Recent content by Genly

Between the two kingdoms there was a part where the weather would change like the seasons we know on earth. The people of both kingdoms found this place strange and said that there were witches and other "mythical" creatures there. Maybe this region could be very stormy, with bad weather much...

Interesting concept. I am not sure of the dynamical stability of this system, and it would be interesting to do the calculation. I suspect, though, that our current understanding of the relevant physics is reasonably uncertain, given the current controversy about whether our Moon has actually...

I don't have much to add to Aldarion's very informative article. As he says, a good starting point for evil is ideology. Aldarion has outlined Sauron's ideology, his drive towards a kind of utopia that he believed only foolish people would oppose. He believed that he was wise, so he should rule...

Regarding civil war, I guess the causes are the usual ones: starkly different views of how society should be organized, a long history of animosity between two or more sides, and then a triggering event. The triggering event would typically cause intense disappointment for one side, leading to...

Impressive. Thanks for sharing.

Yeah, the Lion King was always a little problematic in that regard. They tried to explain it in the movie with the "circle of life" concept, relying on a sort of biological inevitability as a moral justification for why lions eat antelopes. I suppose that could be developed into a "willing...

I agree with Aldarion. The popularity of "fantasy in space" science fiction is much greater these days than so-called "hard" science fiction. I guess that means that people who like epic fantasy can also like epic space-based fantasy. Hard science fiction might have less appeal to people who...

I read it a long time ago and enjoyed it, although you have to be in the mood. A few years ago I was at a college dinner where part of the "entertainment" was a professor declaiming ten minutes of Beowulf in the original Anglo-Saxon. Funny, it seemed like longer than that...

Just putting it out there, but perhaps one issue to think about is whether a non-human character has different or additional "levels of attention". For example, they may react strongly to certain stimuli that humans might be unaware of. Or they may lack a particular important human trait e.g...

So there are two issues here. I guess the first is political: a weatherperson in that world would also have to be an effective negotiator and politician, as well as a forecaster. The second is technical: pushing a storm away from one location would probably lead to a storm elsewhere, perhaps...

If you need any technical advice on the weather, I am a meteorologist...

I guess one reason that oracles might remain separate from society and don't seek political power themselves is that while they may be able to predict future events, they may not know how to get there politically. For example, let's say an oracle in 1938 predicted (correctly) that Britain would...

From my naive perspective, "timid" could just be one aspect of a character's personality. A character could be timid with the opposite sex but ferocious in battle. A character could be an extremely confident merchant but be deathly afraid of his/her mother. Or timidity could just be a...

My initial thought is that it would have to be a very good prosthetic leg for the captain to walk without noticeable effects on his gait. His gait might be very close to normal, but not quite. Maybe this could be what Amber notices, and wonders about?

What if people's shapes shifted depending on their mood, making it rather easy to tell what they were thinking?