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damerell at 07:21pm on 03/10/2013
damerell at 07:21pm on 03/10/2013I bought Dodger the other day, and it has a short extract from Raising Steam, which appears to be bringing the railway to the Discworld universe, which makes some kind of sense given the universe's transition (some by authorial retcon but some in-canon) from hack fantasy medieval to Renaissance to hints of the Industrial Revolution.
But... there's a despair-inducing bit at the end of Making Money, where they've just uncovered a vast number of golden golems, and (accepting the universe canon that golems are no more slaves than machinery is) there is a brief prospect of a new era of luxury for all with all routine work undertaken by these golems, when someone points out this will cause the economy to collapse because apparently they can no more get away from the pernicious model where taking in each others' laundry is valuable GDP than we can.
This does rather raise the question; are we going to (absurdly) get the railways without general-purpose steam engines? The extract almost suggests we are; we seem to have skipped directly to Trevithick's 1808 locomotive without the evolutionary steps up to it, even though early woefully inefficient designs are much more useful as pumping engines (and we know there are vast dwarf mines), for driving factories, even pulling unpowered wagons up inclined planes - it doesn't matter how heavy a static engine is.
But if we're not, then presumably the steam engine will have an equally disruptive effect as the golems would have done, so if it wasn't OK then, why is it OK now?
But... there's a despair-inducing bit at the end of Making Money, where they've just uncovered a vast number of golden golems, and (accepting the universe canon that golems are no more slaves than machinery is) there is a brief prospect of a new era of luxury for all with all routine work undertaken by these golems, when someone points out this will cause the economy to collapse because apparently they can no more get away from the pernicious model where taking in each others' laundry is valuable GDP than we can.
This does rather raise the question; are we going to (absurdly) get the railways without general-purpose steam engines? The extract almost suggests we are; we seem to have skipped directly to Trevithick's 1808 locomotive without the evolutionary steps up to it, even though early woefully inefficient designs are much more useful as pumping engines (and we know there are vast dwarf mines), for driving factories, even pulling unpowered wagons up inclined planes - it doesn't matter how heavy a static engine is.
But if we're not, then presumably the steam engine will have an equally disruptive effect as the golems would have done, so if it wasn't OK then, why is it OK now?