I finally read Brinkmanship this past week, and it was good reading. Seemed like the ambiguities I've been somewhat conditioned to expect by Hollow Men and The Never-Ending Sacrifice was throttled back somewhat, although I'm hard-pressed to give specific points in the story right now.
One of the things that you can expect to intrigue me with as a rule, however, is fictional geography material. Or, in this instance, fictional astropolitical cartography.
Seeing as the Venettans share borders somewhat with the UFP, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance and the Tzenkethi Coalition (and by implication, the Typhon Pact)...well, that had me grabbing my copy of Star Trek: Star Charts, digging up Jed Whitten's Starmap site, and opening up Celestia, that planetarium software that Christopher L. Bennett has often spoken highly of on trekbbs.com and in his novels' end-notes.
Anyway, this is what I came up with:
From Mythical Maps
Possible Locale of the Venettan Convention - Generated in Jed Whitten's Starmap Utility at http://starmap.whitten.org. Settings as follows: Map is centered on x:-10, y: 50, z: 0; x-y radius: 40 lightyears; z radius: 100 lightyears. All Star Trek-specific systems tagged as such for reference.
If we go by the Mandel/Whitten implications...well, it's 190 lightyears, give or take a few thousand AUs, between Cardassia and Ferenginar. Lots of room for the Venettans, and Whitten's not yet gotten around to nailing down a homestar for Ab-Tzenketh, nor has anyone else to the best of my knowledge.
Interesting...
One of the things that you can expect to intrigue me with as a rule, however, is fictional geography material. Or, in this instance, fictional astropolitical cartography.
Seeing as the Venettans share borders somewhat with the UFP, the Cardassian Union, the Ferengi Alliance and the Tzenkethi Coalition (and by implication, the Typhon Pact)...well, that had me grabbing my copy of Star Trek: Star Charts, digging up Jed Whitten's Starmap site, and opening up Celestia, that planetarium software that Christopher L. Bennett has often spoken highly of on trekbbs.com and in his novels' end-notes.
Anyway, this is what I came up with:
Possible Locale of the Venettan Convention - Generated in Jed Whitten's Starmap Utility at http://starmap.whitten.org. Settings as follows: Map is centered on x:-10, y: 50, z: 0; x-y radius: 40 lightyears; z radius: 100 lightyears. All Star Trek-specific systems tagged as such for reference.
If we go by the Mandel/Whitten implications...well, it's 190 lightyears, give or take a few thousand AUs, between Cardassia and Ferenginar. Lots of room for the Venettans, and Whitten's not yet gotten around to nailing down a homestar for Ab-Tzenketh, nor has anyone else to the best of my knowledge.
Interesting...
no subject
Date: 2012-11-07 11:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2012-11-08 01:28 am (UTC)Jed Whitton created a not-so-small masterpiece for astronomy-minded laypeople when he came up with that website. With the help he provided and the databases he worked with in order to provide it, I was able to cobble together a map of a region sized at about 1.28 million cubic light-years. 200 ly from "top" to "bottom", 80 ly on each horizontal "side".
If one's of a mind, they can nail down what they want, sector by sector.