not sure which thread to put this in

[Murmur the Fallen]

As I haven't had the time yet to read all the Fenspace [and where did that name come from?] threads, I decided to make a little meta-thread for some of the ideas that popped into my head when I read the precis.
First off, handwavium basically shot all of humanity pass the event horizon of the Technological Singularity, with the Fens being truly Rapturous Nerds (a la Ken MacLeod).
This means that the second generation will be almost completely unrecognizable to the first generation of Fens. Their children will be weirder and with interests that will have little in common with their forebears. The Fandom of Tomorrow may be something incredibly weird like . . . watching cheese mature in a cave. They'd discuss the best moisture level for the types of cheese, how the various molds fight against each other, which section would taste best at which stage, etc.
There may be entire nations built around the fandom of cheese.
And that's just one example
Secondly:
Here are some ideas for various clades and polities that are relatively small in number but could show that nothing is monolithic in space . . .
except for the Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame, and have secreted themselves in one of Jupiter's moons, possibly Hegemone. They rarely deal with other inhabitents of the Jovian system, i.e. browncoats, but do occaisonally trade information. Their goals have to do with modelling genetic experiments on baseline humans, though rumors abound that they have a bioreactor and have gone beyond simple modelling.
Bekenstein Breakers: Quasi-monastic infotech order that have devoted themselves to achieving informational density beyond that possible within a black hole, i.e the bekenstein bound. They are supported by various ideospace clades and polities, who see the breaking of the bound as the key to true immortality beyond the end of the universe.
Satanists: Contrarian order who believe in God, but really dislike him. Hooked themselves up to life-support, chemically gave themselves MPD, uploaded prayers from all religions, and then started praying to initiate a DoS attack on God 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. (wednesdays are margarita and bowling nights).
Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade. Known also for factionalizing, so there are Real Blakes, Continuity Blakes, True Blakes, The Avon Brigade, The Provisional Blakes Army, Blakes 700, etc.
Kuiper Brain: a computronium mass originally made from a middle sized kuiper belt object, now massing about the same as the moon, holds a community of purely ideospace beings running about 100X human cognitive speed. Not much is known about them, as yet.
The "Socialist Swarm": name given by outsiders to ideospace/baryonspace amphibians who travel the solar system and possibly beyond for fun and "mutually benefitial resource merger." When seen in baryonspace, resemble porcelain figures daubed in abstract paintings, while in ideospace they resemble platonic spheres. Travel in coffin-sized vessels that "swarm" together and apart like a cloud, but can also merge into larger "ships."
Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.
New Sun: Ideological movement for remaking the sun into a stellar engine; possible connection to Kuiper Brain.
Eschaton Express: Two Island 3 cylinders retrofitted into near-light starships so that a community of humans would skip "all the boring bits" and go straight to the end of the universe. Rumored to have devised a time machine so that they could come back with the True Cosmological Knowledge. In their wake, grew a powerful legend that sees other groups of humans doing the same.
Possibly more to come.
-murmur

[CattyNebulart]

---

First off, handwavium basically shot all of humanity pass the event horizon of the Technological Singularity, with the Fens being truly Rapturous Nerds (a la Ken MacLeod).

---

I don't think so, a tech singularity requiers repeatability and some understanding, and no-one understands handwavium, and few of the principles it works on are understood.
I do like some of your group ideas though, even if most would not fit that well with fenspace. There are few handwavium objects that can be replicated, the closest the fen have archieved is to breed highly specialized strains of handwavium, and even the duplicates are rare. (in the form of exact dupplicates, but if there are a million spacesuits the are roughly a million desings, though some only have subtile differences.)
Edit: oh and the proper thread for this would probably be plotbunny for slae cheap: p202.ezboard.com/fdrunkar...ID=1.topic
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[M Fnord]

---

First off, handwavium basically shot all of humanity pass the event horizon of the Technological Singularity, with the Fens being truly Rapturous Nerds (a la Ken MacLeod).

---

Not as such. Not yet, anyway. While I admit it's nice to see another singulatarian wandering the halls, the precis has a shallower acceleration curve than your standard Kurzweilian Hard Rapture, and the five years from Event One to the setting's "now" of 2012 hasn't been long enough for that kind of heavy change. Come back in a hundred years, maybe.
Why is that? In meta terms, it's a nerfing for ease of access. If I was writing on my own, I'd be more willing to let things accelerate into outright transhumanism. But this is a group project, and since not everybody's familiar enough with the concepts it's better to keep things a bit more grounded, so to speak.
As Commisar, I don't have any particular objections to having shadowy transhuman groups rumored to be lurking in the Kuiper and Oort, or building strongholds around nearby dwarfs, but I'm leery of going for the heavy stuff like bekenstein computation or large-scale uploading just yet. Unless the consensus judges otherwise, of course.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Murmur the Fallen]

Not as such. Not yet, anyway. While I admit it's nice to see another singulatarian wandering the halls, the precis has a shallower acceleration curve than your standard Kurzweilian Hard Rapture, and the five years from Event One to the setting's "now" of 2012 hasn't been long enough for that kind of heavy change. Come back in a hundred years, maybe.
[Okay. I was thinking that a lot of these groups would be second generation, anyway, after humanity had some time to settle down and put down strange roots. A few of these groups could be done in the "here and now" though.
I'm thinking in particular the Blakes, Cold Shatter, Satanist (have to come up with a better name), maybe the Black Monoliths and Kuiper Brain, though by this point the Brain would have consumed only half an asteroid or comet.]

