James Davis Nicoll: Re BDOs: George O. Smith's "Lost Art" is about what gets left out of technical documentation. I could see an analog where ancient aliens go to tremendous trouble to mark a site or artifact as lethally dangerous, only for humans to interpret the warnings as "To Find Cool Stuff Dig Here."

"I want to read some books about competence-porn queers instead of disaster queers," I think, writing another book about a lesbian trapped on a strange planet with the girl who dumped her, a pirate, a space marine, and a giant bug.

maybe the bug is a competent lesbian bug

The bug is very competent! It's Mantis Cop! Actually they're all quite competent, it's just that my protag is pretty mopy over her ex.

Re BDOs: George O. Smith's "Lost Art" is about what gets left out of technical documentation. I could see an analog where ancient aliens go to tremendous trouble to mark a site or artifact as lethally dangerous, only for humans to interpret the warnings as "To Find Cool Stuff Dig Here."

My default for any extra solar colony is that in case of a galaxy wide social collapse, instructions for the creation and necessity of flush toilets will be engraved in easy to understand pictographs in the middle of each urban center

That is not exactly the plot of this book, but it is definitely in the same ballpark. It's the whole THIS IS NOT A PLACE OF HONOR problem, isn't it?

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