Good to know, I spent sometime last night trying to dig up an 'ancient Greek chronophone' to no avail and it was driving me nuts trying to figure out what such a device would be. Now you've got me curious as all hell, "How much would you pay to be on time?", of course the flatworld reference has me thinking of a Terry Pratchett book "Thief of Time" too. It's tricky to imagine a setup where people needed to be accurate with time to the point of paying a subscription but if you pull that off it would be fairly new ground I think, a place that featured accurate timekeeping as significant sector of its economy, beyond the normal ground of the clockmaker and pocketwatch. I won't pry for details though.

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View original postGreeks a nice one cause you can bust out 'Archon', one of those titles that sounds properly bad ass and isn't as overused as Emperor or King. It sounds interesting, its alway more fun to read stuff by people you know. I'd offer myself as an alpha reader but my only two modes are usually 'I liked it' or the sorts of extreme nitpicking that don't help a story, I think last time I unloaded on someone for their insistence on having railroads, which typically weigh about a hundred tons a league, but having steel armor so incredibly expensive only nobles could afford it even though the odds of a reader giving a shit were minimal, and I'm about ten times worse with sci-fi.

I think that's almost inevitable, and honestly I'm probably in the worst 1% at noticing such things and they rarely screw with my enjoyment of the book as much as plotholes or bizarre behavior from the characters. In a way I almost think the danger comes from an author trying to explain something, because having brought attention to it the reader thinks about it. A floating city is cool, nobody demands to know why it floats or how the nightmare of bringing in food is dealt with, its cooler if that explanation works, but if it doesn't then one has just wasted a few pages on exposition in order to highlight a flaw.

I remember that post. The fun thing about technology is that it really isn't some sort of inevitable pathway of converging ideas people often think of it as and because of economy of scale and perfection through long use there's all sorts of stuff that could never be invented or never be used because something else came first and filled the niche. Or things people assume, by date of invention, must be very complex, like a fridge, when in reality one could be built using tech from ancient greece and powered by just having a piece of its circulation system built into a fireplace or oven, the Einstein Fridge, or running water in a house simply by having a rain barrel cistern up top, just decently higher then the sinks, a concept frequently employed in one way or another even back in antiquity. And one could even use that to drive appliances on. I think almost any tech that came into use after electricity tends to get lumped in as too modern to use, which is a pity.

If you're already late-stage I'd not be of much use, catching a major flaw in setup at that point generally limits one to just hanging a lantern on it, e.g. flat and/or moonless world "Why do we have tides?" "It's a great mystery, many scholars have tried to explain it, moving along"

Well anytime you're of a mind to, just NB me and I'll send you my email. Especially when it comes to designing or contemplating bizarre world setups and the sorts of secondary results of such a setup I always get a kick out of it.