[Spoilers] WPV: If Wishes ...

Not really a spoiler of the plot, but there is an inconsistency with Joelle Bresby's earlier story "Obligated Service". There are two ships that figure in that story, one is a dockyard queen ("Ephraim") and the other ("Manasseh") isn't. Claire was reassigned from the dockyard queen to the other ship. The dockyard queen was destroyed along with the rest of the Blackbird Yard. In "If Wishes were Space Cutters" Claire is serving on the "Ephraim" rather than the "Manasseh".

Robert_A_Woodward wrote:Not really a spoiler of the plot, but there is an inconsistency with Joelle Bresby's earlier story "Obligated Service". There are two ships that figure in that story, one is a dockyard queen ("Ephraim") and the other ("Manasseh") isn't. Claire was reassigned from the dockyard queen to the other ship. The dockyard queen was destroyed along with the rest of the Blackbird Yard. In "If Wishes were Space Cutters" Claire is serving on the "Ephraim" rather than the "Manasseh".

The ship may have been renamed in honour of one of the ships lost during the strike. Suppose that "Ephraim" is on a list like the RMN's List of Honor and that the current steadholder descended from the person this ship was named after put pressure on the Office of Shipbuilding to do it quickly. Since the GSN didn't have a lot of destroyers and wasn't going to build more any time soon, they could have renamed an existing ship.

More likely this is just the authors mistaking which ship was which. We'll wait for BU Nine to claim "we can retcon this" somehow

I very much enjoyed this story. It shows us how civilian commoners live in Grayson, how there's a large disparity between rich and poor (at least in some steadings), and that even the most conservative of the steadholders cares enough for their poor to have working outreach programmes. We'd known that the women in Grayson were technically-minded and ended up doing a lot of the engineering work, this story reinforces that.

I'd like to see more of Noah and how his fortune improves. With his record being expunged, he should be able to get a good job and he has his head on his shoulders.

I don't know if I like Suleia. She's bratty and entitled, thinks he knows best and is always right (the supervisors' annoyance bonus was probably due). But she is in fact often right and does things for the right reasons. She needs experience to temper her enthousiasm, so in fact her sister Cecile's non-intervention when she was digging herself a hole was the right thing to do, if for the wrong reasons. If Suleia had been "saved from herself," she'd resent her rescuers and not learn anything from the experience; she'd more likely think they were holding her back from her potential (she'd be partially right) than trying to save her from committing a big error (she'd be mostly wrong).

It doesn't look like Suleia and Noah are going to end up together. Noah's fortunes should improve with more certifications to his record and with proven employment experience, so he'd be eligible to whatever status the Rustin's see needed. But Suleia doesn't look destined for marriage any time soon. She looks like the independent sort that will strike out on her own in the civilian sector and make a name for herself. She's also probably a third-gen prolong recipient, so she'd be in no hurry to settle down and have children.

That actually reminds me: the Grayson population pyramid is going to take some weird shape for the next T-decades. A lot of young people will put off starting families for two big reasons: first, the aforementioned prolong; second, because of Allison's genetic treatments. Knowing they don't have to undergo the heartache of stillborn boy babies, quite a lot of those young families will put off having children until they've had a chance to get the treatment.

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Knowing they don't have to undergo the heartache of stillborn boy babies, quite a lot of those young families will put off having children until they've had a chance to get the treatment.

Weren't the nannites widely distributed when Allison created them? I remember there being discussion of the morality of broadcasting them so that the entire population would be corrected, or if it would be part of the Test for people to decide on their own whether to accept the cure or not.

Fox2! wrote:Weren't the nannites widely distributed when Allison created them? I remember there being discussion of the morality of broadcasting them so that the entire population would be corrected, or if it would be part of the Test for people to decide on their own whether to accept the cure or not.

I don't remember the details. This story does talk about people still undergoing treatment at the clinic, so it made me think it's not immediate.

Fox2! wrote:

ThinksMarkedly wrote: Knowing they don't have to undergo the heartache of stillborn boy babies, quite a lot of those young families will put off having children until they've had a chance to get the treatment.

Weren't the nannites widely distributed when Allison created them? I remember there being discussion of the morality of broadcasting them so that the entire population would be corrected, or if it would be part of the Test for people to decide on their own whether to accept the cure or not.

It is my impression that Allison had to correct chromosomes one person at a time.

It was a good story. I found the two ensigns confusing and the letters too long, but it was well written and I'd like to read more.

There is also that battlesteel isn't metal, it's a "carbon nonocomposite". So it would be pretty stealthy inherently.