Daniel M. Bensen's Blog, page 106
April 15, 2014
The Great Continent of the Far East
Friend, writing buddy, and sometime contributor to my podcast, Melissa Walshe, has some excellent things to say about writing and reading and inspiration in her blog.
And some REALLY interesting questions about alternate history. Specifically, what would have happened if explorers from Eastern Asia had discovered the New World rather than Western Europe?
Her questions are in >>carrots<<
>>What was the technological leap that made it possible for Europe to do it’s conquering?<<
None. In 1492, China was more or less on par with Europe technologically. It’s only by 1600 or so that Europe has decisively pulled ahead in science and technology.
If you want a Point of Divergence (POD) that will produce a Chinese New World, look to social, not technological changes. The Treasure Fleet of Zheng He, for example, established trade with people all around the Indian ocean, from Malaysia to East Africa. This was in 1430. In 1433, however, the Yongle Emperor scrapped the fleet for internal political reasons and by 1500, China’s naval power was virtually non-existent relative to Portugal and Spain.
>>
Would it make geographical sense for China to need the same technology to conquer, and if not, what challenges would they face and given where they were at, what’s the minimal change that would have made conquest feasible?<<
Let Zheng He keep his job?
I think in that case you can at least depend on Chinese trade routs extending to the Cape of Good Hope on the one hand and Australia on the other.
But then you face the issue of getting across the Pacific, and finding something on the other end that’s worth stealing.
It would be hard to imagine any sane emperor sponsoring such a crazy scheme as a trans-Pacific Voyage. Columbus’s voyage required two crazy people, (Columbus, who thought the world was smaller than it was) and Queen Isabella (who wanted to kill all heathens and also get some gold to pay for her efforts to kill all heathens), and that voyage was shorter and had better prospects. After all, Columbus banked on finding China at the other end of his voyage. What would a Chinese explorer hope to find on the other side of the Pacific? Woolly, cheese-stinking Europe? Whoop-de-friggin-do.
In order to create a Chinese Columbus, you need to put your POD earlier. Perhaps say that the Mongols never reunified northern and southern China. You get two (or three or four) squabbling Chinese principalities, and even if one state scraps its navy, your Chinese Columbus can shop around and find a patron elsewhere. These absent Mongols also never steamrolled over the Islamic Golden Age, and so the Muslim Far West is in a position to trade profitably with China. Perhaps a Nestorian state has taken over and blocked Silk Road, leading to a bottle-neck of trade that the various Chinese maritime powers are trying to circumvent…But I’ve written about that scenario already.
Perhaps some more settled culture in the North Pacific mines enough gold to attract Chinese traders across the Bering Strait to Alaska?
Might a Treasure Ship, blown off course, find itself on the west coast of Central or South America? From there it’s easy to imagine an AltHist Emperor rubbing his hands together at the prospect of Aztec gold and Inca silver.
Another possibility is the discovery is made by somebody else. Perhaps a more powerful and expansionist Majapahit Empire expands to the Hawaiian islands, and a combination of Malay technology and Polynesian seamanship gets us permanent trade rout to Aztec land? It’s a bit of a stretch.
>>Was a philosophical difference in attitudes towards conquest a determining factor? <<
Perhaps. As far as I know, the usual philosophy of the Chinese government vis a vi the slavering hordes of non-Chinese barbarians has most often been “everyone is a subject of the Emperor, they just don’t know it yet.” They didn’t tend to colonize or proselytize. They just traded with you and blew you away with their obvious cultural superiority until you put away your furs and yogurt, gave up being a barbarian, and joined them.
>>Who would the lynchpins have been and what would have had to change for them to be successful with a different message?<<
I’m of the opinion that economics is to cultural philosophy what geology is to the shape of rivers. If an entire new continent of land to grab just opened up in front of them, Chinese policy would change pretty damn fast. Taking a wild stab at thinking about it, I’d say you’d get very powerful Buddhist temples operating as missions/trading-posts/gold-depots.
>>What is the Asian culture that would have been dominant at the time?<<
Depends on when you’re talking about, but China was always a huge power (even if there might have been several states claiming to be “China” at any given time)
>>Would an Asian conquest be more likely if a different Asian culture had won a particular war?<<
See my comments about an Asia with no Mongols. I suppose a successful Japanese conquest of Korea some time before the 15th century could create a maritime power with the wherewithal to discover the Americas.
