A Conversation with Peter Gold

[00:00:00] Spaceman: Thank you all for tuning into the Halfling in the Spaceman. If you're new to our show, we welcome you and hope you are entertained and inspired to start your own journey into active fandom. If you're a returning listener, thank you for choosing to spend some more time with us. Today we're excited to be talking with Peter Gold, representing one of the several fan-based groups around David Weber's Honorverse series of books, and that is the Royal Manticoran Merchant Marines.

[00:00:27] Spaceman: He'll be talking with us about the honorverse and specifically about the various fan groups based on the military as portrayed in the Honor Harrington Books. Peter, welcome to the show.

[00:00:38] Peter Gold: Thank you.

[00:00:38] Spaceman: To get us started, can you tell our listeners a little bit about what The Honor Harrington books are and what the honorverse is?

[00:00:45] Peter Gold: Honor Harrington series is commonly referred to as the honorverse. It's a military science fiction series featuring the main character of Honor Harrington. She's a Space Navy officer from Manticore. We follow her life and adventures from what is her second Starship command up until she's in charge of the combined fleet of three different large star nations. It's explicitly trying to be reminiscent of C.S. Forester's for Horatio Hornblower series for people that are familiar with that. Another option to look at would be the movie Master and Commander. Starring Russell Crow, a age of sail Combat. The science fiction technology that David developed was designed to give the tactical feel of age of sail combat without being wooden ships 'n sails and space. So they use a wall of battle. Using a relatively short range energy weapons, similar to the age of sail's, line of battle cannons, rather than the modern spread out battle formation of World War II in later eras. Although tactics and technology change within the stories as they go on, . The Starship commanders are often on their own with broad discretion to carry out orders In a universe where the speed of message is at the speed of ship, you can't just get on the radio or Ansible and call back to headquarters and say, Hey, what's going on here? If they're not in the star system, messages are gonna take weeks to get there. The author David Weber was trained as a military and maritime historian, so he's familiar with real world history and that has actually had an impact on his writing in terms of how he covers things. Currently 36 books with number of 37 due out, I believe this spring.

[00:02:28] Halfling: Oh, wow. I didn't realize that, that it expanded. So far,

[00:02:32] Peter Gold: Seven of the books are anthologies, short stories by various co-authors or contributors rather and there's three, no two subseries. There is, Manticore Ascendant; written with Tim Zahn and Tom Pope, and then there's a young adult, the Star Kingdom, which is the Stephanie Harrington series aimed at young adult with Ja.

[00:02:55] Spaceman: One of the interesting things about the Honor Harrington books from when we were reading them is that even when it's not explicitly detailed, there does seem to be a lot of world building behind the scenes. Even when you don't see it, there's a lot of implicit world building as opposed to being explicit world building.

[00:03:12] Peter Gold: Yes. Well, he developed, um, I think he said 80,000 word tech bible before he started writing the first book.

[00:03:20] Halfling: Oh wow. 

[00:03:21] Peter Gold: So he did a lot of tech work, beforehand to get that look and feel while still being internally consistent. You can also see in part when he started writing these books, and also some of the changes that he's explicitly made to make them not like some of his other series at the time. So there is no artificial intelligence.

[00:03:41] Peter Gold: There are brilliant computer programs, but they're not AI, which is a exact offset from the Dahak Series Mutineers' Moon, which he wrote roughly the same time.

[00:03:52] Spaceman: It really does seem with the Honor Harrington books that there is a real world kind of feel to them. Even though we're off in deep space in different star systems with vast, star republics and empires and socialist states all competing there's a depth to it. There's a, viscerality to it. I think that's missing from a lot of the more. Fu not really futuristic, what's a good word? High tech, UltraTech, SuperTech, 

[00:04:20] Halfling: Sci. 

[00:04:21] Spaceman: settings, Tech, one of those 

[00:04:22] Halfling: techs,

[00:04:24] Peter Gold: Yes, and I think part of that has to do with the medium and that it's basically one author's major vision of how things work. Who's somebody who's got a history? Background, who's got a military background or academic military that is, he never served. And he also was a war gaming background, which is unusual somewhat, but definitely not something I think you see very much of in any of the TV or movie science fiction fandoms.

[00:04:52] Spaceman: That's true. That's true because you can feel the tactics. In the books. All right.

[00:04:58] Halfling: When did you get started reading The Honor Harrington books and discovering this gem of a world. 

[00:05:06] Peter Gold: I probably first read them in the very late nineties, early two thousands. I may have read the first book On Basilisk Station or first two or three, on a ship, a few years after they came out. But if so, I don't specifically remember. I really got into it either in the mid two thousands or after 2012 when they did a serialized broadcast of a Rising Thunder on the Baen podcast. So when I started hunting down all the books I hadn't read and actually started going through them in order and I got involved in the fandom. That's a little bit complicated. 

