Heid burst
Spoilers Coda: Book 2: The Ashes of Tomorrow by James Swallow Review Thread
- Thread starter JoeZhang
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Heid burst
“I hate temporal mechanics”
I never said anything like that. But it's a little bit of a leap to go from that to something threatening multiple timelines. Like, our galaxy is 100 billion stars and there are around 125 billion galaxies known in our universe. Are the Devidians attacking all of them at the same time? Or is the "local" stuff they're doing that we read in the books enough to collapse entire timelines and affect all of that??
Don't get me wrong, I'm loving Coda, but I've got my blockbuster movie brain on while reading.
To be fair, Species 8472 did say they were going to purge the whole galaxy of life. Whatever benefit those other races got from the Borg getting their asses whupped, would have been short lived once the Borg were gone and 8472 turned to them.
I don't feel certain about Voyager's interpretation of that, especially in light of Places of Exile.
I trusted Kes' version of it. However, when confronted with this, the Species are embarrassed. I get the impression that it WAS their original plan but they realized not all races were like the Borg AFTER Kes' read. However, that was after Voyager assisted the Borg.
So essentially it was a comedy of misunderstandings.
There really aren't many other ways that kind of phrase can be interpreted in the moment. Sure, we can now apply what was learned after the fact and place things in context accordingly, but at the time, the facts available to Janeway that a race of aliens so powerful they could destroy Borg cubes in one shot were talking about eradicating all life in the galaxy. That's not the kind of situation where it's appropriate to sit on your ass and say "well, let's put things into proper context before we rush into this situation."
‘Much Ado About Janeway, or Assimilate You Like It’
I have to say, I was PSYCHED to see an explicit reference to Tlaoli IV in this book. Even if it did not feature in the story, The Janus Gate getting mentioned nearly 20 years on is quite satisfying to me!
Very very good, but very, very draining. Rather like Saving Private Ryan (which my father and I saw for the first time this past Memorial Day).
Call me crazy, but the Devidians kind of remind me of Trump and his ilk: parasites who are utterly contemptuous of those on which they feed.
Spotted something in a Google search, something that suggested that Redjac was a Devidian.
Call me crazy, but the Devidians kind of remind me of Trump and his ilk: parasites who are utterly contemptuous of those on which they feed.
Spotted something in a Google search, something that suggested that Redjac was a Devidian.
We spoke with James Swallow on the latest episode of the Positively Trek Book Club. Great discussion, James is always a lot of fun!
Just one. First name David.
Misjudged the timing, had planned to read book 1 and 2 to finish book 2 on November 29th, ready to read book 3 on the 30th. Alas they were too good and I undershot by a few days.
Missing Guinan, glad she's been mentioned, but I'd love to know what has happened to her.
Have to admit I still believe it was a cunning deep level plan from Riker, with either Akaar without Picard's knowlege, or vice versa, pretty much up until the encounter at Omicron. Also was surprised Bowers went along with it, I always thought he was a stickler for rules and procedures.
My guess for part 3 will be
that something will happen, probably involving Spock, to cause the Romulan star to go supernova across different timelines
One line I liked which wasn't mentioned, was from Wesley
"Did you give a speech? I miss hearing those"
Another one from the other Crusher on reflection of the strings she was pulling to get preferential treatment for Rene
"Funny how a threat to the life of your child makes you reevaluate your moral standards"
I'm pretty sure the authors have already said there will be no Romulan supernova in the Litverse.
That's why I'm not fond of stories about things that could destroy the entire universe. Given the effectively infinite size of the universe and its immense age, if there were anything that could destroy the entire universe, then surely it would have already happened long, long ago.
But there's something I pointed out in DTI: Watching the Clock -- despite how we talk about them, parallel timelines do not encompass the entire universe. Quantum-mechanically speaking, when the observed universe diverges into two measurement histories, the divergence/superposition propagates outward as particles interact with each other, so it only spreads out at the rate of interaction -- which in real life means the speed of light at most. As far as anyone outside the light cone of that interaction is concerned, i.e. anyone far enough away not to have been affected by it, the split hasn't happened. So parallel timelines are more a local phenomenon than a universe-wide one. We only call them parallel "universes" because from our perspective as observers, they encompass the entirety of our experiential universe, i.e. the extent of what we can observe.
