And on a somewhat saner note: will there just be a time-jump to the current date as of the last WotOR (or further), or will there be stuff filled in before then?

'Course...now all of a sudden, I wonder what a quadruple-combo with GaoGaiGar, Getter Ryger, Dai-Guard, and Gurren Lagann would be like...all those drills....

(Interesting thing, incidently...Spiral Energy? Green (Simeon) and pink/purple (Genome) (I remember it as being pinkish at least...). Just like Getter energy.

Could it be...SATAN!? I mean...COINCIDENCE?

Anthy doesn't turn out to be the queen of sweetness and light everyone seems to think she is:

Admittedly, I didn't care much for the character until her half-svartelven heritage made her interesting, I'm not that familiar with the source material, either...but everytime I read any scene with her, something inside me says "I ain't buyin' it, and I think Corwin and Utena are getting taken for a ride"

Am I using this as an excuse for our main bad boy Akio, hell no, but I also don't think little sis is spotless herself, and I don't think we've seen all there is to see about either of them yet (re: Norse myth never seems to end happily - Volsunga, etc...)

Also, I think given the Chief and co's abiding love for Norse myth, the triangle of Corwin, Utena, and Anthy, with a child in the mix...whew, there could be some rough times ahead.

Granted I could be completely, totally, and undeniably wrong, but the thread DID say "wild speculations"...

Maybe it was just something about Anthy and Utena's wedding scene...something didn't "feel right" -

And then did NOTHING with it. Ultimate fake-out McGuffin.

From a non-WAY-OUT-THERE technological idea:
Gradius' Vic Viper, or the ZOE Version (Variable Fighter heheheh)
Mechanaughts from Exteel
A/G/I/M-Gears from Flysis

And my #1 on the tech wishlist:
Bolos. Imagine having a BOLO with a female personality getting inducted into the ranks of the Valkyrie.

From a non-tech POV: I'd like to see the magical equivalent of the Jedi/Sith. References to LOTR, Harry Potter, D&D, Shadowrun, etc. Then have fun introducing a fully trained Jedi/Sith Wizard....

I've asked Gryphon about magic in the past... I think he prefers to keep it pretty low-key. Raven is as powerful an adept as he's likely to show.

Well, and some Asgardians - Skuld in particular - at the very least walk the fine line of Clarke's Third Law.

But then, I am under the impression that, in the UF universe at least, classical sorcery is really just an application of absurdly advanced mathematical constructs involving the manipulation of energy (and thus matter, which is, as Einstein has taught us, just a particularly sedentary form thereof).

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/

"Any sufficiently advanced technology can be debugged with a sledgehammer" :D

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

“They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid piece of harness. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot; and went on.”
-- Arthur Wellesley, First Duke of Wellington

Earthforce shovelling out both Battleplates from Schlock Mercenary and an extremely pared-down, bodged-together, 285th-hand Culture G.O.U. whose Mind has gone... a bit odd. Even by Culture standards...

Those would at least be a challenge for the various human-haters of the Universe, if not an outright stumbling block...

Yeah, but if Earthforce brought battleplates to the party, the Good Guys would simply have to phone up Emperor Colin the First, Dahak, and their happy little fleet of assault planetoids. :)

Then again, with all due respect to David Weber's Fifth Empire, E.E. Smith ultimately wins any war of escalation. When you do things like crush your enemy's homeworld between two planet-sized "nutcrackers" with opposing velocity, or channel the Sun's entire output into a directed-energy weapon, you are, as the old commercial said, playing with power. And that's not even the biggest firepower that gets deployed in the Lensman books, let alone Dick Seaton's solution to a bit of ethnic strife in Skylark of Valeron... :)

Also, I think that every library in the whole of UF should be run by ourangoutans and Dwellers.

The Dwellers could be all over the UF Universe and we wouldn't even need to know it...

In the interests of full disclosure, I should probably note that I've never finished an Iain M. Banks novel, nor started a David Weber one.

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Thought they'd be your thing. Space operas in the grand tradition and all that. Then again, I really ought to know better than to try and second-guess your taste in anything.

