OTU Only: The Jump Drive and CJ Cherryh

[mike wightman]

The stations are to exploit the raw materials you find in space; asteroids - there are lots of rare earths vital to modern electronics that will on current trends become so rare and expensive that companies here in the real world are already drawing up plans for asteroid prospecting.

The original STL ships that built the stations (basically small but mobile stations themselves) were crewed by people from the Sol system that had grown up in space based communities, spending a decade or two on a moving station (STL ship) didn't sound too bad.

The original plan was for them to build a station at the destination world and go to work, but some decided they like the travelling life and so remained on board and hence the differentiation between ship dweller and stationer. They moved the raw materials from the stations back to Earth and organics/luxury items (and money) from Earth to the station.

The secondary task of the station was to manufacture the next station construction modules ready for transport to the next system. Whether this was the original intent or not it still happened, and you had those weird ship folk willing to make the journey to the next system and the next...

Earth was needed as a source of organics and luxury items and as a marketplace. Pell and later Cyteen were so important because they broke the monopoly Earth had on luxury organics, not to mention an actual market for the raw materials being shipped back from the stations

 

[BlackBat242]

It was my impression (having read all of the Union/Alliance novels up to 1992) was that to some extent trade between stations was partly developed to stimulate further trade and expansion... my impression was that a significant part of what was being ships "earthward" was actually simply refined and re-shipped outwards.

In many respects, the economy seemed to be much like the "all goods produced in one of the American Colonies must be shipped to England before they can be shipped to a different American Colony" BS from the late pre-Revolutionary War period.


As an aside, this site has a nice presentation of the place of the stories in the universe: http://www.cherryh.com/www/univer.htm

 

[Supplement Four]

It was my impression (having read all of the Union/Alliance novels up to 1992) was that to some extent trade between stations was partly developed to stimulate further trade and expansion...

That's my take on it, too--but, I'm not quite buying why that would happen. What's the push? Why would people want to just create stations that are years away from each other (in communication and transport).

Why not just fill up one star system with a multitude of stations?

Or orbit one world, or the system's primary, or a gas giant--several stations orbiting one stellar body?

One star system has enough raw materials to last--what--a damn long time.

 

[mike wightman]

If I were crewing one of those ships I would want to fly to just one more system...

look at the number of people who signed up to a one way trip to Mars...

 

[Supplement Four]

look at the number of people who signed up to a one way trip to Mars...

If there are a lot, I'd say that's because those people are looking for a new adventure--an adventure of a life time.

These station people and mechanteers are living in space. If living in a space station, why strive to build another station in a system that has a 5 year round trip price tag associated with it. When you get there, it's the same interior space station walls and recycled air that you had at the last place.

Your comment above about Mars would fit better if you counted people who wanted to move from Chicago to Detroit. The reason people do that are not usually because people want to live in either city.



Maybe I'll read something in a later chapter that sells me on the idea, but for now, with what I've read, it's not really making sense to me.

I'd have an easier time buying it if the diaspora happened after jump was discovered and travel/communications were measured in weeks/months rather than years/decades.

I'd also be more willing to bite if the systems that are developed had worlds with standard atmospheres. But, what we're talking about are nine star systems, spread about, way the hell OUT THERE, with only one earth-like world among them.

 

[Whipsnade]

Maybe I'll read something in a later chapter that sells me on the idea, but for now, with what I've read, it's not really making sense to me.

There's nothing in the setting that we'd perceive as colonization pressure, S4. That is, there's no "huddled masses" on Earth is lining up to move into space or move to Pell or move anywhere for that matter. Colonists instead are being drawn from a very small pool.

When the Sol Company sent that station mission after their first STL interstellar probe, they sent out people from those who were already living in space and not people from Earth. When the time came to build the next station further out, the "colonists" came from the local station and not from the Sol system. The most recent station always built the next one until Pell was discovered at Tau Ceti.

Remember me bloviating earlier in the thread about the cultural and mindset differences between merchanters, stationers, and planet dwellers? To a very great extent, the stationer mindset informs thinking about colonization. As you'll see in the book, stationers live in a very hierarchical society. Leading families, oligarchs in all but name, control station government across generations. Stations are fragile, easily damaged either by accident or sabotaged. Every stationer behaves and works with that in mind.

There's little social mobility in a staion, little unless you help found a new station that is. Stationers move to newly founded stations for social and economic opportunities new stations offer.

As bad, conscribed, or stultifying as station life seems to you and me, stationers prefer to all else. They don't sign aboard merchants and they don't settle planets. When Cyteen is discovered beyond Pell and the Union formed, the Union has to resort to a mass cloning program producing the azi in order to populate both Cyteen and the other stations being built. Normal stationer population growth was far too low and stationers wouldn't voluntarily settle the planet.

