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The Solarian League is not a conquering power. They incorporate new systems is by having their border security forces form "protectorates" along the Frontier after being "invited" into the system to solve a dispute, with those protectorates gradually being absorbed over the course of a century. Apart from those Frontier forces, which aren't officially an arm of conquest in the first place, the only way they could force anybody to join is by declaring war and gobbling up - which would require the unanimous support of every member, because a single "no" vote torpedoes the whole thing. The frontier forces operate only along the frontier. If you count Manticore as being 40 light years from Earth, then they're well within the frontier and the frontier forces have no business being anywhere near them. If you count them being 500 light years away, they're far beyond the frontier and the frontier forces have no business being anywhere near them. As for the close ties with Beowulf, those very ties would prevent any attempt to do any incorporating - Beowulf has veto power over any official action.
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Apr 5, 2020 18:29
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Gnoman posted:The frontier forces operate only along the frontier. If you count Manticore as being 40 light years from Earth, then they're well within the frontier and the frontier forces have no business being anywhere near them. If you count them being 500 light years away, they're far beyond the frontier and the frontier forces have no business being anywhere near them. That seems far too "Well technically" to be believable. A frontier is just a border, and the wormhole forms a border. The frontier security forces should be providing security there the same as they do for all the other borders. If they aren't doing that, it should be because some other internal faction has muscled them out.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:17
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Undead Hippo posted:That seems far too "Well technically" to be believable. A frontier is just a border, and the wormhole forms a border. The frontier security forces should be providing security there the same as they do for all the other borders. If they aren't doing that, it should be because some other internal faction has muscled them out. That's like saying that the Coast Guard should be providing all security at international airports. In this case, internal security for the wormhole is provided by the Beowulf System Defense Force. In universe, the Solarian League's Office Of Frontier Security's main job is dealing with the hordes of independent nations just outside the League's borders, with the official mission of providing powers in dispute with one another via negotiating teams and a hard stop to conflict by being far too strong to challenge. So, to give an example from the books, a world with two nations on the brink of nuclear apocalypse could have one side call in OFS to prevent the war from boiling over. They then subordinate both governments to a new planetary government that is a League protectorate, charge the planet fees for a few decades to offset the expenses incurred, and ease the planet into being a full League member. The problem is that they started making "get more systems for the League" their primary mission because those fees were the only direct income that the Federal government could get, because the League constitution limits the power to tax considerably, and allows any member to veto any proposal. This means that they not only intervene as long as they can find somebody -anybody- willing to call them in, but will go so far as using Frontier Fleet units as "pirates" to create the need for interference. But for them to go after something that far away would be akin to a US Coast Guard cutter pulling up to the Chinese coast and declaring that China now belongs to the US.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:31
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Gnoman posted:The frontier forces operate only along the frontier. If you count Manticore as being 40 light years from Earth, then they're well within the frontier and the frontier forces have no business being anywhere near them. If you count them being 500 light years away, they're far beyond the frontier and the frontier forces have no business being anywhere near them. This makes no sense at all my gender-nonspecific dude.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:35
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General Battuta posted:This makes no sense at all my gender-nonspecific dude. In what way does it make no sense? The only people who have the authority to conquer at-will have a very constrained region of operations. It is impossible to put the "Kchama says they should have been conquered years ago" people anywhere near this area, no matter if you use actual distance or travel distance.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:41
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Like imagine some Solarian technocrat opening up a spreadsheet and saying "Hey these Manticore guys control three quarters of our trade, everyone's routing through them. Should we establish diplomatic relations and start buying up interests in their economy? Maybe give them Most Favored Nation status and make sure their prosperity depends on us? Oh, it says here they're not at the exact distance where we're allowed to use our soft power. Never mind!" The Solarians wouldn't need to send a single ship to conquer Manticore. They'd just do what the good ol US of A did to post-Soviet Russia.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:41
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Saying that they're TOO close to the League to become enmeshed in its soft-power web is especially silly. Oh, they're too accessible and easy to get to! They'll have such quick access to all our culture and banks! We can't possibly devour them now!
