I would say this about the psychic handwavium aspect... It is certainly the case that some handwavium picks up on subconscious signals - we have evidence of a variety of quirks that are far too specific and otherwise unsourceable for it to be otherwise. However, it is also the case that handwavium is strange, has an arbitrary number of different strains, and mutates rapidly when not bonded into shape already (sometimes even when it *is* bonded into shape already.) Handwavium pulls in data from *everywhere*, and is by its nature inherently filled with impurities. It mutates fast enough that if you take a homogenous mass of 'wavium, feed it some appropriately processed biomass, and leave it in a dark room for a week, you will end up with a mass (somewhat larger, it's true) that has at least three or four distinguishable subtypes. It's true that you might get "lizard" out of a subconscious sweep, but it's at least as likely that the handwavium did a gene search, found the unused lizard-bits in the DNA, and thought they looked pretty. The stuff that you get may be drawn from you, it's true. It may be drawn from psychic echoes deep within the bowels of the ship. It may be drawn from local machine-readable data - or any data. It may be totally random. Don't limit yourselves.
Personally, I would hypothesize that part of what Makes The Professor Tick is that there are significant accretions of handwavium in his brain. This does a few things. First, his brain tends to resonate with whatever handwavium happens to be nearby. This gives him a strong intuitive understanding of what various kinds of handwavium are likely to do. It gives him absolutely *no* intuitive understandings of *why* - but he's good at coming up with rationales. This partially helps explain his habit of putting out seemingly contradictory explanations that all test true. Second, the handwavium resonates with his brain, which means that it tends to follow his lead a lot more than it follows the lead of most folks. Third, his brain is always excited, which means his brainwavium is always excited, which tends to cause nearby samples of handwavium of various sorts to *also* be excited, which causes any number of entertaining efects. Fourth, his brainwavium is always excited, which means his brain is always excited - and, specifically, always excitd about handwavium. That's just *my* theory, though.
Also, Rob? I'm reading a whole lot of "I'm a badass!" and not much in the way of duct-tape in your story. in particular, that whole "get attacked for no good reason, deal with it without much sense of difficulty" thing was a little off, as was "I have grav-tech and no one else does except maybe the Professor, and who knows with him". There are other, lesser concerns as well. Admittedly, you had the post-combat stress thing, but between the fact that you apparently had deflector shields adequate to pretty much ignore the attacks, and the speed and ease with which it went from "threat" to "have a shot" to "no threat", I just didnt get any real feeling of danger there.
- Fuel pods are a bit too large size-wise for NASA to lift them into space trivially. There's a reason the shuttle invariably ditched the things on the way up. You could do it with handwave lift assets, certainly, if you could track down a ground-to-orbit specialist in the right timeframe, or you could slap engines on the things while they're on the ground and have them lift themselves. Making each of them technically capable of functioning as in independant if unwieldy spaceship probably isn't a bad idea anyway.
- Okay, on the re-read, I'm seeing the "serious post-combat stress reaction" and the "massive evil ugly paperwork" stuff, but... it's so short. You've got a couple of sentences on the one, and a short paragraph on the other. I literally skipped past it my first read through and didn't notice.
- Quirks are supposed to be quirks for *you* more than quirks for *them*. For them, these things are normal and natural. The fact that the Pinafore gets to hear her Captain's lovely singing voice all the time doesn't bother that ship's AI one bit. Trigon actively *enjoys* being megalomaniacal. So on and so forth. AIs tend to be happy being what they are. Even if someone made a wavium version of Martin, he'd be doing it because, deep inside, he just enjoys being miserable.
- having a few earth-orbit tourist stations certainly makes good sense for the Dane tourists, but you'ld not be likely to see much int he way of Fen tourism. If the Fen *do* want to go gawk at Danes for a while (and with the remarkably short timelie we're working under, that's pretty unlikely to begin with) they'll just go land in some legal spot. Australia's accepting, even if nowhere else is. If you want Fen for the Danes to gawk at (aside from the few you might get who are in it for the attention) you're going to have to give them some other reason to be there.
Personally, I would hypothesize that part of what Makes The Professor Tick is that there are significant accretions of handwavium in his brain. This does a few things. First, his brain tends to resonate with whatever handwavium happens to be nearby. This gives him a strong intuitive understanding of what various kinds of handwavium are likely to do. It gives him absolutely *no* intuitive understandings of *why* - but he's good at coming up with rationales. This partially helps explain his habit of putting out seemingly contradictory explanations that all test true. Second, the handwavium resonates with his brain, which means that it tends to follow his lead a lot more than it follows the lead of most folks. Third, his brain is always excited, which means his brainwavium is always excited, which tends to cause nearby samples of handwavium of various sorts to *also* be excited, which causes any number of entertaining efects. Fourth, his brainwavium is always excited, which means his brain is always excited - and, specifically, always excitd about handwavium. That's just *my* theory, though.
Also, Rob? I'm reading a whole lot of "I'm a badass!" and not much in the way of duct-tape in your story. in particular, that whole "get attacked for no good reason, deal with it without much sense of difficulty" thing was a little off, as was "I have grav-tech and no one else does except maybe the Professor, and who knows with him". There are other, lesser concerns as well. Admittedly, you had the post-combat stress thing, but between the fact that you apparently had deflector shields adequate to pretty much ignore the attacks, and the speed and ease with which it went from "threat" to "have a shot" to "no threat", I just didnt get any real feeling of danger there.
- Fuel pods are a bit too large size-wise for NASA to lift them into space trivially. There's a reason the shuttle invariably ditched the things on the way up. You could do it with handwave lift assets, certainly, if you could track down a ground-to-orbit specialist in the right timeframe, or you could slap engines on the things while they're on the ground and have them lift themselves. Making each of them technically capable of functioning as in independant if unwieldy spaceship probably isn't a bad idea anyway.
- Okay, on the re-read, I'm seeing the "serious post-combat stress reaction" and the "massive evil ugly paperwork" stuff, but... it's so short. You've got a couple of sentences on the one, and a short paragraph on the other. I literally skipped past it my first read through and didn't notice.
- Quirks are supposed to be quirks for *you* more than quirks for *them*. For them, these things are normal and natural. The fact that the Pinafore gets to hear her Captain's lovely singing voice all the time doesn't bother that ship's AI one bit. Trigon actively *enjoys* being megalomaniacal. So on and so forth. AIs tend to be happy being what they are. Even if someone made a wavium version of Martin, he'd be doing it because, deep inside, he just enjoys being miserable.
- having a few earth-orbit tourist stations certainly makes good sense for the Dane tourists, but you'ld not be likely to see much int he way of Fen tourism. If the Fen *do* want to go gawk at Danes for a while (and with the remarkably short timelie we're working under, that's pretty unlikely to begin with) they'll just go land in some legal spot. Australia's accepting, even if nowhere else is. If you want Fen for the Danes to gawk at (aside from the few you might get who are in it for the attention) you're going to have to give them some other reason to be there.