what are you reading?

[F-ZeroOne]

I've just picked up a couple more books from the library, including "Watch on the Rhine" - where Germany resurrects the S.S. to fight the lizard invasion.

Oh, deary, deary me.

In one sense, yes, they are terrible books. But I haven't got anything else to read at the moment, and as long as I keep my brain in neutral they're enjoyable mind candy.

Does this count as a tank too?

[juice]

Does this count as a tank too?

Um...

Q. Is Ogre based on Keith Laumer's "Bolo" stories?

A. No, it's a completely original background and technology. When Ogre was originally designed for Metagaming, the plan was to seek a Bolo license. But it cost too much to be worthwhile for such a small game (the original edition of Ogre was a $2.95 minigame). The owner of Metagaming said, "Invent a different background." Steve was happy to comply, as he had some ideas that were incompatible with the Bolo background. So it all worked out.

The Bolo stories remain one of the two original inspirations behind Ogre – the other being a story called "Gottlos," by Colin Kapp – and we acknowledge the debt to Laumer's apocalyptic vision!

Q. Are Ogres supposed to be intelligent and self-aware?

A. Because Laumer's Bolo supertanks ARE self-aware, the original Ogre background explicitly made the Ogres NOT self-aware. They are programmed with excellent personality simulators and seem self-aware, but that is just to make them easier to command verbally (as well as more terrifying to the foe). But they are just machines; they have no "soul." Some of Laumer's Bolo stores are quite sentimental... "monster tank with a heart of gold." The original Ogre background presented the contrasting view: they are simply engines of destruction, doing what they are programmed to do.

But a decade later, as the Ogre background developed, we decided that at the end of the Last War some Ogres did develop self-awareness. Why? Purely for literary and gaming reasons. Self-aware Ogres would behave in ways that "programmed" ones wouldn't making for an interesting variety of opponents. Self-aware Ogres could even, conceivably, be used as player characters, and the Factory States period is intended as a roleplaying background. And it will let us explore some ideas of machine personalities that will be very different from Laumer's "gentle giant" Bolos!

Not bad, but a Mark XV Bolo would still have them for lunch

[F-ZeroOne]

I feel at this point that I have to state that Ideon would have them all for breakfast, lunch, elevenses, supper, tea, dinner, and midnight snack.

Technically not a tank, true, but at least two of the vehicles that combine to make it could be counted as tanks.

[juice]

I feel at this point that I have to state that Ideon would have them all for breakfast, lunch, elevenses, supper, tea, dinner, and midnight snack.

Technically not a tank, true, but at least two of the vehicles that combine to make it could be counted as tanks.

Well, yes, but anything which can destroy the entire universe is a tad overpowered

[zip accident]

This one was at least partway built:



From here

That photo could be of a mock up.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panzer_VIII_Maus

[merman]

Re-reading Nick Hornby stuff at the moment, like Fever Pitch.

Also read "Strip Tease" by Carl Hiaasen on the train up and down to London, I love the novel so much more than the Demi Moore film (which cut so much out)

[F-ZeroOne]

I feel at this point that I have to state that Ideon would have them all for breakfast, lunch, elevenses, supper, tea, dinner, and midnight snack.

Technically not a tank, true, but at least two of the vehicles that combine to make it could be counted as tanks.

Well, yes, but anything which can destroy the entire universe is a tad overpowered

It has secondary weapons. You know, for when you just want to cut a planet in two.

[juice]

I feel at this point that I have to state that Ideon would have them all for breakfast, lunch, elevenses, supper, tea, dinner, and midnight snack.

Technically not a tank, true, but at least two of the vehicles that combine to make it could be counted as tanks.

Well, yes, but anything which can destroy the entire universe is a tad overpowered

It has secondary weapons. You know, for when you just want to cut a planet in two.

Yers. Still, an EE Doc Smith planet would smack the crap out of Ideon:

