One thing I liked about Mass Effect is how the krogan are a warrior race - and it’s disastrous for them. They all want to be warriors - so the answer to who does all those non-warrior tasks is “no one”. It renders them dysfunctional as a civilization.
As I understand it:
Where the humanoids come from is a mystery in-universe as well, especially given how human-like they appear. They may have been planted there by an unknown species. A species that may have created the whole bizarre ecology as well.
There’s not only a single deposit of unobtanium; it’s simply the closest big and easily mineable deposit.
I suspect that either the neuro-link and life itself on Pandora is artificial, or that once a linked ecosystem evolved it simply overwhelmed and replaced all competitors.
I think, as a general rule, worlds created because the author has an ideological axe to grind stop become untenable faster than the ones that are just outright fantastic.
Maybe it’s what happens when the message you’re trying to send aside the story you’re trying to tell.
This thread makes me think of one I saw in a SF series my husband was watching where the inhabitants of this planet would not allow a child to get surgery because once you cut the skin the soul slipped out and the person was just a shell.
They executed the kid that was operated on, so does that mean instead of stitches, they excute people who cut themselves? How does that work? How did any child live to grow up (or was mine just stitches prone)? How did they build ANY kind of civilization with an interdiction against cutting skin? One serial killer and this planet is uninhabited…
That’s the rub: It isn’t easily mineable, hence the multibillion dollar Avatars.
If there was Unobtainium anywhere else on Pandora, why not move there and go to to work? Or better avoid the Na’vi altogether and simply mine UNDERNEATH them?
They also never explain if it’s an element or a compound. If it’s a compound, then synthesize it. If it’s an element, then it would have to be present elsewhere in Pandora’s solar system.
I read them at the same time my 12yo twins did. We all felt pretty much the same: first book was outstanding, second was okay, third was a waste of paper and ink. (They understood my theory about its dreckiness from the publishing end but my son simply couldn’t get past about chapter three anyway.)
I think anyone who read the books with at least modest comprehension will come away with the clear message that all governments, of all forms, suck and should be ignored as much as possible. The government that led to the wars of destruction was bad. The government that ruled from the Sun King’s court at the expense of every other life in “Panem” was bad. The revolutionary government that wanted to take over was bad. And whatever finally took over and let them grow old and have kids was only okay insofar as it didn’t bother them too often. You don’t have to have a degree in Poli Sci to be pretty strongly imprinted with the message that government only does bad things.
It only mattered if you punctured the chest cavity, where the soul could escape from. Random lacerations or being punctured elsewhere didn’t render you soulless. The number of times people could have their chest cavity ripped open and still survive are relatively few - not enough that society would collapse without it.
Even in our own timeline, successful routine internal surgery barely existed before the 20th century. “The abdomen, the chest, and the brain will forever be shut from the intrusion of the wise and humane surgeon.”* - Sir John Eric Ericksen, British surgeon, appointed Surgeon-Extraordinary to Queen Victoria 1873.*
And yes, I know about the skulls from antiquity with healed surgical openings. Doesn’t count if you forget how to do it.
The appendices specifically discuss the Southern plantings of desert plants (that we never see in-novel) - it’s why the Fremen pay a massive annual tribute of Spice to the Guild not to allow observation satellites on Dune.
Except that is based on some real-world harvest festival customs from when barter was the rule and coin was either rare or unknown. Not to mention that even in later times metal coinage was ridiculously variable, with no established exchange rates and value assessed by weight as a fallback when everything else failed. Not even straight weight since coins tended to become debased pretty quickly if they were anything close to pure when struck at the mint. They didn’t have good ways of testing purity, so conversions were based on gut feel. The chaotic reality of markets in the past is almost unbelievable to a modern person. Hell, there weren’t even banks until about the 1300s. And the value of currency is still set in part by government fiat.
It’s not as if modern markets don’t have tokens, scrip, or chips. People tend to forget that money is totally abstract. What’s a dollar bill worth? In some places, less than toilet paper. Oh, and that dollar was adapted from Spanish coins.
Spice enabled all of their travel. They’d be stuck at sublight speed without the ability to fold space, which would completely isolate all of the planets from each other. That made it basically a hydraulic empire (which I see is noted below on that page). Each of the systems is in effect its own kingdom, only loosely controlled by the Emperor via his control of Spice production, which is why there’s all the infighting and intrigue, and why the Emperor’s hold seems so tenuous.
I think it can make sense if you assume their language started normally and evolved into what we heard. After all, how could they have told the stories the metaphors are displaying? It’s also possible their written language doesn’t match their spoken one and is more precise.
What gets me about Arrakis is that they use weather control satellites to eventually change the weather rather crashing a few comets into the surface. If you need water, why get it as cheaply as possible?
That’s always been something that annoyed the fuck out of me with the end of LotR.
“Hey slaves of Nurn! You’re free! We killed all (er, most) of the Orcs. Now we’d like you to stay right here and just keep farming your slave plots, k? But you’ll be free. We promise. Oh, and our army is headed back to Gondor, so if there’s any trouble with the scattered Orcs, just send a messenger…”
I’d be the guy to say;
“Your majesty? I think I speak for all of us when I say FUCK THAT SHIT. We’re coming with you. We hear you’ve got a bunch of empty land back in Ithilien. That’ll do.”
Even with the justifications given in the books (one zone has nukes, the others don’t) exactly how did the US/Canada devolve to 12 worker gulags more tightly controlled and submissive than the Soviet republics? And stay that way with no significant revolt for some 75 years or more? What, the fops in Zone 1 are going to nuke their coal- or food-producing zones to prove a point?
Where’s the rest of the world in all this?
Sending kids to fight battles to the death, every year? Really? Televising it? Claiming it teaches the oppressed zones some lesson about revolt? All while showing the glittering, rich, decadent lifestyle of the capital zone, which (IIRC) does not send candidates to the games?
Nah. It’s unbelievable on so many levels that it requires that famous suspension of consciousness to swallow. If nothing else, the revolt that finally occurs should have happened in 10 years, not 75.
That’s similar to the Koban series. A warrior race that was actually working towards self-extinction when space-faring do-gooders showed up and tried to civilize them. Instead, they killed the do-gooders and used the tech to expand, uniting to kill or enslave every other race they meet. Their greatest weakness is they’re utterly dependent on their slave races for everything, so they make sure no one knows where they are.
