Spoilers! Be warned ...So, what happens next?

ecortez wrote:This would certainly be in line with the Shongairi as canines. But we don't know how much of their society is a manifestation of their hard wired instincts and how much is purely cultural (i.e. open to change). There are plenty of warrior cultures in human history that were equally brutal, some even more so, yet all human societies aren't like that.

True, but unlike human society at any point in our history and even today, Shongairi culture is described as a mono-culture. The dominant polity and culture at the time simply subjugated all the others and, IIRC, that happened even before they had space flight. So even if there's some form of diversity left, it seems to me that it's much, much less than for humans. They have a very powerful central government, embodied in the Emperor, that probably dictates a great deal of their society.

Another thing is that they don't seem to have many colonies yet. Given the limitations of interstellar travel, those colonies will eventually diverge. But it doesn't seem to have happened yet.

Going forward it'll be interesting to see whether less rapidly progressing races can acquire the innovation bug from association with humanity. For several hundred thousand years after homo sapiens appeared, we too were stuck at a very basic technological level. The time of large scale civilization and scientific advance occupies only the last few thousand years. A small sliver of our total existence. So ... what changed? Maybe in the context of these books it was the intervention of the mysterious Fifth Race.

We don't know how long other races spent in their pre-historical periods either. Human evolution has taken barely 12,000 years since the neolithic and around 8000 only since the Bronze Age.

I suspect the explanation is that evolution to history and forging of metals takes a LONG time for everyone (including us), but the evolution after that takes equally long for everyone but us. Incidentally, this would partially explain the Fermi Paradox too.

Something (probably commitment to technological stagnation) caused a falling out between them and the other GH founding races. Either they left for greener pastures, or the others wiped them out. In the latter case maybe the Hegemony isn't quite as ignorant of higher developments like humanity's improved hyperdrive as one might hope. Perhaps they have the means to defeat Earth after all! Only putting together a large enough alliance against them, and perhaps discovering a few tricks they never saw from their old friends, could propel us to victory.

That could be an interesting plot twist and may allow the authors to prolong the series further. At the current state, it could end in just two more books with overwhelming human victory (like in Christopher Nuttall's standalone "First Strike" book).

I am certain there will be plot twists, but I don't think this is one. I think the Hegemony level of technology is exactly as it seems. The GH does not have the capabilities to defeat humanity. To me, that means something else will happen to make the books interesting.

There's definitely more going on than we've seen so far. Just having humans build a fleet of superior ships and conquer the GH wouldn't make for a very interesting story.

Exactly!

ThinksMarkedly wrote:Another thing is that they don't seem to have many colonies yet. Given the limitations of interstellar travel, those colonies will eventually diverge. But it doesn't seem to have happened yet.

If things had continued the way they were, I agree, any colony, out of touch for years on end, would have a divergent culture.

Given the now known future... I doubt Dave Dvorak would jump on a ship for years or multiple months, JUST to have a conversation with Vlad. He had responsibilities and family on 2 planets, and 2 other planets which would have been contacted between the end of the 2nd to last chapter and the last. Dave became way too important to just jet off for a lengthy period of time. Someone like Longbow would have done nicely in his stead. Something tells me the new tech made the intercept journey inside of 6 weeks... or less. Think the difference between N. American Settlers in the 16th and 18th centuries - in the 16th, they expected to die in the new colony, by the 18th, people routinely traveled back and forth. By the 20th, you could have lunch in Paris, and be back home to New York for a late dinner.

Theemile wrote:Given the now known future... I doubt Dave Dvorak would jump on a ship for years or multiple months, JUST to have a conversation with Vlad. He had responsibilities and family on 2 planets, and 2 other planets which would have been contacted between the end of the 2nd to last chapter and the last. Dave became way too important to just jet off for a lengthy period of time. Someone like Longbow would have done nicely in his stead. Something tells me the new tech made the intercept journey inside of 6 weeks... or less. Think the difference between N. American Settlers in the 16th and 18th centuries - in the 16th, they expected to die in the new colony, by the 18th, people routinely traveled back and forth. By the 20th, you could have lunch in Paris, and be back home to New York for a late dinner.

Or, for a couple of decades, you could have breakfast in Paris, take the 10:30 am Concorde flight to New York, arrive 8:25 am and have a second breakfast.

ThinksMarkedly wrote:

Theemile wrote:Given the now known future... I doubt Dave Dvorak would jump on a ship for years or multiple months, JUST to have a conversation with Vlad. He had responsibilities and family on 2 planets, and 2 other planets which would have been contacted between the end of the 2nd to last chapter and the last. Dave became way too important to just jet off for a lengthy period of time. Someone like Longbow would have done nicely in his stead. Something tells me the new tech made the intercept journey inside of 6 weeks... or less. Think the difference between N. American Settlers in the 16th and 18th centuries - in the 16th, they expected to die in the new colony, by the 18th, people routinely traveled back and forth. By the 20th, you could have lunch in Paris, and be back home to New York for a late dinner.

Or, for a couple of decades, you could have breakfast in Paris, take the 10:30 am Concorde flight to New York, arrive 8:25 am and have a second breakfast.

I was hoping I was the one who got to say that.