There is the general spoiler page for general questions.
I’m making this set of pages for more specific questions.
The rule is: do not ask or comment about a book until it has been at least a month in issue. I think that will make everybody happy re spoilers.
I’d say sometime a couple of hundred years after Cyteen, about 2700.
Thanks! About the same time as the start of the Mri wars.
Just finished Heavy Time and Hellburner rereads, and am on the Last book in the direct U/A saga, Finity’s End. It had been a long time since I read these and having just gone back and reread all of them I love them even more the second time around. Of them all I think Merchanter’s Luck and Tripoint are my favorites, but I really enjoyed them all immensely. Each of the books has given us a slice of life from various viewpoints and opposing sides in some cases and its just incredibly rich and real.
It would be amazing to see a book chronically the rise of Signy Mallory and accompanying the Norway on some of the war years. Ot where the heck had Mazian been all this time?
merchenter luck showed how tough are life in the merchent world in space.
Sandor didnt get a break by Dublin associates on his ship, and got beaten up badly. I wonder, how outside the wormth of youre family ship, all people show wicked behavoir toward other individuals. no mercy there.
tripoint also show suffering one man against a all ship, while in his own ship, he never threated right.
I think that in heavy time, hellburner and downbelow station, we see more compasion between people which are not related in family ties, which I find more encouraging if one wonder the humanity of human kind…
I hope we’ll see more books in the heavy time-tripoint timeline
(and I hope more Chanur books as well)
While eagerly awaiting Regenesis (due out on the 19th here in the UK) I’ve been re-reading Cyteen for the umpteenth time, and have been reminded of a question I’ve wanted to ask for 20 years.
How is ‘Reseune’ pronounced? The apparent French roots would suggest something like ‘rezURN’, but monoglot English speakers would presumably turn it into something more like ‘rezOON’ or ‘rezYOON’.
What I’d really like to know is how the inhabitants pronounce it, since I’d regard that as authoritative.
Apologies if you’ve already answered this question elsewhere.
Rez-YOON. You got it right.
Many thanks for the quick reply. At the risk of trying your patience, does this mean that they’ve also Anglicised ‘maman’?
It’s notable as the one non-English common word which occurs frequently – but only from Ari II and adults talking to her. Dare I speculate that as one of the first and most emotionally-charged words Ari would learn, the Project resurrected some obsolete vocabulary just in case? 120 years would certainly be long enough for some linguistic change.
By way of excuse for this nit-picking inquiry; I often find myself reading (or at least muttering) striking dialogue aloud, and uncertainty about pronunciation tends to interfere with the flow.
I wonder if we have some knoledge about the Rab movement and its origions. was it a Belt thing? or Earth idea that got spread to space? do we know more about the protest near the company offices doors when the police openned fire, and was it state police or private EC police?
Does the Rabs were fururistic Anarchists? (according to what we know about young dekker trying to sabotage the station he lived in? or was it a spacers movement demanding freedom from the grip of the EC?
It was an Earth-based movement, and the state police were involved, protecting the Company HQ, and serving to mark a point at which peaceful protest was shut down, leaders were arrested, some fled, some were deported. The original Rab movement (named from the comment that the protesters were mere illiterate rabble) was against the increasing influence of the Company’s economic profit over the economic needs of the (largely) third-world nations of Earth. The massacre on the steps had a chilling effect on protest thereafter, and court rulings (corrupt judges) came down on the side of the police.
Thanks for the fast reply. Its sound chillingly familliar from anti globalization protests in G8 conventions. An Italian Anarchist had been shot dead and european&american left wingers, anarchists, and trotskists continue protesting against international corporations exploit of the third world.
did you antisipated all that? I mean, you wrote all those books in the 1980’s before the reality of globalization apear! I hope we wont come to what you described in HT and HB !
when you say deported, do you mean out of the planet to work in some hole in the belt? or deported from theire country?
Off the planet.
And one regrets to say some actions don’t need much prophecy—they keep happening over and over again, wherever people’s needs confront somebody’s desire for profit, from Pericles’ Athens, the Italian riots in Republican Rome, to the era of revolutions and the rise of modern states.
Im reading right now “Imperium” by Robert Harris (actually just finished it yesterday) about the life of Kikero, and its just what you wrote. everybody exploit the provinces, everybody give bribe to stop the courts from prosecute them accept the amazing example of Veres, and when the masses go desperate, the Roman imperators “bring back law and order”. Krasus savage execution of thousends of slaves along Via Apia…
(Im epologizing for my horrible spelling and bad grammer. English isnt my mother tongh. consider me a mahe talking the Pidgin…)
Just found this site. Like the comment from Ken Burnside as I was wondering the same thing re: game set in the A/U universe. CJ’s model does differ from most other S/F I know in that the ships come out of “hyperspace” at near lightspeed relative to the target, which would introduce all kinds of relativistic effects that I can’t imagine working in a video game.
