We live in the future
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Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
Surely you are aware that the very word 'drive' is just a consequence of lazy scifi writing? Drives and blasters are terms designed to consign the essential boggling-ness of the technology required to the commonplace so that the 'actors' can get on with the job of telling the story, assisted by special effects. I would not mind if FTL was invented, but I would hate it if they called it a 'drive'. Anyway, micro rant over. Now off to work in my Petrol-Drive machine. D'Oh! | :doh:
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
Please - don't call it a 'drive'. Call it Propulsion or Engine or Motor. Drive belongs with Blaster, to an era of seventies SciFi which was looking to make these mind-cracking inventions commonplace, so that the 'heroes' could get on with the real business of saving the universe while we techies were factored out.
Rant rant rant etc.
Now to drive to work using my Petrol Drive. :doh:OK then, we got you. No more calling it a drive! :)
Sorry about that. My first posting went into a .... a...... wormhole....damn. I said it. :doh:
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Sorry about that. My first posting went into a .... a...... wormhole....damn. I said it. :doh:
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Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
Sorry about that. My first posting went into a .... a...... wormhole....damn. I said it. :doh:
That seems infinitely improbable to me, are you sure you don't have access to an Infinite Improbability Drive Engine
Infinite Improbability Drive? But...but....Douglas Adams was on our side........that means my whole thesis is flawed....aagh! I'm melting....melllltinnnnng.... :omg:
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Surely you are aware that the very word 'drive' is just a consequence of lazy scifi writing? Drives and blasters are terms designed to consign the essential boggling-ness of the technology required to the commonplace so that the 'actors' can get on with the job of telling the story, assisted by special effects. I would not mind if FTL was invented, but I would hate it if they called it a 'drive'. Anyway, micro rant over. Now off to work in my Petrol-Drive machine. :doh:
Fact of the matter is that, should a practical FTL engine of some description be invented at some point, it will probably be known as the iDrive, or MS Drive 8.1 or something. I don't see it as being lazy writing at all - if the gist of a story isn't the specific science - i.e. the fact of being able to travel FTL is a given, then the more mundane it can appear, the better. noting worse than an author trying to put pseudo-science into a story - especially when you read it years later. I love it when stories from the 50s and 60s go on about various recording devices that always seem to involve tape, for example - very small, but tape nonetheless; simply referring to it as a recording device has a timelessness about it.
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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Please - don't call it a 'drive'. Call it Propulsion or Engine or Motor. Drive belongs with Blaster, to an era of seventies SciFi which was looking to make these mind-cracking inventions commonplace, so that the 'heroes' could get on with the real business of saving the universe while we techies were factored out. Rant rant rant etc. Now to drive to work using my Petrol Drive. :doh:
Seems to me you have travelled through a vortex using your FTL drive with anti-gravity blasters.
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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Seems to me you have travelled through a vortex using your FTL drive with anti-gravity blasters.
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
Sshhh...They'll all want them...why do you think I'm trying to poo-poo the idea? Coming from the future was hard enough without trying to hide it from those Physics idiotsProfessors.
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Sshhh...They'll all want them...why do you think I'm trying to poo-poo the idea? Coming from the future was hard enough without trying to hide it from those Physics idiotsProfessors.
:snigger: you said poo-poo
MVVM # - I did it My Way ___________________________________________ Man, you're a god. - walterhevedeich 26/05/2011 .\\axxx (That's an 'M')
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Surely you are aware that the very word 'drive' is just a consequence of lazy scifi writing? Drives and blasters are terms designed to consign the essential boggling-ness of the technology required to the commonplace so that the 'actors' can get on with the job of telling the story, assisted by special effects. I would not mind if FTL was invented, but I would hate it if they called it a 'drive'. Anyway, micro rant over. Now off to work in my Petrol-Drive machine. :doh:
I don't understand your objection to the term 'drive'. It's a colloquialism. In a story, the hardware that gets you from point A to point B over interstellar distances could be anything from a mechanism that takes up 99% of the ship (see some of Larry Niven's 'Known Space' stories) to a small cluster of specialized cells in your brain. The characters need to call it something, and 'drive' is as good as anything. Most readers will understand that it's "the hardware that makes the ship go" and leave it at that.
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
Now off to work in my Petrol-Drive machine
If you really want to impress us, build a steam-powered starship ;P.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
I don't understand your objection to the term 'drive'. It's a colloquialism. In a story, the hardware that gets you from point A to point B over interstellar distances could be anything from a mechanism that takes up 99% of the ship (see some of Larry Niven's 'Known Space' stories) to a small cluster of specialized cells in your brain. The characters need to call it something, and 'drive' is as good as anything. Most readers will understand that it's "the hardware that makes the ship go" and leave it at that.
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
Now off to work in my Petrol-Drive machine
If you really want to impress us, build a steam-powered starship ;P.
Software Zen:
delete this;Steam-powered starship? Ha! I've already designed a Traffic-cone powered Radar.
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I don't understand your objection to the term 'drive'. It's a colloquialism. In a story, the hardware that gets you from point A to point B over interstellar distances could be anything from a mechanism that takes up 99% of the ship (see some of Larry Niven's 'Known Space' stories) to a small cluster of specialized cells in your brain. The characters need to call it something, and 'drive' is as good as anything. Most readers will understand that it's "the hardware that makes the ship go" and leave it at that.
Simon O'Riordan from UK wrote:
Now off to work in my Petrol-Drive machine
If you really want to impress us, build a steam-powered starship ;P.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Gary Wheeler wrote:
If you really want to impress us, build a steam-powered starship ;-P .
David Drake has steam powered star ships in his Leary novels. Of course, the water becomes steam because of heat from a fusion power plant. But still! Steam!
I've been reading the Leary books over the last few months. They're a guilty sort of fun :-O.
Software Zen:
delete this; -
Courtesy of the newly operational Gemini Planet Imager, an image of a planet over 63 light years away[^].
-------------- TTFN - Kent
So "We live in the future" because we are looking at an image that was sent 3 years before I was born? Doesn't that really mean we can look at the past? Because right now, assuming the planet still exists, it is 63 years older than it was when it sent the image. If that planet has an imager as well, doesn't mean we are living in the past? If that planet has an imager, then I'll buy we live in the future because they have to wait 63 years to see what we are doing now.