Top 5 Hardest Pills To Swallow

roseandheather wrote:Yeah, the High Ridge gov't was long after OBS, but at the time of the series' start, Janacek was First Lord of the Admiralty for... er, Reasons. I don't really remember what the Reasons were, but there were Reasons. I don't think he left the post until after the whole Pavel Young shitstorm.

The government changed after the Peeps went to war IIRC.

blackjack217 wrote:

runsforcelery wrote:
(1) Janacek wasn’t cutting costs because he believed in protecting the public’s money or because he was the sort to spend only cautiously on proven concepts. He was cutting costs as part of the High Ridge Government’s effort to direct funding away from the military to “more important” vote-buying expenditures. In short, he was willing to run the Navy down to what were (in fact) dangerously weak levels out of a combination of arrogance which denigrated the Republic’s chances of finding a tech equalizer (“We have got the Maxim gun and they do not!”) and cynical political maneuvering for partisan ends. Neither of those qualities would have precluded him from wasting the public’s money on pet projects of a relative whose success he thought would make him look good, and the truth is that he always knew Sonja really was the smartest person in the room . . . usually.

Wait, I'm confused. The Highridge government happened long after On Basilisk Station. Why would their cost cutting vote buying boondoggle be relevant in this instance?

Because he wasn't cutting costs at the time of OBS. He was happily spending tons of money as directed by the Cromarty Government on the build up King Roger had begun and Queen Elizabeth had accelerated. The cost-cutting side of him only turned up when his corrupt cronies needed money for vote-buying purposes.

My point was that reasons of economy had nothing whatsoever to do with his thinking or actions where Fearless was concerned.

In fact, Cromarty and the Queen hadn't wanted him for the Admiralty under any circumstances. He was there because Cromarty's majority in the Lords was thin enough it depended upon at least the tacit support of the Conservative Association. Trust me, if there'd been one person Elizabeth wanted less than Janacek, I would be hard put to think who it might have been.

Elizabeth's current (as of the latest book) pretty much complete dominance of the SEM's government is largely the result of 20-plus years of war and the utter disaster of the High Ridge Government. She warned High Ridge that the House of Winton would still be there when he wasn't, and she was right. Not only that, his total incompetence and thoroughly proved (as in proved in court) corruption kneecapped her enemies while allowing her to put the Alexander Brothers, Inc., in charge of running things for her. Prior to OBS, her majority was much more fragile and she knew (however little people like Janacek, Houseman, and High Ridge might have wanted to admit it) how ugly the interstellar future looked. Because of that, she couldn't run the sort of confrontational political risks which might have given her that dominance earlier.

Janacek's ability to screw up things in Basilisk and with projects like Fearless were one consequence of the fact that she couldn't.

runsforcelery wrote:

Theemile wrote:You've mentioned several times that the only reason the Fearless was used was it's availability, but didn't you mention in the past, that if the concept were successful, the final fleet component would have been a CA sized vessel with a more balanced weapons fit? Even if the Fearless worked, there never was a inkling of fielding something so gelded in that role?

The original "concept" vessel was a CA-sized ship on the theory that a better suite of offensive and defensive weapons could have been fitted into, say, a Star Knight's hull after allowing for the volume of the engineering changes. It was never anything more than a concept vessel, however, and they didn't have a handy CA hull as remotely disposable as an old light cruiser smaller than some modern destroyers. And what the Fearless trials demonstrated pretty clearly was that any grav lance-armed ship was going to be solely an "ambush" vessel (Honor's first, successful use of it actually validated that truth) and that it couldn't be used successfully that way if the other side knew it existed (which all of Honor's subsequent efforts to use it validated). So there was never any real possibility of proceeding beyond the trial stage.

In fact, Honor was totally successful in her assigned mission: to demonstrate the possibilities --- and limitations --- of the concept. Sonja was royally pissed by how poorly it worked out in the end, but however pissed she might be, she also knew that Honor was one of the best tactical officers in the Fleet . . . and that she'd demonstrated that she couldn't make it work, once the mere existence of lance-armed ships was known. That's the very definition of a successful trial . . . of a system that doesn't work, because proving that a weapon absitively, posoloutely doesn't work is just as valuable as proving that it does.

