Factions in Revelation Space

This is a list of fictional factions in Revelation Space. The human factions are found in the Revelation Space universe, the setting for a series of stories and novels by Welsh author Alastair Reynolds.

Interstellar factions

Spacefaring humanity is divided among these four main factions. While each of these factions has its roots in the Solar System, they have spread with humans to multiple other star systems. Demarchists controlled most major colony worlds, including Yellowstone, until the introduction of the Melding Plague. Conjoiners inhabited hollowed out asteroids on system peripheries, called Nests, before the move to the central Mother Nest in the Yellowstone system during the Conjoiner-Demarchist war. Ultras prefer living aboard the massive lighthugger ships, and are generally uncomfortable on terrestrial worlds. Skyjacks are comet and asteroid miners.

Conjoiners

ULTra (rapid transit)

ULTra (Urban Light Transit) is a personal rapid transit system developed by the British engineering company ULTra Global PRT (formerly Advanced Transport Systems).

The first public system opened at London's Heathrow Airport in May 2011. It consists of 21 vehicles operating on a 3.9-kilometre (2.4 mi) route connecting Terminal 5 to its business passenger car park, just north of the airport. ULTra is in contention to develop an urban system in Amritsar, India projected to carry up to 100,000 passengers per day using 200 vehicles.

To reduce fabrication costs, ULTra uses largely off-the-shelf technologies, such as rubber tyres running on an open guideway. This approach has resulted in a system that ULTra believes to be economical; the company reports that the total cost (vehicles, infrastructure and control systems) is between £3 million and £5 million per kilometre of guideway.

Inception

The system was originally designed by Martin Lowson and his design team, Lowson having put £10 million into the project. He formed Advanced Transport Systems (ATS) in Cardiff to develop the system, and their site was later the location of its test track. ULTra has twice been awarded funding from the UK National Endowment for Science, Technology and the Arts (NESTA). Much of the original research on ULTra was done by the Aerospace Engineering department at the University of Bristol during the 1990s. Recently the company renamed itself "ULTra PRT Limited" to better reflect its primary business, and moved its corporate headquarters to Bristol.

Ultra (Depeche Mode album)

Ultra is the ninth studio album by the English electronic music band Depeche Mode, released on 14 April 1997 by Mute Records. The album was the band's first since the departure of Alan Wilder, who had left the band in 1995 having become disillusioned with life in Depeche Mode. Wilder's departure and lead singer Dave Gahan's drug problems, which culminated in a near-fatal overdose, had caused many people to speculate that the band was finished. This is their first album as a trio since 1982's A Broken Frame.

Ultra debuted at number one on the UK Albums Chart and at number five on the Billboard 200. By April 2006, the album had sold 584,000 copies in the United States. The project was initially conceived as an EP.

In 1999, Ned Raggett ranked the album at number 50 on his list of "The Top 136 Or So Albums Of The Nineties".

Promotion

To promote the release of the album the band played two short concerts in London and Los Angeles, titled Ultra Parties. The London concert took place on 10 April 1997 at Adrenalin Village and the Los Angeles concert was held on 16 May 1997 at the Shrine Exposition Hall. The Shrine show was produced by Philip Blaine whose 1500 Records was currently compiling the soon to be released Depeche Mode tribute album For the Masses. The shows featured Christian Eigner on drums and Dave Clayton on keyboards. The Los Angeles show was filmed by MTV but the performance was never broadcast in its entirety.

List of Pearls Before Swine characters

This is a partial list of characters in the comic strip Pearls Before Swine by Stephan Pastis.

Rat

Personality

Rat is a megalomaniacal, misanthropic rat, who is frequently critical of the strip's style and artwork, as well as the other characters in his and other strips, real life people, and almost all living (and often nonliving) things. He believes himself to be much more intelligent than he actually is, and thinks more or less anybody else is stupid with the only person he believes worthy of his respect being Leonardo da Vinci. He tends to irritate people, particularly his intelligent friend Goat, and is easily irritated by his naïve, dim-witted housemate Pig. Rat believes himself to be the wisdom of the strip, if not wisdom itself, and that anybody else is more or less dumb, whereas most other characters view him as "a loudmouth, pompous malcontent". He may or may not be a personification of the Seven Deadly Sins.

Rat is very prideful and arrogant (he once made a list of all the geniuses in the world that only said "Mozart, da Vinci, Me", and then said that he only put 'that music dude' there to be nice), and is constantly dreaming up schemes that invariably would keep him away from anyone and everyone else, though these inevitably backfire. He often appears incapable of seeing his own faults.

Spoons

Spoons, also known as Pig or Tongue, is a fast-paced game of matching and occasional bluffing. It is played with an ordinary pack of playing cards and several ordinary kitchen spoons or other objects.

Spoons is played in multiple rounds, and each player's objective is to grab a spoon. No spoon may be grabbed until one player has collected a four of a kind, but once the first player to get a four of a kind has grabbed a spoon, all players may immediately reach out to attempt to grab a spoon. No player may grab more than one spoon at a time. As in the game musical chairs, there is always one fewer spoon than there are players, so one player will always be left without a spoon. Depending on the variety of game being played, that player either loses the game and is eliminated, or continues playing but loses a point.

Playing the game

Preliminaries

The game Spoons can be played with 3 or more players, using one or more decks of 52 ordinary playing cards and a number of spoons totalling one fewer than the number of players. Even though the game is famous for the usage of spoons, virtually anything can be used. The spoons are placed in the center of the table in a circle with handles pointing outward so that they may be easily grabbed by any of the players. One person is designated first dealer and deals four cards to each player. The dealer will use the remaining cards to draw from.

Humber Pig

The Humber Pig is a lightly armoured truck used by the British Army from the 1950s until the early 1990s. The Pig saw service with the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) from the late 1958 until early 1970. The Pig became particularly well known from its presence on the streets of Northern Ireland during the worst of the Troubles.

History

The Humber Pig is based on the FV1600 series of four wheel drive 1-ton payload trucks manufactured for the British Army by Rootes from 1952 to 1955. The Pig FV1611 is the armoured variant of FV1601 CT Truck and the FV1612 the armoured version of the FV1602 CT FFW Truck. Originally designed to fulfil many roles with RAC, RA, RE, RS, Infantry. The armoured body was fitted to fulfil the need for an armoured carrier until the Alvis Saracen could be delivered in numbers. The armoured bodies were produced by J.Sankey as well as the Royal Ordnance Factories . Of 3,700 Humber trucks some 1700 Pigs were produced

Deployment

Twenty prototype Pigs FV1609A (no armoured rear roof) entered troop trials in 1956. When these trials ended ten were issued to the RUC in October 1958. In 1960 the RUC Pigs were upgraded with a rear roof to emulate the FV1611 that was now in production The truck chassis proved ideal for urban internal security duties, and ended up serving longer than the larger, heavier Saracens that were intended to replace them.