As Commisar, I don't have any particular objections to having shadowy transhuman groups rumored to be lurking in the Kuiper and Oort, or building strongholds around nearby dwarfs, but I'm leery of going for the heavy stuff like bekenstein computation or large-scale uploading just yet. Unless the consensus judges otherwise, of course.
[Okay.
Oh, and here're some more ideas:
Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes! Customizable phsyiognomy! Comes equipped with private FTL-com for the true meat-puppet experience and a maintenance creche! A two-hundred year warranty available! Order now!
CHONP:The true food for the true Fen. Made from one-hundred percent comets! Has the recent food embargo from Earth gotten you down? Tired of eating recycled foods over and over again? Try CHONP! Comes in a variety of styles and flavors, including CHONP-Meat, CHONP-Veggie, and CHONP-Other! It's made from rocks and ice, so you know it's tasty.
Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police officers or private army. Mercenary, officious, arrogant, and willing to get into bed with anyone, but also adheres to strict standards of evidence, due process and human rights. Rumored to be truly headed up by a super-AI that's trying to control the course of humanity. Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.
Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.
]
-murmur

[M Fnord]

---

Okay. I was thinking that a lot of these groups would be second generation, anyway, after humanity had some time to settle down and put down strange roots. A few of these groups could be done in the "here and now" though.
I'm thinking in particular the Blakes, Cold Shatter, Satanist (have to come up with a better name), maybe the Black Monoliths and Kuiper Brain, though by this point the Brain would have consumed only half an asteroid or comet.

---

Second or third, depending on when quirk-free handwavium starts to become available. Since that's the holy grail of wavetech engineering, it'll happen eventually.
(Speaking of probabilities, once the mundanes come up/obtain quirkless 'wave, I fully expect Earth to go Sheenisov. Which will set certain quarters howling. Moo hoo ha ha ha.)
As for the groups... the Blakes, obviously, in all their fractious glory. Cold Shatter would make for an interesting bad guy once we get over the zwilnik hump. The Monoliths and Kuiper OTOH, I think work better as rumors than actual factions, the sort of stories Belters and browncoats tell while drunk.

---

Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.

---

*snort* Okay, this wins.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[CattyNebulart]

---

Second or third, depending on when quirk-free handwavium starts to become available. Since that's the holy grail of wavetech engineering, it'll happen eventually.

---

Quirk free handwavium won't appear unless God wills it to appear. And can you honestly see Haruhi doing that? (Well I can but that's not the point. The point is that it is unlikely.)
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[itsune9tl]

---

Second or third, depending on when quirk-free handwavium starts to become available. Since that's the holy grail of wavetech engineering, it'll happen eventually.

---

Quirk-free 'wavium is where we get Hardtech from. In other words The ultimate form of handwavium is an Engineer/Scientist that still has an useful imagination.

[M Fnord]

---

Quirk free handwavium won't appear unless God wills it to appear.

---

Nonsense, that's like saying computers will never get smaller than room-sized. Handwavium is technology, not magic. As the underlying principles are discovered and understood, more control is achieved, and the quirks begin to damp out. The Professor understands this, which is why everybody's so scared of him.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

Touching on some of the other items in the original post...

---

Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame

---

I'd see that as a Fenspace Nextgen group - the only known case of human-to-AI conversion so far was a biomod that took place while the person was dying. I can't see people being willing to kill themselves on the off-chance that it would make them functionally immortal.

---

Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade.

---

Ah, lawbreakers - or, as we call them, Boskonians. At least, that's how people would view them...
A line from my story Recollections of an Immortal comes to mind: "He'd spend a fortune on making sure a police force kept going, then take the law into his own hands and kill someone who was threatening one of us." I could easily imagine the person Noah'd killed be a Blake...

---

Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.

---

And most of the rest of Fenspace, too - if they destroy Earth, where are we going to get our PS4s and xBox720s from? More importantly, where would we get our fresh food and advanced medical care from?

---

Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes!

---

Going story-mode for a moment:
"Boss, take a look at this advertisment."
I started reading the webpage that my exec had forwarded to my palmtop. "'Meat-Puppet Conversion'... Is this something you want, Yoriko?"
"Not really, Noah. Well, I want to be able to bear your children, but if the wording says what I think it says, the price is too high."
"Oh?" Then I got to the part she was worried about. "'Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material'... Oh, by all that's holy..."
"Exactly, boss. If they aren't cloning the bodies, then are they kidnapping and murdering people to make them?"
I put the palmtop down on my desk. "Call the Browncoats; tell them I'll fund an investigation into this."
And so on.
Maybe you'd like to re-phrase that, laddie...?

---

Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police

---

Probably lumped in with the Browncoats, in public opinion...

---

Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.

---

Oh, good. I'd hate to find out what would happen if such skimpily-dressed troubleshooters were to team up with Kohran... No, I lie; I'd love to read that story - but I'm not about to write it.

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[M Fnord]

---

Maybe you'd like to re-phrase that, laddie...?

