Suspension of Disbelief.

JeffEngel wrote:People would be well able to take wonderful care of plenty of children. The whole cost calculation would be radically different.

Most people do not WANT to take care of a lot of kids. It just "happens". Has little to do with $$$/time. That is why fewer are born if given the option. Before birth control, large families were the norm, because well, if you can't figure it out.....

The slogan, "If it feels good; do it." is not exactly a new slogan.....

As for suspension of disbelief, everytime I pick up a book and read it the first time, by and large, I take whatever the author writes at face value. It only becomes when reading for the 2nd time, that one is reading and since you ALREADY know what is going to happen, this leaves your brain able to cogitate while reading, and this big ol', pops up and it turns into
NO WAY!
_

The religious aspect actually makes perfect sense to me. From what I can judge, there are very few 'religious' planets. Grayson, Masada, etc.. True Zealots. Most (like Manticore) could probably be compared to the modern day USA only slightly less. Basically, religion is something that 80% or so say they believe in, with maybe 10% being a deep believer and another 10-20% going to a worship once a week or once a month because its how they were raised and its a community building thing and they want their children to be raised that way.

I think the key aspect with the religion of Honorverse is to read about the days just after the diaspora.. For over a century at that point the UN had been in near total control, and run by a political ideology that ran the economy into the ground for most. After that is broken (Economic Winter), a golden age of advancement begins but starts running into problems with cloning and Super Soldiers (Final War). Especially where the Final War was concerned and the deep philosophical questions that cloning and genetic manipulation can bring about, to me its clear that many people would turn towards religion. And seek to flee. To the stars - far away. Where they can create a colony of like belief individuals. Hence, you have many planets where religion plays a small role (mainly as a community binder and social institution to provide piece of mind and help to those in trouble), but also a few die-hard sects who have been so cut-off from the rest of humanity that they have become their own people.

Addressing a bunch of issues:

Religion: Yes, it's going to be gone.

Fermi paradox: The fact that we made it to the stars says we are already on the far side of whatever the great filter is. I don't think we would be fighting a bunch of aliens out there--the fact that we haven't seen any signs of aliens yet makes it very likely indeed that there are no starfaring aliens out there. Given the aliens we have seen he seems to be saying that at least part of the filter is the development of technology--something I consider unlikely.

Population growth: It's not just a matter of contraception. In poor societies children aren't all that expensive (it doesn't take all that long before they're an aid to production) and they're the only insurance you have for old age (although it's not very good insurance.) In an industrialized society children become far more expensive (they need far more education and generally whatever they produce is for their own benefit, not the benefit of the family) the birth rate of course drops.

Given the tech we see in the Honorverse we still have the lack of production but we also have a far lower cost to having a child. Thus we will see more children unless the government tries to reduce childbearing. (The inner worlds are so populated that we might see government initiatives against population growth.) Note, also, that prolong will greatly increase the children per parent. As it stands now a couple normally raises only one batch of children. They have the number they intend to and that's it, few choose to reproduce after that. By the time the nest is empty it's really too late to be having more. With prolong, though, empty nesters very well might have another batch. And another. And another.

The nanotech: I totally agree--the computers are light-years beyond anything else despite being nano scale.

Artificial limbs: They're extremely slow to adapt because it's not the computers in the limb that matter, but the brain. If you had a perfect set of measurements of what neural impulses the limb was used to you could create a new limb and expect it to pretty much work immediately. However, they normally lack that--without a baseline they can only hook it up and let the brain learn how to handle it. (Honor should have been able to learn her replacement gear very quickly as they would have the information from the old one to set it up with. I don't recall what actually happened.)

JeffEngel wrote:

munroburton wrote:As for educated women slowing down reproduction, that may be due to them learning our planet is overpopulated/underresourced/your term of choice. We don't know what educated women would do on rich, abundant colonies when the "overpopulation pressure" message is removed or even replaced by "we need more kids."

Indeed. Those rich, abundant colonies are also going to have natural resources literally dirt-cheap, processed with machinery that lasts pretty much forever (so ongoing costs are dinky), living space that's wide open even before counter-grav towers, stupendous childcare provisions, short work weeks, and a lot of work that won't even take a parent away from the child if that's their preference.

People would be well able to take wonderful care of plenty of children. The whole cost calculation would be radically different.

Not being a woman I cannot offer a definitive perspective, but I would be surprised if resource depletion/overpopulation is at the front of a woman's mind. Their motivation is probably more driven by cost (which you address) and time. In a post scarcity (or nearly so) society the only valuable commodity becomes time. Therefore a child gets even more expensive than today because even if they don't necessarily cost lots of money/physical resources they take a lot of time from their parents. We're shown the early colonization of Sphinx by Stephanie Harrington, she is schooled at home, so even school doesn't become a time when the parents can drop their kids off to be somebody else's problem for 8 hours a day.

