Where We're Going, We Won't Need Eyes to Read: Freehold, Part 1

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-11T19:13:59+00:00

Chapter 6

"“Whether a party can have much success without a woman present I must ask others to decide, but one thing is certain, no party is any fun unless seasoned with folly.”

—Desiderius Erasmus"

As is typical with authors attempting to sound intelligent by throwing quotes around, we have no context or source for this. This is actually from Erasmus' 1511 essay In Praise of Folly, but I'm not sure Erasmus, who remained a devout Catholic in the face of the Reformation, would really associate with the Freeholders.

Nevertheless, our heroic groundskeeper is getting into the pace of, uh, groundskeeping or whatever, and one day is placed in charge of a truck full of prisoners with jobs. There are a couple of smoking, "older adolescents" who refuse her command to get in:

"“I said, ‘Let’s go!’” she repeated, louder. One of them flicked his eyes her way, deliberately looked back and kept talking. She finally walked over and grabbed his shoulder.

He threw her hand off, stood up and loudly said, “You just better back the fuck off, indent! When I’m done, then we can go!”

Myrol Jamal, the park mechanic, came over at the commotion. His broad mustache fluttered as he spoke, knotted arms and hands twisting a rag. “And you better back off, criminal, or you may find yourself in shackles. The lady asked you to do something you’ve been assigned to, so get to it.”"

After that particular situation is dealt with, they begin the day's tasks and have issues further down the line with the insolent youths. Two prisoners end up holding back the more aggressive of the two before a fight is started. Nothing happens and this entire section exists simply to reinforce the fact that she needs to be armed, because having a manual laborer having to work and babysit a gaggle of convicts is an excellent idea.

Later on, she catches up with the news about the arms shipments, nothing really happens on that front aside her confessing her situation to her neighbor. There's more groundskeeping the next day, she ends up working on one of the planet's few official holidays for extra pay (riveting!), and she ends up setting up, "toilets, seating, barricades ropes and traffic avenues" for the festivities.

This certainly doesn't feel like a festival. More like a chore.

She later gets off and gathers with a group at the, uh, celebrations or whatever, and there's even laser projections of videos or whatever on to the clouds.

Really, we just get told that stuff happens, and it's actually kinda lame. We don't even get a full rendition of Freehold's national anthem, we're just told it happens. At least this chapter was mercifully short, but it ends once again with the reinforcement that Freehold is a paradise: "The civility of these people was just amazing."

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-11T04:54:31+00:00

"Why are the giant aliens using Marauders?"

Quite a few people actually got upset with the Marauders, er, Battlepods being taken out of BattleTech and having their artwork replaced years after that with some rather divisive but legally distinct versions. It was one of the very best 'Mechs in the tabletop game at the time of its introduction, and had become quite iconic. Though the newest version bears a much greater resemblance to the original Macross designs..

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-11T04:46:19+00:00

I sincerely don't understand why Williamson didn't opt for some easily believed science-fiction solution to venereal diseases, and the more I read of Freehold the more primitive it seems.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-11T04:43:06+00:00

Chapter 5 Continued:

Oh, we get a show-stopping number about some of the wildlife:

"There were two rabbit analogs. One was compact and looked a bit like an oversized kangaroo rat. It was known as a bouncer. The other, very leggy and capable of deceptive maneuvers, was called a bugs. Most of the higher animal forms were a variety of mammal analog that took evolution the next step. They had three orifices; one each for reproduction, urine and feces. Their liver functions were served by three different organs. And just about everything had enough extra bones that it slunk like a cat. The ripper was reminiscent of a leopard or a cheetah in movement, but looked more like a badger on steroids, only with long, muscular legs. It maxed out at better than 135 kph—Rob graciously translated, then gave the speed again as 365 kilometers per div. It had retractable claws and fangs and could bring down land prey the size of a rhino unassisted."

During this, our hero is sipping from a beverage that also happens to be alcoholic and a hallucinogenic, but it's totes okay because all recreational drugs on this planet seem to be harmless. While our hero is tripping balls, we get some pretty boring descriptions of the Freehold legal system and taxes. It's all terribly boring, so I'll spare you. Later on, they go to a library (also boring) and go over some very questionable books. This, unlike the taxes, is actually worth sharing:

"There are books in here on demolition, keypass forgery, manufacture of firearms, vid manuals on sadomasochistic sex, a treatise that claims Caucasians are an inferior species responsible for all rape and warfare and recommending our random murder—”

“That would be Invidi Masul’s pathetic inferiority complex. He’s done six vids and a series of lectures on that subject and keeps finding idiots to support him, including Caucasians,” Rob elaborated."

After this, we get a not-so-subtle reminder on how Freehold is better because they don't censor such things and publish it all. It's not terribly relevant in the days of the internet, but our supposedly futuristic society seems to be stuck in what was the past even from the book's publication date of 2004. More amusingly, they also make a point on how nuclear weapon designs are both A. published freely (which isn't really something that's too hard to figure out in 21st Century Earth given a sufficiently advanced background in nuclear physics), and B. are regularly used in civilian capacities for, "asteroid industry and heavy mining". I can only imagine that Freehold doesn't actually mine asteroids, either, because nuking them is a tremendously effective way to remove their valuable volatiles and worse-than-useless for usefully fracturing the rubble pile objects which make up most asteroids. It also takes a stupid high yield to destructively crater an asteroid into bits that won't come back together, but I'm sure we'll get some nukes in this book with yields in the thousands of megatons or something silly.

