not sure which thread to put this in

[Kokuten]

a General Public's view on these.

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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).

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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.

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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.

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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...

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

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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)

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nothing is monolithic in space . . .

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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).

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

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Blakes:

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

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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.

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

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The "Socialist Swarm":

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

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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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Fringe Nutjobs.

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

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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! 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!

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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..

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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.

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

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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.

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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.

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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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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