Brin (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
brin_bellway) wrote2021-04-25 11:07 am
brin_bellway) wrote2021-04-25 11:07 am
Entry tags:
A Connecticut Yankee in the Bellezzan Court
[cw: illness, (mild) amnesia]
I've been thinking a lot about the Stravaganza series lately. Wasn't sure why at first, but I think it's because of all the talk about reality shifters.
I've started re-reading it (well, "re-" for the first half, because apparently there was an entire second trilogy I did not hear about). It's been very nostalgic: I had a special interest in this series when I was ten, and I remember it fondly.
---
The language is interesting. Britain is another country, and so is the past: you can actually *see* the language of this early-00's book getting more archaic as the decades go by and we diverge from it. Not even just slang: sometimes it's stuff they probably *expected* at the time to be pretty stable.
It's still *intelligible*, of course--I am *aware* of the meanings of "football" and "mask" that Lucien takes for granted--but they aren't what I would mean when I say them.
---
I expected that these days I would be more uncomfortable with how Prime Directive the stravaganti are, while the people trying to get their hands on future-tech from the fast-forwarded other world (ours, circa 2002) are the antagonists.
What I had not remembered was how *thick* they lay it on. Lucien explicitly references the Prime Directive; the story has now brought up *specifically* the differences in *diseases and treatments* the two worlds have *three times*. I'm less than a third of the way through the first book!
(Also, they've mentioned it's only been two years on the Talian side since the timeframes desynchronised in 1575, so they really haven't had that much time to think over how they're going to deal with access to future-tech. The original import/export restrictions were almost solely because having an object from the other world allows you to astral-travel to it, and they were concerned what that kind of abrupt widespread access might do to their societies.)
It's so blatant that it really feels like *foreshadowing*, like it's leading up to the stravaganti realising it's their moral duty to teach the Talians germ theory. And yet I don't *think* this happens? I do vaguely recall a plotline in the second book where a couple of recently-inducted-into-the-secret-society teenagers conspire to cure the antagonist's kid of cancer, but I think that's about it. Although, like I said, there's three more books I haven't read yet, so who knows.
Information wants to be free, Rodolfo. Do you think the di Chimicis could even *stop* people from boiling their water, washing their cuts with alcohol, infecting themselves with cowpox to train their bodies in pox-fighting techniques? You don't strictly need imported objects, nor even imported blueprints: you can get a lot more done on 1577 tech with just the *knowledge of how to use it to a fuller potential*.
Fuck, your city-state *literally has mandatory-masking laws*, just *change what kind of mask*--
(Of course, I'm saying this to a guy who apparently has access to teleportation--strongly implied to have been invented on *his* side of the multiversal divide! quite possibly by him personally!--but has *not* revolutionised transport and trade with it, so there's that. The devil could take everyone else, indeed.)
I've been thinking a lot about the Stravaganza series lately. Wasn't sure why at first, but I think it's because of all the talk about reality shifters.
I've started re-reading it (well, "re-" for the first half, because apparently there was an entire second trilogy I did not hear about). It's been very nostalgic: I had a special interest in this series when I was ten, and I remember it fondly.
---
The language is interesting. Britain is another country, and so is the past: you can actually *see* the language of this early-00's book getting more archaic as the decades go by and we diverge from it. Not even just slang: sometimes it's stuff they probably *expected* at the time to be pretty stable.
It's still *intelligible*, of course--I am *aware* of the meanings of "football" and "mask" that Lucien takes for granted--but they aren't what I would mean when I say them.
---
I expected that these days I would be more uncomfortable with how Prime Directive the stravaganti are, while the people trying to get their hands on future-tech from the fast-forwarded other world (ours, circa 2002) are the antagonists.
What I had not remembered was how *thick* they lay it on. Lucien explicitly references the Prime Directive; the story has now brought up *specifically* the differences in *diseases and treatments* the two worlds have *three times*. I'm less than a third of the way through the first book!
(Also, they've mentioned it's only been two years on the Talian side since the timeframes desynchronised in 1575, so they really haven't had that much time to think over how they're going to deal with access to future-tech. The original import/export restrictions were almost solely because having an object from the other world allows you to astral-travel to it, and they were concerned what that kind of abrupt widespread access might do to their societies.)
It's so blatant that it really feels like *foreshadowing*, like it's leading up to the stravaganti realising it's their moral duty to teach the Talians germ theory. And yet I don't *think* this happens? I do vaguely recall a plotline in the second book where a couple of recently-inducted-into-the-secret-society teenagers conspire to cure the antagonist's kid of cancer, but I think that's about it. Although, like I said, there's three more books I haven't read yet, so who knows.
‘And if they did have these cures and the skills to apply them,’ persisted Rodolfo, ‘do you think they would be made available to all? No. The di Chimici want to help only the di Chimici. They would steal whatever made them strong, made them live long, made their women have easy childbirth and healthy babies. And the devil could take everyone else.’
Information wants to be free, Rodolfo. Do you think the di Chimicis could even *stop* people from boiling their water, washing their cuts with alcohol, infecting themselves with cowpox to train their bodies in pox-fighting techniques? You don't strictly need imported objects, nor even imported blueprints: you can get a lot more done on 1577 tech with just the *knowledge of how to use it to a fuller potential*.
Fuck, your city-state *literally has mandatory-masking laws*, just *change what kind of mask*--
(Of course, I'm saying this to a guy who apparently has access to teleportation--strongly implied to have been invented on *his* side of the multiversal divide! quite possibly by him personally!--but has *not* revolutionised transport and trade with it, so there's that. The devil could take everyone else, indeed.)
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I read a post once worldbuilding a post-apocalyptic society, and it ended with something like "Obviously this is not long-term stable, but a long-term-stable post-apocalyptic society is just a historical society with salvaged plastic and germ theory." I think about that sentence a lot.
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