Spoilers DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread

[OverlordSpock]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^ I would assume the Federation was long a thing of the past. Either it has fallen at some point, for whatever reason, or the galaxy had evolved beyond the need for it.

I have to say that this was my favorite bit of TrekLit in the last few years. There have been a lot of strong, powerful, and emotionally driving TrekLit in that time—and I love all that stuff—but this one just had the feel of a fun romp to me. There have been a few other fun romps too in that time, but those frequently were just silly or had other structural, plot or character problems. The best of the bunch previously had been DS9: Lust's Latinum Lost (and Found), and that one was pretty close to this, but The Collectors edges it out because of the strengths of Christopher's writing style and his ability to tie everything together tightly. It may have been a fun romp, but it was also a fun romp where the characters grew and changed and found things out about themselves and each other. I loved it! Plus, Christopher just has the ability to think so big.

Spoiler: The Fun Surprise

As for the bit about the Borg-osaurus Rex, when I first read that I thought to myself "Of course there would be a Borg dinosaur! Why wouldn't there be?" but completely without sarcasm, laughing with glee the entire time. In hindsight it was such an obvious twist on the Borg trope that it's perfectly clear why no-one else had yet come up with it. A huge hat-tip to Christopher for being the one to figure this out and pull the trigger. I loved it!

 

[Gul Re'jal]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

A decent, fast paced story. I felt that I understood the time-techno-babble best here, but maybe because it built on the knowledge/technicalities gained from the two previous books. Or maybe because there wasn't that much of it here to overwhelm my little brain

I must say I enjoyed most

Spoiler: what I liked a lot

Mr. Borgosaurus! So wonderful and surreal!

 

[Paul Weaver]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Another outstanding book, as expected, and another pleasant headache.

Spoiler: The book, duh

^Thanks so much! And the Warehouse 13 echoes were entirely intentional.

I'm glad it wasn't just me - I was worried when the word "warehouse" didn't appear on the first page of reviews. Perhaps I'm a bit hyped-up on Warehouse 13 at the moment - just started the last season on dvd, Spike left, and parcel-force/Giles has been dealt with. Is HG Wells' time machine somewhere in the vault?

Technical issues -- kindle/iphone didn't have page numbers. I know I shouldn't, but I do read the annotations in parallel with the book, I had to do it on a chapter-by-chapter level!

What does Mack the Slayer have to say about bringing back the Borg? I like the idea that he can't kill off any DTI people though -- He might control space, but Christopher controls time

 

[Markonian]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Alexander Hartdegen's famous time machine is hinted to be in the Vault in Watching the Clock.

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

^No, H. George Wells's famous time machine is hinted to be in the Vault. If I'm gonna reference a film adaptation of The Time Machine, it's gonna be the good one. (I don't think I've ever actually seen the 2002 version -- I had to look up "Alexander Hartdegen.")

 

[Enterprise1701]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I'm curious to know what happened to the Federation 21 million years from now.

In Watching the Clock, the Chenar, controllers of the territory containing the interface to the Axis of Time 26,000 years after 30 September 2381 did not recognize the names "Vulcan" or "Romulan". The book did not specify whether the Chenar were further asked about "Federation" or "human", but I think it is safe to say that the Federation is no longer around by 26,000 C.E.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I'm curious to know what happened to the Federation 21 million years from now.

In Watching the Clock, the Chenar, controllers of the territory containing the interface to the Axis of Time 26,000 years after 30 September 2381 did not recognize the names "Vulcan" or "Romulan". The book did not specify whether the Chenar were further asked about "Federation" or "human", but I think it is safe to say that the Federation is no longer around by 26,000 C.E.

Garcia didn't dare ask about Human or Federation.

 

[Hando]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I'm curious to know what happened to the Federation 21 million years from now.

In Watching the Clock, the Chenar, controllers of the territory containing the interface to the Axis of Time 26,000 years after 30 September 2381 did not recognize the names "Vulcan" or "Romulan". The book did not specify whether the Chenar were further asked about "Federation" or "human", but I think it is safe to say that the Federation is no longer around by 26,000 C.E.

Garcia didn't dare ask about Human or Federation.

The lack of a station - Federation or any at all - at the 112th century and 200th century stops would point out that the Federation is already not around.

This would go against the "Guardians" short story, but alas.

On the other hand the Axis could have become one of these things that no longer interests the Federation, or has been forgotten.

