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Sovereign
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ahhh... glad to hear there's a possible "joe" sequel! 
In my opinion, two suspenses are driving me crazy... the council "who will win?" and the take-down of the cyborg factory.
Personally, I'm rooting for the Hive. Maybe its the small dictator inside of me  or maybe its because I enjoy playing or pact'ing with the Hive in the SMAC and SMAC-X games. 
I'm like "Hey you! Don't let Lal win or I'll time and parallel-reality warp over and kick your butt, Yang!" 
.... Or "Cmon, Joe! Kick some Datatech butt, and oh by the way, make sure these people learn that hacking isn't the way to survive. Or I shall come over and kick your butt from my reality and time."
I personally can't figure out how a faction totally focused on hacking, anarchy, and espionage can build a civilization in a hostile world like Chiron. The other factions can, since they have ideals of survival, but can you electronically hack the enviroment to give you farms and mines? Or create armies? Or have a ordered government with anarchy? What good does espionage gain other than intel info... do they espionage mind worms or magically make armies? 
I can see the other factions actually focusing on the task at hand, with order, organization, government, and a belief of democracy, Bible, emanicpation, preserve enviroment, and so forth.
Thats why I always eliminate the Datatech faction first in any SMAC-X game I play. Their faction makes no sense, and a despicable bunch. They seem to usually declare vendetta or sneak attack me, more than even Yang, Santiago, and Miriam. 
Also, I'm curious. How do you have new factions crop up in the SMAC-X game after it is well underway? The Cybernetic Consciousness "popping" up, and I thought the maximum of factions were 7. I count PK, Sparta, Pirates, Datatech, Caretakers, Morgan, Gaians, Hive, University, dead Believers and Drones, Usurpers, and Cybernetic Consciousness. That comes up to 13 factions in one game. I apologize if I'm being analyztical, but I remember you posting a map of your game and I saw like 8 factions on it when there's supposed to be 7 max in any given game. 
At any rate, I really enjoy Joe and am looking foward to a hopeful Joe 2.
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Alinestra Covelia
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I sense the dodgy presence of Bing - a presence I've not felt since...
Feb 2000
time: 00:13
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Another episode is up but the suspense is still there. You're all going to hate me for this!
Sovereign - as regards to a "Joe" sequel, I already have a few ideas, again largely focussed on the internal workings of the Hive. My biggest problem will be time constraints - I have already spent over two years writing Joe, and I'm not sure, with my graduate degree about to begin, whether or not I can spare the time and effort to write another such piece.
Also, part of the problem is that I've already pulled out all the stops with Joe - I'd hate to write a sequel that couldn't match up to the first work! That's happened with many films and quite a few books too (Catch-22's sequel, Closing Time, springs immediately to mind, as does Hannibal).
As for your argument against the DataTech, I think somewhere in the first page of this discussion thread (and roughly two years ago so don't worry!) somebody mentioned that too. I agree, actually. I don't think the Data Angels are a particularly convincing separate faction on their own, although as a terrorist organization or subversive spy ring, they are slightly more convincing.
Note that DataJack Roze does not, in my story, do much actual leading per se. This may be indicative of the difficulties of making this faction believable.
And yes, I'm aware that there are more than seven factions running around on the map: there are nine if you count Hive, Uni, UNP, Gaians, Morgan, Pirates, DataTech, Caretakers, Spartans. "Dead" factions consist of Drones, Cult, Believers, Usurpers. That makes 13, not including Zeta-5, which is about to be reinstated as the tenth global government.
This is not a true reflection on the game itself, which indeed only had seven factions (in fact fewer than that, by the time I got to this particular state of affairs... hum-de-ho-de-hum!  ) but then again I thought that in any story about the SMAX world, I'd really have to at least mention every last faction. After all, there's a whole history given to them - what right to I have to say "actually, they never existed"... 
Kassiopeia: Where's James Bond 2100? I thought it was erased! Can you give us a URL?
As for Aki's name, I also know it is a male name. (I read Authunars thalltr when I was at college and remembered that King Svein's wicked steward - who tries to steal Authun's bear - was named Aki.) That is why I refer to the Algorithm itself as merely "Zeta-5". On the few occasions that I mention "Aki" as a name, I always mention that the human shell no longer had a gender. I don't know what a neuter version of "Aki" should be - knowing the very small number of Finnish people to which it could apply, there probably isn't one!
Notice that when I talk of the young girl back in her hometown of Hollingsdall, I use "Aka" instead. I heard somewhere that this is the female version of the same name and I thought it would be better to get facts right rather than perpetuate a Firaxian mistake.
So even though Firaxis made an error with the naming of Aki, I tried to explain this through her eventual ungendered nature. Largely, I've been successful.
