Triple The Value

[woodwardiocom]

-It occurs to me that if the creators of the RPG Traveller had named one of their Sword Worlds "Terminus Est", they could have achieved a triple literary homage . . .

Comments

[sir-goober.livejournal.com]

Ok, 'splain, please. I get Terminus Est . . .

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

-The Sword Worlds themselves are taken from H. Beam Piper's Space Viking, and "Terminus" is the name of the home of Asimov's Foundation.

[sir-goober.livejournal.com]

Thank you!

[jlhlinnell.livejournal.com]

Okay I don't get Terminus Est. Splain more?

Innit nice when folks make you explain a joke in excruciating detail?

The Great Raptor of Cognitive Dissonance swoops down-

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

Terminus Est</> is the name of an executioner's sword in Gene Wolfe's Book of the New Sun series.

I'm not sure that thwe triple reference would have been possible; _The Shadow of the Torturer_ was first published in 1980, while "The Spinward Marches" came out in 1979.

[woodwardiocom.livejournal.com]

The Shadow of the Torturer was first published in 1980, while The Spinward Marches came out in 1979.

-Imperium science sneers at mere chronological order!

[jlhlinnell.livejournal.com]

But GURPS Spinward Marches came out a few years later. The folks at SJG could have made the triple-play on their own!

Re: The Great Raptor of Cognitive Dissonance swoops down-

[notthebuddha.livejournal.com]

RIGHT but GURPS Traveller: The Spinward Marches came out a few years later.

The problem is that all the Sword Worlds were already named, and the book may not have been approved with an "extra" or renamed Sword World. If someone had thought of it during the production of the specific Sword Worlds book, it might have been slipped in somewhere among the new, more detailed place names.

Re: The Great Raptor of Cognitive Dissonance swoops down-

[jlhlinnell.livejournal.com]

Of course, of course. Hard to meddle with established intellectual property.