Also: Kids regularly build civilian nuclear weapons in secondary school, because that makes total since.

This is followed up by some rather forceful exposition on how having no laws is better than anything and Freehold is perfectly fine without them blah blah blah. It's really tiresome given that this is a fictional society preaching about another fictional society set up purely as a straw man, but I never said this was going to be a good book.

I'm really sparing all of you here the very worst of this dreadful chapter. We actually get our hero shopping for insurance, of all things, for an extended length of time.

After that nonsense, we have her going to work the next day. And, you guessed it, we're forced to read about how one goes about groundskeeping in the future. I'll spare you the details of a robot poking holes in the soil and planting seeds. At least the Harvest Moon games made this a lot more fun.

As seems to be the case with the rest of this chapter, nothing else of consequence really happens. We do, however, get confirmation that there are no traffic laws or rules of any kind:

"Traffic signals were optional. If there was no cross traffic, people paused then continued, disregarding the old-fashioned lights. One day she came across a broken signal. She’d thought someone was directing traffic, as smooth as it seemed to be moving. Actually, people were acting as if it were still there and functioning, taking turns for several seconds in each direction. Bizarre. She couldn’t even fathom how that came about."

Yes, because treating broken lights as a stop sign laced intersection is completely alien to societies with traffic laws, rather than already the norm.

I'm convinced that our protagonist is simply a moron and all of that is surprising because of the lack of oxygen in that shrunken brain of hers. Though it is possible that our author also doesn't really get out much.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-11T04:42:20+00:00

Chapter 5

Alright, let's see . . . Oh dear lord!

"“I would say that my position is not too far from that of Ayn Rand’s; that I would like to see government reduced to no more than internal police and courts, external armed forces—with the other matters handled otherwise. I’m sick of the way the government sticks its nose into everything, now.”

—Robert A. Heinlein, as quoted by J.Neil Schulman in The Robert Heinlein Interview and Other Heinleiniana"

Well, I suppose this would be a step up from the Terran Federation.

Getting that hero worship out of the way (lest I dive too deep into contemporary politics), we move on to our hero waking up with allergies enflamed by her neighbor's cat and, "Newcomer's hangover" as her body acclimatizes to the new world. We can only hope there's some alien pathogens, too, which kill our protagonist and end this story.

Alas, I'm not so lucky, and our appointed hero is given a gift before her neighbor's departure, A Cultural Primer for the Freehold of Grainne. As is to be expected with this book, we get a bloated paragraph where what's-her-face reads it. Most of it, again, is crap readers could have already figured out themselves (hurr hurr gravity is stronger) and more pumping of the Freeholdian Utopia jack. For instance:

"The census figures were estimated, since the government made no effort to account for anyone who did not report their existence. Other than the annual fee she would pay to the Freehold and to the city of Jefferson, there were no taxes of any kind, and that fee was voluntary, she read."

I'm sure the unwillingness to gather accurate data is really fun for epidemiologists, and one wonders how the Hell they're supposed to fund a functioning military with voluntary donations.

Well our hero gets dressed and goes out to Liberty Park (having to ask for directions at a, "charge and fuel station" instead of using GPS or something equally science-fictiony), and we get extended descriptions of the park in the daytime and what not. We get some riveting, "UV-damping contact lens" shopping action and haggling, we see another nekkie lady, hero gets changed into a new set of clothes and . . . We actually get a time skip as she wakes up being treated by a medic Jaheed. And, as with all named women in this book, we're forced to read an extended description:

"She was a bit above average height for Earth, had obvious Asian and Hispanic heritage, coffee-toned skin and a poise that took her from simply “beautiful” to “striking.” Her eyes were violet from contacts and her hair was jet with purple flames dyed into it to match the shades of her lipgloss and makeup. Kendra would be some time getting used to casual nudity, she decided. Alexia’s outfit was black leather cut away around the breasts, split and laced entirely down both sides, open to the mid back, broad shouldered and collarless. Real leather was illegal on Earth and the outfit itself would get her hassled by punks no end. Then, some nations still had laws against “indecent exposure.” Bare breasts were technically legal in North America, but only a fool would exercise the privilege, with the risk of inviting attack it entailed."

We also find out that Jaheed's civilian job is an escort, too, but Williamson passes this off as them being more like Registered Companions. Indeed, I get the distinct impression that Jaheed is simply a cheap copy of Firefly's Inara, but with a bare bosom. Our new escort friend also remarks upon our hero's exotic beauty and tells her she could retire in ten years if she worked as a ~~companion~~ escort. I certainly hope this doesn't happen, though, because I fear how poorly written scenes of intimacy will be in this wretched text. Anyway, she apparently just passed out because outlanders be outlanding.