>> How would the dominant philosophy (minimally tweaked for conquest purposes) impact the way that technologically less-advanced native peoples were treated?<<
The convert-them-through trade policy was relatively benign (and even allowed the development of such historical super-stars as the Mongols), but in general relations between settled farming civilizations and stateless peoples were as depressing in East Asian as they were everywhere else.
>>What diseases were rampant in Asia at the time, and how would they have played out versus smallpox?<<
Ah, that won’t make a difference. Europe and Asia were part of the same big, happy epidemiological family by the 1400s. The last big disease exchange between the two is called the Black Death. Yay! Anyway, expect the Native Americans to die a whole lot after Chinese contact. It is just possible the Chinese conquerors won’t see quite the need to systematically exterminate the natives that characterized European involvement in the New World, but I’m not optimistic.
Now some suggested reading:
1493 by Charles C. Mann
Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World by Jack Weatherford
Germs, Guns, and Steel by Jerad Diamond
And the Alternate History Forum
Any ideas or references I missed?
April 13, 2014
52 Self-publishing with Jamie Wyman
I’m talking this week with Jamie Wyman, author of Wild Card and the sequel Unveiled, whose publication she is currently funding through a Kickstarter campaign. Since one of those books was e-published by Entangled and the other is self-published, Jamie is in an excellent position to compare the two processes. Plus…
Editor Danielle Poiesz
Create Space and extended distribution
I much prefer the writer aspect of writing
A video of Jamie eating fire (which you can’t see unless you back her project)
Beta-readers, critique partners, and professional editors
Editors are supposed to be your manuscript’s voice
Wild Card is technomancers and trickster gods playing poker
Jamie put some of her world building online. Go read it.
I put my world building online and nobody read it. Ha ha.
I’m not going to read a book about a witch with a tramp-stamp.
John Picacio‘s cover art for The Creative Fire
You’re a little bit freer to make your own identity
April 10, 2014
Wheel in the Sky 5
“Tell me everything.” the long, long shadow of Martus Aletheiton, Root-commander of the Gothemor Krypteria, cut across the floor of the cell as if cast by the gnomon of compass. A black line, perfectly straight, perfectly aligned with the sun at the hub of the world, pointing the way toward truth.
“You want names?” The traitor in the cell cowered in the knife-shadow of Martus. “I can give you names. It was Brontar the Kite who came up with the idea, and Coil the Smith who made the dynamo—”
Martus frowned, very slightly, and the traitor’s confession fell to mumbling silence. “You mistake me,” said the Krypterion, “you think I want facts, but facts I already possess in abundance. The traitors you name are already here, in this very keep, confessing to all the crimes you cited and more. No.” With a thought, Martus commanded his mantel into actuation mode. The shadow on the floor grew jagged out with lightning-bolt limbs. “What I want,” he said, “is truth.”
“I told you,” said the traitor. “Brontar and Coil. It’s the truth.”
“No, it is fact!” A knife-bladed limb flickered out from Martus’ mantel, a black slash in the air that bent in precise right angles around the bars of the cell, crossed the distance between its master and its target, and inserted itself between the lense of the traitor’s eye and its lid.
“What I want,” said Martus, “Is truth.”
The tip of the actuator flexed a precise micrometer and the traitor’s eye flushed red.
“Why did the Powers put us on this wheel in the sky?” Martus spoke while the traitor shivered and bled. “Having done so, why did they then proceed to go insane? And why are there people like you?” The eyelid trembled against the smooth black surface of the actuator, “who would want to talk with them?”
The traitor was keening now, a high, thin noise like a dying machine might make.
Martus withdrew the actuator and the traitor could finally blink. A bloody tear squeezed from his ruined eye and the traitor collapsed, sobbing.
“Do you know the magnitude of the forces you were meddling with?” Martus’ voice was nearly inaudible over the animal howling, not that it mattered. Not that this fool would grasp the meaning even if Martus bellowed his message. Screamed it. Wept, himself.
“Stop that.”
The noise stopped.
“If your plan had succeded,” said Martus, “and you had built that radio. That,” his lip curled at the vulgarity, but any chance to increase understanding, “that ‘god-snare‘. It would have killed you and everyone you loved.”
The traitor only looked up, but his good eye was filled with bitter defiance. Martus had not created a die-hard rebel. He had only broken a man’s spirit. And saved another village from utter annihilation.
