David's point about survival chances makes me wonder about the new Ancients - who's going to have the best long-term survival chances, and why? Who's going to go first? I'm kind of leaning towards the new guy, Will, having the best chance of long-term survival. Since his emotions are the way they ar...

Sure, they have rules, followed them, and even as a group enforced them - but that doesn't mean that they couldn't twist things in their minds to make the rules say what they want them to. That's how Cordes and Green broke Noram in the first place, after all. People in general build up justification...

Hahaha. I read that and thought, "Well, that's terrifying." Not sure why.

That actually brings us back around to my original point - Doris doesn't ask, she just does what she feels is right, so people don't really need to VOLUNTEER for correction. Since she's got all those noble kids around her all the time, seems like maybe she would be fixing what she already said was a...

See, that's the thing I never really understood about why the nobles were/are such assholes about short people. It was pretty much explained as genetic changes that Cordes and Burks made based on themselves, although I don't recall which book that was in. There aren't all that many nobles, and Doris...

There was that Austran that could make copies in the Sara book, right? He was the one that got his wife/kids abducted to force him to kill Timon? I don't remember hearing anything past that.

OK, first, sure, I know the real reason is because Dale hasn't written it in yet or it'd ruin the story. That said, I'd buy the cultural blind spot for the Noram folks, but they've got a zillion Austrans in Harmony with them, and I wouldn't think the Austrans would have that same blind spot...they'r...

YES! I've been thinking that ever since Tiera's Makers came out. The Bakers were all sitting around on the moon for 11 years, along with pretty much the whole Lairdgren group. Basically the entirety of the "new-style" builders. The ones with imagination. In that much time they were never s...

I took your advice and gave IVONA a shot. I have to admit it's a pretty big improvement over what I tried before. Sometimes she even sounds like a real person talking, which is pretty impressive. Other times it's a little rougher, and I do miss inflection, but nothing's perfect, right? I imagine the...

I've given text to speech a shot before and not been impressed with the results, but I do have to admit it's been some years since that experiment, so it's probably time to give it another shot. Thanks much for the suggestion.