Grrl Power #867 – Tour from the stars
Yeah. Earth is apparently open for business. At least some aliens seem to think so.
The first panel here didn’t quite land like I’d hoped. I think if you look at it long enough, you can tell it’s a guy leaning down to look out the windshield of his car at a rocketship that’s landed in the middle of times square. The reason it doesn’t work as well as I’d hoped is because if this was a TV show or a movie, you’d get a clear shot of the guy, then the focus would rack to show the spaceship, and neither one would be at 50% transparency.
I considered cutting the panel in half and doing a focus change, but I thought it’d be too small, and it still does work. It’s not elegant, but you can tell what’s going on if you spend a little time on the panel. Lesson learned for next time I guess.
So… a big part of me is convinced that I’ve seen almost this exact joke somewhere before, but I can’t place it. It could be one of those self-cryptomnesia events where I thought of this joke a long time ago and then when I re-thought of it, I thought I was repurposing it from something else I’d seen – or if I’d actually just recycled someone else’s joke. I hope I haven’t, but I don’t know, this feels like something I would have seen in… I want to say a Men In Black movie? But the aliens are secret in those, so they wouldn’t be wandering around. Well, if I copied this joke from elsewhere then I apologize to whoever popularized it. Or whoever did it first – honestly a scene like this could have appeared in half the books you guys recommended last time.
Speaking of which, there were a lot of great suggestions for space opera or at least sci-fi books under the last post. My wishlist has swollen considerably and I’ll be checking a few of them out at least. I should have mentioned I’d already gotten into some Honor Harrington though. Quite a few recommendations for that. I really liked the technical space battles in them, something I wouldn’t think I’d be into, but I got to something like book 7 or 8 and was like, eh, I get it, and didn’t follow through with the rest of the series. I guess I can always go back to it.
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I’ve read some Honor Harrington, but not all.
I kind of lucked out and bought an HH book at St vinnies, and it had a cd with all the books up the point of the one I’d bought. I still have a LOT of books to read through now.
Yeah one of the nice things about Baen as a publisher, and David Drake since he agreed to it, surprised the disc was still with it.
The Honor Harrington Series is one of my favorites. My Wife got me hooked on them. David Weber is an excellent writer! :-)
I just looked up Honor Harrington. It sounds like Horatio Hornblower in space. I’ll look into it.
If y’all like Honor Harrington, you should check out the Vatta’s War series by Elizabeth Moon (Book 1 is called Trading in Danger).
FWIW, the various Baen CDs are available online in various places, albeit under a slightly stretched interpretation of “you can make copy for a friend” and at least one of them, the Vorkosigan CD, is generally not available by request of the author (the author, Lois McMaster-Bujold says that she was never really asked, and feels that the data shows that she lost money on Baen deciding to give those stories away for free, based on sales for the one book then-published that was not in the collection).
I personally think it was a brilliant idea, but I also sympathize with Lois that it should have been more voluntary on the part of the author.
I’m not sure on when that specific one was released, I have difficulty believing Jim while he was alive would have gone through with it without asking permission. And I seriously doubt her sales were hurt by the discs, the idea and the BFL generally have been met with a positive response from the community and the sales haven’t been lacklustre for her or the others compared to the rest of the industry; a big chunk of my own shelves are occupied by Baen published authors and they’re not exactly empty Weber, Drake, McCaffrey, Moon, Norton, Lackey, Niven, Nye, Asprin, Pournelle, Turtledove all there.
Weber is a phenominal author… except for his ‘Out of the Dark’, which has an ending ‘Out of the Blue’. If you’re liking his work, I might suggest the Looking Glass series by John Ringo and Travis Taylor. Plenty of Hard (and some fuzzy) science, and some really insane scenarios… both the “Holy cow!” and the “Those pics had to be photo-shopped, no way in @#%^ that could happen for real!” sense of insane.
You’re being invaded through portals by a silly strong enemy… you’ve fought him off and locked the door…but the lock will fail and probably soon. You’ve got your hands on an alien FTL drive system. What do you do?