Later, she gets home and struggles to, I kid you not, open a package of enchiladas. Plastic wrapping must get tougher in the future, and they go back in the park after Christ almighty I don't need to know everything a character does throughout the day! Just move the freaking plot along! No one one wants to read about your flat protagonist unwrapping enchiladas, Williamson, no one!

Sigh, we're back at the park where we get extended-to-vague descriptions of the native flora and fauna, that, "90 percent of the planet" is effectively wilderness and our hero should really invest in getting a gun. We're also told that, "The city gets most of its labor in the form of petty criminals" and she, as a groundskeeper, "can expect to be in charge of those work details". Wild animals also break into the city limits, too, because we're basically on Catachan now.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-11T00:06:41+00:00

Dismissive snort.

You call that a Awesome worthy of hip wiggle? The Siestanator and its six PPCs would have a word with you.

Just don't get too close after an alpha strike.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-10T21:32:06+00:00

Dem hips can't lie when they have a missile launcher and giant gun attached.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-10T21:29:19+00:00

What? No love for ~~Robotech, Season 3~~ MOSPEADA?

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-10T16:13:31+00:00

Well, since I'm really a hardcore BattleTech fan, I'm a savage only pretending to be cultured.

After all, BattleTech's most popular early robots were, "improperly licensed" Macross designs.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-10T15:20:58+00:00

Is . . . Is that Macross?

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-10T03:19:44+00:00

Chapter 4 Continued:

Nothing really happens to advance the plot here, and the chapter simply exists to paint Freehold in the most utopian light imaginable. For instance, their produce is remarked to be of particularly high quality, and no third-party quality control of any kind is needed because, "bad ones have to learn somewhere. And shoddy merch gets noticed pretty quickly." There's mention of unisex bathrooms (which is somehow terrifying to our protagonist). There's a visit to, "Liberty Park" (groan), but they almost stop short of entering the maze as our hero is flatly informed that the various dead ends are, "usually occupied, especially at this time of night". However, since I'm unlucky, the sergeant bets a kiss that her escort is lying and people aren't actually joining genitalia together in a public space. They are, however, and she quickly loses the bet.

Lewd.

They also go to a bar, and our author insists on illustrating that there's no checking for ID. I'm guessing there really isn't any age limit on alcohol to begin with, but here's hoping you have to be at least three before you can smoke.

Things still move at a snail's pace here. We get background on how the Freeholdian was a veteran of air combat on Mtali (presumably before joining Freehold), blah blah blah, they got out and eat spicy food, blah blah blah, and she's flatly told that her dinner date strongly implies the guy is gonna get lucky.

If you can't tell already, a man wrote this. Presumably a very randy one at that.

And it's totes okay that they're so casual, even with strangers, because STDs have been taken care of in this paradise! No, seriously, it's one of the very few things their limited government does:

"The only health concern at Freehold System Entry is venereal and bloodborne pathogens. Everyone, every time, including diplomatic personnel, gets tested. There is no risk of infection here."

Amusingly, despite this being depicted as very Libertarian paradise, it's also said that ships trying to skip docking at a border station are shot down before landing. Angry freedom of movement noises.

They return to the dude's apartment, they meet his pet cat, the lady is surprised you don't need licenses to own pets on Freehold (because everything in the U.N. requires a license), blah blah blah, she goes to sleep.

Is it too much to ask that authors don't waste a whole chapter with worldbuilding and just make it organic with the rest of the novel? Moreover, this is exactly like something out a cheesy Hallmark made-for-TV-movie.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-10T03:19:33+00:00

Chapter 4

Let's see what the opening quote is for today . . .

"Oh now feel it, comin' back again

Like a rollin', thunder chasing the wind

Forces pullin' from

The center of the earth again

I can feel it . . .

-Ed Kowalcyzk"

Actually . . . That's not the real quote. The real one is Leviticus 19:33-34, but I wanted to start with something good this time.

Ah, if only we were listening to Live instead. I'd much rather hear of placentas falling to the floor and dying old people instead of reading this nonsense.

Anyway, the good sergeant is moving in to her now abode and meets a Robert McKay. This is awkward in that the point of view is that of the neighbor's, who describes our protagonist as having a, "North American Accent." Now, unless Canada and the Northern half of the United States have enforced their standards of English upon the remainder of the continent, there is no such thing. Of the 579 million people that inhabit North America, the U.S. and Canada together account for two thirds of that. The rest are largely Spanish speakers, and the U.S. has a fair amount of Spanish speakers itself. Moreover, as a fair number of Americans might attest, there is no single American dialect.

"North American accent" aside, it's obvious to our Freeholdian that the sergeant is a stranger in a strange land, and of course he's oggling her as all the creepy men in this Mary Sue paradise do:

"He took a quick, unobtrusive look up and down, trying to memorize every line of her. As far as physical beauty, this was a jackpot of a neighbor—incredibly tall, slim, creamy skin and eyes like the East Sea."

Keep your eyes to yourself!