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

The lack of a station - Federation or any at all - at the 112th century and 200th century stops would point out that the Federation is already not around.

Not at all, because the Axis of Time is quite some distance from Federation space. At least in the present epoch, the interface is located near the Vomnin Confederacy. And given the rotation of the galaxy, there's no telling where it might end up relative to any given star in a future epoch. Nothing stands still in space.

Also, the Chenar are probably the direct descendants of the Vulcan (and Romulan?) species. It's just been so long that the language and nomenclature of our era has been forgotten. Do we know what our ancestors 26,000 years ago called themselves?

Over such a span of time, no single state is going to remain in continuous existence. But that doesn't mean the civilization and heritage that it's part of won't endure -- just as Chinese civilization endures long after the Han Dynasty fell, for example.

 

[rfmcdpei]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

The lack of a station - Federation or any at all - at the 112th century and 200th century stops would point out that the Federation is already not around.

Not at all, because the Axis of Time is quite some distance from Federation space. At least in the present epoch, the interface is located near the Vomnin Confederacy. And given the rotation of the galaxy, there's no telling where it might end up relative to any given star in a future epoch. Nothing stands still in space.

Also, the Chenar are probably the direct descendants of the Vulcan (and Romulan?) species. It's just been so long that the language and nomenclature of our era has been forgotten. Do we know what our ancestors 26,000 years ago called themselves?

Over such a span of time, no single state is going to remain in continuous existence. But that doesn't mean the civilization and heritage that it's part of won't endure -- just as Chinese civilization endures long after the Han Dynasty fell, for example.

Do we even know for sure that this Chenar did not know? Perhaps she was simply a very good actor, conscious of the need not to let anything slip of the catastrophe impending for one of her ancestral populations in Garcia's native time.

 

[Hando]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

The lack of a station - Federation or any at all - at the 112th century and 200th century stops would point out that the Federation is already not around.

Not at all, because the Axis of Time is quite some distance from Federation space. At least in the present epoch, the interface is located near the Vomnin Confederacy. And given the rotation of the galaxy, there's no telling where it might end up relative to any given star in a future epoch. Nothing stands still in space.

The distance between the Axis and Sol during that time would have increased by 400 ly at the max. I could have made a miscalculation, but it does not seem that great a distance to me.

Also, the Chenar are probably the direct descendants of the Vulcan (and Romulan?) species. It's just been so long that the language and nomenclature of our era has been forgotten. Do we know what our ancestors 26,000 years ago called themselves?

My first impression was that the Chenar are like the Mintakans, and/or the Debrune.

With the Universal Translator the word Vulcan should have been at least recognized as the mythical origin place of the Chenar - just my take.

As I lack any expertise on the pre-historic age, I cannot say, but my guess would be:"people" - in whatever language existed at that time.

Also no writing vs super-duper computers does not seem a fair comparison to me.

Over such a span of time, no single state is going to remain in continuous existence. But that doesn't mean the civilization and heritage that it's part of won't endure -- just as Chinese civilization endures long after the Han Dynasty fell, for example.

I know that it is a false premise. But I just do not know how to disprove it.

I guess the best way would be to find all the reasons a state may fall and/or change and prove that it could not have happened to the Federation or the Vulcans and/or that it would not have long-term effects on them.

Do we even know for sure that this Chenar did not know? Perhaps she was simply a very good actor, conscious of the need not to let anything slip of the catastrophe impending for one of her ancestral populations in Garcia's native time.

This did not occur to me.

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Do we even know for sure that this Chenar did not know?

My intent was that she didn't. Not everyone is an expert in ancient history.

The distance between the Axis and Sol during that time would have increased by 400 ly at the max. I could have made a miscalculation, but it does not seem that great a distance to me.

Okay, I may have been thinking in terms of longer time scales, but 400 ly is still nearly half the distance from Sol to the Axis interface. And it's very nearly the entire diameter of the UFP as shown in Star Charts. The point is, the Axis interface is nowhere near Federation territory, and the presence or absence of a station at those future centuries was not intended to imply anything about the survival of the civilization that was called "the Federation" in the 24th century. I did make it pretty clear that a descendant species of humanity was still around well over a million years in the future.

My first impression was that the Chenar are like the Mintakans, and/or the Debrune.

Nope, I meant them to be descendants of the Vulcans.

With the Universal Translator the word Vulcan should have been at least recognized as the mythical origin place of the Chenar - just my take.

