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Originally Posted by Schneicw
Off topic but what book is that?
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1636: The Kremlin Games. Eric Flint, et al.
Part of this month's BAEN ebook bundle.
Lots of fun, too.
It's part of the 163X series and not quite off topic, as the series revolves around the social and political disruptions that ripple off from dropping an entire town of 21st century (West Virginia) americans in the middle of the 30 years' war. And the biggest impact comes not from the uptimers technology, but their attitudes. (The first two volumes in the series are free at the Baen Free library; 1632 and 1633.)
As is, in the latest volume, the russians see the uptime tech as a way to fend off the polish-lithuanian threat and import a couple of consultants with pretty good results; better roads, better guns, a central banking system built around paper money. (Like nothing can go wrong there, right?) They want to take advantage of the technology but neglect the innevitable side-effects.
Pretty quickly, the russian "middle class" service aristocracy (read: entrenched middlemen) see the new ideas and technology as a threat to their traditional gatekeeper role and their livelihood (derived from serf labor) and try to use the tech and suppress the ideas.
Much like the big publishers tried to milk ebook technologies to beef up the bottom line while trying to maintain their traditional gatekeeper roles.
Both efforts prove to be equally self-defeating. But the russians are more amusing.
(For a change, Boris and Natasha are working with the Flying squirrel.
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