On the Razor’s Edge

Notes for the Curious

It’s a big Spiral Arm and the technology of thousands of years from now is about as imaginable as airliners would be to Assyrians. It helps that there were intervening Dark Ages, lost technologies, and deliberate suppression of innovation. That lets us get away with over-the-horizon science and technology of here and now. Take some stuff that we maybe almost know how to do, and then suppose that we can do it really well. Techne that makes an appearance in On the Razor’s Edge includes:

1. “Subway tunnels” through space.

Just a gleam in the physicists’ eyes, for now: http://www.npl.washington.edu/AV/altvw86.html.

2. Domino Tight’s exoskeleton.

We’re already making their precursors: http://www.technovelgy.com/ct/Science-Fiction-News.asp?NewsNum=2174.

3. Invisibility cloaks.

We can’t make them yet, but see here: http://www.cnn.com/2010/TECH/innovation/11/16/space.time.cloak/index.html?hpt=T2

After this manuscript was written but prior to publication “researchers led by the University of Texas at Austin have cloaked a three-dimensional object standing in free space, bringing the invisibility cloak one step closer to reality”: http://www.kurzweilai.net/scientists-create-first-free-standing-3d-cloak?utm_source=KurzweilAI+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=778bb63bfe-UA-946742-1&utm_medium=email.

4. Self-assembling ruins of the Hall of Suns.

Researchers at the University of Michigan have developed a concrete material that self-heals cracks and recovers most of the original strength. Now project it way into the future: http://ns.umich.edu/podcast/video.php?id=804.

5. More self-assembly and self-repair of shenmats, equipment, and systems.

Self-healing polymer mixtures from Oak Ridge National Lab and the University of Tennessee: http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/v42_3_09/article15.shtml.

Nanoparticles assembling into complex arrays at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory: http://newscenter.lbl.gov/press-releases/2009/10/22/new-route-to-nano-self-assembly/.

A University of Illinois polymer with self-sensing properties that can react to mechanical stress: http://news.illinois.edu/news/09/0506polymers.html.

Raytheon HEALICS Technology incorporates self-healing into a complex system-on-chip (SoC) design, providing the capability for the chip to sense undesired circuit behaviors and correct them automatically: http://raytheon.mediaroom.com/index.php?s=43&item=1410&pagetemplate=release.

6. Teasers and dazers.

At Old Dominion University, nanosecond-long high-voltage pulses that punch holes in cell membranes could be used for a Taser-like weapon that stuns targets because the pulse temporarily disables human muscles: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn16706-shocking-cancer-treatment-may-also-yield-weapon.html.

Shadow culture is based loosely on the decadent Franco-Burgundian knighthood of the fifteenth century, the main source for which is Johan Huizinga, The Autumn of the Middle Ages. Many of the anecdotes, events, and poems in the novel are based on actual anecdotes, events, and poems of that era, including the sudden passions of cruelty and sentiment. The story of Prime and Lady Ielnor’s chemise is adapted from the poem “Des trois chevaliers et del chainse.” The song Ravn listens to in Chapter 2, while shepherding Méarana into the Confederation, is adapted from Alain Chartier’s “Ballade de Fougères.” The introductory poem to chapter 7 is adapted from a prose passage in Le Jouvencel, the autobiography of Jean de Bueil. The introductory poem to chapter 14 is a mash-up of “Le Dit de Franc Gontier” by Philippe de Vitry and Eustache Deschamps, no. 184.

Descriptions of the society of the late Commonwealth and certain twilight attitudes attributed to its writers and thinkers were adapted from Peter Brown’s The World of Late Antiquity concerning the outlook of fourth-century pagan rhetors.