Oolite Bulletins

Diziet Sma wrote:

Sounds as if you got pipped at the post, El Viejo..

Yeah... I was making the tea!

That's what happens when you don't deal with the important things first!

I'm English... tea comes before all else.

OK, an easy one here (because even if you don't know it, it's eminently googleable).

Name the novel that features a mercenary band know as the Felix Dzerzhinsky Workers' Defence Collective.

It’s ‘The Star Fraction’ by Ken MacLeod.

El Viejo hits the back of the net! It is indeed.

A question from the ‘The Culture’ series:

A speed record was set… by which ship (both names please), in which novel, and what was the speed?

Bonus point if you also give the ship's old nickname..

Damn, the book's at home and I'm at work. Typical.

edit to add: IIRC another ship actually beats this in the same book, although not under it's own power.

I'll try it from memory, The novel would be "Excession", the ship the GSV Sleeper Service, former name Quietly Confident I think. As for the speed, I'll take a stab at 233,000 times the speed of light.

Good stuff from memory, Loxley.

All correct, except I think the speed was 233,500c (from memory).

Your turn, sir.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Bonus point if you also give the ship's old nickname..

Oops.. I was getting confused, and thinking that the GSV Sleeper Service was previously known as the GCU Grey Area, whereas in fact the Grey Area was travelling inside the Sleeper Service on that high-speed dash.. my bad.

I had wondered where you were at with that 'bonus point' thing, Diz.
An 'interesting' ship, the 'Grey Area'.

I need someone to check that speed out for me... I don't have the book anymore and I can't always trust my memory.

I don't have the book any more, and some googling around failed to turn up the actual speed, but I did find a couple of references saying that an ROU had gone even faster than the Sleeper Service. However, then I came across this discussion on calculated Culture speeds, which is well worth a read.

According to them, the Sleeper Service attained 240,000c, but the real record holder (also in the book Excession) was the Torturer Class Rapid Offensive Unit Killing Time, which, on its suicide-run attack on the fleet from Pittance, they calculated to have attained a speed of 10ly/µs. About 30 trillion times the speed of light. Fast enough to cross the universe in less than eight hours.


Side note: Am seriously tempted after reading this, to rename the Gunboat Diplomat to Attitude Adjuster.

Diziet Sma wrote:

Side note: Am seriously tempted after reading this, to rename the Gunboat Diplomat to Attitude Adjuster.

Could be worse, at least you're not going for the Grey Area's nickname.

On the speed issue, I'll have a root around my bookshelf when I get home and see if I can't turn up an answer.

edited for grammar