Had to google that as the only Herbert I've read is Dune and a few of its sequels. But they do sound pretty interesting.

One of my favourite aliens is from Hamilton's Commonwealth saga, the main antagonists the Primes. Basically biological computers.

MacIver wrote:What annoys me is that no sci-fi movie has ever used time dilation properly. It's such a cool idea. For example, a ship going on a round trip to Spica, in the constellation Virgo 260 light years away can get there and home again under high acceleration in a few decades. But hundreds of years would pass on Earth. So you get a cool story of exploring an alien star system and an older and wiser crew essentially travelling into the future as well.

Of all the bloody things to write about Queen did a song about this. '34 sounds like a folk song, then you read the lyrics which (of course) Brian May wrote.

The problem about time dilation is that if you write about it, that's your story. At best you see it used as a device such as Planet of the Apes. It screws up writing Space Opera if going anywhere takes hundreds of years to the observer.

With realistic physics interstellar civilisations are pretty much impossible to do. But that doesn't mean you can't have interstellar cultures. Alistair Reynolds does a good job in his Revelation Space series. Cultures, such as the Demarchists or the Conjoiners exist in many star systems. You've even got the Ultras, who crew the huge lighthugger ships that spend most of their time a relativistic speeds and thus exist on an entirely different time scale to the rest of the humans.

Just saw Alien 2 the other night for the first time believe it or not.

Can anybody tell me why our first contact with alien life wasn't greeted with a bit more sciency type stuff instead of a load of nut jobs trying to blow it up. Seems like the company guy was the only one talking sense.

Probably because they were marines. It's not their job to approach a situation with science. They come at it with guns-a-blazing.

MacIver wrote:With realistic physics interstellar civilisations are pretty much impossible to do. But that doesn't mean you can't have interstellar cultures. Alistair Reynolds does a good job in his Revelation Space series. Cultures, such as the Demarchists or the Conjoiners exist in many star systems. You've even got the Ultras, who crew the huge lighthugger ships that spend most of their time a relativistic speeds and thus exist on an entirely different time scale to the rest of the humans.

I remember reading Chasm City, and there was a mention of a group of people called the Time Jugglers? They had some kind of device which stored every single possible outcome, and depending on your input, you could have instantaneous communication.

It's been a while since I read Chasm City and I can't remember them. There's the Pattern Jugglers who're the big seaweed like collections of microscopic lifeforms.

EDIT: Ah, I've just Googled it and found who you're taking about I think.

Jumper Clowns : An ancient race from whom the Grubs acquired instant communication technology. Very little is known about them, but the grubs claim that they refuse to research faster-than-light travel, to the extent that any mention of it causes refined jumper clowns to die of revulsion.

I remember in Peter F Hamilton's Reality Dysfunction FTL travel was possible but FTL communication wasn't. That was quite interesting.