Convoy escorts - SPOILER for SNIPPET 8 of HFQ

What? You mean write books without a coherent plot?
(really I have no idea what the phrase "doing a George R. R. Martin" means, could someone clue me in here?)

No, I was just using the opportunity to comment on the overlong list of characters that seem to eat up two-three chapters worth of page count in each and every book.

Keith_w wrote:

hvb wrote:
To find space for 10 pages would of course mean that the next book's dramatis personae had to be reduced by ... what? Half or so? A third?

So are you trying to get RFC to do a GRRM?

hvb wrote:What? You mean write books without a coherent plot?
(really I have no idea what the phrase "doing a George R. R. Martin" means, could someone clue me in here?)

No, I was just using the opportunity to comment on the overlong list of characters that seem to eat up two-three chapters worth of page count in each and every book.

I think in this context "doing a George R. R. Martin" would be killing off a significant number of primary characters in a single book. And while RFC has shown that he's willing to say farewell to well established characters when the story dictates, we don't want to encourage him to off them in job lots just to make the list of characters shorter.

Exactly!

runsforcelery wrote:
/snip/

For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

Have we mentioned lately that you do the sadistic, evil thing quite well?

I wonder what form this "Something Goes Wrong" will take. Hypothetically, of course. Accident? Sabotage? OBS action? I would hope that the inner circle is paying close enough attention to limit the consequences of an accident, and we've already seen sabotage (albeit not at Delthak itself), so ...

Yep, sadistic and evil.

The "economic problems" would be bad but I'm thinking even the Charisians would wonder "Is God trying to tell us something".

We see "Act of God" as something that means no human was at fault in causing.

Safeholdians would see "Act of God" as something God did to send a message.

Going along with that, I read of two New England pastors wondering if lightning striking churches more often than houses was God sending a message to the church leaders.

n7axw wrote:Without wanting to to minimize things here, Deltak would pretty big for a single act of sabatoge to take out completely. It's really become an industrial complex rather than a single factory.

Then too, softening the blow a bit would be that other sites for military production are being developed.

Not that a catastophic accident at Delthak wouldn't throw a huge monkey wrench into the works...

Don

runsforcelery

/snip/

For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four (forum?) of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book. [/quote]





Gotta love how we get all these extra snippets in the form of replies to our quest to figure things out.
Thanks

But RFC didn't say WHERE it might happen. One of the Harchong foundries, perhaps?
Cheers
John

Nick wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
/snip/

For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

Have we mentioned lately that you do the sadistic, evil thing quite well?

I wonder what form this "Something Goes Wrong" will take. Hypothetically, of course. Accident? Sabotage? OBS action? I would hope that the inner circle is paying close enough attention to limit the consequences of an accident, and we've already seen sabotage (albeit not at Delthak itself), so ...

Yep, sadistic and evil.

runsforcelery wrote:

For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

When you made a comment years ago about carefully mapping out the Delthak works, I thought something like that might happen. Mind you, short of the ORBS attacking it, it will take a saboteur with a lot of knowledge to, for example, put a wagonload of explosives next to a reservoir, or tie down the safeties on a steam boiler.

-- Bob G

runsforcelery wrote:For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

Well 'addressing the potential for a catastrophic point failure' needn't mean anything more than the inner circle recognising and discussing the possibility. On the other hand ...

runsforcelery wrote:For that matter, I'm a bit surprised that there hasn't been more discussion on the four of the potential for a catastrophic point failure if Something Goes Wrong at Delthak. By the strangest turn of fate, I think it's possible — possible, you understand — something like that might be addressed in the new book.

Gasworks go bang