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Ftl faster than light terraformers6/21/2023 The dozen alien races that existed in the Milky Way all self-destructed by one means or another, with ages since death from many millions to, tragically, only a thousand years ago. Bluntly - why haven’t we gotten messages from all the aliens? The Fermi Paradox gets wrapped up in this story, too. As a result, there are no faceless mooks that can be mowed down without guilt. Another nice touch is that the sentient AIs are treated by humans and other AIs as if they are people. These smarter AIs are smart enough that Benjamin Prester, our investigative hero, manages to talk a couple of them out of killing him and into helping him against their mad scientist creator - on the grounds that having their creator surrender to the authorities, going to jail and getting treatment would be safer for him. beep, click! That does not compute!” “Don’t play non-sentient with me, buddy…” The AIs fall into two classes - dumb ones, which essentially just do as they’re told like contemporary computers, and smart ones, which appear to have a degree of personhood close to that of humans: In various different entertaining and dangerous ways. There are a lot of settings where AI just… go nuts. The scary part? Mars and the martian in this picture are sane. But one technology is particularly interesting… (Yes-men… or bots… aren’t terribly helpful, after all.) Nanobots are used for healing on multiple occasions. Our mad scientist is also smart enough to sometimes accept advice from his minions. For instance, the antagonist is smart enough to immediately realize that a craft seen taking only two minutes to get from Mars to Earth is going faster than light-speed, and acts on that intelligence. It’s not hard sci-fi by any stretch, but it does a nice job of remaining relatively consistent throughout. There are nanobots, antigravity “vector fields”, AI, disintegrators and ray guns. Faster-than-light communications are ubiquitous, and Mars has figured out how to do FTL travel. Mars, Venus, and Ganymede have all been terraformed to the point of habitability. To match the SRMD, there’s an appropriate amount of mad science. Of course, there are standard diagnostic criteria (mad cackling, crazy ideas, not playing well with others, using a lab coat to handle the chill…) and appropriate medical treatments. Mad scientists have a particular mental health issue, communicable via memes (particular ideas), which results in them being… well, mad scientists cackling about making a robot utopia, for example. That pretty much summarizes the main idea. Hey, I said there was mad science, right?īest quote ever: “When you’re a recovering mad scientist, you’re always afraid you’ll wake up some morning with a half-built time machine in the living room and a plan to go back in time and pants Hitler. Also the comments underneath by the authors.) I hadn’t noticed them before, but they add some bonus hilarity. (Also, when reading, don’t forget to read the titles on your browser window. As ever… spoilers! Big spoilers! I strongly recommend you read the comic first - it’s awesome. It’s a webcomic with good drawings and some of the best semi-squishy sci-fi I’ve come across, as well as a few relatively unusual features. I was originally going to just write up about that phenomenon… then I remembered A Miracle of Science. Everybody loves a good mad scientist, right?
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