You load the drive into a submarine, arm the sub with biggest bang for weapons you can give it, and send the thing into space to see if you can find anyone out there, be they more alien baddies, or friendlies who can offer aid. Friendly aliens exist, yes? Gak, stop gnawing on the sub!, we need that to get home!
As to Baean’s deal with generally distributing “no DRM books”, I could see doing that with the first book or two in any series, and never the last couple books. If people don’t know what they’re getting… it’s a risk to them “I may hate it…” but once they’ve decided if they like the series or not, readers can feel free to shell out for the conclusion, or not.
“As to Baean’s deal with generally distributing “no DRM books”, I could see doing that with the first book or two in any series, and never the last couple books. If people don’t know what they’re getting… it’s a risk to them “I may hate it…” but once they’ve decided if they like the series or not, readers can feel free to shell out for the conclusion, or not.”
Somewhere on the Baen site are Eric Flint’s posts about why Baen doesn’t do DRM. What it amounts to is, “We decided to trust the readers.” Please note that Tor now publishes without DRM, also.
If a reader wants to, he can load Calibre and Uncle Al’s de-DRM tools and strip all that encryption crap off. Then you can have the mobipocket format (same as un-encrypted Kindle), or whatever format your other readers read.
With Baen, you don’t need to. You can directly download each and all of HTML, MOBI, EPUB, EREADER, PALM, RTF… whatever. First books in the series, last books, middle books. All of them. They trust you not to sell them.
Baen Books, formerly Published by the late Jim Baen, now by Toni Weisscopf. There is a mega/giga/terafan named Joe Buckley who Jim Baen and heirs gave permission to host all those book CDs. 21 of them, people.
Do you need all 21 CDs to own most of the eBooks of David Weber, David Drake, John Ringo, Eric Flint and Dave Freer? No, you do not. Instead, you can browse here: http://baencd.thefifthimperium.com/ and download the zip file of the latest CD by each author. That latest CD will contain nearly everything found in earlier CDs.
For example, I am an Eric Flint fan. The Eastern Front CD contains nearly half of the books of the Ring of Fire series.
There are a bunch of Weber CDs, starting with the Honorverse CD. I’m not sure which Ringo CD is the latest, nor which Drake CD. That’s why you browse.
And while you’re at it, DaveB, get an image of Joe Buckley, and kill him. It’s traditional. Everyone kills him, at least once. Some authors kill him over and over and over. Ringo parked him in the blast zone of an anti-matter weapon and detonated it, then dropped a space ship on him. Named a PDA after him and it has a paranoid personality. They get destroyed, a lot. Kill Joe Buckley, DaveB, you owe it to your fans.
I wonder if any of he aliens are going to recognize Sydney for eating the spicy food at the space station
…Probably less than the odds of someone recognizing one of the Four people who completed the Entire Pancake Mount Doom Mega meal.
Note that I would not be surprised if anyone from here recognize what I’m talking about., But your talking about the population of at least a galaxy.
We don’t know if Andy also got on the wall, it could be 5 by now.
Welp, now I got to search that.
Search El Goonish Shive archives. :)
Well, so much for the Prime Directive! When do we get FTL?
When we pull it out of our own arses (or Sydney’s)
Give it five weeks before SmugD reveals his own ‘homegrown’ FTL (that he used wholemeal from Fracture)
Nah, Cora would buy the US a entry level spaceship in return for the Fel ship, remember?
Then I guess ArcSWAT has become traffic control for the tourist rockets? Until the Galactic Police can find their way here?
Not an insane assignment for them. The local police don’t have Arcswat’s experience with extreme weirdness, nobody knows what these aliens are doing, they might have captured a local family by force or guile (only the father knows that they paid hm about five troy pounds of gold for a simple tour.)
Sure, after a quick check they’ll know these are friendly tourists, but they don’t know that yet!
Imagine if it were that alien from Asterix and the Falling Sky!? The alien’s name is Toon and is from the planet Tadsilweny,an anagram of Walt Disney….