To the observers in the Z9M9Z those three seconds stretched endlessly. What
would happen when that utterly foreign planet, with its absolutely impossible intrinsic
velocity of over fifteen times that of light, erupted into normal space and went inert?
Nobody, not even the Arisian, knew.
Everybody there had seen pictures of what happened when the insignificant
mass of a space-ship, traveling at only a hundredth of the velocity of light, collided with
a planetoid. That was bad enough. This projectile, however, had a mass of about eight
times ten to the twenty-first power—an eight followed by twenty-one zeroes—metric
tons; would tend to travel fifteen hundred times as fast; and kinetic energy equals mass
times velocity squared.
There seemed to be a theoretical possibility, since the mass would
instantaneously become some higher order of infinity, that all the matter in normal
space would coalesce with it in zero time; but Mentor had assured Kit that operators
would come into effect to prevent such an occurrence, and that untoward events would
be limited to a radius of ten or fifteen parsecs.
...
Ploor and everything around it disappeared in an utterly indescribable and completely
incomprehensible blast of pure, wild, raw, uncontrolled and uncontrollable energy. The
infinitesimal fraction of that energy which was visible, heterodyned upon the ultra as it
was and screened as it was, blazed so savagely upon the plates that it seared the eyes.
...
At the impact of the second loose planet, accompanied by the excess energy of
its impossible and unattainable intrinsic velocity, Ploor's sun became a super-nova. How
deeply the intruding thing penetrated, how much of the sun's mass exploded, never was
and perhaps never will be determined. The violence of the explosion was such,
however, that Klovian astronomers reported—a few years later—that it was radiating
energy at the rate of some five hundred and fifty million suns.
Thus no attempt will be made to describe what happened when the planet from
Nth space struck the Boskonians' sun. It was indescribability cubed.

Gotta love pulp sci-fi

[F-ZeroOne]

I did say "secondary". Ideons primary attack... does not leave survivors. Anywhere.

[zip accident]

I did say "secondary". Ideons primary attack... does not leave survivors. Anywhere.

Sorry, I cannot buy that as in any way plausible.

The universe is huge. I was thinking earilier, there are probably more galaxies than there are crustaceans (shrimps, crabs, lobsters, barnacles etc. (and there are lots of etc.s)) in all the seas and rivers of earth. Or maybe there are more than 5 x 10^11 crustaceans.

In fact, I don't believe any technology within the universe will ever be able to destroy the whole universe. The universe may collapse into a black hole, but though it may be radically changed by that, I do not think it will be destroyed, though the change may be irreversible.

[juice]

I did say "secondary". Ideons primary attack... does not leave survivors. Anywhere.

Sorry, I cannot buy that as in any way plausible.
...
In fact, I don't believe any technology within the universe will ever be able to destroy the whole universe. The universe may collapse into a black hole, but though it may be radically changed by that, I do not think it will be destroyed, though the change may be irreversible.

I don't think Zip or myself think any of this is vaguely possible (though tbh, I don't see why would you couldn't destroy the entire universe, e.g. by tweaking one of the universal constants and unbalancing everything. After all, with a long enough lever you can move the moon...)

It's just entertaining to grab ever more grandiose examples from pulp sci-fi

Still, given that the Ideon's weapons grant a phyric victory, I think we should count it as unusable Unless there's a manic-depressive anime director at the helm...

[everklear]

Just finished "Tawny Man" trilogy by Robin Hobb.

Just starting "Seeker's Mask" by PC Hodgell.

[F-ZeroOne]

I did say "secondary". Ideons primary attack... does not leave survivors. Anywhere.

Sorry, I cannot buy that as in any way plausible.
...
In fact, I don't believe any technology within the universe will ever be able to destroy the whole universe. The universe may collapse into a black hole, but though it may be radically changed by that, I do not think it will be destroyed, though the change may be irreversible.

I don't think Zip or myself think any of this is vaguely possible (though tbh, I don't see why would you couldn't destroy the entire universe, e.g. by tweaking one of the universal constants and unbalancing everything. After all, with a long enough lever you can move the moon...)

It's just entertaining to grab ever more grandiose examples from pulp sci-fi

Still, given that the Ideon's weapons grant a phyric victory, I think we should count it as unusable Unless there's a manic-depressive anime director at the helm...

I was about to say, this is someone who obviously has never heard of Yoshiyuki "Kill 'em all" Tomino...

[The Captain]

Just finished The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré and it is astonishing. I hated it at first but the opening chapters are meant to be dry and suffocating - it certainly kicks up a gear or three later on. Never read any Le Carré before; now I want to read little else. Wonder if the film is any good?

[grue]

Just finished The Constant Gardener by John Le Carré and it is astonishing. I hated it at first but the opening chapters are meant to be dry and suffocating - it certainly kicks up a gear or three later on. Never read any Le Carré before; now I want to read little else. Wonder if the film is any good?

Everything really. I read some Le Carre from time to time, the political grey he portrays is refreshing after most writer' black-and-white-ness regarding politics take.
I suggest you read Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy and then watch the BBC series. The book is miles better of course but Alec Guiness is a win so...