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Apr 5, 2020 19:43
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Ok, I see what you're saying. My statement was only in the context of deliberate military force, or else the "Such and such party in your government requested our aid, so you are now a protectorate of the Solarian League. Give us all your money." operations that spark the whole conflict. The first is blocked by the veto of any member, while the latter can only happen just outside the actual border - the people doing it don't have any power outside that area. You seem to be talking about entirely soft power - buying influence in political parties, building tight trade ties, things like that. I fully understand why you'd find my statement nonsensical in that context.
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Apr 5, 2020 19:52
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Yeah, it's just hard to imagine Manticore as anything *but* a major object of, at the very least, interest and information-gathering for the League. Even in an oligarchical and corrupt bureaucratic state, a lot of effort is going to go into greasing the wheels and keeping an eye on the locals anywhere the state has economic interests. Weber has gotten himself stuck in a paradox here: Manticore has to be important enough to threaten the League economically, but also overlooked enough that the League is oblivious to its true military power and political influence.
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Apr 5, 2020 20:11
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Gnoman posted:That's like saying that the Coast Guard should be providing all security at international airports. In this case, internal security for the wormhole is provided by the Beowulf System Defense Force. I think it's more like saying that US Customs and Border Protection should be providing security at both airports(deep within the internal borders) and seaports and land borders(right at the edge). US customs and border protection does do that. Almost all countries do similarly.
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Apr 5, 2020 20:15
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General Battuta posted:Yeah, it's just hard to imagine Manticore as anything *but* a major object of, at the very least, interest and information-gathering for the League. Even in an oligarchical and corrupt bureaucratic state, a lot of effort is going to go into greasing the wheels and keeping an eye on the locals anywhere the state has economic interests. Weber has gotten himself stuck in a paradox here: Manticore has to be important enough to threaten the League economically, but also overlooked enough that the League is oblivious to its true military power and political influence. That's a fair criticism. At the very least, they'd have noticed the importance as soon as the Havenite Wars began, when Manticore decided to use it. It would be like the US not noticing the steady economic dependence on China in the 90s. Undead Hippo posted:I think it's more like saying that US Customs and Border Protection should be providing security at both airports(deep within the internal borders) and seaports and land borders(right at the edge). US customs and border protection does do that. Almost all countries do similarly. Except that the relevant agency here (Frontier Security) isn't Customs. It is the Coast Guard, with an added duty of routinely conquering other nations to expand the border.
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Apr 5, 2020 20:18
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Frankly the idea of the Manticorans getting into a life or death struggle with the Solarian League Coast Guard (while trying to avoid getting the real military involved) sounds way better than what we got.
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Apr 5, 2020 21:29
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General Battuta posted:Frankly the idea of the Manticorans getting into a life or death struggle with the Solarian League Coast Guard (while trying to avoid getting the real military involved) sounds way better than what we got. This is not a high bar to clear. You guys are way overthinking this book series which is a power fantasy about hot women shooting space rapists with missiles. General Battuta is on to something when he points out the League bureaucracy will fight to the death to prevent the law against orbital bombardment from falling, but that is a way better conflict than what we got in the books. Just let it go. Weber isn't worth it. Arguing about fictional spaceship missile batteries or the boundaries of fictitious star empires isn't going to create a compelling narrative from a man who routinely drops pages of exposition about how the space missiles descended from the Apollo program or whatever. Kchama posted:I'm not talking about invasion. I'm talking about /caring about/. Like the "Manticore is 500 light years away' is basically the reasoning that books and defenders I see to say that Solarian League doesn't care about Manticore because they're 'neobarb 500 light years away' but... They don't care because they're villains in a Weber novel and not allowed to be competent. Dramatic tension apparently went back in time and made David Weber watch Zach Snyder movies as a child, and now every time he has to confront the possibilities of his heroes having setbacks he can't take it and just inflates more missile numbers. The only time I can think of when Manticore actually lost was when Pavel Young got missiled to death while Honor was stealing spaceships from the Space Waffen-SS to escape Rape Camp. That is not a joke or an exaggeration, that is the dreck you are trying to salvage. Adding