Could you describe Home, from the Worldwar series, for me?

Hnau

Banned
Here's the deal. I am writing a fan-fiction dealing with Roxolani contact with the Empire on Home circa 1871. I felt I was well-prepared for this because I had read Homeward Bound a year ago, in a free .pdf file hosted here: http://static.scribd.com/docs/g1wbm1uelci7u.swf I'm sorry to say that they have taken this down. I have forgotten enough of the specifics that I need to take a glance at it again!

I checked my local Borders to see if they have the book, but it is not there. I don't want to order it because, really, in my opinion, its not worth buying. 80% of the book was filler, really. I could have re-written Homeward Bound into 100-150 entertaining pages that covers everything the book did. Its just really mind-warpingly repetitive and boring. The same scenes happen over and over again! I have no idea what Turtledove was thinking.

Nevertheless, I love the concept of the Worldwar series, and I love the few ideas here and there. But, I still think that the entire epic series could be covered in four books: two for the four Balance books, two for the three Colonization sequels and a Homeward Bound epilogue section. Maybe this is pessimistic.

Anyway, I need to refresh my memory about what Home was like, for my fan-fiction. Anything would be greatly appreciated. :)
 

Hnau

Banned
I'm looking for a little more detail than that. Some description I can use for their cities, use of technology... I can't remember but what kind of style of architecture did they use. And what did their cars and roads look like?
 

Riain

From what I gather Home and everything to do with the race is what we have now only cleaner, better thought-out and organised. Electricity is generated by nuclear fusion and engines burn hydrogen and they think everything through before doing anything. Cities would be amazingly clean and uncluttered, with efficient public transport, bla, bla, bla.
 

Hnau

Banned
Anything more specific than that? It seems like a bunch of ideas, but some concrete stuff would be useful.

It seems that the Race does not use planes, but rather orbital-to-suborbital shuttlecraft. I found that quite interesting. A sector of society regularily submerges themselves into cold sleep, awakening every one and a while to experience life, then sleep for a while longer.

I order Homeward Bound, a used edition for about $3.50 total, so that's not that bad. Still, I have to wait up to a week to finish my fan-fiction, so any extra details... would help me out a lot!

What is the Emperor's palace in Preffilo called exactly? Wasn't it described as something like the Kremlin?
 

Amerigo Vespucci

In addition, it seems to be much more of a rocky-dry than a sandy-dry, which makes sense, if you think about it. Without much water, erosive forces are going to be far lower than on Earth, and erosion is going to have to take place via windblown sand and debris, which is far more rare on a global scale.

There might be a few sandy places where the wind is particularly strong, but overall, the mountains will tend to be a bit higher than on Earth -- due to that same lack of erosion -- and thus present better barriers to wind. I don't mean to say that there's high mountains all over, but think of dry mountains as you'd find in Nevada or Arizona.

For the Race itself, I imagine something along the lines of a 1950s vision of the future combined with modern Cairo. You've got buildings that are literally thousands of years old -- and are well-worn because of that fact -- but they're as modern as anything today. They're aged, but in good repair; dust in the corners perhaps, but they're still as comfortable as ever. The cars are clean, streamlined, and efficient. Think of everyone in super-efficient hydrogen-powered Ford Tauruses. Because there's barely any innovation, there will be far fewer "brands" as we know them today -- since there's nothing to tell them apart.

You'll probably see a handful of massive corporations, horizontally integrated into their various trades. Not a lot of vertical integration, probably -- you'll have things like the Mining Company, Refining Company, Foundry, Car Manufactury, Car Dealership, and so on, but only a few options and all offering pretty much the same product.

Everything works; there's virtually no mechanics or maintenance people, since everything's had over 50,000 years of design experience. As shown in the WorldWar series with Goldfarb's radar scene, things are modularized to a T. Anyone can replace a critical part in the unlikely event that it happens to break -- it's simply a matter of taking out the broken piece and snapping in a new one. No need for mechanics there.

To a human being, Race society is going to seem very petty and bureaucratic. With it being a government by fiat, there's going to be an enormous bureaucratic infrastructure to allow the Emperor to keep control of the situation as needed. In addition, the fact that the Race has engineered everything to a fault makes me wonder if they haven't engineered their society to an extreme as well with laws and regulations governing every aspect of life. Think of the so-called "Nanny State" taken to an extreme.
 
Grey Wolf

Grey Wolf

It was more an analogy of China AND Japan together I thought, and the role of Emperor was an interesting one, half mythological being descended from so many nbody can count but at the same time a canny individual occupying the throne who is capable of cutting through the crap which surrounds his daily life and trying to work out the crux of the matter

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
 
Fenwick

Fenwick

Grey Wolf said:
It was more an analogy of China AND Japan together I thought, and the role of Emperor was an interesting one, half mythological being descended from so many nbody can count but at the same time a canny individual occupying the throne who is capable of cutting through the crap which surrounds his daily life and trying to work out the crux of the matter

Best Regards
Grey Wolf
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I believe in the second World War book it shows the Japanese and that Race pilot agreeing about their religon.

As for cities they are flashy and new, as the Race seems to be more then willing to blow up landmarks for put up a shopping center. There are oceans, but small and seem to be more like swamps then what we have on earth.
 

Ivan Druzhkov

Fenwick said:
As for cities they are flashy and new, as the Race seems to be more then willing to blow up landmarks for put up a shopping center. There are oceans, but small and seem to be more like swamps then what we have on earth.
Click to expand...
If I remember Homeward Bound correctly, aren't most of their landmarks so old that there simply isn't enough left of them to maintain. Wasn't their a line about how their equivalent to the Pyramids were older than the species of H. sapiens?
 

Amerigo Vespucci

Ivan Druzhkov said:
If I remember Homeward Bound correctly, aren't most of their landmarks so old that there simply isn't enough left of them to maintain. Wasn't their a line about how their equivalent to the Pyramids were older than the species of H. sapiens?
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Indeed. The common timing that we're given throughout the series is that they discovered nuclear fusion 50,000 years ago. Given their slower rate of development, their Pyramids equivalent would've decayed a long time ago.
 

~The Doctor~

Hnau said:
Did the Empire formally conquer Home 1 mya? Or is that exaggerating?
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The term they use is Unify, and I think it was about 200,000 years ago. Haven't read the books in a while.
 

Hnau

Banned
Oh, cool, thanks.

Alright, I think I might have enough information, thanks guys... I'll start writing my fanfic again. Which is here, by the way.

I'd still love any description or information of Home, if anyone else can provide it.

Thanks again for all of your efforts!
 
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