---

Nonono, no murder! Murder-free! Just bad ad copy! I swear!
The idea's pretty simple, tho' the execution's kind of dicey: Take a baseline DNA sequence - the averaged setup they used for the Human Genome Project frex - and feed the information into a computer. Then, you have the computer simulate what kind of person that genome would grow into. Tweak it until you've got a match, then feed the data into a bioreactor. Hey presto, instant synthetic human, just add brain patterns.
(The far end of this techtree includes fun ideas like the Darwin-Gosse machine, which can simulate an entire ecosystem and evolve it for terraforming purposes. Neat, huh?)---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[robkelk]

Aaiyah! It's good that no murder is involved. Really.
But using 'wavium to creat life...? Eep.
(Yes, I know... "tell it to Julien Friez"... )

-Rob Kelk
--
Rob Kelk
"Governments have no right to question the loyalty of those who oppose
them. Adversaries remain citizens of the same state, common subjects of
the same sovereign, servants of the same law."

- Michael Ignatieff, addressing Stanford University in 2012

[CattyNebulart]

---

Nonsense, that's like saying computers will never get smaller than room-sized. Handwavium is technology, not magic. As the underlying principles are discovered and understood, more control is achieved, and the quirks begin to damp out. The Professor understands this, which is why everybody's so scared of him.

---

The thing about scientist is that unlike priests, who are always right, they are never right.
Take Newton forinstance he completly forgot to take the speed of light into account so most of his calulations are of. Einstein fixed the big problems with newtonian physics, but enough problems remain to say that Einstein is probably wrong too, there has just not been enough time yet to explain how einstein went wrong. Some might say that they where almost right, but almost right is still wrong. We should dread the day that scientist are right, though I doubt it will come, since we are always figuring out that the world is bigger than we though it was.
The same way that building buildings isn't all sciene, or making computer games isn't all science I doubt handwavium will ever be an exact science. Granted science can help one understand the limitations and it can push those same limitations, and it gives the underpinnings to make it happen science alone is not enough. That is why there are arhitects, Interior desingers, game desingers, etc. They are not scientist or engineers but they are craftsmen. I'm sure that handwavium will at some point be relativly well understood, and that like any new science it will make hughe advances in it's early years, much like computers have been doing/are doing, but I doubt it will ever be completly understood. There will always be a new frontier after we reach the horizon of our current imagination.
Edit: Arg, can't do nested quotes.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Murmur the Fallen]

Wow, lots of talk here. Thanks a lot, you guys!
You know, going through this group more, it becomes more and more clear that this isn't a sort of futurist shared universe, per se, but rather more of a sci-fi/fantasy fan bash in space.
Hmm, okay.
Re: reply
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Quote:
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Okay. I was thinking that a lot of these groups would be second generation, anyway, after humanity had some time to settle down and put down strange roots. A few of these groups could be done in the "here and now" though.
I'm thinking in particular the Blakes, Cold Shatter, Satanist (have to come up with a better name), maybe the Black Monoliths and Kuiper Brain, though by this point the Brain would have consumed only half an asteroid or comet.
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Second or third, depending on when quirk-free handwavium starts to become available. Since that's the holy grail of wavetech engineering, it'll happen eventually.
[oh, goody. Yeah, when wavium and hardtech are interchangeable, then it'll be good. Speaking of which, were any Thanksgiving cornucopias turned into actual femtotech cornucopias by wavium?]
(Speaking of probabilities, once the mundanes come up/obtain quirkless 'wave, I fully expect Earth to go Sheenisov. Which will set certain quarters howling. Moo hoo ha ha ha.)
[Really? Sheenisov? Not very utopian, mate, especially given the way it ended up in both the timelines. Why not go Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?]
As for the groups... the Blakes, obviously, in all their fractious glory. Cold Shatter would make for an interesting bad guy once we get over the zwilnik hump. The Monoliths and Kuiper OTOH, I think work better as rumors than actual factions, the sort of stories Belters and browncoats tell while drunk.
[Yeah, that makes sense. Though there should be nascent gene-hackers and self-evolvers among the Fen population already, to give Black Monolith and Kuiper credence.]
Quote:
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Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.
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*snort* Okay, this wins.
[I literally couldn't finish Slan given just how friggin' whiny the main character was.]
Touching on some of the other items in the original post...

Quote:
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Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame
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I'd see that as a Fenspace Nextgen group - the only known case of human-to-AI conversion so far was a biomod that took place while the person was dying. I can't see people being willing to kill themselves on the off-chance that it would make them functionally immortal.
[Some people would. And I'm sure that as quirk free wavium and hardtech catches up to it, there'll be more. And of course personality backups should be playing some part in fenspace soon.]
Quote:
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Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ah, lawbreakers - or, as we call them, Boskonians. At least, that's how people would view them...
A line from my story Recollections of an Immortal comes to mind: "He'd spend a fortune on making sure a police force kept going, then take the law into his own hands and kill someone who was threatening one of us." I could easily imagine the person Noah'd killed be a Blake...
[Groovy. Blakes have a ideology of freedom from any overriding government, and are willing to blow shit up and commit acts of boskonianism.]

Quote:
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Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.
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And most of the rest of Fenspace, too - if they destroy Earth, where are we going to get our PS4s and xBox720s from? More importantly, where would we get our fresh food and advanced medical care from?
[They'd, uh, they'd make their own? I guess? Cold Shatter basically believes that having all those natural resources, and they don't really believe that things like plants or an atmosphere that you can't carry with you, is just a waste. Why have all that nickel-iron in the Earth's crust just wasted on making a magnetosphere when it could be used to make life better in fenspace through free market forces? They're pretty much militant uber strip-miners.]

