Steam Engine Time

[moon_custafer]

Hanne Blank explains the *why* part of history:
Steam Engine Time

This is good, because for some reason this morning I was remembering the Conrad Stargard books, and this is a neat way to explain them: Stargard is a 20th century engineer accidently transported to medieval Poland, and trying to figure out who to help the people there with his knowledge when he is most emphatically not in Manufactured Parts Time (ie, a lot of, "this would be a useful thing, but how do we build it out of wood and iron?").

Comments

[boywhocantsayno.livejournal.com]

I think I'm one of maybe three people who actually enjoyed those books. Everyone else I know dismisses them as being misogynistic. But I liked them for the reason you describe in your post.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

The one I read as a teen struck me as not so much misogynistic as naively optimisic about medieval life, and even then Conrad is aware he's landed in a best-case-scenario fiefdom, where the lord is pretty decent to his subjects. I think Conrad's a little less aware that the women hit on him because *he's* a best-case-scenario.

[moon-custafer.livejournal.com]

Oh, there was another thing I was thinking of when I read Hanne's article, which was how I sometimes say that if you really want to affect future technology, become an art director for a classic SF film/series (of course, guessing which ones will become classic is the heard part); then people will have the image of your gadgets in their heads when they invent the real stuff, and will make it look like your fictional tech (sort of like Galaxy Quest).