I studied Latin for 5 years, and hate the language intensely. +1.
I really like this one.
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THE CURSE OF 2229 IS BROKEN!
+1, for a job well done, you son of a gun
I am a little confused about the premise here. Sextus can apparently communicate by instantaneous FTL with his homeworld, and they also appear to be very advanced besides, why do they think that the Earth is still in the Classical era? They have enough of a model of our minds to know that their home system appears in Ursa Major when viewed from Earth, but they can't understand that we would have evolved culturally over the last two millenia?
Also what system are they supposed to be from? 47 Ursa Majoris is only 46 light years away. HD96127 maybe? It's a K2III at 1761 ly; so it is 255 CE there (the Year of the Consulship of Valerianus and Gallienus).
I am a little confused about the premise here. Sextus can apparently communicate by instantaneous FTL with his homeworld, and they also appear to be very advanced besides, why do they think that the Earth is still in the Classical era? They have enough of a model of our minds to know that their home system is in Ursa Major when viewed from Earth, but they can't understand that we would have evolved culturally over the last two millenia?
Well, in the end, Sextus is still an alien. Judging by the fact that he thinks that it would take humans two thousand years to develop useful steam engines with the aid of extremely elaborate schematics, I think it's safe to say that his civilization has trouble with comprehending the speed of human technological and cultural development. He sees the Earth in terms of what it was two thousand years ago, because, to him, how could it be anything but that?
Basically, they took a snapshot of the Earth, and thought, "Yup, this is how it is, and will be for a very, very long time," based on their own pace of progress.
Well that's what I originally thought, but in the incidents we see that they can communicate instantaneously in real-time so they shouldn't be observing Earth at 255 CE but rather right now, and it should be pretty clear that we are different now than we were then.
I guess the information Sextus gets is very limited? Even though he can see what people are looking at and could teleport a sensor directly to Earth if they wished?
Or, he doesn't even comprehend what he's looking at in the first place, since he's still in the mindset of looking at the Earth as it was two millenia ago… except for the Foundation, which is feeding him an image of the Earth as it was. The comfort of encountering what he expected is enough to satisfy him.
Yeah, okay. "Slow aliens underestimate humans" is getting to be a bit of a cliché in military sf though (the main premise of both Turledove's Worldwar books and Ringo's Legacy of the Aldenata series) and I do dislike human exceptionalism. Basically you'd have the premise of a bad John Ringo novel here, if the Foundation had decided to send like MTF Tau-5 instead of some hapless clones. On the other hand this is pretty entertaining. I will think about it.
My thoughts align with sirpudding, although an overdose of humanity-exceptionalism scifi on Reddit has already jaded me.
I have to agree with Sirpudding on this one, but I do like anything that crosslinks with something of mine, hahahah.
This stands on its own nicely but is also a lovely Showmen/1822 tie-in.
Another possibility is that they might be so far ahead of humanity that it'd be like a person going back in time dressed in a toga to to teach Romans how to build hydraulic/pneumatic pump systems: Not a clue that they were teaching them something they already knew inside and out, because they were clearly primitives. And everyone knows Romans wore laurel leaf crowns and togas.
I'll point out as a side note that human exceptionalism is not a new trend in sci-fi. We're talking all the way back to Sagan and Asimov at the least. In my very shady memory from devouring golden age sci-fi as I kid, the human-optimistic/jingoed trend was almost as popular as the human-pessimistic/apocalyptic trend.
That said, for this SCP, I prefer to believe that Sextus Pompilius Trio's people only have access to the Roman Empire season of humanity on the Showmen's equivalent of Netflix, and their telepathic and teleportation abilities aren't particularly precise or effective. (I mean, they can only teleport things that their receiver is concentrating on.) Thus them only being able to target random individuals in the geographic location of Rome.
I'll point out as a side note that human exceptionalism is not a new trend in sci-fi.
War of the worlds is the earliest I can think of. 1897.
Yeah, we were loosing… right up to the point one of us sneezed on a tripod and unleashed a deadly plauge of the common cold on the invaders.
Hey, who said "adapted immune system" can't qualify as exceptional?
That human exceptionalism is old and tired is what makes it cliché.
I'm kind of puzzled at why so many people are seeing this as human exceptionalism. Aside from my aforementioned "Did we invent the steam engine before or after those solar panel things? I mean, seriously, they don't even have basic antigravity tech yet." hypothesis, they mention humans are behind schedule for an appearance in the arena- meaning humans are progressing more slowly than most species.
Just because the alien con artist is also a moron doesn't make us brilliant.
Because these aliens assume that we haven't evolved technologically or socially in a millennium and this assumption is apparently a reasonable one for an interstellar civilization to make. This is exactly the premise of Turledove's Worldwar.
Just because the alien con artist is also a moron doesn't make us brilliant.
An entire civilization of moronic wimps kind of does, in comparison.
Edit: Also that these aliens are so hopeless at fighting compared to superior humans that a 3rd century Legion (or whatever year they think we are permanently stuck in) is better equipped for it even with the huge disparity in technology. Which is the premise of like every "humans are superior" milsf story, ever.