more mind caulk to justify the stupid power fantasy is a waste of time. Now that I've ranted about that, if someone held my family members hostage and told me I had to salvage this into something vaguely interesting, I would probably just blatantly rip off World War 2 and make Manticore vaguely Imperial Japanese and the Solarian League the US. Manticore is entering the war with a technological edge and veteran sailors/soldiers from their war against Haven. They need to win fast and try to force the Solarian League to the negotiating table from a position of strength because if they don't the Solarian League shifts to total war footing, ramps up industry to produce legions of ships, and reassigns their hordes of scientists from consumer goods or whatever to death rays and missile immunity shields. I still can't think of a reason Manticore actually wants to go on the aggressive in this war. They don't have the Imperial Japanese problem where they need to seize space oil to continue expanding, and they're not really presented as wanting to conquer people for no reason. The best they could do would be to turn themselves into Space Vietnam and try to convince the Solarian public that their war was unjust and needed to stop, but even then North Vietnam had the advantage of Soviet and Chinese support. To my knowledge, there is no counterweight to the Solarian League that would actually prevent them from doing the space equivalent of just invading Space North Vietnam and shooting Space Ho Chi Minh. Of course, I made the mistake of looking at the Honor Harrington wiki and the Manticore battle fleet apparently blows up the SLN in Earth orbit or something stupid and then it turns out the space eugenicists have an evil plan to destroy the Solarian league so they can use human labor for hard mining in a setting where robots and AI exist and rule according to everyone's genetic value (which is bad) instead of by the genetic value conferred by royal titles (which is bad, but Weber thinks its good) Whatever. Peace!
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Apr 6, 2020 02:35
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Kchama posted:Also I remember seeing someone research that Manticore's wormhole couldn't be all that important to internal core Solarian League trade because the furthest possible distance between any core world was 192 light years and in general the travel time to and from Manticore-controlled wormholes and then to the systems would be about 197 light years, plus multiple toll-boothed jumps. So they were baffled about how it could be in any way preferable to pay a bunch of tolls and not save any time. https://forums.sufficientvelocity.com/threads/full-slow-ahead-ralson-reads-honor-harrington-a-rising-thunder.9340/#post-1923618 ctrl-f for mentions of "wormholes"
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Apr 6, 2020 02:38
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Gnoman posted:Ok, I see what you're saying. My statement was only in the context of deliberate military force, or else the "Such and such party in your government requested our aid, so you are now a protectorate of the Solarian League. Give us all your money." operations that spark the whole conflict. The first is blocked by the veto of any member, while the latter can only happen just outside the actual border - the people doing it don't have any power outside that area. This is, FYI, what I was talking about too. I was not talking about conquering them. The reason why I was talking about the wormhole putting them so close is that I often hear that the physical distance between the systems, sans wormhole, means that the Solarian League is too far away to wine and dine them or to have any interest in them, despite the fact that the wormhole puts them literally closer than most Solarian League core worlds and also they have good reason to actually come down on Manticore's side on things. Like conquering can be on the table or whatever, but you'd think Manticore would be important to the Solarian League rather than people they are pushing assholes who wouldn't be nearly as friendly to them to conquer. TheGreatEvilKing posted:Of course, I made the mistake of looking at the Honor Harrington wiki and the Manticore battle fleet apparently blows up the SLN in Earth orbit or something stupid and then it turns out the space eugenicists have an evil plan to destroy the Solarian league so they can use human labor for hard mining in a setting where robots and AI exist and rule according to everyone's genetic value (which is bad) instead of by the genetic value conferred by royal titles (which is bad, but Weber thinks its good) Whatever. Peace! Manticore being so aggressive and going "TIME TO DESTROY THE SOLARIAN LEAGUE" is super baffling considering their superspies have come up and told them that the True Bad Guys' scheme who are behind all evil in the universe hinges on Manticore doing... literally what they end up doing. Weber deciding that Eric Flint's outright idiocy meant he needed to speed everything up meant he wrote himself into a corner and worse yet, he had no idea how to get out so he just had Manticore do everything his original outline had them do, but in the original outline they hadn't been warned that Mesa wanted them to do this as it would bring Mesa's stupid planet to fruition somehow. Also their evil plan isn't to use human labor for everything but uhmm... uhmm.. to make everyone into transhumanists and also them in charge of the universe so they decided to do this by making everyone despise transhumanists as a cover for their true plan to make everyone embrace transhumanism. ... if this plan makes no sense it's because Weber came up with this after he established them as being behind slavery in the setting.
