So, yes, a bit of a glitch with the site this weekend, but all seems to be fine and working well now.
Some Rules On Comments: please refrain from commenting on theories you develop, details you notice, etc which may be viewed as spoilers. This story is a mystery, and so being clever and “figuring something out” is cool, but posting it is not.
The order for books is at the printer, the etched glasses and giclée prints too. Plus a pallet worth of shipping supplies. November will be busy. But yay, all is moving along at a good clip! Now I just need to edit the additional “Dusty tract” and “how to leave the planet” zine.
As I mentioned, I went to NYC with my girlfriend. No real plans or agenda, just stayed with and visited friends, ate some nice food, and walked around A LOT. I feel I should have more to blog about this, but I simply don’t. We didn’t even make it to the MET (the one thing somewhat planned), only walked north far enough to go to the library (which admittedly has some very nice paintings).
It should be “Let your Eebs choose to be employees” rather than “chose to be employees”, I think. 🙂
So, about half again the mass of Earth/Dustinia/Sol Three/Tellus.
Garzun has a [redacted] [redacted]. [redacted] [redacted] [redacted]. [redacted] [redacted] [redacted] planet’s weight in darkhuenium.
Garzun’s facial expression in panel nine is perfect.
@Hg, fixed!
Oh, and I forgot to mention comment ground rules: please refrain from commenting on theories you develop, details you notice, etc which may be viewed as spoilers. This story is a mystery, and so being clever and “figuring something out” is cool, but posting it is not.
I…. Can’t remember what Darkhuenium does.
@Eebiot, honestly, it’s always been simply a macguffin. If they were sea pirates, it would be gold. If it were Pulp Fiction, it’d be glowing in a suitcase.
Eebiot, I don’t think they’ve ever said. It’s just generally agreed to be valuable…?
Spoilers? I must say, I appreciate the vote of confidence in our brilliance at anticipating your stories! The clever plotting and twists have been legion. Heck, has anyone ever been absolutely right in anticipating how something will turn out?
And of course, there’s always the good old “real time retcon” trick if the audience gets too cocky.
“Hey, Mr. Chekhov, wasn’t there a rifle hanging on that wall yesterday?”
Nine sextillion tons what kind of gravity well are we talking about? Unless they can negate or manipulate gravity they won’t be able to mine it if it is one world. Oh and the cost would go down to pennies or fraction there of. Why De Beers controls over 90% of all the diamond mines in the world. Otherwise diamonds would be cheaper by the dozen.
Night-Gaunt: These are space-faring civilizations; if they can’t extract stuff out of a gravity well, I don’t know what they’re doing in space in the first place. And the oversupply problem is explicitly addressed.
So even if Garzun keeps her map secret, it’s gonna be hard for her to keep a whole mining operation secret once she starts moving Darkhuenium into the marketplace by the ton. Unless she has pirates smuggle it in their luggage. So obviously unrefined Darkhuenium must appear as gold which glows brightly in a suitcase.
She owns all the mud beads too, doesn’t she?
This reminds me of an SF short story I read years ago. “The Cost of Styxite,” I think it was?
OMG! I’m gone for a couple days (okay, more like half a month) and come back to all this awesomeness! You, sir, are legendary!
@Eebiot: I always thought it was the stuff that they make podiums and desks out of. See how they’re all dark blue like that? (Probably allows for good hidden circuitry)
I’ll admit, though, I only thought that because, when it was first named, the speaker’s podium was just about the only dark-blue thing we’d seen
Christopher, could you please tell me if I’m reading the illustrations correctly, some of the comments seem confusely to me:
The 3 green glowing squares on the desk are monitors, and the 2 bricks on the desk shelf are the Darkhuenium.
Thank you,
@Jediadept, yes, green squares are monitors. But the “bricks” are just knicknacks which have always been on the Apex Speaker’s desk. 🙂
A tough rule to follow Christopher.
Conjecture is just that, conjecture. We don’t know it’s a spoiler until the episode in question, or you say; “D’oooh!”
My favorite macguffin driven story was; Repo Man.
The car to be repo’ed was real enough, and a real POS at that, but the trunk was full of macguffin.
@Night-Gaunt: 9 sextillion tons is about 50% more massive than Earth. So not a particularly huge gravity well, as those things go.
Lol Birdo. Super Mario 2.
@Crestlinger, Ha! Look at that. 🙂
@Crestlinger: Yep, similar snout, but Garzun’s horns and eyes are much different, plus Garzun is far more expressive. But now I just hope Chris doesn’t dress Garzun in a giant red bow.
So clearly inaccurate speculation is okay? I’m speculating that Garzun will trade the entire planet’s worth of Darkhuenium for delicious Hostess Fruit Pies, in that case.
One of my favorite books since I was a kid was “The Twenty-One Balloons” by William Pene DuBois. Takes place on a fictionalized island of Krakatoa, prior to the explosion. A small civilization of twenty families lives there in isolated but fabulous luxury, because the island is stuffed with diamonds. They don’t tell anyone at all, but periodically slip small quantities of diamonds out to civilization to purchase things they need without flattening the market.
If Garzun had the brains of a chicken, this planet would have been kept a deep, dark secret, using the same “trickle-out” method of getting fabulously rich. Since she does seem to have brains, I suspect letting the secret out wasn’t her idea.
Well, here we are in the future – http://www.goldstar.com/e/74219
Ah yes, Garzun, of the noble race of Octorok space explorers 🙂