Alliance-Union Guidebook

contributors CJ, Ragi-at-Heart,

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62 Comments

  1. chondrite

    I just looked at your Ragi translation of the Babel story. Would the atevi use the same translation for God, Aija Dhailia, as for Bren’s title: Lord of the Heavens?!? o_O I am uncertain how much religion remains in spacefaring Human culture, but that translation might give a jolt to anyone still practicing!

  2. HRHSpence

    The Babel Project is an endeavor to highlight constructed languages (conlangs) by showing off the grammar and the morphology for other conlangers. No attempt is made to account for how such a translation would be received by fictitious characters in a book. Yes, I used the term Aija Dhailia, Lord of the Sky or Heavens, as my term for God of the Universe. I am assuming that Bren’s title is not quite so universal.

    I am thinking in Bren’s culture, religion is treated like we treat the myths of ancient peoples long gone. We translate Gilgamesh, but don’t really want to incorporate his beliefs into our lives.

    • rockwestfahl

      Yeah what a thought, if they wanted to claim a greater age than their birthdate shows, could they? I wonder.

  3. BlueCatShip

    Wow…that means a story idea I had in the 80’s or 90’s and filed away, and was looking at a couple of weeks ago, is…quite a bit more possible *now* than I would’ve thought. Thanks, Ragi-at-heart.

    • BlueCatShip

      That link takes me to a song video in a language I don’t recognize. I think you meant another link; typo somewhere.

  4. Hanneke

    Chanur book 4, Chanur’s Homecoming, is available as ,a href=”https://store.kobobooks.com/nl-nl/ebook/chanur-s-homecoming”>an e-book on Kobo! Hurrah, finally the series is complete in e-book format.

  5. Hanneke

    Chanur book 4, Chanur’s Homecoming, is available as an e-book on Kobo! Hurrah, finally the series is complete in e-book format.

    (Sorry for the typo, please remove the first try; and if this one’s in the wrong spot please move it to where it belongs).

  6. BlueCatShip

    Oh, hurray! Now Chanur’s Homecoming is finally showing up for Amazon Kindle as well! Excellent!

  7. BlueCatShip

    A question regarding azi (clones) in Alliance-Union books:

    I don’t recall it being mentioned. Union creates azi clones quite a lot. I can’t recall if Earth or the Merchanter’s Alliance do also, but I thought they did later.

    However, my real question is, how are azi clones gestated? Are there surrogate mothers? Or are there artifical wombs? Perhaps both? Are surrogate mothers given special incentives? Or how does this work? — Given examples like 40,000 in Gehenna, with large numbers of azi clones sent on colonial missions, I’d think there’d be some artificial gestation. But that presents problems of how to assure it’s as much like a natural process as possible.

    Also, given the nursery crêches / dormitory-style living we saw in Cyteen and another book or two, apparently again there are large numbers of clones (azi and CIT) who are raised communally after birth. So there’s a whole system involved there in raising large numbers of identical clones, and having them interact with others, clones and natural-born persons, to ensure whatever results are wanted.

    Hmm…. There’s surely a lot of story potential in there somewhere. (I’m glad you didn’t take the satirical / absurdist approach Aldous Huxley did in Brave New World.) — Now I have the urge to reread Cyteen, and read the Regenesis sequel.

    (I still think it’s telling, how I didn’t initially get the full nature of Justin and Grant’s relationship, when I first read the books in the late 80’s. I was in, I think, the second book, in a scene where Justin and Grant have an argument in a bathroom in offices, when I finally got it and wondered why I hadn’t. But that shows my own state of mind / development with my own feelings, at that time. — And the book helped. It was a nudge along the way.)

    • Tommie

      Unfortunately, I find Huxley’s view in that book very likely, given humanity’s nature. Brave New World is as heart and gut wrenching for me as Serpent’s Reach.

  8. CJ

    Artificial wombs, complete with heartbeat, sounds, movement, etc. Many born-women opt to have their own ‘natural’ children via such, as far more convenient.

  9. kiloecho

    So my question is, with the majority of attention being given to the Foreigner universe, do you think we will see one more Alliance/Union novel?

  10. Paul Armstrong

    stuck on references to emory and wallingsford. any help?

  11. knnn

    Although my allegiance is to Alliance, I do like Foreigner; but I avoid that chat because I’m always several volumes behind.

    If you like Alliance, you will likely feel at home in the first volume of Foreigner.

    (and my favorite character is the Dowager by far)

  12. knnn

    Sorry, I put the above comment in the wrong thread. I meant it for the Alliance-Union Books thread.

  13. Wes

    I was recently rereading most of the books, and two questions nag me.
    1) Is there any guidance systems or jets at all on the shells/missiles fired during the Earth Company? And does the same apply to the Compact hunter ships?
    2) Just how do the Methane breathers fight? K’nnn’s tech is so advance they could jump a ship into hyperspace, but the T’Ca don’t seem that advanced. So are the T’ca ships armed?

    • Charles R. Stevens

      If memory serves (and it well may not) their are both misiles and kenetic weapons mentioned. If one were to extrapolate modern anti aircraft and anti ship weapons one would consider proximity fused and impact (perhaps penitration fused warheads due to hull thickness due to radiation and heat shielding) guided misiles as well as large volumes of dumb shells (not unlike the 30mm spent uranium slugs of an A10). Not to step on our hosts toes, but two things com into play, vast distances involved even in a Terestrial belt conflict and jump and rider ships operating at fractions of C. You either must launch a valume of dumb shells at we’re you predict your target will be (much easer for point defense and relatively slow in system traffic) or you launch misiles to the same predicted location that have the capability of detecting and vectoring in on a target in relative close proximity.
      As we see in a seen from the Chauner series, multiple misiles are launched at the most likely spot for a hunter ship laying in ambush. One assumes that a civilian freighter doesn’t have the state of the art firepower of a Kiff Hunter, but at a fraction of C it dost really mater if it’s a nuke or a spit wad.
      As to methainbreathers, that I leave to Miss CJ as I won’t even pretend to know what she had in mind nor do I have a modern weapon system to extrapolate from.

  14. Laura Lasley

    OK, now that Alliance Rising is out, will you be making the rest of the series available on Kindle or e-book? I can’t find my copy of Finity’s End and I have no desire to spend $25 on a used paperback. Truly selfish of me, I know,but I can’t remember what I read 20 years ago!

    • Teegan

      I was wondering the same thing. I went through my bookshelf and didn’t find a copy of Finity’s End either. And these days I really prefer reading on my tablet.

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