What I can't explain is how they got Sheng Ji Yang's name entirely fouled up. The Chinese have their surnames first, so rightfully he should be called Chairman Sheng (notice Mao ZeDong is never called "Chairman Dong"). This appears to have slipped Firaxis' usually-strict accuracy standards.
Perhaps nobody brought it up when Michael Ely was writing his story "Journey to Alpha Centauri". If you read that, you will notice that Zakharov's name was originally "Saratov", but Russian feedback persuaded Ely to change it to a more feasible name. Maybe there just weren't enough Chinese people reading the story to make a difference.
This cultural confusion is also a minor theme in the Council in "Joe". I didn't spend too long on it, because I didn't want it to become a mid-story rant, but Lal's response in the story is sadly indicative of many Westerners' responses on this forum and elsewhere - "yeah, so we got the Chinese name wrong, but so what? Our names don't work that way".
From what I can tell, the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean naming systems all tend to put family name first. I'm not sure about the southeastern Asian countries, though.
Oh, by the way, I did not make up or research the surname "Luttinen" myself. If you check http://www.firaxis.com/smac/ you can find a wealth of information on faction leaders that you can't get anywhere else - not from the game, not from the manual. That website also has the original name of Zeta-5, though it still gets her first name wrong.
In writing "Joe", I took three sources as being canonical, and which I did not plan to contradict if at all possible.
The first is the game itself and the manual that comes with it (in fact, I once mistakenly wrote that Planet has a 24 hour cycle... later, when I reread the manual, I had to go back and change every single time reference of previous chapters to account for its 18 hour cycle!).
The second is the official Firaxis website http://www.firaxis.com/smac/ which has, amongst other things, Aka Luttinen's original name and birthplace.
The third is Michael Ely's original piece of work "Journey to Alpha Centauri".
In places, these works occasionally contradict each other (eg Sheng Ji Yang's real rank onboard the Unity is variously given as "Executive Officer" or "Ship's Doctor" - which should actually be Lal's post) and I just chose whichever option best fit my story.
As far as faction leader characters are concerned, I tend to lean more towards "Journey" than the game. Miriam especially is a much more interesting character in the "Journey" story than the game makes her out to be. Chairman Sheng is probably the only exception to this, as his character is hardly (if at all) developed in Ely's work. His in-game quotes are, however, fascinating to say the least.
Of course, in this story Chairman Sheng probably owes more of his character to my own play style than anything else, as this story developed out of a game of SMAX I played. But in real life I smile more than he does.
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Mr. President
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The leaves that are green turn to brown
Jul 2001
time: 15:13
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quote:
From what I can tell, the Chinese, Japanese, and Korean naming systems all tend to put family name first. I'm not sure about the southeastern Asian countries, though.
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Many speakers of languages from the Malay group (Indonesian, Malaysian, Singaporean Malay, Minangkabau, Acehnese, Kalimantan, Sulawesi, etc.) only have one name (like the former President Suharto). When people do have a given name and a family name, the family name is written last. What the person is called in speech, though, is not consistent: the Indonesian writer Ali Akbar Navis is called Pak (Mister) Navis, whereas the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Mahathir Mohammad, is called Dr. Mahathir.
I also agree with the analysis of the DataTechs. Computer hacking is perhaps the most tenuous base for a society even in a game that contains the Cult of Planet and the Nautilus Pirates.
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Kassiopeia
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Jyväskylä, Finland
Jul 2001
time: 07:13
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True. Aki is an Asian female name. As is Mika (IIRC) and Ari (IIRC). However all three are male names in Finnish (LightEning, if you know him, is Ari IRL, and there are sportsmen like Mika Salo and Aki Parviainen, for instance).
Very bizarre.
But the "Aki" in question here is obviously from Scandinavia (Finnish surname, Luttinen, and Swedish/Norwegian/Danish hometown, Hommsdall (sp)).
Of course, if she were born to a Japanese mother and a Scandinavian father, but I do think the father would have objected the name.
Oh, and I've still got trouble reading a scifi novel I wrote when I was thirteen. The shame, the shame! 
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Alinestra Covelia
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I sense the dodgy presence of Bing - a presence I've not felt since...
Feb 2000
time: 00:13
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No, it wasn't the End! Now, at long last, we see the End of the fan fiction Joe.
Two more *final* episodes up.
Sorry about the slight cliffhanger there, but I was rudely pulled away from the computer and sent to Missouri. Call it a bout of realism diarrhoea, or literary coitus interruptus, what you will. There was a plane flight involved, so that's my excuse and I'm sticking with it.
So now here I am at Missouri. In three days flat I have located a nice apartment, bought a bed, spent over a grand of money that I'm going to have to repay someday, and finished my first piece of novella-length fiction Joe.
