04-20-2018, 11:56 AM | #11 | |
Join Date: Feb 2005
Location: Berkeley, CA
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
|
|
04-20-2018, 12:46 PM | #12 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
No, I wouldn't. They are actually divergent from each other in this hypothetical case and would be penalized when understanding each other's technologies. So the reference society would be TL 10 and the other society would be 8+2. It does not of course matter which is which.
Last edited by David Johnston2; 04-21-2018 at 07:51 AM. |
04-20-2018, 02:14 PM | #13 | |
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
Mark Twain's telegraph based "internet" (From The London Times of 1904) is TL(6+1) is one such example. Wells TL(6+1) atomic bombs of World Set free is another. |
|
04-20-2018, 03:04 PM | #14 | |
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
Mark Twain's telegraph based "internet" (From The London Times of 1904) is TL(5+2) is one such example. Wells TL(6+1) atomic bombs of World Set Free is another. |
|
04-20-2018, 05:05 PM | #15 |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Well, no, I don't think so. Verne and Wells were TL5 and TL6, respectively, for the most part; their portrayal of the TL after ours would be TL(5+4) and TL(6+3), respectively. It's really implausible to suppose that the likely projection from our technology would look anything like either of their imaginings.
__________________
Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
04-21-2018, 06:10 AM | #16 | ||
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
Quote:
Also, unless I am missing something, there is isn't that much in Verne and Wells that is beyond our TL that doesn't fall into the superscience (^) category. From the Earth to the Moon: TL(5+2)^ to TL(6+1)^ space travel thanks to really big gun which needs superscience to prevent the would be travelers from being messy stains on the floor. Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea and Mysterious Island: TL(5+1)^ per reference works. Can be viewed as TL(5+2)^ if you want to view it as some form of atomic power as many people do. The Island of Doctor Moreau: Vivisection stands in for genetic engineering; TL6^ or perhaps TL(6+2)^ if you want to be really generous and that is a may be. The First Men in the Moon: TL(6+1)^ space travel via an anti-gravity metal. War of the Worlds: The TL of the Martians is really bizarre; they have space travel (TL9) but not flight (TL6) and they seemed to have no concept of harmless to them but deadly to us biology (TL5) GURPS does a really poor job of explaining just how TLx^ differs from TL(x+y) and TL(x+y)^. Last edited by maximara; 04-21-2018 at 06:30 AM. |
||
04-21-2018, 08:05 AM | #17 | ||||||
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
But I think that saying "superscience" often goes too far. There are lots of cases where science fiction writers (including authors of voyages extraordinaires or scientific romances) either don't realize the scientific implications, or don't care, because their goal is to tell a good story. That's not the same as "I have this radical new invention that solves this problem" or "the laws of nature are different in my fictional universe" (both Verne and Wells pretended that their stories took place in the real world!) or even "narrative causality makes this work" (which is kind of a generic superscience justification for fantasy as such). Sometimes they're just handwaving away the problem; sometimes they don't realize it IS a problem; occasionally the science of their time could not have let them realize that such a problem might arise.
__________________
Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
||||||
04-21-2018, 09:20 AM | #18 |
Join Date: Dec 2007
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
|
04-21-2018, 09:49 AM | #19 | ||||||
On Notice
Join Date: Aug 2004
Location: Sumter, SC
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
Besides Verne does address some of the issue "The problem before us is how to communicate an initial force of 12,000 yards per second to a shell of 108 inches in diameter, weighing 20,000 pounds." and Barbicane tells Michel he is not sure that the water-cushions will sufficiently protect them. Quote:
"I find in all atoms an inherent power (an atomic power), more “ or” (and) less in all matter, which power is rought into action only when the atoms are under certain conditions, which power .is similar to that noticed in steel, and there called magnetism." - Proceedings of the Nova Scotian Institute of Science (1870) "In other words, it takes the whole atom-power of chlorine, 35-5, to engage 1 atom of hydrogen ; whereas, the atom- power of oxygen, 16, suffices to engage 2 hydrogen-atoms; and the atom- power of nitrogen and carbon suffice, respectively, to engage 3 and 4 hydrogen-atoms." - Introduction to Modern Chemistry (1866) p 165 "The maximum combining power is invariable; the value of substitution may change. If we call the former atomic power or atomicity we must find a term corresponding to the latter, as the German word AEquivalentigkeit corresponds to Atómigkeit." - Chemical News (1866) Page 290 Never mind, "Verne’s Nautilus; This is the vessel which is the real star of Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea – a period superscience submarine, built and commanded by the brooding Captain Nemo." - GURPS 4e Vehicles Steampunk Conveyances pg 10 Quote:
Quote:
Of course when you get right down to it Cavor wasn't very bright. No clear notes on any of the experiments made nor records of the success that did happen. Quote:
Quote:
'“Superscience” technologies violate physical laws – relativity, conservation of energy, etc. – as we currently understand them.' It certainly doesn't help that in 3e TL(x+y) meant both divergent TL and superscience TL: "From these definitions, devices labeled TL4 or TL5 should be real inventions; devices labeled TL(4+1), TL(5+1), or TL(5+n) should be fanciful. But it's not that simple. Real inventions of the early 20th century that fit the 19th century's technological idiom, such as airships, are classified as TL(5+1); devices that apply real 19th-century technology in cinematic ways, such as the lunar shell (p. STM83), are classified as TL5." (Steamtech 6) Last edited by maximara; 04-21-2018 at 10:36 AM. |
||||||
04-21-2018, 11:08 AM | #20 | |
Join Date: Jun 2005
Location: Lawrence, KS
|
Re: Tech Level Confusion
Quote:
As for the Nautilus, * I don't agree that it's the real star of the novel; it seems to me that that's clearly Captain Nemo himself, given among other things how much of the novel is about his relationship to Professor Arronax and its conflict with his self-chosen exile from humanity. * I don't think that it actually is intended as "superscience." Verne carefully ties it to the science and technology of his own time, just as he ties his oceanography to Matthew Maury's pioneering textbook on the subject, trying in both cases to produce the strongest possible sense of "this is something that you might read about in next year's news." In fact Verne was proud of doing this; he had a passage where he contrasted his firing men into space in a shell from a gun with Wells sending them into space with cavorite, which he dismissed as Wells just making stuff up. Of course Verne was wrong about what was technologically possible, but he had no intention of making up arbitrary miracles. * That a GURPS book classifies the Nautilus as "superscience" is a device for reconciling the novel's account of its capabilities with the restrictions of standard GURPS on things like battery power, which leaves a big gap that has to be filled somehow. But it's not a statement about the novel itself. It's a later fiction made up about an element of the novel to fit it into a different fictional universe. It's exactly as if, having noticed that cowboys or cops in a movie seem able to go on shooting without reloading (because the writers don't bother with "how many bullets do they have?"), you gave them guns with a superscience bullet materializing device in the grip.
__________________
Bill Stoddard I don't think we're in Oz any more. |
|
Tags |
tech level |
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|