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| Destroyer Question: Number Of Colonists At Reunion | |
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| Tweet Topic Started: Apr 16 2008, 06:07 PM (3,079 Views) | |
| agricola | Apr 29 2008, 03:06 AM Post #46 |
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A very possible explanation - which doesn't explain why CJC ever brought them up in the first - and second - place. I still think there is a backstory somewhere with extra 'Taylorites'! Maybe they were on Reunion? book one - Bren gave his mother his citizenship allotment (don't recall the name but it was in book one) because he didn't need it - and she took that and some extra cash and 'bought Toby a medical practice on the North Shore'. (Bren didn't need his because he went into the Foreign Service and his education was paid for - or at least, that's the notion I got from that. Give me some time and I'll find the exact reference). Even a casual country doctor has emergency calls now and then. Toby drops everything and flies to Brentano every time mother has an emergency and Bren can't be there. Oftener. If he's in a medical practice, it isn't very onerous. I vote for dentist. My dentist works four days a week and takes regular vacations and he golfs too. And goes skiing. A few years ago, he broke his leg big time and was having quite a time of it, trying to do dental work with an entire leg casted ankle to thigh! Dentists are terribly depressed though. They have a very high suicide rate as an occupational category. Maybe because their job involves (occasionally and unavoidably) hurting people and frightening children? Not that my dentist frightens children. He's very nice, really. My BIL is an optometrist and he might be able to have the same kind of hours, if he wasn't such an overachieving ... ahem. Never mind that. But while I'm pretty sure people will always need their teeth cleaned and possibly straightened a bit, I'm not at all sure that near and far sightedness aren't going to be done away with eventually, since there does seem to be a considerably hereditary component to it. Which means gene therapy should work someday. Should I mention I'm the departmental person of choice for editing other people's technical articles? Book four is definitely the worst 'edited' of them all. I have little notes in the margin all through it. The Nojana/Narana thing is the worst and most obvious. |
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| agricola | Apr 29 2008, 03:17 AM Post #47 |
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The FIFTH book, Defender, by the way, dwells on the '300 survivors' number. Bren considers it to be far too few in number to keep a station running and operating, and thinks they certainly would not have been able to mine fuel for the ship (preparing to leave). Hanging issue: where did Bren get the info he casually discussed with Ilisidi prior to ever going up to the station at all, that Reunion was damaged but not destroyed and Ramirez was ordered to go to the atevi world by authorities there? Because that's what is stated (and that is apparently what did actually happen). Yet every indication AFTER that, is that NOBODY knew there were survivors at Reunion at all, EXCEPT Ramirez and his companions (Jenrette among them) - Ogun didn't know. Sabin didn't know. Jase - nobody knew. So how did BREN know? I think personally CJC slipped up there, and changed her mind about where to go with the story between the writing of book3 and the next trilogy. And if I weren't so darned anal about those things (and if the story weren't so bloody GOOD that I have reread the whole series multiple times), it could easily slip by. But that still doesn't explain how you go from '300 survivors' which presumably is the number Ramirez left in a message for Ogun et al.in Precursor (book 4); to some few thousands - which in the LAST of that triplet of books, the ship seems to expect - because during the trip to Reunion, they are preparing several decks for the survivors. It is never explained. We are left at the end of book 5 still looking at '300' and pick up with book 6 with numbers in the four and five digits. And nobody, but NOBODY seems the least bit surprised or remarks on it at all! Blast it! |
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| ready | Apr 29 2008, 10:57 PM Post #48 |
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Member Mathematicians Guild
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My personal opinion is that Trent Cope who came down to take Yolanda's place is one of Taylor's Children and that others of that ilk were on Reunion when the kyo took out part of the station. I still believe that Taylor's children will figure in a future book. (By the way isn't it interesting that Taylor who was a navigator, not a captain, is revered as a captain?) |
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| Surtac | Apr 30 2008, 12:53 AM Post #49 |
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Antipodean Assassin
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Wasn't Taylor the primary / senior pilot at the controls when the original Point Error occurred, rather than the navigator? :invert |
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| agricola | Apr 30 2008, 01:15 AM Post #50 |
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Taylor was pilot. I think senior. I don't think I can wait a whole 'nother year for the next book! |
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| Arianne_Luinithil | Apr 30 2008, 11:26 AM Post #51 |
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Bu-javid tekikin
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Well, if Cope is one of Taylor's Children that Ramirez had created as a diplomatic corps, he's not been covering himself with overmuch glory, so far as we know. In fact I don't think CJC's mentioned the guy at all since the first time we heard about him in Precursor. Wasn't he supposed to be Yolanda's replacement? Yet in Defender onwards, no mention at all of him, and Yolanda maintains her post as paidhi in Shejidan and later on Mospheira. What gives? And yeah, Taylor was a pilot, but not a captain--at least he was never addressed as such, as far as I remember. The later books also mention pilots other than captains guiding the ship, or at least commanding during the times between watches when neither Sabin nor Jase were on duty, according to my rather spotty and nutrient-starved memory. If so, perhaps a ship's pilot could be considered as something like captains in their duties, but not of Captain rank? (has just succeeded in confusing herself. One really should not take to theorising on an empty stomach.) |
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| agricola | May 1 2008, 05:06 AM Post #52 |
