Re:Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
by rm445 on Saturday October 29, 2016 @06:25PM
(#12826797)
Hmm. I've read the first book in the series (must get around to reading the rest), which is mainly exploration and doesn't focus too much on society-building, but as an engineer I'm not sure I buy that bootstrapping in a new Earth without bringing any iron/steel would be that difficult.
It would be an effort, but I think we could retool to bootstrap industry mainly using aluminium and copper alloys (engineering bronzes particularly are great materials). Some titanium and nickel alloys in the mix.
Re:Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
by david-given on Saturday October 29, 2016 @07:42PM
(#12827156)
The first two are excellent. But then you can tell that Pratchett's influence has waned, and Baxter's bitterness and misanthropy is creeping in; in The Long Mars everyone's painfully disfunctional and whiny.
I'm still not sure I want to read the last two. I swore of solo Baxter books after getting burnt by Titan.
Re:Why It Took So Long to Invent the Wheel (2012)
by rm445 on Saturday October 29, 2016 @07:48PM
(#12827183)
Sigh, that's another one on my reading list. I thought Baxter's Voyage was a wonderful novel - quite dry, but masterfully put-together, using NASA's true history to inform how an alternate history might have gone. Titan seems irresistible, but it sounds like it might be quite bitter.
(In that setting, you can build a very simple machine --- powered by a potato, which actually makes sense in context --- which can take you to a parallel Earth. You can take what you can carry with you; but not iron, which stays behind. Turns out that setting up a society from scratch using only hand tools and brain power is kinda hard.)