(TFT) Re: TFT Digest V4 #225

[David Bofinger <bofinger.david@gmail.com>]

Jack Vance had a good subversion of this in one of his Demon Princes novels.

The hero meets a girl who grew up as a slave of the villain, on a
planet whose location is unknown. The hero gets in his spaceship with
her and says, "Look for a constellation that's familiar. It'll be
distorted, maybe it'll be smaller than you're used to, and it may have
extra stars in it." When she points one out he drives the ship toward
it, working on the theory that the least-distorted part of a skyfield
is the one behind you. After zero or more false starts (can't
remember) the stars get more and more familiar to her and when they
look right they check every habitable planet by hand.

No mess, no magic, no hand-waving, no need for massive computers. Just
common sense.

-----
David
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