Re: [HoE] Road Warriors Vehicles

[Allan Seyberth <darious@darious.com>]

>In looking at the different vehicles throughout Road Warriors, the one thing
>I notice is that they all look circa 1990's.  Considering that HOE is set in
>2094, on a world that had whirligigs, paravanes, automatons, and all the
>other Mad Science in the 1800's, and advanced spaceflight in their own time,
>shouldn't vehicles be more advanced?

That's one thing that I've felt was a ding on HoE - that the technology has
the look and functionality of late 20th century tech, instead of late 21st
century tech in a timeline that seemed to jump ours by about 40 years.

On a previous discussion of why the firearms are so "primitive", it was
mentioned that firearms of today are pretty much at the pinnacle of their
base functionality.  ie the guns themselves aren't gonna get much better -
their accessories might, but the mechanisms for the actual projectile will
not.  Then the Wasted West book came out and it had some cool high tech
weapons in it, made me feel better.

The one theory that I came up with is that basically, the reliance on
manitou driven Mad Science has actually stifled several branches of
scientific development.
Instead of investing in proven and consistent paths of scientific
development, governments put their money and effort into getting the latest
MS creation - with the understandable belief that just getting the right
super-weapon would assure victory.
After all, look at the incredible results that was achieved early on in the
Civil War.  The course of the war was utterly changed by the MS creations,
and it took super weapons to stop super weapons (Chemical Warfare vs.
Battle Tanks).

I haven't completely thought this through, but basically the thrust is that
due to the splitting of resources between two tracks of research, 2094 of
the Weird West looks like 1994 of our world - but with certain incredible
advances (robotics, space travel, and psionics come to mind) overlayed on
top.
-------------------
Allan Seyberth
darious@darious.com

Why did the chicken cross the road:

Ayn Rand:
The chicken crossed the road in order to get away from the flock that is
stifling his creativity.