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Apr 6, 2020 03:49
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I’m going to finish my rewrite of Mission of Honor and then I’m going to post it. No one can stop me
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Apr 6, 2020 04:05
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Kchama posted:Also their evil plan isn't to use human labor for everything but uhmm... uhmm.. to make everyone into transhumanists and also them in charge of the universe so they decided to do this by making everyone despise transhumanists as a cover for their true plan to make everyone embrace transhumanism. So I'm gonna cop to reading the wiki because gently caress giving Weber money, but there was something about people being ranked by "genetic value", which is literally the exactly same premise behind the feudal aristocracy of Manticore, except you inherit intangible royal blood instead of genes.
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Apr 6, 2020 04:19
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I mean when you get right down to it, what really happened was that Weber was doing the Wars of Revolutionary France and the Napoleonic Wars from Nelson's perspective but in space. Except that the inciting incident that bankrupts the Ancien Regime isn't the American Revolution because Manticore can't possibly be allowed to lose a war the way the Brits did. So then the  ), with Thiesman taking over as the Napoleon figure. Fine, sure, whatever. File off those serial numbers all you like, Dave, just give us a decent ending, will you?Except that in the end, 
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Apr 6, 2020 04:21
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(Esther McQueen is Napoleon here, actually, or so Weber intended. It's even in the books.) Also this whole thing started over Frontier Security being pissed that Manticore dared to offer some marginal planets along the League's frontier an alternative to being gobbled up by OFS. Manticore had no intention of conquest of any part of the Solarian League at any point in this shitshow, and up until Filareta's invasion of the Manticore system they've been trying to get the League to pursue a diplomatic option...which the 'Mandarins' rejected outright.
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Apr 6, 2020 04:46
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So I'm gonna cop to reading the wiki because gently caress giving Weber money, but there was something about people being ranked by "genetic value", which is literally the exactly same premise behind the feudal aristocracy of Manticore, except you inherit intangible royal blood instead of genes. Oh yeah sorry I didn't to imply that that idiocy also wasn't there, cuz it was. Also the whole Eridani Edict thing means that the the Solarian League should be HYPER focused on the Manticore-Haven war because their entire purpose is the Eridani Edict. And at one point it's basically said that the SL had invisible watch platforms everywhere witnessing everything and that the ones that a company sold Haven that worked VERY WELL were 3rd-rate cast-offs that weren't good enough for the Solarian League. Aerdan posted:(Esther McQueen is Napoleon here, actually, or so Weber intended. It's even in the books.) Actually everything kicked off when a station (IIRC) exploded near a Manticorean ship while a Solarian Fleet was there and thought the Manticorean ship blew it up and panicked and opened fire at the Manticorean ship and destroyed it. And then a Manticorean fleet showed up and demanded they surrender and turn over all of their data and opened fired when the Solarian fleet refused and wanted to retreat instead. Also the 'attempt' to get the League to pursue a diplomatic option involved a full economic war, and that's the term that the Manticorean 'diplomat' agrees with when the 'Mandarin' (ugh) points it out. And the SL guy's big request is for Manticore to leave Solarian League territory, and the 'diplomat' gives him bullshit about how the Royal Manticore Navy's duties require them to breach SL territory oh and also they're blockading the Solarian League and invading all wormholes exits connected to them. That is not how you act if you 'just want a diplomatic option'. Kchama fucked around with this message at 05:00 on Apr 6, 2020 |
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Apr 6, 2020 04:55
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TheGreatEvilKing posted:So I'm gonna cop to reading the wiki because gently caress giving Weber money, but there was something about people being ranked by "genetic value", which is literally the exactly same premise behind the feudal aristocracy of Manticore, except you inherit intangible royal blood instead of genes. Worth noting that since Manticore disenfranchises the majority of their population, corporate colony would be a step up for a lot of their citizens. Combine that with the League navy being able to get Haven to back down without an expensive war and there should have been a Business Plot style coup in the third book. There isn’t because Weber is terrible at both historical and material analysis. Also Manticore loses big in the opening rounds of their second war with Haven. I remember that well because the queen starts screaming about how the havenites are all “loving peeps” in a very “kill all the {insert slur here}” moment.
