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Welcome to the Zarthani.net H. Beam Piper mailing list and discussion forum. Initiated in October 2008 (after the demise of the original PIPER-L mailing list), this tool for shared communication among Piper fans provides an e-mail list and a discussion forum with on-line archives.
 
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^     All messages    << 1795-1810  1788-1794 of 2246  1772-1787 >>
1794
David "PiperFan" JohnsonPerson was signed in when posted
11-21-2017
04:00 UT
~
Svants and Thorans

If you have Rogue Games' ~Transmissions from Piper~, a Traveller role-playing game supplement based upon Beam's yarns "Naudsonce," "Last Enemy" and "Ministry of Disturbance," then you've already seen (a black-and-white version of) this illustration of a Thoran by Jeff Preston:

https://roguegamesblog.wordpress.com/2008/...-piper-art-preview/

This Thoran "hillman" is a bit more humanoid than I'd pictured them--and the kilt is not nearly as garish as I'd imagined--but it's great to finally see them depicted.

There are also a couple of wonderful illustrations of Svants by Alfredo Lopez, Jr., including one of "Sonny" and "Mom."

~Transmissions from Piper~ doesn't seem to be in print any more, but you can still find used copies at ABEBooks.com. You can get a PDF version here:

https://studio2publishing.com/products/tho...ions-from-piper-pdf

Enjoy,

David
--
"I saw a man shot once on Mimir, for calling another man a son of a Khooghra. The man who shot him had been on Yggdrasil and knew what he was being called." - Jack Holloway (H. Beam Piper), ~Little Fuzzy~
~
1793
David "PiperFan" JohnsonPerson was signed in when posted
11-11-2017
15:28 UT
~
The Return on eBay

A great-priced (so far!) copy of ~The Science-Fictional Sherlock Holmes~, which contains the original, expanded version of Piper's and McGuire's "The Return" is now on offer on eBay:

https://www.ebay.ca/itm/312000217545

(The plot, of course, was spoiled by the yarn be collected in this anthology!)

I'm not the seller (and I already have a copy so I won't be bidding).

Bon chance!

David
--
"Do you know which books to study, and which ones not to bother with? Or which ones to read first, so that what you read in the others will be comprehensible to you? That's what they'll give you [at university]. The tools, which you don't have now, for educating yourself." - Bish Ware (H. Beam Piper), ~Four-Day Planet~
~
1792
Tanith in OzPerson was signed in when posted
11-03-2017
13:03 UT
So after doing some sleuthing I’ve determined that “sociology” as it came to be known did not have an official governing body in Australia until 1963. There were various institutes at the University of Sydney, Canberra, Melbourne, Adelaide etc… but there was no centralized authority.

Sociology, in Australia as it turns out was governed under the Education Workers Association in each state before the incorporation of the Sociological Association of Australia and New Zealand (SAANZ) in 1963.

It seems there was a very long and torturous history for the field in Australia, and it took until the 60s for it to crystalize a governing body. There are many reasons for this, but the primary one is that each state liked to run its own affairs and distrusted Federal government mandates. This tended to manifest in the way Aboriginals, the poor/destitute and wards of the state were treated and how in many ways this conflicted with other jurisdictions.

However in the late 1980s New Zealand decided to split off and go it alone. This forced the remaining Australian States to form The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) in 1989. This organization continues to today.

TASA runs annual conferences in Australia, allowing various universities to bid for the right to host. In 2018 it will be held at the University of Western Australia.

Now, given Piper preferred to use the term “sociography” it’s possible that something like TASA could have formed and run conferences in his universe. A Federation Sociography Association I guess, an organisation separate to the Extraterrestrials' Rights Association.
 
I think this is a likely extrapolation and would provide a plausible reason for visiting academics from aboard to have been at one of these conferences. They would then be stuck in Adelaide unable to return to France.

This then would lead to a choice to try to return to a "French" colony, or to remain in Adelaide (or other places in Australia). Most of the contingent choose to stay and are incorporated into the University of Adelaide.