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On the trip to Reunion, pilots were 'in charge' in the shifts between Sabin and Jase. Possibly 'second in commands'? Is it likely/possible that pilots are the main source of new captains? Ogun is TRAINING pilots at Alpha - he MUST have been a pilot himself - I am talking myself into the idea that pilot ranks are the pool of captain -candidates. I've also persuaded myself that the '300 survivors' are CREW in some fashion. Phoenix makes a distinction between crew and colonists. Is there a crew contingent that was/could have been resident on Reunion for some reason? Maybe families? People in 'school'? Discussions between the principles in Precursor and following make it clear that 'the crew' of Phoenix had originally (by Ramirez) been told that there were NO survivors of the attack on Reunion. Although some of them knew otherwise - one, of course, Jenrette. I still don't really understand Sabin. |
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| Arianne_Luinithil | May 2 2008, 09:54 AM Post #53 |
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Bu-javid tekikin
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Hmm---nadi, one believes you may be on to something. After all, all those offspring of senior command who are aspiring Captains, no matter what their hereditary privileges of command may be, doubtless require training and aptitude to be capable of piloting the ship. Which just highlights how unique Jase's position on ship is--he may well be the ONLY captain in Phoenix history to never have gone through the selection process employed to find potential Captain candidates. :winkgrin Hang it, he is, I'm certain. Seeing this, one wonders just how much distinction does Phoenix make between crew and colonists, and at what point does one transit into the other? Don't understand Sabin-aiji? Join the club. *mutters* One reckons that her numbers are still very much mysterious; about the only firm man'chi that Sabin will hold to is the preservation of the ship and its crew, inasmuch as they are needed to run the thing. |
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| Chanor-ji | May 2 2008, 04:04 PM Post #54 |
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I :salad: Sabin. She is pretty much a law unto herself, and mostly a cypher to everyone around her except possibly Ramirez before he died and Jules Ogun, who got left at the station. Arianne said:
That's pretty much how I see Sabin, too. She has a will of iron, and the only reason the Dowager got the best of her at the beginning was through stealth. (Wouldn't you just love to be a fly on the wall at a tea party for Ilisidi, her cousin and Sabin? :rofl: ) I'd love to find out about Sabin's back story. Has Phoenix always been her one and only love? She's bitter about Ramirez's poking around in kyo space. Why? (Besides the obvious that it brought the kyo to Reunion.) From what she told Jase, she was pretty much against it from the beginning -- even before they found traces of the kyo. Was Sabin always this dour and stolid? What made her the way she is? I hope the Divine One :cherryh: sees fit to give us much more of Sabin in future volumes. |
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| Blond Tekikin | May 3 2008, 10:49 AM Post #55 |
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Just to throw something into the mix- in the original trilogy Jase's big revelation to Bren on thier 'camping trip' was that he was 'pilot's guild'- witch seems to cover all ranking positions. (It was the 'pilot's guild' that the Mospherians blame for robbing the atevi-earth stationers to the point that they had to go planetside.) So it woule make sense that it's this guild that later 'pilot' quotes are refering to. |
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| Arianne_Luinithil | May 3 2008, 01:28 PM Post #56 |
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Bu-javid tekikin
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Well, it would make sense, if we go by the assumption that all pilots are automatically Guild? Which I suppose goes without saying... Blond Tekikin-ji, just what point were you trying to make? One is somewhat confused. |
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| Tevia | May 4 2008, 04:23 AM Post #57 |
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This is just my understanding, of course, but I do so firmly believe in the distinction between Crew and Colonists. Stationers were Colonists. Mospheirans are colonists who left station. Crew mostly left with the ship - maybe some stayed on the station - the ones that fought going down to the planet... Now the political beliefs continued from those early crew/stationers/unwilling descenders to the planet can be found in the Heritage Society that just wants to get back to space no matter how. Not the part that believes only in human superiority necessarily though the two may overlap. |
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| Arianne_Luinithil | May 4 2008, 09:54 AM Post #58 |
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Bu-javid tekikin
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That does seem to be what nand' :cherryh: was trying to get at in Inheritor and Precursor, one believes. |
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| Blond Tekikin | May 4 2008, 11:57 AM Post #59 |
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This is what I was responding to- one shouldn't skip several posts like that without quoting, bad BT! (& to clarify- if pilot & captain are just ranks within the same guild it answers most of our speculation, doesn't it?)
If Jase is pilot's guild back when he was on the planet how has he really circumvented anything. (He's shifted specialty, one might say.) |
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| Arianne_Luinithil | May 4 2008, 01:03 PM Post #60 |
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Bu-javid tekikin
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Hmm. But Jase isn't a pilot--not by training until much later, after he became a Captain; even then he has no practical experience--and certainly NOT by inclination. His early training, along with Yolanda's was all languages and history, little to do with astrophysics or things of that sort. So the most inexperienced Captain on board--that's him, never having gone through tests, exams, etc. of his qualifications on ship systems, ops and general navigation. So we could say that Jase is Guild by blood--assuming Taylor's Children to all be automatic members--but not truly trained to be Guild, as in neither he nor Yolanda can pilot, as far as we know? |
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