Skyward Easter Eggs

[+Ark1002]

What easter eggs have you noticed in Skyward?

I noticed the "Ahlstorm loop", which is obviously referring to Peter Ahlstorm.

[Overlord Jebus]

Rig McAffrey is a nod to Anne McAffrey who wrote the Dragonriders of Pern series to which this seems to have a few homages to (The caverns analogous to the Keeps, the waves of Krell from the sky are like the Thread, the characters been descendants of ships that landed on the planet, even the cytonic teleportation and the "nowhere" seem to be homages to the teleportation in the Pern books).

[RShara she/her]

13 hours ago, Overlord Jebus said:

Rig McAffrey is a nod to Anne McAffrey who wrote the Dragonriders of Pern series to which this seems to have a few homages to (The caverns analogous to the Keeps, the waves of Krell from the sky are like the Thread, the characters been descendants of ships that landed on the planet, even the cytonic teleportation and the "nowhere" seem to be homages to the teleportation in the Pern books).

Ahh I didn't catch those. I'm too stuck on the similarities to Hyperion and freecasting Being able to understand and hear the Krell communications was like learning the language of the living. And of course, seeing/hearing the call of the stars was like hearing the music of the spheres. And cytonic teleportation is so much like freecasting.

And someone caught this on reading Hyperion today

Quote

Our worst dreams have come alive. Something wicked shuns the light. Shades of Morbius and the Krell. Keep the fires high, Mother, Grendel comes tonight.

Both Krell and Grendel (the Beowulf story) mentioned in that line!

Edited November 13, 2018 by RShara

[Platypus]

M-Bot plays Dvorak's New World Symphony for Spensa.

Neil Armstrong had a recording of the New World Symphony along on the Apollo 11 mission.

Also, if I'm remembering correctly, John Williams used it as part of his temp track for the original Star Wars, so that's a second spaceflight/starfighter connection.

[Platypus]

There's a reference to "Stewart destructors", I assume that's a reference to Isaac Stewart.

[Snipexe he/him]

@Platypus Good catch!

M-bot makes a reference to Schrödinger’s cat saying, 

Quote

“Hello?” M-Bot said. “Spensa? Are you dead?”

“Maybe”

”Oooh. Like the cat!”

 

[PandACT he/him]

Further down on the shchrödinger's cat joke, M-Bot says, "the probability has collapsed in our favor" when he confirms Spensa is alive. I wasn't convinced until then, but I screamed at that moment. :3

Edited November 25, 2018 by PandACT

[Ashertliden]

When talking about Spensa's brain activity, the scientist Rikolfr says that "The Writellum section of her brain went crazy with activity when she was around the Krell"

Spoiler

This is possibly a reference to Jason Write from Defending Elysium. 

 

[+Ark1002]

Yay! Lot's of easter eggs!

[+ILuvHats he/him]

Jorgen’s first choice for a callsign, Jager, could be a reference to the webcomic Girl Genius.  It does mean “hunter” in German, which Jorgen alludes to, so there’s an in-world reason Jorgen chose it.  But Brandon has mentioned Girl Genius in Writing Excuses and called it his favorite comic (back in 2010 or something) so this can’t be a coincidence. 

[Sandra she/her]

Jorgen's father is called Algernon, maybe that name's based on the scifi short story Flowers for Algernon.

[ScarletSabre he/him]

On 25/11/2018 at 11:30 PM, Ookla the Indefatigable said:

When talking about Spensa's brain activity, the scientist Rikolfr says that "The Writellum section of her brain went crazy with activity when she was around the Krell"

  Hide contents

This is possibly a reference to Jason Write from Defending Elysium. 

 

Most likely, the second I read the words

Spoiler

"Cytonic Hyperdrive"

I instantly thought of him and that story, and was waiting for a reference to

Spoiler

The Phone Company or the Varvax.

 

Edited November 28, 2018 by ScarletSabre

[ADIMORTIS he/him]

M-bot was called Murderbot by Spensa. So maybe referencing the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. But I'm not sure...