Regarding the seeming one station per system "rule". First, Sol has multiple off-world habitats as seen in Hellburner and Heavy Time. Sol Station is just where most FTL ships dock, much like the UWP listed starport in Traveller.

Second, Cherryh's ships a fast. They move at appreciable fractions of c so most parts of a given system are close in time to each other.

Third, nearly all populations beyond Sol are tiny. While the Union is filling it's worlds and stations with azi - and that's one of the reasons behind the war - systems like Pell have a population under 100K. Later in the book...

Spoiler:

... you'll read how a few thousand refugees dumped on the station by Mazian's fleet almost cause a complete social breakdown.

 

[Silverhawk]

Having just finished rereading Merchanter's Luck, I think that the movement of stationers to found a new station is similar to the position Allison Reilly is in.

Qualified to stand watch but stuck in the hierarchy at a certain level. Jumping over to Lucy/Le Cygne is a chance to get to a level that is otherwise blocked by people holding seniority and aren't likely to be moving on.

What if you are a stationery in engineering that is deserving of promotion but there are not slots. Stick around and wait or move on to the new station that is about to be sent out where your likely to be in that next level up.

Doesn't seem like a difficult choice to me.

 

[Supplement Four]

What if you are a stationery in engineering that is deserving of promotion but there are not slots. Stick around and wait or move on to the new station that is about to be sent out where your likely to be in that next level up.

Doesn't seem like a difficult choice to me.

I can buy that...I think. There must be a lot of people feeling that way, though, to go through all the effort to build another station in another system (and not in the same system), where the round trip is measured in years.





But, it is proving to be a damn good book. It feeds my sense of wonder. The universe Cherryh is building is incredible.

I just finished the short section about

Spoiler:

the Hansford coming in, life support failing. A death ship. Vomit. Blood. Urin. People cut in twain from emergency hatches. People murdered so that they would not breath the slight air left to the others.

Wow.

That....affected...me.

I had to flip the book on its spine (it's a hardback) to make sure I was reading a female author. I've read this kind of gritty stuff before, but it's almost always written by male authors. Some of the Conan pastiche can get quite gruesome, for example--almost always written by men. With Cherryh, I guess I stereotyped her a bit, thinking that the book would deliver on a cerebral level.

I'm happy to report that I was dead wrong. Cherryh is kicking ass. I'm addicted to this book, at this point.

Right after the Hansford scene, there's a short paragraph or so about how the Norway's Captain, a woman in her mid-forties, with...for all practical purposes..was a whore. A male whore.

And, it was discussed at how the Captain would sometimes take some of her ship subordinates to bed--but there was no romantic relationship hinted at--not at all. It is just sex. Filling a need, like breathing air and eating breakfast.

Wow.

That....affected me...too. The Puritan side of me.

But, I like it. It evoked an emotion. That's the best kind of writing.

Yeah, the book is hitting the spot. It's scratching the right itch. I've started re-watching Babylon 5 recently (its own epic), and I wanted to read something science fiction, preferably with stations in it, and a dense universe to explore. I thought about picking up Honor Harrington again, but I didn't want to read something that was exclusively military. For that reason, I decided against attempting David Drake's With the Lightnings and Walter Hunt's The Dark Wing--both series I've been wanting to read. The same goes for Scalzi's Old Man's War. I wanted something that focused on the far future but featured civilians, too.

I think I hit the nail on the head.

This book is delivering, so far, exactly what I want.

 

[Supplement Four]

There is a book series that I completely loved, for a time, and the author took a right turn and just completely turned me off--so much that I stopped reading right in the middle of the second book.

It's the Night's Dawn trilogy, by Peter F. Hamilton.

The universe Hamilton creates is just...well, I think it is one of the most interesting scifi universes ever written. There's artificial gravity but no magical inertial compensator to counter act G forces. When ships go into combat, the crew has to strap themselves in and G-chairs and experience the heavy G forces.

Combat between vessels is done with missile technology--not blasters or lasers or phasers.

There are exactly three alien races that have been discovered by man, and the races, like Traveller alien races, are extremely alien. They're not just a slightly different human culture. They're really different.

There are also these living ships and habitats that serve as space stations. They are grown in space. Biotechnology. And with the habitats the living space ships put their consciousness into the habitats to preserve who they were (like a Vulcan transferring his katra upon his death). The habitats--the old ones--have access to generations of information from all these memories and personalities stored in them.