Quote:
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Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Going story-mode for a moment:
"Boss, take a look at this advertisment."
I started reading the webpage that my exec had forwarded to my palmtop. "'Meat-Puppet Conversion'... Is this something you want, Yoriko?"
"Not really, Noah. Well, I want to be able to bear your children, but if the wording says what I think it says, the price is too high."
"Oh?" Then I got to the part she was worried about. "'Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material'... Oh, by all that's holy..."
"Exactly, boss. If they aren't cloning the bodies, then are they kidnapping and murdering people to make them?"
I put the palmtop down on my desk. "Call the Browncoats; tell them I'll fund an investigation into this."
And so on.
Maybe you'd like to re-phrase that, laddie...?
[How exactly are browncoats defined here? What's their role? Are they, like, cops? Cause given the source of that name, you'd think they'd be more criminal than cop. Anyway, meat-puppets are basically engineered human bodies that are controlled by AIs through a dedicated FTL-comm and a computer in their heads, as explained below.]

Quote:
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Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police
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Probably lumped in with the Browncoats, in public opinion...
[Really? Cause I would think that the Whedonites wouldn't really like Baley, because they'd be more than willing to bust up unions and go all rights of the state/corporation supercedes the agency of the indivdiual.]
Quote:
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Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.
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Oh, good. I'd hate to find out what would happen if such skimpily-dressed troubleshooters were to team up with Kohran... No, I lie; I'd love to read that story - but I'm not about to write it.
[Me too.]
-Rob Kelk
The thing about scientist is that unlike priests, who are always right, they are never right.
Take Newton forinstance he completly forgot to take the speed of light into account so most of his calulations are of. Einstein fixed the big problems with newtonian physics, but enough problems remain to say that Einstein is probably wrong too, there has just not been enough time yet to explain how einstein went wrong. Some might say that they where almost right, but almost right is still wrong. We should dread the day that scientist are right, though I doubt it will come, since we are always figuring out that the world is bigger than we though it was.
[I guess it really depends on your definition of "right" and "wrong." Post-modern critique on science and the scientific method is useful but only in that you can't get puffed up about knowledge.]
[Anyway: Metropolis, a machine-city that is made from a waved abandoned space module, not sure what, possibly from the apollo missions. Anyway, grew into a large city that is AI-run and AI-friendly. Home to Universal Robots, a robot manufacturing corporation. The main living area for non-AIs is called Alphaville. Home to many pulpers.
[Nemos: a subset of space pirates, only steampunk-tinged.
[The Quatermass Institute: Dedicated to watching the skies for signs of alien life and utterly blowing it to kingdom come if it's hostile, along with any other bystanders. Labelled doomsday fanatic paranoids by the rest of fendom. Rumored to have stockpiles of nuclear weapons and kinetic missiles to defend and/or blow up Earth and humanity in general. Dislike hippies and young people in general. Hardtech as much as possible as they see handwavium as possibly an insidious plot by evil people-eating aliens to destroy us all.
[AEUG: Group calling for the abolishment of all 'dane influence in space. Dress in red prussian-inspired attire and ride around in giant mechs.]
-murmur

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Take Newton forinstance he completly forgot to take the speed of light into account so most of his calulations are of.

---

Just as a point of info, Catty, it wasn't that he forgot, it's that he had no idea that he needed to. At that point in time, most people had no idea that light travelled at all -- and some were still postulating that sight was a radar-like phenomenon using undefined signals emitted from the eyes. And that period was still centuries away from having the sophistication needed to perform the experiments that would indicate that the speed of light was indpendent of the frame of reference, which is really the key piece of info needed to get to relativity from classical physics. It was the need to reconcile that outrageously counterintuitive datum (which was still demonstrably true) with Newtonian physics that led Einstein inevitably to relativity. But without being able to measure c? No way. Newton did a bang-up job with the data he could get, and remember -- until you get to wild extremes of speed, mass or whatever, Newtonian physics still works just fine. It may be superceded, but it's not broken.
-- Bob
---------
Visit beautiful Boston, proud successor to Seattle as
"City Most Scared Of Its Own Shadow

[M Fnord]

---

You know, going through this group more, it becomes more and more clear that this isn't a sort of futurist shared universe, per se, but rather more of a sci-fi/fantasy fan bash in space.

---

Yeah, pretty much. When I dropped the first plotbunny my mental image was a hard scifi Undocumented Features, but concept mutation set in and well...
And now you know The Rest Of The Story[tm].

---

oh, goody. Yeah, when wavium and hardtech are interchangeable, then it'll be good. Speaking of which, were any Thanksgiving cornucopias turned into actual femtotech cornucopias by wavium?

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Not as I'm aware, and they'd probably be the best-kept secrets in the entire Solar System if they do exist.

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Really? Sheenisov? Not very utopian, mate, especially given the way it ended up in both the timelines. Why not go Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom?

---

*shrug* We never got a really good close-up look in the books, but the little we see of normal Sheenisov life in Cassini Division makes for a good general model: not entirely utopian, but a highly urbanized, post-scarcity, post-capitalist and largely non-expansionist society. Kinda like what James Nicoll calls his "nightmarish future of continued prosperity." That, and Doctrow makes me itch.

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Yeah, that makes sense. Though there should be nascent gene-hackers and self-evolvers among the Fen population already, to give Black Monolith and Kuiper credence.

---

There's a couple who've been highlighted so far, like the Jason, though if you're still slogging through the threads you might not have come across him yet. Oddly enough, he's also the first person to come up with something resembling primitive computronium...

---

I literally couldn't finish Slan given just how friggin' whiny the main character was.

