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In the science fiction game Traveller, players take on the roles of wandering interstellar adventurers who are willing to take on dangerous and/or illegal jobs for pay. The genre sources for Traveller (now known as “Classic Traveller” or “CT” for short) are as obscured as a medieval palimpsest, yet a careful sifting through the evidence reveals the hidden roots, which in turn point to the pathways of genre evolution from 1965 to 2001.
Post by Hexenritter Verlag on Aug 18, 2018 23:12:12 GMT -5
I loved the article, thanks for posting the link. I need to check out if I can Space Vikings & Damarest books of I can find them. It definitely makes me want to get the Traveller Book in print.
I loved the article, thanks for posting the link. I need to check out if I can Space Vikings & Damarest books of I can find them. It definitely makes me want to get the Traveller Book in print.
If you read them, please post in this thread about them, that would be fantastic.
I loved the article, thanks for posting the link. I need to check out if I can Space Vikings & Damarest books of I can find them. It definitely makes me want to get the Traveller Book in print.
If you read them, please post in this thread about them, that would be fantastic.
Hopefully I can find them as they sound great & I will post my thoughts on them here if I do.
Mr. Andre-Driussi's analysis is interesting, but I think he dismisses the other sources in Supplement 4 too quickly. Alexei Panshin's books, for example, have the clearest precedent for the "remote, centralized government" of early Traveller, as well as their own answer to low berths.
There are a number of other sources that don't appear in that list, but have been mentioned from time to time:
The Solar Queen, Forerunner, Star Guard/Star Ranger, and Witch World series by Andre Norton come up fairly frequently, as does the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
Prisoners of the Sky, by C. C. MacApp, is cited in the text as the source for "Victoria" in JTAS #2.
"Brightside Crossing," by Alan Nourse, is the inspiration for Across the Bright Face.
Robert Weaver, in his post “Why are there no Ranks in the Scout Service?” ( ancientfarfuture.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-are-there-no-ranks-in-scout-service.html ), identifies “Entity,” by Poul Anderson and John Gergen, as the likely source of that feature. He has as well a number of other blog posts on the subject of Traveller literary history.
Marc Miller mentions (in a 1981 White Dwarf interview) The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, as the source for pinnaces (among other things), and Robert Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars as the source for inertial locators. He refers to “A Pail of Air,” by Fritz Lieber, in an article from the Space Gamer about running Leviathan. He says (in "A Decade of Traveller," Challenge #29) that "the prototype Imperium universe was populated with Aslan, Hivers, Vargr, Humans, and Dorsai."
Loren Wiseman, over the course of his editorship of JTAS Online, mentions as inspirations The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein; The Hammer’s Slammers books, by David Drake; The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman; The Solar Spice & Liquors/Nicholas Van Rijn Series, by Poul Anderson; The Hornblower books, by C. S. Forester; The Sharpe novels, by Bernard Cornwell; 87th Precinct novels, by Ed McBain; and The Dogs of War, by Frederick Forsyth -- not your usual science fictional suspects!
Mr. Andre-Driussi's analysis is interesting, but I think he dismisses the other sources in Supplement 4 too quickly. Alexei Panshin's books, for example, have the clearest precedent for the "remote, centralized government" of early Traveller, as well as their own answer to low berths.
There are a number of other sources that don't appear in that list, but have been mentioned from time to time:
The Solar Queen, Forerunner, Star Guard/Star Ranger, and Witch World series by Andre Norton come up fairly frequently, as does the Foundation trilogy by Isaac Asimov.
Prisoners of the Sky, by C. C. MacApp, is cited in the text as the source for "Victoria" in JTAS #2.
"Brightside Crossing," by Alan Nourse, is the inspiration for Across the Bright Face.
Robert Weaver, in his post “Why are there no Ranks in the Scout Service?” ( ancientfarfuture.blogspot.com/2016/08/why-are-there-no-ranks-in-scout-service.html ), identifies “Entity,” by Poul Anderson and John Gergen, as the likely source of that feature. He has as well a number of other blog posts on the subject of Traveller literary history.
Marc Miller mentions (in a 1981 White Dwarf interview) The Mote in God’s Eye, by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, as the source for pinnaces (among other things), and Robert Heinlein's Podkayne of Mars as the source for inertial locators. He refers to “A Pail of Air,” by Fritz Lieber, in an article from the Space Gamer about running Leviathan. He says (in "A Decade of Traveller," Challenge #29) that "the prototype Imperium universe was populated with Aslan, Hivers, Vargr, Humans, and Dorsai."
Loren Wiseman, over the course of his editorship of JTAS Online, mentions as inspirations The Rolling Stones, Starman Jones, and The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress, by Robert Heinlein; The Hammer’s Slammers books, by David Drake; The Forever War, by Joe Haldeman; The Solar Spice & Liquors/Nicholas Van Rijn Series, by Poul Anderson; The Hornblower books, by C. S. Forester; The Sharpe novels, by Bernard Cornwell; 87th Precinct novels, by Ed McBain; and The Dogs of War, by Frederick Forsyth -- not your usual science fictional suspects!