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nancylebovThere are things about the timeline I seem to be stuck in which would either work as science fiction or would be too implausible for science fiction.....
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people went to the moon and then stopped going for decades
9/11 and, more generally, Islamic extremists having a worldwide political effect
demographic transition (a spontaneous drop in the birth rate)
China's one child policy
a black president
global warming
home computers
getting more and more information from less and less data (species' histories from DNA, extra solar planets deduced from tiny variations in starlight-- unfortunately, I haven't seen any sf about this trend)
homosexual marriage gradually becoming legal, and likely to be fully legal in much of the world within a generation
the US becoming a security state (I recently saw something about how prescient Heinlein's Between Planets was-- younger readers may not realize he meant it to be a shockingly bad situation)
AIDS (both that it happened and that it's under partial control-- in normal sf, it would either be generally devastating or completely stopped)
too much science fiction for any one person to keep track of (I think, there may still be a very few people who can do it-- sf used to be a field of a much more manageable size)
people went to the moon and then stopped going for decades
9/11 and, more generally, Islamic extremists having a worldwide political effect
demographic transition (a spontaneous drop in the birth rate)
China's one child policy
a black president
global warming
home computers
getting more and more information from less and less data (species' histories from DNA, extra solar planets deduced from tiny variations in starlight-- unfortunately, I haven't seen any sf about this trend)
homosexual marriage gradually becoming legal, and likely to be fully legal in much of the world within a generation
the US becoming a security state (I recently saw something about how prescient Heinlein's Between Planets was-- younger readers may not realize he meant it to be a shockingly bad situation)
AIDS (both that it happened and that it's under partial control-- in normal sf, it would either be generally devastating or completely stopped)
too much science fiction for any one person to keep track of (I think, there may still be a very few people who can do it-- sf used to be a field of a much more manageable size)
no subject
Date: 2010-03-04 03:51 am (UTC)-- cooking over a coal stove or wood stove. This includes baking.
-- cooking either on a spit or in a dutch oven or a kettle over a fire in a fireplace -- and baking.
-- brewing small beer.
-- making your own clothes, from purchased fabric, by hand sewing.
-- making your own well-fitting shoes from leather
-- building wagons, including wagon wheels
-- forging, making or machining tools for use in doing other things
-- cooking without the use of freezers; cooking and preserving food without refrigeration.
-- growing and preserving, in some way other than freezing, enough vegetables to get you and your household through the winter and spring until the next harvest
-- identifying and cooking wild plants and vegetables, which includes knowing which parts of which plants to eat in which seasons
-- create a temporary shelter if you don't have one, in any weather.
Yes, I can make a quill pen from a quill; if necessary I can boil oak galls for ink.
And -- by the way -- if you are somewhere without a fire in this weather, not knowing how to use flint and steel can be a matter of survival. Any loss of survival skills is a huge loss.