4 ms·
"The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser. That could not even melt steel at the frigate’s range. No matter, the laser was aimed, tu
by akkartik 4y ago
"The new Power had no weapons on the ground, nothing but a comm laser. That could not even melt steel at the frigate’s range. No matter, the laser was aimed, tuned civilly on the retreating warship’s receiver. No acknowledgment. The humans knew what communication would bring. The laser light flickered here and there across the hull, lighting smoothness and inactive sensors, sliding across the ship’s ultradrive spines. Searching, probing. The Power had never bothered to sabotage the external hull, but that was no problem. Even this crude machine had thousands of robot sensors scattered across its surface, reporting status and danger, driving utility programs. Most were shut down now, the ship fleeing nearly blind. They thought by not looking that they could be safe.
"One more second and the frigate would attain interstellar safety.
"The laser flickered on a failure sensor, a sensor that reported critical changes in one of the ultradrive spines. Its interrupts could not be ignored if the star jump were to succeed. Interrupt honored. Interrupt handler running, looking out, receiving more light from the laser far below…a backdoor into the ship’s code, installed when the newborn had subverted the humans’ groundside equipment…
"…and the Power was aboard, with milliseconds to spare. Its agents—not even human equivalent on this primitive hardware—raced through the ship’s automation, shutting down, aborting. There would be no jump. Cameras in the ship’s bridge showed widening of eyes, the beginning of a scream. The humans knew, to the extent that horror can live in a fraction of a second."
http://akkartik.name/post/straumli http://akkartik.name/post/straumli
- gitfan86 4y agoHave you read Rainbows End?
- CPLX 4y agoReading this reminds me of the enormous chasm that exists between the vast majority of overwrought poorly written science fiction like this, and the absolute best of the genre.
- akkartik 4y agoMerry Christmas to you too.
- gitfan86 4y agoVinge has won plenty of awards. Can you recommend a book that is better and not a obvious top 50 SciFi books that most of us have read already?
- sph 4y agoReminds me of that infinite pain I felt in my soul when I resigned to the idea that Blindsight by Peter Watts could be a fantastic Scifi book, but its writing is so obtuse and impenetrable I am permanently locked out of its story. Anyone care to recommend a dark scifi book about utterly alien lifeforms or worlds, that are more accessible to someone with average IQ? https://youtu.be/DnF7LMkGxhY https://youtu.be/DnF7LMkGxhY
- akkartik 4y agoYeah, Blindsight is great in many ways but the aliens aren't really the centerpiece. Once they get too alien you just get noise. As it happens, I recently inventoried my favorite aliens and eliminated the ones that were too humanized and also not understandable to people. I might be missing something obvious, but the one that sticks in my mind 2 years after I read it is: Pandora's Star
- narrator 4y ago"Fire Upon The Deep" was great until it got to the part about the dog kingdom.
- jjoonathan 4y ago