“Do you understand,” said Martus, “how you betrayed humanity?”
“I understand,” whispered the traitor.
“If only I could believe you.” Again the actuator’s jagged out from the mantel of the Krypterion. “But perhaps your tale will reach the ears of someone who does.”
The actuators swept through the vertical lock-trench and the cell’s door swung open.
“Go back to your home. And remember whom to thank for its continued existsance.”
Martus watched the wretched traitor drag himself into the arms of a silent brother hospitler. Some in Martus’ position would have insisted killing the fool, lest he damage the secrecy that hid the Krypteria from the focus of human and divine power. But light could blind as well as darkness. The stories would serve Martus’ purpose.
And the deeper secrets of the Krypteria would remain intact. It wasn’t as if the traitor had ever seen his tormentor’s face.
With a thought, Martus drew his mantle up into its formal configuration. Hard edges, flat, black panes, long triangular hood like a predatory bird carved from obsidian. The only skin Martus left exposed was his mouth and chin, for his mask had no need for eyeholes.
A flash of indescribable color in his peripheral vision. A request for root-command assistance at the gate.
Damnation and chaos. If Martus had just followed standard protocol and killed that last traitor, he would have had a half hour to rest. Grab something to eat. Wash his face. Spend some time out of his mantel. But today it seemed the price of mercy was more work to do. Or perhaps that was just the price of competence.
Martus extended angular legs from his mantel and scuttled toward his next task.
Marketing, Getting Paid, an Writing Skills
Recently a friend emailed me with some thoughts on self-promotion, and I thought his insights (and my response) might be useful or at least interesting to you guys. Do you agree with him that talent is the least important correlate to success?
My friend: As I understand it, most writer’s groups are directed at improving writing skills. However, I think there are other equally important objectives that need to be addressed.
Working with businesses over the years, I repeatedly saw that it is not the business, lawyer, doctor, artist, etc. that is the best at what it does that becomes successful. It is the business which is best at marketing what it does. There is a correlation between competence and success, but it is a surprisingly weak one.
I think there are three tasks which a writer’s group should focus on:
1 marketing a “presence”as an author
2 getting paid
3 developing writing skills
For task number one, I think Stephen King said it clearly in his book, On Writing. . He submitted a piece to a publication which had previously rejected him and made the comment “people are much less likely to use phrases like ‘not for us’once you’ve had some success” I think there are websites, publications, etc. which will give a great deal of name recognition if they print one of your submissions. I think this task should focus on identifying those sites and how to best get published by them. I think this task should also focus on ways to develop your”brand” as an author.
For task number two, we would all like to create works of art for the sake of beauty, but eventually we need to get paid if we want to do it on a regular basis. For this task, I think we should focus on identifying publications and sites which pay for author’s submissions. In addition, if someone is willing to pay me for my work, I am going to give their opinion much more weight than anyone else’s. If I am in a writers group, how do I know if the advice I’m getting is sound? I know people who have written and taught writing for many years, but have no significant publications and no significant success as an author. Maybe it sounds harsh, but why should I listen to their advice? In addition, we can use such sites for experimentation. If we find an appropriate one, we could all submit a piece and see which ones get published. We could then use that as a format for future efforts.
for task number three, I don’t mean to belittle the importance of this task. Improvement of writing skills is important and requires a lot of effort. However, once a basic level of competence is achieved, marketing becomes as important as competence. And no matter how competent you become,any author appeals to only a limited audience. Honestly, how many people have read The Grapes of Wrath outside of being forced to in a classroom? I think HP Lovecraft is brilliant, but 9/10 people I introduce him to don’t like his work. However, let’s say that despite your best efforts, your writing only appeals to lowbrow audiences in the US. And worse, you are only able to attract 1% of the people in the US as readers. That’s 3.3 million people reading your work and buying your books. Game over. You win. Once you achieve a basic level of competence, the most important task for you becomes identifying your target market.
Me: As for marketing and the publishing industry in general, I can refer you to the books my agent recommended Get Known Before The Book Deal.
I can also comment based on my experience (agented but not published)
my friends’ experience (published, and in one or two cases published often enough to make it an exclusive career) and from what I’ve read of the experiences of best-selling authors (although keep in mind their experiences are now about a decade out of date, and the industry has changed). Here are some thoughts:
Name recognition is definitely important. It’s the same old catch-22 that nobody will pay attention to you before someone pays attention to you. Many authors have made their careers by selling short stories to crappy magazines, then prestigious magazines, and then leveraging that success into a book deal. The caveat is that the skills that make a successful short-story writer do not necessarily make a successful novelist. Also, this career pathway is well known and competitive. Other authors have by-passed it by building a name for themselves with a blog (although that market has also become crowded).
