Regarding Zan's second request, I've been wondering what a space archaeologist does, besides looking stylish with fedora and whip, or maybe a cup of Earl Grey, hot.
* There are settings where history is deep and vitally important to the present day -- David Brin's Uplift series, Stargate, or Vernor Vinge's A Fire upon the Deep. The race for an artifact can decide wars, or trigger them in the first place. * Other settings have a deep history, but the living are living their own lives. Star Trek is a good example. Every now and then, a find causes local excitement, but it won't shift the course of galactic history. In both of these cases, most ancient history is alien. Stargate may be a partial exception. * If most significant artifacts are human, from an early phase of space exploration, can they be more than filling out the details of the historical record? McDevitt's Alex Benedict series makes that the day job of the hero, who then gets into more exciting adventures. That would be the equivalent of selling dinner plates from the Titanic, or perhaps even gold from a Spanish galleon. * Or could there be significant gaps in the historical record? Compare our knowledge of the 19th century, and what we know about the 9th century (AD or BC). For the 19th century, we have a mass of data, and there is no room for doubt who the kings and queens of Britain were. Research centers on things they didn't bother to record, back then, or didn't know -- how Maybe it was long enough that information wasn't re-recorded on new media when the old one wore out. I'm pretty sure I'll be able to find this mail ten years from now, but 100 or 1,000 years? And will they understand the context of GURPS? Most of this human history won't be world-shattering. Imagine we learned how Napoleon really died. Headline stuff, certainly, but then the world goes on. And are there technology choices to encourage interesting archaeology? * Should the research craft be armed? If you poke into lost pyramids in Stargate, bring a big gun ... * A setting with sublight sleeper ships would make history important, maybe, but it makes finding history harder. * Jump drives with a slowly drifting net of jump lines could create lots of missing links, cf Barrayar by Lois Bujold. * By contrast, warp or hyperdrive allows ships to wander off course more easily. Thoughts, anyone? Regards, Onno _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