---

Nearly twenty years in fandom, and I've run into so much fans-are-slans bullshit that casting actual slans as the emo kids of the new generation automatically wins.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"

[Kokuten]

---

Oddly enough, he's also the first person to come up with something resembling primitive computronium...

---

The Jason's only problem is, he's a ritualist - keeps his production costs and times WAY higher than they could be.
damn fine work, but it costs..
The self-replicating part of some of his bio-stuff is a very nice workaround to this.
Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[CattyNebulart]

@bob
I'm not saying that Newton could have done a better job, or that he didn't do some amazing work, or that it isn't a good aproximation, but it is just an aproximation.
It's like saying Pi is 3.1416. It's wrong but it's good enough for most purposes. It's the same with newtonian physis, we know most of it isn't right be we don't are because most of the time it's good enough and dealing with relativity all the time just introduces to many extra calculations that get shwallowed up by the messurment error.
Anyway my point was that 3 generations is probably not enough time to understand handwavium, or that we nessecarily ever can. Early in the 20'th century people thought that they knew almost everything there was to know about physics, and then relativity and quantum mechanics where discovered. We might have a good basis for the basics but most of Handwavium's power would still be beyond us.
E: "Did they... did they just endorse the combination of the JSDF and US Army by showing them as two lesbian lolicons moving in together and holding hands and talking about how 'intimate' they were?"
B: "Have you forgotten so soon? They're phasing out Don't Ask, Don't Tell."

[Bob Schroeck]

Understood. It's just that your phrasing sort of seemed to imply that he'd carelessly left the speed of light issues out of his calculations. I understand it's not what you meant.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[Murmur the Fallen]

I'd like to add some of these factions and places and what-not to the glossary thread, to be taken up and voted up or down by the general board.
I may even add some more.
by your leave, milord
-murmur

[Kokuten]

a General Public's view on these.

---

First off, handwavium basically shot all of humanity pass the event horizon of the Technological Singularity, with the Fens being truly Rapturous Nerds (a la Ken MacLeod).

---

Negatory - as we've seen in multiple stories, a lot of the 'fen are old-style Capitalists, with a strong influence of Hippie, for those who pay attention to the economics side at all.

---

This means that the second generation will be almost completely unrecognizable to the first generation of Fens. Their children will be weirder and with interests that will have little in common with their forebears. The Fandom of Tomorrow may be something incredibly weird like . . . watching cheese mature in a cave.

---

I think.. yes, I think in part you're right, but I think that, at least the first generation, will be a lot more 'normal' than you think, though consider the deviating effects of high-level exposure to Anime and Scifi...

---

There may be entire nations built around the fandom of cheese.

---

I've always been a Sharp Cheddar man, myself. I won't turn down a Brie presented in it's proper environment, though (high-grade crackers, high-grade red wine, high-grade beautiful woman)

---

nothing is monolithic in space . . .

---

That's what I see as the Driving Force of Fenspace. The Jason is fiddling with plants, near-magic, and self-transformation. I'm beating on anvils and adjusting crystallization matrices and emotionally-programmed 'wavemetal forging. And we're both Fen.

---

except for the Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame, and have secreted themselves in one of Jupiter's moons, possibly Hegemone. They rarely deal with other inhabitents of the Jovian system, i.e. browncoats, but do occaisonally trade information. Their goals have to do with modelling genetic experiments on baseline humans, though rumors abound that they have a bioreactor and have gone beyond simple modelling.

---

This.. I can see this as Gen Two 'Fen - I can't see this as Gen One, at least not early. We're still trying to get stable and take out the Clear And Present Boskone Menace.

---

Bekenstein Breakers: Quasi-monastic infotech order that have devoted themselves to achieving informational density beyond that possible within a black hole, i.e the bekenstein bound. They are supported by various ideospace clades and polities, who see the breaking of the bound as the key to true immortality beyond the end of the universe.

---

Again, gen two or three - if for no other reason, with Honey and hardtech, we're gonna have quite a lot of data storage available to us.

---

Satanists: Contrarian order who believe in God, but really dislike him. Hooked themselves up to life-support, chemically gave themselves MPD, uploaded prayers from all religions, and then started praying to initiate a DoS attack on God 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. (wednesdays are margarita and bowling nights).

---

Suggest incorporation of this bit into Religions of Fenspace, change faction title to 'Satan Hats' as a reference to Black Hat Hackers.

---

Blakes:

---

Uhm, what? Source on Blakes, please, I'm drawing a null.

---

Kuiper Brain: a computronium mass originally made from a middle sized kuiper belt object, now massing about the same as the moon, holds a community of purely ideospace beings running about 100X human cognitive speed. Not much is known about them, as yet.

---

How can a 'purely ideospace' being exist? As I understand it, Ideospace is the average human knowledge base

---

The "Socialist Swarm":

---

...Gah...
Fourth Gen. This is some seriously Out There stuff, I don't think we have anyone even _working_ on dimensional/phase/perspective shifting.

---

Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.

---

Fringe Nutjobs.

---

New Sun: Ideological movement for remaking the sun into a stellar engine; possible connection to Kuiper Brain.

---

See, Gen Four again - but in the here-and-now of Fenspace, I can certainly see the Dysonians being busy little beavers, haring off to nearby star systems with self-replicators and some scary-ass Grey Goo reactors, turning planetoids (and Gen 2, planets, Gen 2.5, gas giants, Gen 4, stars) into malleable materials for inclusion in their initial Ringworld build.. They'll have something noticeable by gen 1.5, if they can keep it together.