One advantage I didn’t see you talk about is the advantage of working in a similar industry to publishing. Newspaper writers, professional bloggers, video-game designers, and other similar industries produce much more attractive candidates in the eyes of agents and publishers. For one thing, it’s because they are certifiably good writers, but for another, they already have a name and a fan-base. They probably also have contacts in the agenting/publishing world, or at least know how to conduct themselves.
Building this “platform” is a big part of being a modern author. I’d say it’s about half of the job if you’re published by a traditional big name publisher. If you’re published by an indie house or if you self-publish, the advertising/writing ratio is more like 80:20 (assuming you want to make enough money doing it to feed yourself and you aren’t already famous).
But one thing to keep in mind when talking about money: there isn’t much of it in writing. Graphed on a line from global successes like Steven King to the book of recopies and cat pictures your grandma published on Create Space, you get a perfect exponential curve, with a tiny fraction of sales going to (literally) millions of crappy hopeful books and the enormous majority of money focused on a handful of superstars.
What this means for me is that although I would love to build a mansion with the advance for my first novel, I can’t bank on that scenario. My career path is much more likely to be getting paid insultingly little to write for progressively better publishers until eventually (in perhaps a decade) I have made enough of a name for myself that I can support a family on writing alone and can quit my day job. If chasing money was a priority for me at all, I wouldn’t bother with writing. Teaching ESL is far more lucrative.
April 6, 2014
51 Science and anti-science with Turbofanatic
I’m back with Turbofanatic (of Wheel in the Sky, Aphelion and Deltavengers fame).
He should not have meddled with God’s Creation!
(once again) Coats‘s rule of storytelling #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
Aphelion again (seriously, read this damn comic)
I wanted the hive minds to be the good guys
Star Trek’s technobabble (they wrote “TECH,” by the way, not “SCIENCE”)
Sarah Talks to the coffee
Steven Pinker, my hero, and “the purity bias,” which is Dan-speak for the way our insular cortices process disgust, and make us feel as if things or ideas have been contaminated with evil in the same way a water supply might be contaminated by fecal matter. Look it up.
Assuming things have agency
Every rock and tree and creature has a voice, has a spirit, has a na~ame
What Lovecraft was getting at
Cthulhu does not care about us
Was it Armageddon or was it Deep Impact
Yeah, Bruce Willis! You’re an alpha male. You can solve our problems by blowing them up!
Apollo 13 and the direct abort
It’s called the Lunar Module. It’s for lunaring.
51 Cthulhu does not care about us 2/2
I’m back with Turbofanatic (of Wheel in the Sky, Aphelion and Deltavengers fame).
He should not have meddled with God’s Creation!
(once again) Coats‘s rule of storytelling #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
Aphelion again (seriously, read this damn comic)
I wanted the hive minds to be the good guys
Star Trek’s technobabble (they wrote “TECH,” by the way, not “SCIENCE”)
Sarah Talks to the coffee
Steven Pinker, my hero, and “the purity bias,” which is Dan-speak for the way our insular cortices process disgust, and make us feel as if things or ideas have been contaminated with evil in the same way a water supply might be contaminated by fecal matter. Look it up.
Assuming things have agency
Every rock and tree and creature has a voice, has a spirit, has a na~ame
What Lovecraft was getting at
Cthulhu does not care about us
Was it Armageddon or was it Deep Impact
Yeah, Bruce Willis! You’re an alpha male. You can solve our problems by blowing them up!
Apollo 13 and the direct abort
It’s called the Lunar Module. It’s for lunaring.
51 Cthulhu does not care about us
I’m back with Turbofanatic (of Wheel in the Sky, Aphelion and Deltavengers fame).
He should not have meddled with God’s Creation!
(once again) Coats‘s rule of storytelling #19: Coincidences to get characters into trouble are great; coincidences to get them out of it are cheating.
