Alternative theory to "Why Galton?"

I've been thinking for a while about why David and Eric added Galton to To End in Fire, but it was only this morning that I came up wit a new idea.

The first possibility is that David had planned all along to have Galton and that's why it was there. I don't think this is likely, but I am mentioning it for completeness. It doesn't look likely because we'd never heard of it and usually we do get glimpses in point-of-view characters. It wasn't mentioned by any of the Detweilers, who definitely knew about it. The details from the points of view we did see, especially the Mesan Alignment Navy officers, suggested that the MAlign was new to the military side of things -- the captain that went along with Cmdr. Jessica Milliken on the attack on Torch only knew about cruisers and destroyers.

So if it wasn't planned, it feels like a retcon.

The reason I've been thinking since I read the book and what I think others also feel is that this retcon was added to introduce some future change in how the finding of and fighting with the MAlign is going to happen. Whether that was to add time or to subtract it remains to be seen: it could go both ways. It could be done to close all leads such that Darius can't be found and there's a valid argument that the Alignment has been found and defeated. But others (like me) have argued that there are too many discrepancies, so it's equally possible that it was added to the plot to introduce leads that hadn't been possible. If this is the case, then the obvious question is what wasn't working.

Another point is that David has said there are 3 or 4 books left in the Honorverse, so this is neither the end, nor the beginning of a long arc.

But what if this was neither necessary nor planned? This is the alternative that came up to me: what if David and Eric simply needed a space battle and decided to add one that returned everything to status quo before it started? Honor is still retired, the MAlign is still not found, the Torch Intelligence is still searching for information (the aforementioned Jessica Milliken is not turned yet). This is Military Sci-Fi, so there needs to be at least one battle. Crown of Slaves didn't have a battle, only a stand-off; Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts had none; did maybe those books not sell as well?

Insightful, thanks.

It’s there so the leaders of Darius can cackle while the redt of the galaxy knows they have taken care of the threat. Only to have they pop out at some narratively ideal point in a future book.

"...David has said there are 3 or 4 books left in the Honorverse, ..."

Once upon a time there was a question as to whether the additive 1 (3+1 = 4) and the multiplicative 1 (3 x 1 = 3) are the same. which turns out to be the same as the questions as to whether or not there are unnoticed integers between 0 and 1. It turns out, though the proof is not short, that they are the same, and therefore there are no extra integers in there. David's statement could be interpreted as proof by counterexample that there are extra integers, so that in the process of reaching 3 and assigning an integer, e.g, 1 or 2, to each book, the presence of the occult integers will be revealed, so that to reach book 3 seven or nine new volumes will appear.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I've been thinking for a while about why David and Eric added Galton to To End in Fire, but it was only this morning that I came up wit a new idea.

The first possibility is that David had planned all along to have Galton and that's why it was there. I don't think this is likely, but I am mentioning it for completeness. It doesn't look likely because we'd never heard of it and usually we do get glimpses in point-of-view characters. It wasn't mentioned by any of the Detweilers, who definitely knew about it. The details from the points of view we did see, especially the Mesan Alignment Navy officers, suggested that the MAlign was new to the military side of things -- the captain that went along with Cmdr. Jessica Milliken on the attack on Torch only knew about cruisers and destroyers.

So if it wasn't planned, it feels like a retcon.

The reason I've been thinking since I read the book and what I think others also feel is that this retcon was added to introduce some future change in how the finding of and fighting with the MAlign is going to happen. Whether that was to add time or to subtract it remains to be seen: it could go both ways. It could be done to close all leads such that Darius can't be found and there's a valid argument that the Alignment has been found and defeated. But others (like me) have argued that there are too many discrepancies, so it's equally possible that it was added to the plot to introduce leads that hadn't been possible. If this is the case, then the obvious question is what wasn't working.

Another point is that David has said there are 3 or 4 books left in the Honorverse, so this is neither the end, nor the beginning of a long arc.

But what if this was neither necessary nor planned? This is the alternative that came up to me: what if David and Eric simply needed a space battle and decided to add one that returned everything to status quo before it started? Honor is still retired, the MAlign is still not found, the Torch Intelligence is still searching for information (the aforementioned Jessica Milliken is not turned yet). This is Military Sci-Fi, so there needs to be at least one battle. Crown of Slaves didn't have a battle, only a stand-off; Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts had none; did maybe those books not sell as well?

ThinksMarkedly wrote:I've been thinking ....

This is Military Sci-Fi, so there needs to be at least one battle. Crown of Slaves didn't have a battle, only a stand-off; Torch of Freedom and Cauldron of Ghosts had none; did maybe those books not sell as well?