Dwellers are basically hyperintelligent cog-shaped squidgummy thingies (the technical term) that liive in gas giants for hundred of millenia at a time. They're an example of the Slow - extremely long-lived aliens with a sense of time passing to match. In comparison, humans and the like are Quick races.

Yeah, I dunno. I have at least one friend from college days who's a huge Banks fan, and I've given his books a try several times, but they just haven't engaged me. (As for Weber, well... I've read enough Forester and O'Brian, I don't really need to read 'em again with zap guns. :)

--G.
-><-
Benjamin D. Hutchins, Co-Founder, Editor-in-Chief, & Forum Admin
Eyrie Productions, Unlimited http://www.eyrie-productions.com/
Ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.

Oh well.

Back to writing my massive Culture-The Algebraist-Warhammer 40000-Schlock Mercenary-A Saga Of Seven Suns crossover novel. Space Marine-filled Ildiran-built G.O.Us ahoy! With Barack Obama as their mighty captain!

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

They communicate via bonsai tree. In the words of the teacher from Final Destination 2, "Sorry, but I gotta call bulls***".

How can they make sequels of a film called Final Destination? Or for that matter, any series with the word Final as part of the title? If there's a sequel it's not final, is it? Common sense...

Oh, that'd be Honor Harrington. The Dahak books are (a) a separate series, (b) a much shorter series, and (c) rather more Doc Smith than Forester. Especially the titanic space battles toward the end of the second book, featuring an alien armada of millions of conventional warships versus our heroes' fleet of several hundred planet-size ships. It's horrible. It's madness. IT'S WAR!

...Come to think of it, Colin isn't unlike UF-Gryphon in some ways: a relatively ordinary guy suddenly dropped into a position of incredible military power and importance.

Anyway, I strongly recommend... well... actually everything Weber has written EXCEPT the Harrington books. Those only get a weak recommendation from me. Heresy, I know. :)

--The Evil Midnight Lurker what Lurks at Midnight
"An object at rest--CANNOT BE STOPPED!!!"

I've read the first two Dahak books and liked them. And some thought Largo was compensating for something when he made the AT&T. I mean, a whole fleet of freaking war planetoids definitely mean business.

Another of his books I liked was The Apocalypse Troll. Man, the thought of the Kangas and their Trolls running amuck working for the bad guys can give you nightmares....

Michael

	Michael C. Fortner RCW #2n+1 "I smoke in moderation. Only one cigar at a time." -- Mark Twain

I have just finished my first Banks novel, "Matter". I can't say I enjoyed it anymore than I enjoyed any of the Peter Hamilton I've read.

Dresden on the other hand, would fit in wonderfully with the BPRD.

Twipper

>>Thought they'd be your thing.
>
>Yeah, I dunno. I have at least one friend from college days who's a
>huge Banks fan, and I've given his books a try several times, but they
>just haven't engaged me. (As for Weber, well... I've read enough
>Forester and O'Brian, I don't really need to read 'em again with zap
>guns. :)
>
>--G.

I'll third the motion about the non-Harrington stories. Harrington itself is getting to be very. long. drawn. out. calculus. missile-spam. Much of the fun of the older books that had rather fun battles of maneuver is lost now that the battles are pretty much everyone lines up light-minutes apart and just does a glorified war of missile attrition.

Dahakverse on the other hand has almost -none- of the hard fact numbers that are present in the Harringtonverse. Instead its just giant moon sized warships against overwhelming odds (in the 2nd book) and stuff gets blown up epically. 1st & 3rd books are more a ground-pounders paradise as in the novel version of Heinlein's Mobile Infantry would all but fall over themselves to get their hands on some of the 5thImp's toys. And again, its mostly stuff blowing up in epic ways that doesn't require a 4 year college math degree to take in stride. Its kind of like Perry Rhodan-lite as a German friend of mine described the Dahakverse.

BTW - would David Drake's powersuits as seen in his Northworld trilogy be any good in the UF? The ones with the 'cut/shoot' energy cannons between thumb & forefinger. Compared to some of the stuff out there, the suits would almost be considered 'quaint', while in others (being able to use a particle-ish beam much like a bandsaw - think Sol Bianca) it'd be potentially quite nasty.