponges off his friends, he steals whenever he thinks it won’t be noticed, he has used stimulant programs Illegal on most Confederation worlds, he shows no respect to the girls he has sexual relations with, he even tried to avoid paying his income tax last year, claiming repairs to his spacecraft were legitimate expenses.
At least the habitat AI has a clear view of what a douchepigeon Josh is.
His weight was never anything less than optimum. The rumour around Colin’s staff said Smith had bedded half of the women in the administration office.
Dante got it all wrong, he thought, hell isn’t about searing heat, it’s about being permanently wet.
Truth