Aphelion again (seriously, read this damn comic)
I wanted the hive minds to be the good guys
Star Trek’s technobabble (they wrote “TECH,” by the way, not “SCIENCE”)
Sarah Talks to the coffee
Steven Pinker, my hero, and “the purity bias,” which is Dan-speak for the way our insular cortices process disgust, and make us feel as if things or ideas have been contaminated with evil in the same way a water supply might be contaminated by fecal matter. Look it up.
Assuming things have agency
Every rock and tree and creature has a voice, has a spirit, has a na~ame
What Lovecraft was getting at
Cthulhu does not care about us
Was it Armageddon or was it Deep Impact
Yeah, Bruce Willis! You’re an alpha male. You can solve our problems by blowing them up!
Apollo 13 and the direct abort
It’s called the Lunar Module. It’s for lunaring.
Dougal Dixon might have seen my work at some point!
One of my heroes (Daren Naish) interviewed THE hero (Dougal Dixon) on Scientific American and pluged my high-school project, Specworld! (scroll down to the second montage of images, my work is in the upper right corner)
April 3, 2014
Wheel in the Sky 4
“Gothemor Keep.” Saria indicated the tapering cone on the hill before them. The setting sun, hovering just above the hub, cast nearly horizontal beams of light on the pale ivory of the building and the dark forest around them.
“It began as a dragon’s tooth, you know.” She turned in her saddle, keeping her back straight, maintaining her poise. “The Anachronic Society built its cities in the jaw, and carved new geas signs to shackle…well.” She performed a knowing smile. “You don’t need me to tell you about geas, do you? Or Powers?”
“I know more than I want to.” Powers, the man sounded dreadful. A voice like that belonged on a sunbaked desert hermit, not a man barely out of boyhood. It was true Heroism was bad for you.
“‘I know more than I want to, my lady.’” Saria corrected him. “I’m sure that mistake was unintentional, what with the withdrawal and all, but don’t make it again. I hold the key,” she ran her fingers through the harp-string fibers of her veil, “to your addiction.”
Her hired Hero glared at her, his eyes red, his skin waxy. “Can you kill him?”
Saria masked her expression of surprise with a spangle of lights across her veil. “Why would you want me to do that, master Hero?”
“Don’t call me that.”
“Candegar, then. I thought Heroes—people of your affliction, rather—I was under the impression that you enjoyed using your blades.”
“Enjoy?” Candegar’s face did not darken with anger. Instead his eyes widened and lost their focus as the stubbled, graying cheeks bunched in a sickening grin. “Lady, you have no idea.”
She turned away from him so she wouldn’t have to meet his eyes, but there was no escaping his voice.
“He tells me to stab people. Especially people with Powers.”
“I am aware of that,” said Saria. “that is the geas of a Hero Blade.”
A sandy chuckle. “Being aware of something and knowing it are different things, Lady. You might be aware of how this thing is going to kill me, but I know. I can feel my bones changing. I can hear his voice getting louder, every time I use him. It feels good….”
Of course it would. That was how a successful Hero Blade worked, compelling its host to travel and duel with other Heroes until the parasite had amassed enough material and genetic information to reproduce. Feeling sorry for Candegar was as useless as feeling sorry for the caterpillar parasitized by a wasp. Especially when Saria had use for a wasp.
“Sometimes,” the doomed Hero said, “when the pain gets too bad, or the pleasure gets too good, and I can’t shut his voice out. Sometimes I put the knife in my mouth, get the edges between my teeth, you know. And I bite down, just a little.”
She imagined that addict’s face, the eyes full of drugged bliss, the blood running from the monomolecular edges of the black and green blade.
“So I’m asking you if you can kill Voidcleaver,” he said, “while I still have my own mind and my own body.”
Lost Heavens. Saria had hoped that someone, somewhere in this whole scheme, might actually willingly sacrifice himself, and wouldn’t require her to threaten and mislead. Ah well. If happiness and friendship were Saria’s goals, she would never have left home.
She blanked her veil, turned, and favored Candegar with a beneficent expression. “Serve me well and perhaps I will grant your request and end your infection.” If by no other expedient than killing him. “But of course I cannot cure your Heroism before you complete this quest for me.”
She nodded at the infected dagger, swinging in its plain sheath from around his neck. To her vision, it swarmed and scintillated with Power.
“Your pointy little friend. Or rather, his distant ancestors, were were tools for the Anachronians, and with a little luck, there may be a Power round here that still remembers that.”
