The Reading Vent & Rant Thread

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by theducks

1950's newspaper funnies had Dick Tracy with a wrist radio, later in that decade, upgraded with Video.
No excuse for being that far behind in the tech UNLESS EXPLAINED

Eh, they have faster than light space travel there. So yeah, no excuse for the lack of personal comms.

I actually remember another SF novel (ok, written a decade or two later) where there were no personal electronic devices at all and the reason was explained in-universe (I don't think the explanation was all that believable, but at least it existed). But no reason that I could discern in that 1982 novel (other than the author's lack of foresight).

[ownedbycats]

I only have very fuzzy memories (the book honestly gave me a headache), but Dune had a somewhat-vague Butlerian Jihad to explain the lack of computers.

[Sirtel]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

I only have very fuzzy memories (the book honestly gave me a headache), but Dune had a somewhat-vague Butlerian Jihad to explain the lack of computers.

Yes, I was reminded of that too. If you ask me, that's also a lame explanation. But then I'm not a big fan of Dune (I did like the most recent movie, tho).

Anyway, even a lame explanation is better than nothing. But authors are only people, and so their books will never be all-seeing, all-knowing perfections.

[Sirtel]

OTOH, we actually still don't have many things that SF authors have predicted for our time, or even for earlier time - real AIs, intelligent robots, self-driving cars, nuclear fusion or some other cheap, never-ending energy source, space colonies and so on. We haven't solved our hunger and poverty problems either.

[andyh2000]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

The Chanur Saga (C. J. Cherryh) has actual magnetic cassette tapes being used. It's always a bit jarring when a mention of them comes up.
...

Originally Posted by Sirtel

Yeah, in her other books as well. I always feel a toothache coming on when I read the word "tape" in one of her books. But there's no helping it.

I think I mentioned this the last time this came up. For me, the tape references have become exotic and more SF-like again as magnetic tape of all descriptions has dropped out of daily life. So I don't think compact cassette when I read it, I think hand-waving SF plot device. As it should be.

Andrew

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Sirtel

OTOH, we actually still don't have many things that SF authors have predicted for our time, or even for earlier time - real AIs, intelligent robots, self-driving cars, nuclear fusion or some other cheap, never-ending energy source, space colonies and so on. We haven't solved our hunger and poverty problems either.

SF is mostly about entertainment. Sometimes a warning. But only the poorest kind attempts to be predictive. Most has Science fantasy or even "magic by another name".
Cordwainer Smith's work is classic SF but certainly has psychic power and fantasy.
E E Doc Smith started publishing his Space Opera in 1928 and being a scientist/chemist would have known that iron is the most impossible fuel for spacecraft. Fusion & Fission was certainly known to have iron as the valley point even then.

Some "predictions" have happened by accident, some by people or companies deliberately trying to implement the idea. Musk, Zuckerberg et al forget SF was never meant to be a blueprint and if serious at all was warning of dystopian results. See Brunner's brilliant "Shockwave Rider" inspired by rather silly book by I think Toffler.

There is a spectrum between "pure" SF and "pure" High Fantasy, no sharp barrier. Most so-called Hard SF is nothing of the sort and is best when the Science/Technology aspects are simply a backdrop (20,000 Leagues Under the Sea: the submarine, batteries, electric engines and diving suits were all already real).

We do have miniaturisation and CPU/GPU power hardly imagined.
Fusion does exist and has a net output if the neutrons from reaction irradiate Fission waste, otherwise the system consumes more than it delivers.
Electric cars, radio, fax, colour photography, mechanical TV, batteries, movies are all Victorian or slightly earlier inventions. Electronic TV outlined in 1905. The CRT invented in UK and Germany in 1890s.
First programmable computer was the Z1 in 1939.
LEDs (accidental) and transistors (couldn't be made) known before 1936 but took till 1960s for LED and 1947 to make a working transistor (due to purer Germanium).
The magnetrons in a microwave oven date from WWII and the Victorians could have made microwave ovens but not Radar if they had stumbled on the Magnetron idea. It only needs a clockwork timer, metal box and a mains transformer (they had AC mains and also transformers) as well as the simple magnetron.

