11th Observation [audio // English]
An informal and entirely statistically invalid survey, if it's not too much time out of your day.
[And what are the odds someone has anything better to do than sit around woolgathering over the comms?]
How many of you are from universes with FTL--that's faster-than-light--interstellar travel?
If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, that's a "no."
My Earth's had it for a few decades now. We ran into some extraterrestrials several light years out while we were both poking around Barnard's Star, and they showed us the math. We'd gotten there the slow way, of course, but they were nice enough to give the Odyssey a lift home.
[Fred pauses to light a cigarette, because you're not a Zelazny character if you don't smoke like a chimney. There's the click of his Zippo and the slight crackle of the cigarette catching, suggesting he's holding the comm quite close to his mouth.
He exhales.]
I think this is where I'm supposed to mention an immense, paradigm-shattering social upheaval, but it turns out bureaucracy is universal, First Contact happens so often they have forms for it, and we fit in just fine.
OOC: Barnard's Star is a red dwarf with nothing to recommend it but proximity. However, when Fred's book was written, it was believed to have planets, so in his universe, it does.
[And what are the odds someone has anything better to do than sit around woolgathering over the comms?]
How many of you are from universes with FTL--that's faster-than-light--interstellar travel?
If you don't have any idea what I'm talking about, that's a "no."
My Earth's had it for a few decades now. We ran into some extraterrestrials several light years out while we were both poking around Barnard's Star, and they showed us the math. We'd gotten there the slow way, of course, but they were nice enough to give the Odyssey a lift home.
[Fred pauses to light a cigarette, because you're not a Zelazny character if you don't smoke like a chimney. There's the click of his Zippo and the slight crackle of the cigarette catching, suggesting he's holding the comm quite close to his mouth.
He exhales.]
I think this is where I'm supposed to mention an immense, paradigm-shattering social upheaval, but it turns out bureaucracy is universal, First Contact happens so often they have forms for it, and we fit in just fine.
OOC: Barnard's Star is a red dwarf with nothing to recommend it but proximity. However, when Fred's book was written, it was believed to have planets, so in his universe, it does.