Fair enough (and I missed that the final concept was to use it on a bigger ship) , although it still seems rather poor design practice to me. The issue of "how do we get into range" isn't new, after all; it's been around ever since one force with melee weapons faced another with ranged weapons. Since the "classic" counters (armor and/or speed) are insufficient on a light platform, and Honorverse stealth technology isn't good enough to make up the difference, that presumably leaves tactical solutions. Now, if the RMN is willing to spend the money and resources, it's IMO legitimate to answer that only provisionally before going on to live tests, but at least based on the test there's no indication anyone (and I'm not solely blaming Hemphill here as she presumably wasn't alone in the design process) even asked those questions - they seem to have just given the ship to Honor (who, however brilliant, was still a fairly junior captain) and told her to come up with a solution. I should note that failures in this process, where concept testing fails or is unreliable because of RMN politics, is a recurring issue - it also came up with the LACs.

Eyal wrote: I should note that failures in this process, where concept testing fails or is unreliable because of RMN politics, is a recurring issue - it also came up with the LACs.

Reasonably realistic I would think, given it's "not unknown" in RL either. I recently got an education in the story of the USN and the WW2 Mark 14 torpedo over on EricFlint.net . Google it if you're unfamiliar. NTM the pretty constant wrangling among different arms of the US military for priority in funding and projects. I don't imagine we Brits are much better.

Randomiser wrote:

Eyal wrote: I should note that failures in this process, where concept testing fails or is unreliable because of RMN politics, is a recurring issue - it also came up with the LACs.

Reasonably realistic I would think, given it's "not unknown" in RL either. I recently got an education in the story of the USN and the WW2 Mark 14 torpedo over on EricFlint.net . Google it if you're unfamiliar. NTM the pretty constant wrangling among different arms of the US military for priority in funding and projects. I don't imagine we Brits are much better.

Huge bureaucracies --- which describes just about any major power's military --- all tend to be that way for a bunch of reasons. The fact that militaries are bureaucracies in the first place guarantees turf wars. The fact that the people at the top of the internal decision making tree are almost all professional, career military people guarantees that departmental rice bowls and career making or breaking concerns will turn up the wick under any disagreement. The fact that they're spending public moneys automatically brings in the politicians. The fact that there are military contractors in various political districts automatically brings political patronage and political rice bowl issues into play. And the fact that procurement and (for the last 125 years or so) R&D are literally life-or-death issues for both individual servicemen and women and the nation they serve guarantees that people on different sides of fundamental disagreements will pull out all the stops to win their case . . . including the support of every politician (slimy or not) they can reach.

And that they will then rewrite the history of how we got from Point A to Point B to demonstrate that they and their supporters were always on the side of the Light and their opponents were at best unwise, more probably stupid, and possibly evil in disagreeing with them. (Which, after all, is sort of the very definition of "politics in action," isn't it? )

The truth is that the RMN has been remarkably free of the sorts of behind-the-scenes political infighting that often typifies military organizations.

For me it was hard to swallow that Honor's family on her mother's side is this high ranking on Beowulf.

On Manticore and Grayson Honor had to work her way up and that's one of the thing that is so likeable about her.

Now it turned out that on her maternal side her family comes from the uppermost crust of Beowulfian society - and has been there seemingly forever.

That diminishes the character for me. Too much of a good thing. Less is more and all of that.

Bruno Behrends wrote:For me it was hard to swallow that Honor's family on her mother's side is this high ranking on Beowulf.

On Manticore and Grayson Honor had to work her way up and that's one of the thing that is so likeable about her.

Now it turned out that on her maternal side her family comes from the uppermost crust of Beowulfian society - and has been there seemingly forever.

That diminishes the character for me. Too much of a good thing. Less is more and all of that.

You're not the only person who's said something along those lines to me. Again, part of the problem is that I had intended Honor to die before the . . . nosebleed elevation of her Beowulf family connections became central to the story of her kids. At that point, the reader was supposed to find out that Allison had become — and remained — completely estranged from everyone except her brother Jacques because of her refusal to toe the family line back home on Beowulf. Honor was supposed to be connected with Jacques all the way through — hence her membership in the society for creative anachronisms, her love of archaic handguns, etc., etc. — but to have had virtually no contact with the rest of her Beowulfan family.

Then she didn't die and the Alignment became central to the plot line, which dragged the Beowulf side of the family front and center.

So, what we have instead, is that Allison — while she did patch things up with her mother (who we sort of meet at secondhand in Uncompromising) after a fashion — is absolutely, 100 percent adamant that Honor is not going to grow up thinking of herself as a member of the top 0.00000001% in either of her family's home star systems. ("Oh, no! Not my little girl! Not after all the crap I had to deal with!" Which, of course, makes what happens to Honor eventually even more ironic.)

