Harry, Time Travel and Sue

[Ananda]

You... You MONSTER.

(I feel that way about the porn star coven in the book previous. One of the few Files my wife actually read the back copy to, and I have had no satisfactory retort to "This is just Harlequin for boys, isn't it?"

How funny!

[wardenferry419]

Harry does not get lucky enough to consider the series a romance for men.

[jonas]

Harry does not get lucky enough to consider the series a romance for men.

Jim would write a series staring Thomas for that.

[wardenferry419]

It could be called the Penthouse Papers.

[Talby16]

It could be called the Penthouse Papers.

Well said Sir!

[LordDresden2]

Yeah, I've stood beside sue, and she's really not that big.  Bigger than an Elephant, but not THAT much bigger.

Natural land animals, or at least vertebrate tetrapods, can't get much bigger than the dinosaurs got, for various reasons of physics and biology.  Even the prey animals that the carnivorous dinos fed upon rarely got much over 100-140 tons.  That's substantially bigger than Sue, but they wouldn't have made good combatants for Harry, either.

[wardenferry419]

Because prey animals lack agression?

[Kindler]

Natural land animals, or at least vertebrate tetrapods, can't get much bigger than the dinosaurs got, for various reasons of physics and biology.  Even the prey animals that the carnivorous dinos fed upon rarely got much over 100-140 tons.  That's substantially bigger than Sue, but they wouldn't have made good combatants for Harry, either.

Conservation of mass-energy kind of gets in the way. It's one of the plot holes in Jurassic Park; a T-Rex simply couldn't have eaten enough to get that big in the amount of time since Hammond had cloned it.

[wardenferry419]

Well, you just gotta suspend that disbelief or be ignorant like me!

[Kindler]

Well, you just gotta suspend that disbelief or be ignorant like me!

I honestly wish I could. I had to write a shapeshifter novelette to fulfill a publisher obligation a few years back, and simply couldn't ignore the physics problems. I wound up hamfistedly explaining the Square-Cube Law and Conservation of Mass just to point out that I recognized they were problems, but that there was something about shapeshifters that allowed them to ignore it.

Except the Square-Cube Law. I had to limit the shapeshifter to blatantly ignoring Conservation of Mass-Energy and turn into spiders and ants rather than just shrinking down when he needed to. A person the size of an ant would suffocate in minutes, or freeze to death in seconds.

The story would've been paced better if I didn't feel the need to shove the explanations in there, but I refused to let it go.

[wardenferry419]

My understanding of physics is very limited. I have tried to read Hawkings book several times and just can't wrap my head around it.

[Rasins]

I honestly wish I could. I had to write a shapeshifter novelette to fulfill a publisher obligation a few years back, and simply couldn't ignore the physics problems. I wound up hamfistedly explaining the Square-Cube Law and Conservation of Mass just to point out that I recognized they were problems, but that there was something about shapeshifters that allowed them to ignore it.

Except the Square-Cube Law. I had to limit the shapeshifter to blatantly ignoring Conservation of Mass-Energy and turn into spiders and ants rather than just shrinking down when he needed to. A person the size of an ant would suffocate in minutes, or freeze to death in seconds.

The story would've been paced better if I didn't feel the need to shove the explanations in there, but I refused to let it go.

I read a series, I forget what it was, but the main characters were shapeshifters, and they could not ignore the conservation of mass/energy. 

In this one, he's tried to shift into the form of a spider, to escape something I think, but he still had the same size and mass and it mess with his breathing and everything.

Oh, and they were addicted to basil.

[jonas]

I read a series, I forget what it was, but the main characters were shapeshifters, and they could not ignore the conservation of mass/energy. 

In this one, he's tried to shift into the form of a spider, to escape something I think, but he still had the same size and mass and it mess with his breathing and everything.

Oh, and they were addicted to basil.

That... sounds kinda stupid imo, just cause for real, basil? I rather liked the Animorphs explaination, the extra mass was shunted off into zero point space(z-space, which they're currently trying to wrap their heads around to create warp drive) and could in theory be hit by a ship if it were to pass through the same space. it never happened but one time

(click to show/hide)

they transformed into mosquito's so small they popped into z space with the rest of their bodies, fortunately they were saved by a nearby ship, ect)

overall I liked the mesh with physics.

[wardenferry419]

Look on TV Tropes for Alien Catnip. They mention something about basil.

[Kindler]

I read a series, I forget what it was, but the main characters were shapeshifters, and they could not ignore the conservation of mass/energy. 

In this one, he's tried to shift into the form of a spider, to escape something I think, but he still had the same size and mass and it mess with his breathing and everything.

Oh, and they were addicted to basil.

Interesting take on it. The writer didn't try to handwave it by dramatically increasing density or anything? He was just a dude-sized spider?

My explanation was also partially to explain why he couldn't turn into a a Kaiju and just wreck everything; he could if he had an adequate understanding of biology and physics and could actually design a creature that wouldn't immediately suffocate, collapse under its own weight, and had a circulatory system that functioned properly. I presume the limitations on Goodman Grey are similar in some regard, though I don't know if he could shift into something smaller than him, if he's importing matter from the Nevernever. Does he export it, too? And if he does, how does he get it back?