Oolite Bulletins

Well, I wasn't going to miss a chance at the first one I actually knew for months... since there's been a few discussions about taxation in Oolite recently:

As a result of the protagonist's tax evasion, they discover and foil a major conspiracy by a religious group.

Clues:
- the tax evasion is set on a planet with no laws (but in a "working anarchy" way still has a functional tax system)
- the conspiracy relates to something secretly guarded by humanity due to its religious significance to thousands of species.

It's the Buck Godot adventure The Gallimaufry!

Disembodied wrote:

It's the Buck Godot adventure The Gallimaufry!

Correct!

OK ... who (or what), from which debut novel, said

"Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else."

no idea about that debut novel, as I try to avoid Vogon poetry, but he who said that must definitely have been this one :

snork wrote:

no idea about that debut novel, as I try to avoid Vogon poetry, but he who said that must definitely have been this one :

No, this particular pronouncement was made by something significantly more ... specific. And emphatic.

Clue time: it's the sort of thing that might get immanentized, so I've heard ...

I'd already Googled this unfortunately, as the clue would have tipped me off (think Illuminatus or religion).
It's the Eschaton from Singularity Sky by Charles Stross.

El Viejo wrote:

I'd already Googled this unfortunately, as the clue would have tipped me off (think Illuminatus or religion).
It's the Eschaton from Singularity Sky by Charles Stross.

It is indeed – an entity which has left the message etched into mountain ranges, carved onto moons and distributed around networks across known space:

The Eschaton wrote:

I am the Eschaton. I am not your God.
I am descended from you, and exist in your future.
Thou shalt not violate causality within my historic light cone. Or else.

Over to you, EV!

I must get that from the library, as it sounds excellent.

Onward: an old sailing boat is found on a farm, which is nowhere near the sea.
Title and author of this novel, please.

From the top of my head that could be the first book of the Spelljammer Cloakmaster Cycle.

Beyond The Moons by David Cook?

Nope! Not much to go on in that question, was there. First clue due this evening.

Clue the first: the sailing boat is in near-perfect condition, but it is very, very old!

Clue the second: at first simply a curiosity, after investigation the old sailing boat is found to be made of a previously unknown material. Further investigation of the locality uncovers a 'boathouse' made from the same material. Within this 'boathouse' a portal device is discovered, which leads to 'other' places not on this Earth.