Re: Vector Rules / Inertial dampers

Christopher Pratt spotted the following in my message:

> Smith and Trowbridge's geeplane drive works the same way, and
functions as a
> de fecto crash cushion as well.  Panarchic boarding lances use shaped 
> nuclear charges to weakend the target ship's shields, then they
overload the 
> geeplane and smash through.  Even with the geeplane, they pull ten
gees when
> they hit.
> 
> Pretty neat trick.  'Tis a shame that space combat in the series can't

> really be gamed (because of a combination of tactical FTL and
lightspeed 
> sensors and weapons), as this series has somee of the best space
combat
> ideas I have ever seen. 

And then asked:
> what would the name of this series be...

The series is named _Exordium_, and the five books in the series are:
1. The Phoenix in Flight
2. Rule of Naught
3. A Prison Unsought
4. The Rifter's Covenant
5. The Thrones of Kronos

>From my _Exordium_ web page [http://www.wizard.net/~caw/exordium.htm] :

> The best place to learn about the plot of the series is through the
back 
> cover blurbs, which are recreated at the <http://www.well.com/user/
> davetrow/ exordium.htm">_Exordium_ webpage maintained by Dave 
> Trowbridge.  Suffice it to say here that years ago Gelasar 
> hai-Arkad, 46th Panarch of the Thousand Suns, defeated the Avatar of
Dol 
> in war.  A generation later, the Avatar exacts his revenge through the

> use of million-year-old technology and an alliance with the pirates of

> the Rifter Brotherhood.  With his father imprisoned and his two older 
> brothers dead, Brandon vlith-Arkad is on the run with an agenda of his

> own.	But the Avatar learns the same lesson Alexander the Great
learned 
> millenia ago -- to conquer is one thing, to rule another... 

This is NOT your standard Margaret Weiss, "galactic fuedalism"-type
novel, 
with the noble ruling family fighting the the evil forces of democracy,
and 
everyone running around with titles straight out of the middle ages. The

social institution are well-thought through, their is a *lot* of
political 
intrigue, an average on one spiffy space battle per book, a lot of cool 
military concepts (such as the aforementioned boarding lances), and a
neat 
background that involves such things as the Ban against self-aware
computers 
(created after humanity almost lost the war against the Adamantine
machine 
intelligences), 7-km-long battlecruisers aremed with 1-km-long
skipmissile 
tubes, and planet-level tesla shields which transfer the energy of
skipmissile 
attacks directly to the planetary crust.

Book 1 is very easy to find used, book 2 is impossible to find, book 3
and 4 
can be found with a little difficulty, and book 5 is still in the
stores.  If 
you think you are interested, I would buy book % *now* and worry about
the 
others later.  And, if you find extra copies of book 2 some place,
please let 
me know -- I have multiple copies of the other books, so as to have
copies to 
give away, but I short a couple book 2s.  My .sig has the information
for whom 
you can email to ask them to reprint the series.

I do have a minor word of warning:  It takes about a hundred pages or so
to 
"get into" the story.  I don't know of a single person who, having made
it to 
that point, wasn't totally hooked.

Sometime in the next couple of weeks I am starting an Exordium mailing
list as 
well.

--Chris Weuve		[My opinion, not my employers.]
mailto:caw@ascend.com (wk/day)		mailto:caw@wizard.net (h)
------------------------------------------------------------------------
----
Would you like to see Smith & Trowbridge's _Exordium_ reprinted?  Help
their
editor, Beth Meacham, convince the Tor sales department -- send email to
her
at mailto:bam@tor.com.	   [http://www.wizard.net/~caw/exordium.htm]