^ Well, looks like I'll be in the market for a new writing partner, once Terri beats you to a bloody pulp.
Summon the Thunder (Spoilers)
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Kevin Dilmore said:
^ Jack Bauer? With the crap scared out of him? Better get yourself a new handle, bub. Try for something a little more pansy. Like Jack O'Neil or John Sheppard. Or Keith.
Glad you dug it.
Kevin
*cracks knuckles*
I see Bubba's self-preservation instincts have taken their leave for the evening.....
What happens when he looks in a mirror?
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
He shoots it.
^ Might be. I should probably wait to see if Terri spares Bubba's fingers in the coming beat-down.
Well, that explains all the bad luck...
Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
No, it wasn't invisible, just featureless. I got the impression of a largish humanoid-shaped figure with a smooth, crystalline black surface devoid of any features such as eyes, mouth, fingers, etc., and with the arms tapering to sharp conical points. Sorta like an abstract obsidian sculpture of a human form, except moving real fast and killing people.
The two agencies Anna is working for are Starfleet Intelligence and Klingon intelligence. She's a double agent, a Klingon spy who's been co-opted by T'Prynn to spy for Starfleet.
As opposed to what? A singularity drive like in TNG? That's a pretty advanced technology, probably too advanced for a 2260s-era Bird of Prey.
The main thing I'm wondering about is the 2265 date given here. It seemed to be only a few months prior to "Balance of Terror," and I've always assumed (and so does the Okudachron) that TOS began fairly late in 2266, say September or so. Indeed, "Balance of Terror" is just after "Charlie X," which takes place on Thanksgiving, and just two episodes before "Dagger of the Mind," which takes place just after Christmas, so that would seem to put BoT in early December of '66.
My only other problem with the book is that I'm getting the names "Ezekiel Fisher" and "Isaiah Farber" mixed up in my head.
Well, to be really technical, what Scotty said was "Their power is simple impulse," not "their drive." But either way, there's really no easy way to reconcile that line with what we now know, so we shouldn't be bound by it (any more than we should be bound by the line in "Where No Man" about the impulse points decaying to lead, as though they were based on fission instead of fusion). We know Romulans had warp drive in the 22nd century, so they must've had it in the 23rd, and matter-antimatter is a more plausible source of power for a warp drive than fusion.
There was a line in Articles of the Federation that older Romulan ships were powered by an ion drive, which seemed to be the explanation for what fueled the ship from "Balance of Terror" to give it faster than light capability without disregarding the "simple impulse" comment from Scotty. Summon the Thunder seems to negate that, though.
How the heck did I miss this question before?
To be honest, I didn't remember the ion drive reference from AotF when writing STT. I know that's shocking, as AotF is the one book from which all others derive dependence and so on (see? that joke works for anything!), but stuff happens.
Anyway, as I recall, ion propulsion within the Trek 'verse has always been portrayed as limited to sub-light velocities. The one (apparent) exception I can remember offhand is the ship with ion propulsion in "Spock's Brain," and Scotty is pretty giddy at the idea of checking out the engines of such a vessel ("They can teach us a thing or two," etc.). With that in mind, an ion drive as the Romulans' means of FTL at the time of TOS didn't seem right.
(Sorry, KRAD.
)
Further, the notion of the singularity drives seemed more than a bit advanced for the era, so -- for better or worse -- we went with something "conventional."
Let the floggings begin. Bubba's all buttered up and everything.
To be honest, I didn't remember the ion drive reference from AotF when writing STT. I know that's shocking, as AotF is the one book from which all others derive dependence and so on (see? that joke works for anything!), but stuff happens.
Anyway, as I recall, ion propulsion within the Trek 'verse has always been portrayed as limited to sub-light velocities. The one (apparent) exception I can remember offhand is the ship with ion propulsion in "Spock's Brain," and Scotty is pretty giddy at the idea of checking out the engines of such a vessel ("They can teach us a thing or two," etc.). With that in mind, an ion drive as the Romulans' means of FTL at the time of TOS didn't seem right.
(Sorry, KRAD.
)Further, the notion of the singularity drives seemed more than a bit advanced for the era, so -- for better or worse -- we went with something "conventional."
Let the floggings begin. Bubba's all buttered up and everything.
There's an image to give one nightmares....
Yeah, I meant to say the "power was simple impulse," sorry. However, I think this actually supports the idea that their FTL drive was powered by the same kind of reactor/source that powers an impulse drive, ie, fusion. Sure, fusion is less efficient than matter/antimatter (which is why Enterprise had an advantage), but it still might be good enough to power an FTL drive, which we all agree (I think) the Bird of Prey had.
In reality, ion propulsion is a very, very low-acceleration engine type, the sort of thing that takes days to get up to any appreciable speed, but can be sustained longer than conventional rockets and thus allow greater acceleration over the long haul and faster interplanetary travel, on the order of months rather than years. And it's a propulsion technique we already have today. So there's no way it could be a form of super-advanced FTL drive that Scotty would be amazed by. And there's no way it could be a crude, backward form of FTL drive either. I mean, we're talking something that would take hours to get up to freeway speeds -- it's not even in the ballpark for interstellar drives.
However, again the key is in the exact words -- in, I believe, every reference except one, it was called ion power rather than ion propulsion or ion drive. So it could refer simply to the power source that enabled the ship's warp engines to function, rather than the actual propulsive mechanism (just as an ion rocket uses electrical power). My preferred retcon is that it's the "polaric ion power" seen in VGR's "Time and Again." That was depicted as a power source so dangerous and unstable that the Federation, Klingons and Romulans mutually agreed to ban it in 2268 -- no more than two years after the Romulans' isolation ended, so it must've been pretty important to bring them together at that time. So it stands to reason that Scotty would be amazed by a technology that could harness it safely. (And as it happens, "Spock's Brain" would probably take place in late 2268.)
I recently started Summon the Thunder right off finishing Harbinger and have avoided this thread so as to miss any spoilers. However, I have to ask about this reference on p. 69.
Am I correct in assuming that this refers to Una McCormack? And if so which one of you fellas wrote that?
Am I correct in assuming that this refers to Una McCormack? And if so which one of you fellas wrote that?
And possibly related to the Cascade Ion Drive of the Daedalus novels. A warp drive power technology that Starfleet has experimented on, so that Scotty knows what he's speaking about - but since the experiments failed, Scotty has every reason to respect those who got it right.
I still rather like the idea of a singularity power source for the "Balance of Terror" ship. That's the perfect excuse for Scotty to get confused: since singularity engines are advanced from the UFP point of view, Scotty doesn't quite understand what he is seeing. Or rather, not seeing. Since he doesn't spot any of the telltale emissions of an antimatter reactor or a CID reactor, he opines that an impulse reactor is the main powerplant.
Obviously, what Reap the Whirlwind needs is more technobabble so that we can get these TOS peculiarities sorted out once and for all...
Timo Saloniemi
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