Re: Tech Advances & others

[email removed] writes:
> >From: [email removed]
>
>  >I read a book a long time ago (oh no I hear you say ... suffer!) where
>  >technology took a different path.  There was a simple law of physics that
>  >if seen would lead on to anti-grav and space flight but precluded all
>  >electrical type technology as we know it today.
>
> I think this one may have been by Poul Anderson.  As I recall, one of the
> side effects of taking the antigrav path is that you never get the really
> neato weapons, flight tech, etc.
>
> I think the story starts with a group of conquistador type ETs landing their
> spaceship on a current tech Earth, and opening up on the natives with their
> super high tech weapons (muskets).  Things progress as might be expected
> from this point.

The stories you are discussing are "Herbig-Haro" and "The Road Not Taken",
both by Harry Turtledove.  I think both of them are in his short story
collections someplace, but he's a prolific short story writer, and his
stuff is everywhere.  "Herbig-HAro" was one of the first stories he published
in Analog, and takes place sometime after the humans built an empire using the
easy drive technology left to them by the aliens and their own surperior
weapons.  This empire, like all human foundations, eventually collapsed, and
the story is about the first contact with another race which also has gone
the road to electricity and so forth.

"THe Road Not Taken" expands on a small sequence from "Herbig-Haro", in which
the arrival of the 17th century style aliens on Earth is shown.

Rob Dean
(Occasional SF trivia consultant)