From: pyrotechie@stellvia.lib
To: all.call@nation.fen
Subj: Re: [RFC] Theories on Handwavium
> What -is- handwavium?
A pain in the butt to work with, Dr. Sanders. It doesn't blow up.
> Phlogiston-The discredited phlogiston has made a comeback with the
> ability to create fire from himself with a crackpot in Northern
> Carolina. He also has handwavium inside himself which accounts for the
> discredited scientific trope.
I think, if it was phlogiston, that it would blow up. It doesn't.
So, Occam's Razor points to it being something else.
> Following the lead laid out by the great Heinlein, it's the
> accumulated creative energies of an author or authors from a parallel
> universe who are writing about us, "squeezed" into our 'verse from
> theirs in a kind of black hole/while hole pairing, transmuted into a
> physical form when it gets here.
That's just silly, Mr. Schroeck.
> I'm of a Clarkian frame of mind... or is it Niven's Corollary to
> Clarke's Law: Sufficiently Advance Magic is Indistinguishable from
> Sufficiently advanced Technology?
Are you thinking of Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law, Vulpine?
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
> That said, I've discovered that several of my processes are getting
> harder and harder tech as we go along. This especially helps if you
> design your 'wave devices to produce a non-wave effect. I have
> recently achieved a hard-tech version of one of my first puppets. My
> control rigs still require some 'wave, but the amounts needed are
> dropping swiftly. I'm actually applying for 'daneside patents soon.
I'd be *very* interested in seeing the schematics for that puppet.
> Has anyone else discovered a lessened requirement for goop to make
> things they've done before?
Yes. It takes a lot less plotdevicite now than it used to for my
monthly maintenance session. The goop isn't going anywhere, so my
circuits must be adapting to hardtech.
> Has anyone considered that it may be a living thing, a symbiote?
You know my biggest complaint about plotdevicite, Buckaroo: It doesn't
blow up. That *could* be a self-preservation instinct.
> I'm with Fury in the sense that handwavium is technology of some sort.
> We haven't had the chance to do any really *deep* studies of it, but
> some time ago the Central Committee paid off a friend of a friend to
> put a sample of handwavium under an electron microscope. What she
> found was, well, extremely puzzling. There appears to be a fine
> structure to the 'wave at the nanometer scale, but it's completely
> unlike anything organic. Some of it looks like the theoretical
> manipulators described in nanotechnology journals, but the
> manipulators seem to branch down to even *smaller* scales.
Are you describing a fractal structure, Mal, or something even stranger?
> It's not sapient in the raw form, but consciousness *does* seem to be
> an emergent property if the 'wave is given enough of a framework to
> shape itself.
(waves)
> Oh, and if I find an Emblem Seed? Maybe I'll let you know.
Promise me you won't *use* it first, A.C. I like you the way you are.
Kohran Li
"Don't mess with Kohran Li, dude. She makes *asteroids* explode."
(Kirk Russell, at SOS-Con)
Listen to "Red Lad", Sundays at 15:00 GMT on Fen Radio Live!, 104.2 FM
--
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
To: all.call@nation.fen
Subj: Re: [RFC] Theories on Handwavium
> What -is- handwavium?
A pain in the butt to work with, Dr. Sanders. It doesn't blow up.
> Phlogiston-The discredited phlogiston has made a comeback with the
> ability to create fire from himself with a crackpot in Northern
> Carolina. He also has handwavium inside himself which accounts for the
> discredited scientific trope.
I think, if it was phlogiston, that it would blow up. It doesn't.
So, Occam's Razor points to it being something else.
> Following the lead laid out by the great Heinlein, it's the
> accumulated creative energies of an author or authors from a parallel
> universe who are writing about us, "squeezed" into our 'verse from
> theirs in a kind of black hole/while hole pairing, transmuted into a
> physical form when it gets here.
That's just silly, Mr. Schroeck.
> I'm of a Clarkian frame of mind... or is it Niven's Corollary to
> Clarke's Law: Sufficiently Advance Magic is Indistinguishable from
> Sufficiently advanced Technology?
Are you thinking of Gehm's Corollary to Clarke's Third Law, Vulpine?
"Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced."
> That said, I've discovered that several of my processes are getting
> harder and harder tech as we go along. This especially helps if you
> design your 'wave devices to produce a non-wave effect. I have
> recently achieved a hard-tech version of one of my first puppets. My
> control rigs still require some 'wave, but the amounts needed are
> dropping swiftly. I'm actually applying for 'daneside patents soon.
I'd be *very* interested in seeing the schematics for that puppet.
> Has anyone else discovered a lessened requirement for goop to make
> things they've done before?
Yes. It takes a lot less plotdevicite now than it used to for my
monthly maintenance session. The goop isn't going anywhere, so my
circuits must be adapting to hardtech.
> Has anyone considered that it may be a living thing, a symbiote?
You know my biggest complaint about plotdevicite, Buckaroo: It doesn't
blow up. That *could* be a self-preservation instinct.
> I'm with Fury in the sense that handwavium is technology of some sort.
> We haven't had the chance to do any really *deep* studies of it, but
> some time ago the Central Committee paid off a friend of a friend to
> put a sample of handwavium under an electron microscope. What she
> found was, well, extremely puzzling. There appears to be a fine
> structure to the 'wave at the nanometer scale, but it's completely
> unlike anything organic. Some of it looks like the theoretical
> manipulators described in nanotechnology journals, but the
> manipulators seem to branch down to even *smaller* scales.
Are you describing a fractal structure, Mal, or something even stranger?
> It's not sapient in the raw form, but consciousness *does* seem to be
> an emergent property if the 'wave is given enough of a framework to
> shape itself.
(waves)
> Oh, and if I find an Emblem Seed? Maybe I'll let you know.
Promise me you won't *use* it first, A.C. I like you the way you are.
Kohran Li
"Don't mess with Kohran Li, dude. She makes *asteroids* explode."
(Kirk Russell, at SOS-Con)
Listen to "Red Lad", Sundays at 15:00 GMT on Fen Radio Live!, 104.2 FM
--
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