[Norlick27]

M-Bot makes Shakespeare (Hamlet) references in the scene where they're shooting rubble as target practice.

Quote

"Good night, sweet prince," M-Bot whispered as the junk crashed to the ground. "Or princess. Or, most likely, genderless piece of inanimate space junk."

Quote

"Alas, poor space junk," M-Bot said. "I would have pretended to know you, if I were capable of lying."

 

[+Hoiditthroughthegrapevine he/him]

From Defending Elysium, the head of the Phone Company, Jason Write could have a real world analogue.

Listening to the science news summary by Jim Campanella at the end of Starship Sofa Episode #561 he mentioned a paper published by Dr. Jason Wright, associate Professor of Astronomy and Astrophysics at Penn State university, where he and his students examined how much of the Cosmic transmissions have actually been combed through in the SETI project. The previous estimate, using the analogy of all of the possible encoded Alien transmissions as the volume of water in the oceans, was that SETI was like randomly dipping a glass of water into the ocean and looking for life in that glass of water. The updated n-Dimensional cosmic haystack estimate (oulined in the new paper) is that it's more like dipping a large hot tub into the ocean at random and looking for life in that size of random sample.

Was curious if any of you have heard about this from any Sanderson source, like is this an homage to a colleague/friend of Brandon or Peter who they consult with to get the details right on how the complex physics of a given solar system in the Skyward Universe (our universe really) or the Cosmere would work?

One final bit that's pretty interesting, Dr. Wright has wrote on his blog last december about a Rendevous with Rama type situation where an instellar asteroid, Oumuamua, that was passing through our solar system and had dimensions that were 10 times longer than it was wide, could have potentially be a tumbling derelict alien spacecraft, he largely panned this idea, but it's still fun to read about.

Is Oumuamua an Alien Spacecraft
Oumuamua Updates

And more Skyward related, he has written on his blog about Tabby's Star, that has very peculiar stellar dimming observation data that suggests that something mighty peculiar (possibly a Dyson's sphere) is oribiting around the star.

Here's possibly the most interesting blog post about this, concerning the possibility that the data might be revealing Alien Megastructures (this is an analysis of similar stellar dimming, and some interesting discussion of different arrangements of extra-planetary energy harvesting structures).

[Arcanist Lupus he/him]

There was a brief mention of a call sign "Broken Wind", which was the name of one of the ships in Schlock Mercenary.  "Morningtide" is the name of a Magic: the Gathering set, and knowing Brandon, that's not a coincidence.

[+Ark1002]

18 hours ago, Arcanist Lupus said:

There was a brief mention of a call sign "Broken Wind", which was the name of one of the ships in Schlock Mercenary.  "Morningtide" is the name of a Magic: the Gathering set, and knowing Brandon, that's not a coincidence.

Oh, good catch!

[Emily she/her]

On 26/11/2018 at 10:30 AM, Ashertliden said:

When talking about Spensa's brain activity, the scientist Rikolfr says that "The Writellum section of her brain went crazy with activity when she was around the Krell"

  Hide contents

This is possibly a reference to Jason Write from Defending Elysium. 

 

I didn’t notice that. That’s a really cool connection.

[One_Armed he/him]

On 26.11.2018 at 1:30 AM, Ashertliden said:

When talking about Spensa's brain activity, the scientist Rikolfr says that "The Writellum section of her brain went crazy with activity when she was around the Krell"

  Reveal hidden contents

This is possibly a reference to Jason Write from Defending Elysium. 

 

The place in the brain that is in charge on cytonic abilities? That's clearly what branderson ment.

[Cultch]

Gran-Gran and Naga (taynix) are characters from the Avatar series. Gran gran plays a similar role in setting the protagonist on their path to develop their abilities and save the world. I'm on ReDawn right now, looking out for other ATLA universe references. 

On 11/30/2018 at 12:12 AM, ADIMORTIS said:

M-bot was called Murderbot by Spensa. So maybe referencing the Murderbot series by Martha Wells. But I'm not sure...

I wondered about this, too.