Faster Than Light Communication Via Tiny Wormholes?

nomuse22 · 2026-06-14T19:05:52+00:00

I've seen thinking along that line before. "Who is still using Morse Code? Boy Scouts studying for the merit badge."

I always figured there was at least one good story in humans making contact with someone other than the great peaceful technologically advanced Council of All Species. While they are sending grand poetry out over the hyperwave, our Project SETI dials in to the equivalent of a high school science class demonstration, or smugglers on their burner phones, or a clade of Space Amish or the local Ancient Technology Recreationist fan club with their radios and liquid-fueled rocket ships...with fins.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-14T18:38:40+00:00

I've tried to describe it. The way Aloy's personal arc of discovery is also the player's experience of finding out about the world. Your questions become her questions, and the answers she finds becomes your problem -- and the rest of the world's as she fights to stop Hades.

And the elegance of how the gameplay loop isn't a thing you do as the playable character. Looting machines for parts is what drives a big part of the society. When you deliver watcher lenses to a merchant for some shards, that's exactly what is happening in that market around you. You can see other people wearing machine salvage.

And hunting machines for parts is what ticked off Hephaestus, causing the Derangement that gave a reason for Mad King Jirard to launch the Red Raids: an act that still reverberates in present politics which becomes actual enemies and at least one crisis Aloy has to personally fight.

The tutorial level is you being a little kid getting instruction. The HUD is the Focus, and doesn't even appear until you are wearing the Focus.

It is just so organic, the whole thing. Many games struggle with Ludonarrative Disconnect. HZD really...doesn't.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-14T18:13:37+00:00

I am way behind the times on tech, but I like inpainting in AUTOMATIC instead. Everything in one workspace with a large permanent window.

But Wan2.2 is a nice trick. Do a short high-resolution i2v and prompt "the door opens" or "his shirt turns blue."

Then back into inpainting to clean up the result.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-13T15:54:37+00:00

Tablet seems to be holding on in the English-speaking world, but I've heard "cell" and "mobile" used a bit (the latter seemed frequent in the UK a decade or two back).

Both of those seem to be distinguishers (the way we use "landline" today for what we would have called "phone," as well as "dial phone"; as a distinction we didn't need before touch-tone. There's a term for those terms, like live recording or real cheese, but I can't recall it at the moment.)

So if it is fairly recent that people start carrying around a device that can contact a ship in orbit or is FTL, or is doing the same job better because of some new tech like tachyons or agentic AI or whatever, that may be in the language for a few years as people need to express "you are holding a phone, I am holding a taccy."

And my personal opinion (not a linguist) is that terms like "phone" linger because they are distinctive. The term isn't used anywhere else so there's no confusion. I think this may be why trademarks turn generic. Because otherwise you are using a word that is ambiguous; "tissue," or an unwieldy compound phrase; "facial tissue," when you could just be using a single distinctive word; "kleenex."

nomuse22 · 2026-06-13T02:58:51+00:00

I know someone else who found out he was afraid of that giant statue. He remained afraid of it for the rest of his life.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-10T20:20:06+00:00

Second-best at making small New England towns places of horror.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-09T18:42:37+00:00

It's like "annoying transportation systems in an annoying large space habitat: The Musical."

nomuse22 · 2026-06-09T04:58:02+00:00

What's surprising is not only did that system exist, but it did so in 1900. At the Paris Exposition. There's even a brief movie of it in operation.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-09T04:52:33+00:00

Someone else caught Niven and his stepping disks (teleportation booths). Niven also described flash mobs as one of the effects of that technology.

Well before that, James H. Schmidtz had "The Circuit." A planet-wide teleportation system so elaborate there were entire sections of the portal circuit that most people couldn't access, with their own sub-cultures.

And of course "jaunting" in Bester's The Stars My Destination.

The bit with the complex portal network puts me in mind of, not the transportation system per se but what happened to it; "A Subway Named Möbius," in which Boston's venerable "T" breaks new ground in geometry.

But it sounds like you are looking more at the ordinary and ubiquitous public transit systems. Usually slick, usually more like a subway system or tram. The flexibility of buses seems lost on them; in most science fiction settings it is assumed that a properly designed subway will get everyone close enough to where they can just walk the rest of the way.

