"it is always disturbing to see developed and sophisticated fictional societies resorting to trial by battle"...
I vaguely recall a story (it was pre-COVID, so I can't recall how long ago it was) that someone in the UK tried to invoke trial by combat to get out of paying for a parking violation. So, it wouldn't necessarily be out of the realm of (fictional) possibility for an advanced society to still have it sitting on its books.
Granted the two people who could have made the most of it in a fictional setting- Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett- are sadly no longer with us, but still I could imagine it still existing in some form.
Iam not much into fiction but this sounds like something I might enjoy. However, if you took the above and turned that into a book, I would read it in a heartbeat!
To complete an industrial revolution seemed to involve science, engineering and maths. The Romans certainly had engineering. Even so, the computer scientist Doug McIlroy observed that "... bad notations can stifle progress. Roman numerals hobbled mathematics for a millennium ..." I have wondered how Roman engineers worked with them. Perhaps they used another system and then mapped back into the elaborate tally form (similar to converting the mixed-radix system LSD to say pennies for calculation, then mapping the final result back to LSD). Perhaps in an alternative timeline they simply adopted arabic numerals that much earlier.
Love the summary, guaranteed to read it now and had passed on it earlier.
One thing you can have industrialisation and slavery. And the issues you explore that upset the Americans so much could get even more interesting.
You are a phenomenon
Thanks for being in the public square
Well, you've sold that to me! I'm really excited about reading it. 😁😁
"it is always disturbing to see developed and sophisticated fictional societies resorting to trial by battle"...
I vaguely recall a story (it was pre-COVID, so I can't recall how long ago it was) that someone in the UK tried to invoke trial by combat to get out of paying for a parking violation. So, it wouldn't necessarily be out of the realm of (fictional) possibility for an advanced society to still have it sitting on its books.
Granted the two people who could have made the most of it in a fictional setting- Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett- are sadly no longer with us, but still I could imagine it still existing in some form.
Iam not much into fiction but this sounds like something I might enjoy. However, if you took the above and turned that into a book, I would read it in a heartbeat!
To complete an industrial revolution seemed to involve science, engineering and maths. The Romans certainly had engineering. Even so, the computer scientist Doug McIlroy observed that "... bad notations can stifle progress. Roman numerals hobbled mathematics for a millennium ..." I have wondered how Roman engineers worked with them. Perhaps they used another system and then mapped back into the elaborate tally form (similar to converting the mixed-radix system LSD to say pennies for calculation, then mapping the final result back to LSD). Perhaps in an alternative timeline they simply adopted arabic numerals that much earlier.