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[AAR] The Grand Tour - Voyage To The Planets


czokletmuss

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I feel like many don't see the problem (that is well applicable to us too): We're too many and we take too much resources that our Planet will never be able to restore. We basically destroy ourselves and everything else. Of course no one can just go ahead and kill half of humanity, even if this might "fix" the problem or give us more time to fix it. It's a very difficult question, and I honestly don't expect anyone to find a solution for it - in our world. In the Kerbal universe, BERTY might be the only one who can ensure Kerbin's and Kerbality's survival in the long term. Of course this is not easy to explain morally, but if the other option is the extinction of all Kerbals... By the way, has anyone ever read "The Swarm" by Frank Schätzing? It kinda also deals with the problem we're discussing here, I certainly recommend reading it.

Czo, I guess you got into something rather complicated there... :D

Yes I agree. What many people don't understand is that every day we are killing the future of mankind with every piece of trash, with every kilowatt used, with every liter of CO2 we emit: all of this is poisoning our planet. I was quite shocked when on a physics lesson we were discussing different types of motor engines and how they emit these byproducts and then he said: you shouldn't worry about it, Earth will become inevitably poisoned not in your lifetime. I think this is the worst attitude kids are supposed to learn. I however love that there are many campaigns that raise money for recycling, nature protection and byproduct emission. They must teach the future generations that if we don't do something, the planet will just become overpopulated and poisoned. Considering birth, I think there should only be one child per family. If we don't control birth rates we will kill ourselves too quickly. China is a wise country, and they realized they overpopulated so they set up the 1 child law which is a very good thing. India has to do the same because it is insane how they have 8 children in families.

Yes I am not to judge about humanity but I will do my best to save us from ourselves. Before thinking that killing half of humanity is tyranny, think of it this way-your are extending humanities existence twice in time, which is saving multiple generations of humans.

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Can I ask if after the AAR is finished it will be downloadable via, say a txt file?

I was thinking about making a e-book of sort of the AAR but it would require a lot of work (for instance, screenshots - some of them are vital for the story because of the "show, don't tell" rule) and I would need someone to double-check the grammar and typos. I'm not sure whether I will do it - it would take few weeks probably and I think I prefer to spend my free time on something else. But honestly, I don't know right now :)

Btw there are some mistakes above:

You wrote Mun instead of Duna

You wrote "prove" where it should be "probe"

Where exactly?

You remind me of David Weber. If you have not heard of him, check out the Honor Harrington series and maybe "Out of the Dark". He has a knack for killing off characters too! ;)

Haha, okay, I'll check him out :)

By the way, has anyone ever read "The Swarm" by Frank Schätzing? It kinda also deals with the problem we're discussing here, I certainly recommend reading it.

Nope, but I'll surely check it out :)

Well, off this topic...

CZO, YOU'RE FREAKIN AWESOME!!!! :confused:

Your story is just amazing, I went through it almost unstoppably and lurked a bit after I finished in chapter 50, just waiting for 51 and 52. I was just too amazed to post anything.

I can only say: MOAR!!!

Really. Right to the feels.

Can't wait for the next chapters ^^

fun fact: i always imagine BERTY with a female voice, even though you refer to him as male. oops.

Thank you very much, I appreciate it :) I'm glad that you enjoy the story and since it's your first post in this thread - welcome!

And speaking about BERTY with a female voice - it's not like BERTY has a gender, so it's not so far-fetched. I'm refering to him as a male for the same reason the crew of "Proteus" does - it's easier and much more comfortable while interacting with it. There are various examples in s-f literature and movies and even video games. Plus, there is a Comptuer Voice trope:

In Speculative Fiction, computers can speak. It certainly beats having the audience read a computer screen. Most of the time the voice is female (theories on why vary, see below) to emphasize the "otherness" of the A.I.'s nature, but there are many examples of male and gender neutral synthesized voices. Generally, they all carry a pleasant (if somewhat dull) monotone. If it should ever become (or started out with) a Creepy Monotone, watch out.

The gender will vary depending on the intentions of the computer. If it is designed to be utilitarian, military like, then it will be male. If it is supposed to be very user friendly for the tech-ignorant, then it will be female. The Star Trek franchise even shows this evolution: in the original series the female voice was always used when accessing encyclopedic information. The movies were more military-like, so it used a male voice. The Next Generation era computers were simply the most user friendly computer possible short of reading your thoughts.

This has been referred to as the most common sci-fi female character archetype. That is, since Most Writers Are Male, and the Sci Fi Ghetto is particularly associated with male fans, there are a disproportionate number of male characters but somehow the idea of the female computer has gotten lodged into the collective unconscious. Probably not coincidentally, these A.I.'s will have long, largely nonsensical descriptions whose acronyms 'just happen' to spell feminine names. For example, the Computer-Human Liaison Officer Executable, or CHLOE for short.

Edited by czokletmuss
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David Weber is one of my favorite authors right now. Still waiting for the next in the main saga, but he has so many off-shoots on his tales and other universes he writes of that there's always something interesting in his work. For those that don't know him he mainly does military sci-fi tales, mostly far future stuff, but he has done fantasy stuff as well, and some... well, near alternate history. It's actually another world developing 17th century tech, but it feels like alternate history.

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Jeb finds that the lives of his fellow Kerbal are worth many times more than some mission.

BERTY finds that the mission would be for the greater good.

These Kerbal's LIVES, breath and blood, are not worth some technological advancement for one country.

But the technological advancement would keep the Kerbal race going; the greater good is upon them!

GAH! I CAN'T DECIDE!