I like it. I think bringing a small part of the Sorbonne into Adelaide university culture is an interesting idea. And it then makes Adelaide Uni much more prestigious and could have started the academic notoriety that was eventually mentioned by Piper in Uller Uprising.

And it might not end there. The same thing also could have happened at the University of Montevideo. Say visiting academics from Cambridge got stuck there. Or maybe Yale? The sky's the limit on this but I could see this being a reasonable possibility.

Therefore applying the same method the "Melbourne Times" might not be a physical relocation of the entire Times organization from London. But some of their journalists could have gotten trapped in Melbourne too. Lets say they were traveling with members of the British Royal Family when the 4th war happens. Stuck in Melbourne they either start up their own version of their paper from back home or they take over a smaller paper and rename it. Either way it certainly works better than saying the whole thing moved.


So yeah.

Regards

Terry
Edited 11-03-2017 14:08
1791
Tanith in OzPerson was signed in when posted
11-03-2017
05:08 UT
~
Jon Crocker wrote:

> There's always some university researchers doing field work, so if it just happened that a handful from one big > european university were in town, sure.

This is a fair point Jon. I do like the idea of some members of the Sorbonne being down under when the balloon goes up. Perhaps some of them were in Adelaide for a conference, or a symposium, or something academic related. Whatever the reason they were in Adelaide they stay when it becomes obvious Paris has been destroyed.

Staying in Adelaide they join the school of Sociology, later Sociography and then steer the reputation of Adelaide Uni over the centuries.

I think this is a good solution and its rather elegant.

Regards

Terry
1790
David "PiperFan" JohnsonPerson was signed in when posted
11-03-2017
05:08 UT
~
Terry "Tanith in Oz" Glouftsis wrote:

> Given that the London Times went to Melbourne
> it occurs to me that many other institutions may
> have also gone down under too.

Jon makes some excellent points here and he's correct that we don't ultimately know how to explain this. His musings about the amount of time between (genuine concerns about) the outbreak of the Fourth World War and the destruction of civilization in the Northern Hemisphere (presumably including London) are spot on. But my sense--just my sense, I can point to no other evidence in his work--is that Beam was telling us something about how that war unfolded here.

> Previously the idea of the British Royal family
> coming to Australia had been touted

A couple of points. First, we know that there is extensive damage in the North in the Thirty Days' War which in and of itself might lead some Northern nations to move some government functions to the South in the "interwar" years. The folks who do that are going to tend to be the Northern Thirty Days' War "victors"--the Americans obviously--and they will tend to move to "available" territory in the South. But the hitch here is that much of the South is _already_ inhabited by nations that _don't_ suffer much in the Thirty Days' War.

That's what helps to make things like an American move into Antarctica make more sense: it's a place the Americans can go to without having to fight others who are already established here. (It also helps here that we know _someone_ ends up settling in Antarctica and that they have surnames like "Murell.")

The British, even if they stay out of the American-led (first) Terran Federation likely still remain allied against the Eastern Axis in the Thirty Days' War. That means Britain may suffer in that war too.

Unlike the Americans, the British have have some places where they might go in the South where they likely don't have to "fight their way in." Namely, the Commonwealth nations. The Commonwealth had already stopped being "British" (formally, at least) by the time Beam was writing but a great deal of affinity nevertheless remained between Britain and nations like Australia. And then, of course, there is the ~Melbourne Times~. . . .

So, if the Fourth World War unfolds in ways that leave time for the British to evacuate their government it's not unreasonable to guess that they might do so to a Commonwealth nation like Australia.

(Here's the intriguing thing about Melbourne. In the early period of Australia's independent nationhood--before Canberra was established as the federal capital--Melbourne was the seat of the monarchy. If Australia finds itself playing host to a British monarch-in-exile during the Fourth World War there are good reasons why it might nevertheless not want to be seen as being _too_ close to Britain. Sequestering the British monarch away from the Australian capital--in the monarchy's "old digs" in Melbourne--might very well help to serve that purpose. This is all conjecture, of course.)