Some things have physical limits. So we are nearly at transistors as small as they can be. Programs need a specification and on silicon are simply faster than on a mechanical machine, so some argue that while simulations that fool the naive are easy, real "hard" or "general" AI like in Banks stories or ST-TNG Data are impossible.
The speed of light is a limit. Entangled particles seem to break that limit, but actually they can only be used to validate light speed messages, it's as if your randomly shuffled deck of cards you've not examined is instantaneously re-shuffled. Since you didn't know the prior state the new state can't carry a message.
Unless some unknown physics is discovered the only kind of Starship is the coasting Generation ship, which would need to be a big ring or tethered ships rotating on a common axis, or everyone would eventually die due to zero gravity. The ship would be like a nuclear sub as those can probably already be self-sufficient and stay submerged for a year. They use the fission power unit to get oxygen from seawater. A generation starship would carry water as shielding.

We had a radio controlled biplane in WWI and a modified passenger jet (no passengers) took off, flew and landed autonomously maybe in 1972.
Rocket engines using liquid hydrogen and oxygen tested in 1930s
German supersonic V2 had a mechanical inertial guidance computer and almost hypersonic.
Jet aircraft based on a Spitfiire airframe tested in 1939.
The Russians landed a probe on the moon in 1959 (Luna2). Early Russian spacecraft used valves (tubes) of a specialist kind. Luna 3 sent back photos of the far side of the moon in 1959.

Early spy satellites dropped the film canister to Earth. Ice Station Zebra based on a real event in Norway. Later they used the idea Baird developed in the 1930s for TV to develop and scan the film in the satellite. He did it because he had no electronic camera (that was an RCA/EMI design invented by a Russian in the USA). Then the images could be transmitted back. It was decades later before electronic cameras could match film.

The Six Million Dollar Man was based on a book called Cyborg. In reality electronic eyes, ears and mechanical body parts are never going to equal self-repairing biological parts. Regrowing teeth is almost here. Stimulating the body to kill some cancers is almost here and vaccines are since Crimean war. Cholera deaths massively reduced when they treated symptoms so someone could live long enough to get better. Salt, water and sugar, though now a banana is known to help.

There is no shortage of food or energy. The problem is greed, not technology. The USA alone consumes over 50% food and 80% energy with about 12% of population, though USA only 5th highest meat consumption.


Some research will easily find the links for all this. It's well known.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by theducks

1950's newspaper funnies had Dick Tracy with a wrist radio, later in that decade, upgraded with Video.
No excuse for being that far behind in the tech UNLESS EXPLAINED

A radio (with batteries and headphones) that fitted in a hat was real 1930s product.
The first pocket radios used hearing and military valves (tubes) in 1950s. The first transistor one was in the USA (Regency TR-1) 1954. Sony renamed themselves Sony (from So New York!) for the TR-63 in 1957 which was the first successful pocket transistor radio.
The first matchbox sized radios would have been toy crystal radios needing a long aerial in 1950s. Sinclair didn't do the first matchbox sized AM transistor set, but it's the best known 1967.

See www.Radiomuseum.org
AM Watch Radios never worked well. Too poor reception. FM models using an IC in the 1980s used the earphone flex as an aerial as do phones with FM radio today, but battery life is poor. Some iPhones have an FM radio as it's included in the BT&WiFi chip, but due to ditching the 3.5mm jack purely for cosmetic reasons the radio is disabled as it has no aerial.

[Renate]

Originally Posted by Quoth

The problem is greed, not technology. The USA alone consumes over 50% food and 80% energy with about 12% of population, though USA only 5th highest meat consumption.

I'm not disagreeing with the sentiments, only the numbers.
The US is 4.23% of the world's population.
50% of the food and 80% of energy? I seriously doubt that.
I make it out to be 17-24% of world's energy.
Yeah, we're hogs. There is a problem.

You made me feel so guilty that I just turned off the lights.
It's very early morning here.
OTOH, all my electricity is solar.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

I'm not disagreeing with the sentiments, only the numbers.
The US is 4.23% of the world's population.
50% of the food and 80% of energy? I seriously doubt that.
I make it out to be 17-24% of world's energy.
Yeah, we're hogs. There is a problem.

You made me feel so guilty that I just turned off the lights.
It's very early morning here.
OTOH, all my electricity is solar.

Maybe the approximately 12% is North America, not USA.

Either way, it's not a good look and the point is that food shortages is absolutely not a technology issue but politics and corporations and culture. See Russian's invasion of Ukraine.