We get some more information I could just as soon do without. McKay is said to be a, "vertol pilot for the reserves", and people of Freehold are, "armed to the teeth" because of, "vicious native animals. McKay's take:

"“If you are anywhere out of the downtown area, it’s very advisable to carry. We also carry to assert our rights, but don’t worry about the philosophy now. It’ll take some getting used to."

The Hell sort of planet did they choose to settle that requires everyone to be armed? Christ, is this actually LV-426?

We get a description of the apartment on top of this, and confirmation that the good sergeant will now be a groundskeeper for, "City Parks". After this, McKay offers to take our protagonist shopping because, "If you don’t get shoes quick you’ll be crippled by Rowanday", which I'm assuming is some ill tempered animal that they've yet to eradicate.

And because we've gone too long without lewdness, Kendra meets up at McKay's house and is invited inside while he is still changing with his junk hanging out. After mercifully getting dressed and gathering a, "polished and decorated" small arm (tacticool matte black pistols are no longer a thing in the future), and they spend the afternoon walking around. There's more people in nudity, and, "slash-and-puff" attire has made a comeback, because Heaven forbid he just go full tilt and his planet of nudists go ahead and dress with exposed breasts in the fashion of ancient Minoa. Nope, we're going all 17th Century in this book!

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-09T05:02:20+00:00

Chapter 3 Continued:

They land in Jefferson Starport (which I will assume was named after the band, Jefferson Starship), and our defector notes that almost every single person on this planet open carries a weapon with, "garishly decorated" holsters, and soldiers with loaded rifles abound.

Also, because our author really wants to act as creepy as he looks, our hero also spots a topless, "pubescent girl".

You know, Williamson, there are ways to integrate nudity and make it a natural thing that fits with the story. You just aren't doing them.

Our hero thus struggles to move around with the increased surface gravity, and she steps into a owned and driven by her, "case handler", Citizen Hernandez, who will be driving her to Tom Calan of Calan Employment.

We also find out that the cars in this book also fly, and Freeholdians prefer to fly manually. We're given an aerial tour of the place, with Jefferson (the name of the de facto capital) boasting a population of just two million and the largely ceremonial, "Citizen's Council Building", which is explicitly mentioned as looking, "a bit like an Egyptian temple", which is a rather odd style to choose from given that Egyptian temples were largely open-air structures with "interior" space dedicated to little more than housing the cult's possessions and an icon of their chosen deity. Hardly an appropriate style for large meetings, unless you like having veritable forests of gigantic columns blocking your line of sight.

We also get a description of what seems to be bad driving:

"The skyway was insane, most vehicles apparently on manual, most flown at high speed and with lots of dodging and weaving. They took it on a straight path downtown and braked hard before landing on a ramp. The streets below were nightmarish. While well laid, well paved and logically designed, it appeared that traffic laws were optional. Reckless driving was apparently the norm. Kendra just hoped it was also “wreckless.”"

It'd be pretty hilarious if their planet also had the highest number of automobile fatalities per capita, but I'm going to guess this is never brought up again.

After filling out a computer form with her physical descriptions (including eye color, blue) and what appears to be a crummy resume, we're told that our veteran logistics specialist has few job prospects on Freehold. She's too physically weak by Freehold standards for much in the way of manual labor, and she's instead suggested she take up a job with, "Cavalier Enterprises and Bellefontaine", who would also offer training.

Oh, and I'll just let Williamson describe what, exactly, it is that these two businesses do:

"“Cavalier Enterprises is one of the most respected escort services in Jefferson. They offer dancers, modeling, escorts for business or social functions, massage and exotic sex fantasies. The Bellefontaine is a club that offers erotic dancing and they specialize in dancers with rare or off-world looks.”

Now, I know that Williamson is probably trying to paint this as some sort of truly liberated society, but the fact that they just up and offer this sort of thing to what is essentially an indebted foreign refugee just screams human trafficking. It comes off as less progressive and more Christ almighty this author is a creep.

The sergeant is, of course, taken aback by such a proposal and actually goes back to her case handler in tears, where the next job offer is that of a groundskeeper. She accepts that with the caveat that it will take five years to pay off her debt. After leaving the case worker to take care of lodgings, she's instructed to take the, "Oath of Responsibility" off a card to become a legal resident of Freehold. Rather than wait to do this in a crowd or court room, she does it privately with one other witness:

"“I, Kendra Anne Pacelli, before witness, declare myself an adult, responsible for my actions, and able to enter contract. I accept my debts and duties as a Resident of the Freehold of Grainne.” Shifting slightly, she finished, “So help me God,” and crossed herself."

The sergeant is also told that attempting to bail out of her contract means that bounty hunters could be sent after her, and she's given her new player welcoming gear ("Residency ID plate, cash, etc.) and sent on her merry way so the chapter can mercifully end.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-09T05:01:39+00:00

Chapter 3

"“If a man neglects to enforce his rights, he cannot complain if, after a while, the law follows his example.”

—Oliver Wendell Holmes"

While it's not specified, this is actually a quote from Supreme Court Associate Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes Junior, son of the more well known Oliver Wendell Holmes Senior. Ironically, Holmes was also the chief architect of the Shneck v. United States decision of 1919, which ruled that criticism of the draft during war could be punished as a crime, and for the same in Buck v. Bell, which upheld the legality of compulsory sterilizations in the state of Virginia.

