Things TLs 7-9 would be interesting to see WITHOUT

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

The only thing I can think of off the top of my head would be for nuclear power to have developed from radiothermal power by engineering experimentation rather than being developed from physical principles... a nuclear reactor and a bomb are very different beasts and whilst you might know from experience that you get a hell of a mess if you lose control of your core the idea that you could turn that into a practicable weapon might not be inutitive if you don't know the physics.

That was my idea. The aliens figured out, hey, these rocks are a bit on the warm side. If you bring them together, they get warmer. I bet if you brought alot of them together and dunked them in some water, you'd get even better steam power than you get with coal.

Or something like that.

It was only later, as they understood the principles involved (to better engineer their super steam-engines), that they realized they could make a weapon out of them. As a very warlike species, they're grudgingly admiring of humans for figuring out the super-weapon first and then "reverse" engineering the power aspect. I figure it's one of those "in hindsight, that's really obvious" kind of things, but I'm not sure if it's so obvious as to be absurd, hence why I'm asking.

It's easy to devise alternate Low Tech, because some a plethora of real-world examples exist. It's easy to devise alternate Ultra-Tech, because sci-fi is loaded to the gills with interesting ideas. It's hard to devise alternate High Tech, because most discussions of TL 5-8 consist of things that really happened, rather than neat ideas some TL 4 guy had. You have a few examples of alternate-tech (zeppelins, steam-tech, and the difference engine), but it'd be nice if we had some more.