I've just got this book and am only some 60 pages in so far so if I'm a little off target with this please forgive me and I will ammend my thoughts as and when I get further into the book.

OK the gang arrive at a gateway inside an old aircraft carrier -hmmm ? Correct me if I'm wrong but before the advent of the interphaser in OL -many years into DL's (never to get closer ) future, didn't the Mat-Trans units need to be located at a FIXED position for them to work? An aircraft carrier in my mind is anything but a fixed platform (unless is was installed inside a mothballed one -and then the question WHY?)

I'm hoping it gets explained and not another huge FU like Nick P's petrol driven one

Jim

This was an outstanding book.  The flow of the story, the inter related plots, the great thinking that went into the story made it a real page turner.  This was definatly one of the better ones I've read.

The kraken battle was pretty awesome.

--------------------------

A couple of things: Carriers hold 5000 people, not 1000.

I didn't quite get why the museum hadn't been found and looted.

It seemed unlikely that the baron could see the door code when Ryan typed in the code.  After the baron and his guys later opened the door he immediately closed it.  352 opens, and 253 closes it; the baron wouldn't have know how to close it.

In response to post #2:  If you'll recall Ryan and the team jumped onto an obiting space station and later onto a space ship.  Just because OL said something else it may not necessarly mesh with what happened early in the series.

Hey, The space station Ryan and co. jumped into was most likely in Geosynchronous orbit around the planet and as such was in an orbit with an orbital period that matches the earths sidereal rotation period. To that end it was static within the gateway network. As for the spaceship we didn’t get to see a great deal of this and it could have been docked to the spacestation !

...Just because OL said something else it may not necessarly mesh with what happened early in the series.

Are you saying that is was possible to jump to moving gateways in DL but someone or something changed it to make it not possible in the time of OL ?

Remember that within the pages of Outlanders is the ONLY place in either series where a full expalanation of how the gateway systems work appears.

I always assumed the space station was the same one used in Outlanders, the first book that Sindri appeared in (the title eludes me at the moment).

Posted By Ron Miles on 15 Dec 2009 04:50 PM
I always assumed the space station was the same one used in Outlanders, the first book that Sindri appeared in (the title eludes me at the moment).

I believe it is.

Posted By )3az )3aziah on 15 Dec 2009 04:48 PM


Are you saying that is was possible to jump to moving gateways in DL but someone or something changed it to make it not possible in the time of OL ?

Remember that within the pages of Outlanders is the ONLY place in either series where a full expalanation of how the gateway systems work appears.

Yes I am.  It is possible but not for the reason you'd expect.  OL gave a full and complete explanation of how it works with the series sticking to those parameters from book to book.  DL on the other hand has a history of not......er......exactly  keeping things  straight from one book to another.

I guess anything is possible in the DL.

I do wish they would break down and get this one thing right. These little groups of people spread out all over the world that haven't seen anyone else for a hundred years are all using the same rather stupid slang.

I really have a problem with that. A little pest hole in the Black Hills that has been totally isolated from the rest of the world and an Island in the South Pacific that is in the same condition and a small settlement in South America all call cars and trucks Wags, killing someone Chilling, women of the night are all Gaudy Sluts, all bosses are Barons, and many many more.

All I can say to that is FAT CHANCE. Being an author myself I find that one aspect of the books hard to take.

However, like everyone else, I am hooked on the story line for some reason. I love apocalyptic fiction and this is about the best of the on-going line available. I'll stick with it despite its many faults, I like the series.

The Duke

Parallax Red is the space station from the book of the same title.

Hey everybody. In your opinion what is the best Deathlands book? Bloodlines is my favorite. It was also the first Deathlands that I read. I really like vampires and the way that Mr.James described them and the scenery was great.

If you like Bloodlines, then you are going to love Blood Harvest. Lots of vampire-ish activity, with an epic scope and very interesting characters. Doc is particularly good in it, and poor Ryan gets put through the grinder.

Graphic Audio is releasing Time Castaways next week and will have a podcast interview with the voice of Ryan.

In this podcast interview, Richard Rohan discusses his work on James Axler’s DEATHLANDS series in GraphicAudio and we also included a preview of Deathlands 89 - Time Castaways. Rick plays the character Ryan Cawdor and also does the narration for the Deathlands series.

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They've jumped into at least different space stations: Parallax Red, Enterprise (Dark Carnival), and an unnamed station that was losing power (Sky Raider). Given that very few authors besides LJ (and even he's questionable) have even attempted to adhere to any given set of "rules", I don't really see a problem with them placing a gateway in an aircraft carrier.

Look at Stargate. We start off with gates requiring seven chevrons - an origin address, a destination address, and some other stuff. Intergalactic travel (Atlantis) requires 8 chevrons. Travel to a moving target (Universe) requires 9 chevrons and a crapload of power, and it can only be done from specific places. It's not unreasonable to assume that the mat-trans system works under similar principles - we have GPS, after all, so it's not a large stretch to imagine that the computer system could easily calculate the destination gate's location at any given point in time.

I believe Mark Ellis set out the fact that Gateways were located at fixed points in Outlanders and it was only with the creation of the interphaser over 100 years after DL that "jumps" could be made to none fixed locations.

The fact that gateways have to be located at fixed points is further strengthened by the huge map of the world on the wall of the Cerberus redoubt (Bravo) showing the locations of all the gateways on earth, each marked with a light.

Again the space stations are most likely in geosynchronous orbit and thus fixed in there position.

As I said in an earlier post you will have to read OL to discover more of how the Gateways work.

The simplest explanation for the diffrerences between the Interphaser and the Mat-Trans is that the Interphaser operates more like the Stargate--opening up quantum wormholes between parallax points--and the Mat-Trans functions more like a teleporter or Star Trek's transporter.

Lakesh created both devices so they operate on the same principle.

He created both devices? Rumor has it that Canadian scientist Davis Horncastle worked closely with Lakesh in developing the matter-transfer unit. When Horncastle was tragically killed in a car accident, Lakesh took sole credit for the research. Now wouldn't that put an interesting spin on things.

Only insofar as an example of after-the-fact, resentment-fueled revisionist BS on the part of whatever fill-in writer came up with it.

 Rumor has it that Mack Bolan is actually the illiegitmate son of psychotic Richard Wentworth AKA The Spider. I doubt seriously Don Pendleton would have gone along with that "rumor."

Not to say that Lakesh didn't work closely with other scientists--Silas Burr/Jamaisvous comes to mind...but it's been a canonical standard for over 13 years that Lakesh was the first one to get the first mat-trans unit to operate and was the first human being successfully "dematted" and then "rematted."

Standard rule of thumb--when you're playing in somebody else's universe, if a new addition violates established, locked-in continuity and characterization then "rumor" is the mildest adjecitive for it.

But--you know that already.

I sure do! But anything is possible in fiction--not that the scenario I mentioned is being considered by anyone at all. I don't think anything created in the DL/OL universe would be resentment fueled in the least. I would assume that a writer would merely want to spin a good yarn. But I certainly agree that a writer must respect canon.

I don't think anything created in the DL/OL universe would be resentment fueled in the least.

Riiiiiight, he drawled sardonically.