Centrum & Gernsback

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Some of it depends on how much the WSC knows about Centrum's backstory. Centrum wasn't just created from the ashes of the Final War. It's probably made up of the victors in the Final War and they may well have been the people who started it.

Centrum's attitude toward the Final War appears to be that is that it's inevitable in any world without a monolithic power structure and the only way to avoid it is to create such a power structure before the Final War can happen.

This really shouldn't go over well with the WSC's post-WWI utopianism. Their Great Soviet War was fought against an irrational power but it didn't go on after that against all national governments. They really aren't as totalitarian as Centrum and are committed to building World Government through Reason and Science!.

Centrum really doesn't believe in co-operation based on rational self-interest among equals. They might want their One World State to be as fair and rational as possible but unified control of everything comes first.

If Gernsback ever learned parachronic travel, started exploring, and ran into one of the Reich worlds, would such a thing possibly shock the nations and groups their and maybe make them start to reconsider things like eugenics and racism?

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by warellis

If Gernsback ever learned parachronic travel, started exploring, and ran into one of the Reich worlds, would such a thing possibly shock the nations and groups their and maybe make them start to reconsider things like eugenics and racism?

Probably not how the situation would present to them. The problem they'd see would be about irrational imperialism and not letting nut jobs run industrial nations.

Scientific laws are so variant on Gernsback that even simple eugenics probably works there. It's not just a couple of superscience gadgets that work there.

The Zeppelin-docking scheme on the top of the Empire State Building works regularly on Gernsback even though it was utterly impractical here. Then there are the "flivers" which sort of look like a model T having unnatural relations with several lengths of stove pipe and a big propeller. What it works like is a single engine V-22 yet it is not particularly harder to fly than a model T is to drive. That absolutely would not be the case on our world.

Aircar and jetpack engines appear to work on the Tesla Bladeless Turbine adapted for propulsion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_turbine

Another thing that works on Gernsback but not in our world.

The power broadcasting depends on a "standing wave" in the upper atmosphere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave

...very complicated and neat sounding but you don't see them in our world except in limited situations.

Their Electronic Brains are terribly primitive by our standards yet manage to regulate planned economies much better than anything we've come up with and I suspect they're better at predicting the weather too.

It's probably all bordering on the metaphysics but I would suspect that you don't see non-linear dynamics or "chaos theory" on Gernsback. Lotsd oof quantum mechanics too.

It's a more "orderly" place in almost Moorcockian terms. You don't have random air turbulence breaking up all the Zeps as they try to fly or chrashign those stupide flivvers or several other things.

So getting back to the Eugenics, genetics could very easily be one of those things that's just less turbulent and unpredictable than jn our world and Eugenics probably works in theirs. When they see letting head cases like Mengele out of the asylum to play with concentration camp victims in a way similar to the way that dubious children do to their Barbie dolls they aren't going to see the irrationality of Eugenics.

The WSC might believe in real rational differneces between "races" but I bet they also believe they can be irradicated through vitamin supplements and scientifically designed pre-school education. They might even be right on their world. Their Head Start programs might be dramatically more successful than ours.

[warellis]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Probably not how the situation would present to them. The problem they'd see would be about irrational imperialism and not letting nut jobs run industrial nations.

Scientific laws are so variant on Gernsback that even simple eugenics probably works there. It's not just a couple of superscience gadgets that work there.

The Zeppelin-docking scheme on the top of the Empire State Building works regularly on Gernsback even though it was utterly impractical here. Then there are the "flivers" which sort of look like a model T having unnatural relations with several lengths of stove pipe and a big propeller. What it works like is a single engine V-22 yet it is not particularly harder to fly than a model T is to drive. That absolutely would not be the case on our world.

Aircar and jetpack engines appear to work on the Tesla Bladeless Turbine adapted for propulsion

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tesla_turbine

Another thing that works on Gernsback but not in our world.

The power broadcasting depends on a "standing wave" in the upper atmosphere

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Standing_wave

...very complicated and neat sounding but you don't see them in our world except in limited situations.

Their Electronic Brains are terribly primitive by our standards yet manage to regulate planned economies much better than anything we've come up with and I suspect they're better at predicting the weather too.

It's probably all bordering on the metaphysics but I would suspect that you don't see non-linear dynamics or "chaos theory" on Gernsback. Lotsd oof quantum mechanics too.

It's a more "orderly" place in almost Moorcockian terms. You don't have random air turbulence breaking up all the Zeps as they try to fly or chrashign those stupide flivvers or several other things.

So getting back to the Eugenics, genetics could very easily be one of those things that's just less turbulent and unpredictable than jn our world and Eugenics probably works in theirs. When they see letting head cases like Mengele out of the asylum to play with concentration camp victims in a way similar to the way that dubious children do to their Barbie dolls they aren't going to see the irrationality of Eugenics.

