I remembered that earlier, and during my re-skim when I wrote this post, I got confused by the combo of:
a) he goes out of his way to specify that humans only get to live on around brown dwarves (if the “there’s no value in leaving the economy”, this implies… literally every regular star has aliens?)
b) wormholes exist
c) I think there was a line somewhere about older civilizations that spread farther
And also it just seemed so go damn unreasonable for no one to send out a replicator probe.
And, like, are there literally no pioneers like the Pilgrims/Puritans who are like “well this solar system’s resources are all crowded. I would rather be king of an empire to myself + my friends than live in the slums of this dyson brain?”
(more spoilers)
I remembered that earlier, and during my re-skim when I wrote this post, I got confused by the combo of:
a) he goes out of his way to specify that humans only get to live on around brown dwarves (if the “there’s no value in leaving the economy”, this implies… literally every regular star has aliens?)
b) wormholes exist
c) I think there was a line somewhere about older civilizations that spread farther
And also it just seemed so go damn unreasonable for no one to send out a replicator probe.
And, like, are there literally no pioneers like the Pilgrims/Puritans who are like “well this solar system’s resources are all crowded. I would rather be king of an empire to myself + my friends than live in the slums of this dyson brain?”