“Hello. My name is (unpronounceable)”
“Well, Ms. Pronounceable, our first stop is the gourmet fare of Wendy’s”
I think a big part of why the first panel does not work is that there’s conflicting perspectives. A modern car’s windshield is at a pretty shallow angle; eyeballing the cars at a nearby parking lot says about 30 degrees from horizontal. In order to see that far back into the cabin of the car you’d have to look in from a fairly low angle. Geometry says that from a viewpoint like that the reflection would be mostly sky and certainly would not show anything in front of the car. This perspective also makes the man on the driver’s seat look like some sort of hunchback; the head is too far down for a mostly-frontal view, even if he’s leaning forward.
The second perspective is the view of the rocketship and buildings. It looks like the view direction at the bottom of the ship is pretty close to horizontal. In order to get that kind of reflection you’d need to put the viewpoint above the roof of the car and look down at the windshield.
This would work better with a windshield angle typical of a van or a minibus.
That’s assuming it’s a modern car, and not one from the 80’s (or even earlier)
The dad is practically leaning on the wheel, that’s how forward he is
Okay, how are they going to deal with it?
I say:
– pull on uniforms and enforce law and order mostly just by helping clueless aliens to people with clues.
– open a spaceship check in somewhere nobody cares.
– Maxima calls the council to speak with the representative of extraterrestrial life, the president, boarder control, the air force, etc.
– Ariana accelerates a healthy tourism sector to deal with this.
– Sydney does nothing with her powers, so they don’t get detected and (mis)identified as NTH-tech
– Arc Light identifies which aliens are currently present and their needs.
– Xuriel uses her intel to identify possible threats.
– Hiro flies up, directs traffic and advices the teleporters where to help.
– the teleporters help where there form problems
– To keep all their powers secret to avoid interstellar war Arc-Sparq introduces disguises: Hiro gets a fake jetpack, Maxima stays out of view, Xuriel doesn’t need it, everyone with super strength gets a fake exoskeleton(or a real one he doesn’t use often), Harem uses the fact that all her 5 bodies look different, Jiggawatt gets an actual disguise and a futuristic looking gun, Gestalt girl gets full body clothing, Achilles gets futuristic looking armor, Math doesn’t need it, Anvil gets futuristic looking armor, Adrealine guy gets a fake exoskeleton, Jabberwocky gets a gag, Heatwave gets a futuristic looking hairdryer, etc.
feel free to add and correct
After the Fel-Fiasco, the whole damn Universe knows Dirt has Supers, and if just a half dozen can completely destroy a Fel ship, they won’t dare piss off the entire planet
Only a few Galactic police officers and a few befriended adventures knew of this encounter.
I suspect the galactic police would not share this information with the international community and Cora and crew(not knowing how strong other armies are) would probably keep it a secret for earth’s safety.
As of this fear factor, sure everything lower level than space empire wouldn’t dare if they heard about this, but the rest would only be motivated to harness this amazing resource.
Sorry if this’s double my comment doesn’t seem to function.
Only a few befriended space adventurers and the galactic police saw this and they’ve both a reason to keep it secret.
The galactic police doesn’t want to deal with whatever the reaction will be from the galaxy and Cora and crew don’t know how strong all space armies are and so have reason to convince the galaxy that their earth friends don’t have anything of value(she already established that she fears such attack with Sydney and her statement over her NTH orbs and after the fight she said “maybe earth has something the galaxy wants”.
Furthermore, while I agree everything under “space empire” level wouldn’t dare challenge Maxima’s and Vehemence’s home planet, but space empires and higher now only have motivationto harness this incredible resource.
This is assuming the galactic police doesn’t have random galactic citizens listening in using a common police scanner, or the advanced tech version thereof. I doubt the overarching galactic law enforcement has an unbreakable security algorithm and just like on Earth, there’s probably lots that just do it as a hobby to know what the police know.
Heh heh.
I thought a flier might need to conceal their attribute someday with a backpack or a broom.
A snowboard would look like a BTtF2 Hoverboard if they could stay close to the ground.
Well, those kids are going to have an awesome story to tell their grandchildren about how their great-grandfather gave a tour to some of the first (known) alien tourists.
