Container drivers/Space Cowboy
I'm most of the way through an interesting history of the shipping container and its effects on trade, prices, globalisation and all that malarkey. Inspired by this, it seems to me that there's a deal of SF where the universe is assumed to run on a pre-Napoleonic basis, and that's likely a bit rubbish.
I mean, either you've still got big boys fireworks, which means little more than grown up slashdotters queueing for a go in Branson's sub-orbital pickle jar. Or you've got a handwave drive and it's business as usual for Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk, other than the truck drivers having to negotiate the picket lines of angry physicists outside the depot.
Assuming interplanetary trade or shipping isn't a ludicrous idea in the first place.
Hm. I think I've just re-invented Ken McLeod's 'Engines of light' books.
Best not do that.
I mean, either you've still got big boys fireworks, which means little more than grown up slashdotters queueing for a go in Branson's sub-orbital pickle jar. Or you've got a handwave drive and it's business as usual for Hapag-Lloyd and Maersk, other than the truck drivers having to negotiate the picket lines of angry physicists outside the depot.
Assuming interplanetary trade or shipping isn't a ludicrous idea in the first place.
Hm. I think I've just re-invented Ken McLeod's 'Engines of light' books.
Best not do that.