We are shown some glimpses of the Avalonian environment even during the onslaught of the second attack. The planetary environment, of course, includes the moon, Morgana. When Morgana is bombarded, its mountains crumble and its valleys run molten. Later, the moon is:
"...murky-spotted and less bright than formerly. So much had it been scarred." (XIX, p. 660)
During the attack, Terran Meteor boats, including Rochefort's, attack a missile launch silo which:
"...lay beyond the mountains, in the intensely green gorge of a river." (p. 631)
When the boats have finished:
"A set of craters gaped between cliffs which sonic booms had brought down in rubble. Rochefort wished he could forget how fair that canyon had been." (ibid.)
On the Scorpelunan plateau, where the invaders establish their bridgehead:
20 comments:
Kaor, Paul!
Then the Avalonians should not have built that missile launch silo in that gorge!
Inadequate intelligence led Admiral Cajal to landing his forces on that plateau. It would become a trap for his men.
Ad astra! Sean
Nature always plays a role in war. Eg., look at the problems the Romans had when they ventured outside the agricultural zones they'd arisen in -- steppes and deserts like those in the Middle East. They never even tried to go far into the East European steppe zone.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree. Factors like the weather, geography, and geology also needs to be taken into account when managing a war.
The Romans did try more than once to invade/conquer Mesopotamia, and even succeeded during Trajan's reign--which his successor Hadrian abandoned.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: abandoned because of massive revolts in the territories in question, and Jewish revolts in the Eastern provinces.
I would agree that Hadrian was being overly cautious -- without Mesopotamia, no government based on the Iranian plateau would have had the revenues to sustain a big war.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I recall mention of those Jewish revolts but not that the Mesopotamians were so hostile to Roman rule.
Interesting, that you think Hadrian should have held on to Mesopotamia. I agree that control of those fertile lands were what gave Iranian dynasties like the Arsacids and Sassanids the wealth and resources Persia needed to be a great power. I recall how you had Arthur/Artorius thinking in your first Antonine novel that something would have to be done about Parthia.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: yeah, he does think that.
You 'strike while the iron's hot', and advantages are temporary.
Eg., gunpowder isn't going to remain secret forever... though he's in a position where he can pull -new- advantages "out of his hat".
One of the chapters in the next book is set in an ironworks... charcoal hot-blast blast-furnaces, and chemical steelmaking, all powered by reverse-overshot waterwheels.
It's at the Erzberg mine, now in Styria and then in the Roman province of Noricum. The Romans may well have known about the deposit, and used it on a small scale -- Norican iron (and small quantities of steel) was famous in the period.
The new methods are very useful... for, among other things, cast-iron cannon and cannonballs. And wooden plows become obsolete! Plus cast-iron pots and pans, pipe and so forth.
The Roman Empire produced about 80,000 - 85,000 tons of iron a year, and needed something like 500,000 workers to do it, seasonally or permanently.
A lot of the processes they used were very wasteful of raw materials and extremely labor-intensive.
A single plant like the one described could -- within the technical capacities of the day -- produce something like 8,000-10,000 tons a year, including cast iron (which the Romans couldn't do at all), malleable wrought iron and steel, with about 3,000-5,000 workers including the charcoal-makers. That latter was the biggest labor requirement.
The cost advantage in iron ore, charcoal, and labor would range from 75% to 90%. So you'd get a reduction in -cost- of around 80%, besides increasing the range of products.
Bessemer steel wouldn't be practical for some time, but there was another process (invented in the 1860's by a guy called Heaton) using nitrates for chemical decarburization of molten pig iron which -could- have been done then. Basically all you had to do was pour the iron into an enclosure with the chemicals.
Not quite as efficient as Bessemer, but comparable, so steel prices fall by more than 90% and it can be mass-produced.
Roman-era Europeans had terrible trouble producing steel -- they didn't understand the chemistry, it was all rule-of-thumb and a complete pain in the arse and critically dependent on the initial chemical composition of the ore, which as I said they couldn't tell except by trial-and-error.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Fascinating! The new tech being introduced by Arthur/Artorius would allow the Romans to conquer Germany/Bohemia at least as far east as the Elbe River. Once that was nailed down Marcus Aurelius could make a really determined effort to wrest Mesopotamia from Parthia.
I would worry, tho, about the Empire expanding too quickly. But, yes, strike while the iron is hot!
Fascinating how introducing 19th century methods of iron and steel making would be truly revolutionary.