Edit: Also that these aliens are so hopeless at fighting compared to superior humans that a 3rd century Legion (or whatever year they think we are permanently stuck in) is better equipped for it even with the huge disparity in technology. Which is the premise of like every "humans are superior" milsf story, ever.
I'm not sure where you got the idea that these aliens are worse at fighting than humans are from this article. Sextus isn't saying that they can't fight, it's just that they don't want to, and would rather throw a less advanced and more warlike civilization under the bus. Also, if you consider what Sextus says at the end about how the "legion" performed, there's not very much to suggest that they were successful in any sense, only that they were entertaining to the audience, which could mean anything.
Sextus says so:
Our people, as wondrous as they may be, are not warriors, which we are now in deep need of.
And you even just said
more warlike civilization
Furthermore, they are willing to expend whatever effort is needed to bring human troops across ~2000 light years, instead of using their own troops (or robots, or genetically engineered soldiers or even more conveniently located alien mercenaries or whatever).
But really, we are talking about how this strikes me as very similar to human exceptionalism in milsf, which even if it wasn't your intent, is at least on the surface what is going on here: the aliens say that they expect us to have not advanced in two millenia, and they say they expect us to be better suited to fighting their battles then they are.
Edit:
Sextus isn't saying that they can't fight, it's just that they don't want to,
This strikes me as a distinction without a difference. Unwillingness to engage in interpersonal violence, or risk harm's way is why both men and nations are led to surrender against a hostile enemy.
This quality, the willingness to fight, is exactly the only way in which humans are exceptional in Ringo's Aldenata books, which is as archetypical an example of the trope as you could ask for.
But really, we are talking about how this strikes me as very similar to human exceptionalism in milsf, which even if it wasn't your intent, is at least on the surface what is going on here: the aliens say that they expect us to have not advanced in two millenia, and they say they expect us to be better suited to fighting their battles then they are.
OK, I'll grant that the aliens do think the humans are better suited for fighting their battles, but not because the humans are actually good at fighting in this case. Remember that the reason the aliens want human soldiers in the first place is to have surrogates in a gladiatorial combat. Whether the humans win or lose the combat is inconsequential, because all the aliens care about is entertaining the spectators and quenching their bloodlust. Humans are capable of doing both of those things very well precisely because they are so much less advanced.
This quality, the willingness to fight, is exactly the only way in which humans are exceptional in Ringo's Aldenata books, which is as archetypical an example of the trope as you could ask for.
Are the humans in this scenario actually willing to fight, though? If the humans were actually willing to fight, they would have sent out an actual military force, like MTF Tau-5, as you mentioned before. Instead, like the aliens, the humans decide that it is most expedient to conscript some surrogates (the clones) and throw them under the bus. If anything, I think that this SCP shows how similar the humans are to the aliens.
Yeah, I can see that being an issue, but to play devil's advocate: Why do you assume the entity that compares its relationship to its human contact to a master and a slave is being completely honest with the human? Especially if it *is* telling the truth about its race not having warriors. If you abuse and manipulate someone who is stronger than you for profit, you don't give them your home address (or even tell them the right part of town to look in).
Besides, from all the Foundation actually knows (from what is presented in the article), this is just a telepath/matter teleporter across the street screwing with them for lulz.
This wore out its welcome too quickly for me to enjoy or get any reaction out of.
Crazy kids! Back in my day we had imperium and we liked it!
In all seriousness, I thought this was an entertaining article, not only for the fact that Sextus is incredibly behind the times, but also that this advanced race has basically decided to outsource its tribute to another society.
+1.
Ugh. I'm far too tired to note all the historical issues with this portrayal of a pseudo-Roman alien thing, but I will say that there are more than a few and that they are readily apparent. Downvoted accordingly (also because it was not very entertaining in general).
I will say I was a little "they can teleport matter and six thousand people, but not realize a dude isn't actually an emperor?" not to mention the description is fairly pedestrian. But I love the interviews, and getting to see this guy in action really helps with that description. +1
I donno. I was perfectly happy with the SCP before the collapsible. It was a clever little idea. I liked the purple cloth/glassware detail.
Then it got so deeply tied into the Showmen (with a hefty and somewhat ill-considered dollop of SCP-2000) that it's own legs kind of collapsed out from under it
(Further note on SCP-2000: Back before I joined and SCP-2000 was under debate, some people were concerned that it was going to be a generic super-button to fix every problem. I don't share this concern, but this particular reference is an example of what they were afraid of: a reference inelegantly and arbitrarily shoved into a plot gap where other narrative options might have improved it. For example "We needed dudes. We made 6000 clones. Sextus tells us clones died" has virtually no emotional impact compared to, say, "We needed a legion. We sent in 50 members of one of those Roman Legion disguised MTFs. Fates left mysterious.")
Also you're leaning on the central concept of Eric Flint's Belisarius books, just sidestepped into the Foundation/Showmen-verse. I don't know if that would bother me in other circumstances, but here it's just another example of an SCP that was pretty original on its own getting randomly weighed down with ideas from elsewhere.
I think there are other structural or tonal problems, but they all kind of get subsumed under that bigger point.
I think I have to downvote.
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page revision: 2, last edited: 15 Jan 2023 15:06