Hrmm I think the problem is you were thinking instead of remembering...

They all had battles in them

As for the rest... Yes, Galton seems a bit slapped on, though in perspective from the Alignment... If you can reproduce "babies" artificially and actually get them raised on the CHEAP keeping them as slaves, creating MULTIPLE worlds to increase their power which cannot happen LIKE today where the cost of raising children is prohibitive, then the cost benefit analysis changes and changes drastically compared to today. Slavery essentially died out today as modern industry does not work all that well with slaves as labor, human labor becomes an ever smaller decreasing cost of the product where one machine making zero errors is MUCH superior to a human being or MANY human beings doing the work that one machine does without bitching, complaining until it gets old, and creaky. There are still many products this is not true and why we still see ~serfdom/slavery/indentured servitude in those product areas(clothing for instance)

I also think it's a retcon that came from the fact that rfc didn't kill off Honor as he had planned. It'll probably be used to shuffle Honor into the background to allow for new main characters to enter the story, like for example some of her children doing their middy cruise in about 1941-42PD, picking up the story from there.

The fact is that Galton and its demise was a bit jarring story-wise, there was really no real actual build-up before Honor goes there to wreck it which is kind of uncommon for rfc when it comes to such pivotal events in a story. Sure, we had some tidbits and events on the MAlign side of the story, but it was awfully thin.

In some ways, it felt like an action movie where there is no real action going on until the director comes up with a big fight in the end that's supposed to be meaningful for the story but all you get from it is more in the "oh, the bad guy got in some cheap shots before the hero defeated him - but at least it was beautifully choregraphed" category instead of "wow".

Relax wrote:There are still many products this is not true and why we still see ~serfdom/slavery/indentured servitude in those product areas(clothing for instance)

I agree that slavery (etc) still exists; but the clothing industry usually is characterized by the sweatshop, which is not quite the same thing. Slavery (etc) is defined by being physically or contractually bound to a job. The criticism of the sweatshop is that the laborer (often a child) is being paid a small fraction of the eventual worth of the product being produced, but it pays better than anything else available; that is the worker is not bound legally or physically to the job - the bound is economic.

Of course, if there is a lack of oversight, then the difference between sweatshop work and outright slavery could be unbearably small.

Relax wrote:[


Hrmm I think the problem is you were thinking instead of remembering...

They all had battles in them

Well, for some value of battle. That value being “pushing baby chicks into a pond”.

Aka war porn. Which David once went on a rant against.

Joat42 wrote:I also think it's a retcon that came from the fact that rfc didn't kill off Honor as he had planned. It'll probably be used to shuffle Honor into the background to allow for new main characters to enter the story, like for example some of her children doing their middy cruise in about 1941-42PD, picking up the story from there.

I hear you but I don't agree with you, for two reasons. And Honor was already shuffled out by the end of Uncompromising Honor, when she told Beth she had been in war tempo for nearly 20 years and was now going to take time to spend with the family. There wasn't a need to add content to shuffle her off, because that had already been done.

First, it's that I think it's unlikely he decided to go back to that timeline, after switching away from it. He acknowledged that giving Eric the MAlign as the enemy for Crown of Slaves compressed the storyline, so we weren't going to see Honor's son serving as the Flag Lieutenant to Adm. Lester Tourville, the man who would have caused her death. If he regretted the idea, he would have corrected it earlier. Changing his mind nearly 20 years after CoS came out to go back to that early iteration is unlikely.

The second is that there are not enough books left for us to get to know and become attached to those new characters. A timeline jump right now would mean we get to meet them with their careers already partially developed (which is how we met Honor, but that was 20 books ago). Moreover, it would mean certain other characters we've met and grown to care for, like Abigail Hearns, Helen Zilwicki, or Paulo d'Arezzo, might need to be phased out to leave room for those new characters. Unless it's handled really well, I'd expect to feel a disservice to us readers that those characters were built up and then discarded.

Instead, I expect we'll see minor advancements in time, like used to happen in the early books, with a couple of years between the books, instead of counting months. I expect to that the series will end within around 10 T-years, so I expect to see Captain Abigail Hearns as one of the mean protagonists. I'd be surprised if we get to see Raoul and Katherine Alexander-Harrington even begin their professional careers.

The fact is that Galton and its demise was a bit jarring story-wise, there was really no real actual build-up before Honor goes there to wreck it which is kind of uncommon for rfc when it comes to such pivotal events in a story. Sure, we had some tidbits and events on the MAlign side of the story, but it was awfully thin.

That's why I don't think anyone believes Galton had been planned at the time UH was published, let alone when RFC finished writing it.

It feels more a desperate retcon. We just don’t fully understand what he’s trying to fix.