Nano-tech is also very advanced. These tiny machines are injected into a person's blood so that they can be accessed like a hard drive. You can look at someone, squint to move the correct muscle, and pull up files on the person you are looking at--instant access to the net, or a computer.

Sometimes, a person can be hijacked, in the same way a computer can be hijacked. It's a form of possessions, but totally based on tech. Not all people have this tech flowing through their veins, though.

It's a damn amazing universe.

And then...the author just destroyed it for me. He brings back the dead. I'm not talking about the book turning into a horror story. Nope. It's the real dead coming back to live. Al Capone is one of them. The real Al Capone, possessing live people.

I couldn't stand that. I thought it was silly the way it was presented.

Maybe I'll try to tackle it again someday, but I guess that you can say that the death-live-again angle, which is he point of the entire trilogy, from what I'm told, blew my suspension of disbelief.

 

[Whipsnade]

Glad you're enjoying it.

Spoiler:

Right after the Hansford scene, there's a short paragraph or so about how the Norway's Captain, a woman in her mid-forties, with...for all practical purposes..was a whore. A male whore.

I really won't be spoiling anything when I tell you the situation was worse than that.

Much worse.

Cherryh is using Mallory's treatment of that Union prisoner to show you what the Fleet thinks about everyone who isn't part of the Fleet and how the Fleet treats everyone who isn't part of it. She's using actions and not words.

Also, thanks to rejuv, Signy is over 100 years old. Much of the Fleet's upper echelon are rejuv users which may explain they conduct towards other humans.

 

[Supplement Four]

Spoiler:

Cherryh is using Mallory's treatment of that Union prisoner to show you what the Fleet thinks about everyone who isn't part of the Fleet and how the Fleet treats everyone who isn't part of it. She's using actions and not words.

I wasn't sure what he was. It wasn't clear. She didn't want to know his name, and she told him that he'd be staying on Pell. She said that "they had played with his mind on Russell's."

Also, thanks to rejuv, Signy is over 100 years old.

Not at this part of the story. When Mallory is introduced, it says that she is 49 but is 36 biological thanks to rejuv.

....I'm sure it will change, as you say, later in the story.

 

[Whipsnade]

Spoiler:

When learn you learn more about the prisoner, you'll learn more by inference about Signy.

Regarding her age, I bum doped you. Sorry. I confused her with Ariane Emory from the Cyteen series. Both women have similar "behavior", not that Cherryh makes that a common theme in her work.

Again, my apologies.

 

[Supplement Four]

No worries, brother Whipsnade. I'm enjoying the sideline banter. :rant:

 

[Supplement Four]

Cherryh's Union-Alliance universe reminds me of a PC game that I used to play back in the day. It was a space sim called Independence War II. It had an excellent story/history with lots of depth about this culture of people in the future who lived and worked entirely in space. The game used real physics for moving about in space, too--I remember it being a damn cool game.

 

[JimMarn]

Occasionaly I go to the Atmoic Rockets web site. The menu system is at the bottom of each page. Lots of info on rockt ships, propulsion systems, etc.

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/

The trouble with starships...

http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/fasterlight.php

 

[Supplement Four]

For you Alliance-Union lovers: What is an armscomp?

 

[Whipsnade]

My understanding is armscomp = arms computer, that is an integrated system for controlling various weapons aboard. Civilian ships seem to have one armscomp position, most likely with a "junior' or "altday" backup. Military ships seems to have multiple armscomps.

In the various scenes, descriptions, and dialogue in the various books, "scan" apparently refers to ship's sensors. Whether the "armscomp" uses data from "scan" or whether it has it's own dedicated sensors I don't know.

 

[Supplement Four]

I took "altday" to mean "night-time" or "rest period", since there is no night and day in space. You don't seem to use it that way above, though.

 

[Whipsnade]

I took "altday" to mean "night-time" or "rest period", since there is no night and day in space. You don't seem to use it that way above, though.

Because there's no night or day, ships and stations need to be manned by the same number of bodies at the same level of competency regardless of the time. Cherryh's ships and stations literally have two entire crews to accomplish that.

There's no midshift or swings or anything like that. There's days and altdays with each group living a schedule which is reciprocal of the other. On the stations, offices, stores, bars, etc. never close as day staff take care of day clients and customers while altday staff do the same for altday clients and customers.

 

[Supplement Four]

There's no midshift or swings or anything like that. There's days and altdays with each group living a schedule which is reciprocal of the other. On the stations, offices, stores, bars, etc. never close as day staff take care of day clients and customers while altday staff do the same for altday clients and customers.

That's what I was thinking. Thanks for the longer explanation, though.