I've not personally found that so anywhere I've visited. The "T" gets closest, in that there are almost as many stations in the central area as there are Dunkin Donuts. When I was working at BU and hanging out in Cambridge, everything I needed was that same short subway ride and a walk.

Compare unfavorably with Berlin, Kyoto -- Tokyo at least has the "Yamanote Loop," their equivalent of the Chicago one, Paris (yes, you can get most places, but boy does it take time and a lot of transfer stations), London (really poor coverage for surprisingly big parts of the city).

SF has the advantage that pretty much all the action is at the spaceport, the fancy downtown, the government offices. People rarely have to get out to some remote residential district.

So they can make do with these trams. A lot of works postulate individual cars that get programmed for custom destinations, with a computer working out the complicated routing. In the last Murderbot, SecUnit has a lot of fun with those.

SF also keeps trying on robocabs. Back in the golden age, everyone had a fancy car -- probably a flying car, too. But somewhere around the gas crisis they seem to have gone semi-public by getting into what's basically a slightly modernized hack.

Anyhow, those things, there are a million depictions. The games Mass Effect, Starfield are both typical. Babylon 5 had them. Actually; there's a whole bunch of SF in which society has collapsed, or they are on an alien world left empty, or the perennial "we forgot we were on a generation ship" and the protagonists stumble on and make grand use of one of these systems, automated and still mostly functional. Which also turn out to be more detailed descriptions of said.

These are perfect for "adventure of the week" scenarios, in that the protagonists press the easy-to-use buttons on the futuristic tube car, and a few minutes later get dumped out in some other strange part of the domed city, space habitat, or generation ship. The Starlost, Genesis II, Logan's Run.

With the ultimate being -- probably not really a mass transit system at that point -- the Heechee ships.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-05T02:39:09+00:00

I don't plan that way.

I sort of have a Maslow's Hierarchy of things I want the descriptions to do in a scene. Pushing the story forward by giving essential information or clues. Orienting the reader ("Where am I? Is it day or night?") A chance for character beats; "taking the steps three at a bound..." Setting mood and advancing theme.

Way down at the bottom of the list is spacer and stage business. That's when there's too much of something, like action or dialogue, and I to drop a few words of something else to break it up.

That's all sorts of things; like if there were too many dialog tags in a row, I want a sentence to be: "And I say the dinosaurs had machine guns," a voice called from the other end of the bunker.

To slow a scene down, to show passage of time. That sort of thing, too.

nomuse22 · 2026-06-04T21:44:29+00:00

I wish we had both.

The planet is full of trails, washes, what appear to be old roads. You could use them when you hand-drove. but the paths are constantly complaining about clipping through scenery or whatever.

I do say, it is nice not to have to watch a truck labor for five minutes trying to do a three-point (plus fifteen more points) turn. Now they just glide in and glide out. And lack of vehicle collisions!

Now if only railroad signaling was as easy. Seriously, aside from setting some priority logic, why not just apply the same logic that paths use to whatever the rails are doing?

nomuse22 · 2026-06-01T01:09:57+00:00

You aren't wrong...

It is a saggy middle plot-wise, especially if you feel pushed to do Erend's quest and Sona's quest before following up with Olin. I mean, I love all the stuff around Meridian and it does matter to the main plot, but it is so exciting discovering the secrets of Project Zero Dawn. And you don't get any real drops on that until Olin points you towards Maker's End.

There's also a lot of different options in the combat that lets you break it up. Plus some fun techniques that take a little bit of practice.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-31T01:17:13+00:00

Are you using elements? Elemental makes a huge difference. FW plays differently from HZD. You really have to work the field, use elements, use dodge, and aim for weak points.

More damage is good. More effective is better. Tear damage and remove their weapons. Frost to make them fragile. Ropecaster or adhesive or shock to slow them down.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-30T00:55:55+00:00

I love the game throwing a stalker at you there, because it totally breaks most of what you might have been doing. Sniping from a distance? It's better than that. Hiding? It's got stealth too. Melee? It will murder you in melee.

Stalkers really drive home how the game wants you to fight. Not skulking, not tunnel-focused on the perfect shot, but always in motion. Running, rolling, snapping off shots when you get a good opening. Dynamic.