Take that example further, daycare is getting more and more expensive today because it isn't the material cost that is rising to care for kids (animal crackers are not becoming more expensive) but the time of the childcare provider is becoming more expensive. Imagine that carried to a world where time is the only truly valuable thing. In previous centuries the labor (in other words, the time) of a woman was inherently less valuable than a man's (I am referring to a muscle powered society), and so her time could be profitable invested in the rearing of children (and implicitly male children) who can provide valuable labor in the future. But as soon as her time becomes as valuable as a man's (thank you technology) then it isn't urgent to raise future laborers in order to help on the farm (or wherever). Instead that investment in raising kids becomes a personal preference and not a matter of economic survival.

Somtaaw wrote:The point I'm really having to suspend disbelief, is that so far there have been zero encounters with star-faring aliens.

the natives of Basilisk, 'cats, and the handful of other alien intelligences that have been mentioned are one thing... but Fermi Paradox and the question of "where are they?"

It's one thing to have all the humans having scattered to countless millions of colonies, lots of failures which were generally attributed to lack of food or supplies, disease, or just plain "giving up and coming home".

But there's not a single system, that was claimed by a non-human intelligence, that's been mentioned.

IIRC humanity has encountered one star-faring alien civilization, but they are clear on the opposite side of the SL so there is no interaction between them and Manticore/Haven.

exiledtoIA wrote:IIRC humanity has encountered one star-faring alien civilization, but they are clear on the opposite side of the SL so there is no interaction between them and Manticore/Haven.

IIRC, it was either implied or stated that they were star faring after humans sold them starships.

Two come to my mind. First, interplanetary commerce. I know it has been discussed before but I still have a hard time believing that it is more economical for a world the size of Earth to have a reason to import or export goods from another planet no matter how economical THAT is.... but I let it go and accept that because otherwise no point for the books to be written. Another aspect of these books that makes me cringe a bit is how Honor calls her Queen, Beth. I'm Canadian and my mother and 99% of my relations are British. I see this kind of informality as being rude and disrespectful. The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria were said to have much affection for each other throughout his life and while she might occasionally address him as Benjamin he on the other hand would NEVER not address her preeminence. Still friendly, still respectful. It's just that that's the way it is. I could be wrong however because it isn't the British monarchy (and also I am not an expert on the proper etiquette) so I don't get worked up over it but I wonder if this is an American blind spot.

The Queen could have insisted on that informality off-screen.

npadln wrote: Another aspect of these books that makes me cringe a bit is how Honor calls her Queen, Beth. I'm Canadian and my mother and 99% of my relations are British. I see this kind of informality as being rude and disrespectful. The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria were said to have much affection for each other throughout his life and while she might occasionally address him as Benjamin he on the other hand would NEVER not address her preeminence. Still friendly, still respectful. It's just that that's the way it is. I could be wrong however because it isn't the British monarchy (and also I am not an expert on the proper etiquette) so I don't get worked up over it but I wonder if this is an American blind spot.

It's not 18th or 19th century Britain. Sure, the setting is built to harken back to the Age of Sail, and Manticore's political system certainly bears some resemblance, but it's a very different social milieu. Victorian class consciousness isn't fitting there; early 21st century Windsor expectations wouldn't be either.

The whole Manticoran inherited status scheme doesn't share any roots with monarchies or aristocracies on Earth - it's a recreation that got banged out purely and simply to keep enough political power out of the hands of all the immigrants and their descendants. It's only people who've lost all touch with that history in-universe who take "good breeding" seriously.

Elizabeth's attitude toward formality seems to be that it's a tool for use in public, when she's on the job. (She inherited her job, sure, she's always on call, and there are a lot of hours, but still - it's a job.) It's something she has to assume, keep up, and use for the sake of the exercise of her office. Sometimes, it's something she may be happy to use to cut off some twit. Other than that, she won't have any more desire to keep up any more social distance with friends than anyone else - maybe less, given how much distance she has to keep during all those on-the-job hours, including her entire life in public.

npadln wrote:Another aspect of these books that makes me cringe a bit is how Honor calls her Queen, Beth. I'm Canadian and my mother and 99% of my relations are British. I see this kind of informality as being rude and disrespectful. The British Prime Minister, Benjamin Disraeli and Queen Victoria were said to have much affection for each other throughout his life and while she might occasionally address him as Benjamin he on the other hand would NEVER not address her preeminence. Still friendly, still respectful. It's just that that's the way it is. I could be wrong however because it isn't the British monarchy (and also I am not an expert on the proper etiquette) so I don't get worked up over it but I wonder if this is an American blind spot.

Actually Honor calls her Elizabeth, the only ones who call her Beth is her family. But it could be like Prince William when he served aboard HMS Iron Duke. On duty its Yes and No Sir or Lt. Windsor off duty its Wills or Bill, on formal occasions its Prince William. Also Honor is something of a peer to Elizabeth, remember Honor as a steadholder is a head of state in her own right.