Manticore's foundational ethos

One thing that I get the impression of is that when people set out to found a colony in the Honorverse they have some sort of precept of goal that acts as the foundation for the colony. Montana was founded by cowboy wannabes who created a world where they could build a romanticized version of the American West. Rembrant was founded by people inspired by the Dutch Masters, Grayson was founded as a religious colony, ect.

Yet one thing has never been explained: what was the precept of the original Manticore colony expedition? When Roger Winton and his fellows set out for their new world what sort of world did they originally have in mind to make?

My best guess is that they were erudites and that the Manticore colony was meant to be a civilization of well read historians and scholars. I base this mostly on the fact that everyone on Manticore seems incredibly well read on the subjects of history and the fact that they seem to have purposely left all the movies behind.

This is purely a guess and I would be delighted to hear other people's theories (Assuming Mr. Weber does not feel like enlightening us to this little piece of lore)

GabrialSagan wrote:One thing that I get the impression of is that when people set out to found a colony in the Honorverse they have some sort of precept of goal that acts as the foundation for the colony. Montana was founded by cowboy wannabes who created a world where they could build a romanticized version of the American West. Rembrant was founded by people inspired by the Dutch Masters, Grayson was founded as a religious colony, ect.

Yet one thing has never been explained: what was the precept of the original Manticore colony expedition? When Roger Winton and his fellows set out for their new world what sort of world did they originally have in mind to make?

My best guess is that they were erudites and that the Manticore colony was meant to be a civilization of well read historians and scholars. I base this mostly on the fact that everyone on Manticore seems incredibly well read on the subjects of history and the fact that they seem to have purposely left all the movies behind.

This is purely a guess and I would be delighted to hear other people's theories (Assuming Mr. Weber does not feel like enlightening us to this little piece of lore)

I think there may be some selection bias at work: the "theme" colonies stick out out of proportion to their numbers, so there's an inference that the ones without an apparent theme had an unknown one instead of "let's go claim a whole lot of property out yonder in adequate numbers, proportions, and intentions to be a self-sufficient community".

The impression Manticore provides there may be simply the result of a fine educational system; the story concentrating on a non-representative sample of the population (naval officers, often senior; some politicians; some business leaders); and 2D mass media entertainments (stuff we'd recognize as movies) not being popular any longer when Manticore's colonists took off.

I know it's a wet blanket sort of answer; I just doubt we're entitled to anything more exciting.

Could Manticore, with it's initial corporate structure and "Manticore Foundation" building up left-over investments, be the Ferenghi of the Honorverse?

This is speculation, but I think it was along the line of getting out before the shit hit the fan. We know that the Final War "officially" ended in 943 PD, but what we don't know is when the war started. What if it started shortly after the Manticore Colonists set out in 775 PD. I'm not saying, like in 776 PD but in a decade or two or three down the road. Maybe Roger Winton & CO saw the writing on the wall and decided to get out while the getting was good. The reason I am saying this is I think that the Final War ran hot and cold for years and probably decades before it got very hot and was finally 'declared' over. I'll bet that Earth was putting out bushfires for years or decades after the 'official' end of the war. It's much like all the precursor incidents prior to the start of WWII like the Marco Polo Bridge incident in July 37 or the Japanese invasion of Manchuria in 1931 FYI the bridge incident is considered the start of WWII by most historians.

Weird Harold wrote:Could Manticore, with it's initial corporate structure and "Manticore Foundation" building up left-over investments, be the Ferenghi of the Honorverse?

Not a chance. The Ferengi had no morals or scruples. Though they had plenty of values -- rooted in greed.

The Manticoran original ethos is quite clear - Excellence and Education.

When you go to real war with real WMD's the war just isn't going to last long. It might not formally end for a while, but once you have destroyed the power grids world-wide, all orbital systems, all the ports, military bases, major cities, and large-scale industrial sites as well as most smaller cities, plus most all ships, long range missiles and long-range aircraft are gone it's really hard to fight a global war. "We row from Puget Sound to Vladivostok" seems like a questionable attack plan to me.

Starvation, disease and freezing to death during the winter are going to be the big killers.

kzt wrote:When you go to real war with real WMD's the war just isn't going to last long. It might not formally end for a while, but once you have destroyed the power grids world-wide, all orbital systems, all the ports, military bases, major cities, and large-scale industrial sites as well as most smaller cities, plus most all ships, long range missiles and long-range aircraft are gone it's really hard to fight a global war. "We row from Puget Sound to Vladivostok" seems like a questionable attack plan to me.

Starvation, disease and freezing to death during the winter are going to be the big killers.

There was an SF story, author or title not remembered, that posited aliens knocking out all nuclear and high pressure energy sources, with a horrible first year death rate. A burgeoning true social science was turned to war purposes.

Given a major breakdown, my priorities would be getting away from cities (it is possible to travel on foot tens of miles per day and even bikes or scooters improve that), having water that doesn't infect me, providing some source of food, preferably by growing it instead of gathering it. After that, (in North Dakota) some way of surviving winter, even if it is only stuffing paper or grass into blankets rolled around me. I once survived a stranding experience by burrowing into a haystack, but this has to be done right, one man lost toes and fingers due to carelessness.

One prepper is planting perennial food plants in out of the way places as a hobby, and mapping on paper these and possible wild food locations. Could work if there isn't too much competition.

Better would be encouraging communal action, to reduce the number of people who make things worse by looting. How to stop panic reactions

cthia wrote:Not a chance. The Ferengi had no morals or scruples. Though they had plenty of values -- rooted in greed.

It's true. If they came upon a planet where the last survivors were slowly dying in a shelter they would come up with a mutually beneficial deal with the survivors that involves transporting them to somewhere they could survive and eventually allow a profit to be made. As opposed to the leaving them to slowly die so as to maintain their moral purity, as the federation values require. The federation also needs a telepathic political officer on all ships to root out thoughtcrime and ensure that crew is only engaging in goodthink.

DDHvi wrote:There was an SF story, author or title not remembered, that posited aliens knocking out all nuclear and high pressure energy sources, with a horrible first year death rate. A burgeoning true social science was turned to war purposes.

Actually, a major SF universe with !5 novels to date.

The author is S. M. Stirling and the series is most often tagged, "A Novel of the Change." Your description is of Dies The Fire The fourth book in the Universe, and the first of the second trilogy. The first Trilogy is about the island of Nantucket being transported into pre-roman times and the adventures of the coast-guard cutter that was transported too.

Also, it wasn't aliens, per se, that engineered the Change, but the Gods (God) and/or the embodiment of Evil -- it's not made perfectly clear who or why.

Weird Harold wrote:Also, it wasn't aliens, per se, that engineered the Change, but the Gods (God) and/or the embodiment of Evil -- it's not made perfectly clear who or why.

It was aliens. Steve stated it was aliens and the effect would break down in a few millennia. You will never see them, it's a condition, not a problem that can be solved.

It was apparently what he did when his agent promised the publisher he'd do a sequel to "In The Sea of Time" and he was not excited with writing more in that universe. I hate the change series, but as it allowed him and his wife to live more the lifestyle he'd have had if he had stuck with law and been a senior partner in a Toronto law firm I understand why he does it.