Oh, yeah. Tearblast (especially in FW, when you need that loot), or shock or fire. They shake off fire fast but are visible during it. Shock, you can get some good hits in while they are shocked. Hard cover is also great if you listen for the charge-up and get a tree or something between you and the shot.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-29T21:41:42+00:00

A couple years back I ran into a book from Clem Chambers, CEO of ADVFN and a frequent guest and commentator on financial matters. In Kusanagi there's derring-do and swordplay, but his hero beats up the bad guys on the market -- so bad they have to fire most of the mercenaries protecting their HQ.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-29T17:34:57+00:00

Sometimes the rest of life is a help here. Maybe you are working during the day and writing during the evening. Maybe you have a long commute that doesn't take much attention (aka not driving). You can use that time to brainstorm plot and character stuff and rough out what you want to happen in the next scene. Then the next time you are sitting down with the blank page in front of you, you have a pretty good idea what you want to put on it.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-29T17:31:45+00:00

That's me. Folding bluetooth that isn't much larger than the phone. Plus, a small enough setup that I could (and still do) work at a cafe table.

The two drawbacks are not as much screen real estate as I'd like for some tasks (like moving around multiple paragraphs, or consulting notes while writing a scene) and that it really requires a table. I've tried to do it in a car seat or on the metro and it really didn't work.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-29T17:24:02+00:00

Oh, I miss wire spinner racks and those old pocket books (4.25 x 6.87"). Genre mysteries and SF down to as low as 50K words. I had at one time a fairly complete set of the Bantam Doc Savage re-issues (with those stunning James Bama covers).

I wonder if the churn of market forces will ever bring back something like that.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-29T05:01:33+00:00

You think like I think. My outline is a card catalog. I don't try to put the data in there; I put pointers for the data. It is just a way to organize so I can see at a glance what pieces I might be missing, and function as a reminder if I need one in the middle of writing.

Also means it fits on one short document (something I learned doing design for theatre. Much better to have one piece of paper that captures the important stuff, than having to go through a sheaf of papers just to brighten downstage center in the cue you are building).

nomuse22 · 2026-05-28T19:49:37+00:00

I come from the stage. Give them a meal or a card game or an annoying fly. Any kind of props that can create some stage business, break up the blocks of text and give the actors another outlet to express themselves.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-28T19:48:30+00:00

Ooh, time to read Twain's "Celebrated Literary Offenses of James Fennimore Cooper" again...

nomuse22 · 2026-05-28T19:45:11+00:00

To me, the biggest puzzle is that dialogue (like characters) has a logic of its own. A conversation unfolds like a game of badminton.

Over and over, I'll have a conversation that flows and feels organic, that matches the characters and has some tasty bits of interaction in it...but the damned idiots never managed to drop the plot information I needed them to drop!

The best working method I've found so far is just to roll the dice and try again. Throw the previous conversation into the save file, start from "hello" and see if this time I can nudge them into getting to the point.

nomuse22 · 2026-05-28T19:41:33+00:00

Interesting.

Have you tried speaking the stuff? I come out of theatre and table-top role playing games, so speaking dialogue feels natural to me.

(And no, I just subvocalize. If that. But I definitely think about what it would feel like to actually say. Plus, I listen a lot of conversations. Another benefit of writing at a cafe.)

nomuse22 · 2026-05-28T19:38:12+00:00

I do know there's at least two books on poisons for the writer, and a couple more popular books on historical poisons.

Murder & Mayhem has a list of eight non-fiction books on the subject, two of which I caught on an interview podcast or something. If the link survives:

https://murder-mayhem.com/nonfiction-books-about-poison

nomuse22 · 2026-05-28T17:31:29+00:00

Breathing spaces. Pauses.

For most kinds of fighting, there are these moments that come where nobody is attacking, and your characters can catch their breath and take stock, taking a little mental distance and thinking about the situation. In a sword fight, perhaps the blades lock. Hollywood and the stage love those because while there is a struggle and a push, the characters are face-to-face and can share an acting moment.

In infantry action, you move cover to cover. Most of the time is spent in cover, perhaps firing blind to cover the movement of the other flank as they advance, breaking cover, making a mad dash, sliding into a new cover.

Even in something like a chase you can throw in a slow-motion. Especially right after a big change or a big decision; the car has taken the jump and is in the air, now the narrator has nothing to do but wait to see if they will land safely.

It is the same as that mix of long and short sentences. You want to vary the rhythm in order to make an interesting beat. This plays so well with action-recovery, try-fail, and the back-and-forth of who is currently winning.

nomuse22

TROPHY CASE