Granted, in Trek, there are all sorts of faster-than-light phenomena that can cause interactions to spread out far faster than they would in real life, like tachyons and subspace shock waves and so forth, which is how you can have, say, the Amargosa supernova having a near-instant effect on the courses of starships light-years away. So it wouldn't take long for a timeline divergence's effects to spread through all of known space or through a whole quadrant, or even the whole galaxy. But interactions between different galaxies are quite rare in the Trek universe, so other galaxies would probably be unaffected by any given timeline split within our galaxy, or by the collapse of any of our galaxy's distinct timelines.
From that perspective, it makes sense that a threat to the existence of entire timelines within our galaxy would have to originate within our galaxy. Although it's still a coincidence that it happened within the very tiny part of the galaxy that the 24th-century Federation has managed to explore.
I think an issue arises when you lean too much on disaster prawn, which to be fair the latest TV series bar Lower Decks has also been guilty of. You have to deploy some major suspension of disbelief when it’s another threat to the entire universe / galaxy. In the case of Coda we need some major divergent event, and for example the Destiny series was a major wrap up of the Borg.
In context however, even during the TOS / TNG era, most of the threats were localised. V’ger and the whale probe were both planet sized threats, for example. The Genesis Device became an allegory for nuclear weapons and their impact on the balance of power. In DS9 we got our first all out “world war” but again we’re talking a great power trying to take out other big great powers. Big but not Disco or Picard galaxy ending. The universe is too big to play those cards often.
One thing that’ll be nice about the tie in litverse is that we’re going to get a lot more episode in a bottle sized threats to deal with. But even if we got another free run litverse at some point, I’d lay off the Genesis Wave sized crisis after crisis and ensure you go for a strictly limited galactic disaster prawn stories. Quite like how DTI for example manages to have big threats but contained, given the whole nature of time travel and containment and suchlike.
In context however, even during the TOS / TNG era, most of the threats were localised. V’ger and the whale probe were both planet sized threats, for example. The Genesis Device became an allegory for nuclear weapons and their impact on the balance of power. In DS9 we got our first all out “world war” but again we’re talking a great power trying to take out other big great powers. Big but not Disco or Picard galaxy ending. The universe is too big to play those cards often.
One thing that’ll be nice about the tie in litverse is that we’re going to get a lot more episode in a bottle sized threats to deal with. But even if we got another free run litverse at some point, I’d lay off the Genesis Wave sized crisis after crisis and ensure you go for a strictly limited galactic disaster prawn stories. Quite like how DTI for example manages to have big threats but contained, given the whole nature of time travel and containment and suchlike.
Lower Decks and Prodigy. And DSC season 3 wasn't about preventing a disaster -- it was about restoring civilization in the aftermath of one. Although unfortunately they seem to be going back to that well yet again in season 4.
It's often struck me how rarely canonical Trek went to the "threat to the entire universe" well compared to other sci-fi franchises, or even compared to Trek novels, which were full of such threats in the '80s (e.g. Corona, The Wounded Sky, The Three-Minute Universe). As far as I recall, the only times the pre-DSC franchise posited threats that could destroy the entire universe (discounting erasure/alteration of the Prime timeline) were TOS: "The Alternative Factor" and DS9: "Playing God."
From memory wasn't that only affecting the Bajoran system - the solution was to return it to the Gamma Quadrant, where whatever happened with it afterwards clearly didn't impact Bajor, or even much of the Dominion from what we could see.
It wasn't in the Gamma Quadrant, it was in a subspace interphase pocket, i.e. a point of overlap with another spacetime continuum, like the interphase in "The Tholian Web." The pocket was in the GQ, but the proto-universe itself was from the other continuum that the interphase pocket connected with.
And yes, the expansion of a literal entire universe inside ours would indeed have destroyed everything if they hadn't returned it through the interphase:
In Trek, since there are subspace propagation mechanisms, wouldn't the divergent universe change completely in far less time than the Hubble timescale?