[00:05:49] Halfling: Isn't fandom always?

[00:05:51] Peter Gold: Well, no, I got involved with doing some background material in the universe for BuNine, which is his consulting group 

[00:06:00] Halfling: uh-huh,

[00:06:00] Peter Gold: before I actually joined the fan club.

[00:06:02] Halfling: Oh OK.

[00:06:03] Spaceman: Now that's a little unusual where you become a technical consultant first and then join the fandom..

[00:06:08] Peter Gold: Yes. I was at a convention. I had been talking with some of the BuNine folks and they actually called me out at a public presentation that was aimed at the fan club at RavenCon. And then a few years later when I actually joined the fan club and I wanted to track down where they got some numbers for the Merchant Marine, I said, Well, where'd you get?

[00:06:27] Peter Gold: Where'd you get that number? Because the number had changed between the very, very early books and the much later books. And they said, 

[00:06:35] Peter Gold: Oh, 

[00:06:35] Peter Gold: we got it from you.

[00:06:37] Halfling: Oh, 

[00:06:38] Halfling: Oh 

[00:06:40] Spaceman: Now that is a compliment.

[00:06:42] Halfling: Yeah it is! 

[00:06:43] Peter Gold: Well, that's subject matter expert stuff.

[00:06:46] Halfling: Very good. Very good. Okay. Switching gears just a little bit to your. I won't call what you do mundane by any stretch, but we'll just say mundane life as opposed to your fandom related life. We know that the merchant Marines are not really part of the military, but they support ships.

[00:07:07] Halfling: Are you able to talk about your actual duties within the Merchant Marines?

[00:07:13] Peter Gold: Yes. A lot of it I can, 

[00:07:15] Peter Gold: It's actually a Merchant Marine. There is S.

[00:07:17] Halfling: Oh, I apologize. I'm sorry,

[00:07:19] Peter Gold: That's okay. That's okay. I've been dealing with this since 1979 when I first went to sea.

[00:07:27] Halfling: Oh, wow. Okay. 

[00:07:29] Peter Gold: Yes. I started sailing on a passenger ferry in high school and. 

[00:07:37] Peter Gold: Even most of my classmates didn't understand it. They always thought I was in the United States Marine Corps, ran around with an M16 during the summer,

[00:07:44] Halfling: Mm 

[00:07:45] Peter Gold: A few of them realized that it was, oh no, that he works on the ships that we take out to Martha's Vineyard and in Nantucket.

[00:07:52] Peter Gold: Mostly because I actually saw some of them and was able to bring them up to the bridge and show them how the ship was steered and such,

[00:07:58] Halfling: mm. 

[00:07:59] Peter Gold: which is kind of rare, the bridge is normally off limits to passengers.

[00:08:04] Halfling: sure, sure. 

[00:08:05] Peter Gold: Yeah. So, I've been a ships engineer since I graduated from Maine Maritime Academy in the mid eighties, so 35 years now.

[00:08:16] Peter Gold: 45 years I think.

[00:08:17] Halfling: wow. 

[00:08:18] Peter Gold: Yeah, 45 years.

[00:08:19] Halfling: Mm. 

[00:08:21] Peter Gold: I've worked on steam ships. , motor ships, diesels, both ranging from super slow speed. 120 revolution per minute for an engine to diesel, electric to medium speeds. I have some experience on tankers. Bulkers,, a lot of it's government service contracts, which I can't talk a lot about.

[00:08:43] Peter Gold: It's military seal of command, search, sea lift and such.

[00:08:46] Halfling: Hmm. 

[00:08:47] Peter Gold: So I run the power plant. I help, fix the equipment, I manage the equipment. I'm trying to think of other ways to explain what I do. Think, Scotty from Starship Enterprise. 

[00:08:58] Halfling: Oh wow. Okay. Well that's,

[00:09:00] Peter Gold: Yes. 

[00:09:02] Halfling: That's a good character to as aspire to, We always thought he was the hero of the series.

[00:09:08] Spaceman: Yeah. It doesn't hurt that, Jimmy Doohan was actually a World War II hero, so you know,

[00:09:13] Peter Gold: Yes. Yes, 

[00:09:15] Halfling: Yeah. It does sound like you're really, when it comes to serving on a ship in that capacity, you are sort of a jack of all trades and evidently you're , pretty good at all of it. 

[00:09:28] Peter Gold: As an officer in the Merchant Marine, I focus on 

[00:09:32] Halfling: mm-hmm. 

