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... not really. Not in England. So, OK. This is 2112, and it is possible that whoever the successor to TfL is by than has rebranded significantly. But why? When the tipeface Johnston was 100 years old, in 2016, TfL got themselves a new version. With the tube itself being basically the same rufly 100 years into our future, i don’t see why they should have a problem with using a 200 year old tipeface along with the more than 200 year old train system. And if rebranding, why the most boring and in addition most Swiss tipeface for, again, England?

I mean, their killing off or collecting all the survivors was of course tactically sound. A flotilla simply disappearing would have been something quite different for the Earth side than a detailed report of the battle. It is just that the author wrote some observers into the story,so that didn’t work out for the Too’rries.

So. The attack on the »peacekeeping¹« force: It is called »unprovoked« but the sequence of events is:

• The Earth force shows up and takes up an attack formation
• They start some probing of the other side’s ships’ systems that can be seen as aggressive
• The other side fires one shot, damaging one Earth ship
• All Earth ships start firing back with multiple weapons
• The other side start firing with all their weapons

That isn’t quite as one-sided as the characters (and the author?) want as to believe it is.

OK. The aliens shooting up the survivors is quit aggressive. But they haven’t signed the Geneva Convention.

1) The peace they keep is very much a pax romana: keeping the subjugated colonial folks down in their place with the threat of force.

So, yeah, the whole thing is a bit silly. And simple. What we get is »gender euphoria (after the Clarke-magic physical transition) plus silly plot X« where X is stories like To Love Ru (i think) or MiB; some generic anime style robot fighting. Stuff like that. In the end we get Jeffries tubes, so a bit Star-Trek-ish.

The corner Wellington Street–Burlington Street was enuf to identify Hammer City as Hamilton, Ontario. (There are lots of other details later, like the Wentworth Stairs.) But this is total fantasy: Hammer City has streetcars and a subway. Don’t let the name »Hamilton Street Railway« confuse you: Hamilton only has bus service, and not even trolley busses any more.