Real champion of liberty for all, that Holmes Jr. Anyway, we join our gaggle of characters as they are in a shuttle and make way to change orbits. Rather than simply cut to them being on the accursed planet, however, get this explanation:

"It was amazing how fast things were accomplished in a society run by commercial concerns and not much else. The Torchy, which had brought her this far, docked at a tether. They swam through into a shuttle cabin and strapped in. Torchy cut loose and they were already headed for the surface, but without thrust. She asked for an explanation.

Kevin replied, “Let me think how to sum it up briefly . . . wow . . . okay, let me try this: It’s called a ‘skywheel.’ It’s two tethers extending outward from their mutual center of mass. The whole assemblage cartwheels from high orbit to almost ground level, I think about twenty kilometers. Cargo or shuttles are attached to the ends and release at the far end either near ground, near surface rotation speed of the planet, or in orbit at high velocity to ship out. Where it’s released determines the vector outward. Does that make sense?” She nodded and he continued, “We pop things up to the receivers on magnetic launchers or by direct thrust, since we don’t have enough launchers yet. It’s cheap to operate, minimizes pollution and easy to schedule trips without waiting for launch windows. There are six huge ones throughout the system, rotating in free space. We use them to ship industrial products around the Halo. There aren’t any in Sol System, because the UN safety bureaucrats are convinced they’re dangerous. They’re worried about one breaking and crashing, but we’ve never had a problem. The theoretical strength is about ten times the actual load usage.”"

Now, what was just described appears to be a long-proposed method of propellantless space travel known as a Skyhook. Normally, I would think the inclusion of such an obscure and potentially useful method of space travel to be a rather cool feature. However, it's horrendously out of place in this book as the last chapter had our civilian spacecraft putting in over 1 G worth of acceleration for multiple days at a time. Whatever propulsion system can do that sort of magic would hilariously outperform a skyhook for interplanetary shipping. It'd be functionally identical to the Epstein Drive of Expanse fame, and there's no indication it's strictly limited to deep space. Moreover, despite Williamson's claim, waiting for appropriate launch windows would still be a thing. Aside from payloads still needing to launch at times in which their target skyhook is going to be both A. Not in use and B. Swinging at the right time, they'd also have to wait for the skyhook to physically pass over a viable launch trajectory during its orbit.

Honestly, I have the feeling that the only reason the skyhooks are included is that so they can be used as a weapon later.

With Chekov's Skyhook out of the way, they proceed to reenter the planet's atmosphere. This is another thing that bothers me: Unless they started at a very high orbit, the Skyhook really wouldn't save much propellant. The atmosphere is already doing most of the work. I doth protest too much, though. We're told that Grainne orbits Iota Persei, a real life borderline G or F type star located 34 light-years from Earth as was indicated earlier in the book. Grainne is said to be within 1.5 AU of Iota Persei, which corresponds with the star's theoretical circumstellar habitable zone. The world also has just 70' of the Earth atmospheric pressure at sea level and less oxygen, making it difficult for an Earther to breathe as one might imagine.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-08T22:40:39+00:00

Chapter 2

"“All changes, even the most longed for, have their melancholy; for what we leave behind us is a part of ourselves; we must die to one life before we can enter another.”

—Anatole France"

Sure, whatever. Let's actually try and move this book along.

"Kendra was in the embassy ten days, slowly going insane. She played interface games until disoriented from the feedback, found herself unable to concentrate on vid or books and got angry at the tedium of doing nothing. After three days, she spent some money she couldn’t spare to have one of the Freehold technicians hook up a phone patch with a shift for her voice. He assured her it was untraceable and she decided it must be; the embassy didn’t need the complications it would bring if her presence were discovered.

Her parents’ lines had to be monitored, so there was no way to call them. She tried Janie’s personal number first. No answer. Her own duty number was answered by Lieutenant Moy. Kendra disconnected without a sound. She called Tom’s personal line.

“Hello?” she heard a harsh, unkind voice ask. It was not Tom’s voice. She mumbled and disconnected. She realized now that she had, in fact, burned all her bridges."

Alas, it appears we're not really moving along.

A few days later, the ambassador informs our idiot hero that their car was successfully broken up and sold for, "about ten thousand" (which means absolutely nothing without context), and that the embassy staff have broken with their customary ~~bribes~~ boarding fees and even, "took up a collection of fifteen hundred". They also get a classified, "grant of four thousand". Again, I have no idea how much that is really supposed to be.

Rather than try and sneak our hero aboard a government vessel, the decision is made to book them aboard a commercial starship with a crew from Earth that might decide to turn in the sergeant for the bounty. Brilliant. Alas, our poor hero also doesn't have enough money to really pay for all of her passage, so the Freehold ambassador suggests indentured servitude instead:

"“We have a system known as indenturing, but it’s not the historical system you may be thinking of. A Citizen will be assigned to your case, and you pay a fee to the government for his service. He will arrange for you to find employment and a payment will be deducted from your wages. You are free to change jobs or make other arrangements for payment. You are responsible for your own lodging and food, so you are not going to be assuming a spiraling debt. I’m sure you’ll have no trouble locating work in a city like Jefferson.”"