Of course, they are here “illegally”. I will give them a pass only because the government has not yet passed legislation to grant “Non-terrestrial beings” travel visas, but that needs to be fixed rather quickly. We need to protect Earths (and America’s) economy from the rapid influx of goods, and the potential risks to our agriculture from unknown pathogens.
(Heck, there are agricultural checkpoints into California. If they do that for other American States, we definitely need to do that for non-terrestrial produce.)
The agricultural check points in California are not there to protect California agriculture from disease. Rather, they are to protect it from competition, disease being just an excuse. As an attempt to fight disease, the check points are inefficient and ineffective. It is very effective in forcing competition from other states to have to comply with deliberately expensive California regulations. Since the regulations have been around for generations, other purposes have likely crept in. [I hear the cops use it to arrest people trying to flee the state.] But the “attempt to protect California from disease” is still a con.
BTW, DaveB, the boy’s seatbelt is going the wrong way. Minor nitpick.
Even more fun: the boy is missing in the first frame. Just the girl’s leg is visible in the back seat.
And seatbelts do not connect to the actual seat like that
Or maybe this is just one of those 1-Star rated cars fear-mongers keep yarping on about
Eh, if he’s in the middle seat… but then we get the implausibility of siblings being in that close of contact without wounds.
Thought that as well, then looked at their legs: different colours and design
If this is the problem I wouldn’t call Arc-Swat.
I think normal military personal can help much better, because they’re more organized and don’t hold enough power to cause an interstellar war and no the genitals aren’t already revealed everyone who currently knows how powerfull the top of supers are is either death, space cop, befriended with Archon, stuck on earth or a space smuggler(SmugD) and while it’s true that some alien civilizations wouldn’t dare Maxima’s home planet, remember that there’re also giant space empires and even a third and fourth level of alien with even more power.
class 1 civilizations could view Earth as potential up and coming competition.
class 2 civilizations would likely still be weary of Maxima’s power but contain power to destroy the entire Earth a thousand times over and in this setting it looks like all the 1.5-2.5 civilizations have joined a single space police force (Xevoarchy), with possibly a few upstarts and outliers to contend with like the Fel and kaiju world breakers.
class 3 appear from what Cora said to be your typical annoying glowing squid ancients who think nothing in the physical world is their problem anymore (basically they might as well be dead), and only show up to deliver cryptic messages of peace, guidance, and your usual *oh great champion I deliver through the crystal obelisk this message to defeat the eldritch dark lord* that just leaves you wandering why they don’t take care of that problem themselves if they think its so important.
class 4: if these Nth are above the Kessler scale of galaxy empire, multi-galaxy, up to universe…or slide away from this imperialistically minded and limited thought process and can move inward to sub-spaces, outer dimensions, or beyond the far dark… or are the whole (we can manipulate local laws of physics, created entire sub-universes that can exist on their own after set up and continue on surviving, manipulate the raw dimensional distortion potential of reality to create a controllable matrix that most lower civilizations would regard as a natural phenomenon (magic);…then chances are you’ll be dealing with them on an individual by individual case.
-some reality manipulating superhero or fae or other supernatural being who is suspiciously more knowledgeable or powerful than others.
-someone playing a game with the universe but has put limiters on themselves, amnesia, reincarnation, but their power and understanding of complex things keeps popping up surprising even them *also thirds and really high seconds can pull this trick *see ghost diver mechanical beings observing a world by experiencing life there as one of them by using a psycho-dimension hack to be the subconscious observer/soul of a human child, or plant an orphan bot and alter the memories of the parents.
Basically something along the lines of Q from Star Trek just goofing around, upwards to Washu who blocked her own memories of being a hyper-reality being who with her sisters created the multiverse the series takes place in as an experiment. to everything in between. I mean you also have things like Star Ocean where such a civilization weren’t physically gods themselves just had the technology to create a reality with physics they designed (a sort of super version of the Matrix but physically existing in its own dimension).