Joe is around 157000 words long. Printed out, I make it to be 295 pages in length (this meaning sides, not printed pages - divide by two for printed pages). On my laptop it takes up 959Kb in rich text format. The story was begun 19th July 2000 (during the Olympic games) and it was finished on 30th July 2002 (during Alinestra Covelia's period of calm before her graduate studies began).
Thank you all for reading the story, and I hope that you'll spread the word to fellow SMAC fans who have equally large amounts of time on their hands.
I would like to thank the wonderful phenomenon of jet lag for its help in writing this story. Without those many hours of predawn boredom somewhere in upstate New Jersey, Joe would still be languishing in the middle chapters even now.
If there are any themes that people would like to discuss about this story, then please feel free to ask away here. The story was written episodically, but I have tried to maintain cohesion and continuity. Several fictitious diplomatic and military incidents during this story are drawn from real life.
There will be an emailed picture of myself eating a bamboo tree in situ for the first people to correctly identify what they are!
Otherwise, I shall have to leave you people with the teaser that Joe may or may not have a little brother sequel someday in the future. If writing were an act of love, I'd be an exotic dancer. 
Finally, the feeling I have upon finishing Joe is that of extreme relief. Those literary purgatives finally worked.
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Alinestra Covelia
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I sense the dodgy presence of Bing - a presence I've not felt since...
Feb 2000
time: 00:13
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Sovereign is entirely correct about the two Sentry-8 attacks being one of the events with real life symbolism, and also that the downed Hiverian fighter near SouthSea Isle was another, but his suggested symbolism was not the real-life analogy which prompted me to write about it. But if there's one thing I learned in my English Literature course, there's no such thing as an "unfeasible" analogy, so thanks to Sovereign for suggesting it.
Hiroshima/Nagasaki never crossed my mind but they are quite obvious comparisons. I feel kinda silly at not having thought of it myself As for the US fighter downed in Bosnia, I am ashamed to say that I never heard of that particular mystery before today.
You're on the right lines, though. Keep guessing. The real life equivalent of the Sentry-8 attacks was equally as infamous as the nuclear attacks, and the real life equivalent of the SouthSea Isle lost Hiverian jet was very controversial in its day. Guess what they are!
A few notes, now that I have some time on my hands:
1. I had originally wished to explain Joe and Dritnam's cluttered net language. Those of you who have spent time in chatrooms might have come across messages where numbers and alphabets are mixed for stylistic effect. Sometimes, the letters themselves are made up of symbols to further add to the effect. I don't know what the official name for this type of net slang is, but Joe and Dritnam use a version of it.
Originally, my intention had been for their script to be explained by reference to Chinese characters. When a person types in Chinese using a western keyboard, the characters are usually expressed as a series of ALT + num pad keystrokes (regardless of whether or not the typist had to press ALT + num pad to input them - many other forms have easier ways of input than this). Joe and Dritnam were originally to have been sending messages where the words of the message were unimportant - what was important was the numbers contained in them, which would relate to an ALT + num pad keystroke, and therefore to a Chinese character. This would naturally be difficult for the DataTech to unscramble since English is the lingua franca of the entire globe, excluding the Hive.
Part of the theme would be to further emphasize the marginalization of the Hive's culture on Planet (and by implication, many non-European based cultures on Earth). In the end, I left this out for a few reasons - A) I couldn't really claim any technical knowledge of how the Chinese characters are expressed, and I didn't want to look stupid (er) under expert scrutiny. B) I didn't want to labor the point too much of Hiverian marginalization, especially since the Chairman himself later comes to mention this. C) I didn't want to make it seem that the Hive was being marginalized to the exclusion of all other factions - I wanted to show that all factions lost something too.
2. I had originally intended for the two Hiverian jets to have been captured intact. I'll keep the reason for this secret until more guesses have been submitted about the political/diplomatic analogies but that alone should be a major clue as to what inspired it.
3. I was unhappy about Hommel's fate, but I couldn't think of a more feasible one for him. I'll admit now that the entire nitrogen atmosphere thing gave me a big headache from start to finish. eg "Does the DataTech city really NEED fire escapes in a nitrogen atmosphere?" to "how could Hommel survive without a facemask in the atmosphere without dying of nitrogen narcosis?"
Even the DataTech attack on Agent Hu in the magtrain had a few problems and required a few rewrites before I got the masks/breathers/commlinks thing sorted out. Initial versions had them screaming at each other in the naked air - not caring that they'd suffocate long before they got to Agent Hu.
4. Agent Hu is loosely based on my ex-housemate. Many analogies exist - he practises martial arts, has a shotgun fixation, and enjoys putting good looking females through painful physical experiences including but not limited to Chinese burns. He doesn't smoke in real life, though.
That's all I can think of right now. When I reread the story I'll jot down what inspired me to put something in.