So Honor literally doesn't think of herself as related to Beowulfan "royalty" (especially when she's only a teenager or at the Academy during her confrontation with Young). Moreover, Beowulfan connections — while relatively common in Manticore — have zero implications for a naval career. Had she gone into the diplomatic service, instead — had she gone into medicine, had she gone into commerce, had she gone into finance, had she gone into law — those connections on Beowulf would have been absolutely invaluable to her as part of the "old girl" network. She chose pretty much the one career path where they literally didn't mean squat, really. (For the reader, the irony about all the titles heaped upon her was supposed to become evident only after her death when they found out that, in effect, the woman who'd been made a Duchess and a Steadholder was already Beowulf's equivalent of at least a duchess in her own right.)

From my perspective as the writer, and given Allison's attitude, I don't find it unreasonable that Honor truly thought of herself as a "yeoman's daughter" — but remember, she was the daughter of a pretty darned well off yeoman couple, given her parents medical practice — on her way up through the Navy. Now, is she much more aware of that relationship and its . . . power implications than she ever was before? Absolutely! But she's been becoming aware of it over the course of several books now.

I don't think it's the most seamless patch in literary history, and from some perspectives, I would've preferred to go ahead and let the reader find out about the connection she'd always known about but always refused to even try to use as a card in the patronage game, only after her death, when Raoul and Katherine (who are already from pretty stratospheric social strata both in Manticore and on Grayson) are entering the fray against the newly discovered threat of the Mesan Alignment. They were supposed to find out that Honor had shared Allison's alienation from the rest of Allison's family, mostly because of the Beowulf side's view that Allison had "married beneath herself" with Alfred, despite the way they'd met. I leave you to imagine how Honor would have felt about that. (And if you are gathering from this that Honor's Beowulfan family wasn't nearly so nice in their original iteration, I congratulate you on your perceptiveness. )

In the original game plan, her kids really become aware of their Beowulfan connections only when someone in a position of authority in the Navy or the Diplomatic service decided they needed someone — "like you, Raoul!" — to contact highly placed members of the Beowulf government (while Beowulf is still part of the League and there are no active hostilities) and guess who we've picked to do the contacting? I'd even sketched in the scene where Raoul meets his great-grandmother for the first time, complete with a treecat on his shoulder who really, really doesn't like her initial emotions. Of course, when she sets eyes upon her great-grandson and sees the granddaughter she never allowed herself to know in his eyes, her stony old heart melts and she becomes a Better Person™.

It was a pretty darn good scene, actually, if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately, that route was no longer available to me when the timeline got telescoped the way it did.

runsforcelery wrote:


You're not the only person who's said something along those lines to me. Again, part of the problem is that I had intended Honor to die before the . . . nosebleed elevation of her Beowulf family connections became central to the story of her kids. At that point, the reader was supposed to find out that Allison had become — and remained — completely estranged from everyone except her brother Jacques because of her refusal to toe the family line back home on Beowulf. Honor was supposed to be connected with Jacques all the way through — hence her membership in the society for creative anachronisms, her love of archaic handguns, etc., etc. — but to have had virtually no contact with the rest of her Beowulfan family.

Then she didn't die and the Alignment became central to the plot line, which dragged the Beowulf side of the family front and center.

So, what we have instead, is that Allison — while she did patch things up with her mother (who we sort of meet at secondhand in Uncompromising) after a fashion — is absolutely, 100 percent adamant that Honor is not going to grow up thinking of herself as a member of the top 0.00000001% in either of her family's home star systems. ("Oh, no! Not my little girl! Not after all the crap I had to deal with!" Which, of course, makes what happens to Honor eventually even more ironic.)

So Honor literally doesn't think of herself as related to Beowulfan "royalty" (especially when she's only a teenager or at the Academy during her confrontation with Young). Moreover, Beowulfan connections — while relatively common in Manticore — have zero implications for a naval career. Had she gone into the diplomatic service, instead — had she gone into medicine, had she gone into commerce, had she gone into finance, had she gone into law — those connections on Beowulf would have been absolutely invaluable to her as part of the "old girl" network. She chose pretty much the one career path where they literally didn't mean squat, really. (For the reader, the irony about all the titles heaped upon her was supposed to become evident only after her death when they found out that, in effect, the woman who'd been made a Duchess and a Steadholder was already Beowulf's equivalent of at least a duchess in her own right.)