[00:09:33] Peter Gold: engineering. That's the only thing I'm technically qualified for as an officer is engineering officer. Unlike the US Navy, which is different from almost all other Navys where navy officers spend a few months being an engineer than they go off to being a deck officer to being, combat information center officer, weapons officer.

[00:09:57] Peter Gold: So I spent all my career working with propulsion systems.

[00:10:01] Halfling: In thinking about what you do and the actual Merchant Marine, is there any resemblance, to how the actual merchant marine operates versus how it's depicted in the honorverse?

[00:10:15] Peter Gold: It's very similar to what we see in the honorverse. The problem is we don't see a lot of settings on merchant ships. There's just not a lot of characterization. There's an awful lot more strategic implications of the Merchant Marine and the honorverse books 

[00:10:36] Halfling: Mm. 

[00:10:37] Peter Gold: And part of that is David has read and understood Mahan and Corbett' sea power theories, and when he got his master's degree, I had the same thing when I got my bachelor's, cuz at a maritime academy, they have to learn that stuff., so we see the Merchant Marine and the honorverse books at the strategic level of discussion rather than at the character level with a few exceptions.

[00:11:05] Halfling: yeah. 

[00:11:06] Spaceman: They say an army marches on its stomach, and the same thing is said about any type of logistics. Logistics wins battles as much as armament does.

[00:11:15] Peter Gold: The, actual saying is logistics wins, wars,

[00:11:18] Spaceman: Ah,

[00:11:19] Peter Gold: Yes. 

[00:11:20] Halfling: You and your stomach Spaceman?

[00:11:23] Spaceman: I like to eat. 

[00:11:26] Peter Gold: So, 90% of everything in the real world moves by ship, that's the Merchant Marine. All the crudeoil, fuel, petroleum, grain, fertilizer, everything that we get from overseas China. All those, all the supplies, that's all the Merchant Marine. a book by called 90% of Everything by Rose George. 

[00:11:46] Peter Gold: Discusses that in depth. 

[00:11:48] Spaceman: So it sounds like the merchant Marine plays a vital logistics role in all sorts of things and are the unsung hero of pretty much a lot of commerce. 

[00:11:58] Peter Gold: Well, they are the commerce.

[00:11:59] Peter Gold: Like I said, 90% of everything moves by ship as compared to a very small percentage moves by airplane from overseas. Now once you get it Into the United States, it tends to move by rail if it's a container, or if it's going into the Midwest, if it's a bulk good, like grain or fertilizer will move by, barge up the Mississippi, which is currently having problems with low water levels. same for Europe. They bring everything in by container and then they move it by truck throughout Europe. For the bulk stuff, they do have a very developed river network that's also suffering from severe drought, they're losing cargo capacity there. 

[00:12:38] Spaceman: Since I haven't read all 37 of the honorverse novels, I do have a question though. You mentioned that the logistics and the Merchant Marine in the honorverse was important, but it was never in the forefront. Has there been any situation where the Merchant Marine in the honorverse has contributed towards a victory of the Royal Manticoran Navy?

[00:12:59] Peter Gold: Not directly. No. No. We have the joint Navy Transport Command, which is similar to the Real World Military Seal of Command or the UK's Royal Fleet Auxiliary. It's mentioned, but we never see it actually in action. We see how the withdrawal of Manticoran merchant ships, creates a crisis for the Solarian League in that, all of a sudden their trade volumes basically almost go to zero because so much of the ships are Manticoran owned and operated compared to solar.

[00:13:35] Peter Gold: All it took was an order from the Star Empire of Manticore. We're calling all our ships home because we can't trust the Solarians not to blow them out of orbit, and, basically crushed the Solarian economy.

[00:13:48] Halfling: So you talked about when you first started getting interested in taking to the series. You said this was kind of complicated , but when did you decide that you actually wanted to join the Royal Manticoran Merchant Marine? You know that particular fan group, 

[00:14:09] Peter Gold: Okay, so it's a branch of the main fan group, the Royal Manticoran Navy,

[00:14:14] Peter Gold: TRMN Okay. And I joined the overall fan organization, and chose the Merchant Marine Branch in 2015 when I actually saw they had a merchant marine branch. That was my impetus for joining. I have been working on doing space merchant marine talk work for five or six years.