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Main_Brain
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Economic World Center
Jul 2002
time: 06:13
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1) Its called l33t speak I think :=)
mhh Two Mighty Planes destroy a Building.. WTC? would have to check when it was posted for which im too lazy :P
Mhh would fit also with 2) as I see..
3) Well i thought he would develop into a madman Cannibal on Island, but its 'prolly better he didnt :=)
4) is simply terrifing.. but I guess the Decaption would also be an Analogie an Analyst would be interested to hear ;=)
I Dont fully get the Thing with Hu though, he is only Frozen so that he cant build up psychical defense?
this whole Head in Jaw Thing reminds me of smth. I cant remember...
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Sovereign
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Bah!
That doesn't seem or look like 9/11 in any way. I mean, to use similiar scenarios, you'd have to destroy a center of commerce by using minimal "explosives" rather than fusion bombs used aganist a miniature subterrean city. PowerClip would be more like a nexus of secrecy, like Area 51 or Roswell, than a center of industry or commerce.
I still think the best scenario would be the Japan bombings, since it didn't completely destroy or ruin the cities, while the fusion bombs didn't annilihate everything in PowerClip. There was still considerable infrastructure left standing, but the electronics were fried, like in the nuking of Japan.
The WTC towers were completely destroyed (Nothing left standing, except metal sheets).
Then again, its just my personal opinion.
As for the jets, I can think of another scenario. The spy plane incident with China, last year with the crew being "held" in China after accidentally hitting a Chinese MiG jet. The spy plane was unsalvagable, unable to fly back to the USA so it was abandoned in China or its sea, IIRC.
I'm just debating ideas, not trying to insult people or make people upset.
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Alinestra Covelia
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I sense the dodgy presence of Bing - a presence I've not felt since...
Feb 2000
time: 00:13
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Well done, Sovereign! You're right on the money about where the SouthSea Isle jet downing came from. After 9/11, nobody seems to remember the previous furore over the May 1st downing of a Chinese fighter jet and an American spyplane near Hai Nan Isle.
Hai Nan in Chinese means "South Sea". Much of the language included in the story coincides with what both governments were saying in the international muckflinging after the incident, eg the Hiverian claim that the cockpits are "sovereign Hive territory" (the same claim was made by the US government immediately after the spy plane landed to prevent the Chinese from boarding).
Yes, in the final form, the two nuclear explosions don't resemble 9/11 very much, but nonetheless 9/11 was the original inspiration for it, even if it didn't get used much. I think putting in a terrorist attack that was too similar to 9/11 would probably offend some readers.
You show admirable conciseness in summing up Li Min's end condition. There appears to be only one small sentence that you missed in the conclusion, concerning small wreckage.
I tried to write the story's ending so that it has many echoes of its beginning. Joe and Dritnam die in situations very similar to Lydia. The story starts off with Joe watching the sunset in the east, and it ends with Joe soaring towards the sunrise in the west.
There are a few loose ends, too, and Li Min is one of them. Note also that he is the only DataTech probe member to survive that we know of.
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Alinestra Covelia
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I sense the dodgy presence of Bing - a presence I've not felt since...
Feb 2000
time: 00:13
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Nobody was quite sure who was at fault, just that the Chinese fighter jet was destroyed and the pilot never recovered, and the US spy plane was held at Hainan air base under heavy guard.
This was particularly sensitive because the spy plane contained US intelligence files that, if cracked by the Berzhinev Hiverian Intelligence Bureau (or whatever the Chinese equivalent is) would allow the Chinese to suddenly gain 40 years' worth of parity in a very short time. Allegedly.
Fortunately (or not depending on your viewpoint) the American crew successfully destroyed the intelligence files contained onboard the plane. They were detained for nine days (I think) and then released. The US government sought permission to repair the plane and fly it out of Hainan, which the Chinese government refused.
The plane was eventually disassembled, placed onboard a Russian cargo plane, and flown back to America. The Chinese government demanded that the US government pay a $1,000,000 housing bill for the plane, which the Senate loudly rejected. Instead, they paid $46,000.
At the time I was in Britain and I remember all of my housemates (all British save Hu Man Bing) sided with the Chinese, surprisingly enough. One even went so far as to say that America deserved a bloody nose for its actions. I remember going online at one point and seeing plenty of anti-Chinese sentiment, ranging from "Chinese fighter jets are kites covered in tinfoil" to "China outnumbers America 5 to 1 and those are not good odds; let's nuke 'em now while we still have the time".
A crazy world we live in.
Much of Chairman Sheng's thoughts concerning media manipulation are my own - now moreso than ever, given my journalism course. It is surprisingly easy to give a very strong skew whilst maintaining at least the appearance of objectivity and impartiality.
And Sovereign and Main_Brain only get half the photo each, because of the way the two questions were answered.
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25-07-2002 21:26
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