PhilGoetz comments on Normal Ending: Last Tears (6/8) - Less Wrong

26 Post author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2009 08:45AM

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Comment author: Eliezer_Yudkowsky 04 February 2009 08:50:30AM 10 points [-]

This is the original ending I had planned for Three Worlds Collide.

After writing it, it seemed even more awful than I had expected; and I began thinking that it would be better to detonate Sol and fragment the human starline network, guaranteeing that, whatever happened in the future, true humans would continue somewhere.

Then I realized I didn't have to destroy the Earth - that, like so many other stories I'd read, my very own plot had a loophole. (I might have realized earlier, if I'd written part 5 before part 6, but the pieces were not written in order.)

Tomorrow the True Ending will appear, since it was indeed guessed in the comments yesterday.

If anyone wonders why the Normal Ending didn't go the way of the True Ending - it could be because the Superhappy ambassador ship got there too quickly and would have been powerful enough to prevent it. Or it could be because the highest decision-makers of humankind, like Akon himself, decided that the Superhappy procedure was the categorically best way to resolve such conflicts between species. The story does not say.

Comment author: PhilGoetz 28 June 2011 08:06:48PM 2 points [-]

I like this original ending better; it's more thought-provoking (which is almost a synonym for more disturbing). And I'd like to see this submitted and published in a print SF magazine, likely Analog.