[00:14:36] Peter Gold: Before that, probably 2010, just before the Haitian earthquake, I was getting into some strategic level stuff, podcasts and blogs and such. And I had seen a BuNine presentation on naval metaphors in science fiction done by Chris Weave. , he talks about how, Space Navys. Could work differences between real world navys what things you would expect to have to consider if you're designing a Space Navy. So items such as sensors in the real world, Navy. Ships, you have aircraft carriers because you have a need for an interface between the ocean and the sky. Aircraft operate very differently than ships and submarines often operate very differently than surface ships. Other things historically is hid. And then hydrodynamics. If your ship is going to be fast, it's gonna be large. There's a cube root factor in the length of a ship for maximum hull speed. It's one of those little technical aspects. It doesn't matter how much horsepower you throw at a ship, if it's a displacement hall, which is almost what all war ships are, all you're gonna do is burn more fuel. You won't go any faster.

[00:16:00] Halfling: So, you actually started as a sort of getting into being a technical advisor with the buNine and then, 

[00:16:10] Peter Gold: I provided one or two discussions

[00:16:13] Peter Gold: to overstate. I was an advisor, before joining the fan club would 

[00:16:18] Peter Gold: be an overstatement. 

[00:16:19] Spaceman: All right, but you did make technical contributions before you actually took the full, club plunge.

[00:16:25] Peter Gold: Yes, Yes. 

[00:16:26] Spaceman: One of the things that impressed me when I first ran across the RTMN Fandom Group was how well organized the group was, and the fact that everybody had uniforms, which is not something I had seen outside of, groups like Star Fleet Command.

[00:16:43] Spaceman: So I'd never seen that in a literary fandom before. I've only seen it in a media fandom. Can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:16:50] Peter Gold: Sure. I'm not aware of any purely literary franchise that had a fandom with a significant cosplay element prior to the Honor Harrington series. Since then, there has been one other that I'm aware of, which is the Four Horseman's Universe, which is a. I don't wanna call it a spinoff, but some of the people that are in TRMN found another series by an author and his co-authors and decided to form a fandom on that. 

[00:17:22] Spaceman: I've seen, in our fandom life, that we've been doing for 30 some odd years together, a lot of people do costumes from different literary works, whether it's Lord of the Rings or whatever science fiction thing and literary costumes. But I've never seen, that cosplay aspect of a literary fandom and the organization.

[00:17:44] Spaceman: That it's, kind of a breakout thing and it's something I'm surprised we haven't seen earlier. The club seems to be well organized and well run, and, the few times we've interacted with the club at conventions, they've had a really good presence. So, it's been really good.

[00:17:58] Spaceman: You guys are doing a great job. 

[00:18:00] Halfling: Kudos. Kudos. to you. 

[00:18:02] Halfling: We talked a little bit about the Merchant Marine aspects within the honorverse, but there are other branches that have their own fan groups. You've got the larger base and then you have, offshoots with the different branches.

[00:18:15] Halfling: Do the other branches operate similarly or are the Merchant Marines sort of they've got their own way of doing things and this maybe a little different. Does each of those groups have their own way of doing things or do they operate fairly similar?

[00:18:31] Peter Gold: Administratively, it's all under the main group, TRMN. So, all local chapters have to have, a commanding officer called By what? By whatever name. So in the Merchant Marine, it's the master of the ship , in any of the Space Navys, it's the CO commanding officer. We have diplomatic and Special Intelligence Service chapters available. And they're like Council General and I'm not, I think, chief of station for diplomats, SIS, respectively, but I'd have to double check that. We just don't have a lot of those chapters around. Just like we only have one Merchant Marine chapter at the moment. 

[00:19:09] Spaceman: That begs the question. Back when, the Halfling and I used to play with Starfleet Command, the things we would do at our meeting is we would get together and we would watch Star Trek and we would drink beer and maybe eat popcorn . We'd also go to movies and do other things, but it wasn't always necessarily Star Trek related.

[00:19:28] Spaceman: So what do you guys do when you get together with the Manticoran Merchant Marine, or the Manticoran Navy, or the Army or any of the other, branches. 

[00:19:37] Peter Gold: Most of it's social. Usually there's food involved. It depends upon the local chapter. The chapter up in Williamsburg likes to play Wist because they have adopted an age of sail theme, which fits very well with the honorverse. So it's Wist in the captain's. Which is something that Horatio Hornblower did a lot of in those novels. Some, talk about the books. Talk about general social life, because we've known each other for a number of years, Who's doing what at their own work, things like that. Board games, depending upon who has them. 

[00:20:12] Peter Gold: One of the members has a pool at their house, so they'll throw a pool party occasionally, but Yeah.

[00:20:18] Peter Gold: But that's specifically local to that one chapter. You can't go and say, well this chapter does pool parties, then any other chapter's gonna say, have you got a pool in your house? 