---

Eschaton Express: Two Island 3 cylinders retrofitted into near-light starships so that a community of humans would skip "all the boring bits" and go straight to the end of the universe. Rumored to have devised a time machine so that they could come back with the True Cosmological Knowledge. In their wake, grew a powerful legend that sees other groups of humans doing the same.

---

Uhm.
*researches*
WOW. that's _cool_. That's also beyond the Bounds Of Current Wavetech, imo, though we're pretty damn close. I don't think Hephaestus could handle a ~61.5 billion cubic foot order of Battle Steel - and I don't think conventional steel can take the stress, but I'm not at all certain of that.
serious mega-engineering, there. Gen Two stuff, I thinks, though it could happen as early as Gen 1.5, with a charismatic inventor/engineer spearheading it.

---

Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes! Customizable phsyiognomy! Comes equipped with private FTL-com for the true meat-puppet experience and a maintenance creche! A two-hundred year warranty available! Order now!

---

Eehehehehe awesome. I can see this popping up at any point, when there's enough bio-engineering expertise Up Here to pull it off. Though I'm sure the ad copy would be better..

---

CHONP:The true food for the true Fen. Made from one-hundred percent comets! Has the recent food embargo from Earth gotten you down? Tired of eating recycled foods over and over again? Try CHONP! Comes in a variety of styles and flavors, including CHONP-Meat, CHONP-Veggie, and CHONP-Other! It's made from rocks and ice, so you know it's tasty.

---

Again on the Ad Copy, but I'd buy that... hell, I'd produce that.

---

Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police officers or private army. Mercenary, officious, arrogant, and willing to get into bed with anyone, but also adheres to strict standards of evidence, due process and human rights. Rumored to be truly headed up by a super-AI that's trying to control the course of humanity. Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.

---

I don't grok this reference, I'm afraid - but there's plenty of room for pseudo-law-enforcement agencies. Just be prepared to be despised.

---

Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.

---

I can see this popping up as a biomod, but not En Masse, until bioengineering is able to produce the full mod, with FTL comm - this is also dependant on gen 2.5 FTL com, small enough to be implanted - right now, the State of The Art is refrigerator sized, if I remember correctly.

Some concepts, some responses. Cheers.Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Murmur the Fallen]

a General Public's view on these.
[thanks bunches]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
First off, handwavium basically shot all of humanity pass the event horizon of the Technological Singularity, with the Fens being truly Rapturous Nerds (a la Ken MacLeod).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Negatory - as we've seen in multiple stories, a lot of the 'fen are old-style Capitalists, with a strong influence of Hippie, for those who pay attention to the economics side at all.
[the thing about a singularity is that from the other side, you can't really predict what's going to come out. not really an answer, especially the whole economic ideology thing, but . . . ]

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
nothing is monolithic in space . . .
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

That's what I see as the Driving Force of Fenspace. The Jason is fiddling with plants, near-magic, and self-transformation. I'm beating on anvils and adjusting crystallization matrices and emotionally-programmed 'wavemetal forging. And we're both Fen.
[hmm.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
except for the Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame, and have secreted themselves in one of Jupiter's moons, possibly Hegemone. They rarely deal with other inhabitents of the Jovian system, i.e. browncoats, but do occaisonally trade information. Their goals have to do with modelling genetic experiments on baseline humans, though rumors abound that they have a bioreactor and have gone beyond simple modelling.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

This.. I can see this as Gen Two 'Fen - I can't see this as Gen One, at least not early. We're still trying to get stable and take out the Clear And Present Boskone Menace.

[mmmmmaybe. I'll be writing this up soon on the gazeteer thread.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Bekenstein Breakers: Quasi-monastic infotech order that have devoted themselves to achieving informational density beyond that possible within a black hole, i.e the bekenstein bound. They are supported by various ideospace clades and polities, who see the breaking of the bound as the key to true immortality beyond the end of the universe.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again, gen two or three - if for no other reason, with Honey and hardtech, we're gonna have quite a lot of data storage available to us.

[yeah . . . sigh.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Satanists: Contrarian order who believe in God, but really dislike him. Hooked themselves up to life-support, chemically gave themselves MPD, uploaded prayers from all religions, and then started praying to initiate a DoS attack on God 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. (wednesdays are margarita and bowling nights).
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Suggest incorporation of this bit into Religions of Fenspace, change faction title to 'Satan Hats' as a reference to Black Hat Hackers.
[now there's a reference i'll have to look up. certainly the church of fen will be a targe to whatever the satanists end up as.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Blakes:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uhm, what? Source on Blakes, please, I'm drawing a null.
[from Blakes 7, great 70s sci fi series from Terry Nation, creator of the Daleks, Survivors, and a producer for MacGuyver.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Kuiper Brain: a computronium mass originally made from a middle sized kuiper belt object, now massing about the same as the moon, holds a community of purely ideospace beings running about 100X human cognitive speed. Not much is known about them, as yet.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

How can a 'purely ideospace' being exist? As I understand it, Ideospace is the average human knowledge base
[I defined ideospace as basically the "space" that exists for simulations, i.e. virtual reality. as opposed to baryonspace, or "real" space. again, gen 2.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The "Socialist Swarm":
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

...Gah...
Fourth Gen. This is some seriously Out There stuff, I don't think we have anyone even _working_ on dimensional/phase/perspective shifting.
[Oh, no real dimensional manipulation. They are basically nanotech or femtotech blocks with engines, the coffin-size things, that create robot bodies to interact with people in real space.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Fringe Nutjobs.