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Apr 7, 2020 07:32
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Kchama posted:I'm not talking about invasion. I'm talking about /caring about/. Like the "Manticore is 500 light years away' is basically the reasoning that books and defenders I see to say that Solarian League doesn't care about Manticore because they're 'neobarb 500 light years away' but... You know what would help with the missing external trade? Huge alien empires, comparable in size to the Solarian League. Manticore's importance could be explained with one or several of the most important alien empires being just the right distance to Manticore to make a huge flow of external trade through its wormholes possible. Otherwise, it's just Anderman, Manticore, Haven and tiny little states like Sansibar and yeah, that's probably not adding up to a lot of trade from a Solarian perspective. Though now that I think about it, the trade being regionally important but not that important for the League as a whole would neatly explain why the League ignored the "Haven Sector" for so long. Beowulf's views of Manticore are irrelevant in both scenarious, though. I can easily see people in the League dismissing Manticore as Beowulf's pet or colony and not thinking any deeper about some far away border region. All this retconning to make Manticore's trade more and more important to the League was a bad idea, imho. It really fucks everything up because everything stops making sense if Manticore is suddenly too important. The Frontier Force is just a red herring, they've become a conquering, corrupt force only a couple centuries ago, but around that time the Haven Sector was dominated by Haven, which at that point was a strong, democratic force. Around the time the entire Solarian political system had become corrupt enough for a conquest of Manticore to make sense, Haven would have blocked every intrusion into its own backwater. jng2058 posted:With the Sol system nuked back to pre-spaceflight industry and Manticore's tech lead unassailable and growing every day there's no one anywhere in the existing Honorverse who has a chance of challenging Manticore for the foreseeable future. Which means any future Honorverse books are going to be even more boring than the ones we've already gotten, if you can believe it! Wait a minute, I stopped a couple books ago, is that a thing that actually happened?  Because the last thing I remembered was stealth ships blowing up a huge part of Manticoran infrastructure (which of course didn't even slow them down, it just happened to create pathos for the "heroes") and then Manticore winning some more battles.Did Honor blow up Earth herself or something?
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Apr 7, 2020 11:59
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Libluini posted:Wait a minute, I stopped a couple books ago, is that a thing that actually happened? In the last book Honor takes the invincible superfleet to the Sol system and destroys every piece of orbital infrastructure in it, as well as the entire Solarian home fleet. By the end of it, the only things left in the Sol system (that used to have more economic value that all of Manticore's empire mind) that can still fly are the shuttles allowed to evacuate the civilian workers back to Earth on. Then she orbits around Earth and says "if you don't change your government and accept the constitution I've written for you I'm going to go around to every system in the League and blow up their infrastructure until you do."
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Apr 7, 2020 14:08
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She righteously demanded that Earth self destruct every single item of spaceborne technology in the system except for habitats. Earth was cowed by her overwhelming moral superiority and complied. Moral or missile? I can’t remember, they’re so easy to confuse. What’s striking is that Weber spends a lot of words emphasizing how many centuries of progress and labor are being destroyed. He seems to know it’s kind of tragic!
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Apr 7, 2020 14:09
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akulanization posted:Worth noting that since Manticore disenfranchises the majority of their population, corporate colony would be a step up for a lot of their citizens. [CITATION NEEDED] The books establish that 97% of the population are eligible to vote in the single time they mention any absurd voting requirements. The context for bringing up said voting requirements is that "the plutocrats of this planet joining us think they're going to go on with ruling a disenfranchised voter base because they didn't do their research".