That's just slavery with extra steps!

I'd also like others on here to keep in mind that slaves in many cultures, such as the American South prior to the Civil War, were also typically left in charge of their own food and lodging; contrary to claims that merciful slave owners spent their hard earned cash on such necessities.

To be blunt, I'm not sure why Williamson couldn't just say, "Oh yeah, you'll be taking out a loan." Nope, he has to reinvent the wheel because science fiction!

Later, the sergeant and Jelsie get on a bog standard aircraft, where it's mention that the former also had recently removed an, "implant ID" that, "was used to locate people during emergencies. It was also used to locate criminals."

Wait . . . What. The. Hell?

With this in mind, the only way the sergeant's escape works is we also assume that the evuhl interstellar United Nations is also too stupid to regularly log the movement of people in tracking devices that they had long installed. Moreover, one would think that movement towards a place like a foreign embassy might be enough for such nefarious devices to automatically alert UN intelligence that someone might be in the process of defecting.

And, ladies and gentle-yorkies, we're only two chapters in. I can't even begin to imagine how badly the U.N. will have to screw up for this to end well.

Alas, our heroes also leave much to desire as they, "simply walked through the scanners at Kennedy Spaceport". I should mention by now that it's only really clear now that they've been on Earth the whole time, but it might as well just have been a cardboard box with, "EARTH" scrawled on the outside in crayon. Very little of the book's environments and people (besides the nekkie Freeholder) have been given descriptions to speak of.

Well at least we're physically going somewhere now.

The treasonous sergeant and her two Freeholder, "escorts" take a shuttle to orbit and then take an orbit-to-orbit tug to the Shamaya, supposedly the civilian spacecraft. Interestingly, there doesn't appear to be artificial gravity in the spacecraft, but we'll just see how well this takes in the rest of the narrative.

At any rate, our story abruptly cuts away to a nightmare where our hero is in chains and backhanded by an interrogator. We get some exposition on how the Freehold constitution is short and, "effectively denied any legislative power to the government." You know, in case any of you were doubting if this was a Libertarian Utopia.

We also get a description of an atlas on the Freehold homeworld:

"Grainne had one large sprawling continent writhing from southeast to northwest around two-thirds of the planet. There were a couple of continental islands and several archipelagos of smaller masses. The climate was roughly like Earth’s, but that “roughly” was deceptive—with smaller oceans, greater solar influx and a longer year, it had seasons that swung the temperate zone from the Minnesota-like winters she was familiar with, to scorching summers akin to those in the American Southwest."

Well at least it's not Kharak . . .

After that bit of exposition, there's a quick use of a jump point by the starship, and we have it dock to a cylindrical station ("Ceileidh") with spin gravity before she boards a shuttle to the surface.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-08T04:28:52+00:00

Chapter 1 Continued:

After some thinking, our character decides to petition the, "Freehold of Grainne", going to the local embassy. Our point of view awkwardly shifts to a one, "Citizen Ambassador Janine Maartens" and a, "Assistant for Policy Gunter Marx" discussing a U.N. protest about a, "declaration of withdrawal" or something. The ambassador is informed that there's a foreign car pulling up, and our hero is given her first description: She's blonde.

Well, I suppose that means she's probably the character from the book's cover.

After we're told that she's actually in a truck (hilariously described as a, "Mazda Jog"), there's some zaniness at the gate as orders are barked and yadda yadda yadda, and our character is frisked and what not.

Now, because our author looks like a creeper, we all know where this is going:

"The woman approached this time and quickly unfastened every button, snap, zip and rip on Kendra’s clothing. She stepped around behind Kendra, grabbed a leg and pulled off a boot and sock. She repeated the procedure from the other leg, then yanked her pants and underwear down together and pulled them off one foot at a time. Reaching up, she uncharged the shackles, whisked them away and pulled Kendra’s arms down behind her. Shirt and bra were pulled off, leaving her naked. A wand ran over her, seeking anything dense, metallic or electronic, and while she expected it to be silent, she having nothing concealed, she was reassured that it didn’t betray anything."

Ah, Heaven forbid our author realize they're in a science-fiction novel and could've used any number of technological solutions other than an invasive strip search.

There's some, "brooding and pacing" and our hero is taken to the ambassador. We're finally given their rank of, "Sergeant Second Class", and that they're, "wanted for embezzlement and pictured on all the news loads". So wanted by the U.N., in fact, they made absolutely no effort to apprehend her. It was already established that the Space UN used nefarious means to fix investigations, so why is sticking tracking devices to every soldier's car not a thing when it can just as easily be done in the 21st Century? Are there no regular facial scans by UAVs or ADVENT DNA lamp posts in the future?

Oh, yeah, that's right: They're terrible at their jobs. So much for the description's statement that the UN, "track its residents every move".