Again, languages change. Whatever name you use for the place your distant ancestors came from is not the same name they used. The Chenar may be perfectly well aware of what planet they came from, but they wouldn't necessarily know it was once called Vulcan.

Also no writing vs super-duper computers does not seem a fair comparison to me.

If anything, computers create a greater risk of knowledge being lost:

http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...arns-forgotten-century-email-photos-vint-cerf

I know that it is a false premise. But I just do not know how to disprove it.

If you don't have proof, then you don't "know" it, you just believe it. Those are two entirely different things.

Besides, I'm the one who wrote the book. I know what I intended; you just interpreted it differently.

I guess the best way would be to find all the reasons a state may fall and/or change and prove that it could not have happened to the Federation or the Vulcans and/or that it would not have long-term effects on them.

States, like any living thing, grow and evolve. I believe the legacy of what the Federation established will endure even if the name and specific structure of the institution change.

 

[Hando]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I did make it pretty clear that a descendant species of humanity was still around well over a million years in the future.

You did? You mean the Zcham, then they truly are post-human?

Nope, I meant them to be descendants of the Vulcans.

Again, languages change. Whatever name you use for the place your distant ancestors came from is not the same name they used. The Chenar may be perfectly well aware of what planet they came from, but they wouldn't necessarily know it was once called Vulcan.

I stand corrected.

If anything, computers create a greater risk of knowledge being lost:

http://www.theguardian.com/technolo...arns-forgotten-century-email-photos-vint-cerf

Hm, is there an actual study that compares production vs loss of data?
I expect the ratio of loss/production to be higher no then it was in the past, but on the other hand would you really preserve some of the things mentioned in the article?

I know that it is a false premise. But I just do not know how to disprove it.

If you don't have proof, then you don't "know" it, you just believe it. Those are two entirely different things.

Besides, I'm the one who wrote the book. I know what I intended; you just interpreted it differently.

Alright, first this comment was not addressed as to meant that the Federation, Vulcans, Humans or whoever should/ought to have stayed unchanged and existing up to that time.

Rather it was to mean that I strongly believe/intrinsically know/"know" (I am sorry, but I am under the impression that I used a linguistically valid sentence, - a hyperbole maybe ) that a state can last a long, long time. In the same vein as "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence". I cannot provide any real-life examples, only functioning examples would from other fictional works and any Star Trek examples of societies lasting so long could be explained as societies lasting while the state collapses.

Well, it is not important.

I guess the best way would be to find all the reasons a state may fall and/or change and prove that it could not have happened to the Federation or the Vulcans and/or that it would not have long-term effects on them.

States, like any living thing, grow and evolve. I believe the legacy of what the Federation established will endure even if the name and specific structure of the institution change.

Good to know.

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

I did make it pretty clear that a descendant species of humanity was still around well over a million years in the future.

You did? You mean the Zcham, then they truly are post-human?

That's what I intended to suggest. Although, really, given how easy interspecies breeding is in Trek, I doubt there will be many "pure-blooded" humans left that far in the future, and there may be human blood in individuals of countless different species.

Rather it was to mean that I strongly believe/intrinsically know/"know" (I am sorry, but I am under the impression that I used a linguistically valid sentence, - a hyperbole maybe ) that a state can last a long, long time. In the same vein as "The absence of evidence is not the evidence of absence". I cannot provide any real-life examples, only functioning examples would from other fictional works and any Star Trek examples of societies lasting so long could be explained as societies lasting while the state collapses.

But the thing is, all our real-life examples are on the scale of a paltry few thousand years. We simply don't have enough history to know what will happen over the course of ten thousand or a hundred thousand or a million years. What's "a long, long time" by our standards is a passing phase on that scale. Everything's relative.

 

[Enterprise1701]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

So the Chenar and the Zcham could have originated from an Arretian scenario: colonists from a highly technologically advanced species/civilization somehow lose all their technology, historical records, etc. and redevelop civilization all over again, eventually going into space without the knowledge that this isn't the first time their species has traveled in space. ?

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

So the Chenar and the Zcham could have originated from an Arretian scenario: colonists from a highly technologically advanced species/civilization somehow lose all their technology, historical records, etc. and redevelop civilization all over again, eventually going into space without the knowledge that this isn't the first time their species has traveled in space. ?

