OT Which would you Choose

[dmm]

capnq said:
I think one of the problems with the hundred-planet system idea is that as far as we understand gravity, that many planets in one star's habitable zone couldn't maintain stable orbits over time.

Believe it or not, I am such a nerd that I actually did some research into this a while ago (out of curiosity unrelated to Firefly). The conclusion I came to (FWIW) is that you can get a lot of "planets" in stable orbits in the habitable zone around a single star if (and only if) they are actually planet-sized moons of giant planets (themselves presumably uninhabitable due to high gravity). The giant planets don't have to be as far apart as our system's gas giants. In addition, you can (in principle) have stable binary and trinary star systems with the stars pretty close together and not stealing each others' planets. It helps to have cooler stars, as their habitable zones are thicker. (Also, since you've got several stars close together, you want to minimize high-energy photons.) Multiply it all together, and you can get quite a few habitable worlds all in one system and not super-distant from each other. And you could use the slingshot effect to help conserve fuel as you traveled between them. But could such systems actually FORM in RL? I would bet "no" but we have a lot to learn. And could you get HUNDREDS of worlds? Wow, that's a real stretch.

[Tim_Ward]

Randallw said:
The appendicies to the book said the religious aliens lost. Maybe the other books are better, I'll never know. I gave it a chance, he failed to interest me adequately.

Consider Phlebas is, in my view, the weakest Culture novel.. however if you didn't like it, I'm not going to try and recommend the rest of the series to you. If you do ever come across them in the library, however, The Player of Games and Use of Weapons are generally considered the best.

Player of Games also gives you a solid insight into day to day life in the Culture.

EDIT: also this; http://www.cs.bris.ac.uk/~stefan/culture.html

Randallw said:
The Culture destroying the ring world merely so the enemy don't get it reminds me of Soviet scorched earth policy.

This bothered you, but the "destruction of war irrelevent culture orbitals, occasionally producing billions of deaths at a time" (quoting the appendix from memory) by the Idirans (for that is the name of the religious aliens) didn't?

Or the destruction of two stars in the Twin Novae battle, neither of which shone on unpopulated systems, by the Idirans?

(BTW; if you still have the novel you can safely read the Appendix's without giving away the end, the story is not about the war it merely uses it as a backdrop. They're pretty interesting, best part of the book in my opinion)

Normally I would never support aliens over humans but the humans in the book aren't human, they're slaves to machines

That's Horza's view. Horza absolutely dispises the Culture, which is why he works for the Idirans, even though the Idirans aren't exactly saints. He is a text book example of an unreliable narrator.