[00:20:28] Spaceman: I think that's gonna have to be a prerequisite for any new fan group we join. They, you 

[00:20:32] Spaceman: must 

[00:20:32] Spaceman: have a pool 

[00:20:36] Peter Gold: Yeah. Then we do talk about the books. Although a lot of the book talk has moved to more online discussion groups so we can get a wider audience, 

[00:20:47] Spaceman: What type of tool do you guys use for your online discussions? What service?

[00:20:52] Peter Gold: We use Zoom and we use Discord. Those are the primary ones that people use. 

[00:20:56] Spaceman: Is there a dedicated, honorverse discord server?

[00:20:59] Peter Gold: yes, there is. I can give you the link at point.

[00:21:02] Spaceman: We would certainly appreciate it. We'll share it out in the show notes.

[00:21:05] Peter Gold: Okay. Yep. And then most chapters have their own personal discord, their own chapter discord. The fleets tend to have of their own discord. And then some of the senior administrative branches, have their own discord also, where you can ask questions specific to that. We also have a private forum that's open to all members which is where all the official communications are supposed to happen. Posting of announcements for awards, positions open within the club for people that wanna volunteer to do something. Things of that nature.

[00:21:37] Halfling: Well, we know that you guys do conventions. We've seen your presence at a convention, is that fairly widespread thing. And I guess the different branches also have their own presence at conventions.

[00:21:55] Peter Gold: Yes, all the branches will,

[00:21:56] Peter Gold: And that has more to do with locality than with the branch itself. So if you go out to, San Francisco Bay Area, you'll find the Royal Manticoran Navy an RMN chapter out there. We'll have a presence along with one of the Andreani chapters, which is in the same area., the Marines tend to be on navy ships as, there's not very much in the way of independent Marine Corps chapters. So their presence will always be with a Manricoran Navy ship at a convention. Then there's always the oddball people that show up. They're a member, but the, there's no official fan table at the convention, so they're showing up in their uniform, their cosplay outfit.

[00:22:41] Peter Gold: I've done that a few times. I actually had somebody ask me what ship I was on and I answered with my real world ship, not realizing they were asking about the fan club ship. 

[00:22:52] Spaceman: Now that sounds like its a funny story. Can you go into that a little bit more? 

[00:22:56] Peter Gold: Oh. I was just sitting inside a panel, in the audience and somebody asked me what ship I was on and. I, of course relatively new to the fandom. So I just told him my real world ship and I think that threw them for a loop. The person I was sitting next to, he said, I think he meant what TRMN ship. 

[00:23:14] Spaceman: That is funny. One of the, guys we used to do Star Fleet with was in the Navy and he had the same problem, because whenever he would meet people dressed in his civilian clothes, his non-fan clothes, and they would ask him, he would talk about his Navy experience and he would be talking about, where he served.

[00:23:31] Spaceman: And sometimes it would lead to interesting conversations. So...

[00:23:37] Spaceman: but that's always interesting to hear. So how did the audience member who asked the question, react to the whole interchange? Did they think it was funny? 

[00:23:46] Spaceman: Were they perplexed?

[00:23:47] Peter Gold: I suspect Perplexed because they were behind me and I answered the question and then I turned forward to watch the 

[00:23:52] Peter Gold: panel, 

[00:23:52] Spaceman: Oh, Oh, 

[00:23:54] Spaceman: okay. 

[00:23:55] Spaceman: All right. Now that is funny. 

[00:23:57] Peter Gold: So, 

[00:23:57] Spaceman: so 

[00:23:58] Peter Gold: Yeah. So what I think they saw was I was wearing, one of the Club Berets 

[00:24:02] Peter Gold: and one

[00:24:03] Peter Gold: of the fandom T-shirts.

[00:24:04] Halfling: Ah, I guess I could see the confusion or the misunderstanding that took place. Besides being an avid reader of, the honorverse series and being part of that fandom group, what other types of fandom or what else are you a fan of in terms of are you into anime or MCU, University, things like that.

[00:24:29] Peter Gold: I'm a member of Colonial Ministry of Defense, which is the Battlestar Galactica Group. But I've only been a member for, Two or three months now. So I really haven't been active. I'm a member of the Four Horseman's universe, which is another literary group. Again, not very active there.

[00:24:49] Peter Gold: I've read a couple of the books. I haven't done any cosplay with them. 

[00:24:54] Peter Gold: Just basically haven't had time to try and pull a uniform together.

[00:24:58] Peter Gold: I watch a little anime, not much. I've watched some of the MCU universe movies and shows, but more, very casual about it.

[00:25:07] Peter Gold: I mostly read science fiction and fantasy instead of watching it and I haven't really been active in any other of the major fandoms, that have a cosplay presence, active in a literary Facebook group called Golden Age of the Solar Clipper, which is a merchant marine in space series of stories, 20 books, I believe at the moment. 