From my perspective as the writer, and given Allison's attitude, I don't find it unreasonable that Honor truly thought of herself as a "yeoman's daughter" — but remember, she was the daughter of a pretty darned well off yeoman couple, given her parents medical practice — on her way up through the Navy. Now, is she much more aware of that relationship and its . . . power implications than she ever was before? Absolutely! But she's been becoming aware of it over the course of several books now.

I don't think it's the most seamless patch in literary history, and from some perspectives, I would've preferred to go ahead and let the reader find out about the connection she'd always known about but always refused to even try to use as a card in the patronage game, only after her death, when Raoul and Katherine (who are already from pretty stratospheric social strata both in Manticore and on Grayson) are entering the fray against the newly discovered threat of the Mesan Alignment. They were supposed to find out that Honor had shared Allison's alienation from the rest of Allison's family, mostly because of the Beowulf side's view that Allison had "married beneath herself" with Alfred, despite the way they'd met. I leave you to imagine how Honor would have felt about that. (And if you are gathering from this that Honor's Beowulfan family wasn't nearly so nice in their original iteration, I congratulate you on your perceptiveness. )

In the original game plan, her kids really become aware of their Beowulfan connections only when someone in a position of authority in the Navy or the Diplomatic service decided they needed someone — "like you, Raoul!" — to contact highly placed members of the Beowulf government (while Beowulf is still part of the League and there are no active hostilities) and guess who we've picked to do the contacting? I'd even sketched in the scene where Raoul meets his great-grandmother for the first time, complete with a treecat on his shoulder who really, really doesn't like her initial emotions. Of course, when she sets eyes upon her great-grandson and sees the granddaughter she never allowed herself to know in his eyes, her stony old heart melts and she becomes a Better Person™.

It was a pretty darn good scene, actually, if I do say so myself.

Unfortunately, that route was no longer available to me when the timeline got telescoped the way it did.

I speak for many that if you ever want to putout a 'what if' story/novella/collection/padded outline full of this, we'd be interested.

Daryl wrote:Disclaimer. I love this series, fuses my long term love of wet navy warfare stories, to high tech military science fiction, has great characters, and most importantly RFC has the storyteller's art of just roping you in until you say "Shit is that dawn already?". But a few technical things necessitate turning a blind eye to, in order to enjoy the stories.
1. The sheer energy involved in accelerating a 6MT SD at 500g for hours on end.
2. The generally ignoring of tau effects as that acceleration takes the SD up to a significant fraction of C. How heavy is it at that point?
3. The waste heat issues seem to be solved with the same handwavium.
4. I know that Moore's law must eventually be defeated, but after thousands of years I'd expect computing to have progressed further.
5. The Malign seems dim for supposed genetically designed superhumans.

Now please RFC, don't blacklist me. I really love your writing, and enjoy it immensely, and don't regard these as flaws just bits that I skim over.

I do agree there's a definite handwave with their drive system. That's almost inevitable in military SF, though--to make space maneuvering interesting you need insane drives.

I don't see what the problem is with them getting heavier as they chase c.

As for the computer power bit--again, it's basically inevitable. Otherwise battles would be computer vs computer.

As for the MAlign being dim--I disagree. The problem is they have been sitting there for ages building their onion and not actually facing any serious opposition. Their complex plotting has worked. Now, however, they are playing in the big leagues and for practical purposes they are utterly inexperienced. Their complex plots have loose threads and now there's someone out there with the ability to go around tugging on them. They have the brains to do a lot better, they don't have the experience.

runsforcelery wrote:(2) I’ve never made any secret out of the fact that I’m ignoring relativistic effects on mass when I calculate acceleration times. I figure I’m ahead of the game for worrying about them at all, compared to a lot of writers, and the increases in mass — as opposed to time dilation — have a negligible effect on the characters’ working environment and perceptions.

I'm not at all sure there would be any relativistic effects on acceleration times given your drive anyway. You have plenty of power available, your drive is limited by how much acceleration you can counteract by dumping it into the wedge. Is that dumping figured as ship to wedge, at which point you would see an acceleration falloff, or is it wedge to universe, which would mean you could sustain the same acceleration in the eyes of the stationary observer?

And the effects on the crew's environment are not merely negligible, but nonexistent. You only see the effects of relativity when you compare objects moving at different speeds. Thus the only influence is on information from outside. That's clocks (which you address) and doppler-shifted signals etc (which the instruments no doubt compensate for on their own, the crew wouldn't see the information unless they specifically checked raw data.)