Their horses passed into the shadow of the tower, and now the backlit fang piercing the ember-coloured dusk sky. It was just possible to make out carved images of savage Powers being destroyed by great warriors of old or enslaved to wise and noble kings. And the lies beneath that surface were even greater.
Familiar anger welled inside her, giving Saria the resolve to brush her hands across her veil and withdraw the border she had placed between Candegar and his personal demon.
The Hero choked as if punched in the gut. Then sighed, as if given a pipe full of opium.
Saria ignored a flash of empathetic despair. “Tell me,” she ordered, “what does your Blade see in that tower.?”
“He wants me to kill you,” said the Hero.
“Don’t listen to him. Remember what I promised.”
“He says you’re lying.”
“Don’t be tedious, Hero. We know quite a bit more about Powers than you, and I can sever your communication with the Blade at any time.”
“We” said Candegar. “Who’s we?”
Saria raised an eyebrow at him. “Who do you think?”
“Not Krypteria.” Candegar said. “You’d have arrested me. Or I’d just be dead. But nobody else keeps tabs on Powers except…” He cursed. “The bloody heretics.”
“We prefer the term ‘transhumanists’. Now, if you please.”
“Voidcleaver” Candegar spoke to his parasite. “What do you sense about that tower?” He waited as if listening to a response. “Unseelie? No. So either those are more rebel aristocrats like you,” said Candegar or…
“Non-rebel aristocrats” Saria finished. “That is to say the Imperial government. Specifically the branch of the government that enforces the restrictions on human capability.”
“I thought the Krypteria would be part of this mess.” Candegar squinted up at the tower, now looming over them. “And what do you want to do with it?”
“Blow the damn thing up,” said Saria. “Now unsheath that dagger.”
April 1, 2014
Singularity and King 8
Michael: That’s how I imagined it. Some people have it in their heads that everything was so much better in the olden days, which is rarely true unless you’re caught in the middle of a war or a repressive regime or a massive plague. But it’s that sort of uchronian love of ancient periods that led a lot of people to this constructed world and there would certainly have been luddites among them. Most likely, they would have positioned themselves to take the best advantage after the switches are thrown. And then torn out of the wall. But they’re no fools. On a world where cannon don’t work, hypertechnology is the last argument of kings.
Now I’m getting a Dune vibe where some of our Luddite-Aristocracy would very much enjoy lobotomising a strong AI and clapping virtual chains on it. Suffer not a machine to think!
And the Unseelie Court finds this prospect most unappealing.
Dan:Love love love. I like the idea that the current problems with environmental engineering is “runaway software oligarchism,” but you’re right that can’t have been what caused the problem in the first place. So is this place a holiday get-away that suffered a catastrophe (perhaps a pocket-universe that bubbled off the real universe, therefore no hope of rescue)?
I like the conflicting interests between human and AI factions. Perhaps there is an “AI Tithe” where software personalities are offered up to the Emperor’s court to be lobotomised as slaves. Originally it was a stopgap measure to prevent runaway oligarchism, but it evolved into a means for one AI to punish another (you are sentenced to serve the humans!) Now, the Unseelie Court has grown powerful enough to choose Tithes, and is sending Seelies to become human slaves, both undermining the Seelie position and depopulating its ranks (imagine sending animal rights activists to the lion pits). The Unseelie is close to its end-game scenario: wrestling enough control away from the Seelie environmental programming to wage a war of Nature against Man that will forever scrub away the stain of humanity. Evil laughter!
Michael:Ahh, to the Shape of the World. This a disk so massive that it’s the star that’s caught in its centre. Proper application of gravitic manipulation makes the star bob up and down giving the world a day/night cycle and suspended way up in the sky is a layer of highly reflective dust to guarantee solar energy is distributed where it’s needed. This dust can be “shuttered” or concentrated as needed. Archimedes’ sun mirror, anyone? Also, there are shrouded cities (of Leng?) where it is said Darkness dwells eternal…
The disk spins so that predictable weather patterns form. And there are the Regional AI’s to manage local climates. Perhaps the disk radiates heat in a regular fashion as well so we can have seasons.
There are lots of things to break or subvert like what we’ve been working on. And we haven’t even touched on biotech or anything like that yet.
A good model of an Alderson Disk can be found in Charles Stross’ Missile Gap.
For a model with most of the science worked out and with some of Stross’ climate control features, check out Rak Mesba.
I love the idea of a flat world. It brings together super-advanced stellar engineering with the anachronistic worldview of a flat Earth.
