Zach WeinersmithBahaha, there was a thread on the Bird Site talking about A City on Mars. The usual ad hominem stuff, but for the first time a guy implied we were maybe being paid by China. For the record, of the Chinese government wishes to fund longterm research projects on space settlement science (A) they really need to work on their propaganda game (B) please direct them to my bank account at once
Dan Sugalski@ZachWeinersmith I am always a bit surprised exactly how worked up people get over what’s essentially the proposition “living on Mars is really hard, actually, and you wouldn’t like it much”
@wordshaper I had a couple people ask if we were being too defensive in some of the opening sections to which I would always say, oh just wait. They will come.
@wordshaper The thing I really don't get is why so many people insist we're being purposefully dishonest and making stuff up. Like, the word "polemic" gets used, even though we've had quite a few readers say we were too apologetic and too nice to the space billionaires!
Jeff@ZachWeinersmith @wordshaper maybe they think you're in the pocket of Big Mars, and you're just pushing everyone else away, so that the billionaires can have it all to themselves. When you publish "A City on Venus" saying how great THAT will be, to convince everyone to go there instead, their suspicions will be confirmed.
Consider the foolproof logic illustrated in XKCD "Hotels"
https://xkcd.com/958/
@evilotto @ZachWeinersmith ...I am now tempted to start a rumor that Zach is a puppet of the Zeta Reticulans (they're the lizard people with a base under the Denver airport, right? Something like that) to discourage Mars exploration and the discovery of their Secret Base there.
The only thing stopping me, besides laziness, is the depressing knowledge that enough people would take it seriously that the results would be unfortunate.