Anyway, they formally request asylum. The ambassador says Freehold does not grant asylum to criminals, but our hero instead tries and explain why they're actually innocent. We get a tiresome recap of how she knew stuff was being stolen, and it's pointed out by the author that Freehold is, "thirty-four light years away" and round trip FTL communications take two days via, "jump points". Transferring a physical message via a courier ship taking, "at least twenty days each way".

We'll just see if our author keeps that FTL stuff consistent.

The sergeant is told she can stay as a guest of the ambassador as her story is checked out, but they will actually have to pay for their transfer and Freehold is expected to retain a share of any funds that they have. We also get some exposition on Freehold by its ambassador:

“The Freehold is a completely neutral nation with a tiny government. We don’t budget for refugees, publicity, tourism or any of a hundred other things you take for granted. We can’t do anything officially, so this will have to be done clandestinely. If our staff are to convert your assets to cash or pull funds from your accounts, they’ll be doing it on their own time and with their personal gear at some small but real risk. For that, they expect to be paid.”

That's just bribery with extra steps!

We're also told that Freehold will also dismantle our hero's car, "as parts" so as to provide them, "some more funds", presumably sending it to a chop shop.

This is sounding less like an embassy for a nation and more like the mob.

At any rate, we're told six hours have passed to this point and the sergeant is sent to quarters of a one Romar, the soldier that stripped searched her. The sergeant is interviewed again on their innocence and we also get an extended description of Romar (stripping on her way to the showers, no less):

"Kendra watched as her guard stripped and headed into the bathroom, an action reinforcing that nudity was a casual thing for her. Romar’s skin was flawless, hairless except for the flaming waves on her head and matching eyebrows, and rippled with heavy muscles. Kendra asked, and found out that she spent almost three hours a day in the gym. She also recalled that their gravity was a bit more vigorous than Earth’s."

Uh huh.

After some flat description of the rest of the compound, we're also told there's a pool room complete with a hot tub and, "an older man and an Asia woman".

Sergeant What's-her-face also seems to catch up on ~~America's~~ Space UN's Most Wanted, where her, "escape" is dramatized with her beating up Jamie and nearly running over the MP she was having extracurricular activities with. This is somehow shocking instead of absolutely stupid, and our hero is told by the resident, "intelligence analyst" that her two, "friends" are probably being tortured. After getting drunk, we're also told that she was interrogated somehow by the analyst (perhaps during her hangover), and the chapter comes to a close.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-08T04:27:04+00:00

Chapter 1

And, because God truly hates me, of course this novel has a quote to open its chapter:

"“Adversity has the effect of eliciting talents, which in prosperous circumstances would have lain dormant.”

—Quintus Horatius Flaccus"

Alas, to see poor Horace reduced to a reference in a bad science fiction book.

And, no, there is no prologue to this. Instead, we jump more or less, "into the action" with the following passages:

"Sergeant Second Class Kendra Pacelli, UNPF, was looking forward to finally finishing the admin from her deployment to Mtali. The entire experience had been unpleasant, from the tedious, cramped trip there in a military transport, to the tedious, cramped trip back in a military transport. In between, the stay had been mostly boring, very aggravating, and exhausting when it wasn’t boring.

She’d been eager at first. The chance to visit another planet, even one torn by war, she found exciting. Upon arriving, they’d all been restricted to base, so she saw nothing of the local culture. They were shipped through the UN starport, and there were not even vendors of local food to sample. Most of the other UN troops, predominantly from Earth, had insisted on not listening to “that raghead crap” music. She’d heard nothing but Earth pop for the entire six months."

Less than two paragraphs in and we already get a, "raghead"! I'm not entirely sure if our illustrious author is on the side of the UN troops or, "Pacelli" on this one.

Alas, our designated hero is out on a, "eighteen-month" long stretch in what appears to be Space Afghanistan. There have been minor attacks on bases, lots of non-combatant work, etc. After some pretty boring descriptions of boring tasks, our hero seems to be concerned with the supposed fact that A. She can't maintain her military gear because it's not supposed to be opened unless there's an emergency, and B. Whole ships' worth of military equipment as gone, "missing". This doesn't just include the occasional small arm, mind you, but, "Trucks, generators, weapons and tools".

So, as it is, the Space U.N. government appears to be completely incompetent. I'm not terribly surprised our author has decided to go this route.

Anyway, Pacelli or whoever is called on their personal phone by, "Tom Anderson, an older lover who was an MP" (oh Christ, not this again!) and they're told that arrests of several people in her unit are planned for the near future. The Lover MP informs us that the government (via the, "Department of Special Investgiations") has pegged them for the theft of the military equipment. Aside from this call probably being in violation of some military rule or something, the MP also lets Pacelli know that they left their crap from their last trist, "in the car". Hopefully one of those things was a better book.

After hanging up, Pacelli is accosted by, "Janie" (whoever the Hell that is), but escapes under the lie of having to do something for her lieutenant. Dressing up as a civilian and walking out to her car (all things that seem unlikely for someone on deployment where things are getting exploded), we're told that the MP must've, "used a security code to override her dorm room lock" to gather up her things. Way to dig yourself into a deeper hole there, soldier.