[00:25:30] Peter Gold: Maybe 18. Yeah.

[00:25:31] Halfling: That sounds right up your alley

[00:25:33] Peter Gold: Yes it is. it is. 

[00:25:36] Spaceman: Sort of reminds me of the Star Fleet corps of engineers books, which a friend of mine was really, really big into it. Wouldn't read any other Star Trek book, but every single Star Fleet, merchant, Marine book, not merchant, Marine, uh, 

[00:25:48] Spaceman: engineering, No, the. 

[00:25:49] Spaceman: I don't know why I blanked on that, but the Star Fleet Corps of Engineers, every single one of those books, he would just get it as soon as it came out. So, yeah.

[00:25:58] Halfling: Well, people like what they like.

[00:25:59] Spaceman: Well, 

[00:26:00] Halfling: and, uh, 

[00:26:01] Spaceman: I know. I was gonna say, I would think there is a certain technical aspect of some of this world building that a certain type of individual just loves, I like to bite into it too and some people like the story.

[00:26:12] Spaceman: Some people like the world building. Some people like the cool stuff and how the stuff works.

[00:26:17] Peter Gold: Yeah. I won't be interested unless it's a good story. But then when, if I want to get, dig into it, I usually dig into the internal consistency of the tech.

[00:26:29] Peter Gold: Faster than the light drives are all hand wave. 

[00:26:32] Peter Gold: We don't have any idea how to do it. We don't have any real theories that we could even do a crash program to try and turn into an engineering solution and every single series seems to have its own version of faster than light travel, which is fine. The interesting part is what are the implications on what the author has decided to choose? Especially choose rather than presume. 

[00:26:58] Spaceman: Earlier you'd mentioned that one of the hallmarks of the honorverse was that communication was, limited to the speed of travel. So we didn't have anything like, the Ansible from the, Ender's Game universe where you had no fancy subspace radios, no quantum entanglement, and how that impacted the ability of fleets to operate. So that's an interesting thing people don't really consider when they're world building is the implications of not just faster than light travel, but also faster than light communication. 

[00:27:30] Peter Gold: Yes, definitely. If you can't have faster than like communications, the further you get away from wherever your home base is, the more discretion you're gonna need.

[00:27:40] Spaceman: And you're gonna have to trust your commanders in the field. 

[00:27:43] Peter Gold: Right. 

[00:27:43] Halfling: When did you first get interested in, Well now actually you already answered that cuz you said you started, Basically working on ships when you were like 12 years old, I think you said, or maybe four.

[00:27:55] Halfling: Oh, 16. Okay. So not quite as young as I was thinking. Is that pretty much what your goal has always been since you were able, to formulate ideas about what you wanted to do with your life? 

[00:28:10] Peter Gold: Well, working on ships at least during the summer was pretty much a given. A lot of my cousins had worked on ships to get through college. And the money was good.

[00:28:21] Peter Gold: You can pay for, Well, what at the time was most of a semester of college working for one summer. 

[00:28:27] Halfling: Oh wow! That is good money.

[00:28:29] Peter Gold: Yeah. 

[00:28:29] Peter Gold: Yes, yes. So, and this is for somebody with just the willingness to work. 

[00:28:34] Halfling: And you started doing that with really no formal training or education in it, right?

[00:28:40] Peter Gold: Correct, Correct, there was no entry level requirements. They've changed that over the past 40 plus years. 

[00:28:46] Peter Gold: There is now some formal training requirements before you can go onto a ship.

[00:28:50] Peter Gold: It's what they call basic safety or, basic safety training. 

[00:28:54] Peter Gold: It's a five day course in things like firefighting, how to prove that you can swim, how to use an inflatable life raft, how to use a lifeboat, how to use a survival suit.

[00:29:07] Peter Gold: The fact that you should take a shower every day.

[00:29:09] Spaceman: Oh, believe me, we've been to enough cons where we think 

[00:29:11] Halfling: think. 

[00:29:11] Spaceman: be taught at conventions too. 

[00:29:13] Halfling: That's true. Yeah. 

[00:29:15] Peter Gold: Yes, yes. So, yeah, there's, firefighting personal survival. And social responsibility. And then there's one other aspect. I, can't remember the, I'd have to look it up

[00:29:26] Halfling: Well, I think that's probably a, a good and necessary change, for the better. I think, I don't know. Maybe you didn't have any difficulties when you first started, but I can imagine that, you might get, some young people that really didn't know what they were doing, before they started and they're just thrown in there.

[00:29:44] Peter Gold: Well, it's not so much that young people wouldn't know what they're doing. It's. At the officers on the ship wouldn't do the proper training to make sure that they could contribute.

