Name That Spaceship: (04/11/2013)
Last week: polishing off the penultimate rewrite of Bulldog Drummond and the Faceless; editing Empires: Extraction; going to World Fantasy Con. I’ll put up another extract from Empires later this week. This week I’m working on the sequel to The Royalist as a NaNoWriMo project. To follow my progress and/or find out what the hell that even means, you need to hop over to the Fantasy Faction site. Here’s the starter.
This week’s giveaway is a bit different. One of the nice things about conventions is that you get to see all sorts of people when they’re a bit tipsy and more pliable than usual to be tapped up for favours. If you follow the acquisitions news from Gollancz, you’ll already know that when the Kickstarter funding drive for Elite: Dangerous was launched, Gollancz bought the rights to publish three tie-in novel titles. In theory, then, there are three Gollancz novels coming out next year set in the Elite universe. If you’ve been following with *particular* interest (say because you happen to be a Gollancz author who pitch in to the Kickstarter, not that that actually narrows us down all that much, it turns out), you might have noticed that there haven’t been any announcements as to who will be writing them and when they’ll be coming out.
Naturally, from my position of privilege, I shall not be sharing the INSIDE INFORMATION I have on the subject. What I will share, however, is the opportunity, acquired during the World Fantasy Convention for one of you to name a spaceship in one of the elite tie-in novels. Any thing you like provided is doesn’t break some other copyright and isn’t likely to cause offense (both Gollancz and Frontier would have to be OK with it). The ship is currently a Diamondback called the Sword of Alexander and exists in the narrative as something for the protagonist to ostentatiously have a fight with (I believe it puts in a good show for itself before it goes down). There is the possibility that the name might make its way back into the game database for the Elite universe, but I absolutely can’t say anything definite one way or the other about that.
To enter, you have to comment on this post before November 10th AND you have to finish this sentence: “Officer, I crashed into the space-station because…” The author who’ll be using your ship name will choose a winner by some opaque process not subject to any scrutiny next weekend. Enjoy.
November 4th, 2013 at 3: 01 pm
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because I was too busy making a video of a Space Oddity for my facebook page”
Do I have to think of a name now or for later. Something to muse on
November 4th, 2013 at 3: 23 pm
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because there was an artifact on board.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well, I couldn’t just let the ship drift into space with valuable cargo.”
“Why didn’t you take it with you to the escape pods?”
“…”
“You’re an idiot, Captain.”
November 4th, 2013 at 3: 26 pm
Officer, I crashed into the space-station because I stupidly allowed Windows Update to patch my docking computer.
November 4th, 2013 at 3: 49 pm
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because I couldn’t afford a docking computer until I’d delivered this cargo of slaves… sorry, did I say ’slaves’? I meant ‘meat’. I couldn’t afford Cargo Bay Life Support either…”
I think I’d name a ship the ‘Greenback’ as it sounds like a snake, much like the other Elite ships, and because ‘Frog’s Head Flyer’ is likely trademarked.
November 5th, 2013 at 5: 45 pm
Officer, I crashed into the space station because the shipyards build all their ships to be least stable when rolling around their direction of acceleration.
Alt
“Sorry officer, I thought it was a moon”
alt
“Small;…Far away.” “No Officer Ted, I still don’t get it…”
November 5th, 2013 at 6: 29 pm
Officer I crashed in to the space station because that’s how I park all my space ships, nice and snug. Anyway we needed new proximity sensor, and if the station wants a new navigation beacon, we have lots we could sell them in the hold;)
Erirkr blood axe, as he was thane of daneland & York for about 6months until he got booted out, very good at acquiring but not very good at keeping:). It is also the name of my cat;) and he should be famous!
November 5th, 2013 at 7: 52 pm
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because the cat leapt onto the accelerator…”
November 5th, 2013 at 8: 58 pm
“Well Officer, I was attempting to pass aft of the space-station, but quickly discovered that it was far less stationary than I had anticipated.”
November 6th, 2013 at 8: 14 am
I wasn’t texting…honest!
November 6th, 2013 at 2: 30 pm
Officer, I crashed into the space-station because I swerved to avoid the black hole
November 7th, 2013 at 3: 32 am
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because I was too busy listening to Chris Evans on BBC Radio 2. The hilarity of his DJ’ing amuses me In such a way that I lost concentration swerved to miss David Bowie- what he was doing in space was an oddity to me -and then I found myself within the station and everything was a bit broken, sir.”
The name of the ship is Hilda’s Wrath
November 7th, 2013 at 1: 40 pm
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because my Mum called me for dinner just at the moment I was getting ready to throttle back and match the spin of the station. This caused me to turn my head and catch it on one of the many switches I’d stolen from the garage and superglued underneath my desk (where the C64 control unit and heads up display was situated.) This caused me to cut open the front of my scalp and be unable to see because of blood pouring into my eyes. This report is late because I have been in the casualty department at St James Hospital, Sir.
True story.
November 9th, 2013 at 6: 16 pm
Officer, I crashed into the space-station because the Virus had taken control of the forward jump arrays and locked in an endpoint in the middle of a neutron star. If I hadn’t taken them out, we’d have been annihilated instantly. All we had left was thrusters, so I did what I had to. I know people died in the hull breaches on both sides, but I had to take that risk or the entire crew would have been killed. You don’t need me to tell you the numbers. Worse, the Fleet would never have heard about the Virus. We don’t even know how many ships have already vanished into the middle of stars – we have to get the word out.
Ship name: Andarta
November 10th, 2013 at 1: 14 pm
“Ocficer, phardon me , *hic*, did you sthee that sphace stayshon, *hic*, pulled out, right in front of me. Didn’t, *hic*, shtand a chanse, did I? Came from nowhere! *hic* One shecond sphace, nehxt stayshon, *hic*, nehxt – Boom!”
(I know I didn’t quite finish the sentence… call it artistic licence? – or disqualification.)
Ship Name: One_for_the_Road
November 10th, 2013 at 10: 57 pm
“Officer, I crashed into the space-station because it’s my Fer-de-Lance and I’ll pilot it as I’ll damned well please. Shouldn’t you Galcops be out there catching pirates instead of harassing members of the public?”
Ship name: The Arrogance
November 11th, 2013 at 9: 25 am
Thank you all for playing. The Gods of Random have picked Paul. I always get suspicious when they pick a previous winner, like they’ve got something deeply subversive going on and somehow one of you has undermined the fundamental random stochastic quantum processes of the universe and skewed physics and very shortly the world will literally fall apart into fragments of incompatible improbability.
November 12th, 2013 at 1: 44 pm
Or maybe I just pray harder to the Gods of Random and sacrificed my neighbours Goat or something such like.
November 15th, 2013 at 3: 24 pm
officer, I crashed the spaceship because… well I didn’t like the look the guy was giving me. he’ll never give that look to anyone else ever again. The ship was only collateral damage.