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Apr 7, 2020 14:45
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jng2058 posted:In the last book Honor takes the invincible superfleet to the Sol system and destroys every piece of orbital infrastructure in it, as well as the entire Solarian home fleet. By the end of it, the only things left in the Sol system (that used to have more economic value that all of Manticore's empire mind) that can still fly are the shuttles allowed to evacuate the civilian workers back to Earth on. Then she orbits around Earth and says "if you don't change your government and accept the constitution I've written for you I'm going to go around to every system in the League and blow up their infrastructure until you do." General Battuta posted:She righteously demanded that Earth self destruct every single item of spaceborne technology in the system except for habitats. Earth was cowed by her overwhelming moral superiority and complied. Moral or missile? I can’t remember, they’re so easy to confuse. So, I guess the series is dead, then? I'm amazed Weber didn't drag the story out for a couple dozen more books. I guess he really wants to write more Safehold-books and Honor Harrington slowly became a mill stone around his neck, slowing down his boring sailing adventures. In hindsight, I'm now really glad I bailed with the book ending in Michelle Henke planning to visit Mesa with her fleet, because I could already tell she would win effortlessly, which combined with Honor effortlessly winning would probably create a vortex of boredom strong enough to break through to real life, destroying the city I'm living in. And that burden wasn't something I wanted to take on my consciousness. But still, Weber really brought the series to the worst possible conclusion. Thank the spirits it's over now. Finally.
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Apr 7, 2020 15:25
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God willing it's over. But he was threatening in the afterword to do books set a few years down the line with the younger characters moving into command roles, with Honor as the grand old dame behind a desk. I can't imagine what those characters would have to do, considering how badly Dave hosed his universe, but I expect that when he needs some extra cash we'll find out. Or someone will, because even though I've been reading library copies for the last half dozen books, the investment in time these books take is no longer worth it to me. I'm out.
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Apr 7, 2020 16:53
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I suspect the 20-year time skip that Weber originally planned and got derailed from is still his long term plan, yes. "Ending" the series now just gives him a break from idiots asking when the next one is coming
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Apr 7, 2020 18:16
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jng2058 posted:God willing it's over. But he was threatening in the afterword to do books set a few years down the line with the younger characters moving into command roles, with Honor as the grand old dame behind a desk. My friend, it's gonna be this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heirs_of_Empire , version 2.0. Heirs Of Empire was Weber's pre-Ringo collaboration Xenophon's Long March adaptation.
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Apr 7, 2020 19:02
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Libluini posted:Beowulf's views of Manticore are irrelevant in both scenarious, though. I can easily see people in the League dismissing Manticore as Beowulf's pet or colony and not thinking any deeper about some far away border region. Except it's NOT a far away border colony. It's literally closer, time-wise, to Earth than most systems in the SOLARIAN CORE. And the fact that it's Beowulf's pet it WHY they should care about it more, because Manticore runs all of the Solarian League's trade and they're spending lots of money on tariffs and if it gets knocked over by Haven or wiped out by them, trade is suddenly going to get very unfavorable for the Solarian LEague (not that it actually makes sense to). Especially not no "I don't believe these reports from our spies about what's going on!" nonsense or not even noticing that Beowulf suddenly has technology centuries more advanced.
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Apr 7, 2020 19:16
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quantumfoam posted:My friend, it's gonna be this https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heirs_of_Empire , version 2.0. Huh. You know, between the Gbaba who kick off the Safehold books, the Rigellians and Arachnids from the Starfire books, as well as the Achuultani from Heirs of Empire, Dave's drawn from the "implacable genocidal species who cannot be negotiated with" well a lot. It wouldn't surprise me to see him do it again. You may be right.
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Apr 7, 2020 19:35
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Gnoman posted:[CITATION NEEDED]
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Apr 7, 2020 19:46
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Kchama posted:Except it's NOT a far away border colony. It's literally closer, time-wise, to Earth than most systems in the SOLARIAN CORE. And the fact that it's Beowulf's pet it WHY they should care about it more, because Manticore runs all of the Solarian League's trade and they're spending lots of money on tariffs and if it gets knocked over by Haven or wiped out by them, trade is suddenly going to get very unfavorable for the Solarian LEague (not that it actually makes sense to). I look at our news and back to this fantasy story about dumbasses shooting missiles at each other and simply answer with "dumb politicians (all of them) will just not think about that as long as Manticore sits conveniently at the other side of a spooky space hole"
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Apr 7, 2020 20:33
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akulanization posted:Who’s electing the House of Lords and monarch that hold 90% of the political power? The queen literally tells a party she doesn’t like that she will not allow them to form a government. Iran is a more robust democracy than Manticore. The House of Lords has as much power as the US Senate. Or, for a more direct analogy, the British House Of Lords - which was also a "all nobles are members" body prior to 1999. Which is the exact model that Weber based it on. If the vast majority of Manticorans are disenfranchised, so were the majority of the British until 20 years ago. Somehow, I doubt many would agree with that position.