Ad astra! Sean
Sean: well, there's a reason so many tools were wooden, or wood with iron only where it was absolutely necessary. The stuff was -expensive-.
Gunpowder will revolutionize things like mining and roadmaking, too.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I agree, gunpowder makes building roads and mining so much easier. And many other things.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
Another thought I had was that the new tech being introduced by those stranded time travelers to Antonine Rome meant that the Empire would soon be able to make use, within a generation,
of the vast oil fields in Mesopotamia and the Arabian peninsula (and the Dacian provinces!). Another incentive for Marcus Aurelius to wrest Mesopotamia from Parthia!
Strike while the iron is hot! Otherwise even shambolic Arsacid Parthia would start catching up.
Ad astra! Sean
Of course, introducing innovations will also have consequences that -aren't- predictable.
And disruptions to established patterns -- which will have consequences which aren't predictable either.
As one of the time-travellers thinks, it would be amusing to see how future historians explain all this!
If the time travel part is successfully kept secret, the historians would have to contort themselves into pretzels to account for all this stuff suddenly coming out of backward Pannonia.
One helpful factor is that that the 2nd century Roman Empire had between 30% and 35% of the entire population of the planet.
The Han Dynasty Chinese Empire had about the same.
This was an unusual concentration of population in just 2 political units -- probably unique in human history after the spread of agriculture.
It was a "climacteric".
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I should have given more thought to that, how the innovations so unexpectedly coming from Pannonia would have unpredictable consequences: bad, good, indifferent. I did think those innovations would end up making slavery uneconomical, hastening its abolition. I also wondered if the consequences of the new tech would hasten the repeal of the anti-Christian laws. These innovations would also have unexpected effects on Christianity.
Could the fact of Arthur/Artorius and his colleagues coming from the far future be kept a secret? First Josephus ben Matthias, then Marcus Aurelius himself and Galen, were informed of this time traveling. And I assume others would be told or find out. Too many to be kept wholly a secret--so I would expect these future historians to be at least aware of this as a possibility.
That concentration of population in the Roman Empire and Han China was helpful because it enabled the former to make quicker use of that new tech? I assume Parthia/India had most of the rest of the world's population.
Btw, Paul's daughter informed me his computer is again giving him problems. He does not expect to get it back before Saturday, Feb. 24.
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
I can see one or two innovations coming from the Pannonia of Marcus Aurelius' time, such as the "unarota" (wheelbarrow) or even pockets, but certainly not all the things we see being introduced in TO TURN THE TIDE!
What's next? Mechanical clocks? I recall how Anderson discussed in "Delenda Est" how crucially basic good clocks were to become when they were invented in Europe around 1200.
Ad astra! Sean
Yes, clocks and so forth. The main problem is time, followed by the fact that the time-travellers have to experiment to get things working, followed by the lack of machine-tools.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
All that people had for time measuring devices in Roman times were sundials, water/water powered clocks, all of which had serious disadvantages. E.g., sundials would be useless on cloudy days and at night.
And I recall how frantically busy those time travelers were in the draft version of TO TURN THE TIDE. Just trying to get innovations more complex than a "unarota" to work was very hard work!
And the threat of the Marcomannic war was no help!
Ad astra! Sean
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And my humble little light powered SEIKO wrist watch would be worth many times its weight in gold to those stranded time travelers. Given ordinary care it would last much longer than watches needing batteries replaced from time to time.
Ad astra! Sean
Speaking of the wheelbarrow innovation.
Here is an interesting article about another 'unarota' with a different design, useful for moving things longer distances then in a garden or construction site.
https://solar.lowtechmagazine.com/2011/12/how-to-downsize-a-transport-network-the-chinese-wheelbarrow/
Re: watches
In one of the 1632 stories it is mentioned one of the characters has a sort of self winding wristwatch. I *think* it is a quartz electric, but a magnet in a coil on a spring adds a little charge to the battery every time the wearer moves his arm.
Kaor, Jim!
I may have come across mention of that kind of wheelbarrow when I looked up the history of that device. But I wanted to get some idea of when Western style wheelbarrows were invented. In more or less the 13th century.
I have read about self winding watches. It has the disadvantage of needing to be moved to keep it functioning, meaning you can't carefully keep it in a safe place for long before it stops. A light powered watch only needs light to keep it powered. So Arthur/Artorius could keep it on his desk (if he had one) without needing to wear it.
Given an accurate sundial such a watch would continue to keep accurate time.
Ad astra! Sean
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