Zhodani without Psi

[cptbutton]

Since it is being discussed in the Hard SF vs. Traveller threads, I figured I'd dredge up my old idea for how to have the Zhodani without supernatural psionics:

Earlier version here. (That was a repost of my idea, but the original was on the Pyramid boards. I think.)

By law all children in the Consulate have brain implants with wireless communication at birth. In theory, everyone should be able to use them for telepathy by radio, cyberpunk access to computer systems, etc. In practice, only a minority of people ever learn to use them effectively.

No one has ever found a way to get implants to work well if they are put in later in life, so other societies can't duplicate this without going far down the road to becoming just like the Zhodani.

Using them to spy on other Zhodani's brains is the most common skill, but others exist like being able "become" a spaceship, have 360 degree vision, a squad that fights as a hivemind, etc.

So you still have a noble psi class, thought police, elite warriors, and other people able to do stuff impossible for normal people.

You don't get precognition, teleporting commandos, telekinetics, or telepathic spying on foreigners. But there are rumors of all these things and they are the kind of urban legend stuff that just will not die regardless of the facts. And the Zhodani intelligence services are not above spreading such stories and faking evidence of them as misinformation. Or maybe the rumors are a Hiver plot.

[Flyndaran]

Dragging advanced memetics from THS could allow for creepy social manipulation. THS uses it almost like mind control as is.

I can't see how one could really read minds with realistic technology. Stream of consciousness even when fully subvocalized is near gibberish to anyone else.
You would have to have an enormous amount of experience with my life to make heads or tails of my thoughts. Associations that make less sense that obscure puns, dropping trains of thought that never the less continue on in the subconscious only to pop back up fully formed later, holding both sides of a conversation in my head while irritating obsessive music plays in the background, sensory memories popping up and sometimes incorrectly with only a fraction of a second spent correcting them, etc.
It's amazing that this mess can ever be coordinated and organized long enough to communicate with language to another person for even a moment.
In my opinion at least.

[copeab]

The problem is that psionics is the only area where the Zhodani are superior to the Imperium, and use it to good effect with their commandos. When you strip away psionics, they are inferior to the Imperium in every way ad, frankly, not very interesting anymore. Better to replace them with another race than nerf them.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by copeab

The problem is that psionics is the only area where the Zhodani are superior to the Imperium, and use it to good effect with their commandos. When you strip away psionics, they are inferior to the Imperium in every way ad, frankly, not very interesting anymore. Better to replace them with another race than nerf them.

It would be possible to replace the creepy psionics with creepy cyborgs and end up with the same basic relationship.

[copeab]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It would be possible to replace the creepy psionics with creepy cyborgs and end up with the same basic relationship.

Turn them into the Borg?

[Drifter]

Originally Posted by copeab

Turn them into the Borg?

A more interesting model would be the Comprise, from Michael Swanwick's Vacuum Flowers. Obviously the model for the Borg. Much more interesting is the character Winter (I think - been a long time since I read the book).

Where the Comprise was all of humanity on Earth linked in a hive mind, the light speed limit of communication did not allow it to leave the planet. Winter appeared to be an 'agent' of Earth - a group mind of several individuals in communication with the overall mind but not a part of it.

The aristocracy could be such group-mind beings. Maybe vast hive-minds are not tenable, but group-minds of several dozen, at most, individuals work. Not everyone has to be in a group mind, (its expensive? takes extensive training? is dangerious?), so proles have human-normal minds, and while they don't have their minds 'read', the nobility is smarter, faster, stronger than they are.
Intedants are those proles which are receiving training to enter the nobility. They learn to control their emotions, have been cleared of any psycological problems, etc. Like monks or some type of zen initiate.
The 'nobles' are group minds that replace members as the individuals age and die. The basic 'personality' survives centuries, with only gradual change as the components are replaced.

Then again - this isn't the Zho and I really don't see a need to replace them :)

[Flyndaran]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

It would be possible to replace the creepy psionics with creepy cyborgs and end up with the same basic relationship.

To really work you would need implantable FTL communicators to stay linked to the hive.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by Flyndaran

To really work you would need implantable FTL communicators to stay linked to the hive.

Overkill. After all, the Zhodani thought police don't have interstellar range either.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by copeab

The problem is that psionics is the only area where the Zhodani are superior to the Imperium, and use it to good effect with their commandos. When you strip away psionics, they are inferior to the Imperium in every way ad, frankly, not very interesting anymore. Better to replace them with another race than nerf them.

It may be their only technological superiority, but technology isn't everything. They are supposed to have a unified culture and a more planned expansion and settlement plan even canonically. Give up on randomized system statistics for them, and maybe allow planned economies to work a bit better than they have so far, and something considerably smaller than the Imperium could be a pretty frightening power. Something as big as the Consulate on canonical maps that actually did expand rationally, and therefor is that big because they actually need that many worlds to spread their population and economy over, and in which the entire population can quickly embrace and cooperate toward a particular goal is *scary* even if they're barely Jump capable. If something like that ever adopted a goal like crush the Imperium....

[jason taylor]

Originally Posted by malloyd

It may be their only technological superiority, but technology isn't everything. They are supposed to have a unified culture and a more planned expansion and settlement plan even canonically. Give up on randomized system statistics for them, and maybe allow planned economies to work a bit better than they have so far, and something considerably smaller than the Imperium could be a pretty frightening power. Something as big as the Consulate on canonical maps that actually did expand rationally, and therefor is that big because they actually need that many worlds to spread their population and economy over, and in which the entire population can quickly embrace and cooperate toward a particular goal is *scary* even if they're barely Jump capable. If something like that ever adopted a goal like crush the Imperium....

The only reason they have a unified culture is that they are a Psiocracy. It only worked with the Vilani because by the time they tried that they were so far militarily superior to everyone else that they could afford the weaknesses that come from a "unified culture". They could no longer do this when they met the Terrans and the Terrans could not copy them.

Having a unified culture on that level is simply impossible among humans as we know them. The Zho manage it because they are not, in fact, humans as we know them. They are aliens that happen to have human DNA. Aslan are more like the Viliani-Solomani mainstream then Zho are.