[pretty much, yeah.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
New Sun: Ideological movement for remaking the sun into a stellar engine; possible connection to Kuiper Brain.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

See, Gen Four again - but in the here-and-now of Fenspace, I can certainly see the Dysonians being busy little beavers, haring off to nearby star systems with self-replicators and some scary-ass Grey Goo reactors, turning planetoids (and Gen 2, planets, Gen 2.5, gas giants, Gen 4, stars) into malleable materials for inclusion in their initial Ringworld build.. They'll have something noticeable by gen 1.5, if they can keep it together.

[well, i'm sure that there are fen that would be agitating for this on day one.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Eschaton Express: Two Island 3 cylinders retrofitted into near-light starships so that a community of humans would skip "all the boring bits" and go straight to the end of the universe. Rumored to have devised a time machine so that they could come back with the True Cosmological Knowledge. In their wake, grew a powerful legend that sees other groups of humans doing the same.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Uhm.
*researches*
WOW. that's _cool_. That's also beyond the Bounds Of Current Wavetech, imo, though we're pretty damn close. I don't think Hephaestus could handle a ~61.5 billion cubic foot order of Battle Steel - and I don't think conventional steel can take the stress, but I'm not at all certain of that.
serious mega-engineering, there. Gen Two stuff, I thinks, though it could happen as early as Gen 1.5, with a charismatic inventor/engineer spearheading it.

[really? You'd just need a shielded O'Neill cylinder and give it a huge friggin' engine and just let go. well, maybe i'm just not really seeing the logistical scope of it . . .]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Meat-puppet conversion: Does your AI wish to feel human? Are gynoids and androids just not doing it? Is your AI multiple-cognitive capable and clockspeed variable? Then you and they might want to try Meat-Puppet Conversion! For only a few grams of wavehandium, they can have the sensuous experience of a meat-puppet! Guaranteed made of non-clone genetic material but true, first-gen decanted with customized mitochondria and y-chromosomes! Customizable phsyiognomy! Comes equipped with private FTL-com for the true meat-puppet experience and a maintenance creche! A two-hundred year warranty available! Order now!
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Eehehehehe awesome. I can see this popping up at any point, when there's enough bio-engineering expertise Up Here to pull it off. Though I'm sure the ad copy would be better..

[*sigh* yes, i know. I was working fast.]
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
CHONP:The true food for the true Fen. Made from one-hundred percent comets! Has the recent food embargo from Earth gotten you down? Tired of eating recycled foods over and over again? Try CHONP! Comes in a variety of styles and flavors, including CHONP-Meat, CHONP-Veggie, and CHONP-Other! It's made from rocks and ice, so you know it's tasty.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Again on the Ad Copy, but I'd buy that... hell, I'd produce that.
[okay, okay. I'll never write commercials for hire. Anyway, CHONP (or rather CHON) came from Frederick's Pohl's Gateway series. They've got CHONburgers, etc., there, with CHONP standing for carbon, hydrogen, oxygen, nitrogen, and . . . p-something. the basic building blocks of life. I was going to have them be made by the Soylent Blue Concern (Soylent Blue: Made for People), but dropped it.]

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Baley Security: Private Security/Detective Agency, serve as police officers or private army. Mercenary, officious, arrogant, and willing to get into bed with anyone, but also adheres to strict standards of evidence, due process and human rights. Rumored to be truly headed up by a super-AI that's trying to control the course of humanity. Does not, repeat NOT, have agents dressed in skimpy bikinis that go around blowing stuff up with a giant antennaed cat.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I don't grok this reference, I'm afraid - but there's plenty of room for pseudo-law-enforcement agencies. Just be prepared to be despised.

[Elijah Baley, Isaac Asimov's Caves of Steel. R. Daneel Olivaw.]

Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Slans: group of fens that tried to get the Slan-gene modifications and mostly succeeded. They have the tendrils, the peak physical conditioning, and even the "telepathy." Unfortunately, the telepathy turned out to be integrated FTL comms in their brains that allow them to "read" the minds of fellow Slans and with any FTL comm-capable computer. Also, supercilious jerks that, to a person, have an over-inflated martyr complex that causes them to whine incessently.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I can see this popping up as a biomod, but not En Masse, until bioengineering is able to produce the full mod, with FTL comm - this is also dependant on gen 2.5 FTL com, small enough to be implanted - right now, the State of The Art is refrigerator sized, if I remember correctly.
[be writing this up for the gazette thread too.]
Some concepts, some responses. Cheers.
Wire Geek - Burning the weak and trampling the dead since 1979

[Bob Schroeck]

---

(Soylent Blue: Made for People)

---

Soylent Blue: Made by People, for People, from People!
Gotta have that late-80s mission-statement slogan feel to it, you know.

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[Norgarth]

---

Here are some ideas for various clades and polities that are relatively small in number but could show that nothing is monolithic in space . . .

---

Most of these I was clueless on, resulting in some googling to find out what you were talking about.

---

except for the Black Monoliths: Fens who had uploaded themselves into the Black Monoliths of 2001 fame, and have secreted themselves in one of Jupiter's moons, possibly Hegemone. They rarely deal with other inhabitents of the Jovian system, i.e. browncoats, but do occaisonally trade information. Their goals have to do with modelling genetic experiments on baseline humans, though rumors abound that they have a bioreactor and have gone beyond simple modelling.

