Anonymous_Coward4

...never tried a single drug

I'm going to presume you've drank tea, or taken medicine, and under that presumption I can say 'Yes you did'. It's just that the drugs you chose were the ones that adults in your culture had decided were safe... things like caffeine say. Had you grown up in a mormon culture or Amish culture, you might not be able to write the same thing you just did, so isn't what you just wrote an accident of birth rather than a conscious choice about your use of particular chemical structures inside your body?

I would imagine that by choice of locale, you may have passively taken nicotine, too, albeit in small quantities.

, never lost control to hormones...

.... really? Never got angry then, or too depressed to work? Crikey. Or do you mean you only lost control in the way that your parents and culture approved of; again, nothing more than an accident of birth?

One book suggestion. "On Intelligence" by Jeff Hawkins.

Although there is a plug for his own research model, I would summarise the book as:

• brains are a bit tough
• but they can't be that tough
• someone is going to figure it out eventually
• so let's try to figure out
• here's everything i learned myself, hope it helps YOU figure this out, if I can't.

Enjoyable book actually, regardless of what you think of his own preferred AI technique.

AC, I can't stand Banks's Excession.

Interesting, and I must admit I am surprised.

Regardless of personal preferences though... it seems the closest match for the topic at hand. But hey, it's your story...

"Excession; something excessive. Excessively aggressive, excessively powerful, excessively expansionist; whatever. Such things turned up or were created now and again. Encountering an example was one of the risks you ran when you went a-wandering..."

Still puzzled by the 'player of games' ship name reference earlier in the story... I keep thinking, surely Excession is a closer match?

"But I'm having trouble figuring out the superhappys. I can think of a story with rational and emotional protagonists, a plot device relating to a 'charged particle', and the story is centered around a solar explosion (or risk of one). That story happens to involve 3 alien genders (rational, emotional, parental) who merge together to produce offspring."

The story you're thinking of is The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov, the middle section of which stars the aliens you describe.

Yes, I believe I already identified the story in the final sentence of my post. But thanks anyway for clarifying it for those that didn't keep reading till the end :-)

Anonymous.

Regarding ship names in the koan....

Babyeaters: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Midshipman's_Hope. Haven't read, just decoded from the name in the story.

But I'm having trouble figuring out the superhappys. I can think of a story with rational and emotional protagonists, a plot device relating to a 'charged particle', and the story is centered around a solar explosion (or risk of one). That story happens to involve 3 alien genders (rational, emotional, parental) who merge together to produce offspring. It should be known to many people on this thread but it's been about 10 years since I last read it. Asimov, the gods themselves.

Anonymous.

Since this is fiction (thankfully, seeing how many might allow the superhappy's the chance they need to escape the box)... an alternative ending.

The Confessor is bound by oath to allow the young to choose the path of the future no matter how morally distasteful.

The youngest in this encounter are clearly the babyeaters, technologically (and arguably morally).

Consequently the Confessor stuns everyone on board, pilots off to Baby Eater Prime and gives them the choice of how things should proceed from here.

The End

Wait a week for a Superhappy fleet to make the jump into Babyeater space, then set off the bomb.

You guys are very trusting of super-advanced species who already showed a strong willingness to manipulate humanity with superstimulus and pornographic advertising.