[00:29:55] Peter Gold: Okay. So my first ship, that afternoon after, because we were running a passenger service, the morning, the first morning trip from the mainland was jam packed.

[00:30:10] Peter Gold: So my supervisor said, Well, this is all you. This is the stuff you've gotta do. And then for the afternoon when we run back to the mainland with almost nobody on board, one of the officers came down and said, Okay, here are the things you need to know how to do. You need to know this is this. If a fire breaks out, this is what you've gotta do.

[00:30:30] Peter Gold: If we start syncing, this is how you launch a life raft. This is all real basic stuff. Doesn't take very long. Obviously there's no way to do a practical, We weren't gonna throw a multi thousand dollars life raft over the side just to inflate it.

[00:30:47] Halfling: Sure. 

[00:30:48] Peter Gold: Okay? When you go to the schools now, they have older rafts and that's what they do.

[00:30:53] Peter Gold: They make you inflate it, jump into it, and actually climb inside from the water, 

[00:30:58] Halfling: Mm. 

[00:31:00] Halfling: I think it's really good that they actually require that training ahead of time, rather than necessarily relying on the officers, the commanders to provide that. Once you get started,

[00:31:13] Halfling: But I actually just thought of a question I hadn't thought of earlier, but, okay, now I'm about to draw a blank.

[00:31:22] Halfling: I apologize. 

[00:31:24] Halfling: I apologize. Our age, Well, you know, 

[00:31:29] Halfling: the Halfling is a little older than she used to be. What can I say?

[00:31:36] Halfling: It happens, right?

[00:31:37] Spaceman: Didn't Didn't you just, celebrate your 11th birthday

[00:31:40] Halfling: Yes. As a matter of fact. So,

[00:31:43] Halfling: I wish wish I could have 

[00:31:44] Halfling: remember, 

[00:31:44] Halfling: I, it'll come to me.

[00:31:46] Spaceman: I'm sure 

[00:31:46] Spaceman: it will. But, before we go on, there's something else we wanna do with our show, which is to let our listeners know how they can get involved in a specific fandom. We've got people out there who've read the Honor Harrington books and they really like what you guys are doing, how do they get in contact with you and, how do they find their local group.

[00:32:05] Peter Gold: So the easiest way is to go to the organizational website, www.trmn.org.

[00:32:16] Halfling: We'll make sure to get that in the show notes, for that are interested. 

[00:32:21] Peter Gold: Right. And from there is a description of what the group is. There's links to the wiki about the organization, which has got an awful lot of in depth detail, on who's doing what. There's a way to find local chapters you can choose your branch from there. We have a training program that we can, we send out tests to people if they wanna advance.

[00:32:45] Peter Gold: And membership is free. You just have to sign up for it and , even if there's not a local chapter, you can still join. We have a number of chapters that meet online regularly so getting involved is really up to the individual in terms of how, as long as they're willing to use some kind of a social media like Discord or attend Zoom chats or anything like that, there's no limit to being isolated and actually participating 

[00:33:13] Spaceman: Is your Discord server open to the public? 

[00:33:16] Peter Gold: There's a couple of channels that are open to the public, or I guess they're channels. A lot of it is you do have to be a member. 

[00:33:23] Spaceman: Okay. 

[00:33:23] Halfling: I actually just thought of the question that I had slipped my mind earlier here. Oh, I'm not believing. I just lost it again. This is crazy. I'm sorry. I need some more sleep. I evidently need some more sleep. Oh, no. How, with, your actual, experience with the real Merchant Marine, how do you get assigned to a ship?

[00:33:47] Peter Gold: I call my union and see what open jobs they have. 

[00:33:50] Halfling: So you don't get a call and say, You're going here, you're gonna be on this ship or whatever.

[00:33:56] Peter Gold: Only when there's an emergency, yeah, I got called for hurricane Katrina. 

[00:34:01] Halfling: Mm. Yeah. 

[00:34:03] Peter Gold: They called everybody in the union that wasn't listed as being on a ship. Can you come out? We need people to activate 

[00:34:10] Peter Gold: the ships for Hurricane Katrina.

[00:34:11] Halfling: Yeah. 

[00:34:12] Peter Gold: And I was like, Okay, sure.

[00:34:13] Halfling: Yeah. 

[00:34:14] Peter Gold: And I spent six months in New Orleans and, Lake charles 

[00:34:19] Halfling: Okay.

[00:34:19] Peter Gold: down there running a slow speed diesel ship.

[00:34:22] Halfling: Mm, 

[00:34:22] Peter Gold: Housing people. 

