Being Gbaba

The larger puzzle, for which the author doubtless has an explanation, is how the Terrans do not know, given that captured a number of Gbaba-occupied planets, or so I thought. It ought to be possible to tell if the prisoners are sentient, unless they all committed suicide and blew up everything before there could be technical analysis.

gcomeau wrote:And if it was culturally imposed at a later date artificially after they'd reached their current level there's just no way it gets maintained over thousands of years without breaking down since there's constantly going to be at least some drive within the species to think of new things.

Unless they removed innovation and independent thought via genetic engineering...

phillies wrote:The larger puzzle, for which the author doubtless has an explanation, is how the Terrans do not know, given that captured a number of Gbaba-occupied planets, or so I thought. It ought to be possible to tell if the prisoners are sentient, unless they all committed suicide and blew up everything before there could be technical analysis.

Oh, I'm sure they analyzed the technology (they knew the Gbaba ship designs haven't changed) but that doesn't really prove anything.

I mean, presumably the Gbaba were sapient once or they wouldn't have built starships, but they could have genetically engineered themselves into a bunch of hyperspecialized castes which were the biological equivalent of "expert systems" rather than truly sapient.

Or maybe the captives were clearly not sentient, but the TF didn't know if there were sentient "hive queens" or "controllers".

phillies wrote:The larger puzzle, for which the author doubtless has an explanation, is how the Terrans do not know, given that captured a number of Gbaba-occupied planets, or so I thought. It ought to be possible to tell if the prisoners are sentient, unless they all committed suicide and blew up everything before there could be technical analysis.

Of course the other side is that Aliens are by definition Alien, their motivation may not seem rational to any vaguely sane human.

That said, I am sure ISIS supporters would happily kill any of what they define as a non believer and blow themselves up rather than be captured, large number so Japanese behaved the same way in the Second World War with typically one in a thousand being captured in a number of battles. Never underplay the power of religion in war, ISIS followers believe that if they die in battle, Allah will reward them and the Japanese believed the emperor was god and both believe that anyone who disagrees is sub-human and to be killed out of hand.

Belief in anything is a dangerous thing if not tempered by mercy, charity and a value on the worth of sentient life (that said, to quote Monty Python, there's bugger all here on earth).

For the Gbabba time runs backwards.

They first encountered mankind in their past (our future) when mankind inexplicitly (from the Gbabbas' point of view) launched a genocidal surprise attack under Merlin et al on the peaceful Gbabba empire.

So in their own future (mankind's past) the Gbabba are launching their own genocidal counterattack on mankind.

That also explains why Gbabba weapons don't evolve: as manking progresses into its own future we move backwards into the Gbabbas' past so the Gbabba weapons will actually become less sophisticated, not more sophisticated.

Since nobody has included a link to this spoof written by RFC that encompasses many of the theories and books referred to in this thread, here's the link to "How the Safehold Series Won't End" by the Mad Wizard Weber himself: http://www.davidweber.net/essays

Bruno Behrends wrote:For the Gbabba time runs backwards.

They first encountered mankind in their past (our future) when mankind inexplicitly (from the Gbabbas' point of view) launched a genocidal surprise attack under Merlin et al on the peaceful Gbabba empire.

So in their own future (mankind's past) the Gbabba are launching their own genocidal counterattack on mankind.

That also explains why Gbabba weapons don't evolve: as manking progresses into its own future we move backwards into the Gbabbas' past so the Gbabba weapons will actually become less sophisticated, not more sophisticated.

I like the theory... By this logic if humanity waits long enough, they ought to find that the Gbaba have devolved to the point of being armed with spears and bows and arrows!

Don

phillies wrote:The larger puzzle, for which the author doubtless has an explanation, is how the Terrans do not know, given that captured a number of Gbaba-occupied planets, or so I thought. It ought to be possible to tell if the prisoners are sentient, unless they all committed suicide and blew up everything before there could be technical analysis.

I don't recall that they ever captured any Gbaba. Nor have they found any planets that were "occupied" by the Gbaba. All they have found is planets that were wiped out by the Gbaba.

SWM wrote:

phillies wrote:The larger puzzle, for which the author doubtless has an explanation, is how the Terrans do not know, given that captured a number of Gbaba-occupied planets, or so I thought. It ought to be possible to tell if the prisoners are sentient, unless they all committed suicide and blew up everything before there could be technical analysis.

I don't recall that they ever captured any Gbaba. Nor have they found any planets that were "occupied" by the Gbaba. All they have found is planets that were wiped out by the Gbaba.

The TF did in fact capture several Gbaba occupied systems. From OAR: "The first genocidal attack had punched inward past Crestwell to take out three of the Federation's fourteen major extra-Solar star systems, with one hundred percent civilian casualties. But then the Federation Navy had rallied and stopped them cold. The fleet had even counterattacked, and captured no less than six Gbaba star systems.
Which was when the full Gbaba fleet mobilized."

We aren't told what the surviving Gbaba (if any) on those worlds were like. We know that at least some of the Gbaba understood English, since they interrogated several human prisoners who were later rescued. The Gbaba simply weren't interested in communicating with humanity, they just wanted to exterminate us regardless of the cost - and the cost was much higher than they anticipated.

It's going to get much higher...

I always wondered, how can you capture six entire star systems and still not know what the enemy looks like?

Aethor wrote:I always wondered, how can you capture six entire star systems and still not know what the enemy looks like?

I suppose they could have ground-based weapons so long-ranged, well-defended, and powerful, that you would have to use weapons of similar range and power to silence them, and that the collateral damage from those impacts would suffice to wipe out all recognizable traces of the enemy. And add in such thorough smaller-scale weapons that your probes could not get close enough to get a good look beforehand either.

It's pretty extreme but conceivable.