poke at "Hrunkner Unnerby"

diff --git a/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md b/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md
index 5ede8e9..4af2aa2 100644 (file)
--- a/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md
+++ b/content/drafts/hrunkner-unnerby-and-the-shallowness-of-progress.md
@@ -8,12 +8,11 @@ Status: draft
 
 Apropos of absolutely nothing—and would I lie to you about that?!—I've been thinking a lot lately about Hrunkner Unnerby, one of the characters in the ["B"](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/PlotThreads) [story](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/TwoLinesNoWaiting) of Vernor Vinge's _A Deepness in the Sky_.
 
-Our protagonists are spider-like nonhuman aliens native to a planet whose star "turns off" for [TODO] years out of every [TODO].
+The B story focuses on spider-like aliens whose rapidly-industrializing civilization is entering its Information Age, native to a planet whose star "turns off" for 215 years out of every 250, during which time life on the planet goes into hibernation. The aliens' reproductive cycle is synced with the appearance and disappearance of their sun, resulting in discrete birth cohorts: almost all children in a generation are the same age, conceived just before the world goes into hibernation, and born when the sun re-emerges. Rare "oophase" (out of phase) children are regarded as unnatural and discriminated against.
 
+Our protagonists are Sherkaner Underhill (mad scientist extraordinaire), Gen. Victory Smith (an oophase military prodigy, and Underhill's wife), and Sgt. Hrunkner Unnberby (an engineer, and Underhill and Smith's friend and comrade from the Great War). After the war, Underhill and Smith deliberately conceive children out of phase. Underhill is motivated by a zeal for progress: a champion of plans to use the new discovery of atomic power to keep civilization running while the sun is off, he reasons that the anti-oophase taboo will be unnecessary in the new world they're building. Smith seems motivated to pass on her oophase legacy to her children, and give them a more supportive environment than the one she faced.
 
-Sherkaner Underhill (mad scientist extraordinaire), Gen. Victory Smith (military prodigy, and Underhill's wife), and Sgt. Hrunkner Unnerby (an engineer, and Underhill and Smith's friend and comrade from the Great War) 
-
-rapidly-industrializing civilization is entering its Information Age—
+Unnerby is horrified.
 
 
 Every improvement is a necessarily a change, but _not every change is an improvement_.