So, the Pequod have a STL drive capable of 99% the speed of light? Who needs a weapon to boil a planet, just ram the Earth with one of those ships a couple of times, that'll do it. Of course to do this, they are probably using antimatter propulsion. In that case, they only need 11,000 times the ship's dry mass in antimatter to pull it off...
Could be that the Pequod government knew just fine that dissent isn't very closely tied to genetics, but wanted to make an example of what happens to dissenters pour encourager les autres. People thinking of dissenting have been put on notice that if they make waves, not only themselves but anyone they are even remotely related to will die; and those who don't buy the government line that the punished were genetically tainted are made aware that the government is perfectly capable of wiping out millions essentially at random just to make a point.
It's revealed late in the novel that the aliens believed that bayl fcrpvrf jvgu n pregnva pbzzba trargvp yvarntr (juvpu uhznaf qb abg funer) pna orpbzr vagryyvtrag.
This is very timely. My brother sent me a copy of this as a gift because he's a fan of Lindsay Ellis as a blogger. I'm about a third of the way through, and it's nice to know that it holds up reasonably well.
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james_davis_nicoll) wrote2020-08-17 09:26 am
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(Anonymous) 2020-08-17 04:59 pm (UTC)(link)What axiom ends? Or how does it play as metaphor?
I read it as meaningless technical misappropriation. It grates, it grates.
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"There are no aliens hanging out at Area 51?" :)
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(Anonymous) 2020-08-19 10:36 pm (UTC)(link)Robert Carnegie
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