The WSC might believe in real rational differneces between "races" but I bet they also believe they can be irradicated through vitamin supplements and scientifically designed pre-school education. They might even be right on their world. Their Head Start programs might be dramatically more successful than ours.

While I agree with most of this post, what makes "simple eugenics" so difficult or impossible in real life considering in our history, it was mostly attempts to do things like sterilize/neuter the criminally insane or mentally challenged people? Even in the AE1 article for Gernsback, that's the type of eugenics done. I didn't read any mention of attempts at creating genetic supersoldiers, just them doing the sterilizing of the mentally challenged or criminally insane.

And how do you know it's a more "orderly" place? Does that mean the time period when zeppelins flew in our time line was also a more orderly place without air turbulence?

[Lamech]

Eugenics on our world could theoretically work. Although it would nigh impossible without extreme evil. (Or advances in tech and infrastructure depending on your definition. )

However historically it was informed by racial prejudice, other prejudices and insufficient understandings of genetics, psychology and human development. Gernsbeck almost certainly has similar problems to our programs.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Lamech

Eugenics on our world could theoretically work. Although it would nigh impossible without extreme evil. (Or advances in tech and infrastructure depending on your definition. )

It could theoretically work for certain traits and things, but not universally, because some traits and behaviors and aspects of biology don't breed in any simple way, but only at high levels of complexity. But the extreme evil part is right, to say nothing of the additional practical problem caused by the relatively long (by mammalian standards) human breeding cycle and long individual life spans.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by warellis

And how do you know it's a more "orderly" place? Does that mean the time period when zeppelins flew in our time line was also a more orderly place without air turbulence?

I thought I explained that. Zeppelins flew in our world but they also _crashed_ at an appalling rate. Not due to hydrogen-based fires either. Alsmot every Zep built after WWI was destroyed by weather.

The Zeppelin mooring mast trick on the ESB didn't' work at all. It works regularly on Gernsback and the Zeppelin loss rate is low. That points to something fundamental about the behavior of weather and air turbulence on Gernsback to me.

Really, I mentioned a lot of things in my post which you quoted but did not seem to grasp. the differences between Gernsback and out world are not simple matters of a few ^ gadgets.

[maximara]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Scientific laws are so variant on Gernsback that even simple eugenics probably works there. It's not just a couple of superscience gadgets that work there.

This is the main reason that the efforts to protect the Secret will ultimately fail. Parachronics are not the only way to travel Quantum (and Homeline knows this). The political backlash to Infinity from a world that they have been moderating for years that stumbles on to a method unrecognizable to Infinity (due to that reality's wonky physics) to run around Quantum would be a relations disaster.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by maximara

This is the main reason that the efforts to protect the Secret will ultimately fail. Parachronics are not the only way to travel Quantum (and Homeline knows this). The political backlash to Infinity from a world that they have been moderating for years that stumbles on to a method unrecognizable to Infinity (due to that reality's wonky physics) to run around Quantum would be a relations disaster.

Homeline doesn't do that much though (with the exception of acting against any Centrum or Reich operations). If a parallel develops a means of travel so unfamiliar that Homeline can't recognize the initial steps until it was too late, they won't do anything at all. I'm reminded here a bit of the Man From Uncle crossover discussion where it was suggested that Uncle would come down on any offworld agents like a ton of hammer, as though they didn't already have a world swarming with covert agencies operating at cross-purposes and they were constantly dealing with far more substantive threats than some unidentifiable intelligence gatherers. Worlds where covert operations come as that big of a shock are going to be extraordinary in their naivete.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by David Johnston2

Homeline doesn't do that much though (with the exception of acting against any Centrum or Reich operations). If a parallel develops a means of travel so unfamiliar that Homeline can't recognize the initial steps until it was too late, they won't do anything at all. I'm reminded here a bit of the Man From Uncle crossover discussion where it was suggested that Uncle would come down on any offworld agents like a ton of hammer, as though they didn't already have a world swarming with covert agencies operating at cross-purposes and they were constantly dealing with far more substantive threats than some unidentifiable intelligence gatherers. Worlds where covert operations come as that big of a shock are going to be extraordinary in their naivete.

It's not the covert ops part that would be shocking, but the nature/origin of the operators. Yeah, if all UNCLE (or THRUSH) knew was that there were new players in the Game, they'd make a note for further investigation and go to dinner. But if either or both found out the nature of the new players, all bets would be off.

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by warellis

If Gernsback ever learned parachronic travel, started exploring, and ran into one of the Reich worlds, would such a thing possibly shock the nations and groups their and maybe make them start to reconsider things like eugenics and racism?

Probably not, because they wouldn't see those things as the problem. Yeah, they'd recoil in horror from the Reichhlines, but they'd see the problem as racism and eugenics done in horrible ways and for the wrong reasons. They wouldn't see it as an inherent problem, any more than the fact that civilized governments don't stop imprisoning murderers because despotisms imprison dissenters, if you see the distinction.