Re: (ReacTor) Five SF Novels About Rediscovering Ancient Tech

On 5/14/2024 1:59 PM, Christian Weisgerber wrote:

On 2024-05-09, James Nicoll <jdnicoll@panix.com> wrote:
 

Five SF Novels About Rediscovering Ancient Tech
>
https://reactormag.com/five-sf-novels-about-rediscovering-ancient-tech/

 Iain M. Banks' _Against a Dark Background_ is set in a lone solar
system in an intergalactic void.  There's nowhere else to go.
Earlier civilizations rose and fell, and the planets are littered
with their artifacts.  The novel's McGuffin is the last Lazy Gun,
a weapon with impossible physics and a dark sense of humor.  IIRC,
among other things, the protagonist picks up an ancient high-tech
equivalent of a motorcycle.
 In _Captain Future and the Space Emperor_, the villain has stumbled
over artifacts left by the ancient Jovians and uses those to walk
through walls; hit victims with a de-evolution-ator (or whatever
it was called) that has them transforming backwards through
evolutionary history, from hairy apes to reptiles; etc.
 | Lanier demonstrates considerable faith in the durability of
| modern-day technology. The travelers need only hit an on-switch for
| pre-war machines to activate. Impressive, considering that the novel
| is set in the year 7476 AD.
 I was already intrigued by the British TV mini-series _The Last Train_
(1999), where fifty years after the apocalypse our cryo-preserved
protagonists can just start up cars still sitting around in garages.
No flat batteries there.

In Woody Allen's 'Sleeper', the protagonists find a 200 year old
VW Bug in a cave. It starts at the first try.
In the film of LRH's "Battlefield Earth", a 1000 year old fighter
jet is ready to fly, and fully fueled. I don't know if its in the book,
I boycott Hubbard's works.
pt