Zazz Razzamatazz posted:

Not only that but it's amazingly fast to be able to go from one solar system to another in just 180 whatever years...

For that matter the space travel has been really inconsistent. The ship the Foundationers were on didn't have a jump drive and was sub light speed and yet somehow made it from near the middle of the galaxy to the outer edge in less than a human lifetime. Even at lightspeed that would take tens of thousands of years. (at least for the people not on the ship)

Phenotype posted:

Despite that, I really liked this episode, including Empire's storyline. I was really disappointed to see him be so petty about the deposed priestess. Demerzel said it -- he'd already won, in such a convincing fashion as to bring even more glory to his line. I suppose it shouldn't be much of a shock considering that old painter guy that he vaporized in the first episode, but I like that they show him as a more textured character than Generic Ruthless Despot, and I was expecting him to leave her alive in disgrace as part of the elegant victory that he pulled off.

Tom Guycot posted:

I don't understand why Day would even give a poo poo about not seeing a vision. Hes not a member of this religion, so he certainly doesn't believe in whatever magic gods they worship, so why would he even expect to see a vision?



If i went to a revival church where people were falling over in aisles and getting faith healed by someone slapping their head, I wouldn't be worried I don't have a "soul" because I didn't break out into speaking in tongues.

Phenotype posted:

I tend to give a pass to most sci fi shows when it comes to travel time in space, since the sheer magnitude of space makes it difficult to tell any sort of story that doesn't take place in a single solar system, if you're concerned with realism. It is a super huge bummer that it would literally take a hundred human lifetimes even for light to travel to the planet with the fish people, but if you want to tell a story about meeting the fish people you've gotta just speed up the ship somehow.

Rutibex posted:

Thats not true, you can have hard sci-fi stories about the USS Enterprise traveling around the galaxy. Its just the journey is one-way and Earth will be a burnt out husk before they reach their first planet. But due to time dilation the crew of the exploration ship will experience everything just like a warp drive.

To me thats a much more interesting story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQnka2wNa_M

galenanorth posted:

Maybe the writers for the show are so ashamed that the author of the source material was an atheist that they felt they had to put in some "God's Not Dead"-like moment where the non-believer feels shame. This contrasts with how Gene Roddenberry's work as an atheist was followed up by the good religious storylines in DS9

Asimov posted:

Why is it my favorite? For one thing I got the idea all at once and didn't have to fiddle with it; and I wrote it in white-heat and scarcely had to change a word. This sort of thing endears any story to any writer. Then, too, it has had the strangest effect on my readers. Frequently someone writes to ask me if I can give them the name of a story, which they think I may have written, and tell them where to find it. They don't remember the title but when they describe the story it is invariably 'The Last Question'. This has reached the point where I recently received a long-distance phone call from a desperate man who began, "Dr. Asimov, there's a story I think you wrote, whose title I can't remember—" at which point I interrupted to tell him it was 'The Last Question' and when I described the plot it proved to be indeed the story he was after. I left him convinced I could read minds at a distance of a thousand miles.

quote:

The story deals with the development of a series of computers, Multivac, and its relationships with humanity through the courses of seven historical settings, beginning on the day in 2061 that Earth becomes a planetary civilization. In each of the first six scenes, a different character presents the computer with the same question, how the threat to human existence posed by the heat death of the universe can be averted: "How can the net amount of entropy of the universe be massively decreased?" That is equivalent to asking, "Can the workings of the second law of thermodynamics (used in the story as the increase of the entropy of the universe) be reversed?" Multivac's only response after much "thinking" is "INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

The story jumps forward in time into later eras of human and scientific development. In each era, someone decides to ask the ultimate "last question" regarding the reversal and decrease of entropy. Each time that Multivac's descendant is asked the question, it finds itself unable to solve the problem, and all it can answer is (linguistically increasingly-sophisticated) "THERE IS AS YET INSUFFICIENT DATA FOR A MEANINGFUL ANSWER."

In the last scene, the god-like descendant of humanity, the unified mental process of over a trillion, trillion, trillion humans who have spread throughout the universe, watches the stars flicker out, one by one, as matter and energy end, and with them, space and time. Humanity asks AC, Multivac's ultimate descendant that exists in hyperspace beyond the bounds of gravity or time, the entropy question one last time, before the last of humanity merges with AC and disappears. AC is still unable to answer but continues to ponder the question even after space and time cease to exist. AC ultimately realizes that it has not yet combined all of its available data in every possible combination and so begins the arduous process of rearranging and combining every last bit of information that it has gained throughout the eons and through its fusion with humanity. Eventually AC discovers the answer—that the reversal of entropy is, in fact, possible—but has nobody to report it to, since the universe is already dead. It therefore decides to answer by demonstration. The story ends with AC's pronouncement:

And AC said: "LET THERE BE LIGHT!" And there was light

GABA ghoul posted:

Yeah, this show is pretty far from hard sci-fi. In the first episode you already have: magic voodoo mathematics, psychic powers, a stone age village build on water and FTL travel.

Rutibex posted:

Thats not true, you can have hard sci-fi stories about the USS Enterprise traveling around the galaxy. Its just the journey is one-way and Earth will be a burnt out husk before they reach their first planet. But due to time dilation the crew of the exploration ship will experience everything just like a warp drive.