Actually this does make me wander where the astral beings and eldritch mentioned before by Dabbler fit into this hierarchy, I am guess (natural thirds), but without tech assistance. Sort of the thing when mixing sci-fi and fantasy elements together you end up with Galactus and the Abstracts sort of beings contenting with magical Shuma Gorath and Dormammu beings, along side ancient civilizations who have ascended and created devices capable of controlling and destabilizing reality; or those god like hyper dimensional beings working backwards to create technology to understand and interact with lower dimensions but because of their “physical” nature even their most basic stuff ends up insanely advanced as they could see and manipulate key components of reality to produce them…see Tokimi, Tsunami, and pre-series Washu (some light novel stuff), for doing that.
I’d like so much to see those billionaires hoarding their fortune in gold discovering that outside source made their treasury as valuable as its weight in plastic.
Haha. Indeed XD.
Is that holographic accessories or holographic full outfit?
It’s a good conductor, but too dang soft to use on its own which is why we just electroplate harder stuff with it. If we had vast metal reserves, there are harder alloys that conduct just as well – we already use palladium extensively on Earth, it used to costs as little as 1/2 as much but is now about the same price.
Orphaned reply, disregard.
As a photographer myself, I concur about the frame 1 issues.
If I were framing it myself I would have the square scene from above with ship as the main focus, the car interior shown through a sunroof or glass top, with the ‘dad’ looking wide perplexed through the windscreen, is it a new shop display etc, or the flames and smoke if he watched it land, then the rest.
But as the internet states this ^ is only one persons personal opinion.
But as you are a super hero photographer yourself, your opinion in capturing such complex issues is highly valued.
I will be the first to admit I didn’t read all 272 comments before this one, so apologies in advance if this was already said.
I think I may know where you’re seen a bit similar to this one, Dave. One of many, probably, depending on how far you want to stretch the word “similar”, but this was the one that popped into my head (whereupon it tried unsuccessfully to flee in terror):
( Note: I’m going to try “spoiler” tags below; if they don’t work, and by some horrible twist of fate you’ve never seen Jumanji, just stop reading when next you see the word “spoiler”.)
In Jumanji (the original with Robin Williams), Van Pelt goes into a gun store to buy ammo. He’s told his ammo hasn’t been available for decades, so he decides to buy a new rifle. The proprietor begins explaining about paperwork and waiting periods, until Van Pelt plops down several gold coins. The proprietor immediately withdraws the paperwork and signals his wife to lock the door and close the blinds. And claims the gold, of course. (He also asks, somewhat belatedly, whether Van Pelt is a postal worker.)
Sigh. Not only did the spoiler tags not work, but I totally forgot that they’d be invisible nonetheless. My apologies to anyone who got despoiled … enspoiled? … whatever. It’s about as minor as spoilers get, anyway.
The spoiler tag is used using the square [ brackets rather than the L < brackets
Some people have been speculationing that this is what Maxi was talking about
Doubt they would call in Archon to deal with off-world tourists, unless this happened prior to Archon being called in
Personally feel this is just a fun little breather in between, like DaveB likes to add from time to time
I would be inclined to think that it is indeed what Max was talking about, or a part of it anyhow. She specifically mentioned that the problem was in New York. Whilst, in his commentary above, Dave confirms that this scene is in Times Square (which is in New York).
Further no regular agency or police force would be competent to deal with all the issues relating to a bunch of alien tourists disembarking in Times Square! At best they would be flummoxed. At worst they might try arresting or even shooting one, for whatever reasons we could conjecture. Risking an interplanetary incident or war is best averted by sending in Archon, as they are used to (covertly) dealing with aliens.
It would also explain why Maxima would be willing to have Cora along, despite the risk that she may consider that someone deserves a shooting. Having an alien starship captain to paw would be very handy if trying to negotiate with an alien starship captain, without using the Bruce Willis technique.
Forget the drake Equation, what are the odds of a random car in NYC not being a cab?
What equation? When you can see the aliens in front of you, you really do not need to be reaching for your formula book, unless you want to cross it out.
Sorry Yorp, I forget.
Does anyone else see what looks like the Star Trek symbol in the middle of panel one???
Mind you, I haven’t read through all the comments, but did a ‘Trek’ search on the 3 pages and got Zero results.
