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Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel ending)

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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by Jonathan_S   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 9:00 am

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tlb wrote:
Mersal wrote:Here is another happy side question (since a whole separate thread for pne question maybe is too much): from AAC and onwards, is any story length ever situated on Beowulf?

I've heard about Beowulf and its high gravity and crazy storm weather for 22 years, but never ever seen it up close. Does this ever happen?

There are short stories and story lines that occur on each of the planets in the Manticore system (I am not positive about one of them, Gryphon) and on Beowulf. But Beowulf is not the one with high gravity and crazy storm weather; that sounds more like Honor's home planet of Sphinx (which explains why many of its inhabitants have a genetic modification for heavy gravity).

However Sphinx is not close to being the inhabited planet with the heaviest gravity.

Or maybe San Martin -- the habitable world at Trevor's Star.

And then, the longest sequence I can remember on Beowulf itself was David Weber's short story Beauty and the Beast from the anthology Beginnings
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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by Theemile   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 9:19 am

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Jonathan_S wrote:Or maybe San Martin -- the habitable world at Trevor's Star.

And then, the longest sequence I can remember on Beowulf itself was David Weber's short story Beauty and the Beast from the anthology Beginnings


Lots of segments in the Beowulf system though.
******
RFC said "refitting a Beowulfan SD to Manticoran standards would be just as difficult as refitting a standard SLN SD to those standards. In other words, it would be cheaper and faster to build new ships."
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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by tlb   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 9:34 am

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tlb wrote:However Sphinx is not close to being the inhabited planet with the heaviest gravity.

Jonathan_S wrote:Or maybe San Martin -- the habitable world at Trevor's Star.

And then, the longest sequence I can remember on Beowulf itself was David Weber's short story Beauty and the Beast from the anthology Beginnings

The heaviest planet may be Thandi Palane's home world of Ndebele. However I do not remember the weather being discussed for either San Martin or Ndebele.

The weather at Sphinx is often mentioned. Also we see Honor living there and the Stephanie Harrington stories.
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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by Mersal   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:02 pm

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tlb wrote:The weather at Sphinx is often mentioned. Also we see Honor living there and the Stephanie Harrington stories.


Maybe it was Sphinx. It was so long ago, but I seem to remember people mentioning that person X was stocky and very well-suited for being a Marine due to having grown up on a planet with high gravity and terrible storms year round.
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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by tlb   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:33 pm

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tlb wrote:The weather at Sphinx is often mentioned. Also we see Honor living there and the Stephanie Harrington stories.

Mersal wrote:Maybe it was Sphinx. It was so long ago, but I seem to remember people mentioning that person X was stocky and very well-suited for being a Marine due to having grown up on a planet with high gravity and terrible storms year round.

In that case it may well be San Martin (but I do not remember that quote):
"Your son," Honor repeated in a flat voice. "Tomas Santiago Ramirez." Commodore Ramirez goggled at her, and she sighed. "I know him quite well, Commodore. For that matter, I've met your wife, Rosario, and Elena and Josepha, as well."
"Tomas—" he whispered, then blinked and shook himself. "You know little Tomacito?"
"He's hardly 'little' anymore," Honor said dryly. "In fact, he's pretty close to your size. Shorter, but you and he both favor stone walls, don't you? And he's also a colonel in the Royal Manticoran Marines."
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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by Mersal   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 12:52 pm

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tlb wrote:"He's hardly 'little' anymore," Honor said dryly. "In fact, he's pretty close to your size. Shorter, but you and he both favor stone walls, don't you? And he's also a colonel in the Royal Manticoran Marines."


Nice one. I think I remember that exchange, or one close to it. The father talked about fighting the Black Pants evil cabal, he said "pantalón negro" or something like it.

The novels with the big naval battles are well and good, but I got very strong entertainment from the novel where Honor fights guerilla-style to get off-planet, and the one where Harkness disables that warship so that the others could program a shuttle to open a wedge from inside the hangar bay. Good times.
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Re: Please help me name the last HH-novel I read? (novel end
Post by Somtaaw   » Tue Jul 19, 2022 9:27 pm

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tlb wrote:
The weather at Sphinx is often mentioned. Also we see Honor living there and the Stephanie Harrington stories.


Sphinx actually has relatively mild weather, it's just really LONG seasons. A complete Sphinx orbit is 5.22 T-years long, and winter alone is a full T-year. Gryphon's orbit is only 1.69 T-years long, so a Sphinxian winter is almost as long as the entire planetary orbit of Gryphon which has stronger and more intense weather. So Gryphon actually has far more tempestuous weather than Sphinx, which simply has longer seasons.


Honor of the Queen, Ch.10 (Honor and McKeon) wrote:“That’s because you’re an effete Manticoran. You call what you get there weather?” She sniffed. “You’re all so spoiled you think a measly meter or so of snow is a blizzard!”(Honor)

“Oh? I don’t see you moving to Gryphon.”(McKeon)

“The fact that I like weather doesn’t make me a masochist.”

“I don’t imagine Commander DuMorne would appreciate that implied aspersion on his home world’s climate,” McKeon grinned.

“I doubt Steve’s been back to visit Gryphon more than twice since the Academy, and if you think what I have to say about Gryphon weather is bad, you should hear him. Saganami Island made a true believer out of him, and he resettled his entire family around Jason Bay years ago.”



Also in early Ashes of Victory, when Elizabeth first informed Honor she's now a Duchess
Ashes of Victory, Ch.6 wrote:"Correct," Elizabeth assured her. "We've carved a rather nice little duchy out of the Westmount Crown Reserve on Gryphon for you. There aren't any people living there right now—it was part of the Reserve, after all—but there are extensive timber and mineral rights. There are also several sites which would be suitable for the creation of luxury ski resorts. In fact, we've had numerous inquiries about those sites from the big ski consortiums for years, and I imagine several of them will be quite eager to negotiate leases from you, especially when they remember the role you played in the Attica Avalanche rescue operations. And I understand you enjoy sailing, so we drew your borders to include a moderately spectacular stretch of coast quite similar to your Copper Walls back on Sphinx. I'm sure you could put in a nice little marina. Of course, the weather on Gryphon can be a bit extreme, but I don't suppose you can have everything."
emphasis bolding, mine



Beowulf was also generally described, from Honor's point of view in the same book
(Beowulf)Her mother's birth world was dry and dusty by the standards of most human-inhabited worlds. It had enormous continents and few but deep seas. While it lacked the mountains and extreme axial tilt which made Gryphon's weather so . . . interesting, it also lacked the climate-moderating effect of Gryphon's extensive oceans. That meant she'd grown up accustomed to a pronounced "continental" climate, with long, hot summers and extremely cold winters, but Honor was a child of Sphinx. For her, the long, slow seasons of her chilly home world, with their rainy springs, cool summers, blustery autumns, and majestic winters would always be the norm


So Beowulf and Gryphon are vaguely similar, but Gryphon is certainly described as more powerful, while Sphinx is described more generally as long and slow seasonal shifts. Also the segment from early Echoes of Honor when Nimitz is "shedding with a vengeance", as a native of Sphinx he didn't handle the climate change of ship-board to Hell very well.



I recall San Martin weather being described, briefly, about how they have to live on the mountaintops due to toxic air density, and that her 'refugees' from Hell were willing to tolerate the gravity and weather simply to get off their captured ships.
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