Part of the appeal of Rome's Revolution was the culture clash between Rei and Rome.
While the most obvious difference between the Essessoni culture and the Vuduri culture is the Overmind, I'll cover that in more detail tomorrow. Today's entry is centered around the differences in technology.
In 14 centuries, if technology continued at the pace it does today, their society would probably be unrecognizable. That wouldn't make for a good story. I introduced The Great Dying to set society back to the Stone Age. This way, it would take the nearly 14 centuries just to get back to where we are today. To add a little whiz-bang element, I let them go just a little ahead of us.
The most obvious and important advance was the discovery and exploitation of the Casimir Pump described yesterday. Other hallmarks of classic scifi future societies are FTL spaceships (got 'em), rayguns (got 'em), robots (had 'em) and super-genius computers (got 'em in spades). I even threw in a few aliens (Stareater, falling blankets) but the traditional green aliens will come in 2014 in The Milk Run.
I wanted the reader to feel comfortable that this was a "classic" futuristic society. Then there is the twist. Lots of science fiction movies like to show future music, art, dancing, drugs, all sorts of things that are extrapolations from today. Well, since the Vuduri society is founded on the principle that they would never do things like us, all those went away.
In fact, their future is boring. Their clothing is boring, their study of science is pragmatic. They have all this wonderful technology but as a people, they never take the time to "look up" and see what they have done.
That is what makes the merging of Rome and Rei so awesome. Rei comes from a world where we can appreciate what Rome's people have achieved, far more than they do themselves. Once Rome is cast out and is forced to think for herself, she, too, learns to appreciate the wondrous world of the 35th century.
You will note that once these two have joined forces, the pace of scientific discovery (through their agent MINIMCOM and to a lesser extent OMCOM) picks up significantly through The Ark Lords and will continue with Rome's Evolution.
Entry 1-064: February 27, 2013
How the Overmind came about
When I first started Rome's Revolution in 1973, I had no idea of what things were going to be like technologically in 2013. But I did know that Rei and Rome were fated to be together.