It turns out I've been summoned to a close friend's birthday party and thus, sadly, won't be able to show up for the tournament.

Great news! If no IRL social activity pops up at that evening, I'll be around.

Actually, I always thought that a sequel would star Fwiffo and Talana in the main roles.

Regarding intelligence agents not killing people: what about Bond?

As for intent, just let me tell you a fact about Portugal. One of our national heroes is a baker. The story goes like this: after being routed during an attempt to invade us, a few Spaniards hid away in her oven. When she came to work, she found them and finished them off with her baking shovel. Now, this was a long time before the Genebra Convention and I don't support her actions towards enemies that were already defeated, but when you invade someone's country you are bound to find resistance from both civilians and military. I don't know much of American History but similar episodes must have happened during the Independence War. The intent, then as now in Iraq, is to defend your country from invasion.

But is terror a legitimate means to that end? The Macmillan Encyclopedia defines terrorism as "The use of violence and intimidation to achieve an objective that is usually, but not always, political". It seems to me that all acts of war, as well as 'muscled diplomacy' (comprising the idea of an ultimatum) fit to this description. So, keeping to this strict definition, everybody, from states to playground bullies and parents disciplining their children, does it. We're all terrorists; as a noun, it could replace 'mankind'.

Though technically useless as a way do discriminate between people, the term is still widely used. Why? Because it questions the legitimacy of the other guys - generally the weak ones - fighting back. I recall that when we, the Portuguese, were fascist and the oppressors a good chunk of Africa the term 'terrorism' was used to designate the same guys that, by the standards of the international community, were freedom fighters. It's a dirty name, that's all. You call it to people you don't like. Especially if you are oppressing them and they have the nerve to fight back.

In The Ur-Quan Masters Trademaster Greenish says:

Just under 20 years ago, the brave and suicidal Shofixti annihilated their species by exploding a Precursor device -- some kind of bomb -- in the interior of their sun. The resulting storm of solar flares cooked the life off the Shofixti homeworld and incinerated over a hundred Ur-Quan Dreadnoughts which had just entered the system to conquer the Shofixti.


So, are the Shofixti dirty little terrorists or, as Commander Hayes puts it, noble and fearless Warriors?

I like it a lot but find it out of character.

And it just has a bit too much reverberation for me.

I would like to hear 'unplugged' versions of these songs played on these cultures' traditional instruments.

Another bellicose way of getting RUs: if you have great skill with the Syreen Penetrator, you may fly them into battle with a single crewmember and get out of it with full crew. Thus the RUs you get from scavenging your adversary's debris are complemented with the value of the crewmembers themselves. The ideal way to do this is to have a fleet of penetrators and your flagship equipped with a large number of crew pods. It is time consuming.

And, although I have never tried this, I also believe that if you get stranded in hyperspace without any easily removeable equipment on your vessel we Melnorme may actually supply fuel without charge. Please do not make the mistake of thinking of this as a `gift' or act of altruism; we are merely investing in our relationship with you, the customer. We are certain that in the long run, this will prove to be a most profitable investment. Anyway, if you are close to your starbase you may then proceed to sell this fuel to Commander Hayes and re-initiate the cycle.

And remember, Captain, you will always find us willing to share such crucial business insight with you for an unspecified fee that may be billed anytime in the near future. We look forward to your next visit.

Welcome back, Captain! You are our favorite customer.

The problem with managing information gathered from a thousand secret sources in space and time is that reference tends to get sketchy. For this I apologize.

I am thus willing to forget that the charge for revealing even one of these sources would be so high that your species would be in debt to us for centuries. I seem to recall having eavesdropped this information either on the 4th astral plane, where most gods like to hang out, or in Channel 44. Whichever the medium, the deific duo would be the source.

But since this information seems to be at odds with your own personal memories of events concerning the Black Spathi Squadron, perhaps we are experiencing alternate realities as side effect of that otherwise excellent transdimensional drive we bought from the Keel-Verezy just last month.

Anyway, you know our policy. ONLY technological system items are guaranteed to be useful for something important somewhere in the galaxy at some point in the future. No refunds.

Until we meet again, Captain.

The Black Spathi Squadron are a club of SC1 fans who got written into SC2 by TFB as an injoke.

Your present balance is 125 Credits.

It has been a pleasure dealing with you, Captain.
We look forward to your next visit.

I am currently captain Cerulean of the New Alliance of Free Stars' flagship Numena.

Needless to say, the freeest radical of them all is Cheep-Guava, Yehat resistant!

How nice to see you again, Captain.

As you know, we Melnorme are interstellar purveyors of fine trade goods and valuable information gathered from a thousand secret sources in space and time. Actually, our primary trade good IS information. And since your credit balance with us is good, we can disclose that the 10.17.98 #StarControl chat log reads:

<Deep-Reep> what the algorythm for the pkunk coming back?
<Fwiffo> The pkunk's resurrection is really only 50/50
<Fwiffo> NNNGN, would I lie to you?

As always, it is a pleasure doing business with you.
Goodbye, Captain.

I recall that there is a George Barr fan page with some high resolution digitalisations of his stuff. And once I wrote to Armand Cabrera if he wouldn't publish his on the net. He answered that the pictures belong to F&P and he wasn't free to do so. To me, this suggests that he still has the originals.