No, that's not it at all. It's just the gradual erosion of knowledge as more recent knowledge supplants it. Again, we're talking about a timeframe far longer than all of human history, so we have no real-world antecedent for it. It just stands to reason that, even if a civilization endures and advances indefinitely, eventually the old knowledge will get displaced by the accumulation of more and more new knowledge. It's just entropy. Over a long enough span of time, any information will degrade. You can copy it over and over, but there will be errors and data loss in the copying. (I explored this issue in The Buried Age, whose plot had a lot to do with the preservation of civilization across hundreds of millions of years and the difficulties therein.)

Anyway, there may well be Chenar historians who would recognize the name "Vulcan" or "Romulan," but that particular Chenar was not a student of ancient history. You can't generalize to an entire civilization from one individual's knowledge.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Given that it's been hinted on occasion that Vulcans are descended from the Arretian diaspora and didn't originate on Vulcan at all...maybe later centuries or millennia will see a more complete knowledge of where the Vulcanoids originate? In turn leading to a different angle on the ancient racial history of the Chenar that renders Vulcan less important and less memorable than it is to most modern Vulcanoids? Maybe Vulcan/Minshara/T'Khasi is just one of many worlds that the prominent Vulcanoid race(s) of the far future consider significant, and their sense of historical identity has little interest in one specific homeworld, no matter how historically prominent from a 24th Century perspective? For that matter, with all the interchange and immigration and inbreeding, the various disparate shards of the Vulcanoid race will surely find each other again. Maybe the populations of Vulcans, Romulans, Watraii, Zami, etc, have interbred and mixed together so often that the Vulcanoid people(s) trace their heritage to a whole swath of space and no longer identify with a given few planets at all? Why remember the name of Vulcan when your heritage encompasses Rigel IV and Mintaka and Glintara, etc., just as equally?

"We're the Chenar and we're everywhere, in all our diverse variants. I think I read the name "Vulcan" somewhere - that was one of the ancient societies that helped form the Chenar Entire, right?"

 

[Hando]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

Christopher, I am sorry to sidestep the current discussion, but have to ask some questions before I forget them again.

1. Meeting of Jena Nois
I cannot recall ever seeing or reading a time-travel story, where a time traveler returning to his/hers present meets an alternative version of him/herself.
What was your inspiration?

2. When regarding the linear timeflow the Collector future we have seen is in the TIA future. Possibly by that time all the timelines already merged, but if not did not FTA Jena Noi and DTI Dulmur and Lucsly basically eliminated TIA Jena Noi from existence by returning back to the past/present?
Or was she simply protected by some far-future technobabble?

 

[Christopher]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

1. Meeting of Jena Nois
I cannot recall ever seeing or reading a time-travel story, where a time traveler returning to his/hers present meets an alternative version of him/herself.
What was your inspiration?

Just common sense, really. As I explained in the story, it wouldn't necessarily follow that the Jena Noi in this alternate history would've been sent back in time at the same time "our" Jena was, so there was no reason she wouldn't be there.

2. When regarding the linear timeflow the Collector future we have seen is in the TIA future. Possibly by that time all the timelines already merged, but if not did not FTA Jena Noi and DTI Dulmur and Lucsly basically eliminated TIA Jena Noi from existence by returning back to the past/present?
Or was she simply protected by some far-future technobabble?

As long as she stayed outside her timeline when it collapsed back into the mass, she should've been spared. From what we've seen, I surmise that you'd only be erased in that situation if there were already a temporal double of yourself existing at the same time (e.g. Picard in "Time Squared"), but Supervisor Noi stayed in the distant future when Agent Jena went back to her home century. Also, yes, the tech built into their uniforms would protect them from timeline mergers, allowing them to control whether or not they merged with alternate selves.

 

[Hando]

Re: DTI: The Collectors by Christopher L. Bennett Review Thread (Spoil

1. Meeting of Jena Nois
I cannot recall ever seeing or reading a time-travel story, where a time traveler returning to his/hers present meets an alternative version of him/herself.
What was your inspiration?

Just common sense, really. As I explained in the story, it wouldn't necessarily follow that the Jena Noi in this alternate history would've been sent back in time at the same time "our" Jena was, so there was no reason she wouldn't be there.

Well, common sense is usually incompatible with time travel.
It is usual, when a Time Policeman return to his own time after correcting a change in the past, that there are no duplicates of him in his own time.
However if he corrected the problem there would be no reason to go back into the past and therefore his present self would be doing something else.
I am not sure, is this a Grandfather paradox or not?

Spoiler: hopefully not a story idea

Or maybe I am missing something and every time a FTA agent returns to the 31st century he/she has to merge with the local version?