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Apr 7, 2020 20:57
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Gnoman posted:The House of Lords has as much power as the US Senate. Or, for a more direct analogy, the British House Of Lords - which was also a "all nobles are members" body prior to 1999. Which is the exact model that Weber based it on. If the vast majority of Manticorans are disenfranchised, so were the majority of the British until 20 years ago. Somehow, I doubt many would agree with that position. To be fair to him, the House of Lords has a lot more power than the US Senate, since the only power we see the Commons explicitly have is that they can propose budget bills and that's not something given to them until the Opposition takes control of the Lords in a way that the queen can't just undo with a snap of her finger like she can at literally any other time, because outside of times when states of emergencies are declared, she has absolute control over the make-up of the Lords. So when the Opposition takes power in the Lords, the queen starts giving power to the Commons where people loyal to her have power.
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Apr 7, 2020 21:01
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Kchama posted:To be fair to him, the House of Lords has a lot more power than the US Senate, since the only power we see the Commons explicitly have is that they can propose budget bills and that's not something given to them until the Opposition takes control of the Lords in a way that the queen can't just undo with a snap of her finger like she can at literally any other time, because outside of times when states of emergencies are declared, she has absolute control over the make-up of the Lords. ...Unelected bureaucrats? The horror!
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Apr 8, 2020 00:18
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Gnoman posted:The House of Lords has as much power as the US Senate. Or, for a more direct analogy, the British House Of Lords - which was also a "all nobles are members" body prior to 1999. Which is the exact model that Weber based it on. If the vast majority of Manticorans are disenfranchised, so were the majority of the British until 20 years ago. Somehow, I doubt many would agree with that position. All of the series prime ministers are lords. And at least at the start so are all the party leaders. The body wields almost exclusive executive power and greater than coequal legislative power. So really it’s the super senate and the presidency at the same time. Unless you want to argue that executive power resides with the crown, which is also unelected and even less accountable. The date you are choosing is interesting as it can be viewed as merely a recent addition to the centuries long process of removing power from the House of Lords, and I definitely would consider the people living in 1800s Britain disenfranchised. Why you would think that people living in the far future with access to a history that has many examples of governments that place more power in the hands of the people would not consider themselves disenfranchised?
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Apr 8, 2020 00:45
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akulanization posted:All of the series prime ministers are lords. And at least at the start so are all the party leaders. Later on in the series, the one party leader who isn't a lord is an ex-lord, and she's also independently gently caress-off wealthy on a "top 10 richest people in Manticore" level.
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Apr 8, 2020 00:55
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Early Keith Laumer Bolo stories are pretty legit. Some of the short stories in the long defunct Thieves World collaborative universe are weird mil-fiction. Star Wars fiction and Warhammer/W40K fiction revolve around war. 2000 AD's entire catalog of work is built around mil-fiction/mil-scifi. A few of the Discworld books qualify as mil-fiction. John Steakley's(?) Armor is the definitive non-W40K power-armor story. Technically a bunch of Heinlein's work qualifies as mil-fiction/mil-scifi however Heinlein's embedded creepiness and fascism makes me never want to go back to any of Heinlein's work. Mary Gentle's GRUNTS! is fantasy mil-fiction and has been recommended in the main SF&F threads a few times (personally find GRUNTS! godawful). W. E. B. Griffin wrote a bunch of mediocre mil-fiction. Iain Banks best 3 books are definitely mil-scifi with Consider Phlebas probably being the most vivid. Branching out to TV, want to say the COMBAT! tv series had spinoff novels and coloring books, vaguely remember seeing them when visiting older relatives. The 3rd Doctor Who era TV episodes mostly involved UNIT, so the 3rd Doctor era Who novels probably do too.
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Apr 10, 2020 07:51
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quantumfoam posted:Early Keith Laumer Bolo stories are pretty legit. The Bolo anthologies from Baen also have some legit good stories in them. There are of course a few stinkers, but on the whole they're great. I should do a review or overview of the series. The Man-Kzin War series declines in quality as it goes along, but Poul Anderson writing Known Space stories is a real treat.
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Apr 10, 2020 09:09
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