Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi → The Galaxy Tales - Dirk B.
Can someone suggest a real mineral on Earth that might be used in energizers to draw dark energy from the void as a means of very high power generation. I was considering radioactive tritium, but it's normally a gas. I'm hoping for a relatively rare mineral that might exist on other worlds in greater quantities. Think of it as Arrakis's spice, but for power instead of navigation. Should I just make one up?
You should make one up because you're not stuck in hard sci-fi. I suggest it not be a mineral or an element (because it's likely that we've discovered all the stable elements).
As a complex molecule, you could make up the conditions that cause it to exist. Then, you can tailor the conditions to suit the worlds where you want it to exist in abundance.
The "Spice" of my series has been given the condition it only forms in heavy rocks exposed to minimal heat or sunlight during its formation. This causes my character to chase down objects in the Kuiper Belt to get it - a place no one would want to be, otherwise.
Strawberry Jam? Space Jam? Toe jam?
I like the idea that the mineral isn't stable so it isn't on Earth.make it extreme mining. Like harvesting plasma from solar flares. Or compressed isotopes from a black hole.
I was considering a mineral called sparkle, which would explain why one of the names for a dark energizer is Old Sparkie. I like the name, but dark energizers only appear in my battle scenes, so I'm not sure a nickname for a dark energizer would be used by people in a life-and-death battle, especially in the military.
In battle, it's Sparkle or Sparky.
Make it Janet's name. Usually minerals have longer names. Sparkanium?
Sparkanium it is.
Next item. Does anyone think it's particularly bad to have both cold fusion and dark energizers in the book? I don't dwell on it, but cold fusion is used for low power applications (e.g. flying cars, starfighters, etc.) while the energizers are used for all the big capital ships. I'm not sure where to draw the line, though. Should a garbage scow have an energizer?
On a related note, my understanding of cold fusion is that it produces excess heat, so I have a damaged fusion core overheating in a starfighter to the point of killing the occupant. I introduced coolant in the starfighters to prevent this from happening normally. Reasonable?
You can make your little cold fusion do whatever your heart desires. It can read Shakespeare or sing Pink Floyd , if you deem that desireable.
I'm looking to keep it within the realm of physically possible, albeit improbable. I'll punt cold fusion in favor of generic power cores if I have to. I used the latter in my second draft. Cold fusion is a little sexier, without requiring an explanation. Assuming cold fusion is ever made to work, it is expected to emit heat, which is converted to power. Instead of the leaked coolant in v2 causing the pilot to be cooked from within, I assume I can vent excess heat into space. So I would need to destroy the ability of the fusion core to vent heat to get the same roast pilot. Yes?
Check out talk-polywell.org for a fusion concept.
v4 of chapter five, A Pax Romana, is up. I can't believe you folks allowed me to get away with v3.
K, I kept what you wanted and ditched the rest, then added the new material.
Quick go read!
Almost wrote three whole drafts without looking up shogun. Turns out the word I was shooting for all along was samurai. Some days....
Can someone please suggest an image file type that translates well into book format? Compression ratio? Also, how to insert it into chapters here online. Bill suggested adding timestamps to my Royals Forum posts, and basic formatting doesn't lend itself to that. Should I use a Word table?
Thanks
Dirk
K, there were a total of seven instances of hard/harder in my latest chapter. Thanks for catching that. Apparently, I'm completely blind to them. Time for some quality time with thesaurus.com.
Is there a way to imbed Word tables (or images of the tables) within my chapters online? Tom Oldman mentioned that he hosts the images elsewhere and then links to them, but I think he was referring to images in thread posts. Have any of you done it? Embedding a table would be ideal, since that's probably what I'll use for the layout within the book. Images will do as a fallback. It's for a collection of fictional forum posts. I want them to look more structured than is otherwise possible with regular text formatting.
Thanks
Dirk
I've done images fairly often. Never tried a table
Where did you host them from and how did you link them into your chapters?
Hosted off Kwan's website... I think I just link them in HTML... eg <img src="http://www.mysite.com/my pic" />
Thanks. Now to find a hosting site.
Turns out TNBW can host the images directly. I gave up on it though. The table format doesn't look good. I was trying to include a timestamp on each post in the Royals forum.
I just lost a 1/2 hour of my life on your review and the computer went tits up. I'm tired. I'm going to go to bed. (Pouts) It was a good review, too!
Imagine that the Edsel was subcontracted to Yugo and built with Pinto and Vega parts, along with some of the glue they used in the Boston tunnel ceiling (the one that collapsed). Its quality would exceed that of almost all software written today.
Fantasy/Magic & Sci-Fi → The Galaxy Tales - Dirk B.