To me thats a much more interesting story
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JQnka2wNa_M

Phenotype posted:

That said, this show is kinda pushing it, but it's still whatever -- the Empire has instant travel that folds space, everyone else has to use ships that outperform lightspeed travel but still take decades (which is used as a caveat to skip time and insert characters into future time periods.)

DaveKap posted:

I had to look up some examples and came to realize that my definition of hard sci-fi is way looser than it should be.

So instead perhaps what I mean is that this is where the show's moving from science fiction to fantasy.

Glimpse posted:

In the podcast of the show, the word of god is that the non-jumpships don’t travel faster than light, and that the Foundation colony ship did about half the speed of light, so we have to assume that this galaxy is not much larger than our solar system.

gohmak posted:

She broke the ship by breaking a display screen, then jettisoned in a pod into the very same accretion disk that threatened the main ship.

I'm done fellas.

Phenotype posted:

Yep, and the Enterprise is an ancient hunk of junk by halfway through the first season and the crew spends the rest of their days as an oddity in a space zoo after the first time they encounter any hostile aliens.

Rutibex posted:

I think they already did, they showed the crew dead from space madness
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e8YObV6i_Yc

Rappaport posted:

The soft vs. hard sci-fi discussion is interesting, but that isn't the main problem with this show, IMO….

And now with the Space Pope Election plot-line, even brother Day has had some fairly dumb things going on, and never mind Demerzel. Even though the trek along the spiral was interesting, the whole vision business, just ugh.

Rappaport posted:

(book stuff) and since Hari is a cyber-boy, are they even going to do the "hologram predictions"? What would be the point, if the man is actually sci-fi-alive? And if not, what is the point of the fainting couch monolith? And then there's everything about Event Horizon Invictus, which in addition to Anacreonian stupidity has all sorts of inane contrivances of its own.

And now with the Space Pope Election plot-line, even brother Day has had some fairly dumb things going on, and never mind Demerzel. Even though the trek along the spiral was interesting, the whole vision business, just ugh.

e: put some book spoiler tags just in case!

stephenthinkpad posted:

Yeah you just remind me that Voyager Doc style Seldon projection ruin the major set piece in the book Seldon pre-recorded prediction. Hey remember the geocities page you made 25 years ago? How about you just stealth edit it?

Atarask posted:

muscles like this! posted:

Explicitly showing whether or not Day had the vision was a weird decision. It would have been much better if the whole thing was ambiguous.

Metropolis posted:

I think Day was (not morally but practically) right to kill that priestess. Even if she was rebuked now she wasn't permanently defeated just because he went for a walk. That religion has trillions of followers, plenty of room for a schism big enough to be disruptive to his authority.

Metropolis posted:

I think Day was (not morally but practically) right to kill that priestess. Even if she was rebuked now she wasn't permanently defeated just because he went for a walk. That religion has trillions of followers, plenty of room for a schism big enough to be disruptive to his authority. Also if the Huntress' plan were to succeed he would be about to experience a great lesson in not dealing with potential rebels in half-measures, something I think we already saw him learning when he was Dawn.

Blowdryer posted:

i just realized gaals initial trip made took 37 years so all the dumb poo poo that happened on the ship with holo hari happened at the same time as the terminus timeline. they made it seem as if the plots would converge, but nope gaal is gone for another 100 years!

i guess the only significance is that the second foundation hasn't been set up by the time the anachreon crisis is takes place on terminus.

Tom Guycot posted:

I don't understand why Day would even give a poo poo about not seeing a vision. Hes not a member of this religion, so he certainly doesn't believe in whatever magic gods they worship, so why would he even expect to see a vision?



If i went to a revival church where people were falling over in aisles and getting faith healed by someone slapping their head, I wouldn't be worried I don't have a "soul" because I didn't break out into speaking in tongues.

Blowdryer posted:

i just realized gaals initial trip made took 37 years so all the dumb poo poo that happened on the ship with holo hari happened at the same time as the terminus timeline. they made it seem as if the plots would converge, but nope gaal is gone for another 100 years!

darkgray posted:

Why doesn't the ghost ship stink, anyway? All those bodies just defrosted.

rafikki posted:

If this premise sounds interesting, check out The House of Suns by Alastair Reynolds

Metropolis posted:

The jump-ship's jumping patterns aren't random, they're predictable. Based on the most reliable rumours of its sightings throughout the galaxy, Hari Seldon or some kinda psychohistory AI figured out the pattern. He designed the Foundation to be most likely exiled to Terminus so that they would have a chance at acquiring it. In the early episodes, not having a jump drive was a big deal to Hari. Acquiring an old (and therefore good) imperial Flagship vessel would mean the Foundation could protect itself instead of being at the mercy of every small band of space jerks. This would also let them acquire more power to maintain influence during the fall of the Empire. While they were probably hoping for more reliable protection from the Empire early on, the whole point of their operation is that the Empire would weaken to the point where they couldn't protect something in the outer rim in short order, so facing their first hostile military conflict and coming out on top with unassailable weaponry would be a top priority.

Cojawfee posted:

This was my first thought. Why are they taking off their space suits on a ship full of corpses? It's not like it's just skeletons, these frozen corpses that are soon going to thaw out and start stinking.

Phenotype posted:

Even something like The Expanse has to give up and handwave a magic gate once they want to write stories about humanity leaving the solar system.

darkgray posted:

I think there's a decent possibility the warden's random space jump will end up right in front of Gaal's pod, so her being absent for 100+ years isn't all that guaranteed.

Why doesn't the ghost ship stink, anyway? All those bodies just defrosted.