I looked at solar and the panels are cheapest part, 2nd is electronics and 3rd is batteries (most expensive and oddly Lead Acid is a better solution than fashionable Lithium). It would be handy in an apocalypse or if batteries had x2 life, so not yet. The batteries are shortest lived and panels next longest. Also only 1/2 the year is good, or about 1/4 of the years hours. Not using electric heating, electric clothes drying or air conditioning and only energy saving lights is maybe more important. We never use electric clothes drying or air conditioning or ironing. Willis type water heater in summer. Rare use of one electric heater.

Also the house roof sides point approximately west and east. Garden not big enough.

[Renate]

Well, we need to fix a lot of things.
Population growth is a problem too, especially with climate change potentially invalidating coastal areas.
Having a dozen kids is a good way to ensure a safe retirement (at the cost of a miserable, poor adulthood) but it's just an unworkable Ponzi scheme.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by Renate

Having a dozen kids is a good way to ensure a safe retirement (at the cost of a miserable, poor adulthood) but it's just an unworkable Ponzi scheme.

If they are selfish a dozen kids simply wears you out.

[Hitch]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

There are more people then you think who will see a cover, read the book and notice the error(s) on the cover. Dresden Files is a good example of covers that really do need to be replaced with corrected covers.

Jon:

Yes, but by the time that a reader kvetches, s/he will have already bought the book and cares ENOUGH to give a hoot about whether the horse is brown, sorrel, bay or chestnut or even Palomino. At that point, you grabbed them, you have (at least) the $$ From their first purchase, and presumably, they'll continue to buy.

Someone who a) didn't buy the book or b) didn't like it, isn't going to give two hoots about the color of the horse's mane.

Wholly unrelated mini-rant or laugh about people online who posted as "experts" in What Henry Cavill was riding, in The Witcher.....

Spoiler:

As a horse person my entire life, owning, riding, breeding and all that, I have to say, I found a crapton of Reddits and other posts/threads, etc. ALL OVER THE NET about "wha6t kind of horse is Roach," the [oriignal] chestnut that Henry Cavill was riding. Henry Cavill, who is what, 6'2" or so?
And there were all these "expert" answers, saying ARAB or MORAB [Morgan-Arab cross]. I was DYING. On an ARAB or a Morab, which are barely larger than pony-sized? Man, some folks really need babysitters before they post. Is it possible, remotely, that one Morgan/Arab cross, ONE, in the entire world, is tall enough to comfortably carry Cavill [and have his withers, up against Cavill's head, be the "right" size?} Sure. But generally speaking, they are, serious bidness, 8" shorter at the withers than they ought to be, to carry someone his size and weight.

If they liked the book enough to give a damn, they are unlikely to stop buying the series over the color of the horse, or the eye-color of the heroine, etc. Sure, would it be a perfect world, in which every single author could afford hand-drawn artwork for their books? YES, but I know many that can't even afford a $25 "commercial" cover from some fly-by-night on Fiverr.

AND, I'm sure that if said author sells enough books and the sales warrant it, they'll do just that--revise the covers. I don't remember the early Dresden Covers, TBH. When I first met Harry, he was one lousy book. So...don't remember. And again--I stopped reading those, but not about the COVERS.

Hitch

[ownedbycats]

Last night, I was looking at the "under $5" section of Kobo's Daily Deals. There was a baffling around of spritual healing self-help books and Amish romances. Neither of which I am interested in, oh well.

[Quoth]

Celtic or Celtic themed Fantasy with American spelling, especially on the Irish or Scottish (or even Welsh) names or places. The Scottish football team has a weird wrong pronunciation.

I learnt last year that soft c and hard J is wrong for Classical Latin, which is more like old Irish. Julius Caesar is pronounced wrong as J is just an initial I and German Kaiser is close, which is where that and Tsar came from.

[Quoth]

Originally Posted by ownedbycats

There was a baffling around of spritual healing self-help books and Amish romances.

I can't imagine either of those is written by or published by actual Amish. But you never know what they might have in office out in the barn as well as the phone?

Likely the Amish romances are better for your mental health than some "self-help" spiritual healing books. In one of Harry Kellerman's Rabbi Small mystery books the Rabbi is appalled that someone thinks he's a spiritual guide and suggests that's a Catholic / Protestant thing. Actually Ministers and Priests aren't meant to be spiritual guides either. Rabbi means teacher.

Likely I'm totally ignorant about the Amish, though I do know a bit about Irish Catholics, Presbyterians, Methodists, Church of Ireland and oddly Orthodox (but not Reformed or Conservative) Jews. I know a bit about the "Free Presbyterians" Ian Paisley founded. They are more like Baptists and no connection to Presbyterianism, that was marketing.