---

Note, that the Warsies also have a strong presence at Jupiter. This was one of the 3 references I recognised right off. Frankly though, I don't understand the point. They upload themseves into a featureless hunk of metal/plastic/whatever and brainstorm genetic alteration of normal humans? what can they do with the data the come up with, lacking much in the way of manipulatory extentions and if they are that into genetic engineering, why turn themselves into a form of AI with no biological component?

---

Bekenstein Breakers: Quasi-monastic infotech order that have devoted themselves to achieving informational density beyond that possible within a black hole, i.e the bekenstein bound. They are supported by various ideospace clades and polities, who see the breaking of the bound as the key to true immortality beyond the end of the universe.

---

even after finding out what the bound is, I'm still not sure what these people are trying to accomplish.

---

Satanists: Contrarian order who believe in God, but really dislike him. Hooked themselves up to life-support, chemically gave themselves MPD, uploaded prayers from all religions, and then started praying to initiate a DoS attack on God 24 hours a day, 6 days a week. (wednesdays are margarita and bowling nights).

---

Sounds like a fairly small faction (Satanic extremeists you might say) considering they've basicly dedicated their lives to this DoS attack.

---

Blakes: Anti-Federation terrorists who regularly stage prison escapes (if there are such things in Fenspace) and disrupt trade. Known also for factionalizing, so there are Real Blakes, Continuity Blakes, True Blakes, The Avon Brigade, The Provisional Blakes Army, Blakes 700, etc.

---

the last of the ones I recognised, though I've only seen a couple of episodes. The problem here being that the only prisons to attack are still on Earth, and most if not all interplanetary trade is performed by Fen. There's no real government off Earth to rebel against. For that matter, there isn't much Dane presence off Earth. The only ones I can think of are a US research station in orbit and a US Coast Guard base on the moon.

---

Kuiper Brain: a computronium mass originally made from a middle sized kuiper belt object, now massing about the same as the moon, holds a community of purely ideospace beings running about 100X human cognitive speed. Not much is known about them, as yet.

---

okay, are these 'purely ideospace beings' supposed to be AIs, humans who've uploaded their minds or what?
The "Socialist Swarm": name given by outsiders to ideospace/baryonspace amphibians who travel the solar system and possibly beyond for fun and "mutually benefitial resource merger." When seen in baryonspace, resemble porcelain figures daubed in abstract paintings, while in ideospace they resemble platonic spheres. Travel in coffin-sized vessels that "swarm" together and apart like a cloud, but can also merge into larger "ships."
*blinks* where the heck is this concept from?

---

Cold Shatter: Ideological movement or dangerous terrorists, depending on your point of view. Believe that anything larger than an asteroid is just wasted space, with no way to easily access the "precious planetary metals" inside. Want to build and use planet-cracker bombs to get at the resources in all the planets, including Earth. Hated by terraformers and Earthies.

---

And pretty much anyone who isn't a member of Cold Shatter I'd think. It's a good thing Wavium doesn't like to make weapons.

---

New Sun: Ideological movement for remaking the sun into a stellar engine; possible connection to Kuiper Brain.

---

interesting idea, but definately beyond current capabilities (mostly due to the fact that Wavium doesn'twork well with mass production yet)

---

Eschaton Express: Two Island 3 cylinders retrofitted into near-light starships so that a community of humans would skip "all the boring bits" and go straight to the end of the universe. Rumored to have devised a time machine so that they could come back with the True Cosmological Knowledge. In their wake, grew a powerful legend that sees other groups of humans doing the same.

---

After googling I discovered that I am familiar with this concept, I just didn't know the original name. As wire Geek pointed out though, I doubt the ship is completed yet (assuming it's been started) let alone on it's way. mostly due to lack of manpower and resources.
There are a lot of factions runing around the Solar System, and they all have their pet projects. Additionally, most of the Earth governments (and for that matter, at least 75% of humanity) aren't showing any interest in expanding off Earth for the near future.__________________
The main reason Santa is so jolly is because he knows where all the bad girls live. - George Carlin.
___________________________
"I've always wanted to be somebody, but I should have been more specific." - George Carlin

[Bob Schroeck]

---

Sounds like a fairly small faction (Satanic extremeists you might say) considering they've basicly dedicated their lives to this DoS attack.

---

These folks probably have a fair number of William Blake (not of Blake's 7, but the 18th century poet/engraver) fanatics among their numbers, too. (Blake and his poetry had a weird inverted theology that, looked at one way, seems to redefine God as the Devil...)

-- Bob
---------
The Internet Is For Norns.

[M Fnord]

---

even after finding out what the bound is, I'm still not sure what these people are trying to accomplish.

---

True immortality. In theory, by breaking the Bekenstein boundary you can stuff all the information in the universe into something that can (theoretically) survive the end of the universe. This would in effect be a computer simulation of, well, everything.
(There are some people who claim this has already happened, but nobody takes them that seriously.)

---

*blinks* where the heck is this concept from?

---

Dunno where it's from exactly, though it reminds me of the Festival from Charlie Stross' Singularity Sky: a collection of travelling AI/upload cultures wandering around looking for trade opportunities. They find a likely target, stay in orbit for a while until trade opportunites are exhausted and then head for the next likely target.---
Mr. Fnord
http://fnord.sandwich.net/
http://www.jihad.net/
Mr. Fnord interdimensional man of mystery

FenWiki - Your One-Stop Shop for Fenspace Information

"I. Drink. Your. NERDRAGE!"