Traveller Universe History and Background

[I have removed a name to protect the guilty, where there is a [*] -- James]

To the List in general:

A lot of people seem to be interested in bits and pieces of Triveller travia,
uh, Trivialler tra-- oh, the hell with it. Anyway, if the List needs an
unofficial historian (or, James, an official one), I'll be glad to fill the
gap: I've got access to everything GDW ever put out on the Traveller->MegaT
universe, and almost everything Digest Group has done. There may be people
with better connections for certain things than I (hi, [*]), but for
historical data and info on the Universe, I'd be glad to work as a resource.

When I say "historian," I mean historian, of the universe and of developments
in the game, and not (even if people would listen to me, which I doubt) a
rules arbiter. If you want to know why people laugh when you say you've gotten
a perfect-condition first printing of HIGH GUARD, or why Cymbeline's a
hacker's heaven, or whether Hivers have a sense of humor, or who Ek is, or how
many babies a Vargr mother tends to have in a litter, or even the lowdown on
who is credited with the discovery that you could have a viable 2G, Jump-2
ship with a 200 ton hull (and hence invented the Far Trader by accident), I
can answer you gladly. But I will not render judgements on how ANY actual game
rules are supposed to work, as my policy since discovering my first rules
glitch in the original Book 2 in 1978 has been, "Talk fast, wing it, and if
anyone tries to quote the rules at you, kick their character out an airlock,"
which is great for argument-free play sessions but lousy for being able to
quote chapter and verse on tables of data.

I should warn folks that my database, while huge, is incomplete: I own by no
means all of the stuff belonging to groups other than GDW and DGP, and am
missing several issues of the better-known fanzines. (I need information
contained in Travellers' Digest Numbers 5-7, for example.) And last but not
least, my research schedule forces me to leave my terminal for weeks at a
time, so there may be backlog on occasion. But I'll try to notify James and/or
the List in such cases.

My memory is excellent but by no means perfect, so I may amend answers to
questions after I've had an opportunity to check the hundred-plus-volume
Metlay Traveller Library. And if I get something wrong, I'm open to being
corrected, but flame me at your peril: the last person to flame me was named
Jim Morrison. And before that it was Elvis, and before that, Jimmy Hoffa.

What do y'all think?

expectantly,

******
metlay				| "What'd you hit him for, Hug?" "I asked him
******				| what the wallet was made of, and he said,
[email removed]      		| `Hide, the cow's outside.' Imagine his nerve,
[email removed]        		| suggesting an Aslan is afraid of a cow!" |->