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Amusing truth

Aliens? Invading aliens? What will Earth do? Well...we may have a few more resources than we first thought. Come join a friendly discussion about David Weber's newest Tor series - "Out of the Dark."
Amusing truth
Post by phillies   » Sat Jun 22, 2019 3:18 pm

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If you look again at book 1, you realize that the senior Shongari officers toward the end of the book had more or less figured out what was going on, except for the question of which group of high tech outer space sorts was actually providing Vlad Dracul et al with the technology.

The writer even told you more or less what was going on, cleverly phrased so that no one would believe it.
Last edited by phillies on Sat Jun 22, 2019 7:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by phillies   » Sat Jun 22, 2019 5:18 pm

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phillies wrote:If you look again at book 1, you realize that the senior Chongari officers toward the end of the book had more or less figured out what was going on, exce[pt for the question of which group of high tecch outer space sorts was actually providing Vlad Dracul et a with the technology.

The writer even told you more or less what was going on, cleverly phrased so that no one would believe it.


It was truly fiendish. The auithor told everyone there was a simple scientific explanation for all this and no one paid attention.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by ThisName1   » Sun Jun 23, 2019 2:50 pm

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I'll admit its been a while since I read out of dark but I dont remember any other alien race on earth.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by phillies   » Sun Jun 23, 2019 7:49 pm

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ThisName1 wrote:I'll admit its been a while since I read out of dark but I dont remember any other alien race on earth.


Reread the coments of the late and unlamented enemy supreme leader trying to figure out how he was losing bases.

He concluded that the iirc Kreptu or one like them was fooling around with his plans, possibly to wreck up the Shongari.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by Eagleeye   » Tue Jun 25, 2019 2:03 am

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phillies wrote:
ThisName1 wrote:I'll admit its been a while since I read out of dark but I dont remember any other alien race on earth.


Reread the coments of the late and unlamented enemy supreme leader trying to figure out how he was losing bases.

He concluded that the iirc Kreptu or one like them was fooling around with his plans, possibly to wreck up the Shongari.


Yep, he assumed it - but he didn't have any prove, far less the proverbial "smoking gun". And, as the saying goes, to assume something is the best way to make an ass out of u and me.

So, no - I don't see any way in which one of the other races could've make contact with humanity in secret. And if the Kreptu (or one of the other races) meddled somehow with the human genome to produce Vampires, these would be far more common by story-now then they obviously were. In fact, up until the Shongairi came calling, they only existed in fables and legends.
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The Author's Fiendish Genius
Post by phillies   » Tue Jun 25, 2019 9:38 am

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He inferred it from the circumstantial evidence. That's evidence good enough to hang people.

Someplace there is this SF novel about a Roman prosecutor who is confronted with a series of murders performed with a firearm. He works out enough of the detail to catch the miscreant. Inference.

Besides, he had all sorts of evidence, notably things being pulled off with very high technology. And he knew where his evidence stopped, namely he didn't have a particular species to blame, other than from some of their general limits. A secret conspiracy of not-quite-insane folks from several species is an obvious alternative to what he considered, but an alternative he might well have approved if it had been suggested.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by gcomeau   » Tue Jun 25, 2019 12:21 pm

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I just don't see this as being plausible. First, because it makes no sense for any of these alien races to be creating super powered murder-monsters out of some backwoods race of primitives... and second because if someone says they have tech that can allow people to be impervious to physical weaponry and survive exposure to hard vacuum and move with supernatural speed and oh yeah, instantaneously transform themselves into mist and back... that is going to take one hell of an explanation for what the heck kind of tech that is supposed to be. Because "genetic modification" or "nanotech" doesn't get the job done. Not even close.

I can't think of anything resembling a "simple scientific explanation" for the capabilities Vlad and his minions have shown in this book. Unless it's all completely faked and being done with holographic projectors and force fields or something.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by Robert_A_Woodward   » Wed Jun 26, 2019 12:59 am

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phillies wrote:If you look again at book 1, you realize that the senior Shongari officers toward the end of the book had more or less figured out what was going on, except for the question of which group of high tech outer space sorts was actually providing Vlad Dracul et al with the technology.

The writer even told you more or less what was going on, cleverly phrased so that no one would believe it.


Well, not really. They had concluded that somebody (from the Hegemony) was currently interfering with the Shongari forces on Earth. That is not true. The speculation on the board (in the "Out of Order Snippet thread) is that somebody (from the Hegemony or somewhere else) intervened centuries before and were no longer present. The nature of the intervention is somewhat unclear (and, IMHO, appears to involve technology unknown to the Shongari, perhaps even the rest of the Hegemony as well).
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by PeterZ   » Thu Jun 27, 2019 8:45 am

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Mircea Basarab was Vlad Dracula's older brother. He was "killed" in 1447. That is 32 years after Henry fought at Agincourt. I suspect that is enough time for a member of the Hegemony receive the report from the survey team and send in a research team. That second team could have abducted subjects and conducted their own experiments on humans. These experiments were either to fulfill some political plot or to bypass ethical restrictions established by the Hegemony.

I suspect that such experiments were totally clandestine. If the experiments resulted in something completely new and unexpected, the research team may well have lost containment. Or the team let Mircea loose voluntarily. I suspect that there was some neural education involved. That would explain Mircea's familiarity with Shongori data systems.
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Re: Amusing truth
Post by PeterZ   » Thu Jun 27, 2019 6:32 pm

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Finished the re-read. Yeah, forgot it was Vlad using his brother's name.
Premis still holds, whoever messed with Vlad came between 30 and 50 years after Agincourt. I agree with Phillies. Vlad is the result of Hegemony tech in some way.
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