Tourist: "Anyway, the first SETI signal came from a couple of degrees off and more than hundred light-years out...." (should be "a hundred")
Tourist: "I think he did this in Amsterdam eight years ago when Bob first met him."
but...
"[t]here's only one logical thing to beam backward and forward out there, and you may remember I asked you to beam it out about, oh, nine years ago?" "The lobsters."
(eight vs. nine years since the events in the Lobsters chapter)
Halo: "There are twenty-nine Jovian moons and an estimated two hundred thousand minor bodies, lumps of rock, and bits of debris crowded around them...."
According to NASA, there are now 63 known Jovian moons (see
http://sse.jpl.nasa.gov/planets/profile.cf...piter&Display=Facts ).
Curator: "...a complete archive of human experiences, from the dawn of the fifth singularity on up."
To reduce reader confusion, I suggest replacing "fifth singularity" with "fifth Kurzweil evolutionary epoch" (if that is what you meant). See pp. 20-21 of Ray Kurzweil's book The Singularity Is Near. His "Epoch Five" is the coming "merger of human technology with human intelligence."
Halo: "High in orbit around Amalthea, complex financial instruments breed and conjugate. Developed for the express purpose of facilitating trade with the alien intelligences believed to have been detected eight years earlier by SETI."
But the Halo chapter takes place in the "fourth decade" (2030s), and the world situation report near the beginning of the Tourist chapter (which takes place at "the eve of the third decade," or just before 2020) indicates that the alien signals were detected two years earlier. Thus "eight years" seems too short.
Router: The first of the world situation reports in this chapter describes "the fifth decade" (2040s), and refers to "the well-known extraterrestrial transmission received fifteen years earlier." As in my comment just above, this seems too short a time.
Router: "We are the Wunch," announces the first lobster, speaking clearly. "This is a body-compliant translation layer. Based on map received from yourspace, units forty thousand trillion light-kilometers ago?" "He means twenty years" ... "You accept our translation?" asks the leader. "Are you referring to the transmission you sent us, uh, thirty thousand trillion light-kilometers behind?" asks Amber.
i. At 300,000 km/sec, it would take light about 4228 and 3171 years respectively, not 20 and 15 years, to travel these distances.
ii. Presumably this refers to the lobsters' transmission into interstellar space and the alien signals that were picked up by humans in the late 2010s. See my comments above re time intervals.
Curator: "the starwhisp passes the one-light-year mark, almost twelve trillion kilometers out beyond Pluto."
Suggest changing to "more than nine trillion kilometers."
Survivor: Unclear whether New Japan is in the vicinity of the Hyundai +4904/-56 brown dwarf or elsewhere in the 100-light-year span of refugee quasi-human civilization. The second paragraph places it "a hundred trillion kilometers from the wreckage of Earth" (i.e., about 10.6 light years), whereas the first world situation report (in boldface) could be interpreted as placing it at Hyundai (but Hyundai is about 3 light years from Earth).
Router: Most of the novel's references to Hyundai place the brown dwarf at just under 3 light-years from Earth, but at one point Su Ang refers to being "in orbit around a brown dwarf just over three light-years from home."
Router: The first world situation report (in boldface) refers to "the solar system that lies roughly twenty-eight trillion kilometers — just short of three light-years — behind the speeding starwhisp," but at this point the ship is still accelerating and will continue doing so for another 2 megaseconds (ship time). Thus, the distance needs to be cut in half (at least).
Survivor: The first world situation report indicates that 10 gigaseconds (about 320 years) have passed since the lobster starships arrived at Hyundai. But Sirhan later says that it has been "a hundred and eighty years since we emigrated. Although correcting for general relativity adds another decade or so."
How did Sirhan and his associates survive in the Vile Offspring-infested solar system during the 100+ years between the events of Elector and his emigration?