But man, would I like to fly a hani merchant or kif pirate on runs to Meetpoint.. 🙂
I really hope there are more Compact books and that eventually the humans make it back into Compact space, whether it be Earth, Mazianni(that I’d especially like, since I’d really like to know what they’ve been up to all these years), Alliance, or Union. Alliance seems to have the most in common with the Compact species..but..who knows.
Well here I am,reading Rimrunners…AGAIN.
just finished Rimrunners…
military slang (some similarity with Hellburner) keep me wondering
what “Skuz” stand for?
skut ?
effin’ ?
schiz’?
and did India run away on time from Thule system before Norway inbound?
I can explain most, from a checkered military career (both meanings):
Skuz = skuzzy: crummy, lousy, or disreputable. Sleazy. In actual military usage today.
#
Skut is not one I had seen before CJ used it, but you can gather it from context and “Skuz.” A low-ranking enlisted person, perhaps not one of the most squared-away and sharp, militarily.
#
Effin’ = Effing = F*cking
#
Schiz = schizophrenic–split-brained.
Thanks for the answers.
I guess Skut is like “Tomi” in WW2 regarding british army. kind of “private” in the US army?
make sense. good job CJ doing using slang and short cuts for the military.
is this slang being use by belters in sol system (like miners as were dekker and Pollard)?
PS
schizophrenic isnt nesseserily split personality disorder. its describes a long range of mental illnesses which includes delusions, psycosis, ans illusinations.
thanks for the answer!
Hint: Look up the phrase, “scut work.” Basically, dirty, dreary work. So someone who does it is…. Think of what old-time sailors, farmhands, and servants would do. Swab the decks, bail the bilge, muck the stalls, scullery maids and chamber maids, cook’s helpers, etc. Grunt work. Digging latrines.
Hah, would not have expected that reply as my first post here.
I would love more Chanur / Compact books. There are some things I’d love to see, but I won’t say, for fear they could therefore not be used. — I’m about to reread the whole series. I’d love to have them as ebooks. Likewise the Merchanter books, such as Merchanter’s Luck, Downbelow Station, Finity’s End…. Heck, issue ’em all, I’d love to be able to take Ms. Cherryh’s books with me.
You might check with the DAW site on some of the ones that came out as DAW Books, but others will appear here when I get a little spare time. 😉
And welcome in!
Thank you!
I looked again at Amazon, and although no new ebooks show there, they do show Destroyer in the Foreigner series, Hammerfall and Forge of Heaven, and four Fortress books. (I haven’t read the Fortress books, and I think only one of the Rider / Nighthorse books.)
DAW’s site lists paperbacks and hardcovers, but without going through all 29 books, I didn’t find any ebook references. They list by book name, and you click a book to see the available formats and make a purchase.
I would *presume* they (or any publisher) would make any ebooks available via Amazon’s Kindle format or the upcoming Apple iBooks, but that is assumption on my part, and nowhere subject to reality. ;D
I forgot to say, that was a much easier welcome-in than Sandor got from Dubliners or Fletcher got from Finity. 😉 Thanks.
Huh, oddness. Seems the Amazon search didn’t turn up all five Fortress books, but they’re there. Fortress in the Eye of Time, Ice, Owls, Eagles, Dragons. If I’ve got them out of order, my apologies; I haven’t read them yet. (More to read, yay!)
So, I finally got Regenesis, which means that I inevitably reread Cyteen, which means that inevitably Questions Arose. The obvious one has finally been answered, but these remain:
1. What language does Union speak? I’d always assumed it was English because no one ever seems to encounter a language barrier, but I noticed this time that the plural of ser/sera is seri, and of course that’s the only word we see that’s actually in “Unionese,” as it were. That looks to me like a Russian plural, not an English one, although “azi” would suggest they’re using the Roman alphabet. (Or a Latin plural, perhaps? ;))
2. What’s the deal with Ari II’s cursing? Is Denys really that upset about “dammit” and “hell,” or has it been bowdlerized from something untranslatable or unprintable? Is the issue that she’s a girl? All the other adults curse, even Grant, and no one seems to care.
3. Do the Union political parties have colors? Symbols? As the 2010 political season heats up I am feeling the need for a “Corain/Warrick 2424” icon coming on, and I want to know what color to make the background.
@Spearmint – if you ever get a Corain/Warrick icon whipped up, I’d love a copy to look at and chuckle over!