Explaining the technological idiosyncrasies in my novel, Pt 1 of 2.
Link to my novel: http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B009RZYO2O/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=B009RZYO2O&linkCode=as2&tag=staatthewor-20
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I Feel You by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
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Now, if there's one thing you should never do, it's ask an author about his writing, because he will go on and on and on.
So that said, I am going to try and keep this video brief.
It's a question I received about how do the economics of my novel, As I Walk Broken Roads, how does the technology operate?
How does it work?
Specifically, the challenge I received was, how is it that you can have a place that knows how to brew, you know, a fine ale, which requires some fairly advanced modern technology, and yet they have no idea how to fix an internal combustion engine?
Well, in a way, that's kind of the whole point of the novel.
Now, with the science in general, I did take some liberties.
For one thing, a car like this, she, during a nuclear war, would be completely fried.
The computer would be nothing but ruin, and she wouldn't move.
Now, there's a very slim possibility I might be able to figure out how to rebuild that.
Very slim.
But for the people in Broken Roads, which is happening about 100 years after the nuclear war, not a chance in hell.
Okay, everything would have been completely fried.
So what I wind up doing, I'm kind of cheating by going with mainly 1970s tech, before we were so thoroughly reliant upon microprocessors in absolutely everything.
And this is also part of just my preferred design philosophy.
I do not like microprocessors.
I prefer analog systems because half the time they never break.
And when they do break, you can usually figure out how.
You get computer chips involved and you're dealing with a whole new layer of problems.
So for argument's sake, all the vehicles in the novel were built in the 1970s.
That's why they can still run.
And most of the technology that's still around is 1970s tech.
But how is it that they can do an advanced brewing process using pressurized containers?
How is it that racks can get a hold of an acetylene torch, which requires, again, very advanced machining techniques to maintain the pressure inside of it?
And yet they're so primitive that they're dragging plows with oxen.
Again, that's kind of the point of the book.
I reference in the novel, I reference Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, which is an absolutely wonderful book that I strongly recommend.
And the author, whose name I can't remember offhand, he talks about how people want things done right.
They want it done officially.
And so he talks about his friend who had a problem with his motorcycle where one of the handlebars, it was jiggering a little bit.
And so he took the side of a beer can, you know, snipped the little triangle out of it and put it in as a shim.
And the aluminium of a beer can is an absolute perfect material to use for that because, well, what happens with aluminium is that it rusts immediately when it's exposed to oxygen, but then that protective layer of aluminium oxide, and I know that's annoying you Americans when I say that, that protective layer stops any more rusting.
So yeah, absolutely wonderful material.
Perfect.
But his friend was offended that he put a vulgar piece of beer can in his $20,000 motorcycle.
Which is absolutely absurd.
You know, I once had a mechanic friend of mine, I was having some battery issues, and this, this was, I should have thought of this.
This is brilliant.
He looked at the loose connection, you know, and the clamp was tightened down as much as it could be.
So he grabbed a spare screw, put it into the divot, the gap, screwed it in half a centimeter.
No more electrical problems.
Because you know what?
The battery, the battery is replaceable.
It only lasts for a few years.
And the nodes, I think they're lead.
I'm not quite certain what they're made of, but it's very soft metal.
So by putting that screw in there, he didn't damage the clamps.
He just damaged the node on a replaceable item.
Might not look pretty, but you don't see that part.
There's absolutely nothing wrong with that repair.
Took 10 seconds and no more electrical problems.
But it's not official.
You know, some people would want to spend $500 on a new battery, which is just absolutely, absolutely absurd.
