Ohhhhhh this is hilarious.
Suddenly, 60%+ into the book, we are abruptly referring to tube and pipe transits as *pipe trains* and *tube trains* are you serious 😂
For context, the entire series refers to these otherwise undescribed modes of transportation as "transit/transport pipes / pipe transits/transports" and "transit/transport tubes / tube transits/transports".
Now, suddenly, 60%+ in the book, a wild new descriptive name appeared!
And, apparently, tubes will also be referred to as "Tube trains" -- *twice!*
Would you like to know how often "pipe train" and "tube train" or even just "train" appear in the entire book series?
Pipe train: 2 total: 1 in chapter three of book four, 1 in chapter nine of book eight,
Tube train: 2 total, both in book eight, chapters eleven and twelve
Train:(s) 6 times including the 4 instances above, with 2 other instances (all in Platform Decay) of something being called simply "train" or "trains".
And this my friends, is really, really basic continuity and terminology errors that a good editor should be able to catch, and you, the author, should at least notice when you're self editing to make a first draft into a second if you've... You know ...... Never called a generic vauge transportation system a fucking "train" in all the previous 7 books except for one isolated instance in the third book??
Lets compare the numbers even more!
Pipe cabin: 1 (<- train outlier)
Total: 59 generic scifi, 2 "train" and as a bonus, instead of calling them pipe capsules ... Platform Decay, after suddenly calling them trains, calls it a pipe *cabin*. You know, like a train cabin?
Tube: ~102 (did not manually check each when the first 35 were all in reference to the transport)
Capsule (as a direct reference to being part of a tube): 10
Total: 115 generic scifi terms, and 2 calling them "trains".
Bonus bonus: suddenly in Platform Decay, chapter eleven, trams also exist, and they get mentioned 25 times over chapters eleven through thirteen. Despite not existing in the whole series before now. And no, they don't get introduced as a new thing, they're casually mentioned as though they've existed this whole time.
This is going to sound like a very nit-picking post but litterralllyyyy this is such a basic simple thing that someone should have noticed way before this was published!
This is basic terminology of the setting that should have been nailed down from the very first moment they were invented for the setting in book two (tubes) and book four (pipes)!!!!
And notice too, the wild variation between what these things are called, especially when it comes to pipes/pipe transports/pipe transits/transit pipes/transport pipes.
This is something that should have been simplified and streamlined *long* before now: there is literally no reason to have 4 different names for the exact same form of undescribed locomotion, especially if it's literally, apparently, just been a regular old *train* this whole time...
This is just needlessly overcomplicated, especially considering "tube" as a form of transportation was established in book 2, and pipes randomly became a thing in book 4, even though they are functionally exactly the same as tubes down to having capsules, and it you read the first sentences with them in book 4.... Its very clear "pipe" is referring to "tubes" as interchangeable terms.
And then at some point... tubes and pipes for whatever reason became two different things. Except they're apparently the same thing, because they're both trains.
This is a nitpick yes, but its a nitpik that should already have been combed out in self-editing while drafting AND while having a professional editor go over it by being with a traditional publisher.
There's an old software design expression that also applies to writing, and more specifically, worldbuilding:
"keep it simple, stupid", aka, the KISS principal. It means, don't overcomplicate things unnecessarily, otherwise you're going to end up breaking something, or having a confused end user.
Instead of having 7 variations of different names for your identical scifi trains... Just call them trains.
Then, it won't be so embarrassing when you accidentally call them trains 8 books into a 9 book series that has been traditionally published and theoretically professionally edited the whole time.
It will also be less jarring for your readers when you randomly introduce normal*trams* in the last two chapters of the 8th book in a 9 book series that are the only mode of transportation in the whole series with an understandable modern name, instead of being called "hoppers" or "gliders" or "pipes" or "capsules" or "bubbles" or "pods".
Nope, its just a regular tram and this only comes *after* pipes and tubes have suddenly been referred to as trains.
So..... I guess "Hierarch" is probably gonna have trains in it 🤷
Anyone who has started writing a novel, especially their first first-draft of novel, how picky you are when it comes to word choice, and how important of it is to have each individual word function the way you want it to; you do not need to have a dozen things to call a train if you can simply call it a train, especially when doing so allows your readers to actually properly visualize your world and how it works. Giving everything a brand new name, that is very generic, and never actually functionally describing any of these things that you've given new names to, just means that you're setting in world just turns into a blur of generic names that don't mean anything to the audience. If you're talking about a train in a Sci-Fi setting, just call it a train, unless you have a *really good reason* to not call it a train.
