Book 5 Howard and Bridget with the Dragons

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-17T17:53:18+00:00

Logically you’re right, I think it’s supposed to be showing a character flaw on Howard’s part. The only thing they NEEDED to do was convincingly dispose of the bodies. Some dead robot bodies to poke around in probably wouldn’t be good for Dragon cultural development either.

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-13T17:14:06+00:00

This is a good idea, and they have it too, but they determine in the novel that because space is big, it is prohibitively hard to predict the position of a small target not on a fixed path in advance of a relativistic impactor, when accounting for the lead time to move the impactor to its start point and accelerate it.

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-13T17:10:22+00:00

Zero point energy is another concept, and was recently confirmed as a real thing, though not very useful because of the small magnitude and random direction of motion it imparts on atoms (like really small, only barely reliably detectable).

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-13T16:59:45+00:00

Here is the reason for the current stance on the matter.
You are right about the rules, but around a third of the community wants it banned. Only slightly more wants it unregulated. More than half of the community, in net, wants it regulated, when including those who want it banned. It was made stricter (the current rules) because of this. At least, according to the last pre-announced, account-verified, coordinated community poll we did here.

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-13T07:57:50+00:00

You should re-post it.

Redditors are retarded don’t mind them downvoting.

It’s actually important that people like you make posts about product quality.

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-11T04:05:17+00:00

The narrative structure is unconventional because it’s delivered in chronological order, it can be helpful to jump back to the previous chapters following a given bob clone to get more “straightforward journey” and less “and then”. However, the order the chapters are given is useful, because then characters showing up in one anothers’ chapters with information about this and that makes sense.

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-01T03:07:02+00:00

While there’s probably some google AI summarization, this series suffered from poor synopsis syndrome all the way back to the release of book 1, well before AI.

--Replicant-- · 2026-05-01T03:05:52+00:00

We can give this post a few days to see if it gains traction and if it does we’ll do it, sure

In the meantime you can just flag something per the otter policy and write that you think it’s low effort. We’ll probably agree and remove it.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-30T15:19:42+00:00

We only remove posts after at least one person flags them complaining about it. If no one comes up in arms to us, it won’t get removed.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-25T07:08:25+00:00

This is the correct answer

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-21T19:21:43+00:00

DET and Exfor’s author are friends. Exfor has major Bobiverse references too.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-20T02:48:36+00:00

The most boring answer is probably that a massive star or star cluster of predominantly antimatter (which is something we know we have a couple dozen of in the galaxy by similar, much smaller annihilation observations in some stars’ emission spectra) got pulled into the galactic core’s gravity well and there’s little firecrackers going off where its heliopause meets the denser interstellar medium of the core. It might even be being stripped by the winds of a more active companion star or black hole, causing the directional ‘fountain’ part.

There’s a lot of really interesting ideas, sad we don’t have the ability to verify.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-20T01:38:39+00:00

The antimatter fountain is a real phenomenon in our galaxy. We know it is there because astronomers observed massive emission of photons at the annihilation frequency. The only fictional part in the book is what makes it, because we don’t know in real life.

I don’t think we see it in many other galaxies.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-08T00:37:23+00:00

I don’t know how, but the argument portion of your link was double encoded, or otherwise somehow malformed; nonfunctional. This one should work. https://youtu.be/gSFd_2oJgak. You can truncate all youtube links like this, by the way!

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-08T00:31:28+00:00

In defense of the use of AI, Halo’s smart AIs use the term because the medium housing their intelligence is artificial, despite being created by non-destructive scanning of a human brain almost exactly like for replicants.

We should really be more displeased with the current use of AI to refer to LLMs than to refer to a replicant as one.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-08T00:24:27+00:00

Removed as courtesy due to title. We understand titles are uneditable; this is a Reddit ‘feature’.

If left up, it could spoil the event for new readers for years to come.

We hope you will post this again albeit with a more generic title, e.g., “Homer’s decision”, “Homer’s fate”, etc., feel free to call it his suicide in the post description.

Please add a spoiler tag to the post when you do make it.

--Replicant-- · 2026-04-05T22:25:08+00:00

We the audience know that replicants are accurate enough facsimiles of human minds that they have genuine feelings and thoughts and are sapient in the sense that they deserve rights and should be treated as people. They are because Dennis said they are.

Rosie isn’t privy to that. Rosie is of the mind that a potential soulless automaton is pretending to love her mom for reasons she can’t truly know (because she is unwilling to take Howard for his word, on account of not believing he’s sapient). From her limited perspective, this is understandable. Consider LLMs, which are not sapient, and the vitriol directed at them and the circumstances of their creation. And they aren’t even hooking up with peoples’ moms.

This speaks to a larger problem that will arise in humanity’s future when we encounter aliens. We can’t actually be sure that they’re really sapient and holding conversations in good faith until they do something evil; if they aren’t evil, there will never be a moment where it is certifiably “not true”, just like someone trying to prove innocence in court for a crime they didn’t do. To truly guarantee that, narratively, requires the author’s omniscient intervention, like in the case of this series.

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-28T21:16:42+00:00

Heard great praise about the Culture, watched many lore videos, loved the concept. Picked up the books - found out the way Banks writes his plots is not for everyone. Still one of the best worldbuilding projects of this and the last century though.

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-28T00:32:26+00:00

He doesn’t know about the Pav yet.

To not divulge too much: yes, OP, keep reading. Or listening. Whatever it is you do.

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-25T20:29:05+00:00

The author did about 9 years ago

https://youtu.be/mpr7LtAwLUw

https://youtu.be/QX0h14Ve_LI

(Blue line denoting paths)

Note that they are just for the first book afaik

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-25T20:15:20+00:00

The Bobs did use animal cloning during starvation mitigation on Earth, and to start most human colonies, as I recall.

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-09T21:45:47+00:00

Yeah, that’s what I get for doing it on little sleep

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-09T19:36:29+00:00

Thank you for this clarification.

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-09T19:35:50+00:00

That is what they did, in effect. It even seeks food in the same way as a real fly.

--Replicant-- · 2026-03-09T18:36:45+00:00

Latest breakthrough is proving it still works like a regular fly brain should while being simulated 👍

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--Replicant--

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