View Single Post
  #818  
04-12-2013, 05:03 PM
Nate's Avatar
Nate
Oddworld Administrator
Rainbow of Flavour
 
: Apr 2002
: Seattle (woo!)
: 16,311
Blog Entries: 176
Rep Power: 42
Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)Nate  (13497)

:
I thought it was Douglas Adams. He said they'd attempted to fuel spaceships with monarchy but they weren't very popular with noble families.
I thought it was in Mort.

EDIT: Yup, I was right:



The only things known to go faster than ordinary light is monarchy, according to the philosopher Ly Tin Weedle. He reasoned like this: you can't have more than one king, and tradition demands that there is no gap between kings, so when a king dies the succession must therefore pass to the heir instantaneously. Presumably, he said, there must be some elementary particles -- kingons, or possibly queons -- that do this job, but of course succession sometimes fails if, in mid-flight, they strike an anti-particle, or republicon. His ambitious plans to use his discovery to send messages, involving the careful torturing of a small king in order to modulate the signal, were never fully expanded because, at that point, the bar closed.

-- (Terry Pratchett, Mort)


EDIT AGAIN: I think you're getting confused with the Douglas Adams quote about the spaceship powered by bad news.
__________________
:
Spending as long as I do here, it's easy to forget that Oddworld has actual fans.


Last edited by Nate; 04-12-2013 at 05:05 PM..
Reply With Quote