Just wondering …
Yes I totally thought it was a star trek symbol at first.
“Close, but no cigar” Can anyone recognize, the reference.
For anyone who does not, they can peruse the answer on the earlier comments pages for this comic.
I know this is a minor point but I’ve never seen a backseat car seat belt which was a shoulder seatbelt. They’re usually just across the waist from what I remember.
Maybe I was just spending my time buying really unsafe cars though.
Yeah, the seatbelt is on the wrong side
I have, but it was a really old car my grandpa used to drive. Like where the backseat felt like a couch and the ceiling had almost a shag carpeting to it and enough trunk space to shove a whole full grown buck deer inside it.
They are common in countries with higher safety standards, such as the UK. I was wearing one today, in a cab.
They’re called “lap-sash”, and in most countries have been mandatory since the 70s. Of course, most of those countries are not “freedom-loving”, so their governments can get away with repressive safety measures.
Yes, exactly: emphasis on the ‘lap’, this belt is the more typical ‘shoulder-to-hip’ belt, and rarely (if ever) attached to the front fabric of the seat, and also typically, go from the outside-in
The boy is sat in the middle seat, so the sash can attach from either side.
It took a second read of this page to see the Monty Python reference. I’m disappointed in my observation skills.
I’m super happy that people suggested Honor Harrington, and need to re-read some of those myself. If you’re enjoying the more technical side of “hard scifi” then I recommend the BattleTech Legends books, as they’re now known. Definitely the most realistic depiction of battlemechs you’ll find, and a great source of combined arms battles, political intrigue, and human interaction set in a really cool, realistic future. That is, if you aren’t already familiar with the franchise, considering it’s age. And as always, love the comic!
“So… a big part of me is convinced that I’ve seen almost this exact joke somewhere before, but I can’t place it.”
Honestly, I’ve never seen this particular gag before. So it’s possible it just feel like you’ve seen it before. In the same way that Lin-Manuel Miranda talks about Hamilton as being something the thought ‘must have been done already’ except that it hadn’t :).
It’s crazy, I was sure I had seen almost this exact scene somewhere before, minus the kids in the backseat.
Speaking of sci-fi, have you read The Deathworlders? It’s a web serial that probably is longer than many series in print by now. Worth a read if not. Chapter 1 actually made me laugh aloud, which is fairly unusual for a story.
I read some of it and I really liked it, but was put off by the constant notes that I needed to stop reading the current story and go read a novel’s worth of some other character so the next chapter makes sense.
Is the little girl in panel 4 supposed to be an alien, and if so, how did she sneak in there first? It would be appropriately weird if the group of tourist aliens tried to hitch a ride with a different group of aliens trying to themselves off as human.
Not thulium? Someone never read “Illegal Aliens” by Nick Pollotta and Phil Foglio.
Of course she (or zhe) didn’t stop a cab – New York Cabbies are FAMOUS for being aliens.
She wanted a tour by a LOCAL.
“Meh, youze shoulda been here when Godizilla attacked back in ’97…”
“My Hovercraft is full of eels” – fantastic reference! That’s one of my favorite Monty Python sketches, but I never see it quoted!
…sooo…
…the author is using the “Worthless Yellow Rocks” trope, but hasn’t bothered to explain what aliens actually use for money? No civilization can persist unless it accepts the most basic law of economics; “Choices in conditions of scarcity.”
Why can’t every sapient being in the cosmos have their own spaceship?
Why can’t they all come to Earth and party?
Why can’t they all have a set of orbs like Syndey’s?
“What do they eat?”
“How do they *pay* for food?”
“How can whoever provides the food create the food while having enough food for themselves?”
“The root problem with conventional currencies is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust.”
– Satoshi Nakamoto, inventor of Bitcoin and 15th-richest person on Earth.
Come on, say “gold-pressed latinum” or “Element Zero” or something, or acknowledge the whole setting takes place in “Star Ocean: Till the End of Time”, everyone’s in an MMO run by 4-dimensional beings, and they just reboot civilizations when they hyperinflate.
“creds” apparently.