Heaven's Reach says that the Brothers of the Night invaded Calafia, the Tandu Horst, and the Soro invaded the Conaan colonies. Calafia and Horst are worthwhile worlds --but Horst has only been leased for 6000 years. This is hardly worth an invasion, plus it is inhabited by luddites. The Canaan colonies are all ecological basket cases. The Galactic Institute of Migration literally couldn't give them away. So only Calafia is heavilly colonized, and only Calafia is worth anything on its own. Certainly the Brothers would have incentive to conquer a water world. But the Soro are a much bigger enterprise, and I have trouble seeing them invading a group of low population desert worlds.
At any rate, in Trent's variation on the Uplift Universe the Soro control Calafia and no one bothers to
invade the Caanan cluster.
In GURPS Uplift Soro have four limbs and a tail claw /stinger. Robinson insists Soro have three legs and six arms. One of the arms has the female's mating hook. I compromise with three legs, six arms, and the mating claw on a strong tail. It would be hard for me to go back to four limbed Soro now that I've credited them with 9 queens, 9 ball, etc.
Who is right? Stefan Jones is a canonical source.
Stefan Jones had assumed that jump lines provided olde point-to-point FTL travel. Those using a jump line experienced no subjective time while in transit --that is, travel by jump line is subjectively instantaneous.Heaven's Reach clearly states that one does experience time inside a jump gate AND that jump line travel requires active navigation during transit, not just to insure proper entry into the jump gate.
I still favor the Jones version.
Upon publication of Heaven's Reach it
became clear that I had badly guessed at what Brin meant by
"memetic lifeform." The third edition of the Encyclopedia attempts to be in closer conformity to
Brin's intent while converting Shipley's earlier interpretation of "memetic" to
"virtual." If you should notice any uncorrected text, please inform
Matt Lundstrom of the error.
In general "Five Galaxies" should now read "Four Galaxies."
David Brin wrote that the the "Great Colapse" is depicted as being more severe than he had immagined.
In the Jijo series (Heaven's Reach?) we are told that the Library is limited to O-2 species. The assumption in this site is that the Library IS common to ALL Main Sequence life (and even to Retired species). HOWEVER, data entered by one order of existence tends to be gibberish for members of another order.
Citing text from Sundiver, fans are generally of the opinion that Horst was settled after contact as a special colony for Human Probationers. In that case, the Horst project would more closely resemble the model of Liberia than of Australia. (In fact, many fans hate the idea of there being any pre-Contact colonies at all, and would rather forget Brin's comments about NuDawn.) However, I (TCS) have opted to retain the idea that Horst is a pre-Contact colony --since I like the story of transportation. I also like the idea of there having been several pre-Contact colonies --on the order of five to seven. Of these, Earth was allowed to keep Atlast, Horst, NuDawn, and Omnivarium.
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