Talk:A Fire Upon the Deep

Romance?

Of the subjects listed in the opening paragraph, I remember them from the book, with the exception of 'love'. How does love play into any of it? None of the characters fall in love with each other (although Peregrine and Woodcarver have puppies, it seems like more of a business deal than anything else.) --grendel|khan 06:35, 2004 Sep 4 (UTC)

Are you forgetting Ravna and Pham? And what about the relationship between Blueshell and Greenstalk? --Ansible 00:21, 2004 Sep 6 (UTC)

To say nothing of the apparent similarities between Human-Tine and Human-Canine relationships. Man's best friend and all that. --Dyolf Knip 21:39, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

FTL

"It was made very explicit that FTL was possible only where computers were fast enough; plot points hinged on it." "Lack of FTL in the Slow Zone is not due to a lack of computing power, but is intrinsic to the physics of the zone" --Anon.

It seems to me like the anon is right on this that it is an intrinsic property. Could you point out where it says it depends on computing power? --Omegatron 16:08, Dec 17, 2004 (UTC)

It is an intrinsic property (FTL communication also fails), but the ability to use it is also dependent on computing power. E.g., we live in an environment where television-style displays function, but the extent to which we can use them is dependent on how good our electronics are. If the former fails, then the latter doesn't matter, as a billion years wouldn't be enough to perform the necessary calculations. - Dyolf Knip 21:34, Apr 8, 2005 (UTC)

Russian

Is the -in of Stalin possessive, as stated, or adjectival? — Tamfang 05:29, 9 February 2006 (UTC)

Our Stalin articles says: "Сталин (Stalin) is derived from combining the Russian сталь (stal), "steel", with the possessive suffix –ин (–in), a formula used by many other Bolsheviks, including Lenin." --Gwern (contribs) 22:15 9 December 2006 (GMT)

Tines absurdity

The idea that a multi-bodied intelligence could be coordinated by high frequency sound is nonsensical. There just isn't enough bandwidth to support it. David Gerrold discussed a similar idea (and came to the same conclusion) in his War of the Chtorr series. Also, the vast difference between the speed of sound and the speed of thought is another insurmountable barrier. --Clarityfiend 08:58, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm sorry, your plain text comment is of too low bandwidth to convey any information into my brain. ;-) —-Omegatron 00:37, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

The speed of thought appears to be at most 100m/s, while in normal atmospheric conditions, the speed of sound is 344m/s, so I doubt speed has that much to do with it.-- grendel|khan 14:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)

The speed isn't really relevant, I don't think. Problem is aggregate bandwidth and latency: neurons can fire somewhere around several hundred times a second, as best as I can remember, and there are how many millions or billions firing at any given moment? So high-pitched sound must be generated by muscles, which cycle much slower than neurons (that is, you could only generate so many noises per muscle movement, and neurons can generate signals at a much faster rate, which signals are intrinsically faster than sound, anyway). So bandwidth would be lower even over high pitches, and latency would probably be pretty bad: time for one Tine brain to think of something, generate the sounds, for the sound to propagate to the relevant other Tine, be received and processed into neural activity, and then to spark some thoughts in reaction. If any sort of reply is wanted, then the whole thing would have to start over, even for really short messages that require little bandwidth. --Gwern (contribs) 22:15 9 December 2006 (GMT)

Name that planet

Argh, I've mislaid my copy. What's the name of the first human world in the Beyond, ancestral to most if not all humans in the Beyond? One mention of the name, I think, occurs where Ravna meets Pham, who is visibly not of the same ethnicity. — Tamfang 05:01, 16 August 2006 (UTC)

Nyjora. Ravna refers to Pham as "A glimpse of non-Nyjoran humanity." --Clarityfiend 00:21, 17 August 2006 (UTC)

Cover image

The cover image I added is the Boris Vallejo cover that I've seen on nearly every edition. I have yet to see what the first edition hardcover looks like; if anyone does have it, please feel free to replace the first-edition paperback cover. --grendel|khan 14:48, 6 December 2006 (UTC)