Yep. One of my favorite things about Ian Banks' SF is that he is clearly writing Smith-style space opera, with 80-mile-long starships and nova bombs and everything, but he manages to make it all deep and disturbing and thought-provoking. It's a combination I never expected to see until I read _Consider  Phlebas_, after which I was totally hooked.

On Thu, Sep 28, 2017 at 11:38 AM, Kelly St. Clair <xxxxxx@efn.org> wrote:
On 9/28/2017 11:34 AM, C. Berry wrote:
Smith did something like this in one of the later "Lensman" books. The good guys found two planets with large and opposite momenta with respect to the target bad-guy world, installed ginormous inertialess drives on each of them, maneuvered them into position on either side of the target world, and then turned off the drive. Even at 15, this struck me as being just a teeny bit over the top, but it got the job done. :)

 "Doc" Smith /defined/ "over the top" (and/or "it's the only way to be sure") for a generation of SF.  :)

--
---------------
Kelly St. Clair
xxxxxx@efn.org

-----
The Traveller Mailing List
Archives at http://archives.simplelists.com/tml
Report problems to xxxxxx@simplelists.com
To unsubscribe from this list please go to http://www.simplelists.com/confirm.php?u=PltOdItWBSgOP4y0Q6abkGbDI1eus0lz



--
"Eternity is in love with the productions of time." - William Blake