(Is that heresy?)
]]>For my part I enjoyed "Glasshouse" - not because the 1950s set up was in any way attractive but rather the opposite: because I was waiting to see where, and how, it would be blown apart.
]]>Hm. If you have a world with several intelligent species, then can't you play with their perceptions of each other - we generally only get the Elves' view, maybe the goblins aren't really evil savages: that's only what Our Side tells us? (And those Elves that act so high and mighty have their nasty secrets as well...)
Or the goblins are nasty, but they're like that because they were made/ brought up that way by the evil power that uses them. Given a chance, they wouldn't be like that (cf the Orc in Terry Pratchett's Unseen Academicals).
Or something.
But, I can see the attraction of simply not having to negotiate all this to begin with.
]]>As to Eric Blair/ George Orwell though - yes, he was an officer in the colonial Burma police, but wasn't it that that initially radicalised him (see his novel Burmese Days, for example, one of the first things he had published, I think, and anything but a gentle evocation of the joys of Empire). I'd find it hard to see him as any kind of authoritarian.
That said, it has been suggested that BB was a sort of alter ego, the physical description is rather similar (but that could be, you know, a joke!)
]]>Good tip about it being on Amazon - I've added this to my "Books coming in 2011" Listmania list.
]]>But isn't this slightly dodging the question? You still need to establish the minimum number of specialisms and the number of specialists in each. Say there are a minimum of N specialisms and for simplicity we only need one practitioner of each (and ignoring succession - just looking at the instantaneous system), you could meet that need by N individuals. Or, yes, you could meet it by fewer than N individuals who can either learn new skills quickly or who have several to begin with. But you still need to estimate N to begin with.
(Now where's that spherical cow gone?)
]]>(I find this speculation really interesting. There was a BBC series recently, "Survivors" which assumed near wipe-out by disease, but it focussed on relationships not practicalities - people kept going off, getting into trouble foraging and having to be rescued, but it didn't occur to anyone to find the nearest Maplin and grab a few sets of radios so they could keep in contact.)
]]>However, the Victorians were building up - for example, when they built their railways, they had lots of horses to help with the heavy work. We'd be on the way down. If a disaster wiped out our ability to refine and distribute oil, we'd not only have no petrol or diesel based transport, we'd have no (or few) horses to fall back on either. Or the skills to use them, either.
So there's probably a sort of hysteris going on here - for a given level of development we might need more people, to cope with the lack of skills and infrastructure that previous societies inherited form their predecessors.
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