> Now the French. We've also spoken about there
> being a lack of French references in the Federation
> and that had they gone south they may have gone
> to Madagascar (also a strong possibility).

Perhaps. The fact remains that the French seem to play no role of prominence in the Federation (or later) eras. The French may evacuate to Madagascar or elsewhere in the South but this will be a much smaller presence than that of any Americans in Antarctica or of any Britons in Australia. (On the other hand, if the French are allied with the British in some manner--perhaps in joint opposition to the early, American-led Terran Federation, perhaps they end up having a not-insubstantial presence in s few former Commonwealth nations too. Again, just conjecture here.)

> So what I wanted to ask is what about the Sorbonne?
> Adelaide University is mentioned a number of times
> as having a strong Sociography department. Given
> that the French have a strong sociology tradition at
> the Sorbonne is it possible that elements of that
> institution fled to Adelaide? Perhaps not the whole
> organisation, but some of it?

Possible, yes. Likely? Who knows? We have little evidence either way. But for this to happen, two other circumstances would seem to be required. First, Jon's musings about how the Fourth World War unfolds would have to be resolved with an assumption that there was enough "advance notice" for this sort of thing to take place. Second, evacuated French institutions in Australia raises the likelihood of some sort of Anglo-French affinity in the "interwar" years.

> I think it's possible to argue for it, but I do agree it
> could also be a stretch.

I think you have that just about exactly right. ;)

Tchau,

David
--
"I was trying to show the results of the collapse of the Ottoman Empire after the First World War, and the partition of the Middle East into a loose collection of Arab states, and the passing of British and other European spheres of influence following the Second." - Edward Chalmers (H. Beam Piper), "The Edge of the Knife"
~
1789
Jon CrockerPerson was signed in when posted
11-03-2017
04:20 UT
We'll never know for certain what exactly that term means, "The Times went to Melbourne."

Did far-seeing individuals in that worthy news organization put contingency plans in place that were eventually activated? Did a portion of the staff of The Times quietly move down under?

Or, after the balloon went up, did a few surviving reporters from the southern hemisphere congregate in Melbourne, along with a couple of the editors that had been vacationing with family around Australia & NZ? "I say, Nigel, these Aussies mean well, but they need a guiding hand, being colonials and all. What do you say we show them what's cricket?"

There's scant evidence either way. If it was just a few people involved, it would be easy for that exact beginning to be a bit obscured over the centuries.

There's always some university researchers doing field work, so if it just happened that a handful from one big european university were in town, sure.

Heads of State are easier to explain - people were thrown on planes and headed south on pre-planned routes.

A lot of it depends upon how quickly WW4 broke out - years or months of tensions? Lots of people have lots of warnings and move. If it burst out of nowhere, not so much.

You could always have one or two big organizations be deemed to have been 'extra-prepared' - someone high up in the organization is determined to keep 'the firm' running no matter what, so keeps a few extra people tucked away down under. But that really only works for one or two organizations and could easily be over - used.
1788
Tanith in OzPerson was signed in when posted
11-03-2017
03:10 UT
Hi all I've just got a quick question for the group.

Given that the London Times went to Melbourne it occurs to me that many other institutions may have also gone down under too.

Previously the idea of the British Royal family coming to Australia had been touted (a possibility that I tend to agree with).

Now the French. We've also spoken about there being a lack of French references in the Federation and that had they gone south they may have gone to Madagascar (also a strong possibility).

So what I wanted to ask is what about the Sorbonne? Adelaide University is mentioned a number of times as having a strong Sociography department. Given that the French have a strong sociology tradition at the Sorbonne is it possible that elements of that institution fled to Adelaide? Perhaps not the whole organisation, but some of it?

Let me know what you think about this. I think it's possible to argue for it, but I do agree it could also be a stretch.

Regards

Terry
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