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December 24

sf: phrases as currency

Name the story, maybe by Vernor Vinge. Post-apocalyptic. The tribe uses sacred sentences as currency: I can pay you by teaching you one of them, and I thereafter must not spend it again. (I don't remember if the story touches on how double-spending is prevented, but it's not hard to imagine.) The protagonist is banished for collecting these sentences by eavesdropping. He suspects that the sacred sentences are fragments of the instruction manual for an Ancient machine hidden nearby. —Tamfang (talk) 22:01, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

If you get no answer here, post it over on Sci Fi & Fantasy Stack Exchange. – b_jonas 02:03, 29 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

fwiw I don't find it in The Collected Stories of Vernor Vinge. —Tamfang (talk) 06:07, 31 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

Cross-posted to Sci-Fi and Fantasy Stack Exchange. Answered there by Sava: story is Big Joe and the Nth Generation (The story starts on page 90 of the pdf linked), aka “It Takes A Thief”, from Walter M. Miller, see w:fr: Histoires de robots #Le Gardien du savoir. – b_jonas 22:25, 2 January 2019 (UTC)[reply]

TV series that played with the "Will they/won't they?" trope?`

Will They or Won't They? is a well known trope of sitcoms. I think I remember a recent show (in the last years) that started off as if they were going to set up a "will they or won't they" with characters spekulating how long it will take but then brought the two leads together within the first episode(s). I just can't remember the name of the show. Any guesses which I could mean? Regards So Why 22:52, 24 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

It's no longer "recent", but NewsRadio did this. The execs wanted the male and female leads to have a Sam and Diane relationship, where the romantic tension between them would drive storylines. Instead, the writers deliberately disobeyed and had them sleep with each other in the second episode and derived storylines from the fallout. Matt Deres (talk) 16:14, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

@Matt Deres: Thanks but I was thinking about something more recent. Regards So Why 21:20, 25 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]

I believe Jules and Grayson got together in some form quite fast in Cougar Town although it still took a while for the relationship to be resolved [1] but I have no idea what their plans were and this sort of thing isn't uncommon [2]. (I mean even the infamous friends case didn't take that long for them to have sex.) There is of course also opposite, the infamous case of How I Met Your Mother? where the thing was supposedly completely answered by the first episode, only for the last episode to reveal, 'well actually.....' Nil Einne (talk) 11:10, 27 December 2018 (UTC)[reply]