[00:34:23] Halfling: Well, I wasn't sure exactly, how that worked, whether you just got an assignment and you had to go, or whether, like you said, that you can just look and see what's available and just say, I'm gonna take this assignment 

[00:34:38] Peter Gold: yeah

[00:34:38] Peter Gold: Well, you have to throw in for it and see if they actually wanna hire you, if you've got the specific qualifications.

[00:34:45] Peter Gold: So, example, a lot of the government contract jobs require you have certain government contract training. So if you don't have that training, you're less likely to get a job on that kind of a ship because they want you to have had training and how to use or do certain aspects of the job ahead. 

[00:35:04] Halfling: That makes sense. 

[00:35:05] Peter Gold: Yeah. And that increases as you go up and rank, as you gain seniority, if they're gonna be a senior officer, you better 

[00:35:13] Peter Gold: have already done this stuff. 

[00:35:15] Halfling: Yeah. makes sense. 

[00:35:17] Spaceman: Peter, before we call it a day, do you have any questions for us? Anything you'd like to know about the Halfling or the Spaceman? 

[00:35:25] Peter Gold: not really. I'm subscribed to your podcast. I haven't had a chance to listen to any of it yet.

[00:35:30] Halfling: he says he, he knows all he needs to know. 

[00:35:32] Peter Gold: so

[00:35:36] Peter Gold: yeah. Not sure when I'm gonna get out to Central Virginia again for a convention. I think my next convention for me is going to be in mid to late January in the Norfolk area. Mars Con? 

[00:35:51] Spaceman: Oh, okay. Yeah, we were thinking about applying to go to Mars Con.

[00:35:54] Spaceman: Have you been to Mars Con before? 

[00:35:56] Peter Gold: Oh yeah. I've been, most years since 2005, I think.

[00:36:01] Spaceman: Well, could you share your experience with our listeners about MarsCon?

[00:36:04] Peter Gold: It's a mostly literary convention. They have at least the past few years, but I, cause I can't necessarily remember back. Usually a strong NASA track. They get people in from Langley, which is one of the NASA 

[00:36:18] Peter Gold: locations to come in and do presentations, along with more general science fiction discussion panels. David Weber is supposed to be there this year, so expected fairly decent, at least one or two honorverse panels. I haven't put in for my trade in the honorverse BuNine presentation yet. I need to do that still. Generally relatively small or at least it feels small. There's three or four organized fan groups there. Manticore Navy's always there. Four H U tends to have a small presence. Klingons and 501st tend to have people, think that's it for organized fandom. Fairly decent artists alley for art types and small book publishers. Just want to have, independent author that wants to have a table. There's seven or eight panels at once for most of the entire weekend. So from 10:00 AM till seven or eight at night, there's seven or eight panels per hour to choose from a decent size gaming room over the years. It, helps that I've been going there for a lot of times, so I know at least by face allot of the people. 

[00:37:28] Halfling: Does the gaming room tend to be geared more toward war games and strategic games? 

[00:37:35] Peter Gold: I haven't been , in the gaming room rather for a while. I don't recall it being mostly war games. 

[00:37:40] Peter Gold: There's some RPG stuff and general board games rather than specifically war 

[00:37:46] Peter Gold: games. 

[00:37:47] Spaceman: You could never 

[00:37:48] Spaceman: tell with names like the Halfling in the Spaceman that we were in the tabletop 

[00:37:52] Spaceman: RPGs. 

[00:37:54] Halfling: uh, 

[00:37:55] Peter Gold: Yeah. 

[00:37:55] Peter Gold: Yeah. 

[00:37:56] Halfling: Okay, well that's pretty cool. We might check that out. We're gonna have to start getting to more cons, because, we want to be a presence that people learn about and, and come listen to our podcast. 

[00:38:09] Spaceman: And our goal is to connect people with their fandoms. So we can't do that unless people know to connect with us. , right? 

[00:38:15] Spaceman: Yeah, it's a second order problem, but it's a problem nonetheless.

[00:38:19] Spaceman: All Right.

[00:38:20] Spaceman: So thank you for sharing everything you've shared about the honorverse fandom and, introducing our listeners to, the Royal Manticoran Merchant Marine and the Royal Manticoran Navy. Now I say man-ti-cor-an on purpose because we listen to the audio books and so there's a strong urge as to say man-tic-oran , but we're doing our best not to.

[00:38:43] Halfling: Oh. 

[00:38:44] Spaceman: So we wanna thank all our listeners for tuning in today, and we hope you've enjoyed and perhaps been inspired by today's guest, Peter Gold. Peter, we're gonna give you a huge shout out, and thank you for joining us today. 

[00:38:56] Peter Gold: Thank you. 

[00:38:57] Halfling: This is the Halfling the Halfling Spaceman signing off.