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The problem is that since BERTY doesn't understand Kerbal emotion he doesn't understand them in total. How can he work 'for all Kerbality' when he doesn't grasp what that word truly means? True, one nation above others is not in the greater good, and true attempting to improve the works of all will benefit all and reduce the chance of extinction... unfortunately if BERTY thinks that giving the tech he garners to all of the planet will improve how the various Kerbals deal with one another he SERIOUSLY misunderstands them... if they are anything like people that is, and given what we've seen in Czo's story so far they is pretty darned close! The likelihood is that all it will do is foster further hatred and mistrust between nations and hasten any conflict, bringing extinction that much closer.

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This has been referred to as the most common sci-fi female character archetype. That is, since Most Writers Are Male, and the Sci Fi Ghetto is particularly associated with male fans, there are a disproportionate number of male characters but somehow the idea of the female computer has gotten lodged into the collective unconscious. Probably not coincidentally, these A.I.'s will have long, largely nonsensical descriptions whose acronyms 'just happen' to spell feminine names. For example, the Computer-Human Liaison Officer Executable, or CHLOE for short.

Slightly connected to this but Ive ended up imagining a good few of the characters as female (not BERTY though) and just need to mentally insert an s in from of every "he" describing them. Not for any strong reason, but it does help to mentally empahsise their diversity of personality in more visual terms, and provides a wider array of voices to give them.

Edited by PwnedDuck
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Legal stuff? I think the hardest part would be finding a publisher for this sort of stuff, because publishing companies are often big control freaks that require everything to conform to a certain formula. Something like this with lots of inside Kerbal humor would probably not impress publishers as much as we all wish it would, although it is certainly deserving of more. I've always wondered if it could be translated to video format, if we could find people to do all the voices and animation and KSP recording and stuff.

Edited by BigOto2
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try lulu.com my dad and mum and brother have all used this and made a profit!!

-- you can have hardback, paperback & even .pdf all avaliable for sale.

-- with full colour pictures, monochrome, no picture versions.

-- you can do all diffrent versions, price them diffrently

then post the link in your signature and watch the sale roll in.

thus no publisher: you are the publisher and they print books individually and ship them.

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try lulu.com my dad and mum and brother have all used this and made a profit!!

-- you can have hardback, paperback & even .pdf all avaliable for sale.

-- with full colour pictures, monochrome, no picture versions.

-- you can do all diffrent versions, price them diffrently

then post the link in your signature and watch the sale roll in.

thus no publisher: you are the publisher and they print books individually and ship them.

It's not that, it is about if SQUAD will let czo do it

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forum rule 2.2.g would prevent the signature from publising the book perhaps but#

My understanding is this.

On the one hand:

Copyright is the automatic right of the creator from the point that the first 'recorded' the work in a tangible manner. In this case, from the point you type it in on the keyboard. So this would mean that as the 'creator' of the post, you are the copyright owner.

However....

In posting on the forum, you will have accepted the terms that this type of publication implies. In posting you are accepting that your content will be published by the site owner, and also that the site owner has the right to edit or delete your post as he sees fit. not sure if this forum has any rule on copyright ownership.

Copyright law protects the expression of ideas but not the ideas themselves. The names of characters and planets and moons are useable but pictures from in game would have to be AUTHORISED by Squad.

but I'd still ask Squad myself and see if they had any issues with such a project. who knows they might think it an excellent idea and support it and give their bleesing to ussing images from in game and alsorts of things or they might say 'no'.

Anyway I'm looking forward to the next chapter, and can't believe what happening around Jool! :)

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-snip-

Currently I'm not interested in publishing book - this would require a lot of work, besides the possible legal issues (I'm a EU citizien, so selling something in USA won't be so easy for me I'm afraid, not to mention taxes). Right now I prefer to concentrate on writing. Besides, if you would like to donate you already have such possibility :)

yEdh07v.jpg

But who knows, maybe I'll think about it later near the end of the story. And there is also my Secret Project... :P

Crimeny I have a lot of catching up to do on this story...

I think a PDF format could work well, by the way. You can embed images in those quite easily.

Yup, last time you posted in this thread it was chapter 20-30 I guess :)

David Weber is one of my favorite authors right now. Still waiting for the next in the main saga, but he has so many off-shoots on his tales and other universes he writes of that there's always something interesting in his work. For those that don't know him he mainly does military sci-fi tales, mostly far future stuff, but he has done fantasy stuff as well, and some... well, near alternate history. It's actually another world developing 17th century tech, but it feels like alternate history.

Sounds interesting. Although I personally prefer history rather than alternate history - not because it's more realistic (you would be surprise how crazy things were going on) but because it actually happened.

Slightly connected to this but Ive ended up imagining a good few of the characters as female (not BERTY though) and just need to mentally insert an s in from of every "he" describing them. Not for any strong reason, but it does help to mentally empahsise their diversity of personality in more visual terms, and provides a wider array of voices to give them.

Actually I made them all male because they have male names generated by the game. Today however with the Texture Replacer I guess it's possibly to finally get some female kerbals.

Is their a Tvtropes page for this yet?
Not yet, but it seriously deserves one. I guess it deserves a mention on the KSP main page under 'fanfic recs' or whatever it's called.

Now THAT would be awesome! :)

I'd say everything looks fine but that's tempting fate...

:evil laugh:

I can't wait for BERTY to sing a little song.

(If you get my reference)

We'll see about that :)

Edited by czokletmuss
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Sounds interesting. Although I personally prefer history rather than alternate history - not because it's more realistic (you would be surprise how crazy things were going on) but because it actually happened.

Might not be your cup of tea then! ;) The Honor Harrington series is loosely based on Age-of-sail Europe, though, and he pulls ideas from history a lot. It's a good jumping off point to see what events he's referring to for myself.

In any case, both you and he write amazing stuff. Can't wait for the next chapter.

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