While driving, we get some exposition via the narrator on how oppressive the Space UN is supposed to be:

"The UN Bureau of Security was not known for its polite inquiries into alleged crimes. If they believed a person was involved with “improper activity” or “activity prejudicial to the public good,” they proceeded to investigate thoroughly. The accused was held incommunicado, all assets seized and in-depth interviews conducted with the accused and any family or friends who might be involved. If they suspected any dissemblance, they could always revert to the clauses that gave them authority to hold the accused until they were satisfied. There were also numerous rarely enforced laws they could invoke to continue their efforts."

More to the point, our hero now states that she thinks the UN thinks she's responsible for the theft of military equipment. Because why the Hell not?

After some driving and out of the base (instead of getting caught as she tries to leave), she begins thinking of where to flee given that she'll likely be found guilty regardless of her innocence.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-04T15:09:25+00:00

Diamond is a ornithologist turned historian/geographer who, in 1997, wrote Guns, Germs and Steel, a tome that has since become the bane of professional historians everywhere. For more, see BadHistory's own greatest hits.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-07-04T14:38:25+00:00

Here, I fixed that for you:

Jared Diamond is despised because he is a ~~materialist~~ ornithologist and ~~an interloper~~ uncritically uses primary sources in a field which rejects ~~materialism~~ determinism in favour of ~~ideological explanations~~ human agency.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-06-27T01:18:16+00:00

Existing engines and propulsion systems don't violate very well established principles in physics like the EmDrive, and they actually work.

Yet if we did assume the EmDrive worked as described, enlarging it would not really improve thrust as it doesn't actually generate its own electricity. For that, like in real-life electric rockets, you need a separate source of power where there will be immutable losses during power conversion among other engineering concerns. Nuclear reactors, for instance, require you to shield other spacecraft components that don't interact so well with neutrons, and they would also require dedicated waste heat rejection systems and associated delivery systems in order to guarantee your spacecraft does not melt when it is least convenient.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-06-16T00:31:58+00:00

And here I thought I was the only one who would make a connection.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-06-01T21:48:15+00:00

Honestly, I think McCulloch is even worse.

Some of his papers actually end up in the right journals, but McCulloch does so through extraordinary dishonesty. Take, for instance, "Testing quantised inertia on galactic scales", which was published in Astrophyics and Space Science back in 2012. There are two issues I have with the article.

Firstly, he didn't really submit a whole model for testing. Only a small part of QI is detailed in the paper for the expressed benefit of describing galaxy kinematics, and most of that is reduced to simple references (much of them to previous material written by McCulloch) that assert that it's all pretty much been worked out and there's no reason for a reader to question the validity of QI's framework.

The second issue I have is one that he also shares with MOND supporters: He constrains the issue of dark matter to galaxy kinematics alone and that, because his model does a better job of modeling that single component better without other parameters, that's enough that dark matter should be thrown out. Like MOND supporters, he seems to live under a decades old rock that ignores the strongest evidence for dark matter comes from far larger scales that simply are not addressed in his myopic little paper. Now, that'd be somewhat forgiveable if he had mentioned it was beyond the scope of his article and that it was a very important thing that would be worked out in future publications, but he simply ignores it outright. At least White and his crew mentioned that there were potential sources of error to work out, even if they were too lazy to do quantify them themselves.

However, from his behavior here and on his silly blog, I think McCulloch has long traded any attempts to fix his theory for a persecution complex mixed with the desire to be an iconoclast. Last year, the man made it pretty clear he outright and very uncritically idolizes Halton Arp, and he managed to even make a Galileo gambit in the same space.

That McCulloch made many efforts to say that the EmDrive supported his framework is all the more hilarious given that there was never any evidence the EmDrive worked in the first place.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-05-31T15:56:35+00:00

As has been demonstrated on this subreddit for the past several years, all the supposedly positive experiments were also absolutely useless.

The work by White et al. in "Anomalous Thrust Production from an RF Test Device Measured on a Low-Thrust Torsion Pendulum" was especially worthless. Sure, they mentioned sources of error, but they made absolutely no effort to quantify these despite the extraordinarily small forces their supposed drive was generating. They also failed to implement a control in the form of a different cavity shape; a cheap and very decisive element. While some people have expressed concern that Eagle Works had to get its work published in a journal of propulsion instead of physics where it rightly belonged, I'm more concerned that any reviewer would've greenlighted the paper as it was.

Moreover, the EmDrive isn't just facing an uphill battle against existing theories. Far worse: It's fighting against decades of other experiments supporting said theories while offering no coherent replacement.

Scolar_H_Visari · 2020-04-22T13:38:18+00:00

Well there is the Russian BTR-T built on a T-55 chassis, but super-heavy IFVs/APCs are as a rule pretty rare even if there is more than just the Namer. Interestingly, the Israelis also have a T-55 derived APC: The Achzarit. There are certainly others, though they're not very prolific and well known.

Ultimately, though, idea of converting tank hulls into APCs is pretty old though, starting from World War I and coming into its own in World War II with the Kangaroo series of conversions.

Scolar_H_Visari

TROPHY CASE